ch 7
1. Any human who can't uphold a contractual agreement to behave justly should be treated how, said Epicurus? 81
2. What was Plato's egalitarian initiative? 82
3. What was exceptional about Epicurean social philosophy? 83
DQs
3. Epicurus's attitude to sex is best described as what? 95
DQs
1. Any human who can't uphold a contractual agreement to behave justly should be treated how, said Epicurus? 81
2. What was Plato's egalitarian initiative? 82
3. What was exceptional about Epicurean social philosophy? 83
4. How did the Epicureans depart from the Stoics with regard to politics and public life? 85
5. What connection did Thomas Hobbes see between his political philosophy and the Epicureans? 87-8
6. What was Karl Marx's doctoral dissertation about? 91
DQs
- Is there anything to be said for Plato's idea that people should be designated gold, silver, and bronze? 82 In a genuinely utopian society, would social (or "natural") class exist at all?
- Do you agree that "all societies evolve"? 84 Do some de-volve? How about ours, at present?
- How engaged with politics do you need to be, to be a responsible citizen?
- Is it possible or even likely that most "civilized" humans will choose not to be driven by the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain?
- Was Thomas Hobbes wrong about human nature?
- Given Marx's early interest in Epicureanism, why do you think Marxism became a philosophy of political revolution rather than personal/communal experimental living?
ch 8
1. How do ancient and contemporary ethics fundamentally differ? 92
2. What produces the pleasant life, according to Epicurus? 94
1. How do ancient and contemporary ethics fundamentally differ? 92
2. What produces the pleasant life, according to Epicurus? 94
3. Epicurus's attitude to sex is best described as what? 95
4. Why is love indispensable, for Lucretius? 96
5. What did Tom Nagel point out about what makes death frightening? 101
6. What was the main Stoic objection to Epicureanism? 105
DQs
ch 9
1. Different people inhabit what, according to atomists and Epicureans? 109
2. What Cartesian position is almost universally rejected? 111
3. In what Stoic conception does Wilson find beauty and nobility? 117
DQs
- Must mind and body forever "succumb to the 'stress and strain of age'"? 92 Or will medical science one day "defeat" aging (if not death)? Are the Transhumanists crazy?
- Do you employ "sober calculation" in charting your pleasures? 94 Do you think you always should? Or is it sometimes okay to surrender to the spirit of Dionysus?
- Do you side more with Epicurus or Lucretius on marriage and procreation? 96
- What do you think of Lucretius's "random-roving" advice? 97
- Do you agree with the Epicurean perspective on why death is not so horrible after all? 101
- Do you agree with Kant that happiness and morality are entirely different issues? 105
- Do we have an obligation to distant strangers? 107
1. Different people inhabit what, according to atomists and Epicureans? 109
2. What Cartesian position is almost universally rejected? 111
3. In what Stoic conception does Wilson find beauty and nobility? 117
4. Epicureans lay great weight on what? 119
DQs
- If our ordinary "notions... may not apply to the fundamental particles discovered by physics," 110 would that be an objection to Epicurean atomism?
- "Man is not the measure of all things." 111 Should an Epicurean be so quick to repudiate Protagoras? If we're not the measure(rs) of our own happiness, who or what is? (But: does "man" mean each of us, individually, or all of us, collectively?)
- Did Aristotle and the Stoics have a better grasp of the intrinsic satisfaction of intellectual understanding? 112
- Do you think theists are happier than atheists? 113
- Would an atheistic world be more pacific? 114 (Was John Lennon an Epicurean? --"Imagine all the people, living life in peace..." )
- Are intellectual pleasures "higher"? 116
1. Any human who can't uphold a contractual agreement to behave justly should be treated how, said Epicurus? 81
ReplyDeleteThe singular purpose of justice is to bind us together with others in a useful way and stop one person from harming another. Justice is a "contract, a non-aggression and cooperation pact" (Wilson, p. 81). Any person who is unable to rationally apply this contractual agreement "should accordingly be treated as a dangerous animal." (Wilson, p. 81) Humans kill far more than the animals we consider to be predators and humans who prey on other humans are the most deadly of predators due to their physical and mental abilities and the technology and weaponry they use as tools for killing. It appears that in some cases there are inborn genetic tendencies that increase the likelihood that a person will be a violent killer of other people. People are incarcerated on the premise that this is the only way to protect society from their violent tendencies. At the same time these predatory instincts are encouraged and trained into our warriors who serve in the militaries all over the world. We also see the results of human predation in that predators often cultivate other predators. Sexual predators manipulate their prey, groom them, attack, and often this leads the prey to become a predator themselves. Human violence toward other humans is rightly called a cycle of violence.
