Posts by Cassius

It would also be very interesting to get the full Bacon quote referenced in that excerpt from page 168, because i think there are lots of subtleties in that too.

One such subtlety is that the statement as quoted doesn't necessarily address the issue of whether the "final cause" is true. if in fact some supernatural force as a "final cause" does exist, then I am not entirely sure myself whether it would make sense to worry about the intermediate physical causes.

i can see a good argument that It's the fact that the supernatural final cause does not exist that makes knowledge of the intermediate physical cause particularly important.

Which means to me that it's really important to be clear and state the uitimate conclusion (that the final cause does not exist) as you are saying.

Joshua:

1 - That question mark in the margin is the author, questioning himself? The issue of how to interpret Caesar's actions and the civil war of the time has always been very difficult for me to understand. So the author is supporting Caesar or not? The question of when a pre-existing constitution should be overturned is always sticky, but as the doctrines on Justice say, that which has ceased to be of advantage for the people involved is no longer "just." The part of the doctrines in the 40's that talks about the justice of nature being in agreeing not to harm is one thing that is often emphasized in discussion, but those doctrines that say that agreements cease to be just when they are no longer of mutual benefit indicates that the label of "just" can change very easily. I suppose that's the ultimate way to evaluate Caesar's actions, not by an absolute standard but by the details of the time, which are very difficult for us to evaluate today.

2 - The non-purposiveness issue is something that ought to flow from the implications of the first and second and third of these statements, which are pretty much quotes, but they require some explanation to see that. i agree that the quote from page 168 is very good. Dewitt's summary is also good, especially "This amounts to saying that a nonpurposive Nature had produced a purposive creature, for whom alone an end or goal of living could have a meaning. This is teleology at a minimum." I agree that it would be good to emphasize this more. Are you aware of a pithy quote or near-quote that makes this point from Epicurus or Lucretius or Diogenes of Oinoanda? As it is, I'll probably modify the existing explanation of the statements in 1, 2, or 3 to include it.

Is the issue summarizable by referencing how the Stoics make Nature divine and essentially a god and imply that divine fire is intelligent, which is just step further than Aristotle's prime mover? i think we all agree that Epicurus rejects this as implications of what is stated in the principles of 1,2, and 3, but does he state this separately and explicitly anywhere?

in plain English, does it come down to the point that Nature is neither conscious nor intelligent and is not goal-driven?

yep!

"a nobler, fuller, and stronger nature"

Hard to say what that is even about, but it moves the book significantly down on my "to-read" list.

I've moved this thread into the general Books area so that it will be more findable. It does look to me like there is a lot of good material here on Epicurus' Atomism.

On March 19 we will begin on page 354 of the PDF with section 25.35 [Character, Passageways] Epíkouros, Peri Phýseōs, Book 25, P.Herc. 1191 fr. 109

Here is another review of the topics and significance of TD:

Tusculan Disputations

Tusculan Disputations is considered by many to be Cicero’s richest and most profound philosophical work. This new, original translation is available in Kindle,…

qcurtius.com

Welcome to Episode 272 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 continue our series covering Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" from an Epicurean viewpoint. This series addresses five of the greatest questions in philosophy, with Cicero speaking for the majority and Epicurus the main opponent:

1. Is Death An Evil? (Cicero says no and Epicurus says no, but for very different reasons)
2. Is Pain An Evil? (Cicero says no, Epicurus says yes)
3. Does the Wise Man Experience Grief and Fear? (Cicero says no, Epicurus says yes)
4. Does the Wise Man Experience Joy and Desire? (Cicero says no, Epicurus says yes)
5. Is Virtue Sufficient For A Happy Life? (Cicero says yes, Epicurus says no)

As we found in Cicero's "On Ends" and "On The Nature of the Gods," Cicero treated Epicurean Philosophy as a major contender in the battle between the philosophies, and in discussing this conflict and explaining Epicurus' answers to these questions, we will deepen our understanding of Epicurus and how he compares to the other major schools.

These week we turn our attention further to "Is Death An Evil," and we will read and discuss Sections V through IX where the question is framed and the discussion begins:

In these sections, the student raises to the teacher the proposition: "To me death seems to be an evil.

