Posts by Pacatus

Quote from Cassius

I would expect any of our readers in GA or NC or DC or the Florida panhandle might be without power - at least that's our situation!

Here's hoping all remain well.

Don

If it were not for librarians – and other free researchers – such as yourself, I long ago would have been lost in the closely closeted (or corested?) strictures of those professors, philosophers and priests who permitted no thinking outside their – corsets. (“Why are you reading that?!”)

From my academic student days till now. Thank you.

Bearing the Weight

The axe and maul are heavier,
and splitting a harder chore –
but winter will hardly wait.

Muscle-ache, and stinging sweat
pouring from open pores,
mock me for my aging state.

Chilling air keeps me at my task
as gray light grows darker,
until I am cloaked in slate –

reminded as I limp away,
that I will never again
walk with an even gait.

That is the fate of years,
and not to be mourned –
just the way that I bear the weight.

~ ~ ~

I originally posted this poem on my Wall here. It was published in a book of my (then collected) poems some years ago.

What it reminds me of now is the pleasure/pain tradeoff. I took great pleasure in splitting and stacking several cords of wood each year for the winter fires – though it always became physically painful. I do walk with a slight limp (and have for decades) from an old factory injury: “not to be mourned – just the way that I bear the weight.”

Quote from Cassius

He was setting the playing field so we can *begin* the analysis of how we spend our time,

That just struck me. "Setting the playing field!" Yes!

We still have to play. Nothing in this life around that.

Julia,

I relate to your question. Even in my elder years, I seem to spend too much time in the lower region of your diagram. I have learned (a lot of it on here! but elsewhere as well) perspectives for dealing with that. But, as Ram Das once quipped: “The most difficult thing is to remember – to remember!”

So – eventually (in my ADH[D] labyrinth*) I remember to come back. And sometimes I do find myself in the upper region of your diagram.

A sports analogy: Athletes want to get into “the zone” – where all they do seems easy, even effortless. But that “zone” does not always seem accessible, let alone permanent – then the athlete deals as best they can.

So: I’ve had those moments. I expect to have them again. But, till then, I’ll deal with the “Epicurean calculus” as best I can – and move on.

I doubt any of that is helpful. So I’ll just wish you well and all wellness, for what that might be worth.

+++++++++++++++

* As I have noted before, I reject that final “D” – it’s not a disability, just the way my hypertexting brain works. Sometimes for the better …

Quote from Cassius

When I am in those moods, the thing that works best for me is to do something to remember that the clock is ticking (even something like looking at a clock!), that I will never get lost time back, that I have a very limited time to do what I want to do before I die.

I wear a bracelet inscribed with "memento mori." It was Don who pointed out to me that this could be taken as much (maybe moreso) in an Epicurean vein as a Stoic one (where it seems to usually show up).

Also PD 16 (unless I missed it):

PD16. In but few things chance hinders a wise man, but the greatest and most important matters, reason has ordained, and throughout the whole period of life does and will ordain.

βραχέα σοφῷ τύχη παρεμπίπτει, τὰ δὲ μέγιστα καὶ κυριώτατα ὁ λογισμὸς διῴκηκε καὶ κατὰ τὸν συνεχῆ χρόνον τοῦ βίου διοικεῖ καὶ διοικήσει.

Cicero obfuscating and arguing out of both sides of his mouth?! Say it ain’t so!

__________

Although the main matter here may have to do with mortality, the following struck me:

“‘Cicero’ conflates both argumentative strategies. On the one hand, he shows (i) that also according to non-virtue single-good schools, the goods required for happiness are available even under adverse circumstances, while conditions regarded as bad are no bads or at least not so bad that it would be impossible to obtain the goods constitutive of happiness. On the other hand, (ii) he attributes to virtue an instrumental function for guaranteeing happiness.

…

“All types of real non-virtue goods are sufficiently available for a person to be happy, and there is no reason to suffer from apparent bads that one can despise and disregard (strategy i). However, a person also needs the ability to assess goods and bads correctly, must assume the right attitude toward them and make the right choices. This ability is virtue, understood here as a mind educated to assess correctly what is good or bad so that it does not value what is worthless or fear what is harmless (strategy ii).”

As I recall, the primary practical (instrumental) virtue for the Stoic Epictetus was what we today would call agency: exercising our ability to choose among options.

It seems to me that this virtue is precisely what Epicurus emphasizes in our practical ability to choose among (1) the three categories of desires, and (2) pleasures that may lead to pain and pains that, if endured, lead to greater pleasure.

Possession of this virtue itself does not guarantee happiness (eudaimonia – with due recognition of problematic translation), but only its astute application. Virtue cannot be the only thing necessary for happiness (let alone, as the author mentions earlier, being happiness!) – but rather its instrumental application toward what is happiness: pleasure.

_______________________

There, at bottom, seems to be a kind of vicious circularity in the Stoic notion of virtue being the sole necessary and sufficient “good” for eudaimonia – let alone constituting eudaimonia. Virtue is either instrumental or not. Cicero seems to want it both ways.

Bees in the Arbor Drowse

(For Richard Parker)

Bees in the arbor drowse and dream
under a golden gauze of summer-noon sun.

Green scuppernong grapes ripen to speckled bronze
in a mantle of sawtooth, thick-veined leaves.

Bamboo chimes, hung from back-porch beams,
cluck in the flutter of a light-fingered breeze.

~ ~ ~

We laze in Tennessee-cedar Adirondack chairs,
sip sour-mash whiskey from mason jars,
chuckle as we spin to each other the same
age-old lies we’ve peddled for years
as our beards have ashened from brindle to gray –

poetic license, we tell ourselves,
to rout those pesky poltergeists, who pester us
in that dusty attic of keepsakes
we wish we had pawned rather than kept:

memories we packed away, not to recall
but forget. And so we embellish the tales
of our past lives, as we smirk and wink.

