Category Archives: epicurus

Happy Eikas! The Fourth Element of the Soul

Eikas cheers to all! This month, I published The Fourth Element of the Soul in Lucretius on my Substack blog. Last month, our friend Marcus updated the Epicurean Writings page, and I published the book review of “Comment peut on être dieu” (How One Can Be A God). This is a French-language book that Marcus recommended and was deeply insightful concerning the theory and practices concerning the Epicurean use of moral models.

Our friend Michael McOsker was featured in AI reads text from famously inscrutable ancient scroll for the first time. Recent efforts to decipher the scrolls from Herculaneum using laser technology are beginning to yield fruit. For more on Herculaneum:

Herculaneum Scrolls: Unraveling History

Ruins of Herculaneum Walking Tour – Walk and Learn about the ruins with City Walks

Speaking of writings, my amazon author page has all of my published books available in English and Spanish. One way to support my mission of propagating philosophy in the 21st Century would be to share Epicurean books with others as holiday gifts. You may also search the SoFE page for book reviews to give you ideas of books to give away (written by Emily Austin, by the Epicureans from Greece, and many others). These books would make good holiday gifts for friends of like mind.

The Overthink Podcast published the episode Speaking Truth to Power (Parrhesia), which does not specifically focus on the Epicureans but does help to contextualize the practice of parrhesia.

The essay The pursuit of pleasure and the desire for wholeness adds a thought-provoking theoretical layer to the impulse toward pleasure that is tied to developmental psychology.

I’ve been listening and enjoying to the podcast series that concludes with Philosophers of the Future – Nietzsche Podcast Season Three Finale. I’ve derived many hours of enjoyment listening to this YouTube channel’s podcast series while I do chores at home, or on the train. The facilitator has many insightful and enjoyable, long discussions about books by Nietzsche. I know that N is not everyone’s cup of tea, and he has his faults, but he is one of the philosophers who has taught me to love philosophy, and I find myself coming back to his books from time to time.  

Older Essays

Epicurus wrote 300 scrolls that are lost to us. The writings of many other Epicureans are also forever gone. We can’t change that. What we CAN do is write 300 times 300 new scrolls and revitalize our philosophy with new insights, with new discourse that is relevant to our age and to our lives.

This collection of essays (formerly called SoFE’s Journal) came together during the earlier years of SoFE with the kind assistance of Sasha Euler and has been created as a compilation of contemporary Epicurean conversations and discussions from all walks of life: thinkers, pupils, scholars, and everyday bloggers. We are preserving it for the benefit of students.

Epicurean philosophy and lifestyle

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 1 – 2013

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 2 – 2013

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 6 – from 2014 (ongoing)

Developments of Epicurean thought

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 3 – 2013/14

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 7 – 2014

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 8 – 2014

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 9 – 2015

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 10 – 2015

The Philodemus Series

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 11 – 2017

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 12 – 2017/18

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 13 – 2018-19

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 14 – 2019-20

Related traditions

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 4 – from 2013

On Autarchy

Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 5 – from 2013

Happy 20th!, the newsletter of the Society of Friends of Epicurus, was discontinued.

 

Back to the Main Page

Happy Eikas! Five Contemplations on the Gods

Eikas cheers everyone! Last Sunday at our Eikas we discussed Three Lucretian Arguments Against Creationism. During our presentation, it occurred to Marcus that perhaps there could be a fourth argument, from the method of multiple interpretations, which allows for anthropological and other perspectives to help explain phenomena that mystify some people. Overall, we had an enjoyable virtual discussion. Please enjoy, comment, and share the essay.

The Seize the Moment Podcast published Krista K. Thomason – The Myth of Emotional Harmony: Rational and Irrational Emotions, which I thought was quite thought-provoking and reminded me of Philodemus.

Our Friend Marcus published a five-part essay series titled Five contemplations on the gods: A path to community and friendship, with the intention of helping students to place before our eyes the teachings on how to live like a god.

Part 1 – The Gods
Part 2 – Utopia
Part 3 – The Sage
Part 4 – The Friend
Part 5 – The Departed

The second contemplation reminded me of how Hephaistos constructed robots and machines to serve the gods, and makes me think that we already live like gods to some extent thanks to modern technology. In other mythologies, we see that Hindu gods have varahas (flying vehicles) and the Goddess Inanna appears to have a flying chariot by which she travels to Enki’s temple to gain the civilizing gifts. The point of these technologies (and even simple things we take for granted, like toilets, aqueducts, and air conditioning systems) is that they make our lives easier and more pleasant, usually with little effort on our part. We do not realize how valuable these civilizing gifts are until we find ourselves without them.

I would like to thank Marcus for posting these essays. I’m currently reading a book that was recommended by him on this subject, titled Comment peut-on être dieu (How one can be a god). It’s in French and a slow read for me, since that’s my fourth language, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it. It has many thought-provoking ideas, and I will soon be writing a book review on it.

Four Methods of Exegesis for the Study of Kyriai Doxai

Eikas cheers to everyone! This month, I published An Eikas Manifesto: A Clarion Call to Revive an Epicurean Tradition that Strengthens Friendships and Communities on the Spiritual Naturalist Society page. Please share this essay with your like-minded friends!

Mental Floss published The Lost Library of Herculaneum: Unravelling the Scrolls That Mount Vesuvius Almost Destroyed, and scholar Tim O’Keefe participated in A Dialogue Between Vedanta and Epicureanism, with Prof. Tim O’Keefe.

This video helps to demystify “consciousness”. Can cells think? applies the logic of the materialist paradigm of emergence to sentience (as opposed to the top-down model of the nature of things imagined by idealists and creationists). It argues that just as bodies gain more complexity when they have more particles, similarly complex mental processes are made up of smaller-scale processes. What we experience as sentience is made up of sometimes millions of these processes. 

Studying Kyriai Doxai

At the Society of Friends of Epicurus, in addition to our Eikas program, we have in the past organized a Kyriai Doxai study group. We studied them one by one, from 1 to 40, we evaluated commentaries by Epicurean Guides from the past (Lucretius, Philodemus, etc.), and even included some insights from modern scholars. This has yielded many useful insights. This essay is part of the harvest of wisdom from that process.

Definitions

The Kyriai Doxai are the Principal Doctrines of Epicurus, Metrodorus, and their companions.

Broadly, the word exegesis means “interpretation”. Specifically, it’s the “critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.

The literal method of exegesis

This method makes us look into the original prolepsis or empirical meaning of a word, and the original attestation that led to the coining of it, which says something about the intention of the words chosen. Since this involves access to Greek definitions and etymologies, this can be rewarding, fun investigative work, and can also be frustrating and difficult.

For a case study of how the prolepsis of a word can yield curious insights, you may read this meleta on KD 14, where I evaluate the relation between voice and consensus in the term “exchoriseos” (literally, “exiting the chorus“, figuratively translated as moving away from the herd). The connection between our voice and our authority (and the power to yield authority via a social contract by our vote) is again revisited in the use of symphonia in the later Doxai to refer to the social contract, which in modern English reminds us of the word “symphony“, but in its original prolepsis means “speaking together, uttering in unison“. This carries the sense of the contract as an agreement, specifically of voices.

Since we are functioning in the English language and other modern languages, this method requires us to follow in the footsteps of Lucretius, who had to coin words and find accurate translations from Greek into his native Latin language in order to accurately convey the original sense of the teachings.

In the field of exegetics, the literalists argue that we should simply take the literal words of a text and interpret them without context or explanation that might “obscure it”, but this method puts us in potential danger of falling into unjustifiable fundamentalism, and fails to explain the why’s and the how’s of a Doctrine. In my view, we must investigate the discussions that led the founders to set down each one of the Doctrines as authoritative and final. This contextualizes each doctrine, making it concrete and clear, and helps to place before our eyes the Kyriai Doxai.

The contextual method of exegesis

One way of approaching this method is to start with the literal method of interpretation of the words, and then to infer the underlying ideas, concerns, questions, and worries that led to the establishment of each Doctrine and its particular choice of words. What problems in hedonic calculus or in living pleasantly was this Doctrine trying to solve?

The contextual method also considers the historical details of the doctrine, and its place in the history of ideas, and it follows the logic of Principal Doctrine 5, which teaches that a life of pleasure has content, causes and conditions, that pleasure is interwoven into life because, as we know, “nothing comes from nothing“.

