Posts by Eikadistes

The practice of memorizing the Doxai and other exercises of ancient Epicureans seems to parallel a certain human, religious behavior, cross-culturally that I equate (to an extent) with something like a Catholic rosary, and the memorization of certain prayers (even the "Serenity" prayer in AA), the idea behind it being employing remembrance of truths to overcome temporary obstacles.

I heavily used that when my wife was faced with death two years ago.

Not the rosary, of course. But when someone you love is dying, and you have done everything you can to solve the problem, the problem-solving facet of the human mind keeps on working, and you keep on believing there is a solution, and that naturally leads our minds to begin searching for answers beyond the logistically-possible, and the empirically-probable. The mind reaches for an ultimate, reality-overcoming answer that will change the conditions of mortality, and solve everything. I think it there is a tendency to explore the possibility of divine intervention.

Here's how Epicurean wisdom helped me in that situation: it removed fear.

Magical thinking feeds fear. It is also a crutch. If I held that agreement (between me, and the superstitious idea in my mind), it would have been me assigning human agency to an idea that would be incapable of any sort of intervention. I would be holding an idea in my head for the most important responsibilities in our lives, caring for our health and the health of our friends. That idea fails us, because ideas don't cure sepsis, antibiotics do. God doesn't cure the sick, MDs do. Mysticism doesn't reinforce physical health, practical decisions do. And when magical thinking becomes tantalizing because it offers a solution (albeit fake) for the fear of death, the teachings of Epicurus address that exact same fear, but don't rely on the crutch of magical thinking.

Truly, Epicurus saves us from the fear that comes from a collapse into superstitious thinking.

Some people feel that ... ugh, what did George H. W. Bush say ... "There are no atheists in foxholes", implying that everyone, when faced with death, has a "coming to Jesus" moment. A family member of mine suffered the death of one of their best friends, and that incident persuaded them, after many years, to go back to church and find peace. And they did. And they (believe that they) found peace. I believe it is just a bandaid. It doesn't actually cure us of fearing death. It's just a comfy narrative to deal with the overwhelming, existential fear that we all face. I felt that same fear, and that same, strong desire to put my faith in "Everything happening for a reason", beyond the realm of scientific understanding. At that time (and those times, previously) I go out of my way to practice everything I know to be true: materialism, hedonism, empiricism: reject superstition.

At the end of the day, those things reinforce true confidence, not just a spiritual bandaid.

Just a few holiday and seasonal-themed Waning Gibbouses I've been using.

Quote from Cassius

Today in the podcast recording Joshua brought up the letter to Idomeus, and one phrasing caught my eye, the underline

Quote

The disease in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course, lacking nothing of their natural severity:

This is interesting, because the way this is translated suggests "lacking nothing of their natural severity" as a dependent clause, descriptive of "The disease in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course." The original does not have a dependent clause quite like that. Here's the phrase:

στραγγουρία τε παρηκολουθήκει καὶ δυσεντερικὰ πάθη
ὑπερβολὴν οὐκἀπολείποντα τοῦ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς μεγέθους.

στραγγουρία - (n. nom. sing.) "strangury"
     τε - (conj.) "both"
     παρηκολουθήκει - (v. perf.) "had followed", "had understood"
     καὶ - (conj.) "and"
     δυσεντερικὰ - "dysentery"

     πάθη - (n. nom. sing.) "feeling", "suffering"
     ὑπερβολὴν - (n. acc. sing) an "overshooting", "excess", "extremity", "hyperbole"
     οὐκ - (neg.) "not"
     ἀπολείποντα - (v. pres. act. part.) "leaving [behind]", "deserting", "departing", "remaining"

    τοῦ - (art. gen. sing.) "of the"
     ἐν - (prep.) "in", "within"
     ἑαυτοῖς (pron. dat. pl.) "themselves", "yourselves", "ourselves"
    μεγέθους (n. gen. sing.) "greatness", "magnitude", "size"

I would translate it something closer to something like (literally) "[The] suffering [that] has followed [from] both strangury and dysentery is not abating in extremity of their greatness."

May your owls be owly.

Enjoy this Sunday where absolutely nothing else notable is happening.

