Discussion of the Society of Epicurus' 20 Tenets of 12/21/19

I don't mean to get off track on schizophrenia-- but it's relevant because the disease attacks perceptions. Without accurate perceptions, we can't make wise decisions for pleasure!

Hiram, the word "perfect" and "without flaws", applied to human behavior, conventionally uses the most common absolute moral standards, which are already idealist. It's baked into the words. If you ask a random person on the street what a person without flaws is like, they would use whatever absolute moral standards they'd been taught, such as "always honest", "altruistic", "always kind" "self-sufficient", etc. There would be some person to person variation, but those will be typical responses. I haven't done a formal study, but for decades I have asked parents of young children what kind of adults they hope to teach their children to be. It gives me insight that's useful when conflicts arise. It helps me remind them later and ask if they are demonstrating what they want to teach, in their own choices.

I would imagine that their "perfect person" would have these qualities completely. And those are the kinds of answers I get.

But that type of vision of a perfect person is a little different between people. It's also based on virtues. I have never heard a "perfect person" described as "someone who is always able to choose for their pleasure."

So that is why I asked what you mean by perfect. If you mean the usual, and if Philodemus does, it's abstract and idealistic. It's saying there's a definition we would all agree on which is based on some virtue.

So I ask again-- do you mean that typical definition? And if so, which virtues go into your own definition? Do you see how using virtues to define flawless is idealistic? If not, I am confused as to how to communicate. I am not obsessed with idealism. I just know how to recognize it, and I'm frankly baffled as to why it isn't obvious to you, so I keep re-explaining it.

Quote from Hiram

I shared the hermarchus example elsewhere and am curious to know what you think about it because the scholarchs, it seems, would have wanted us to apply these Doctrines in real life situations and under diverse conditions rather than be armchair philosophers.

I think we all agree that it is desirable to apply the Epicurean doctrines to real life situations and not be armchair philosophers. That is a huge point and I cannot imagine anyone disagreeing with that. The real issue comes down to our attitude toward the fact that different people will come to different conclusions about what will make them happy in a particular situation. When that occurs, we can offer the Epicurean framework of the nature of the universe and point out that no god or no Platonic ideals justify any particular decision, and that if they do something to get themselves killed that will be the end of their life, and we can point out all sorts of related observations about the limits of logic, the nature of living things as having some free will but also doing some things by necessity, etc etc....

But the minute we stray into saying that "if you are an Epicurean you will reach XXX conclusion ....." then we've gone further than the philosophy allows and we have undercut all of our premises from which we started. At the very least before discussing any policy decision we would need an exhaustive review of as many relevant circumstances as we could gather, and in the process of discussing those it would quickly be clear that there are no firm rules that apply outside the particular context.

Which is not to say that the analysis can't be done. Not only can it be done, it MUST be done by the people involved. It's urgent that it be done! It's essential that it be done! If you back away from doing it you're not a man, you're a worm! (Let me not go too far in emphasizing my Nietzschean variation on the Epicurean tune that you have but one life to live and that nihilism for losers and so you must live as vigorously as you can! )

But in regard argain to the vegetarianism discussion, I don't see it as well documented enough to consider it outside the standard framework, and I wouldn't even get to the point of comparing it to the standard framework until I were firmly convinced that the text is reliable, which I am not.

Quote from Hiram

But do you agree that EP offers the tools to help a lawmaker consider the advantages and disadvantages in a particular moment and circumstance to make his choices and avoidances (to pass a law)? And that it gives us the tools to determine whether an existing law is JUST for now, or for a given time?

Yes, BUT! It doesn't just give those tools to a "lawmaker" it gives the same tools to everyone including the people living under the laws. And while you can definitely provide innumerable examples of agreements ('laws") that people might choose to live by, the issue is that not everyone will agree that those laws/agreements are advantageous to them, and their analysis can be every bit as based on Epicurean principles as can the lawgiver's.

The problem we are having is not the issue of saying that Epicurean philosophy does not have immediate practical application. The problem we are having is that we are talking (at least in hypothetical terms) about a "Society of Epicurus" rather than a "Society of Republican Epicureans" or a "Society of Democrat Epicureans" or a "Society of Tory Epicureans" or a "Society of Labor Epicureans."

If you were suggesting that you were forming a "Society of Vegetarian Epicureans" then I think it would be exactly proper to cite as a ground rule that the members of the society find the killing of animals so abhorrent / painful that as a premise of membership they agree never to kill any animal (except maybe in self defense). That would make perfect sense and I would think have no conflict with any Epicurean principle.