• Cicero first argues that this means that everyone is miserable, because everyone dies.
• Cicero asks his student if he believes the stories about monsters in the underworld, and the student says of course he does not.
• Cicero then argues the Epicurean position (without crediting Epicurus for it), that when we are dead we no longer exist.
• Cicero argues that principles of logic require that a thing asserted either be true or false.
• The student retreats to the position that life is made miserable by realizing that we must die.
• Cicero tells the student that if this is so, then death delivers us from a miserable life.
• Cicero cites Epicharmus, who said that "I would not die, but even so I am not concerned that I will be dead."
• The student hears this but challenges Cicero to prove that anticipating death is not miserable. Cicero says he will prove that this is so by showing that death is not only not evil, but a good.
• Cicero goes on to explain that death is the departure of the soul from the body.

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We'll be reading from the Charles Yonge edition.

Here is a link to our discussion guide: Epicurean Views Of Tusculan DIsputations

Our thread here at the forum specifically dedicated to Tusculan Disputations is here.

For purposes of planning ahead, this series will be followed by a series on the Epicurean-relevant material in CIcero's "Academic Questions." A thread devoted to that series where you can make comments on what aspects of "Academic Questions" to include is here.

Editing this first episode is taking a little longer than normal as i think about what this book is all about and how to break it down.

Each of the five parts is divided between an opening discussion that has some interesting information but which is unrelated to the topic, followed by a specific topic.

It's probably going to make sense after this general introductory episode to focus on the main topic of each section, and then come back at the end and mop up the interesting but random details in the introductions.

With that as the organizing theory, the topics that will be addressed can be seen to be major issues of relevance to Epicurus as to all schools:

** Is Death An Evil?
** Is Pain An Evil?
** Does the Wise Man Experience Grief and Fear?
** Does the Wise Man Experience Joy and Desire?
** Is Virtue Sufficient For A Happy Life?

CIcero presents the Epicurean view on all of these after setting up the question, and he contrasts the view of each school on these topics. These amount to the kind of "practical question" that many of us here want to focus on, so i think it will make sense for us to read Cicero's presentation word for word, like we did in Lucretius, so we'll probably go back to what we were doing in On Ends and On the Nature of the Gods and organize each week according to a specific section of text.

That means that unless something happens during editing and I find that we'll be backtracking too much, we'll start the next episode in Part I, section V:

A. To me death seems to be an evil.

M. What to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?

A. To both.

M. It is a misery then, because an evil?

A. Certainly.

M. Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable?

A. So it appears to me.

M. Then all are miserable?

A. Every one.

One particularly nice thing about the software is that you once you find a section in the text that you want to reference somewhere else, you can copy the URL and share it and that url will take you to the specific section - kind of like the artchive.org link to a pdf will take you to a particular page. I haven't previously had a good way to link to specific sections of a text version of Lucretius or other texts so using a system like this would be a good way to provide that.

Side By Side viewer

I note this on page 317 of "Lucretius, Epicurean and Poet," which may give an indication of the writer's perspective. Note the characterization of Epicurus as having ".... a system hardly deserving to be called a philosophy."

Lucretius, epicurean and poet : Masson, John : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Includes bibliographical references and index

archive.org

Quote

In Democritus we recognize not merely a keener intellect, but also, in almost every way, a nobler, fuller, and stronger nature than that of Epicurus. It is only the passionate sympathy of Epicurus with the suffering, with the ignorant, and those who through their ignorance are deceived and terrified, with all who are sore beaten by the storms of life, which alone relieves a system hardly deserving to be called a philosophy.

1 "s" versus 2 "s" , and eighty years apart. Must be pure coincidence. Never heard of the one you posted Tau Phi so thanks

Interesting name of the author - How could his name be so similar to this translator?

The nature of things: a didactic poem : Lucretius Carus, Titus : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

In blank verse

archive.org

Here is a Greg Sadler / Stoic view of Tusulun Disputations. This of course is from a Stoic point of view but it does a good job of explaining the significance of what is in the book. I see that Sadler is particularly focsed on the latter parts of the book on virtue, but I think the former parts on death and pain will interest us as Epicureans even more. I have reviewed the first book today and it's very interesting how the topics Cicero deals with, in attempting to prove the immortality of the soul, are so similar to what Lucretius deals with in his poem and Epicurus deals with in Herodotus and Menoeceus.