~ ~ ~

Bees in the arbor daydream and drowse:
once-on-a-time conjured – under a whiskey-tinged sun.

++++++++++++

Richard Parker: an old Tennessee friend who used to call and say, “Come on over. We’ll sit and have a drink, smoke our pipes – and tell each other lies.” "tell ... lies": a bit of joking tongue-in-cheek, of course. I’ve taken some poetic license …

Welcome MaiTaiNye.

An off-point attempt at some humor, in terms of examples of "god":

Sorry ...

Happy B'day!

Quote from Don

recognition of meaningful patterns

I just want to add (perhaps redundantly, having just blundered in here ) that such pattern recognition is (most?) often intuitive, rather than the result of any (time consuming) discursive analysis of all the elements forming the pattern. That is something that chess masters have often have relied on, rather than complicated calculative iterations. The intuition does rely on memory, of course.

And by “intuition” here, I mean something like “immediate apprehension or cognition” (per Webster’s).

Welcome, David!

BTW, could you (or anyone else here who has read it) comment further on the Jones book? It is pricey enough on Amazon to give me pause, but if it's worth it ...?

Quote from Little Rocker

I admit that I feel like I've reached a point where every time I hear a passionate argument about altruism I cry a little on the inside, even though I recognize that the possibility of altruism really matters to a lot of people. I think I've just lost sight of why it does.

Just some off-the-cuff thoughts:

For me, altruistic acts – from an Epicurean view – can be important from two different points of view: (1) they give me pleasure (the Stoics might deny that as a criteria, but I think they tend to delude themselves with regard to their own pleasure/satisfaction on this score – as Don said); and (2) both in terms of local community and friendship, and in terms of a more extended social fabric – based on a social contract to prevent harm by means of preserving an amenable social context in which we perforce live – as instrumentally choiceworthy, even if any reciprocity is not immediately expected. In today’s world, that social fabric likely includes at least some global considerations.

And perhaps pleasureable feelings of empathy are evolutionarily derived, supporting humans ability to live in any sense of community – and are still valid pathé today in that sense.

None of that relies on some abstract ideal of virtue or “command-morality” (as in the Stoics and Kant, say), which I heartily reject. And, it seems to me, it is the practical instrumentality that those idealists find objectionable.

It does, of course, depend on how narrowly or broadly one thinks of that term “altruism.” But Epicurus did say that one might reasonably die for one’s friends.

At least that’s my personal reflection …

I have just finished Wilson’s Epicureanism: A Very Brief Introduction. It is, indeed, very brief: the text being 120 pages.

As I read, I realized that the books we talk about here fall generally into two categories (though one might often “bleed” into the other): (1) the pragmatic – in terms of how one might live as an Epicurean in our modern times (and why that is worthy of consideration); and (2) the more straightforwardly “philosophical” – in the contemporary sense of that term. In the first category are such as Emily Austin, Hiram Crespo, Haris Dimitriadis and Wilson’s How to Live as an Epicurean (which I need to revisit). In the second category are DeWitt’s Epicurus and His Philosophy, Epicurean Philosophy: An introduction from the “Garden of Athens” (Christos Yapijakis Editor) – and Wilson’s Very Brief Introduction.

What one might recommend as an introduction thus ought to consider where a given person’s interest and prior exposure might be. (I tend to return more to those in the first category.) With that said, Wilson’s Very Brief Introduction might be considered as a sort of “outline primer” to, say, DeWitt.

Her treatment of Epicureanism is what I might call “critically fair” (fair as in evenhanded). She often skillfully sets up the arguments of Epicurus' critics (such as the Stoics and – especially -- the Christians and Kant), only to effectively dismantle (or at least diminish) them. Where she herself offers criticism (or affirms those of others), it was generally in the manner of “it seems” – to her, or to majority contemporary thought. In other words, she seems to leave room (at least implicitly) for cogent criticism of her criticism. [And that has been accomplished, without direct reference to Wilson, on here many times.]

In sum – and, as I said, contingent on my revisiting of her How to Live as an Epicurean – I am revising my opinions recorded above in this thread to a more affirmative view.

~ ~ ~

On reflection of my thoughts in the 2^nd paragraph above, I searched my (much diminished) philosophy shelf, and found a book I had forgotten: Atoms, Pleasure, Virtue: The Philosophy of Epicurus by Avraam Koen (1995). Has anyone else read it? The book was drawn from his PhD dissertation. It seems to be out of print but available: the Amazon price for the paperback is a hefty $61.75.

My copy is riddled with highlights, underlines and marginal notes – some of which I started to skim. If I find anything I think worth discussing here, I’ll post it.

An article on recent research into the importance of friendship. (I’m an introvert, but I’m fortunate to live with my best friend.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/05/28/in-person-friendships-health-benefits/

Quote from Julia

(At times like this, it still feels wild how I myself have been blind to this simple truth for so long; how that was even possible despite all the reading and reflection, despite knowing in my gut that “something isn't right”; how completely I was entrenched in what is wrong so obviously.)

I’m 73 years old, and I still struggle with some of that old stuff (though so much I have let go), and I still have questions. I just keep coming back here.

Quote from Don

I need to read Wilson's Epicureanism: A Very Short Introduction separate from her How to be an Epicurean.

I've just started it. I've always liked that Oxford University Press series.

Quote from Julia

(The Cynic answer: “I just shat on the floor.”)

Quote from Julia

The Epicurean answer: “Myself!”

In the context of the video, absolutely. But I'd extend the Epicurean answer to: Myself – and if can we can be friends, then you too, à la the so-called “Gestalt Prayer”:

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.

— Fritz Perls, Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, 1969