But there could just as easily be a "Society of Epicurean Carnivores" that makes a condition of membership being to advance the cause of eating meat / living keto style, due to the pleasures and health benefits they perceive to result.

Both of the opposite extremes could be perfectly organizable in Epicurean terms.

So our issue of disagreement is that as a philosophy, the philosophy does not justify or condemn any personal preference of pleasure as intrinsically superior or inferior than another, and to suggest that it does undermines the philosophy at its core.

Catherine Wilson does that to a relative extreme, and I certainly see that you have distanced yourself from that, but I don't see you embracing the full implication to the point of being willing to make your society distinct from the "absolutist" ideas that are inherent in humanism, stoicism, etc. By failing to make that distinction you're inviting the water-ing down of the philosophy, and I tend to think that watering down by later Epicureans was perhaps as much to blame for the fall in popularity as was the affirmative suppression by Abrahamic religion.

Until Norman DeWitt hardly anyone recognized Epicurus as such as strong anti-Platonist, and significant numbers of people today seem to have no problem combining Epicurus with supernatural religion, stoicism, and all sorts of other ideas that are fundamentally contradictory.

Quote from Hiram

if the people who adhere to a perspective of "friends of Epicurus, enemies of Plato" do not become proficient at employing the arts of historiography in the same manner as Platonists have become proficient (history is written by the winners, and they HAVE BEEN the winners so far), then we don't have a right to complain that our views are invisible and attacked and mis-represented.

OK there are at least two things going on here:

(1) I am in favor of engagement wherever possible and wherever it makes sense to do so. The primary problem I have is as you alluded to in a recent post -- the call of ordinary life limits our resources tremendously and we have to decided what is the best use of time. And that leads to (2) --

(2) I do not think the statement above logically follows. Your premise seems to be that in order to be effective we must constantly engage with people who are at best ambivalent toward us or worst are absolutely committed to some opposing position. That's the point raised by Frances Wright in A Few Days in Athens: Argument does NOT generally result in conversion of one side to the other. It often WIDENS the distance between the sides, because in fact many positions are not reconcilable.

The reason that you Hiram and I (and others) are able to make some progress in these discussions is that we are already starting with positions that are relatively close in many cases (though it may not seem like it sometimes.) It's my view that you do not recoil at the humanism and the "absence of pain" position of the Cambridge Epicureanism (I am brushing broadly, I know) because you do not personally have it in you to accept the nihilism and the suppression of emotion that is at the root of their version of Epicurus. I am paying you a compliment by saying that you shrug off the implications because you cannot accept that most people would accept the implications of the position that they are arguing, but I think you are wrong about that.

Our differences here are among people who are arguing about strategy toward pursuing pleasure / happiness. Outside this corner of the world, the suppression and historical sidelining of Epicurus has come at the hands of people who are absolutely outside that tent and know exactly what they are doing, and that's why I and others draw such a bright line and refuse to make common cause with them.

IT seems as if in the ancient world Cicero and even Julian the Apostate remarked that it was primarily the Epicureans themselves who read Epicurean literature, and I think that relates to our strategy disagreements. I don't think that trying to storm the walls of Cambridge or the Humanist Alliance (a name I made up for the occasion) is likely to be the best way to reach more people with epicurean philosophy (if we want to define our goal that way.) I think that "normal" people outside of academia and outside of the hothouses of issue advocacy, many of whom are (or should be) totally turned off by the alternatives are the ones we we will find the most honest and open reception.

On the example of Michael Onfrey, you have convinced me that there is doubtless some material in his work that would be helpful. But it is not easily accessible in English, Onfrey did not thoroughly embrace Epicurus as far as I can tell, which limits his usefulness, and unless someone has a special interest in pursuing Onfrey I personally can't rank that high on the list of things I would urge everyone to read.

So that's an example of my analysis -- more power to you if you are able to find good things in Onfrey and bring them to the table, but we all have to do our best to make our best use of our own time. And that's why I do not at all consider anything I am doing as "censorship." I see it the opposite -- there are reams of material devoted to commentators on obscure topics which enhance their resumes in the academic world, but which don't do a think to bring Epicurus into sharper focus for the "everyday person" who most needs the help.

Oscar I have heard the terms analytic v continental but I freely admit as to myself you are way over my head. I would certainly be wary myself of anyone who is "anti-natalist." Do you believe Onfray is anti-natalist?

I see that a google of analytic vs continental brings up a huge amount of material. If at some point (probably not New Years' Eve!) you are aware of an article that summarizes the issues in a way that you find helpful that would be a good addition to the thread.

Antinatalist? My word. Those people are truly a hot mess. That's the most erudite thing I can come up with.

