Posts by TauPhi

I must say I have enjoyed reading this thread immensely. Thanks to all involved. I decided to put in my tuppence worth, so here we go.

An Epicurean pleasure is one of the canonical faculties which makes it completely independent from reason. Canonical pleasure is a feeling but "feeling pleasure" is something completely different and these two are not interchangeable. What we commonly describe as our feelings (pleasure, desire, grief, sadness, joy etc.) is our awareness (= reasoning) of a situation we find ourselves in. In this sense, our feelings have nothing to do (as they are dependent on our reasoning) with canonical feelings in Epicurean terms.

Desire is a non-canonical feeling. It's our awareness (again, cerebral activity) which signals to us that we find ourselves in a situation that is not optimally pleasant for us and we crave the change. "Feeling desire" is always linked with "feeling pain". Similarly, "feeling happiness" is always linked with "feeling pleasure".

The problem seems to arise when we mix canonical pleasure with "feeling pleasure" (= mental awareness of being at the right time in the right sandbox with the right toys) and try to decide how this "Frankenstein pleasure" measures in relation to desire. Not a good idea. To sum up, I'm thinking this:

1) desire is always painful when we treat desire and "feeling pain" as conscious feelings (awareness of our situation)
2) Epicurean canonical feelings of pleasure and pain cannot equate to any conscious feelings (including desire)

Epicurus' classification of desires shows really well that Epicurus knew that desires are feelings in the sense of conscious (mis)understanding of our situation. He knew that when reasoning is involved people are prone to make mistakes in their judgements. Types of desires is a neat tool to increase our chances to reason well and to make choices that minimise pain and maximise pleasure.

Quote from Don

Uh, yeah. That's the "evidence" for Epicureans being "pamphleteers"?

Clearly. On top of that, better evidence couldn't by cited to prove that Epicureans were also the inventors of laserjet printers.

This is an interesting question. We're in the realm of speculation and most likely we will never know for sure but I always found the beginning of the letter to Idomeneus quite peculiar: "On this blissful day, which is also the last of my life, I write this to you. [...]"

How could Epicurus know that it was the last day and why he called it blissful? To me, it sounds a bit like: "There's nothing much to be done, so I feel relief as I made a decision to pull the plug today and end the suffering".

Maybe it would be worthwhile to closely inspect original Greek to shed more light on this sentence?

Link to a doctoral thesis on Epicurean epistemology by Ana Gavran Miloš from University of Zagreb. I skimmed through the work and it caught my eye as an in-depth analysis. Might be worth a look for anyone interested in more advanced Epicurean study. Table of contents is at the end right after bibliography.

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/199709901.pdf

Cassius Can you upload version 1.0.2 to the filebase for me? It seems I don't have permission to do it myself.

Changes:
- fixed the alignment in sections 101/102 for Bailey's translation (thanks to Bryan for noticing the misalignment)
- added Sources section at the end containing comprehensive list of websites used for the creation of the document

The attached pdf contains complete Book X of Diogenes Laertius' "Lives of Eminent Philosophers" in Greek and in three English translations (Yonge's, Hicks' and Bailey's) available in the public domain.

The idea is the same as with my recent Epicurus' public domain translations but this time it's a complete book 10 containing both Epicurus' and Laerius' words. I tried to make it look like an actual book so the file contains everything one may expect to see in a digital book - title page, clickable table of contents, numbered pages etc.

Table of contents contains 12 entries. These are 'chapters' I came up with to divide the book. 6 entries are highlighted by design - these are Epicurus' words. Additionally, every page has a heading with information whether the current section was written by Laertius or Epicurus and shows estimated time of the composition (similarly to the translations headings).

Each page contains one section as per Diogenes Laertius' notation and is marked as such at the top next to the chapter title. Every page has four sections - original passage in Greek is followed by three corresponding translations.

If you have an idea how to improve the file or you spot something that needs to be corrected, please let me know.

I hope you find the resource useful in your studies of Epicurean Philosophy. Enjoy.

Quote from Cassius

Did you do something similar with this PDF, or did you not run into such issues for some reason? If you used one version as the "master" reference for line numbering, which did you use?

Yonge's and Hick's translations are mostly aligned the same. Bailey took more liberties with his translation (including 2 sections where he decided to move large chunks of passages to another sections - 46 and 47 were transferred to 61 and 62 respectively).

For these reasons, my aliment algorithm looked like this:

1) if Y and H are the same but B is not - align B to match the rest
2) if Y and H are different, compare to B and if Y or H match B, go with the majority for alignment
3) if all are different, go to https://logeion.uchicago.edu/ translate Greek words at the end of one section and the beginning of the following section to determine the correct split

Quote from Cassius

Tau Phi I know what you've already done has been a huge amount of work, but let me ask this: Does the method of assembly you used make it possible with reasonable effort to:

1 - Do the same thing for the rest of DIogenes Laertius so that we have the full Book X in one place? That makes it much easier for word searching.