If Lucretius reflects of the attitude of ancient Epicureans, it's more like "Wisdom and Courage":

"⁶²When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth crushed down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters of heaven with hideous aspect lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to withstand her to her face. ⁶⁸Him neither story of gods nor thunderbolts nor heaven with threatening roar could quell: they only chafed the more the eager courage of his soul, filling him with desire to be the first to burst the fast bars of nature’s portals. ⁷²Therefore the living force of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe; whence he returns a conqueror to tell us what can, what cannot come into being; in short on what principle each thing has its powers defined, its deep-set boundary mark. ⁷⁸Therefore religion is put underfoot and trampled upon in turn; us his victory brings level with heaven." (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 1.62-79; translated by H. A. J. Munro)

Quote from Bryan

I may be pushing it, but are full-brim hat types a possibility?

Absolutely! I'll throw SFOTSE and the Leaping Pig on the full-brim style.

Thank you for asking.

There's a strong similarity between Pythagoras and ancient Indian philosophies. I want to suggest that Pythagoreanism is Vedic mysticism processed through ancient Greek Philosophy (in the same way I argue that Pyrrhonism is Ajñana processed through ancient Greek Philosophy), except that I do not believe that we have record of Pythagoras going further East than Mesopotamia, as was the achievement of Alexander III and those (Pyrrho) who followed him into India.

I continue searching for a historical connection (though there may not be one).

Quote from Bryan

Quote from Don

just floods in general.

The way I'm thinking about it ... imagine a writer living a few miles North of Portland in 1980. Let's say the writer has a passing interest in volcanism, specifically the Ring of Fire for which the Pacific is known. Of course, there are thousands of regular of seismic events that inhabitants of the Pacific coast and Pacific islands anticipate. Supposing our writer sets his stories in the Pacific Northwest, he would likely incorporate this theme of volcanism. But if, say, in 1993, he published a story about a stratovolcano that exploded, ripping the top of the mountain off, with a pyroclastic flow that kills a few dozen people ... I would have to guess that the specifics are not an amalgamation of the regular seismic activity: the specifics are available because the author would have personally experienced the event, and borrowed the realistic specifics from his proximity to Mt. St. Helens in 1980.

I would be surprised if Plato were writing an amalgamation of shared cultural experience, rather than borrowing some of the details from his own, personal experience. Though, I could be wrong.

Quote from Don

The MEGA hats, honestly, give me pause even though I get the tongue in cheek aspect.

Is it possible or even desirable to get the piglet or SFOTSE or even a graphic Epicurus on a hat?

I feel similarly about the hats.

I'd be very happy to add those designs! Thanks for asking. I will jump on that tonight.

Quote from Don

All evidence points to Plato making Atlantis up for rhetorical purposes. Everybody points back to him.

Yep, yep, yep! Plato is the singular author of that allegory, and Aristotle confirms it.

On thing I'd like to add:

Only 13 years before Plato published the Timaeus (c. 360 BCE) while living in Athens, the city of Helike literally became "submerged" in the ocean due to a rare seismic event (c. 373).

If Plato didn't witness it with his own eyes, he almost certainly would have felt the seismic shock, followed shortly thereafter by the news of a horrific event just miles East of him. And if he didn't feel the shock, he definitely would have spent the next few months discussing the narrative of a known, friendly city that sank into the sea, (so long as that event captured public interest).

I maintain Helike was the inspiration behind the fate Plato assigns to his allegorical city.

Thanks for the support, Bryan ! I'm glad you like it.

Definitely let me know if there's anything you'd like to see up there.

Quote from Singleton

after finally deleting all my social media accounts

Me, too! 'Tis the season!

There are also a lot of historical trends in our culture (writing this within the borders of America) that reinforce the tone we identify as Stoic . It seems at odds with the tone that was cultivated in the Garden. As Pamela Gordon describes in The Invention and Gendering of Epicurus, Europeans slowly began to (negatively) "feminize" Epicurean teachings by associating Epicurus with traits that were not culturally valued (those traits largely being unfair stereotypes of women). Compared with the medieval stereotype of Epicureans, Stoics were seen as disciplined men of action, cunning, bold, dutiful, and admirably political. As I have witnessed throughout my life, too many of my male friends believe in suffering in silence, and too many women I know fear that their value might only be worth the chores they accomplish at home, and some even view (enviably, I argue ... though I think that is the case with men, too. Despite rejection of feminine men, your average "masculine" American man spends a lot of time watching sculpted male athletes rub against each other on a field, so I honestly question how "masculine" anyone is, really...) but anyway, I think too many women I know view women without children, who pursue careers (etc.) as "missing something". Even though less than 1% of our population identifies as being trans-women, politicians are obsessed with demonizing those people, largely because they do not cling to the harmful stereotype with which the rest of us are faced. Likewise, we (historically) has levied criticism against "masculine" females and "feminine" males. We're obsessed with allowing one's sex to define individual choices we make throughout our lives, and Stoicism (among other philosophies ... the Peripatetics are also very guilty of this) reinforces some of those harmful, culturally-biased perspectives. The notion that American man are anything but "stoic" seems to repulse traditional minds, and we often, with prejudice, look at femininity as a weakness, and something that is embarrassing or even shameful.