Breaking a pernicious cycle involves reflection and independence, which most humans possess in potential if not practice. Consider The Ethicist's (Kwame Anthony Appiah's) response to "a disturbing scene between a relative’s husband and their very young daughter..." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/14/magazine/birds-cats-ethics.html?searchResultPosition=1
Delete6. What was Karl Marx's doctoral dissertation about? 91
ReplyDeleteMarx wrote a doctoral dissertation about the "epistemology of Epicurus" (Wilson, p. 90) Oddly, Marx came to believe that capitalism exploited workers and reduced them to a less than human "animal" state. He concluded that technology, mass production, and the factory system would restore the worker to a fully human state. It seems to me that both systems have the potential to dehumanize or to lift up the worker to a point of happiness. Clearly capitalism has not become extinct and the factory system has gone through sever iterations as it has moved toward being more worker friendly. I remember years ago when GM built the Saturn car plant in Spring Hill, TN. There were high hopes and many accolades for this new way of running a factory with worker input. The Saturn vehicles attained a cult status over time. When capitalist interests finally over powered this movement the plant reverted to an old style standard GM car plant. The motive behind this change seemed to be to get the high paid Saturn veterans to retire early so low paid new hires could be brought in to tweak the profits of that car plant and please investors.
But isn't it interesting that young Marx's focus was on small apolitical experiments in communal living? What happened, to turn his attention to revolution and nation-building?
DeletePerhaps Marx's focus changed from economic systems to political, and the only political system that really goes with communism is true democracy. It would take building a new nation to achieve that.
DeleteDilbert Comic a few days ago:
DeleteAs a newly minted socialist, I look down on your capitalist ways. Why can't you be more generous and caring, like me?
Shouldn't you be working?
It's optional under my system.
3. Epicurus's attitude to sex is best described as what? 95
ReplyDeleteEpicurus would have been comfortable with the changing attitudes about sex in America over the past 50 years. He would have been a front runner in the sexual revolution! In his view sex was better treated as a recreational activity devoid of love, commitment, passion, and especially marriage. He apparently had numerous female consorts, FWB's in modern parlance. He would have loved Ruth Westheimer's call in radio show called "Sexually Speaker" where she performed as a nice little old lady answering sex related questions on air.
He seems to have considered sex, marriage, and procreation far less important than friendship. He seems to have been not so much promiscuous or licentious as just indifferent to the implications of carnal attachment. The Garden was probably not a hotbed of debauchery, unless unrestrained conversation counts.
DeleteIf i am not mistaken I think it was actually a rumor about his garden that they were having orgies. But I believe it came out that it wasn't true. Interesting conversation for sure though!
DeleteI don't think its possible to completely ignore politics and be a responsible citizen but at the same time a preoccupation with politics will like lucretious said lead ultimately to pointless striving and unhappiness, so a golden need must be necessary where one is mindful of politics and participates in them but only in so far as they can foster community both immediately with those you may interact with in terms of volunteering or organizing with but also within a larger community consisting of the entire nation.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe I don't have to follow the 24-hour news cycle? I can just read the occasional weekly New Yorker essay, listen to NPR once in a while, check in with the Times and a few other trusted sources a few times a week? Hope so, that's pretty much what I do.
DeleteIs there anything to be said for Plato's idea that people should be designated gold, silver, and bronze? 82. It sounds like a Hellenic wording a caste system, which is different than a class system, from a Hindu-Vedic perspective it is just the natural form of human social organization. It is governed by spiritual principles rather than secular/economic ones.