2 - In cutting and pasting from the PDF I am seeing a problem that I've had with other PDFs of my own in the past -- there's something wrong with the constructions involving "f" that corrupts the words.

1- It's very much doable. I've done 112 out of 154 sections already so there are only 42 sections left in Book X (27%). As far as I know, all three translators did the entirety of Book X so I don't see any reasons why this couldn't be done. I decided to do only Epicurus' sections because I wanted core texts in one place without any fluff.

2- I used Ghostscript to add ToC to the document and it looks like there's some issue with the characters' encoding during recompilation process. I'll try to find another way to do it. In the meantime, please use my initial file without ToC. It should work without any issues.

Thanks Cassius.

As I mentioned earlier, if anyone notices any mistakes or has some ideas how to make that resource better, give me a shout and I'll try to make it happen.

Thanks for the suggestion, Cassius. Detailed TOC is now added to the letters/doctrines and to each of the 112 sections as well.

Also, feel free to put this file into 'files section' for general accessibility, if you think it's worthwhile. This file contains 100% of public domain material.

There are 112 pages in the attached pdf file. Each page contains one section of Epicurus' core texts (the three letters and Principal Doctrines) as per Diogenes Laertius' notation and is marked as such at the top.

Every page has four sections. Epicurus' words in Greek are followed by three translations: Yonge's, Hicks' and Bailey's. I think such arrangement can enhance the study of the philosophy by increased understanding of each passage.

I know there are more modern translations available but I included only those translations which are complete (i.e. all core texts are translated) and are in public domain. This way, the attached file can be freely distributed and used without any constraints.

This is an initial version and most likely contains some errors. Please let me know if you see something in need of correction or you have an idea how the file can be improved. I'll do what I can to make it better.

Have a blast studying!

Quote from Don

Agreed. That's why I content that the prolepsis of the gods does not cover their blessed and incorruptibility.

Quote from Cassius

Thanks for focusing again on the question of which aspects of knowledge of the gods constitute prolepsis and which constitute opinions arising from reasoning.

I'm with Don on this one. Prolepsis, as all Epicurean canonical faculties, is separated from reasoning. The way I see it, prolepsis is a pattern recognition. If I see enough cats in my life, I'll recognize the next one as a cat without thinking about it. If I lift enough cups of coffee in my life, I'll apply a perfect amount of force to lift the next cup of coffee without thinking about it. Epicureans believed that humans' minds are directly hit with the images of gods, so humans were able to develop prolepsis of gods.

The moment we think: 'Sphynx cats are furless', 'Led cups with coffee are heavy', 'Epicurean gods are blessed' is when the reasoning kicks in. Canonical input data is being processed and opinions arise.

These five tables are brilliant, Bryan . Thank you for preparing them. One suggestion for the third table. Under 'Experiences' I think it would be more precise to go straight into ἡδονή - pleasure and ἀλγηδών - pain instead of '(i.e., feelings)'. Essentially, these are epicurean παθη.

Bryan's tables are pure essence of Epicurean's truth criteria. If someone wishes to investigate them in more descriptive form, I've prepared something for you in the attached pdf file. It's an extract from Sextus Empiricus 'Against the Logicians'. Four passages from books I and II. Definitely worth a read.

And if someone is interested in other ancient philosophers' takes on epistemology, you can easily find 'Against the Logicians' on archive.org.

For those who don't want to post anything online but want to use this software for personal projects where side by side texts comparison is needed, here's the easiest way to do it.

Step 1: Download the zip file and unpack it where you want it. It's basically a webpage template that allows you to display the texts side by side.

https://github.com/tasuki/sbs/archive/gh-pages.zip

Step 2: Create a local HTTP server. This will create a local environment for your webpage. There are different way to do it but the simplest is to run below command in the directory where index.html is. (Make sure Python is installed and you run the command in the correct directory)

python -m http.server

Step 3: Edit index.html to make sure base href is set to current directory: <base href="/"> or simply remove this line as default is current directory anyway.

Step 4: Copy of the files from tests/the_raven folder into the folder where index.html is. These files are the example to show you how things are done. For your own projects, modify these files or create your own.

Step 5: Open your web browser with this address: http://localhost:8000/. This is how you access the local server where your newly created website is.

That's it. Now the world is your oyster. You can put your own texts, compare, re-arrange or even change how things look like by modifying all_min.css file in styles directory. (The file is obfuscated but there are ways to deobfuscate it so it's easy to modify to your liking). After you're happy with the results, you can print as pdf in the browser and you have a nice looking document. Have fun.

Recently, I came across a note in one of the books I was reading that listed 'Lucretius, epicurean and poet' in two volumes by John Masson as an important monograph on Lucretius. It got me curious because I've never heard about this author. I tried to find some information about him online and I got even more curious when I found absolutely nothing. I did, however, found the monograph on archive.org along one more book on Lucretius published in 1884 (all the links at the end of this post).

