Tag Archives: diogenes

The Life of Epíkouros: A Translation for Twentiers

Happy M’Eikas, m’friends!

In honor of this May Eikas, and in the name of Epíkouros, I have produced a new translation of Book 10 of Diogénēs Laértios’ Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, and published it digitally. Each section has been organized at TWENTIERS.COM. Enjoy it here!

I have also uploaded a static version to this post: The Life of Epíkouros.

This translation was produced as a point of personal study and spiritual devotion. It will dually serve as a basis upon which future editions of The Hedonicon can be developed.

As I write in the introduction of the publication: “Diógénēs Laértios composed this biography over 500 years after the death of Epikouros, so the texts preserves multiple literary voices. While Diógénēs’ words are passive and encyclopedaeic, the Gargettian writes with much more color and enthusiasm. Although Epíkouros dismisses ‘unwisely inflecting’ upon the activity of formal poetry, his analogical reasoning relies upon vivid examples that require clear, poetic insight. As Aristophanes the grammarian charges, Epikouros writes with a unique style, characterized by practical metaphors, parallelisms, allusions, humor, and affection.

Epíkouros’ voice is characterized by his friendly demeanor. The receipients of his letters were dear friends and devoted students; his tone accomodates each delivery. To sensitive Menoikeús, he provides sweet words of encouragement and endearing guidance. With inquisitive Pythoklḗs, he shares colorful language and memorable analogies (“thunderbolts” as “atmospheric diarrhea”). To skeptical Hērodótos, he produces a critical methodology that would challenge an otherwise unserious mind. Far from the stereotype of a sterile sage, Epíkouros was personable and quirky.

As with any author, the Hegemon exhibits a variety of rhetorical preferences. He has favorite phrases (refering to reality as “The All” or “The Real”, and to thinking as a “creative casting of the mind“). He has favorite metaphors (that the fabric of reality is made of “seeds“), favorite analogies (as felt is to wool, so moisture is to clouds), and preferred antagonists (the astrologers above all). Much of this flavor risks being lost without delving into the mines of the mind to unearth new treasures.

For instance, consider the ways in which Epíkouros refers to the fundmental units of physical matter, as being “uncuttable“, “unchangeable“, “eternal“, “endless“, “strong“, “swift“, “motes“, “morsels“, “hooklets“, “grains“, “pieces“, and “cents“, among other metaphors. Nowhere does does he simply name them “atoms” as do we; he only flirts with this employment in referring to them as “atomic”. This author maintains that students and scholars alike are robbing themselves of beautiful opportunities to re-invigorate the language by deconstructing overused phrases (such as “atoms“).

Consider further the Epicurean taxonomy of outer space and his treatment of the “activities above are head”: meteoric phenoemna is characterized by spectacular illuminations. Those spectacles are called “glowers”. Most “glowers” follow the “primordial flow” of the “cosmic whirlpool”. Those that do not are “wanderers”. Some are shaggy, with dynamic “feathers” so-called “long-haired”. Some descend through the sky and we call them “falling”. The conventions of “astronomy”, “stars”, “planets”, “comets”, and “meteors”, while compatible, fail to capture the nuance of this poetry.

Likewise, words that carry the weight of contemporary jargon have been avoided, if not omitted completely. What would otherwise be translated as “universe” is here translated as “The All” or “the Heavens”, and what would otherwise be translated as “weight” or “mass” is here translated as “burden“. Epíkouros’ insight is valuable, not simply because it anticipated contemporary discoveries, but because it stands on its own as a coherent, rational system that was developed upon the method of empiricism, and thus, is compatible with empirical discoveries made now and forward.

Further deconstructing the modern lexicon helps reinforce the realities of Epíkouros’ context, realities like the abundance of barley bread over wheat bread, antiquated treatments for kidney stones, mild Winters, speculations about humans living in the Arctic, and general astonishment over the phenomena of lightning (perhaps equivalent to our fascination with black holes). Many times, Epíkouros presents poignont responses to specific propositions made by his opponents, albeit Empedoklḗs’ hypothesis on optics, Aristotélēs’ hypothesis about the propogation of light, Theóphrastos’ conclusions about natural signs, or the Stoics’ propositions about the windy soul.

To animate Epíkouros’ analogies, I make ample use of cossonance, aliteration, and take liberties in generating necessary neologisms. You can expect mellifluous constructions, colorful choices, and as contextually-appropriate as I can recreate. Otherwise, please forgive my aesthetic preferences: “amalgamation” feels good in my mouth, but “accumulation” gets like a cough in my throat. I wield punctuation with wrecklass abandon hoping that I do so for the greater good. I attempt to restore the names of people and places according the their original expressions (all C’s have been restored to their former glory as Kappas.) As a tool for study, I try to use the consistent English expressions for the same ancient Greek words. For the sake of recognition, colors have been very-loosely assigned to various concepts and categories, including the qualities of fundamental particles, the virtues, the goals of life, images of light, and key terms in general. In my own study, I have found that color helps the eye find orientation and serves as a mnemonic marker. I hope that it helps your study, as well.

All [bracketed words] indicate either implied [nouns], or else, they are my additions [intended to improve the fluidity of the statments, carrying the tone of Modern American English vernacular, as well as provide brief historical anecdotes to contextualize some of the propositions].

This structure of this translation builds upon organizational choices made by Robert Drew Hicks (1925) and Stephen White (2021), who illuminate some of the linguistic shadows that have overtaken other works. Besides these points, readers may be pleased to find an interactive copy of this work through https://www.twentiers.com/biography/ where refinements will continue to be affected. I hope you find this endeavor to be entertaining and instructive.”

