Morning ritual: a gourd of Yerba maté tea (once or twice in the day)
Night time ritual: around six shells of Kava kava in evenings, sometimes accompanied by my favorite Pandora channel (“Shamanic Way channel”)
Posts by Hiram
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Thank you Hiram!!!
Lots to comment on but sadly this immediately jumps out at me:
Rather than aiming specifically to maximise pleasure, the Epicureans concentrated on minimising pains, the pains that arise from failures of ‘choice and avoidance’. "
Argh!!!!!
You should pitch your own articles to publications like Partially Examined Life, etc. if you really want your own views and interpretations to be available.
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This just came out today
https://aeon.co/essays/forget-…being-epicurean
Her publisher must have lots of media influence and capital. Aeon is very selective about who can write for them.
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That Greek word "kalos" was also used by POLYSTRATUS in his "Irrational Contempt" when he argued for a moral realism.
He there treated this word (translated as noble) as he opposite of he word translated as "vile", and said these two are relational properties of nature, where he applied terms used in our physics for the ethics.
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From some of our previous discussions together on the subject. Also notice the link to a "third interpretation to the Epicurean gods" (the atheist interpretation), which was initially posited by Ilkka in his Menoeceus blog.
http://societyofepicurus.com/for-there-are-gods/
http://societyofepicurus.com/dialogues-on-the-epicurean-gods/
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I recently finished translating into Spanish (with the help of a volunteer) a Letter to the Objectivists that appeared online some years ago. The original was here, and may resonate with some of what you've been going through:
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Book cover was announced today on Twitter
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It is nearly surreal that we are having to defend Epicurus' philosophy against someone who calls himself Epicurean but is taking one of the exact positions Epicurus argued against.
Huh?!
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That way they deprecate pleasure as the feeling which is the ultimate guide given us by Nature, which is exactly what Hiram's article leads toward in deprecating the role of "pleasure" even though he denies that that is his intent.
Can you explain in what way one deprecates pleasure by rescuing the meaning of eudaimonia?
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Do I take your meaning, Cassius, to be that Eudaimonia becomes a problem only when removed from the Greek and set into English? I can certainly understand how the following sentences might be construed to have different meanings;
I don't think it does, but I believe Cassius does. Elli has also said eudaimonia is a perfectly good Greek word. But the bottom line is that Epicurus used the word, and we should apply the guidelines offered in his sermon against the use of empty words. This would not have been a frivolous choice, and we do not see a trace of anger or hostility against Aristotle in the Letter to Menoeceus. We see a formulation of Epicurus' and his friends' ideas. So eudaimonia / happiness is a legitimate Epicurean philosophical inquiry.
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This essay emerged as a result of controversies surrounding Alex’s expulsion from the EP group. It seemed from my conversation with him that this was a key issue. So it needs to be addressed.
I do not believe that at any point I used the “Aristotelian definition”, in the essay I attempted to apply Epicurus’ criterion from his sermon against empty words of attaching the first meaning that the mind evokes. Since Greek is not my language I looked at the semantic roots Eu (good) and daimon (spirit) and worked from there to deconstruct the word, following the clarity and conciseness guidelines given by the founders.
I’m happy Eudaimonia is being addressed. It’s in the sources.
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I didn't know Turkey banned Darwin!
Now the only three more or less secular countries with Muslim majorities are Tunisia and Bosnia and Albania. Sad.
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Did Epicurus recommend a certain lifestyle?
Does Epicurus recommend eating simple food and growing one's food in a garden?
Would living in a garden and harvesting one's food be a life to strive for as a student of Epicurus?
Concerning should we have a Garden, we should go to the first elements of the teaching. Here, the issue is autarchy (self-sufficiency), which is probably the most long-term existential project that we have to work on. How do we engage productively in the world while still enjoying a life of pleasure?
Philodemus of Gadara wrote a scroll "On the art of property management" which delves a bit into this. But these conversations must be rooted in modern reality. He does not even mention gardening, although it fits within the broader idea of having multiple streams of income in order to facilitate a life of leisure and pleasure. Instead he prioritizes:
- taking fees from the teaching of philosophy
- accepting rental income from our properties
- entrepreneurial income (employing others to work for us)
in that order. He also recommends ownership of means of production, and mentions the importance of associating with good friends and of delegating tasks as means to secure pleasure while being productive. Here are some of my gleanings from the scroll on property management, which you can find on amazon (linked from the essay).
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I know we were talking in your earlier thread about the issue of time, and I think that's a huge issue. It's clearly not appropriate to elevate "long-term pleasure" in every case over "short term pleasure" because time is no magical element that turns a long life of minimum pleasures into something that's intrinsically better than a life that is shorter but more filled with "stronger" pleasures.
I don't think they're mutually contradictory.
Yes VS 14 says we should not postpone our pleasure. But elsewhere, the founders also say that we should make what is ahead of us sweeter than what is behind us.
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Re: incorruptible versus immortal, the Monadnock translation contains both the original Greek and the English, and translates "That which is blissful and immortal" from:
τὸ μακάριον καὶ ἄφθαρτον
Which, if you pass it through google translate, refers to blessedness (makarion) and the other word has to do with death. Maybe a Native Greek can better translate ἄφθαρτον (autharton). My understanding is that "death" is Thanatos.
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I think the key problem I have with the theory of the Epicurean gods is their immortality. It doesn’t pass the test of conceivability that we find in Philodemus’ “Methods of Inference”.
I can conceive of blissful, super-evolved beings, maybe ones who live for hundreds or for thousands of years.