To popularize Epicureanism, we'd either need to hope that the rest of our culture becomes more thoughtful, more observant of nature, more welcoming toward women, more tolerant of cultural differences, more critical of prevailing beliefs ... or, we'd need to change Epicureanism. As Epicurus wrote, "Never did I reach to please the masses, for truly what pleases them, I did not understand, but what I understood was far away from their perception" (U187). I'm just grateful for (here's another shameless plug for Nature's God by Matthew Stewart) the Epicureans throughout American history that have acted as bulwarks against traditional assumptions that were reinforced, over thousands of years by the philosophies of Epicurus' opponents, like Christian superstition, Aristotle's misogyny, Plato's ableism, and the Stoic paradigm of emotions being undesirable disturbances.

Greetings, all!

I'm centralizing some of the Epicurean art, merchandise, and related paraphernalia I've created in the Epicurean Emporium. My wife was previously hosting some of the material – including her historical portraits and digital illustrations – on Etsy and RedBubble, but we've made some changes, so it is now available through https://twentiers-shop.fourthwall.com/.

I'm still uploading things and organizing the navigation. It's a big bucket of products right now, but I'm working it out.

I'm also hosting a digital copy of The Hedonicon through the site. As I posted elsewhere, I jumped off of Musk and Zuckerberg's platforms, and I'd like to move away from Bezos' as much as possible, too, so I've ported e-book to this site. It's better, anyway. Amazon only pays the author/editor pennies for a cheap e-book or kindle file, and this site isn't quite as hungry.

In a modern context, with our advances in water treatment (so we don't have to spike our drinks to kill parasites), I speculate that Metrodoros mighty apply his advice about casual sex to drinking:

"I hear that a profuse change throughout your flesh disposes you toward [drinking alcohol]. As long as you neither disregard the laws, nor dismiss those reasonably established customs, nor distress any of the neighbors, nor damage your flesh, nor deplete what is necessary, do as you please according to your own preference. It is impossible however not to be a little constrained by at least one of these complications; therefore [drinking alcohol] is never advantageous, and desirable only if it has not caused harm." (Vatican Saying 51, but replacing "Aphrodisian intercourse" with "drinking".)

That's a great video!

Are we sure this was created by A.I.? I only ask because it looks really good, and seems to be accurate. I have to assume that a digital artist created this from a geographical image of ruins. A.I. would probably make up something that isn't true and generate a generic Greek-ish sort of scene.

Pietro Galifi, Stefano Moretti, and Alessandro Furlan are digital artists that founded Altair4 Multimedia Archeo3D Production, so I would be surprised if they put their name on anything developed by A.I. I want to make sure the real artists get credit where credit is due.

Quote from ranc1

CBT and modern self-help books are mostly based on stoicism and neurotypical people view social anxiety through the filter of stoicism - which does not work in real life and it is actually damaging.

This is a great observation many of us have also observed. Welcome!

Merry Eikas and Happy Hegemon Day!

I just wanted to take a minute and thank Cassius for hosting this site, and to the admins for maintaining it. I have completely removed myself from Meta and several other social media sites that now seem to me to be instruments of politics.

It is heartening to find this harbor in the storm of digital intercourse.

Quote from DaveT

Hello, Martin. I appreciate your welcome message. I first became familiar with Epicurus' through Matthew Stewart's book, Nature's God. He traced the impact of Epicurus' thoughts in De Rerum Natura through early American history and it's impact on Thomas Jefferson and other leaders of the revolution in formulating the goals of American national goals of achieving Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence.

As a now retired attorney and an author, I have always been fascinated with the historical underpinnings of the founding of the United States. Now, having been exposed to Epicurus, as well as my own newly begun comparative study of the ancient Greek philosophers with Epicureanism I've happily discovered EpicureanFriends.com and this community. I'm hoping to deepen my understanding of past and present philosophy through this community. Best, Dave

See, guys! I keep harping on everyone to read Nature's God. (It is so good!)

Also, welcome, Dave! We're happy to have you.