Quote from Oscar

This touches on Epistemology. My view is in line with the scientific understanding that objective reality exists independent of our sensations. That if life ceased to exist, reality remains. I do not subscribe to the salesperson's mantra that perception is reality, if you perceive yourself to be the Jesus Christ, I have bad news to tell you. I think objective reality can be understood through sensations and reason.

I completely agree with this very important point. A tree that falls in the forest with no one around to hear it does indeed make a sound. I think the issue is more that if one is coming up with a list of statements that are intended to be helpful philosophically, then it makes sense to address the point that is in philosophical contention, which in this case is that even though the vibrations created by the falling tree are of a particular "atomic" nature, different people are going to perceive those vibrations, or fail to perceive them, in different ways. So what we are trying to point out is that there are definitely things going on regardless of our perception of them, but at the same our own personal knowledge of those events arises through our perceptions.

Possibly the whole issue is being obscured, or not revealed clearly enough, by affixing the terms "objective" or "subjective" to "reality," without really stating what "objective" and "subjective" are intended to mean.

Quote from Oscar

I agree with most of the above, though there's also quantum effects that new research, I don't really yet understand fully, suggests there may be more to say on this.

I think this is no longer to be considered a philosophical matter since it's now, I think for sometime already, a scientific matter.

Definitely the issues develop over time as we gain new instruments and new observations to consider. However I suspect that there is always going to be a philosophic aspect to this, as the developments of science never stand still, and new discoveries are made. So we are probably always going to be confronted with issues of what attitude to take toward "ultimate questions" which seem to be a moving target against new scientific discoveries. I suspect that Epicurus would say that this ultimate issue is much the same as what he himself confronted in considering the claims of the mathematicians of his own day.

Oscar, the objective/ subjective issue-- yes, there is a reality independent of us-- _but_-- we can only perceive it subjectively, through our senses, feelings, and intuitions. We have no way of perceiving reality without filtering it through our subjectivity-- it's literally impossible. Even if you are using an instrument, you must still use your eyes, ears, or I guess Braille, touch, to obtain the readout.

This is really, really important to get a handle on for anyone studying this philosophy, because most philosophies consider what they call "objective" reality to be somehow better or more "real" than subjective. But all we can perceive is through subjective experience. Epicurus judged that to be real and sufficient evidence of how things are, and I do as well.

In some cases, as when we are doing science, we will obtain measurements which are highly replicated by different labs/ researchers, and we can rely on this data as likely accurate. However, that replication does not remove the fact that subjective perception was used.

Quote from Oscar

SOE17 To live pleasantly, we must have confident expectation that we will be able to secure the chief goods: those things that are natural and necessary for life, happiness, and health. Therefore, whatever we do to secure safety, friendship, autarchy, provision of food and drink and clothing, and other basic needs, is naturally good.

I wouldn't say whatever we do is good; I think Epicurus stated that in order to live pleasantly, you need to live justly, and without living justly you cannot live pleasantly.

This reminds me of a point I may have omitted to make before: I have a problem with the terminology "the chief goods." I do not recall this phrasing in the Epicurean texts, and it implies that there is a list of "goods" which is higher or more important than others. I think that's a repetition of the same issue commented on before.

"Pleasure" is the guide, and pleasure is the only thing desirable in and of itself. Even when we forgo a specific pleasure in order to avoid a specific pain or pursue a higher pleasure, the motivating force is still the feeling of pleasure, not some specific ranking of "goods" or even a specific ranking of pleasures coming somehow from outside our own feeling of pleasure. What is "chief" for me may not be "chief" for thee.

I am very reluctant ever to imply that there is an "objective" ranking of pleasures, and for the same reason I think it is perilous to suggest that there are "chief goods." I am not aware of Epicurean texts that would support that assertion, and I would dispute it if someone suggested that the "natural and necessary" method of analysis ultimately supports a ranking of "chief goods." Even "natural / necessary" as a method of analysis probably goes out the door when we decide that it is worth it for us to die for a friend, which is specifically contemplated as something an Epicurean might on occasion do.

The bottom line here is that i suspect that "chief good" is just a phase that has been picked up for convenience in Society of Epicurus discussion rather than being based on a clear text. As always, please correct me if I am incorrect.

Oscar, I am confused. How do you propose we can have "knowledge" that isn't subjective? We know what is real through our subjective senses, feelings, and prolepses. Sometimes by comparing notes. No other way to know anything.

Although sense organs and instruments can malfunction, as in hallucinations, we use multiple senses and reconcile the information from all of them together-- plus we can talk to each other.