For instance, we know that PD 1 was inspired, in part, in Theodorus the Atheist’s teachings; and that the idea of hedonic calculus (which influences PD 8 and a few other doctrines) was invented by Anniceris of Cyrene, and so we can see how Kyriai Doxai are a continuation of the legacy and the history of the ideas of the Cyrenaics.

Another example of historical context might be the Timocrates affair, which may have led to the establishment of KD 39 when the first Koinonia was forced to make decisions concerning how to deal with apostates.

The therapeutic method of exegesis

If true philosophy must heal the soul, and if Kyriai Doxai is agreed-upon as authoritative and true, then Kyriai Doxai must contain therapeutic value. The therapeutic method of interpretation of a Doctrine looks for what medicine it uses to cure some disease of the soul, what disease of the soul is the Doctrine attempting to diagnose and heal, by what symptoms (“signs“) the disease is diagnosed, and what treatments can be used. This method is based on the following assertion by the Hegemon:

A philosopher’s words are empty if they do not heal the suffering of mankind. For just as medicine is useless if it does not remove sickness from the body, so philosophy is useless if it does not remove suffering from the soul. – Epicurus (Usener, Fragment 221)

We know that this assertion was taken to its fullest pragmatic repercussions from the fact that Philodemus of Gadara reports that one of the founders of our lineage, Metrodorus of Lampsacus, kept a record of the mental health of the people he had been offering psychotherapeutic treatments to, and Philodemus seems to have frequently referred to this compilation, which was known as Historiai (the “Histories”).

In doing this, Metrodorus was applying the same techniques that were used in the medical field for diseases of the body, to the health of the soul. That is, he was diagnosing by signs, he was offering treatments, and (most importantly) he was keeping a record of the health of the soul of his friends just like physicians keep a record of the health of their patients. This methodical approach must have contributed to the detailed categorization of virtues and their opposing vices, and personality profiles of people of both dysfunctional and virtuous character, that we later see in Philodemus’ scrolls (which were based on similar works by Epicurus).

I wish to stop here to consider what a paradigm shift this is, as it depicts Metrodorus as the very first modern psychotherapist in history who (2,300 years ago) was applying a methodical approach to healing the soul of his friends, with no appeal to the supernatural whatsoever. The founders were reforming the faith-healing practices that Epicurus learned from his mother, and rejecting the attribution of mental diseases to spirits and gods, while at the same time affirming the importance of mental health and self-care as human values.

Much more could be said about this method, but let us consider various case studies: the Tetrapharmakos are commonly known as “THE four medicines” of our tradition, however they are not the only pharmakos. In Kyria Doxa 22, we find mention of “confusion” and “perturbations” (ἀκρισίας καὶ ταραχῆς). It’s up to us to consider by which signs these diseases of the soul can be identified. If we apply the logic of the therapeutic method, we will conclude that clarity of thought and of speech is one of the medicines or benefits of practicing these particular Doxai (22-25).

In Principal Doctrine 17 we find the generic term “perturbations” being named as a possible diagnosis, and in PD 35 we find guilt, fear of being discovered, as signs of diseases of the soul related to unresolved past offenses. The medicine of these Doxai is found in the love and practice of justice, of righteousness, and in the possibility of moral reform that they encourage.

Another way to approach the therapeutic method of exegesis is to see what specific techniques are being used, and to follow the pragmatic logic of these techniques. Many Doxai apply a technique known as relabelling. We may consider KD 2 as a technique of relabelling death, for instance. We may ask what fears or perturbations were attached to death prior to relabelling, or we may notice the difference in our dispositions when we associate death with those fears versus with the new label.

Philodemus left us the most complete and detailed record of how the therapeutic methods were used among the ancient Epicureans.

The contractual method of exegesis

The contractual or legal method of interpretation of a Doctrine considers the role that it plays within the social contract of the first Epicurean koinonia (community). How is agreeing on these Doxai advantageous for mutual association? What noble expectations must people have of each other under the particular contractual agreement of Kyriai Doxai? What happens when we take up this or that Doxa as an article within our own social contract?

This is another method by which we are applying the logic of Kyriai Doxai to itself–in particular, we are applying the logic of the Doxai on natural justice based on the social contract.

For a case study of the contractual method of exegesis, we may consider the Doxai that insist on the importance of having a canon, an empirical and pragmatic standard of truth (Principal Doctrines 22-25), and the importance of having a scientific worldview and some measure of basic scientific skills (PD’s 10-13).

It’s one thing to say: “I will apply these or those specific empirical thinking methods.” It’s quite another thing to say: “My friends and I will henceforward, as part of our social contract, dismiss all supernatural claims and adhere to these standards of truth“. THAT is a paradigm shift: it purposefully creates and perpetuates a social circle, a subculture, a space of intellectual ferment where all supernaturalism has been banned, and where a new physicalist, materialist philosophical conversation may be nurtured unapologetically. When we apply this exegetical method to these Kyriai Doxai, we more clearly understand that part of Epicurus’ and his friends’ agenda involved paving the way for our modern scientific worldview. Today some people claim that this is the “Western” worldview, but in the Hellenistic Era this proto-scientific and scientific worldview was beginning to seek to export itself into all the continents, and in India there was a parallel development in the Lokayata tradition.

Applying this exegetical method has helped me to understand that part of the utility of symphonia, of social contract, is to help people with shared values and shared projects to carry out their activities like a well-oiled machine, in the most effective manner possible. Contracts help individuals with shared values and a shared vision to implement their shared projects most effectively. Understood as the social contract of the early Epicurean koinonia, Kyriai Doxai would have helped to deeply instill certain basic values into every member of the community.

It’s easy to imagine that perhaps Kyriai Doxai constituted the curriculum for “coming of age” and being considered an adult member within the community, since it delineates the basic ethical expectations and existential tasks that all members of the koinonia must attain.

Conclusion

There are, in all likelihood, many more exegetical methods that could be applied to the study of the Principal Doctrines while remaining true to the spirit of Epicurean philosophy. But these are the four methods that we have, so far, identified as being fruitful and correct.

Studying KD in this manner has helped me to understand that we are learning and cultivating highly pragmatic, useful human values when we adhere to and practice Kyriai Doxai: clear communication, teamwork, cooperation, justice, etc. Kyriai Doxai is a full, basic curriculum of human values.

Further Reading:

Kyriai Doxai – our full study guide

 

Convergent Evolution and the Doctrine of Innumerable Worlds

Eikas cheers to everyone! We recently published On Pleasure as the Default State of the Organism, which defends Epicurean arguments against Cyrenaic conceptions of pleasure. A new SoFE blog has been created on Substack. I am trying a new platform (this will likely replace our mailchimp bulletin) and will slowly diminish my involvement in the bird platform, since I have difficulty trusting their algorithm. Substack allows for subscription, and subscribers receive an email whenever I post a blog. Feel free to subscribe and share.

Now, grant me your attention: hear the truth. A new idea is pressing to be heard, a new aspect of nature to be revealed. But there’s no thought so simple that at first it won’t be difficult to accept, and none so vast, so wonderful, that bit by bit it won’t seem less astounding to us all.

– Lucretius, introducing his explanation of the Doctrine of Innumerable Worlds in De rerum natura, Book 2, 1023-1029

In this essay, I will discuss how modern studies on convergent evolution add flesh, and new dimensions, to the Epicurean theory known as the “Doctrine of Innumerable Worlds“. Before we look at these intersections, let’s first consider what the Doctrine actually says. The earliest attestation of this Doctrine is found in seven statements from tmima (portion) 45 (in the Laertian source) of Epicurus’ Epistle to Herodotus.

  1. But, again, the worlds also are infinite,
  2. whether they resemble this one of ours or whether they are different from it.
  3. For, as the atoms are, as to their number, infinite, as I have proved above, they necessarily move about at immense distances;
  4. for besides the infinite multitude of atoms, of which the world is formed, or by which it is produced, could not be entirely absorbed by one single world,
  5. nor even by any worlds, the number of which was limited,
  6. whether we suppose them like this word of ours, or different form it.
  7. There is therefore, no fact inconsistent with an infinity of worlds.

To help us evaluate the Doctrine, I broke it down into seven statements: that (1) the worlds are innumerable; that (2) some are similar and some are different from our own; that (3) since atoms are innumerable and must cover great distances (an idea that is discussed elsewhere), (4) therefore these atoms can not be contained within a single world, (5) or even within any limited number of worlds (6) which may, again, be similar to or different from our own. This point is stressed twice, which adds emphasis on the diversity of worlds. It closes (7) with a conclusive declaration based on all the facts noted.

