Posts by Cassius

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.

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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.

2. Participation Levels

EpicureanFriends.com is an on-line community dedicated to the study, promotion, and practice of Classical Epicurean Philosophy. As with the ancient Epicureans, it is both a place of learning and a community of people working together in the same general direction — a team. Our goal is not to educate passive observers but friends in the Epicurean tradition, actively carrying forward Epicurean activity in the modern world.

Participation at EpicureanFriends.com requires strong affinity for Epicurean philosophy, but we are not primarily a hierarchical organization where all participants are required to agree with everything the ancient Epicureans said or wrote. Participation at higher levels indicates closer agreement with a larger number of Epicurean positions, but no participant submits to any code of conduct or requirements that apply outside the EpicureanFriends forum.

We implement a participant level system to assist guests and participants alike in assessing how much weight to give to any particular post. Posts by guests and newcomers will at times contain questions or opinions not consistent with the goals of the forum. The participant level assigned to each post serves as an indication of probability that the post will be consistent with core Epicurean principles.

Epicurean Philosophy does not consider all opinions to be equally true, and EpicureanFriends.com does not allow any and all opinions to be advocated over time. Good-faith questioning and disagreement is allowed and encouraged, but sustained advocacy against core Epicurean positions is prohibited. Those who are perceptive enough to be interested in Epicurean philosophy in the first place, will readily understand the line between good faith discussion and inappropriate advocacy. Any questions about that line can easily be clarified prior to posting by sending a forum conversation message to a moderator.

2.1. Level Naming System

We have adopted several different naming systems over the years to indicate which participants have longer and closer participation on the forum. Our current system is as follows:

2.2. 1 — Guest

Guests are newly registered members who are in the process of exploring EpicureanFriends and establishing both for themselves and for the community whether they are a good fit for the EpicureanFriends community. Guests are limited to posting in the Welcome forum, where we confirm that new registrants are real people engaging in good faith exploration of Epicurus. To avoid spam and trolling, Guests are required to respond to a Welcome email with basic information about their background and interest in the study of Epicurus. All Guests should review previous exchanges in the Welcome forum to see how this process works.

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Aspiring Friends have demonstrated enough engagement and good faith to be welcomed into the main forums. They are invited to post across the public discussion areas of the site and to attend new member meet-and-greet Zoom sessions. Guests are promoted to Aspiring Friend status after a period of time and posting sufficient for the moderating team to extend an invitation. Aspiring Friends can be presumed to be generally "on the Epicurean team," but they have not yet demonstrated the long-term commitment that characterizes a Friend.

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Friends are the long-standing core of the EpicureanFriends community. Friends are not casual acquaintances but have a bond built on shared values, sustained engagement, and demonstrated trustworthiness over time. Friends have the ability to post in most areas of the forum. Friends are also invited to participate in our regular Zoom Meetings— the forum's more advanced sessions. Reaching Friend status means the community has come to know you, trust your commitment to Classical Epicurean philosophy, and welcome you into the deeper levels of the shared project. Posts from Friends carry the credibility of that sustained relationship.

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Administrators are responsible for the overall direction and operation of the forum. All participation on the forum is subject to moderation, and the Administrators retain at all times the right to accept, reject, and remove any post or any participant at any time for any reason. EpicureanFriends is a team-building community and we constantly seek input and guidance from our friends, but only the Administrators are ultimately responsible for the official decisions of the EpicureanFriends forum.

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The forum hosts several regular Zoom sessions with different levels of access:

Zoom links are available in the respective forum or via the forum's private message system. Meetings are largely informal, typically lasting about sixty minutes. All general forum rules apply in Zoom sessions. Attendance need not be consistent — participants join as their schedules allow.

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.

Episode 338 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "Are Knowledge And Wisdom Available Only To Gods?"

Quote from DaveT

I'm not sure how to take this comment to my statement above. Please explain if you are speaking to me as "one of those"?

No no not at all directed at you - it's just a general reference to a topic that's regularly on my mind - how to balance competing priorities. This topic has covered a lot of ground and that comment arose from my constantly thinking about how to figure out where the "guard rails" should be. I go to the Epicurean Reddit fairly regularly myself, and in general I'd encourage people here to drop in there at least occasionally. We need to be aware of and be able to debate all sides of these issues, the tricker issue is how much time to spend doing it.