ReplyDeleteIn a genuinely utopian society, would social (or "natural") class exist at all? To be truly utopian is to no longer be a society, as long as we operate industrially I find the question silly. As long as humans exist in an industrial way where there are nearly 8 billion people the discussion of utopianism is a waste. Unless is meant a sort of technological utopianism, where everyone is made immortal, all pain perception, the physical suffering of all kinds is removed, and only engaging, interesting, and pleasurable experiences are simulated in highly immersive and neural enhancement augmented virtual and augmented reality which actually replaces physical reality. These technologies could also converge with nanotech to allow for telepathic command of physical forms, so as to make anything take any shape that is thought, which would mean the physical world as well could be integrated, but entirely under command. This probably sounds horrible to most people, which is strange, since more or less everyone accepts technological progress and the culmination of all technological progress has been converging toward a singularity, technological utopia.
Do you agree that "all societies evolve"? Evolution is a series of adaptations to environmental stimuli, it is not conceptually congruent with something nonbiological, aka a society. The whole point of a society is to insulate humans and things from the forces of adaptation such as exist in nature. I mean medical sciences’ sole goal is to make sure natural selection does not happen, what evolution could there be when many of the very pressures needed for it to take place are artificially removed? Cultural evolution is myth as well, a culture can transform it can die, but an evolution does not take place. I find tracing evolution outside of biology as nonsense, it is not a universal theory its just description and observation of patterns in organisms, they tend toward increasing harmony with their environments over time. Also, societies are not a habitat, there is no equivalency, in fact, most societies are built on the destruction of actual habitats, i.e. forests, and such. 84 Do some de-volve? How about ours, at present? Cultures can neither evolve nor can they evolve, they are not organisms and are insulated from the pressures of nature. That is why they were made. A society can decline, collapse, rise, but evolution has nothing to do with it.
How engaged with politics do you need to be, to be a responsible citizen? If by citizen do you mean conformity to the rules of the society, if so the more ignorant you are the better, our system is predicated on people knowing nothing and having zero inner drive to change anything meaningful. Our participation changes nothing, a tiny fraction of humanity design, and plan, this worldwide system, we are their cogs. About 80 people own a majority of the worlds wealth. Democracy is actually easier to manipulate by financers and lobbyists than other forms of government, at least a dictator typically has his own will, not the frenzied will of a bunch of interests groups fighting for control over the militarily political mechanism, our Leviathan.
Disagree. There's a perfectly legitimate extension of the originally-biological conception of evolution, that refers to social adaptation and growth in terms of greater fitness to coexist amidst increasing complexity. Cultures can certainly evolve. We have evolved from the time of slavery, though we seem still to be devolving towards white supremacy and misogyny. They ARE organisms, in that sense. I'm with Dewey on that point.
Delete"Our participation changes nothing" -- wow. That's pretty close to nihilism. A good citizen is not just a conformist. A good citizen is someone who recognizes that he/she shares common values and interests with others, who is willing to sacrifice some personal advantage in order to serve the common good, who tries to raise good children and contribute positively to creating conditions conducive to a better world.
Is it possible or even likely that most "civilized" humans will choose not to be driven by the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain? I think the single largest motivating factor in human conciousness is avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure. We are stuck in this dichotomy unfortunately. It because most of us are instantiated more into our minds than our bodies, our bodies are made the slaves of our egos. And all egos of all kinds care about is gaining what is pleasurable and avoiding or crushing what is unpleasurable.
ReplyDeleteWas Thomas Hobbes wrong about human nature? Massively and horribly, he was right about democracy though. His lies about our nature is one of the worst errors of human history.
Given Marx's early interest in Epicureanism, why do you think Marxism became a philosophy of political revolution rather than personal/communal experimental living? What motivating force for revolutionary action could a communal doctrine have? Forces of insurrection are always co-opted by the ruling powers no matter their proposed doctrine, and the ruling powers are practical and pragmatic, they are not idealists. So in turn every time those who take over just end up more bloodthirsty, power hungry, and tyrannical than those they overthrew. Marx was too vague as to how to actually achieve a communal living, and lots of his ideas were just flat out wrong, the soviets abolished the class system and the state did not go away, nor did equality reign. Nor did revolutions take place in the most advanced, affluent industrial societies, they instead happened in the most technically backward nations imaginable which had no interest in ever getting rid of the brutal power of the state. For any mass movement to be truly revolutionary is an impossibility, if it was truly revolutionary aka really able to completely change the way of life of every living person then it would never be allowed to become a mass movement, it would be killed while still in its infantile state. For it would be considered far too dangerous.
