Questions Sep 11

Epicurus preface & Intro I-IV

1. How is the public image of Epicurus that has come down to us "gravely flawed"?

2. What question expresses the metaphysical problem of The One and the Many? Do you think the senses are more a veil from or a bridge to the real world?

3. Do you agree with Heraclitus or Parmenides? Is it wise or appropriate to "philosophize in poetry"?

4. Do you think empty space truly exists?

5. Should we credit the early Atomists with "speculative depth" or were they just lucky?

6. Is popular religion still a source of superstition and fear?

7. Are you comforted by Atomic immortality?

8. Is death "nothing to us," or was Epicurus trying to whistle past the graveyard?

9. What makes Epicurus a "sensible humanist"?

10. Is the doctrine of The Swerve really a "complete failure"? Do you think Epicurus thought it a proof of free will, a reason to resist determinism, an anticipation of modern physical theories of quantum indeterminacy, or... ?

11. Is human happiness inseparable from the life of the senses?

12. Is hell a psychological projection?

13. Was Berkeley crazy?

14. Are feelings a better guide to the good life than reason? Or are both equally important?



“...In addition to matters of style and approach, large differences between Stoicism and Epicureanism emerge in their almost entirely opposed views of nature. Although the Stoics agreed with the Epicureans that most people do not realize what sort of universe they are living in, and so are bound to end up confused in their attitudes to life, they thought that the Epicureans were just as ignorant as anyone else—if not more so. There was just one thing the Epicureans were right about: that everything was physical. In opposition to Plato and Aristotle, both the Epicureans and the Stoics were firm materialists. There were not two worlds, as Plato had said, consisting on the one hand of ordinary physical things and on the other of ideal Forms and souls. According to the Stoics, Plato’s ideal Forms were really just concepts in the mind, which is a physical thing, and so were themselves fundamentally physical. As for the soul, Plato was wrong to suggest that it consisted of some non-material stuff, and Aristotle was wrong to say that it was not made of any sort of stuff at all. For the Stoics and the Epicureans, it was made of the same material stuff as everything else. Still, on every other question about nature, the two Hellenistic schools were at loggerheads.

The Epicureans said that the world is the unplanned product of haphazard forces; the Stoics said it is rationally organized down to the last detail. The Epicureans said that the universe does not operate with any purposes in mind and that the gods are permanently on holiday; the Stoics retorted that a beneficent God, or providence, is thoroughly in charge and always on the job. The Epicureans said that the course of nature is not wholly determined in advance—there are, for instance, random swerves of atoms; the Stoics said that everything unfolds according to fate in an inexorable chain of cause and effect, and, moreover, that it will unfold in exactly the same way again and again in a cycle of cosmic creation and destruction. The Epicureans held that each person is completely free in his actions; the Stoics denied this, because of their belief in fate (though they still held that people are morally responsible for what they do). The Epicureans said that reality consists of atoms colliding by chance in the void to form everything we see; the Stoics said that matter is suffused with a sort of fiery breath (pneuma) that animates, organizes and directs it into various shapes and forms, and that atoms have nothing to do with it...”
— Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb

Also see

Graceful-life philosophies

I mentioned in my posted introduction to students that I consider myself a kind of epicurean, and invited them to tell us on Opening Day (for extra credit) what that means. This might help.

"Where the Hellenistic philosophies excelled was the production of what could be called secular religions. They were based on self-help–oriented doctrines often borrowed from the earlier philosophers but interpreted and presented in a way that made more direct sense to a lot of people. I'm calling them graceful-life philosophies to distinguish them from other philosophy. Their goals were practical happiness, and they were not merely theoretical about it: they provided community, mediations, and events. In this they were more like religions, but they did not identify themselves as religions and they had remarkably little use for God or gods.

The Hellenistic graceful-life philosophies had a lot in common. The experience of doubt in a heterogeneous, cosmopolitan world is a bit like being lost in a forest, unendingly beckoned by a thousand possible routes. At every juncture, with every step, one is confronted with alternative paths, so that the second-guessing becomes more infuriating even than the fact of being lost. After a direction is chosen, one is constantly met with another tree in one's path. What do you do if you come from a culture that had a powerful sense of home and local value, and now you are lost in something vast and sprawling, meaningless and strange? The stronger your belief in that half-remembered home, the more likely you are to panic, to grow claustrophobic among the trees and beneath their skyless canopy. Hellenistic men and women felt a desperate desire to get out of the seemingly endless, friendless woods.

The graceful-life philosophies of this period were able to achieve an amazing rescue mission for the human being lost in the woods and bone-tired of searching for home. They did this by noticing that we could stop being lost if we were to just stop trying to get out of the forest. Instead, we could pick some blueberries, sit beneath a tree, and start describing how the sun-dappled forest floor shimmers in the breeze. The initial horror of being lost utterly disappears when you come to believe fully that there is no town out there, beyond the forest, to which you are headed. If there is no release, no going home, then this must be home, this shimmering instant replete with blueberries. Hang a sign that says HOME on a tree and you're done; just try to have a good time. Thus the cosmopolitan doubter looks back on earlier generations with bemused sympathy—they were mistaken—and looks upon believing contemporaries with real pity, as creatures scurrying through the forest, idiotically searching for a way out of the human condition. After all, it isn't so bad if you just settle in and accept a few difficult ideas from the get-go."

— Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson by Jennifer Hecht


And see The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt...

Nice epicurean message here:

The day is short
The night is long
Why do we work so hard 
To get what we don’t even want?

We work so hard to get ahead of the game
Work half our lives until we’ve won.
And then one day we sit on the edge of our bed
And we think, “Lord, what have I done?”

The day is short
The night is long
Why do we work so hard 
To get what you don’t even want?

The man in the suit comes home and kisses his babies goodbye.
“Daddy’s got to go on a trip, honey, oh no, don’t you cry.”
He’s gone for a week then he’s home for a day.
Well, pretty soon the babies won’t cry when Daddy’s gone away. 

The day is short
The night is long
Why do you work so hard
To get what you don’t even want?

You know we go to the mall and we go from store to store.
Everybody seems to be wasting time until death walks through the door.
And then you look at all your merchandise and you see
We paid too high a price, you’ll see

The day is short
The night is long
Why do we work so hard 
To get what you don’t even want