An Epicurean Study of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics

Quote from Don

The Google Sites don't allow for comments. As I mentioned previously, I'm just fitting this into my day as I can/want/am able, so I'm not sure how long it'll take to complete all 10 books. But I'm encouraged by your interest and am open to your ideas on how to point to it or allow people to comment on it on this forum.

Oh yes Nichomachean Ethics surely must be one of the key books that needs to be reviewed over and over. The same would go with several other works which would no doubt include Plato's Philebus as well.

I'm not sure how it can be set up and it might not be possible to do much more than we are doing now, but hopefully we can eventually come up with some ideas. a Wiki format might work but lots of effort involved in anything like that so we probably just ought to plow through the material as best we can and then work on organization a little later.

Another long-winded (but non-obsessive! ) "talking to myself out loud” as I sort through some of the posts here:

Quote from Cassius

there is in fact no absolute standard of right and wrong as to how to define words

Which is something even the dictionarists grapple with; and their standard really is evolving conventional usage. Reminds me of a quote by Wittgenstein (in On Certainty, I think): “Don’t look for the meaning, look for the use.”

And whatever other standards there are, are contextual – as you point out; e.g. the word “utility” has a different meaning in economics (borrowed from the philosophical utilitarians) than in everyday discourse.

Folks like Aristotle and Plato (and others) seem to want to make a map that is a standard to judge the territory – whereas any map must be judged by the territory, not the other way round. Epicurus’ mapping (because if you’re a teacher or a therapist, you need to map) seems more designed to point to the territory (reality in all its existential and experiential variability) – a bit like the Zen parable about fingers pointing to the moon. And that certainly does not require the kind of “religious” faith that, say, Plato does. Whatever faith there is a testable faith, meant to be tested in everyday life in all its everydayness.

~ ~ ~

You mentioned “obsessing” earlier. I think that Epicurus wanted to free us from all obsessiveness – which is just another form of tarache. Even the task of unpacking and interpreting Epicurus’ maps is measured, in its goodness, by pleasure and enjoyment, as per VS27: “In the case of other occupations the fruit (of one's labors) comes upon completion of a task while (in the case) of philosophy pleasure is concurrent with knowledge because enjoyment does not come after learning but at the same time (with) learning.”

[One of the reasons I liked Frances Wrights book so much was that her portrait of Epicurus as anything but obsessive; in fact sometimes disarming others’ obsessiveness with humor, and always in an easygoing manner – but without surrender.]

Some of what I post here is just an attempt to put what others have said (that strikes me at the moment) into my own words, both so I can see if I understand them rightly and to personalize the stuff for myself and my own use ...

Quote from Pacatus

Some of what I post here is just an attempt to put what others have said (that strikes me at the moment) into my own words, both so I can see if I understand them rightly and to personalize the stuff for myself and my own use ...

I think that is all any of us can do. That's not to minimize the usefulness of words and ideas but to mark their limitations. And to mark their limitations is not to undercut them so much as it is to prevent their being used as tools of oppression or manipulation of other people. Words and ideas are great! But their aren't to be used as voodoo. Many people are too nice and think "no one is trying to do that!". But tell that to Paul of Tarsus and his friends. I am with Nietsche and I think they destroyed Rome and the rest of the ancient world using just that methodology. In the beginning was the Word - and the Word was God!

It seems like the simplest way to deal with the discussion on the NE is to have a separate thread for each of the ten books. There may be overlap between the books, in which case maybe there could be an overall thread as well to cover such things. Anyway, that's easy to implement before the discussion gets too far along....

what do you think about that Don? We could create the threads under the Aristotle scrion here:. Epicurean Philosophy vs. Aristotle

...and move this thread into that section too

As to the first article there's lots of preliminary material not particularly on point with our current discussion, but good background. Looks to me like the article really gets going around page 12 and this statement:

Lots of interesting stuff in the Sedley article. Samples:

also

One thing I have always liked about David Sedley is that he is very free in his criticism of Cyril Bailey:

Boy this quote attributed to Philodemus on page 28 is highly useful in many contexts to affirm the Epicurean rejection of the view that things can be considered absolutely to be praised or denounced:

Can someone else who uses Android confirm that Don's link above works for them on their phone? On my desktop it works fine but whenever I use my Android phone, on any of there browsers, it does not want to open a page but rather tried to download something . Anyone else having that issue?

Edit: Thanks for the responses below: must be me.

It works fine on my Android tablet.

Quote from Don

but I'm getting bogged down in minutiae.

Ain't that the truth! I've become totally bogged down in my attempt to read the NE. I've been reading through and highlighting, then going back and parsing my highlights. The parsing is where everything grinds to a halt. I've read the first two books, but I'm haven't even made it through parsing the first book.

Keep up the good work! There's interesting stuff in the book, but what a slog!