Posts by Cassius

Wow that is a good catch in the news!

After a long run with this thread, we are going to disable it unless and until we figure out how to stop including people who are long inactive on the thread. That will reduce the number of less-than-useful notifications all users receive.

Quote from Todd

To me, this is not the same question. As I understand it, the question is specifically regarding one's own life or death.

I could defend that being a related question in the sense that if you think life is not worth living in general then you're not likely to think it's a good idea to bring more children into the world. Strictly speaking I agree they are not the same question but I suspect the causes of one are related to the causes of the other.

Quote from Todd

nevertheless cling to it tenaciously, and live with the contradiction.

(Seems like an argument for psychological hedonism! )

But sadiy and tragically, some don't, and they carry out what Lucretius mentioned some do .... which is why i don't accept the persuasiveness of PH -- but let's not get sidetracked on that.

Quote from DaveT

Nice try Cassius but NO. I listened to part of the "debate" and came away with a yawn.

I'm glad you made that comment because I was not suggesting that people needed to watch that video to deal with this question. I thank Don for posting the link but I haven't been able to stomach Jordan Peterson myself enough to watch it.

I'm interested in the general commentary here. I presumed everyone would say "of course life!" but I'm not so sure any more that I should presume that.

Quote from Todd

It is quite possible to arrive at this conclusion without any logical inconsistencies.

I think you are right. Logic can be used in support of the idea that life is better than death, but it can also be used for the reverse. Ultimately it is not logic but FEELING which is the key element.

Quote from Todd

Such a person must be alive in order to say that, thus demonstrating their preference for being alive, and contradicting their claim.

Another excellent use of self-contradiction, showing that they are either not a consistent thinker or being intentionally misleading.

Presuming they are more on the "not consistent thinker" edge of the range, for reasons that we might choose to find sympathetic (so we continue to talk to them!) what else can be said to help them see that their position is damaging?

Or is this position so ingrained in the people who would ask the question in the first place that little help is possible?

I'm not trying to seed this just to start conversation but I can predict who among us might have some interest in this topic so I am going to go ahead and prod:

Pacatus ? Patrikios ? DaveT ?

These are just three that come to mind, but I think this is a basic question that most all of us need to be prepared to answer (if we're not already).

I don't recall whether I got to watch that full debate last time but I'll get to it this time. Thankfully Jordan Peterson seems to be fading away. Hopefully we can express some of the issues in this thread for those who don't watch the video or just want to grapple with this directly.

Stated another way, such a person might say:

1. There is nothing preferable about being alive over being dead.
2. The status of being dead and being alive are essentially equal.
3. Since we are going to be "dead" or "not alive" for a lot more time than we will be "alive," it is important for us to see being dead as not in any way less preferable than being alive.
4. Since Epicurus says that there is no harm in death to us, it should not matter to us whether we are alive or dead.

How would Epicurus react to this point of view? This is not just an off-the-wall hypothetical - I think we essentially this attitude held sometimes in the most unexpected places.

Quote from Kalosyni

The implication here is that "externals" are not important,

As Joshua likes to say on the podcast - "WHAT!!!????"

I don't see that implication at all. There's no presumption that you have lived in a bed of roses, only that you would prefer to live and experience SOME pleasure, even at the cost of some pain, rather than not live at all.

I think what we see in these discussions is that people are presuming lots of things about their own orientations that are not necessarily entailed at all in the summary statements.

Certainly to say something like "it is better to be alive than dead" cannot be analyzed without reference to presumptions. Someone can have all sorts of different pespectives on various parts of life but "it is better to be alive than dead" is a generalization that has to be understood as a generalization. It IS valid and helpful to make generalizations even while at the same time we recognize that there are exceptions. In fact, that is why it is the "exceptions that prove the rule." We are able to geeneralize and reach a rule exactly because we are able to separate the concept of "always" from "most of the time." "Most of the time" is a perfectly valid concept even though what is being referenced is not "always" the case.

So there is no implication that there are not circumstances in which we would be better off dead, but those situations are the minoority of cases. There is no fatalism OR determinsm that requires that we obtain bad results in life.