Notice the stress on how worlds may be similar to, or different from, our own world. Exoplanetary research sheds more light, and adds specificity, to this. When we read the word “world”, in the original, the word kosmos is used. This is why many interpret this as a theory about a multiverse.

Two centuries later, when Lucretius in Liber Secvndvs of De Rerum Natura continues to expound the same doctrine, his final concluding statement is:

One must grant there are other earthly spheres
in other regions, with different races
of human beings and classes of wild beasts.

But how does this tie into convergent evolution? Convergent evolution documents certain traits that have been observed to evolve, in separate lineages, multiple times, so that this is seen as evidence that these traits are highly useful. This video titled “Why do things keep evolving into crabs?” sheds light on this fascinating aspect of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

The intersection between this and the Doctrine of the Innumerable Worlds lies in astrobiology: the more examples of convergent evolution we see in different Earth environments, the more likely we are to find similar traits in living beings in the innumerable worlds. Until we are able to acquire direct evidence, this is currently a matter of mathematics. This line of reasoning adds flesh to the Doctrine of Innumerable Worlds. Using our method of inference by analogy, when we find planets that are similar enough to our own, we can infer that Earth-like life probably exists there, or that it may evolve if some conditions change; and according to convergent evolution studies, specific evolutionary pressures will likely strongly favor certain traits that we are already familiar with.

Examples of convergence can be found in the shapes of the bodies of certain creatures. The shape of a snake evolved both in the water (as eels) and on land. Eight-legged creatures evolved separately multiple times, probably because symmetry is useful. These lineages include varieties of crabs, spiders and other creatures. Flight evolved separately in insects, avians, and some mammals. The behavior and calls of social animals who hunt together also converges: the calls of dolphins and the howls of wolves have been observed to share striking similarities. Ants evolved separately from termites, yet they both have caste systems.

What kinds of creatures might be flying or howling together somewhere in the innumerable worlds?

If Lucretius’ explanation of this Doctrine is true, truth may be stranger than fiction, because he was extremely optimistic about the prospects of extraterrestrial life. Lucretius specifically mentions that different species of human-like beings would be found in space. This would mean that humanity is a convergent trait. Is it?

We know that, on Earth, human lineages evolved multiple times–as Denisovan, Neanderthal, Luzonian and Flores hobbits, Homo Longi in China, our Cro-Magnon ancestors, and several other ancestral hominid species in Africa and Papua that we know very little about. This seems to suggest that the traits that generally make up a human or hominid are convergent. However, only our lineage survived, which raises the possibility that the rise of a species like ours may bring about the destruction or displacement of many other species, and that nature pays a high price for producing certain types of highly-intelligent and adaptable sentient beings in terms of sacrificing the diversity of ecosystems.

Whether or not humanity might be an example of convergent evolution, Lucretius (and, presumably, other early atomists) seemed convinced that it was something like it, and declared plainly that there were other hominids in the innumerable worlds. So we can imagine a human-like model of sentient being that lives by its wit–rather than by fangs, horns or venom–and eventually develops forms of culture, civilization and technology that we may recognize as familiar. The bodily shape of this creature would be somewhat similar to ours. Eagles are smart, but they do not have the manual dexterity to construct complex machines: body shape matters.

Our brains evolved to be much larger and different from other great ape brains over a relatively short period of time, and we don’t fully understand how this came to be. The answer to this may help us to predict how likely we are to find higher intelligences elsewhere.

To conclude, the fields of study that inform convergent evolution add flesh to the ancient astrobiology theories that we find in Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus and Lucretius’ De rerum natura (and which later inspired the comical speculations about alien life we find in Lucian’s True History, believed to be the very first work of science fiction ever written). They also hint at how potentially advanced their speculation about alien life-forms was–even without the benefit of modern scientific methods and theories–, and how natural cosmology is just as rich and awe-inspiring as the supernatural theories that seek to replace it.

Phonás Aphientas: “Scattered Sounds”, and Language Reform

Eikas cheers to all our readers! We recently shared This is why emotions are important, a video from the YouTube channel Freedom in Thought which makes the point that without emotion, it becomes difficult or impossible to carry out choices.

We also shared the American Psychological Association’s article The science of friendship. I have been a big fan of the Naked and Afraid shows for many years: a reality show where they abandon a naked man and woman to the elements for 21 days. Later seasons had 40-day and 60-day challenges with large groups of survivalists. These larger challenges sometimes have reminded me of Lord of the Flies—with cliques forming and abusing marginal individuals. This year in the most recent installment, titled Last One Standing, Jeff (a Mormon and libertarian who adheres to Ayn Randian belief in selfishness) hoarded all the tools and weapons early in the season. This, and his reputation from previous seasons, earned him the distrust and ill-will of all other participants. Other members, on the other hand, derived a great morale boost from the fact that they were able to trust each other enough to cooperate during the challenge. I have only seen two episodes, but they have been eloquent arguments about the importance of being friendly, even in (or especially during) a survival situation.

How to Stop Being a Slave to the Opinions of Other People is a video by Academy of Ideas that cites a quote from Epicurus, and strongly resonates with Kyria Doxa 14.

One must laugh and seek wisdom and tend to one’s home life and use one’s other goods, and always recount the pronouncements of true philosophy. – Vatican Saying 41

In the past, I have discussed VS 41’s instructions regarding phonás aphientas (“scattered voices”). The word phonás shares semantic roots with telephone, microphone, etc., and implies out-loud utterances, while aphientas has to do with sending or emitting something all around oneself (like we do when we plant seeds, or when we disseminate a teaching), so that the phrase implies out-loud utterances dispersed in all directions. Hermarchus (or perhaps another Kathegemone or Guide) says in VS 41 that we must do this with the teachings of correct philosophy (orthés philosophias).

Phonás aphientas instructs us that this philosophy must be oral, spoken out loud, that it must find verbal expression in practice.

In the past, I’ve discussed the role of words of philosophy being uttered out loud as a practice of chanting or repetition that is native to the Epicurean gardens, and I’ve also discussed the role this practice might have in passive recruitment (a perspective influenced by the book The Sculpted Word).

Now, I’d like to take a look at phonás aphientas as a didactic method, and also to consider the ways in which it makes sense in light of studies on language and how it changes the brain–since Epicurus, in his sermon on moral development, argued that moral development is a physical process of steering our neural pathways and shaping our brains through habituation and memorization, and new data shows that language has the power to do this.

In his scroll On Music, Philodemus of Gadara mentions that music only heals the soul if it contains the words of true philosophy, which indicates a logocentric theory of therapy where words are used as philosophical treatments. Phonás aphientas must therefore be considered as a potential method of treatment, and of character development.

Neuroplasticity and Language

The ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury. – Oxford Dictionary definition of neuroplasticity

In Epicurus’ scroll against the use of empty words, we see that the founders were involved in a process of language reform for the sake of clarity. We tend to think of language as identity rather than habituation, but languages are changing with every generation. There is no essential or unchanging, idealist core of any language that remains the same forever. The founders of Epicurean philosophy positively saw themselves as stewards of their native language and they considered it part of their role to steer their language in the direction of being better suited to express the nature of things clearly. I would argue that Lucretius, when he coined words and worked for years in editing De rerum natura, did the same with his own native language.

The study titled Native language differences in the structural connectome of the human brain demonstrates that there is evidence that one’s language changes one’s brain, and that different languages make use of different parts of the brain.

The structural language network is modulated by the specific procesing requirements of one’s native language.

This not only confirms Epicurus’ assertions in “On moral development” (that one is able to change the physical structure of one’s brain), but potentially adds our choice of words, and language use in general, as a layer of our practice, since it raises the possibility that language reform could be a tool for reforming the psyche, or for cultivating undeveloped potentials of our souls. Modern linguists have a name for this way of thinking about language. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis,

also known as the linguistic relativity hypothesis, refers to the proposal that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality.

These studies add flesh to some of the earliest Epicurean theories on language evolution. Based on these studies, we can confidently infer that language evolution reshaped the early human brain, and that modern languages are still reshaping and steering our brains. Once humans experienced the first stage of language evolution (the natural stage) and entered the second stage (the collective utility, cultural, or artifice stage) (see my introductory essay on this), then a feedback loop began which reshaped the brains of humans in every generation. Individuals of each generation that learned the earliest forms of language, reshaped their brains by the use of their particular language, and in turn influenced the language itself and developed it, adding computing and expressive power to the language for the benefit of future speakers. Once this process got started in our species, it never stopped, and its advantages are clear, based on the universality and diversity of language use among us.

