How to Be an Epicurean
aeon.co
aeon.co
Θεός Άφοβον - God is not to be feared
Θάνατος Αναίσθητον - You don't feel (sic or meet with) death
Τ'αγαθόν μεν εύκτητον - It is easy to acquire goods
Το δε δεινόν ευκαρτέρητον - So is easy to withstand rough times
- natural and necessary, e.g drink, eat
- natural but not necessary, e.g sex
- not natural and not necessary, e.g smartphones
Epicure advised to fulfill only the first type of desires, that is, drink water and eat bread, period.
As a sidenote, the goal of his philosophy was not to experience pleasures, but instead to avoid pain, which is quite different.
>The world, they thought, is ruled by providence; all that happens is fated to happen, and we must embrace our individual fates and the past and the future that has been determined for us.
That's not the understanding I got from reading about Stoicism. Sure, some of it could be "fate" and out of your control but there is a lot of emphasis on what you can control. I think the author simplified this too much to the point of making it incorrect.
But nowadays we don't need an argument, we can just point out that ancient people believed it and that's difficult convincing.
Wikipedia[0] has this:
Stoics outlined what we have control over categories of our own action, thoughts and reaction. The opening paragraph of The Enchiridion states the categories as; "Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in a word, whatever are not our own actions.". These suggest a space that is within our own control.
Is that based on the self-help book approach?
[EDIT] not to say their physics & metaphysics were constant over time—Stoicism's period of serious activity spanned centuries, after all—and that much of their "lower level" philosophy wasn't very likely produced by working backward from their conclusions, which is common in philosophies that attempt to prove or support their ethical beliefs in such manner (see also: "natural law" or "natural rights")
[EDIT EDIT] and I'm not claiming that original approach is the superior one. It's just why there might be a difference in opinion over what's essential about Stoicism. The utility of a Stoic mindset may well be pretty unrelated to an underlying approach to the problem of evil, a statement about the nature of the divine, claims about what reality actually is, and so on.
The major problem of studying Epicurean philosophy is that few original sources have survived and almost all of the writing about it is from its opponents.
As far as I have ever seen, the only source for sexual promiscuity is that women were allowed in to his school.
Worth listening if you have the time.
I've found some Stoic attitudes and practices a great help over the past year or so, but suspect there's some really valuable knowledge from the other schools I've yet to learn about.
I'm working my way through Seneca's letters at the moment. He keeps quoting Epicurus, so that's a pretty decent recommendation right there! Anything that builds out context around that era of philosophy is massively interesting to me.
Thank you very much :)
So I guess we can't trust them to give an impartial view of Stoicism.
Is this accurate? My understanding of wealth might be simplistic or reductive, but I have equated it to two neighbor craftsmen producing and trading goods. Each benefits from the other’s specialty and increases overall wealth, which is not zero-sum.
I can agree with the statement regarding fame, since fame is more directly correlated with time, which is strictly zero-sum.
On the other hand, if one has great resources and the others little, then they have a noticable in wealth and power.
It's accurate for the society we live in, but not for all possible societies.
Clever, No?