"Setting Before the Eyes"

On solitary vs teacher-student, since I am still viewing this as a very simple issue, I would say the answer would likely be either.

Either alone, or with a teacher (and I can certainly see that advantages of having a teacher or at least a friend to talk to) the way to reason through any situation would be to turn the possibilities over in your mind and identify them as best you can. For a very obvious example, when evaluating which course of several to apply, sitting down and preparing a chart of the pluses and minus of each option. Which brings to mind that i still like at time today to use a pen and paper to write things down, and I find that the act of writing seems to solidify my connection with the thought. People talk about that as muscle memory or something,right? Maybe there's something analogous about visualizing that also helps make the issues real.

Quote from Cassius

For a very obvious example, when evaluating which course of several to apply, sitting down and preparing a chart of the pluses and minus of each option.

My impression, though I could certainly be wrong, is that this isn't what Philodemus is referring to. I'm interpreting what you're describing here Cassius as a planning activity whereas as I understand it (at least in the specific context of the scrolls) is to work on improving specific shortcomings of a student.

What you're describing is certainly valid as a practice, but I don't think that's what "setting before the eyes" is referring to. It seems very specific. As I recall, it's always referred to under discussion of "therapy".

Quote from Don

And I concur that the list of + and - is a valid practice but it's not "setting before the eyes."

Well I didn't really mean to restrict the activity to words as much as I meant that when you envision the option you document it like on a check off list. But that's probably not the issue you guys are referring to. How do you envision "setting before the eyes"?

My impression is that it seems to involve a very detailed description of the consequences of a particular trait or action, such as anger. The "therapist" paints such a detailed word picture of the consequences that the "patient" learns from this as though they actually experienced it.

Am I inadvertently quoting this from a source posted above? Anyway, the extant sources are limited so "setting before the eyes" could involve more than just this, however this seems to be all that's in the sources.

This brings to mind an experience I had as a teenager: I learned to waterski by sitting in a room with a friend and listening as he talked me through each step of the process, from getting into the water to standing up. He did this on two or three occasions. His explanations were so vivid and detailed that the first time I got in the water I was able to ski as if I'd been doing it for quite a while, and continued to progress from there. I've always been amazed at how that worked! I consider that to be "setting before the eyes", although not in the Epicurean context.

That sounds like a good plan! In reviewing my highlighting in her book, it touches on quite a bit of ground. For example just in my first couple of highlights she touched on the pleasure/absence of pain controversy, which got me thinking about some of the issues involved in that debate. I don't recall if she goes in depth into that issue or not, but I'm getting the sense that there are endless topics for discussion in the book.

I think that's one reason why I remember so little of it other than general ideas. As you suggest Don you might be better served to begin with the original text and then dig into secondary discussion of it....

Quote from Don

I think I should prioritize reading On Anger then read Tsouna's book.

Don, when you have read that, I would be so curious to find out how it compares to modern psychology. Here is a website, has four parts, all very good:

https://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control

Quote from Godfrey

in my first couple of highlights she touched on the pleasure/absence of pain controversy, which got me thinking about some of the issues involved in that debate.

Godfrey, that sounds interesting and am curious to hear more about that.

Kaloysyni, here are some notes from the beginning of the book, all based on one short passage that I had highlighted when I read the book some time ago:

Quote

Page 15

Philodemus follows Epicurus' general theory of pleasure. However by the 1st century BCE the nature of pleasure was debated both inside and outside of the school and Philodemus responded accordingly. One subject of controversy regards the definition of the moral end both as pleasure and as the absence of pain.

- It's counterintuitive that the highest pleasure is absence of pain.

- Pleasure having several distinct aspects may conflict with the presumed unity of the supreme good.

- Some first generation Epicureans held that aponia is not a part of the moral end.

- (from footnote: Demetrius Laco, a teacher of Philodemus, insists that Epicurus considers the telos, pleasure, as the removal of pain)

- Zeno and Philodemus, his student, interpret both absence of physical pain (aponia) and absence of mental suffering (ataraxia) as being in the Canon and as parts of the highest good.

(My thoughts:

- virtue has several aspects as well [the cardinal virtues] so similarly could not be the telos under the unity argument [re the telos argument among schools]

- how do you recognize that you are acting virtuously? Through reason or by experiencing pleasure? [re the telos argument among schools]

- absence of pain = pleasure by definition. Could another way to look at it be that absence of pain produces pleasure?)