Scattered Words as Self-Cultivation

Let us relate these insights back to our meleta on phonás aphientas. The process of scattering out-loud the utterances of true philosophy most likely has great didactic utility as a method of learning: when we are studying some aspect of philosophy, the process of rephrasing, paraphrasing, and voicing out loud, helps us to cognitively assimilate what we are learning. This may work better for some people than for others, but in general it’s an intuitive way to learn.

If language use reshapes our brain, and if Metrodorus and the other Kathegemones were advancing language reform for the sake of clarity–to the point that Diskin Clay makes that argument that the Epicureans had their own lingo in his essay Paradosis and Survival: three chapters in the history of Epicurean philosophy–then the ever-refining and ever-perfecting process of language evolution can also be a process of ever-refining and ever-cultivating our souls, and our ability to think and communicate clearly. Clear thinking and clear speech are important Epicurean values in the canon (Kyriai Doxai 22-25), in Epicurus’ Against the use of empty words, and in Philodemus’ Rhetorica.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that the Kathegemones’ language reform project goes hand in hand with ethical reform as a physical process and program of helping us to train and reshape our brains to think more clearly and efficiently, and to enjoy pleasures, with the help of words and ways of communicating. This makes me consider the ways in which we casually communicate everyday: most of us likely coach ourselves in both healthy and unhealthy ways when we speak.

Language and the Social Contract

One final word on the social contract, as it relates to language: I am increasingly convinced that all social contract requires, and is built upon, a particular agreed-upon language, or agreed-upon means of clear communication. The more case studies we consider of social contract–whether as business transaction, or as constitution, laws, or rules, or as monetary currency, or as communal projects and organizations–, the more we see that individuals cannot come to an agreement with other individuals without first being able to successfully and clearly communicate the terms of said agreement. 

In this sense, there is no real community without some level of clear communication, since communication always pragmatically precedes efficient or functional community, and it’s difficult to conceive of well-functioning natural human community without it.

Contracts therefore “live inside” our language of everyday use. If agreements, and the social contract, are written into our language, then this is an additional incentive to actively steer the development of our communities’ means of communication for the sake of clarity, conciseness, and to better express our other values through our language.

This is part of why definitions must precede all investigations (as we see at the opening of Epicurus’ Epistle to Herodotus), and why communities of philosophers–together with artists, inventors, and other cultural creatives–are among those who are in charge of steering the third stage of language evolution according to Epicurus. Purposeful participation in social contracts is a necessary part of the practice of Kyriai Doxai, and–as we have seen in our years of studying together in English–our most advantageous agreements with others require us to sometimes critically evaluate and re-negotiate the background premises, assumptions, biases, and other baggage carried by our communities’ agreed-upon language(s). Since Epicurus expects his disciples to function within social contracts, he therefore must educate them and equip them with methods of clear communication to help them participate efficiently in these social contracts.

As a side note, the word chosen by Epicurus in Kyriai Doxai to refer to the social contract is symphonia (sym = with, phonia=utterances), which literally translates as “voices in unison”, “uttering together”.

Conclusion

Phonás aphientas (developing a habit of clearly articulating out loud the plain words of true philosophy) makes sense within the context of the Epicurean project of ethical development, as an expression of our identity and of belonging to our particular social contracts and communities, and as a method of learning.

Further Reading:

Epicurean Saying 41

The post-linguistic turn

On Pleasure as the Default State of the Organism

For it is to obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other thing by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body. For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain owing to the absence of pleasure; but when we do not feel pain, we no longer need pleasure. And for this cause we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good. – Letter to Menoeceus

The limit of pleasure is the removal of all pains. Wherever and for however long pleasure is present, there is neither bodily pain nor mental distress. – Kyria Doxa 3

I have called you to constant pleasures. – Epicurus

Introduction and Preliminary Dialogue

In the Tenth Book of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Tmima / Portion 136, the biographer states:

He (Epicurus) differs from the Cyrenaics with regard to pleasure. They do not include under the term the pleasure which is a state of rest, but only that which consists in motion. Epicurus admits both; also pleasure of mind as well as of body, as he states in his work On Choice and Avoidance and in that On the Ethical End, and in the first book of his work On Human Life and in the epistle to his philosopher friends in Mytilene. So also Diogenes in the seventeenth book of his Epilecta, and Metrodorus in his Timocrates, whose actual words are: “Thus pleasure being conceived both as that species which consists in motion and that which is a state of rest.” The words of Epicurus in his work On Choice are: “Peace of mind and freedom from pain are pleasures which imply a state of rest; joy and delight are seen to consist in motion and activity.”

While Epicurus and his friends coincided with Aristipus and the Cyrenaic lineage of pleasure-ethics in recognizing the faculties of pleasure and aversion as the nature-given tool by which we identify what is choice-worthy and avoidance-worthy in our environment, there were also many important disagreements between the Epicurean and Cyrenaic schools. Epicurus made the anti-nihilistic assertion that there is no neutral state for sentient beings, only pleasure and pain–and many critics have questioned Epicurus’ reasoning in this regard.

When I began investigating this subject, I asked members of our discussion group how they would argue a defense of Epicurus’ position that the default state is pleasant, rather than neutral, and Michael said:

Cicero in De Finibus accuses the Epicureans of redefining words in misleading ways precisely because they call these neutral states “pleasurable”. I’ve long wondered how much of this is just in the definitions, given that Epicurus apparently defines the katastematic states in negative terms (a-taraxia “freedom from disturbance” and aponia, “freedom from pain”).

It is true that Epicurean Guides were critical of wordplay, and wanted students to focus on their immediate, clear experience rather than on rhetoric since we need true happiness, not the appearance of it. Michael later added:

You might consider it this way: think about a morning when you’ve gotten enough sleep and have just had a nice breakfast. You’re healthy, all your biological needs are met, etc. Is this state pleasant or does it feel like nothing? Most people seem to think that this kind of thing is pleasant: it’s what people call contentment or being relaxed and comfortable or whatever. In fact, it seems a bit weird to say that the proper functioning of your body isn’t pleasant or unpleasant.

It seems true that only ungrateful creatures fail to see this. Most people take for granted their health until they lose it, so whether they see the default state as neutral or pleasant might be a matter of disposition. This is why cultivating a grateful disposition is part of the ethical training of an Epicurean. Some other replies:

Lau. I think it is varies from person to person depending on genetics. Some people are naturally happier than others. Depends on how much of each chemical your brain produces.

While this is true, Michel Offray de la Mettrie argued that every individual has access to some measure of happiness by their innate constitution and by their history.

Maciej. This idea struck me in relation to the fear of death. I think I am somewhat used to the fact my own mortality, but still don’t like this perspective very much. Therefore I must quite enjoy existence itself, since I do not want to lose it.

Lena. I think this is a significant point. I’ve always felt reassured by the eventuality of death, but haven’t sought it even when I felt emotional and physical pain because overall, life and its potential seems worth keeping. I suppose Epicurus agreed, since his philosophy assuaged his fear of death and his health gave out but he chose to remain alive while he could.

Hedonic treadmill, or hedonic adaptation, is a theory in positive psychology based on the observation that people tend to return to a stable happiness baseline after intense good and bad experiences (the most dramatic case study involved a lottery winner and a person who lost a limb: a study showed that a year after these events, both were equally happy).

Many studies on hedonic adaptation focus on how to escape it, or how to raise our happiness baseline. But if the baseline is positive, and not neutral as the Cyrenaics suggest, this warrants an attitudinal adjustment on our part, and a greater degree of confidence in our ability to be happy. How do we justify this? There are various ways to justify, argue, defend, or explain this attitudinal adjustment, and this doctrine.

The Argument from Hedonic Adaptation Studies

The study Beyond the hedonic treadmill: revising the adaptation theory of well-being by Ed Diener et al. shows, among other findings, that “individuals’ set points are not hedonically neutral”.

After reviewing the data from earlier studies on the hedonic treadmill, Diener et al. (2006) found that approximately three-quarters of the samples studied reported affect balance scores (positive and negative moods and emotions) above neutral.

Even in diverse populations, including the Amish and the African Maasai, the wellbeing levels were above neutral.

So even if people adapt and return to a previous point, it’s a positive rather than a neutral one.