Hobbes was lying? I just thought he was excessively pessimistic, for historically-understandable reasons. But if he was wrong about democracy, I don't suppose it matters--so long as we're trying to preserve a democracy-- what else he thought as a political theorist. We need a philosopher of democracy who believes our country's ideals are still worth pursuing.
DeleteMy only issue with the way Hobbes views nature is that he didn't account for family relation. However, that is really my only issue with his state of nature.
DeleteMust mind and body forever "succumb to the 'stress and strain of age'"? 92 Or will medical science one-day "defeat" aging (if not death)? Are the Transhumanists crazy? It depends if you believe man has a fixed, inherent, intrinsic, permanent, and unchangeable nature, or if he is just some social organism that is infinitely malleable.
ReplyDeleteIt is a matter of lifestyle, in nature animals wear out, and peacefully die. In technological civilization death and aging themselves appears unnatural, unjust, and even hateful and should be avoided at all costs. Of course, the point of all technology has been to achieve a state where it can completely change human life, that is the point. Technology is of Promethean nature, Prometheus did not steal fire he stole Techne and gave it to man. As things look currently physical reality will be altogether replaced, abolished, with virtual and controllable man and machine-made space. “Human” is just a category and word which can be broadened and redefined from this Transhumanist perspective. Biology itself is a redundancy from the standard of technology, a primitive and inefficient form which ages, dies, has a limited range for change. The absolute goal of technological change is to reach a point where mankind is made into technology, the world is made into technology, and ideas like death, aging, pain, suffering are made history. Transhumanists and Transhumanists are the natural conclusions of technological progression.
Do you employ "sober calculation" in charting your pleasures? 94 Do you think you always should? Or is it sometimes okay to surrender to the spirit of Dionysus? If it does not injure you in some way and does not take away from your highest goals, than any pleasure in almost any quantity is acceptable from my view. I lack the amount of self-control to have things around which would make achieving my goals impossible, so tapering is not needed. I flat-out renounce certain things at certain times. Like my phone when doing school work. You should not always limit pleasure. Undoubtedly, I think pleasure is more valuable than actual goals since no amount of satisfaction is compared to the life-changing elixir of powerful pleasure. Pleasure for those pure of heart is not something that needs to be controlled, in my view. Although there need to be controlled on what sucks up your time and attention which gives you no pleasure aka cellphones.
Do you side more with Epicurus or Lucretius on marriage and procreation? 96. They lived in such radically different societies with such radically different relations to women it is hard to say. Although I will go to Lucretius.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of Lucretius's "random-roving" advice? 97. It’s effectively a rebound, I agree with it, pleasure from other sources can provide clarity.
Do you agree with the Epicurean perspective on why death is not so horrible after all? 101. I cannot really comprehend or agree with any normal views on death. Even in Epicurean’s reconciliation with death, there is still a presupposition death is negative. I do not understand this, perhaps for those who have had easy and happy lives death is the ultimate horror. But for those of us who have lived long, miserable lives death is actually one of the strongest motivations for living, the fact at least it will be all over eventually. I am afraid of life, not death. Only certain existentialists share my perspective.
Do you agree with Kant that happiness and morality are entirely different issues? 105 I could not disagree more. Well, I also disagree with having a morality, nonetheless placing morality above happiness. Kant was not happy though, so it is sort of irrelevant what he thought of happiness, he was totally joyless. They are different issues, but I think morality is opposed to happiness, so I am gonna argue against his dichotomy. If you have to repress all your desires so as to conform to the general good and civic duty there's little room for happiness. Passions mean more than any standard or value, they are the mover in and of life. Without passion and pleasure, there is not even the motivation or energy to write a system of belief, or conduct, which disputes the primacy of passion and pleasure.
Do we have an obligation to distant strangers? 107.
This is a Christian idea I do not hold to or understand. Why do people feel this need to other people, I practice courtesy, but I also spend almost no thought on how others are doing, feel, I simply do not care at all. Perhaps the complete destruction of this planet, wiping out most of its species, polluting its rivers and sky, has been internalized as guilt by people, and people project this guilt as a sort of need to help or care, or feel they are helping other people or care about other people. A human being cannot form more than roughly 150 meaningful relationships in their life, and extrapolating from that there is a ceiling on how much we can care and the volume of people we can care about. More than a large tribe of people is incomprehensible to humans, so why should anyone care about what is an abstraction. Every additional person beyond 150 or so is more and more toward abstraction. I cannot see, feel, or understand a million people, and I do not care to. Maybe to deal with their guilt people should actually do something about what created that guilt, instead of just uselessly caring or feeling for people they don't know and won’t meet.