We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time and say yes "sometimes" terrible pain is in face inescapable and we are better off dead, but that "most of the time" terrible pain is not inescapable and we are NOT better off dead.

Nietzsche is all over the board at various phases of his life but I find this to be consistently stated by every commentator I have seen, so I think it is correct:

Its purpose is to test your life-affirmation;

In other words, it is a test for your appreciation of whether you really find your life desirable, in that if you do you will want the opportunity to live life as long and energetically as possible.

Or as Epicurus says, you will find that life is desirable. There is nothing to harm us in being dead, but unless we are in some unusual situation where life is not worth living (which Epicurus says would be the charactistic of a very small man - who has many reasons for ending his life) then the focus is on the fact that death holds no pleasure - nothing positive - for us either.

Quote

[126] But the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, at another (yearn for it) as a respite from the (evils) in life. (But the wise man neither seeks to escape life) nor fears the cessation of life, for neither does life offend him nor does the absence of life seem to be any evil. And just as with food he does not seek simply the larger share and nothing else, but rather the most pleasant, so he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time, but the most pleasant.

And he who counsels the young man to live well, but the old man to make a good end, is foolish, not merely because of the desirability of life, but also because it is the same training which teaches to live well and to die well. Yet much worse still is the man who says it is good not to be born but ‘once born make haste to pass the gates of Death’.

[127] For if he says this from conviction why does he not pass away out of life? For it is open to him to do so, if he had firmly made up his mind to this. But if he speaks in jest, his words are idle among men who cannot receive them.

Vatican Saying 38: "He is of very small account for whom there are many good reasons for ending his life."

Edit: It seems I can never find this reference when I am looking for it because I forget the "good" so I am typing this to help future word searches. This saying explains why only a small man will have many reasons for ending his life.... many reasons to commit suicide.... many reasons to end his life.... lots of reasons to commit suicide...." and this is part of the analysis in the letter to Menoeceus that life is desirable.

While the "big picture" issue of how to present Epicurus was what spurred my additions to this thread, I do think it is probably also worth confirming issues raised in the quoted section which presumed a negative answer:

(1) Would we wish to live indefinitely (or immortally) if we could?

(2) If we did remember past lives and knew that we would return after death, would that be viewed as a good thing.

I would say the answer to (1) is clearly yes, and the answer to (2) is only slightly less clear.

As with any hypothetical the devil is in the details.

Option one is not altogether different than the decisions we already make which influence how long we are going to live. We can eat right and exercise and take care in our activities and live longer, or we can disregard those and say "we don't care" how long we live. So option one is easier to relate to without hedging too much on the details of the hypothetical.

Option two would require more definition of the hypotheticals terms, but I think that too can be viewed relatively simply (as Nietzsche seemed to be doing it). It can be framed simply as if your consciousness could return in the same form as you are now in some future world, would you want that to happen? Given a basic framework of the desirability of life I would say that too is a clear yes.

But I won't be surprised if there is some discussion needed on these.

Yes I will readily admit that some people come at this for reasons that are understandable due to unfortunate personal situations, and I have no desire to criticize any individual who may be sincerely in a bad place or mistaken as to their rhetoric.

But words have consequences, and the choice to focus on a "half empty" view of life has many bad ones, and should not be held up as an accurate or desirable view of Epicurus.

There's a philosophical conflict going on in the world that is creating a lot of unnecessary suffering. The embrace of life is the the right direction, not normalizing a fixation on suffering as an acceptable attitude for most people in most normal situations.

If you read the part I quoted, this is not being written by people who are saying that they are coming from a particularly bad place. This is written by people who think that they are accurately categorizing Epicurean philosophy the way that Epicurus promoted it. And I don't doubt their sincerity either -- this viewpoint has become the drumbeat for hundreds of years and you're not going to escape from it if you don't affirmatively work to punch your way out.

I find find the attitude i quoted offensive, and I feel offended on behalf of the ancient Epicureans that the modern "authorities" would take their philosophy of pleasure and embrace of life and turn it into into an excuse for seeing death as the ultimate reward of life rather than pleasure.

Thank Apollo or whoever that Epicurus did include in his letter to Menoeceus a reference to the desirability of life and ridicule of those who say it would be better to never have been born, or once born hasten to death.