I don't know if the books are worth recommending because I've only skimmed through the tables of contents but at the first look, these works seem to be thorough and interesting studies on Lucretius. If anyone is familiar with these books, please let me know if they are worthwhile.

The atomic theory of Lucretius contrasted with modern doctrines of atoms and evolution : Masson, John : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

xii, 249 p. 23 cm

archive.org

The atomic theory of Lucretius contrasted with modern doctrines of atoms and evolution (1884)

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

Includes bibliographical references and index

archive.org

Lucretius, epicurean and poet - volume I (1907)

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

Includes bibliographical references and index

archive.org

Lucretius, epicurean and poet - volume II (1909)

If you're looking for something like that:

Side By Side viewer

you may want to follow the link to the source code given in 'About' section. I didn't investigate it closely but it looks like there are some instructions how to create similar projects. There are also author's contact details there, if needed.

Happy Birthday Onenski

Through the presentation of a lesser-known Epicurean called Boethus of Sidon, Francesco Verde in his article makes an intriguing points about Epicurean position regarding geometry and its (in)validity. Something else, however, caught my eye as well there. That is the paragraph on acoustics and its explanation through atomism and the influence of heat and cold on atomic concentrations. Enjoy.

Boethus the Epicurean

As is well known, the existence of a positive Epicurean geometry is an extremely controversial question that has been discussed at length by scholars. That the…

journals.openedition.org

Some fragments from Oenoanda dealing with why gods didn't create the world; Dead Sea argument (probably the most interesting part as it doesn't appear in Epicurus' writings known to us); severe pain leading to death; nature of pleasure; natural phenomena like thunderbolts and earthquakes and few other bits and pieces.

I have to ask, because I really don't understand how DeWitt's statement at the beginning of this episode is presented as relevant to the discussion. I'm talking about this:

Quote

The adoption of the Euclidean textbook as a model involved, of course, the procedure by deductive reasoning. The Twelve Elementary Principles were first stated and then demonstrated like theorems. Each theorem. in turn, once demonstrated, became available as a major premise for the deduction of subsidiary theorems. [...]

Where his 'of course' chain of statements come from? How do we know about the adoption of the Euclidean textbook and its consequences? What Twelve Elementary Principles? Where were they first stated? Where were they demonstrated like theorems? How each of this theorem that we know nothing about became a premise for anything?

Is there anything out there that would validate all these claims as DeWitt doesn't provide any sources for his statements? If they are nothing but his speculations, I don't see how they can be considered relevant to the discussion.

Quote from Cassius

And the very thought that we should restrict ourselves from exploring space and learning more about the universe is antithetical to Epicurus' emphasis on studying nature as the best way to live happily.

Cassius , I don't know what you're trying to achieve by stating the above but if you're suggesting I'm against learning, getting knowledge or exploring space, than you can't be further from the truth. I was talking about not pursuing physical contact with Epicurean gods, not about not pursuing anything at all. Your conclusions have nothing to do with what I said, whatsoever.

Quote from Cassius

Again, I think we're just in fundamental disagreement here because you are maintaining that it is inherently impossible to gain additional knowledge in the future (after space travel) than we have today, and I think that's a fundamentally flawed perspective.

Yeah, except that's not my perspective at all. Once again, you're twisting my words about pursuing physical contact with Epicurean gods into what suits you and it's in almost perfect opposition to what I think about gaining knowledge.

Quote from Cassius

It's possible Tau Phi that you have a unique perspective that makes you impervious to concerns about divinity, and again if that is so I applaud you for it.

As I said, my perspective is not relevant to the conversation. I'm talking strictly about Epicurean perspective regarding gods.

Quote from Cassius

His direction clearly seems to be, "Supernatural gods do not exist, but the idea of "divinity" is not crazy at all, and there is good reason that people think about it."

I absolutely agree that this is the case.

Quote from Cassius

And to repeat, even the "idealists" who reject the view that Epicurus thought his gods really existed appear to me to be essentially in agreement with how important a question this is. Having a proper perspective on divinity is a lot more than saying negatively "supernatural gods don't exist." It's an essential part of the picture to understand where the issue comes from and to have a positive position that relates to where we want to go in living as close to happily and imperishably as we can.

As far as I can comprehend Epicurus' view of gods, I think his gods were very much real in a physical sense. And he tried to make perfectly clear that they are not supernatural, not interested in human affairs and this is the proper perspective on divinity - think about it, marvel at it but don't physically touch it. He did this to remove the fear of gods and to shut the door behind such fear. Your insistence on the possibility of contact with gods by the means of space travel opens the door again to the fear of gods and I think this is an anti-Epicurean position and again, please don't read it as I am against knowledge in general because such accusations are frankly speaking ridiculous.