The Variety of Experience Argument

If every pleasure were condensed and were present at the same time and in the whole of one’s nature or its primary parts, then the pleasures would never differ from one another. – Kyria Doxa 9

In Liber Tertivs, Lucretius mentions air (the cool element of the soul related to ataraxia), as well as aurea (coldness, related to fear and to the fight-or-flight faculty) and calor (heat, related to the passions, in excess it produces anger) as being all part of the constitution of the psyche. Therefore, another way to explain this doctrine is to say that, while pleasure is innate and inborn and native to our organism, it is not the only faculty or experience that can easily be recalled. There are others.

At all times, our neurological system has some pleasure available to it somewhere in the organism. This is what Epicurus means when he says pleasure is native to our being, or innate to our organism. Due to the variation in time (Kyria Doxa 19) and in the body parts (KD 9), as well as due to the faculties of the mind (KD 20), this argument says that there is always some pleasure available to us, even when there are also pains available to us. Abiding in constant  pleasures may be as much a matter of attention as it is a matter of training, choice, or disposition.

The Hypostasis Argument

The Kathegemon of the modern Epicurean Garden of Athens, Christos Yapiyakis argues in Eustatheia (Epicurean Stability): a Philosophical Approach to Stress Management that modern science demonstrates that the body seeks its own natural balance and health. This argument is confirmed by hedonic adaptation studies, as well as by biologists who coined the term homeostasis to refer to the natural balance found in living creatures and systems.

I would argue that homeostasis intuitively follows from Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Creatures do not speciate, or even survive long enough to pass on their genes, if they do not first enjoy some level of stability in their environmental niche and in their body and mind’s ability to survive in it.

The Argument of this Doctrine as Medicine

This is more an argument that affirms the utility or benefit of this Epicurean doctrine, rather than its truth value. The assertion that the default state is positive rather than neutral is a medicine for, and a healthy alternative to, the false doctrine of “original sin” for people recovering from Christianity.

Epicurus is basically saying there is nothing inherently wrong with us, just as we are. We are not irreparably evil and damaged, as we were told in church, and we should not nurture the mentality of self-loathing that this view promotes in us.

Like in Taoism, we find here the view that we are okay just as we are, here and now, and that we should be at peace with the unforced simplicity of the nature of things.

Pleasure is Easy to Attain

While it may seem contradictory to have exercises or experiments to realize the naturalness of pleasure, based on what we have said above (since a default state should in theory be unforced), Epicurus taught that society and culture corrupt people. Infants are born with the innate tendency to seek pleasure and shun pain, but the process of acculturation deforms the natural tendency. This is not in itself bad, since we all need to be able to function as members of our societies, and obeying impulses without calculating the repercussions is imprudent. Still, a philosophical education for us means an opportunity to go back to a more natural way of living.

For this reason, several exercises might be recommended to help us attain a more natural way of living. We may cultivate the Taoist virtue of ziran, or the practice of zuowang (sitting and forgetting), which helps us to put a stop to the never-ending habitual patterns of thinking that keep us agitated and stressed. We may also practice mindfulness, or zazen (sitting meditation), which starts as a simple exercise of observing the breath peacefully, with no interference, and leads to a steady peaceful disposition.

Philodemus of Gadara recommends the method of repetition of Pleasure is easy to attain. This mantra paraphrases and contains the medicine of the third Principal Doctrine of Epicurus, and its repetition and memorization in a grateful and content disposition constitutes one way to practice this Doctrine in order to train ourselves to abide in pleasure and to cognitively assimilate this Doctrine.

Another way to practice this Doctrine is by the daily practice of gratitude, whether in the form of a journal, prayer, or by giving concrete tokens of gratitude.

Further reading:

What to Know About the Hedonic Treadmill and Your Happiness

Cyrenaic Reasonings

The Cyrenaics

Eustatheia (Epicurean Stability): a Philosophical Approach to Stress Management

The True Heresy: Haereseos

Happy Eikas to all! This month, we published De Rerum Natura – Study Guide and Meleta, which is a companion to a somewhat similar collection of meleta, educational essays, and videos on Kyriai Doxai that we had previously published in order to help sincere students of Epicurean philosophy to become experts in the study and practice of KD.

Even virtuous actions often have no advantage because men show too much arrogance or fall back without reason into superstitious fears, and because in other actions in life they make many mistakes of every kind, so that no one really exhibits virtue. We, in turn, committed to follow pleasure, will witness in our favor that our affairs are carried out with more ease in the circumstances within which hitherto we had exhibited pain. – Polystratus, Third Scholarch of the Epicurean Garden of Athens, arguing that the pursuit of virtue means nothing without the study of nature

While Metrodorus referred to the belly as a “standard” of nature, details have been emerging of a Christian death cult in Kenya where a pastor had convinced the faithful to stop eating “so they could meet Jesus”, with as many as 201 people (at the latest count) dying from starvation as a result. The latest details about the death cult reveal that the pastor seems to have been harvesting the organs of his victims. These types of events–together with the Kill the Gays bill in neighboring Uganda, and the exacerbation of the AIDS pandemic by the churches’ disinformation campaigns regarding safe sex, not to mention the horrors of the days of slavery–reveal that in spite of Christian propaganda about being “pro-life”, in Africa, Christianity still brings death along with many other problems, and that there is a huge need to teach empirical thinking skills in African communities and elsewhere so that people will not be susceptible to this level of abuse.

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

To such heights of evil are men driven by religion.

― Lucretius

This month, the Nothing New YouTube channel published Epicureanism: It’s Not Just Hedonism!, the Seize the Moment podcast had an episode with Dean Rickles titled Learning How to Embrace the Shortness of Life, and a friend brought to our attention the essay On Religious and Psychiatric Atheism: The Success of Epicurus, the Failure of Thomas Szasz, written by Michael Fontaine, PhD. The author says there some things concerning personal responsibility which are relevant to a subject I’ve been meaning to write about: how the innocent Greek word for choice (haereseos) ended up meaning blasphemy (heresy).

The words haereseos and fygis appear in Epicurus’ Epistle to Menoeceus, and are often translated as choices and rejections, or choices and avoidances. Peter St. Andre translates them as “accept” and “reject”. The terms refer to a helpful and potentially constructive moral faculty, the creative faculty of dynamic will power, of choice and rejection. But first, let us study the context.

Pleasure is the Alpha and Omega

After saying that Pleasure is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of a blissful life, the Hegemon said:

For we recognize it as the primary and innate good, we honor it in everything we accept or reject, and we achieve it if we judge every good thing by the standard of how that thing affects us.

ταύτην γὰρ ἀγαθὸν πρῶτον καὶ συγγενικὸν ἔγνωμεν, καὶ ἀπὸ ταύτης καταρχόμεθα πάσης αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτην καταντῶμεν ὡς κανόνι τῷ πάθει πᾶν ἀγαθὸν κρίνοντες.

Letter to Menoeceus, Monadnock Translation

Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.

Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus.net translation

Agathon Proton

Concerning how pleasure is a primal and native good to our nature, one translation says we “recognize” this in everything we accept and reject, while the other translation says that the insights we get from the pleasure faculty are the “starting point” of every choice and rejection. The second statement translates as “to (Pleasure) we come back”, while the other translation says we honor Pleasure in everything we choose and reject.

The first Epicurean Guides reasoned pragmatically based on signs, which provide the evidence of nature. They were physicalists, and they saw the choices and rejections made by sentient beings as signs by which one could see that pleasure and aversion were guiding sentient beings in their behavior.

Kanoni to Pathei

One translation says “we achieve (Pleasure) if we judge every good thing by the standard of how that thing affects us”, while the other one says “inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing”. I believe the second translation is truer to the original.

Here, pathe / feeling (varieties of pleasure and aversion) is presented as a canonical faculty (kanoni to pathei, or the standard of feeling). In Epicurean epistemology, our canonical faculties are nature-given standards by which we directly perceive the nature of things. These faculties are pre-rational, immediate and clear, and have no opinion added.

Haereseos

The point of this passage is to clearly establish the role of Pleasure as the standard in our choices and rejections. Let us now return to the word translated as choices, or the things we accept. One of the immediate things I noticed about this word is that it shares semantic roots with heresy. Here are the Oxford Languages definitions of heresy:

belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine.

opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted.

The dictionary offers orthodoxy as a word that means the opposite of heresy, and offers the following words as having a “similar” meaning: dissent, dissidence, blasphemy, nonconformity, unorthodoxy, heterodoxy, apostasy, freethinking, schism, faction, skepticism, agnosticism, atheism, nontheism, nonbelief … idolatry, paganism, separatism, sectarianism, revisionism, tergiversation.