I think we'll get a lot out of going through this book closely. Other than Diogenes of Oinoanda and Plutarch, this might be the last major philosophic work that took Epicurus seriously (even in opposition to him) and so it puts Epicurean philosophy squarely in the spotlight of the most advanced philosophic thinking of the ancient world before things deteriorated.

Ok I have a short section of Book One of Lucretius running as an example of what the software can do and its usability by someone who is not a programming expert (me).

This will require much more effort to implement the full book, but it is definitely doable, and being based in github, it can be set up to work on as a joint project:

Side By Side viewer

WOW that is impressive!

Joshua and Don you'll be interested to take a look at this.

Thanks Tau Phi!

We are regularly running into the need for easy production of html pages which allow the side-by-side display of English translation with the original Greek or Latin.

I think the target probably needs to be two or three column - probably two so that it will be usable on portrait size portable devices.

It also probably needs to be somehow divisible by "cells," in that the English translation is frequently longer than the Greek or Latin, and so to keep the passages of text together it's necessary to be able to have the end result look almost like a "spreadsheet" so that the English and original passages stay together. It's possible that links or tags could be used to jump from place to place, but ultimately side-by-side is probably the most usable.

Optimum would be the ability to easily change out the columns, so that for example the first column could be Latin, then the second switchable between Bailey, Munro, etc., with the switching function not causing you to lose your place in the text.

Since we're talking wish-list here, what we need is a system wherein the texts can be prepared and edited either locally or on the internet version, and then the result easily convertible to an html page for posting.

Currently one system I am using is Emacs org-mode, where I can prepare a text and then export the result to an html page like so. It's possible that emacs could do what we want but it has a steep learning curve.

I'd like to employ such as system to deploy side-by-side versions of Lucretius, rather than individually as we currently have it.

I made an early effort in the direction of multi-column pages here. This is somewhat usable, but it's not by any means optimum. The columns don't stay together and the system I used was not user friendly.

I know others would probably find suggestions useful, as Don (for one) is thinking about side-by side versions of his letter to Menoeceus.

I don't have any illusions that this will be easy to do, but if we start the thread now then maybe over time people will come across examples of other sites that are usable for such a project and we can explore how they are made.

Thanks Joshua but I did mean it for this thread, Yes, Democritus is what brought it to mind, but this particular thought is really more focused on the overall evaluation of pleasure and happiness than it is on the Democritus discussion we had today.

Dropping a couple of things here for future thought:

1. In Episode 271, looking at Tusculum Disputations Part 1 at 34, we will come across an offhand reference to Epicurus disagreeing with Democritus. Apparently Democritus held that the soul may continue to exist for at least some period of time after death. Cicero points out that the Epicureans made clear their disagreement with Democritus on that point.
2. Democritus apparently tended to think that the only thing "real" is the atoms and void, and that everything else exists only by convention.
3. If we apply point (2) to the soul, then would we be concerned that Democritus held that the soul is not "real" and that the soul continues to exist in atomic form just like the decomposing corpse?
4. It is apparently clear that Epicurus wanted to escape from the skepticism that Democritus' views entailed for important ethical questions.
5. Dropping back to line 449 of Book one of Lucretius (which is presumably a condensation of Epicurus' On Nature), we have the discussion of properties and qualities of atoms and void. Too much to quote here in full, but in summary it looks like the point is that not only the atoms and void are real but also the properties and qualities of things are real. Epicurean theory seems to end up referring to these things as what we call "emergent qualities" and we consider them to be no less real than the atoms:. Quick summary:
   1. [1:449] Everything that we can name to exist has attributes that we consider to be properties or events/accidents of that thing. A property is something that cannot be separated from the thing without the thing being destroyed, such as you cannot separate weight from rocks, or heat from fire, or moisture from water, or touch from bodies, or emptiness from void. On the other hand, events/accident can be separated from a thing without destroying it, such as slavery, poverty, riches, freedom, war, and peace can be separated from people without destroying the person himself.
   2. [1:464] Time is an example of an event that does not exist by itself, but from our feelings about the motion or stillness of things. For example, consider the Trojan War, which does not exist in itself, but as an event of things that occurred in the past. The people involved in that war are long dead, and the Trojan War is but an event of the people and things that were involved at the time.
   3. [1:483] Bodies are therefore not only the atoms that compose them, but thing things that are created when the atoms combine. In the world around us everything is porous, but by reasoning we will see that the atoms themselves are not porous, and from them everything we see is created.
6. Diogenes of Oinoanda emphasis that happiness is a life of pleasure: in Fragment 32: "Fr. 32 … [the latter] being as malicious as the former. I shall discuss folly shortly, the virtues and pleasure now. If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into «what is the means of happiness?» and they wanted to say «the virtues» (which would actually be true), it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end. Let us therefore now state that this is true, making it our starting-point.
7. Torquatus in On Ends appears to equate a life of happiness with a life of pleasure
   1. Book 1 Line 32: [32] X. But that I may make plain to you the source of all the mistakes made by those who inveigh against pleasure and eulogize pain, I will unfold the whole system and will set before you the very language held by that great discoverer of truth and that master-builder, if I may style him so, of the life of happiness.
   2. [54] But if the encomium passed even on the virtues themselves, over which the eloquence of all other philosophers especially runs riot, can find no vent unless it be referred to pleasure, and pleasure is the only thing which invites us to the pursuit of itself, and attracts us by reason of its own nature, then there can be no doubt that of all things good it is the supreme and ultimate good, and that a life of happiness means nothing else but a life attended by pleasure.
8. Switching contexts again, most of us agree that Epicurus was experiencing happiness, even on his last day, when we was wracked with pain of kidney disease.
9. Going back to Lucretius, quoting this time from Bailey: [449] For all things that have a name, you will find either properties linked to these two things or you will see them to be their accidents. That is a property which in no case can be sundered or separated without the fatal disunion of the thing, as is weight to rocks, heat to fire, moisture to water, touch to all bodies, intangibility to the void. On the other hand, slavery, poverty, riches, liberty, war, concord, and other things by whose coming and going the nature of things abides untouched, these we are used, as is natural, to call accidents. Even so time exists not by itself, but from actual things comes a feeling, what was brought to a close in time past, then what is present now, and further what is going to be hereafter. And it must be avowed that no man feels time by itself apart from the motion or quiet rest of things.

Based on the above:

1. To what extent would it be appropriate to conclude that Epicurus is considering "happiness" to be an "emergent quality" - an event - of a life of discrete pleasures? In this case I would see happiness as an emergent property of the "event" kind rather than the permanent kind because happiness is not destroyed by the existence of some degree of pain, even by a tremendous amount of pain such as when under torture.
2. The main reason I ask this is to consider whether Epicurus viewed "happiness" as a real thing, distinct from pleasure, by means of being a emergent quality that could not exist without the underlying discrete pleasures (accompanied by pains). Is this comparable to how the human body would not exist but for the existence of the underlying atoms and void? Given Epicurus' intent to correct the errors of Democritus leading toward skepticism and determinism, Epicurus would have been able to employ the relationship between atoms and bodies in physics to describe in ethics how the concept of happiness arises from the experience of discrete pleasures.
3. Would these points be helpful in describing the relationship between happiness and pleasure?

Thanks for the information! I am hopeful that "we" will eventually expand into livestreaming or other more informal discussion of how to apply Epicurean principles, but I think it's key that we first set a baseline of what Epicurus really taught from the texts. That's become more our "niche" in the Epicurean world and will likely continue for a long while. There's a tremendous amount of material that rarely gets discussed on Youtube or the general philosophy podcasts. In my own experience, the more deeply you read the more it becomes clear that superficial readings can't come close to doing justice to Epicurus.

Episode 270 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. Today's episode is entitled: "Life Is Desirable, But Unlimited Time Contains No Greater Pleasure Than Limited Time."