If our ordinary "notions... may not apply to the fundamental particles discovered by physics," 110 would that be an objection to Epicurean atomism? Yes but Epicurean if he was alive now would adopt the latest findings in physics.
ReplyDelete"Man is not the measure of all things." 111 Should an Epicurean be so quick to repudiate Protagoras? Yes he should. Man is not the measure of all things, that is a limited view, clearly there are many other points of reference some of which should take seniority over man. Because we are limited to a human perspective does not mean our perspective is somehow superior, it just speaks to our own undesirable limitation.
If we're not the measure(rs) of our own happiness, who or what is? I am not sure you can measure happiness, attempting to measure mine would make me less happy, and the idea of measuring happiness makes me less happy. The more understanding there is the less happy I am. Nothing can or should measure happiness, and nothing does. (But: does "man" mean each of us, individually, or all of us, collectively?) Man means each of collectively.
Did Aristotle and the Stoics have a better grasp of the intrinsic satisfaction of intellectual understanding? 112. Yes they did, if understanding does not dispel fear, anxiety, or really in any way improve the person than why seek it.
Do you think theists are happier than atheists? 113 A bit meaningless of a question, since the archaic structure of belief is imbedded in everything in the culture, the same motivation behind religion is found in atheist substitutions for it. I guess it just comes down to what beliefs make you more or less individually happy.
Would an atheistic world be more pacific? 114 (Was John Lennon an Epicurean? --"Imagine all the people, living life in peace..." )
Are intellectual pleasures "higher"? 116. Haha, the Soviet Gulag Archipelago was the work of atheists, I would not say not believing in the supernatural would make for anymore peace. People just substitute their supernatural belief system for a structurally identical naturalistic one.
Okay, I really need to know what you're drinking/ingesting.
DeleteYou're not really going to conflate atheism with Soviet communism, are you?
I find it very hard to believe that a world without religion would have less conflict. Throughout human history regardless of beliefs conflict proliferates if religion didn't cause a conflict something else surely will instead whether that be ideologies, ethnic tensions, or simply differing interests. Despite how much focus it is given as a cause of war religion can only truly be considered the cause of one of the ten most destructive wars in human history (based on numbers of casualties) which I feel gives credence to the idea that it is man that makes religions violent and not the other way around.
ReplyDelete1 of 10? Can you elaborate? That seems low, but still a pretty high percentage. How do numbers of casualties translate into motivation for conflict? Are there any other single factors that rival it, aside from sheer greed and pugnacity?
DeleteI completely disagree with Kant that morality and happiness are able to be separated. For me personally I've learned the hard way that I can't be truly happy when I'm behaving in such a way that is contrary to what I believe to be right. I think this is something that would hold true for most people. They may disagree on what is the moral decision, but there is little lasting happiness in deliberate immorality. Take for example St. Augustine and the pears reflection on this deliberate immoral act gave him such unhappiness throughout his life that he remembered it and thought it important enough to include in his confessions.
ReplyDeleteBut was Kant wrong to say that our over-riding aim should be worthiness for happiness, rather than happiness as such? I'm sure he'd agree that happiness aligns with rational virtue.
DeleteAugustine strikes me as a perverse figure, not a representative human. Swiping a pear seems hardly worth the effort of self-abnegation,
though I don't approve of pear-nabbing.
DeleteDo you agree that "all societies evolve"? 84 Do some de-volve? How about ours, at present?
ReplyDeleteI do agree that all societies transform in one way or another from time to time. For evidence one need not to look any further than our own country. America from the 1950s certainly isn’t the American from the 1980s. Due to a verity of factors, one of the most noteworthy being technology, our society has transformed from decade to decade. In addition, I also think it is possible for a society to “de-volve” as well. It would make sense, in my mind, for people to become less developed with the loss of progress or the stagnation of progress in one form or another. Countries without running water for instance are forced to use other means that are more time consuming to obtain resources. Therefore, they can’t focus on other things to better their society. I suppose what I am really saying is that societal progress only comes down to one factor, time. Without the time ideas can’t form and without ideas nothing can happen. After all, society is a contract of ideas.