Quote from Peter Konstans

Consciousness requires a dynamically-evolving sense of self-awareness which requires a human brain and its biological substrate.

i agree with Peter K's post and "liked it." I singled out this sentense only because I don't think he meant to imply that animals are not conscious, or only a "human" brain can be conscious. If you did mean that Peter please correct me, but I took your sentence in the context that the word "human" had been omitted and that your intended focus was on the "biological substrate." I suppose even the "biological substrate" might not be necessarily precise enough, but I think most of us consider that to be a reasonable way of describing what we think is required for consciousness. I would focus on Peter's "dynamically-evolving sense of self-awareness" as the right direction for a test of consciousness.

Quote from Martin

In both cases, pattern recognition built on past input is applied to new input to generate a response.

At least at present that's the way I am seeing a relationship that is productive to discuss.

No doubt there are many differences, but i would not underestimate the significance of even this short part of Martin's statement.

When the major other alternatives are things like (1) "God (or my daemon) tells me what the truth is" or (2) "I know the truth because I remember it from my past life when I was living among the ideal forms," then the option (3) "my mind starts at birth assembling patterns that I then use to deal successfully with new experiences" is a huge improvement.

Quote from DaveT

I guess I'm not an Epicurean but rather a student of Epicurean thought and an adopter of many of his methodologies for discovering knowledge.

That "student" term would describe all of us, and is one of the two major goals of the forum.

The other major goal of the forum is to build a community of "advocates" for Epicurean philosophy as a coherent body of thought for normal people. That's not directed toward "discovering knowledge" as much as it is toward "living happily."

For that reason, we curate the forum along the major lines stressed by advocates such as Lucretius and Diogenes of Oinoanda and Philodemus. For those who want no advocacy and guard rails of any kind, there's always Reddit. Both (and other variations as well) have their legitimate places.

I like talking about these things as it builds clarity. I've never been convinced that "EpicureanFriends" was the best title for the forum, but it got picked because it does describe things everyone ought to expect. Whenever someone new comes here, the name tells them to expect to encounter people who are clearly Epicurean, and who clearly think of each other as friends both of each other and of the ancient Epicurean school.

ADMIN NOTE: Speaking of things breaking apart due to atomic collisions, I think Kalosyni is looking at dividing this thread up into more manageable topics such as separating the prolepsis of gods topic from prolepsis analogies to llm (while leaving marker posts) so don't be surprised if that happens.

Quote from Don

The bigger issue for me is talking about "gods" "living" in the "intermundia".

I don't recall that we've discussed this but it would probably be interesting to pin down exactly what it was about being "between the worlds" that the Epicureans would have associated with the idea that this was a particularly hospitable place.

I suspect we today would look for the reasoning revolving around gravity or the spinning of galaxies or the atoms being more "spread out" with more space between them or something like that, because we would think about all the matter in a particular area being attracted toward a localized center. But I am not sure why that would translate in Epicurus' mind as an environment easier to sustain oneself in. Fewer atomic collisions?

I don't expect we would take the same approach at all today but if we understood what he was thinking about we'd probably have a better understanding of whether the gods are "by nature" imperishable or whether they "act to maintain" their imperishability, and that in turn might make the entire picture more relatable.

Quote from Don

I think I'm an atheist or at least agnostic anymore.

This is probably what you meant as written but just to be clear - this is not missing a "don't" is it? (The "anymore" rather than "nowadays" at the end is the main reason i ask that.)

And thanks to Bryan for immediately weighing in with some texts - not many or any others here could do that so well! Who needs AI when you have that kind of memory?

Quote from Bryan

The idealist position would have to argue there is no original source (no hypokeimenon). But according to Epicurus, if there is no original source, the object is not real -- and the proposition that it is real, is necessarily false (such as the proposition "minotaurs exist").

This aspect of the "idealist" position as cited by Bryan reminds me to clarify: I think Epicurus' position on divinity served important goal-identifying and psychological purposes for Epicurus (which is a positive use of the term ideal), just as reverencing the sage is of great benefit to him who does the reverencing). IN ADDITION I think Epicurus thought such beings of such a class really exist in the universe, both because we receive "images" of them and because it makes sense that such beings do exist in an infinite and eternal universe. I think these "real" and "ideal" aspects go hand and hand and there's no conflict between them. To the extent that those that hold the "idealist" position also hold that these gods do *not* exist in reality, but solely as mental constructs, I don't agree with that aspect of the "idealist" view. Sorry to interrupt the flow of the discussion but this is for any lurkers who might be confused by my earlier comment.