If he hadn't included those references we'd be facing an even steeper hill to climb than we already are!

EDIT: And for the sake of absolutely clarity I will repeat: I am not intending to criticize Jack Gedney or anyone else in particular. We are hundreds of years into a major problem and no person alive now was a major contributor in creating that problem. All each of us can do now is decide if we are going to be part of perpetuating the problem or helping push back against it.

Today I finally made some progress in reviewing the book "Nietzsche and Epicurus." I am probably only about half way through it. While there is definitely a lot of useful information in it, at least at the present I would not recommend it.

Here's an example, which I find to be a represenhensible outlook, but also an outlook that is indicative of people who want to place "relief from pain" as the center of Epicurean philosophy rather than pleasure. Because of course if relief from pain is your main concern, you wouldn't want to live forever (because you'd just keep encountering more pain and suffering.

And you would NOT want to experience eternal recurrence, whether you could remember yourself from lifetime or lifetime or not, because of course by golly that would mean that you or someone else was experiencing the pain and suffering of being alive.

To repeat I find this to be both profoundly inaccurate and truly reprehensible ---totally opposite to both the spirit of Epicurean philosophy and the specific statement of Epicurus in the letter to Menoeceus that life is desirable.

But this is where you get to when you analyze Epicurus from an essentially negative / Buddhist perspective and conclude that the most important thing for any Epicurean is to avoid even a moment of pain. Truly a death-wish and death-worship:

Quote from Epicurus and Nietzsche Chapter 6 - Eternal Recurrence - Epicurean Oblivion, Stoic Consolation.... - Michael Ure and Thomas Ryan

Let us sum up the Epicurean treatment of the doctrine of eternal recurrence. Lucretius claims that a proper grasp of recurrence demonstrates the irrationality of our anxiety about future recurrences. We believe that we have grounds for anxiety about our future selves because we assume that this recurrence of the same configuration of atoms means we will once again experience the same sufferings we presently endure. Yet, Lucretius argues, we ought to have no fear for the future because we are psychologically insulated from our future selves. Just as we will not be there when we die, so too Lucretius claims we will not be there when we recur. As we have seen, Lucretius’ argument is flawed on two separate fronts: on an ‘identity’ reading, Epicurean metaphysics does not warrant the non-identity of recurrent individuals, and on a ‘concern’ reading, it provides non-mnemonic grounds for anticipating or fearing future recurrences

Indeed, against Lucretius, it seems that the Epicurean notion of recurrence must compound my present suffering. Epicurean physics requires that I must admit that I will suffer again, rather than sink into eternal oblivion at the moment of death. The knowledge of my return must intensify and compound my present suffering because I know that I will experience it again and again. I cannot live tranquilly in the knowledge of eternal oblivion, but I must suffer in anticipation of the repetition of my past, present and unknowable future sufferings.

Lucretius’ Epicurean therapy aims to show that death is redemption from the recurrence of life. Epicureans do not want recurrence (the return to life) or, indeed, immortality (the extension of life). To Lucretius the prospect of definitive death is preferable to immortality or recurrence because it eliminates all possibility of pain and sorrow. Since the only pleasure Epicureans value is the absence of all pain, death delivers this end definitively. Lucretius suggests that death is not terrifying since it is like a restful sleep, except it is an eternal, unbroken sleep in which ‘no longing for ourselves [will] trouble us’ (3.920).

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Significant discussion recently here on the forum about emergence and Epicurus' opposition to Democritus' atomic reductionism, so just bumping this thread to remind people of the existence of this article by David Sedley directly on point.

Quote

The topic with which this paper’ will concern itself is the relation in which, according to Epicurean metaphysics, a complex entity such as a man stands to its constituent parts and qualities. Although Epicureanism and Stoicism both give centre stage to bodily particulars, and in consequence have certain features of their respective epistemologies in common, their metaphysical systems are nevertheless in fact extraordinarily different. Stoicism is a top-down theory, which takes life and intelligence as irreducibly basic features of the world and of at least some of its occupants. The reason why all but a very few of the items in the world, including mental qualities such as virtue, are bodies, is not that body is more metaphysically fundamental than mind or intelligence, but simply that the ability of such things to cause anything is held to depend on their capacity for bodily interaction. In Epicureanism, on the other hand, bodies are indeed metaphysically fundamental, since they are, apart from the space which they occupy and move through, the only conceivable per se entities. Yet a Stoic-like concern with causality is hardly in evidence here, since in Epicureanism causal interaction goes on all the time between bodies and certain non-corporeal items, namely their properties.