But No species has ever been observed to be immortal.
And furthermore, no _habitat_ has been observed to be eternal. All the stars are suns that, like ours, will eventually explode as supernovas. There are rogue planets with no sun in between the galaxies that are not vulnerable to these and gamma rays and other outbursts, but beings there would have to get their nourishment from the heated core of their home planet, which would have to have a frozen crust. This heated core energy would eventually exhaust. And there is nothing keeping a rogue planet from being captured by a star eventually
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I was never Able to make sense of isonomia or with how the gods fit into the canon of it is empirical.
https://theautarkist.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/the…epicurean-gods/
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I don't remember Wilson mentioning class warfare, or Lucretius.
Epicurus, and especially Metrodorus, did bind philosophy with economics and taught that we should at once philosophize, engage in business, and laugh. Epicurean ethics is also very concerned with consumption and with being aware of its natural limits, and Philodemus articulated a doctrine of the natural measure of wealth. There is a scroll titled "Peri Oikonomias". So, the "homo economicus" aspect is clearly there in our tradition, but this is not a Marxist idea. Capitalists make these same claims that we as a species must engage in networks of mutual benefit (or if not, exploitation), and of production. People in human society have to produce, SOMEONE or something has to produce, and SOMEONE or something has to extract the product being produced so that it is consumed, and we all have to consume--at least to some extent, as nature does not give us a choice.
Also, I've never read (correct me if I'm wrong) any narratives of a "golden age" in the past where humans lived perfect lives, and then civilization made things progressively worse. I don't think such idealisms exists in the anthropological accounts we find in De Rerum Natura, for instance. We DO find in Diogenes of Oenoanda a "golden age" projected into the FUTURE, but in the text it says that it is based on the supposition that ALL humans are able to attain wisdom, and this is a BIG if. Even the text admits that this is a big if, and that Diogenes was merely engaging in an intellectual exercise when he entertained this idea.
Concerning Marxism, Marx erred in thinking that his interpretation of history was fully scientific and in trying to predict a future utopia that did not materialize. But his ORIGINAL project was to reject the German idealism of his predecessors, and to furnish a MATERIALIST re-interpretation of the idealists' DIALECTIC view of history, which saw history as a thesis - antithesis - synthesis of IDEAS. Marx said: NO, the real thesis - antithesis - synthesis is between the various groups that are struggling for the MATERIAL means of production and the MATERIAL conditions in which they exist. So he was on to something, as he rejected a Platonic view of history, but his determinism and his utopian idealism proved to be an error.
I believe that we can apply a polyvalent approach to our view of history (I think both ideas and material conditions change each other). In Epicurus, we see a synthesis of Cyrenaic ethics and Democritan physics. In our embrace of friendship, I see a synthesis of Theodorus the Atheist's misanthropy and Anniceris' philanthropy. But there are also material reasons / conditions that led to the emergence of, for instance, the passive model of recruitment in EP, with privacy among friends being a synthesis of the retreat approach and the missionary-public approach, and this would have resulted from the Platonists' expulsion of Epicurus from Mitilene, a very concrete, material circumstance. So there is a dialectic of both ideas and of material conditions that are both in evidence, and from studying the Philodeman scrolls it's very clear that the Epicureans continually perfected and developed their ideas as a result of constant challenges from other schools.
Also (as Michel Onfray attests) I believe that we DO need a historical narrative as Epicureans because narrative and voice are power, and it is not advantageous for ourselves or for human society to be deprived of the wisdom of the Epicurean school. So while I disagree with Marx's particular over-confident narrative of history (even of future history), I do agree with him, with Nietzsche, and with Onfray that we should study, evaluate, and question the over-arching narratives of those in power and of our intellectual enemies, and posit our own narratives based on the study of nature and on real events.
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Lucretius would not have known of Marx, as he lived in the first century. He argued that, with the invention of iron, weapons for warfare were made and that this, plus horses, plus chariots, made warfare much more dangerous.
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I don’t know about fire only, but re: fire plus iron, in Lucretius, an evaluation of the association between iron and warfare is explored. The passage ends explaining how Discord multiplies the horrors of war.
How nature of iron discovered was, thou mayst
Of thine own self divine. Man’s ancient arms
Were hands, and nails and teeth, stones too and boughs-
Breakage of forest trees- and flame and fire,
As soon as known. Thereafter force of iron
And copper discovered was; and copper’s use
Was known ere iron’s, since more tractable
Its nature is and its abundance more.
With copper men to work the soil began,
With copper to rouse the hurly waves of war,
To straw the monstrous wounds, and seize away
Another’s flocks and fields. For unto them,
Thus armed, all things naked of defence
Readily yielded. Then by slow degrees
The sword of iron succeeded, and the shape
Of brazen sickle into scorn was turned:
With iron to cleave the soil of earth they ‘gan,
And the contentions of uncertain war
Were rendered equal.
And, lo, man was wont
Armed to mount upon the ribs of horse
And guide him with the rein, and play about
With right hand free, oft times before he tried
Perils of war in yoked chariot;
And yoked pairs abreast came earlier
Than yokes of four, or scythed chariots
Whereinto clomb the men-at-arms. And next
The Punic folk did train the elephants-
Those curst Lucanian oxen, hideous,
The serpent-handed, with turrets on their bulks-
To dure the wounds of war and panic-strike
The mighty troops of Mars. Thus Discord sad
Begat the one Thing after other, to be
The terror of the nations under arms,
And day by day to horrors of old war
She added an increase.
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura
