Posts by Hiram

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/

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.

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.

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

Re: this

“Then at about 13:50 she says: "Coming to terms with these limits is really the center of Epicurean ethical philosophy." And here I have to disagree. In my reading of Epicurus, the center is really the principle of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Limits play a peripheral role. I could be wrong, and I'd like to here what other members here think of this.

I'll listen to the rest and add to my comments later”

I remember that diogenes mentioned that not knowing the limits of our desires among the three “roots of all evil”. So this must have been of great importance.

https://theautarkist.wordpress.com/2017/03/25/dio…-the-pleasures/

http://holegon.net/wp-content/upl…n%C3%B3nica.pdf

https://sociedadepicuro.wordpress.com/2015/02/22/el-canon

Well you learn something new every day! I just learned how easy it is to make "tables" on Wordpress.

Here's the essay. Feel free to share it:

http://societyofepicurus.com/the-pursuit-of…fe-improvement/

Quote from Garden Dweller

Yes

What name should this be attributed to? Garden Dweller sounds too impersonal.

Garden Dweller Is it okay if I share this in the Society of Epicurus page?

We need more bloggers

I’d love to read your Epicurean tract

Is there or will there be a summary or notes taken from these discussions for future reference, that can continue to be used or posted for the benefit of people in the future who may choose to read it, using a "study guide" prepared by Epicureans?

If there is, I'd like to have a page link to share.

Here is the relevant portion (I should have included). I think every sincere student would benefit from revisiting this in depth.

My own thoughts is that Epicureanism can only claim to be based on the study of nature if it preserves the (originally intended) empiricism in its canon, and so the acceptance of non-empirical "faculties" is incoherent with the original intention. This strengthens my view that the third / atheistic interpretation of the Epicurean gods (or at least the idealist) is the accurate one. One can only infer so far based on the available evidence.

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Epicurean Preconceptions, by Voula Tsouna, was published in academia.edu. Below is a quote from it. The word enargeia means immediacy, and denotes the quality of an unmediated insight which requires no arguments to establish itself as true.

Quote

Broadly speaking, there are two alternatives on the table. According to one, preconceptions derive their enargeia from their unmediated link to aisthēseis, sensations: because of their origin in sensation, they take on, as it were, the self-evidence and trustworthiness of sensation itself. (I call this the ‘Lockean view’.)
According to the other, the self-evidence of preconception lies, not so much in a natural continuity between preconception and sensation, as in the spontaneity of the association between the preconception and the corresponding object as well as the word that denotes that object. For example, as soon as we hear the word ‘horse’, the preconception of a horse comes automatically to mind, and it is precisely in virtue of this association that the preconception captures ‘both the unmediated nature of an experience and its direct connection with reality’. (I call this the ‘Kantian view’.)
Recall that Epicurus and his followers argue for the veridicality of all (sensations) partly by pointing out that they are alogoi, non-rational: the mind plays no role in sensations, whose trustworthiness depends, precisely, on the fact that they are non-rational events involving no interpretation at all (Diogenes Laertius 10.31-2).

Diogenes Laertius (10.33)--cited in the work--introduces preconceptions in this manner:

Quote

Before making this judgement, we must at some time or other have known by preconception the shape of a horse or a cow. We should not have given anything a name, if we had not first learnt its form by way of preconception. It follows, then, that preconceptions are clear. The object of a judgement is derived from something previously clear, by reference to which we frame the proposition, e.g. "How do we know that this is a man?"

In section five of the essay, which is about the length of a short book, the author explains the controversy surrounding whether anticipations are ontologically a separate thing, a third entity separate from the word and the thing meant. This controversy is summarized as the three-tiered interpretation (which accepts anticipations as a third, distinct thing and is influenced by the Stoic doctrine of lekta) versus the two-tiered interpretation, which says that only names and name-bearers (objects referred to by names) may exist. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this last interpretation is truer to Epicurean teaching. The anticipations appear to be related to our brain's pre-cognitive faculty of memorizing meanings and easily recalling them, as if unconsciously. If names are accurate, it's because the named objects correspond to them, not because meaning somehow asserts itself independently of the named objects. We have no reason whatsoever, in my view, to suppose that they exist as de-contextualized Platonic ideas on their own, or to imagine that they emerge as phenomena in any way independent from the names or the things named. The author says:

Quote

Both the implicit denunciation of investigations of ‘mere utterance’ and the Epicurean rejection of dialectic are warnings against concentrating on language but losing connection with reality. And although Epicurus makes clear elsewhere that attending to prolepsis ensures, precisely, that we remain grounded in reality, nevertheless, in the present instance as well as in others, he chooses to highlight only words and things.

Furthermore, the view that meanings exist as separate things from names and things named is a useful nursery for superstitions of all sorts. Ancient Egyptians believed that words (written or spoken) had magical powers, and that a person's name contained part of their essence. One could curse, influence or enchant a person by the use of their names, which is why the Pharaoh had numerous secret names, and why descendants had to continue repeating the names of their ancestors in the belief that, if the names were forgotten, their souls would no longer be efficient or would "die" on Earth.

This view of meanings as a separate thing from names and things named also lends itself to the superstition that meanings existed apart from, and even prior to, the things that are named--and so we have problems like "in the beginning was the Word", where a complex cognitive process is believed to have preceded nature itself. The study of nature demonstrates that nature obviously existed prior to language, and that language is an emergent property of social sentient beings. Nature must not only provide a mind that has the ability to think, but also contents for it to think about, prior to the formation of thoughts and words.

For more discussions on anticipations, you may visit this forum page.

https://theautarkist.wordpress.com/2019/09/20/happy-twentieth-3/

https://www.academia.edu/8354213/Atarax…lity_at_the_End

Ataraxia Sartre was grouchy? He was in the Parisian cafés partying with Simone!

On tabula rasa, I never delved too deep into the subject but I do know that babies recognize mothers’ nipples and social instincts are innate, and that Darwin observed tiny birds in the Galapagos that experience panic and call out for their parents whenever they see a plane flying over them. This in spite of the lack of birds of prey that eat them in galapagos, but their South American ancestors did get eaten by condors. This means that this panic instinct was not learned but inherited, and it’s difficult to imagine that 1000’s of species survived for millions of years without similar inherited instincts.

Quote from Cassius

This is a very interesting thought that I have not seen made before. I want to think about this one but I pulled it out in hopes that others can comment to. No doubt we want to avoid being in a constant negative-feedback loop. However i think I am wondering whether sentences two and three really address the same point.

Can or should we entertain a sense of urgency about what we want to accomplish before we die separately and apart from the question of whether we regret being a part of history before we were born?

Concerning what we accomplish prior to death, this is from my reasonings about Philodemus' scroll on death (I remember also a portion on the death of a youth, whose name I don't remember now, and how his death was unfortunate because he hadn't lived long enough to study philosophy and live pleasantly, and know the things that make life worth living--so it seems like a certain age and maturity is considered a sufficient natural lifespan to have lived well):

http://societyofepicurus.com/reasonings-abo…demus-on-death/

Quote

Unfinished Business

We all have projects that we would like to see concluded. Many people feel that they wish to leave a lasting legacy, but Philodemus says that very few great men achieve this and that this is an empty and vain desire. If fame while alive is empty, then fame after one is dead is even less of a source of true pleasure.

Sometimes it’s not death, but necessity or fortune that impedes us from achieving our goals in life and materializing our plans. Therefore, if we are concerned about dying prior to seeing one of our goals achieved, we should apply the same consolations that we apply in life to these troubles. If we know what matters (the chief goods), we’re unaffected and enjoy the good things in life, the things that make life worth living, unperturbed. It is here that Philodemus speaks of how the prudent man lives ready for his burial.

38.14 The sensible man, having received that which can secure the whole of what is sufficient for a happy life … goes about laid out for burial, and he profits by (each) day as if would by eternity.

One naturally feels concern for those close to us that have problems or who lack an art of living and haven’t learned to be happy. But these are things that are outside our control. Philodemus argues that the man who has lived well should not lament others’ miseries after he has escaped his own: he should go to his death happy that he lived well.

Quote from Charles Edwins

1. In addition, you must resist and avoid the desires that are both; natural and unnecessary and unnatural and unnecessary.

1. However, there may be some leniency towards desires that are natural and unnecessary such as having a healthy sex life or going out with friends to a nicer restaurant.

Can I ask why you feel we must "resist and AVOID" pleasures that are natural, yet unnecessary? I am including PD 26 and 30 for reference at the bottom, but concerning "resist and avoid", the founders of Epicureanism argued that we must sternly reject only HARMFUL desires, not unnecessary ones (VS 21).

21. We must not force Nature but persuade her. We shall persuade her if we satisfy the necessary desires and also those bodily desires that do not harm us while sternly rejecting those that are harmful.

In other words, it is not in our nature to shun pleasure (PD 20). We should enjoy them, but do so intelligently.

Quote

26. All such desires as lead to no pain when they remain ungratified are unnecessary, and the longing is easily got rid of, when the thing desired is difficult to procure or when the desires seem likely to produce harm.

30. Those natural desires which entail no pain when not gratified, though their objects are vehemently pursued, are also due to illusory opinion; and when they are not got rid of, it is not because of their own nature, but because of the person's illusory opinion.

Quote from Charles Edwins

The universe is ever expanding, but will one day collapse on itself when all matter is exhausted.

Can you explain what you mean by this one?

Matter can not be "exhausted" because it can't be turned into nothing, only into energy / other matter--nothing comes from nothing.

For that reason, cosmological theories of this sort are still very speculative. I think one of the theories I've read is that black holes may swallow all matter eventually, but if this happens, then the matter will still be there (just gravity won't let it escape), or black holes may eject the matter into other universes following whatever laws of nature we have yet to discover regarding black holes. But we know that matter swallowed by black holes does not disappear because otherwise, they would not have the gravity to keep in all the light in them (and we already have photographic evidence of this, as of a few months ago).