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This probably belongs in another thread and I hesitate to even post this, but in any case it doesn't do her argument justice. She continues to develop this for a couple of pages. My apologies: I'm realizing that trying to put my highlights in a useful form is a project that wouldn't do the book justice and in any case is beyond what I can tackle at the moment. But the book is definitely worth reading. Just looking through it makes me wish that I had the time to re-read it! As Don said, "so many books, so little time!"

I had more to say on this earlier today and I should have pulled off the road to post it, but this is the best I can reconstruct hours later:

When I think of telling someone one to "set this before their eyes" I think of telling them to "picture this" in their minds.

Telling them to "picture this" is pretty close to asking them "Can you picture this?"

The reason I bring that up is that it seems to me that some of the epistemology sections refer to what may be a test of "can you picture this?" For example, I am thinking of Lucretius' suggesting that we imagine throwing a javelin toward the edge of space. and picturing whether anything might ever stop it.

It's my impression that Lucretius/Epicurus is suggesting that it is impossible ("inconceivable?") to imagine anything stopping the javelin, or that there is a wall or limit or end to outer space.

So where I am going is that as we examine passages which talk about "setting before the eyes" we might want to be on the alert for epistemological test aspects to the exercise.

If we can picture something in our minds, that might be an indication that the thing "might" at least possibly exist. If we cannot even picture it, that might be an indication of "inconceivability." Maybe I am picking up that"inconceivability" word in Philodemus On signs and it has no relation to the current discussion, but it seems to me to be something to be on the alert for as we read whatever material may exist. Because we clearly have Lucretius using the term "ante oculos" in one part of book one, plus we have him suggesting that we imagine the flying javelin as a technique of impressing the lesson on the student.

As usual my thoughts are clear as mud

Combined with a half-memory of reading something in "On methods of inference."

I think the key word for any potential relationship would be what I think is translated as "inconceivability.". That might sound like a logical concept at first glance, but since proof of anything is grounded in the senses, and there is probably a major role for "picturing" things in Epicurean views of thought processes, we might have a related issue.

Also long ago in the Lucretius podcast I think we ran into reason to discuss the extent to which memories constitute stored pictures, and I think there was resistance to that view, but that might factor in too if our emphasis on the use of words is clarity of meaning in a "picture" sense.

Do you have the picture of what I am suggesting yet?

I am sure by now you are getting the picture.

So see I am not at all resistant to pursing the implications of "ante oculos" and that reminds me too:

1 - Is "ante oculos" what we are discussing?

2- Did we yet pull out the actual quotes from Philodemus (rather than Voula Tsouna's paraphrases or opinions)? That's what I was really concerned about, that we were speculating based on relying on Tsouna rather than on reading the actual reliable-grade texts themselves.

Right now I can picture at least two sections of Lucretius that might be relevant to a "picture this" idiom or method of explaining, but I don't have a firm picture of anything specific from Philodemus.

So I am not asking you (Don) to do it since we are all covered with work, and I don't have the time right now to offer to do it myself, but that would be a good goal for us at some point to pull together at least some preliminary English version of those cites for this project.

And if the texts are so fragmentary that all we can put together in English is Tsouna's conjectures as to the meaning of corrupted sentences, then we can do that, but then at least we can have them clearly labeled as such.

Ok I looked back at 16 and 27 but I still don't see much more there than an allusion or idiom referring to "confronting" a person with the consequences of their thoughts or actions, which seems to me to be a fairly ordinary thing that anyone of any philosophy would do in making a point.

Do you see Philodemus saying more than that in those passages?

What I am reading seems to be something like:

"If someone has a problem confront them by discussing with them the consequences of their actions and fleshing those out in detail."

Ok, if so, that makes sense.

But is there more than that?

Now the specific aspect of telling them to "picture it" might be significant, but wouldn't it be significant only if there is something special in the Epicurean view of how "picturing"relates to thinking?

So I gather that is what we are talking about, some kind of special relationship between thinking and picturing (?)

if so, what is that special insight of Epicurus that makes this significant?

Duh. I should have brought this question up earlier too (I hope i didn't and have forgotten)!

What would be the relationship, if any, between this discussion and the flow of "images" that is discussed extensively in Book 4 of Lucretius?

I gather from our discussion of book 4 (which I think took place before your arrival in the podcast Don) that Epicurus was suggesting that many of our thought processes derive from our minds selectively receiving some from among many of the "images" that are constantly floating in the air. This is specifically suggested too by Cicero in his correspondence to Cassius Longinus and in Cassius' subsequent reference to "spectres."

To what extent would an idea of "setting before the eyes" be related to selectively tuning your attention to certain images as part of the thought process.

One of the reasons the images discussions seem to be largely ignored by modern commentators is that Epicurus seems to have been suggesting that these images were intimately involved in our thoughts, which we tend to reject today. I can't imagine that Philodemus departed too far from Epicurus on that, so is it possible that the Epicurean view of images is related to issues involving setting before the eyes?

10.2********Letter from Cicero to Cassius, written from Rome, January of 45 B.C.

DXXX \(F XV, 16\)

TO C. CASSIUS LONGINUS \(AT BRUNDISIUM\)

ROME \(JANUARY\)

I think you must be a little ashamed at this being the third letter inflicted on you before I have a page or a syllable from you. But I will not press you: I shall expect, or rather exact, a longer letter. For my part, if I had a messenger always at hand, I should write even three an hour. For somehow it makes you seem almost present when I write anything to you, and that not “by way of phantoms of images,” as your new friends express it, who hold that “mental pictures” are caused by what Catius called “spectres” – or I must remind you that Catius Insuber the Epicurean, lately dead, calls “spectres” what the famous Gargettius, and before him Democritus, used to call “images.”

Well, even if my eyes were capable of being struck by these “spectres,” because they spontaneously run in upon them at your will, I do not see how the mind can be struck. You will be obliged to explain it to me, when you return safe and sound, whether the “spectre” of you is at my command, so as to occur to me as soon as I have taken the fancy to think about you; and not only about you, who are in my heart’s core, but supposing I begin thinking about the island of Britain – will its image fly at once into my mind? But of this later on.

I am just sounding you now to see how you take it. For if you are angry and annoyed, I shall say more and demand that you be restored to the sect from which you have been ejected by “violence and armed force.” In an injunction of this sort the words “within this year” are not usually added. Therefore, even if it is now two or three years since you divorced Virtue, seduced by the charms of Pleasure, it will still be open for me to do so. And yet to whom am I speaking? It is to you, the most gallant of men, who ever since you entered public life have done nothing that was not imbued to the utmost with the highest principle. In that very sect of yours I have a misgiving that there must be more stuff than I thought, if only because you accept it. “How did that come into your head?” you will say. Because I had nothing else to say. About politics I can write nothing: for I don’t choose to write down my real opinions.

## ****10.3********Letter from Cassius to Cicero, written from Brundisium, January, 45 B.C.

I hope that you are well. I assure you that on this tour of mine there is nothing that gives me more pleasure to do than to write to you; for I seem to be talking and joking with you face to face. And yet that does not come to pass because of those spectres; and, by way of retaliation for that, in my next letter I shall let loose upon you such a rabble of Stoic boors that you will proclaim Catius a true-born Athenian.

Now of course "images" do not appear to be the same thing in the texts as what we see, BUT it seems fair to say that the things that we see do generate images as well as visible sights. So is it possible that we are talking about picturing things so as to summon up the images that are received directly into the mind?

Also: Are there not some references in Lucretius to our motions being the result of us first visualizing the motion? I thought it was here in Book 2 in regard to the swerve, but it's not exactly stated that way -- HOWEVER see the reference to "clear to see" in line 272 : (Bailey) I wonder if that is an "ante oculos" ->

[251] Once again, if every motion is always linked on, and the new always arises from the old in order determined, nor by swerving do the first-beginnings make a certain start of movement to break through the decrees of fate, so that cause may not follow cause from infinite time; whence comes this free will for living things all over the earth, whence, I ask, is it wrested from fate, this will whereby we move forward, where pleasure leads each one of us, and swerve likewise in our motions neither at determined times nor in a determined direction of place, but just where our mind has carried us? For without doubt it is his own will which gives to each one a start for this movement, and from the will the motions pass flooding through the limbs.

[263] Do you not see too how, when the barriers are flung open, yet for an instant of time the eager might of the horses cannot burst out so suddenly as their mind itself desires? For the whole store of matter throughout the whole body must be roused to movement, that then aroused through every limb it may strain and follow the eager longing of the mind; so that you see a start of movement is brought to pass from the heart, and comes forth first of all from the will of the mind, and then afterwards is spread through all the body and limbs.

[272] Nor is it the same as when we move forward impelled by a blow from the strong might and strong constraint of another. For then it is clear to see that all the matter of the body moves and is hurried on against our will, until the will has reined it back throughout the limbs. Do you not then now see that, albeit a force outside pushes many men and constrains them often to go forward against their will and to be hurried away headlong, yet there is something in our breast, which can fight against it and withstand it? And at its bidding too the store of matter is constrained now and then to turn throughout the limbs and members, and, when pushed forward, is reined back and comes to rest again.