One can quickly begin to sense the tension and the authoritarianism behind the history of the word heresy, and one can imagine the culture wars by which “choice” became “blasphemy”. This is, of course, due to the disinformation campaigns of the early Christian Church (which is mentioned directly in the Oxford dictionary) and its persecution of anyone who was pro-choice, in the broad sense of the word.

Epicurus had given us a philosophy and practice of freedom, of choice and rejection (without which freedom means nothing), of haereseos. Christianity, over many centuries, turned the practice of that freedom, the practice of haereseos (choice) into our modern meaning of heresy. We today have case studies of persistent campaigns to change the meaning of words with modern terms like “woke”, which on its face merely means awakened, but some are trying to re-interpret as a bad word. Our friend Nathan discussed some of the ways in which power changes language in The Book of Sh_zd_r, which I mentioned in Eikas many moons ago.

Heresy became a maligned word that suffered a disinformation campaign, but originally the word simply meant choice. From the evolution of the word heresy, we see that the practice of Epicurean pleasure and freedom evolved, form being a praxis of choice (haereseos), into a practice of heresy. Choice became heresy. It became a target for eradication by the war-machine of the early church. Many Christians still today are anti-choice–which is to say, they are against the practice of freedom, of autarchy and self rule, and of personal sovereignty. And so the faculty of choice, and the moral development that comes from our ownership of it, remain under-developed.

Maybe this says something about human nature, in addition to what it says of power. We often see mortals eager to give up their sense of moral agency, of causal responsibility (in armies, in religions, in mobs, etc.), because the burden of choice on their conscience is too much, or because they do not trust themselves to make choices, or because they are too lazy, or too weak, or not ethically educated, so it’s better to evade choosing and rejecting, to let others choose and reject for them, and to accept the less burdensome uncreative unfreedom of blind imitation or blind obedience. The Christians’ favorite euphemism for this is the Pauline belief in “salvation by faith alone”, while Muslims refer to “submission” to the will of Allah.

Maybe it’s true that the use of the faculty of choice can be an overwhelming task at times, and we must all negotiate the extent to which we will be actively involved in our choices and rejections. Perhaps a measure of outsourcing of our moral agency is warranted, particularly when we concede to the expertise of others, or when we develop and repeat sound habits informed by pragmatic needs and options. But I would still argue that a chronic, persistent outsourcing of our causal responsibility (which often is part of a belief scheme that facilitates this at all times) is unhealthy and dangerous.

Fygis is the word used for aversions, or the things we reject. Some may argue that this is another (equally important) form of choice, or another way to practice our personal sovereignty.

The bottom line is that I perceive a moral failure in how we lost the original meaning of heresy / haireseos as a good and positive human value. I see signs of moral decay and an unwillingness to achieve moral maturity in the persistent and systematic outsourcing of our moral agency. When Epicurus expects us to take ownership of our choices and rejections, he is instilling a sense of our causal responsibility and awakening our natural moral faculties, thereby encouraging our moral development.

Also, even if we make mistakes in our choices and rejections, since we accept the possibility of moral development, we are able to still feel content, at peace, and at ease when we own our choices and accept to learn from our mistakes from a place of personal sovereignty and maturity.

The True, Original Heresy

To conclude: we must use our moral faculty of choice and rejection. The practice of … 🙂 true heresy–in its original prolepsis of haereseos–is the use of the faculty of choice, which is itself a practice of freedom, and of pleasure. This practice of choosing our thoughts, words, and deeds guided by our canonical nature-given faculties of pleasure and aversion is the true and original heresy.

Concerning the linking of heresy with various forms of unorthodoxy in the modern dictionary, and how it reflects historical power dynamics, something else must be said. If we stop imposing the eye of Christian hegemony upon Epicurean teachings, we will find that originally, Epicurean doctrine saw itself as the true orthodoxy. The words orthés philosophias (correct philosophy) are mentioned in Vatican Saying 41, and the Kyriai Doxai are themselves a statement of philosophical orthodoxy.

 

De Rerum Natura – Study Guide and Meleta

Our recommended translations:
LUCRETIUS, ON THE NATURE OF THINGS, Translated by Ian Johnston
Titus Lucretius Carus, ”On the Nature of Things”, English translation by Lamberto Bozzi

De Rerum Natura, or On the Nature of Things, is an epic poem from the First Century BCE written by Lucretius. It introduces Epicurean canon, physics, and ethics, although the focus is mainly on the physics. The work marks a period of expansion, when Epicurean philosophy was adopted by speakers of Latin, and translated and adapted to a new audience.

I wish to thank Marcus for helping me to edit the links on this collection, and Nathan for sharing many of his own DRN study notes with me.

Essays:

Introduction to Lucretius – John R. Porter

Book I

Lucretius begins by invoking Venus, the embodiment of Pleasure, “The Guide of Life”. He goes on to discuss the sacrificial death of Iphianassa and the dangers of religion, and introduces Epicurus as a culture hero and Promethean Savior of humankind whose doctrines save us from the evils of superstition and lead to a life filled with pleasure. Thanks to his Doxai, religion is trampled beneath our feet, making us heaven’s equals.

1-49 Invocation to Venus

62-79 In praise of Epicurus

NOS EXAEQVAT VICTORIA CAELO. (I:67) “by [Epicurus’] victory we reach the stars.” (Humphries)

…QUOD CONTRA SAEPIVS ILLA RELIGIO PEPERIT SCELEROSA ATQVE IMPIA FACTA. (I:70-71) “More often has religion itself | Given birth to deeds both impious and criminal.” (Melville)

80-101 Sacrifice of Iphianassa

TANTVM RELIGIO POTVIT SVADERE MALORVM. (I:89) “So great the power religion had for evil.” (Melville)

102-148 Against superstition; on why we should study nature

149-237 First law of nature: nothing comes from nothing; Second law: nature breaks all things into their atoms, nothing dies off to nothing

NVLLAM REM E NIHILO GIGNI DIVINITVS VMQVAM. (I:150) “nothing ever springs miraculously out of nothing.” (Smith)

NIL POSSE CREARI DE NIHILO (I:155-156) “nothing can be created out of nothing.” (Smith)

Meleta:

Law of Conservation (Wikipedia)

238-264 First elements are indestructible

329-369 density of bodies varies due to the existence of void

418-448 All nature is atoms and void

440-448 a body “acts or is acted upon” — this is treated as an ontological criterion for whatever exists, also in Epicurus’ Letter to Herodotus

449-458 Properties and accidents

Meleta:

Emergence – Wikipedia

Emergent Properties – Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

459-463 Time is an accidental property 

483-564 Atoms are eternal and solid; bodies are also made up of molecules or combinations or atoms

565-599 Hard and soft bodies

600-634 Primal elements are indestructible

635-704 Against Heraclitus

Meleta:

Various refutations against the other philosophers between I.635-1113 (thank you, Nathan):

Heraclitus, Zeno – Fire
Thales – Water
Anaximander – Apeiron (infinity)
Anaxamines – Air
Anaxagoras – Homoiomereia
Xenophanes – Earth
Empedocles – “The Four Elements”
Pythagoras – Numbers

705-797 Against Empedocles and others

798-829 Compound bodies

830-920 Against Anaxagoras

951-1020 The universe is infinite, ergo prime bodies are always moving

1009-1013 atoms and void are forever bound to each other, ergo there is a space-time-matter continuum

Meleta:

What is Space-Time? – from Nature.com

The Nature of Space and Time – Scientific American

1021-1034 Randomness of particles

1035-1051 Infinite matter

1052-1117 The universe has no center

NAM MEDIVM NIHIL ESSE POTEST INFINITA (I:1070-1071) “There can be no centre in infinity.” (Latham)

Meleta:

Venus Over Mars

 Mahsa Amini: the new Iphianassa

Hermarchus’ 22 Books on Empedocles

Book II

Lucretius continues giving a basic overview of a particle-based cosmology. DRN is likely based on Epicurus’ 37 books On Nature. Here, we are presented with the Lucretian account of the doctrine of innumerable worlds, and with how nature does all things without gods ruling over her.

