Episode 176 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 28 - Chapter 12 - The New Hedonism 05

This is true, but I don't think that Epicurus' ideas became as widespread as they were in antiquity by way of logical arguments. Obviously there were logical arguments going on, but my speculation is that the commoner Epicureans that Cicero griped about would have understood the philosophy through direct experience. The practice of frank speech would have been one method to help to analyze direct experience. Logical arguments lose their pursuasiveness once one has a visceral understanding of a philosophy.

The nurturing of nuanced observation of pleasures, pains and desires may once have been a group activity in the Garden, but now we're left to figure it out on our own. Perhaps there's a way to reintroduce a semi-structured version of this type of observation for our current situation. It might begin with a tightly focused exercise and advance from there. And such an exercise, or series of exercises, could be of interest to people who are looking for alternatives to the popular Stoic exercises.

As an aside: Having been on the recording side of this podcast episode, I want to give public ΚΥΔΟΣ (kudos) to Cassius for a masterful editing job on this one! Well done!

Quote from Cassius

But it's not the **only** and as Torquatus said it appears the later Epicureans (and I think Epicurus himself too) decided that for multiple reasons we cannot abandon the field of logic and philosophy itself to the pin-head Platonists. So if we are going to argue for pleasure on philosophic grounds, we have to have rigorous and bullet-proof logical statement of how all this fits together.

You keep using the word "logic" and I think we have to narrow down our terms. As I understand it, Epicurus's opposition was to Socratic-style dialectic, διαλεκτικός, defined by LSJ as "dialectic, discussion by question and answer, invented by Zeno of Elea, Arist.Fr.65; philosophical method." He didn't want to walk around, endlessly debating what things meant. He wanted to point to nature and declare, "There! Right there! **That** is what we mean (or should mean) when we say X." In that sense, I think he was "dogmatic" in the sense of taking a stand, planting his flag, and torpedoes be damned.

Now, he took those assertions and inferred larger points from them, but, as a starting point, he pointed to - what he saw as - the foundational meaning of words as phenomena existing in Nature and treated them as axioms as we might say. "An axiom is a proposition in mathematics and epistemology that is taken to be self-evident or is chosen as a starting point of a theory."

Later Epicureans got cold feet and got intimidated by other schools and their fancy arguments. I think Epicurus stood his ground as to the self-evident nature of his assertions on what was meant by pleasure, and the gods for that matter.

Quote from Cassius

Were Emily Austin to say "I think Epicurus was right -- look at what babies do! - I rest my case" and close her book and sit down for the rest of the semester, she would likely be in very hot water, and probably not satisfied with herself either

That strikes me as a reductio ad absurdum. Epicurus didn't stop at his assertion, but used it as a foundation upon which to build.

Regarding the difficult quote from Theophrastus that "The happy man cannot mount the scaffold to the wheel," I found this confession of a 19th century Parisian: "I demand to expiate it; — I accept the responsibility; — I wish to mount the scaffold." This indicates at least to me that 'mounting the scaffold' to be hanged connotes volition on the part of the condemned. Theophrastus might well be saying that it is impossible to willingly undergo torture, and Epicurus responds by saying that one might well undergo torture willingly to save a friend.

Also relevant are these lines from Shakespeare's Richard II:

“O, who can hold a fire in his hand

By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite

By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow

By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?

O, no! the apprehension of the good

Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:

Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more

Than when he bites, but lanceth not the sore.”

The oldest references to the wheel as an execution tool go back to late antiquity in Germany.

I found no mentioning of execution or torture with the wheel by ancient Romans and Greeks.

Therefore, Theophrastus most likely means something else with scaffold and wheel.

The Loeb translation has a footnote referencing a Greek phrase: στρεβλοῦσθαι ἐπὶ τροχοῦ

to stretch on the wheel or rack, to rack, torture

"Ixion was expelled from Olympus and blasted with a thunderbolt. Zeus ordered Hermes to bind Ixion to a winged fiery wheel that was always spinning. Therefore, Ixion was bound to a burning solar wheel for all eternity, at first spinning across the heavens,[18] but in later myth transferred to Tartarus.[19][20] Only when Orpheus played his lyre during his trip to the Underworld to rescue Eurydice did it stop for a while."

M. Tullius Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes, book 5, section 24

in eo etiam putatur dicere in rotam— id est genus quoddam tormenti apud Graecos6—beatam vitam non escendere.7 non usquam8 id quidem dicit omnino, sed quae dicit, idem valent.

6 id est ... Graecos del. Er. vix recte. τροχὸς ante hunc locum a Romanis non commemoratur. (in R his verbis linea subducta est, sed s. XVII/XVIII demum sec. Stroux) ge- nus R

Greek Word Study Tool

wheel of torture, Anacr.21.9; “ἐπὶ τοῦ τ. στρεβλοῦσθαι” Ar.Pl.875, Lys.846, D.29.40; “ἕλκεσθαι” Ar.Pax452; “ἐπὶ τὸν τ. ἀναβῆναι” Antipho 5.40; “ἀναβιβάζειν τινὰ ἐπὶ τὸν τ.” And.1.43; “ἐν τῷ τ. ἐνδεδεμένον” Plu.2.509c; τῷ τ. προσηλοῦν [᾽Ιξίονα] ib.19e, cf. Luc. DDeor.6.5.

PS:

Antiphon, On the murder of Herodes, section 40

[40] Also let me point out to you that at the start, before being placed on the wheel, in fact, until extreme pressure was brought to bear, the man adhered to the truth and declared me innocent. It was only when on the wheel, and when driven to it, that he falsely incriminated me, in order to put an end to the torture.

Antiphon (orator) - Wikipedia