Today we are making changes to our forum participation levels to make the titles more informative. The full details are on our Community Stands, Participation Levels, And Posting Policies page. The relevant part is reproduced below.

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Welcome to Episode 339 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

This week we start are continuing our series reviewing Cicero's "Academic Questions" from an Epicurean perspective, which gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato's Academy and helps us understand Epicurus' position on the same issues.

This week after an extended treatment of Section 8 we will now be moving into Section 9 of Book 2

Our text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We'll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we'll also refer to the Rackham translation here:

• Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

I've been looking at several aspects of reorganization of the forum, and I thought it would be useful to highlight ways in which Epicurus himself as a model was not just an individual thinker but as a primary part of his effort was working with others to build an organized school. What I am getting at here is that unlike for example Nietzsche or any of hundreds of other philosophers we could name, Epicurus wasn't just an isolated figure writing books and other being a recluse. He affirmatively spent his time building a community, which is not something most other philosophers do. I think that's a major aspect of his life's work that is way too underappreciated.

Here are a couple of ways to look at that aspect. I'd appreciate any comments or thoughts about this topic.

1. He built physical communities, not just a body of thought. The Garden was purchased property — a real financial and institutional commitment, not a borrowed lecture hall or public porch. Owning the space made it a permanent base rather than a seminar.
2. He moved his school strategically, city by city. Colophon → Mytilene → Lampsacus → Athens. Each move was deliberate: he was planting Epicurean communities as he went, not wandering in search of patrons. The communities in Lampsacus and Mytilene continued to function after he left.
3. The move to Athens was a competitive act. Athens was where Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum were. Setting up The Garden there was not accidental — it was a direct challenge to the dominant philosophical schools on their own ground.
4. He designed for succession, not just for his own lifetime. His will made specific provisions for the continuation of The Garden, the training of Hermarchus as his successor, and the care of the children of deceased friends. This is institutional thinking, not the behavior of a lone thinker.
5. He instituted continuing rituals. The Twentieth — monthly gathering on the 20th to celebrate Epicurus and Metrodorus — was an organized, repeating community event, not a one-time tribute. It became a tradition that outlasted him by centuries.
6. He maintained a network of communities through letters. His letters were not addressed to individual scholars; they were written to sustain and instruct communities of followers across the Greek world. He was running something closer to a distributed organization.
7. He radically expanded who was included. Women, slaves, and people outside the citizen class were welcome in The Garden. This was not an abstract philosophical position — it required practical decisions about membership, living arrangements, and social norms. Organization, not just theory.

8. He lived as an integral part of the community he built. After settling in Athens around 306 BC he remained there the rest of his life — roughly 35 years. The Garden was not a school he occasionally visited; it was his life. Compare Aristotle, who tutored Alexander and then returned to Athens to found the Lyceum — Epicurus had no patron phase, no royal appointment. He built from within.

   
   

Contrast with the major alternatives:

1. Socrates — no written work, no school, no property, no institutional continuity after his death
2. Plato — had the Academy, but it was more lecture-based than residential, and Plato remained an elite Athenian; no movement across cities building communities
3. Aristotle — the Lyceum was a great research institution but Aristotle was as much a scholar and court philosopher as a community builder
4. Democritus — Epicurus's atomic predecessor was a prolific writer but left no school, no organization, no succession

5. Pyrrho — widely admired but left no written work and founded no community; Pyrrhonism organized itself around him after the fact

   
   

- His philosophy made the community itself philosophically necessary. Friendship as "the greatest instrument wisdom provides" was not just a nice sentiment — it meant the community was not a byproduct of the philosophy but an expression of it. The Garden had to exist for the philosophy to be practiced, not just understood.