1-19 Philosophy is a fortress of the wise

20-46 Pleasure is easy to acquire (Principal Doctrine 3)

47-61 Science saves us from superstition

OMNIS CVM IN TENEBRIS PRAESERTIM VITA LABORET? (II:54) “…when the whole of life is but a struggle in darkness?” (Bailey)

62-141 Matter in motion

142-183 Speed of particles

184-215 Direction of motion of particles

216-237 The swerve

238-250 Matter travels at set speed in void

251-293 Against determinism

294-307 Laws of physics always the same

308-332 Microscopic motion happens

Meleta:

Brownian Motion – Wikipedia

333-521 Different kinds of particles

522-568 Endless particles

569-580 Growth and entropy

581-599 Different kinds of particles

Meleta:

Elementary and Composite Particles – Wikipedia

Periodic Table of the Elements – Wikipedia

600-643 Great Goddess / Mother Earth

644-660 The nature of the gods

661-729 Possible atom combinations 

730-841 Colors

842-864 Primary particles lack smell

865-943 Primary particles lack sensation

944-962 Hard blows numb sensation

963-989 Pain and Pleasure

990-1022 Cycles of death and renewal

CAELESTI SVMVS OMNES SEMINE ORIVNDI (II:991) “We all have come from heavenly seed.” (Humphries)

CEDIT ITEM RETRO, DE TERRA QUOD FVIT ANTE, IN TERRAS… (II:991) “What once sprung from earth sinks back into the earth.” (Bailey)

1023-1076 Doctrine of innumerable worlds

Meleta:

Exoplanets – Wikipedia

Exoplanet Exploration – NASA

1077-1089 Nature makes multiple samples

1090-1104 Gods do not rule over nature

1105-1143 Growth and decay

1144-1174 The universe has an end

Meleta: Lucretian Parable of the Alphabet

Book III

At the opening of DRN, Lucretius tells us that one of his goals in the poem is to shed light on the nature of the mortal soul in order to exorcise fear of death. Liber Tertivs focuses on this task, and argues that the study of nature provides the cure for this fear. The poet personifies Nature and makes her counsel man to leave this life satisfied at the time of death as one who has enjoyed all the delicacies of a banquet. 

Meleta:

Study Guide for the Epicurean canon

1-30 Invocation to Epicurus

31-93 Fear of death

Meleta:

The Denial of Death and the Practice of Dying – ErnestBecker.org

94-369 On the nature of soul and mind

370-395 Soul is scattered throughout body

396-416 Mind is more vital than soul

417-547 Soul and mind are mortal

MORTALEM TAMEN ESSE ANIMAM FATEARE NECESSE (III:543) “you must admit the soul to be mortal” (Munro)

548-677 Soul dies if body dies

678-829 Soul is inside the body

830-869 Leave life as if leaving a banquet

NIL IGNITVR MORS EST AD NOS (III:831) “Death, therefore, to us is nothing” (Munro)

870-1094 Against fear of afterlife

VITAQVE MANCIPIO NVLLI DATVR OMNIBVS VSV (III:972) “No one is given life to own; we all hold but a lease.” (Stallings)

Meleta:

Passages on the Soul, from Epicurus’ Epistle to Herodotus

A Concrete Self

Some Thoughts on the Soul

Book IV

Liber Qvartvs focuses on the canon (the “measuring stick” or “standard” of truth), and on the importance of trusting the using our senses and our faculties. This was mainly a critique of the Sceptics, who taught that knowledge was neither possible nor desirable.

1-25 Poetry sweetens philosophy

34-268 Explanation of photons (eidolon)

125 Foul odors are cited as proof that tiny unseen particles exist

154 The wave function of light particles is mentioned: “simulacra redundent”, bodies emit images to us ‘wave on wave”

175 On the speed of light

205 Considers the lack of density in outer space

221 The air is ever filled with winged words: “variae cessant voces volitare per auras”

269-352 The case study of mirrors

E TENEBRIS AVTEM QVAE SVNT IN LVCE TVEMVR (IV:338) “Now we see out of the dark what is in the light” (Diderot’s motto in Philo. Tho. 1746)

353-364 Seeing objects from a distance

Meleta:

Scientific names of the various types of “illusions” Lucretius describes in IV.338-463 (thank you, Nathan):

Dark Adaptation (338-353), Distance Illusion (354-364), Beta Movement, and shadows as evidence that light waves are blocked (365-379), Induced Movement (388-391, 421-426, 444-447), Parallax (392-397), Vanishing Point (398-400, 433-436), Vertigo (401-404), The “Moon” Illusion (405-414), Entasis (427-432), Refraction of Light (437-443), Diplopia (“Double-vision”) (448-453), Dreams/Dreaming at Night (454-463)

379-466 Eyes are trustworthy; recognition of perspective

Nothing is harder than separating truth from the hasty, hazy additives of the mind. – Liber Qvartvs, 467-8

Since thus far they’ve seen no truth, how can they know what “know” and “not-know” mean, what thing creates the concepts “false” and “true”, what proves the dubious different from the sure? You’ll find the concept “truth” was first created by the senses, nor can we prove the senses wrong. – Liber Qvartvs, 474-8

467-521 Trusting the senses; 479 Senses can’t be proven wrong; 486-496 Each faculty is independent within the canon; 505 Parable of the building foundation

PROINDE QVOD IN QVOQVEST HIS VISVM TEMPORE VERVMST. (IV:500) “Therefore all sensations at all times are true.” (Smith)

522-614 On the nature of sound waves; 571 On echo

615-632 On the nature of taste

633-672 Animals have different senses

UT QVOD ALIIS CIBVS EST ALIIS FVAT ACRE VENENVM (IV:638) “What’s food for one is poison for another.” (Esolin)

673-721 On the nature of smell; 700 Odors can’t cross walls and boundaries that sound is able to cross, ergo sound is more subtle, and smells easily dissipate

722-822 Photons in the air (posited as a possible explanation for dreams and visions)

823-857 Against natural design, and against teleology in Darwinian evolution

858-876 Hunger and Thirst

877-986 On bodily movement

976 Mentions neural pathways

987-1029 On sleep

1030-1057 Human semen, “the wound of love” and criticism of passionate love, which makes men lose their wealth and their mind

1058-1287 Sexuality and sterility; includes in 1217-1236 the assertion that babies bear the seed of both father and mother, and inherit traits from both sides

… EST COMMUNIS VOLVPTAS (IV:1209) “…sexual pleasure is shared” (Smith)

1260 Food affects our “seed”

Meleta:

Three Lucretian Arguments Against Creationism

Diogenes’ Wall: Who will Choose to Seek What he can Never Find?

On the Canon: Enargeia and Epilogismos; Studying the Canon

Book V

Liber Qvintvs is the most complete extant epitome of Epicurean anthropology. It gives natural explanations for natural and cultural phenomena that ancients used to attribute to the gods. Instead, here nature invents new faculties or powers, and men later perfect their use through culture and habit. It is in this book that Lucretius takes us to the innumerable worlds by depicting a great battle taking place in space.

1-90 In honor of Epicurus

AT BENE NON POTERAT SINE PVRO PECTORE VIVI (V:18) “But a good life could not be lived without a pure mind” (Smith)

91-125 The Earth will also end

Meleta:

When will the Earth come to an end? – Big Think

How will life on Earth end? – Astronomy.com

126-145 Mind can only exist in the body

146-155 The gods are physical

156-194 The gods did not create the world

195-234 Flaws in nature show no design 

235-323 Matter is constantly recycled

324-379 Age of the Earth

380-415 How elements affect each other

416-470 How the Earth formed; 437-440 anticipates the modern scientific proposition of the Nebular Hypothesis

Meleta:

Accretion – Wikipedia

471-479 How the Sun and Moon formed

480-494 The land and sea

495-508 The aether / atmosphere

509-563 The motion of the stars and Earth

564-613 The size of the Sun and Moon

614-750 Motion of the Sun and Moon

751-779 Eclipses

780-836 When the Earth was young

NAM NEQVE DE CAELO CECIDISSE ANIMALIA POSSVNT (V:793) “Certainly living creatures cannot have dropped from heaven” (Smith)

… OMNIA MIGRANT (V:830) “…everything is in flux” (Smith)

837-854 Earth produced imperfect beings

855-877 Survival of the fittest

878-924 Animals belong to a single species

925-1010 Early humans

1011-1027 Origin of families and homes

Meleta:

Nathan notes: 1000-1288 in Book V use SEMINA explicitly refer to human male ejaculate fluid, thus, creating a fundamental poetic comparison between the generation of the Earth and the generation of a Child, both of which are composed of clumps of eternal matter that get entangled while falling through the void, both of which lead to inextricably vast complexity, coming from simple, primordial seeds.

1028-1090 Origin of language

1091-1104 Invention of fire

1105-1160 First towns founded

1161-1193 Origin of religion

1194-1240 The dangers of religion

1241-1286 Discovery of metalwork

1287-1349 How metals increased warfare; 1283-1296 anticipates Christian Jurgensen Thomsen’s “Three-Age System” of the “Stone” Age, “Bronze” Age, and “Iron” Age.