Live fearlessly,
EIKADISTES
Keeper of Twentiers.com
Editor of the Hedonicon

Reasonings About Philodemus’ On the Stoics

stoa

On the Cynical Roots of Stoicism

On the Stoics is a polemic written by Philodemus where he argues that the founder of the Stoic school, Zeno, had been a pupil of the Cynics. The work starts out with historical details, and focuses on an early work by Zeno titled The Republic, which Philodemus says is full of faults and exhibits a vicious character, a kind of “disorder from the school to which he had begun to adhere”.

Among the horrors and impieties that the text says The Republic finds acceptable, there is mention of incest and cannibalism, apparently because it alludes to Greek tragedies that make these crimes part of the plot. But there is much more, and in fact a huge portion of the scroll is dedicated to the horrors defended in the text. Here are just a few:

To renounce their way of life to adopt that of dogs … to masturbate in public … to refuse to acknowledge as city or law that which we know as such …

There is also mention of evil speech, distrust and betrayal of friends, sexual exploitation of slaves, and adultery. The author also argues that Zeno never changed his mind, later in life, about the content of The Republic, which he says “proposes laws that aren’t for real people”. This book is praised by Cleanthes, and by Chrysippus while speaking of the uselessness of weapons. These are two prominent Stoics.

As to the arguments used by Stoics when confronted with these facts, Philodemus credits them with saying: “We dont’ judge Epicurus by his early writings, you shouldn’t judge our Zeno”, however Philodemus says that one can’t find anything shameful or impious in the early writings written by our Hegemon during his youth.

The Supreme End

… and it is a thing of inept people to not explain, once the supreme end has been invented, the rest (of the doctrine) in accordance! Now, what is actually coherent with the supreme end, is to admit that which is exposed throughout The Republic.

… it would have been better for Zeno not to have become a sage, that way there would be no place for indignation at his error! … but if they had had the sense of moderation, instead of loving the baseness, to the point of attaching themselves to perverse doctrines formulated in unsupportable terms …

The supreme end, to the Stoics, is virtue. Philodemus discards this doctrine as an “invention” of Zeno, to accentuate that virtue is not what nature has intended for us. In our teaching, we consider pleasure to be the end because the pleasure-aversion faculty is evident in nature. Stoic virtue, on the other hand, is an arbitrary ideal that is not clearly defined, much less in a way that is evident and observable in nature.

As to how we deal with the issue of pleasure as the end and virtues as means to pleasure, one good source to study this aspect of the Epicurean critique of Stoicism, and to clearly understand this key distinction and why it matters, can be found in the third chapter of A Few Days in Athens, where Frances Wright argues that many worship Virtue but few stop to evaluate the pedestal on which it sits.

We believe that while pleasure is real and tangible, other made-up criteria like virtue and “the good” are arbitrary and are never clearly defined. Pleasure is nature’s guide (and, therefore, transcultural), the others are cultural. Epicurus refused to even argue as to whether something was pleasant or produced aversion: this is not a matter for logic or for syllogisms to discern, it’s an immediate and real experience for a living being. Pleasure and aversion do not need to be learned. They’re innate.

Philosophers of logic can’t use word games to redefine pleasure. Instead, individuals can directly discern it with their own faculties, and so hedonism emancipates mortals from traditional authorities and can serve as a useful universal guide to anyone and everyone. In fact, the pleasure and aversion faculties are essential components of our moral compass.

We also believe that, as criteria, pleasure and pain do not lend themselves to the manipulations of rhetors which distort our moral compass in the way that other criteria do. A muslim might argue that pedophilia is virtuous because his prophet set the example, or that wife-beating and subjugation of women is virtuous because it’s in the Qur’an 4:34. A Christian might argue that killing gays is virtuous because Leviticus 20:13 establishes this practice, and a Jew might legitimize genocide in order to steal other people’s land. Authority-based, tradition-based or virtue-based moralities produce arbitrary rules that generate at times much more suffering than pleasure, whereas the goal of an Epicurean’s hedonic calculus is to produce net pleasure for the long term.

Other arbitrary criteria, like reason, can also serve ends other than human happiness and pleasure. Consider how objectivists have established the free-market as a sacred ideal that must never be toyed with or impeded, and how this led to the Bolivian water wars after all the water in that country was privatized and sold to an American company; or how deregulated financial markets led to the 2008 fiscal collapse, where Wall Street squandered over 40% of the savings that Americans had set aside for their retirement. Should we sacrifice our humanity and our happiness at the feet of the free market? Should people die on the streets fighting for access to water, and remain wage slaves until they die, even if they live to be over 90, for the sake of the free market? Should not the free market serve human life and happiness, instead?

And so there is always trouble and suffering and moral misjudgement when people set guides other than that which nature established, and which is evident in infants in the cradle: they seek pleasure and happiness and they avoid pain. Any other ideal, if it truly has a virtuous disposition, will lead to pleasure and to the avoidance or alleviation of pain. This is true ethics. This is a true and compassionate morality.

Closing

The content here is very different from what we’ve seen in all the other scrolls written by Philodemus. The tone of the controversy against the Stoics does seem out of character, and the scroll closes with the author swearing that he is telling the truth.

As for us, who have for a long time kept away from pollutions both our ears and our minds, defamation is forbidden to us as it is, in truth, the greatest source of pain, we swear.

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