I wish a Safe and Happy Eikas to all this Halloween month! This is the season when bodies in nature succumb to entropy, decay, and the cold embrace of winter and of death. In Liber Tertivs, Lucretius describes the moment when the soul leaves the body (around verse 250), mentioning that the bones are the last part of the body to be affected by external blows (they are also the last thing that remains after bodies decompose).
… the blood is strook, and then
The vitals all begin to feel, and last
To bones and marrow the sensation comes-
Pleasure or torment. Nor will pain for naught
Enter so far, nor a sharp ill seep through,
But all things be perturbed to that degree
That room for life will fail, and parts of soul
Will scatter through the body’s every pore.
For a more detailed contemplation of death, you may also enjoy Philodemus of Gadara’s scroll Peri Thanatos. Today, I published The Second Nature: Lao-tzu, Epicurus and Lucretius on Emptiness in my Substack blog, where I discuss kenos / inane (emptiness) in the Epicureans and in the Dao De Jing, and also provide a commentary for the Punctured Jar parable. From time to time, I have delved into the many intersections between the Epicureans (the wisdom of the Garden) and the Daoists (the wisdom of the valley). This is a complex subject with many layers that I will likely return to often, as it will take many years to cover. My exegetical essay on VS 21 titled Nature must not be forced had a Daoist flavor (it reminds me of the wu-wei principle), and I have published these essays on other Daoist sages (and many more):
Book Review of “The Many Lives of Yang Zhu”
Yang Chu on Non-Violence: “We Are Bodies”
Other SoFE Updates:
- The “Epicurean” Paradox of the Skeptic
- Epicurean Fragments from the Papyri of Oxyrrhynkhos and other Egyptian Scrolls
Additional Updates:
- The Untroubled Blog wrote a response to Plutarch’s criticism of the Epicureans subtitled Why does the great biographer think we are bad at pursuing pleasure? You may remember Plutarch from his work criticizing Colotes. In a previous essay, I sought to imagine what Colotes wrote about based on Plutarch’s criticisms of him.
- What Is Epicurean Justice? Principal Doctrines 31–33
- The Pleasure of Taoism – a video
- Epicureanism | Jonny Thomson
- Brazilian Epicureans? The Greek Philosopher’s Key to Happiness
This meme is curtesy of twentiers.com.