1350-1360 Fabrics for clothing

1361-1378 Farming

1379 … Singing and music

Meleta:

Liber Qvintvs

Naturalist Reasoning on Friendship

On the Intersection Between Science Fiction and Epicurean Philosophy

Lucretius on Iron and War

Better be a Subject and at Peace

Book VI

Lucretius continues giving natural explanations for natural phenomena that sometimes inspired fear-based beliefs in people. The final book includes the parable of the punctured jar, which illustrates the salvific power of philosophy. While some have argued that De rerum natura is an incomplete work, Michel Onfray calls our attention to the fact that the first book begins with a discussion of the creative powers of the Mother (nature), and the sixth and final book ends with a discussion of death.

1-42 In praise of Epicurus

43-95 Against fear-based belief

96-163 The nature of thunder

164-218 Sounds moves slower than sights; 164-166 both light and sound have finite speeds, and light moves more quickly than sound 

219-238 Lightning fires

239-299 How lightning originates

300-322 Wind can carry fire

323-422 The nature of lightning

423-534 Waterspouts

535-607 The nature of earthquakes; (Nathan says: I think lines VI.587-588 explicitly refer to the earthquake/tsunami that destroyed Helike in 373 BCE “near Aegium on the Peloponnesian” side of the Gulf of Corinth.)

Meleta:

Happy Twentieth: Liber Sextvs, on Harmful Beliefs

Plate tectonics – Wikipedia

608-638 The nature of the ocean

639-711 The nature of volcanoes; (Nathan says: the eruption of Etna referred to in VI.641 seems to refer to the eruption in 122 BCE that destroyed the Sicilian city of Catania.)

712-737 The river Nile

738-768 Avernian lakes

OMNIA QUAE NATURALI RATIONE GERUNTUR (VI:762) “All these phenomena are produced by the operation of nature” (Smith)

769-839 Toxic substances

840-905 Water in wells

906-1089 The nature of magnets

1090-1137 The nature of diseases

1138 … The plague in Athens; (Nathan adds context: the Plague of Athens (430 BCE) killed 25% of the population, between 75,000 and 100,000)

Additional Notes

List of literary figures who allude to or have adopted or been influenced by DRN directly (thank you, Nathan!):

Bacon, Bergson, Botticelli, Chaucer, Deleuze, Descartes, Diderot, Dryden, E. Darwin, Freud, Frederick II, Galileo, Gassendi, Goethe, Thomas Gray, Holbach, Hobbes, Horace, Hume, Jefferson, Kant, Locke, La Mettrie, Lord Byron, Marx, Melville, Milton, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, Newton, Pope, Rousseau, Shakespeare, Shelley, Spenser, Spinoza, Santayana, Tennyson, Virgil, Whitman, Wordsworth

 

Meleta:

The Punctured Jar Parable

The Method of Multiple Explanations

The Ethics of a Quarantine

Lucretius’ Apocalyptic Imagination, by Alessandro Schiesaro

Essays and Books on Lucretius:

The Epicureanism of Lucretius – Tim O’Keefe

Metaphor and Argumentation in Lucretius – Matthew Johncock

Predicting Modern Science: Epicurus vs. Mohammed

Happy Twentieth: Liber Sextvs, on Harmful Beliefs

Eikas cheers to all! This month, we were kindly invited to participate in a Q & A and a friendly discussion on Epicurean philosophy as an alternative for modern people by Gregory Lopez, of New York City Stoics. The result is NYC Stoics: A Conversation with Hiram, Alan, & Marcus from The Society of Friends of Epicurus.

In our society, there is a huge pandemic of harmful beliefs about divinity, from those who are praying for Armageddon, to those who deny science, or who reject their own family members as a result of severance from a cult … or the “Kill the Gays” Christian mob in Uganda. This month, a poll revealed that Americans are distancing themselves from traditional values–which means, in part, a rejection of traditional religiosity and the harmful practices and ideas it introduces.

Some outlets have reported the news of the poll as alarming. This manner of addressing the move away from traditional values obeys a nihilistic Christian logic, which requires meaning and values to derive from their particular supernatural claims only. It also obeys a Platonic logic, according to which meaning and values can be imposed by the polis, or otherwise be a mere reflection of cultural power, rather than nature. But what if this is an opportunity to practice more natural, authentic values?

Richard Reeves discusses, in The friendship recession, the need for having friends. Friendship is a model of relation tends to render individuals equal to each other in some way. In that sense, it is a more natural and pragmatic value than traditional values (like religiosity and patriotism, which are cited in the poll). It becomes increasingly possible, as old values continue to recede, for people to be better able to identify and pursue more private, more intimate and personal values that feel authentic and natural.

The death of traditional values should be treated as an invitation and an opportunity to practice friendship and philosophy, so that we may evaluate choice-worthy and true values with our friends of like mind.

Liber Sextvs

I wish to share some of my last remaining notes from a recent re-reading of Lucretius’ De rerum natura, since this is of some relevance to discussions about the old and new tables of values. The mail goal of Liber Sextvs–the sixth book of De rerum natura–is to banish religious fear and superstition. It includes the following jeremiad:

Men see in heaven and here on earth things happen, that often fill their minds with fear, and humble their hearts with terror of the gods.

They’re crushed; they crawl on earth, because, perforce through ignorance of causes they confer on gods all power and kingdom over the world.

If people have learned that gods live carefree lives, and still, for all that, wonder by what means phenomena may occur, especially those they see in heavenly zones above their heads, then they will slip back into their old beliefs and take on heartless masters, whom they deem almighty: poor fools, they don’t know what can be and what cannot; yes, and what law defines the power of things, what deep-set boundary stone; thus with reason blinded, they err and err.

Reject such thoughts! Far from your mind remove them, unworthy of gods and alien to their peace!

Else power divine, belittled by you, will often harm you–not that gods’ power can be so damaged that anger would drive them panting for fierce revenge, but that you’ll picture these placid, peaceful, harmless creatures aboil with billows of rolling wrath, and then won’t enter their temples with peace at heart.

– Lucretius, De rervm natvra, Liber Sextvs, 68-75

The harms of having false, fear-based beliefs about the gods, and the benefits of having wholesome ones is a complex subject, when addressed from the Epicurean perspective, in part because many of us have been indoctrinated into a cosmology and social contract quite different from that of the first Epicureans. Epicurean ideas and methods were used originally to criticize Pagan superstition, and must now be employed with different types of false religions and beliefs that are popular today.

The conclusion of the Lucretian passage is that the gods themselves (if they exist somewhere in the cosmos) are not affected by our views. Instead, we harm ourselves (and often harm others) when we belittle or degrade the gods with our harmful beliefs about them. Gods, in the social contract of the cultures that have them, embody their highest values, the moralizing things that we are supposed to admire and celebrate.

It is our beliefs that are the target of philosophy’s treatment and healing. Pragmatically, the distinction between ancient polytheisms and modern monotheisms is less important than the irrational fears, the methods by which they are diagnosed and treated, and the harmful or beneficial beliefs that an individual adopts. These beliefs (as Philodemus of Gadara explains with many examples) affect our disposition, our character, and our choices, and are themselves affected by our associations, and often affect whoever we associate with. (This is not just true in religion: a recent Aeon essay argues that even in the realm of economics, the opinions and theories that we apply and lens through which we consider things have huge practical and societal repercussions.)

In this essay on the benefits of prayer according to certain studies, the author reports these findings, which confirm that what we believe about deity has psychosomatic effects:

However, all types of prayer might not work in the same way — when hospitalized patients appraised God as a kind supporter, their mental and physical health improved. But when they perceived God as punishing or were angry with God, their health declined.

Let us re-read what I believe to be the core ethical teaching of this passage. It delivers the following revelation: we have the power to degrade “divine power” with our beliefs and, in doing so, to render it harmful to us.

Power divine, belittled by you, will often harm you.

In Latin, the passage ends with what was translated as “peace at heart”. In Greek, this is ataraxia (the state of no-perturbation), and so instances of perturbations are the signs by which we may diagnose harmful beliefs, or place them before our eyes in order to better understand them. These perturbations might be different from the ones that identify signs of injustice in Principal Doctrine 17, or from the guilt and paranoia that point to Principal Doctrine 35. Therefore, this passage explains that the exertion of power to belittle divinity may be at the root, or might be one cause among several, of some of the perturbations we observe in people who do not enjoy “peace at heart”.