Epicurus for Our Time
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
> Forget shallow hedonism. Follow this philosophy for wondrous, unexpected joys and resilience against inevitable misfortune
And
> Epicurus thinks that we not only need friends, but that friends contribute the most to life’s goodness. Friend groups give us confidence of support in times of material and emotional distress, and they help us learn about ourselves and the world. Sometimes only friends can effectively communicate difficult truths. For Epicurus, the crowning grace of good friends is their role in building the library of joyful memories we rely on in times of difficulty, boredom or misfortune.
Epicurus had a garden. When was the last time you spent the day in a garden, napped under the shade of a tree, smelled the plants and the flowers, and saw the moon and the stars in all their glory?
(NB: dang serves as a bit of a fountain: hope springs eternal in his patient moderation, and we are grateful in return!)
Evidence required
It is funny that we are all using the garden as a metaphor here. A garden isn't natural. It is a technological artifact. A subjugation of nature as surely as a parking lot (though assuredly more subtle). We have the power to act in the world. Nature has produced in us a profound power to act. We can't pretend it doesn't exist.
Unless some nihilism crazy person, full of cocain, decides that the school and the kids there are responsible for his or her problems. The self-critics exercised in the west is destroying it's civilization. Last week was in US, yesterday in Brazil. Berlin, almost every day.
Cars, ODs, and suicide are much bigger concerns for those with kids. Or should be. Any one of those dwarfs the risk of death or injury in a school shooting, which is so far down the list that it's in the company of a ton of things that nobody ever gives a thought.
Separately, school shootings are a national disgrace and shouldn't happen, certainly not at anything like the rate they do, but they're not actually a risk worth worrying about on an individual level.
Well swimming pool, but thats are either accidents or personal tragedies. It always happened, it will always happens.
> Separately, school shootings are a national disgrace and shouldn't happen
school shooting or school Rampage is a world problem. Another countries with less guns, but still a world problem.
> but they're not actually a risk worth worrying about on an individual level.
Statistics are good for argumentation (50 million kids in the schools, just 2000 injured in shootings), but if you have kids in the elementary school, or school in general, you will worry on an individual level. Actually the pools supports that https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gun-violence-schools-parents-ch...
Homo Sapiens’ ancestors used technology, including tools. We evolved into, and in the context of, a technological environment.
Now there is a ground breaking tech break through every 5 minutes -- that forever changes life as we know it. What about the unintended consequences? (Planes can help move people/resources around -- also pandemics!)
How long before AI will be editing our genes...?
Businesses are run by people who want to earn money to get ahead of others. Yeah some business are legit creating new things, but many are just making people want to buy useless widgets or waste their time on an ad pipeline platform.
That's the main reason why I think there's no legislating or protesting our way out of the big problems(though that doesn't mean those things are useless). The way only way out is through the development and maturation of humanity. Obviously you can't force that on people though, all you can do is focus on your own self-development and give others the respect and dignity required not to impede on their own self-development, regardless of how much you may disagree or dislike them
Every prayer of man has been answered by technology.
We used to have deities for food, with starvation always looming over our heads. Now, peoples biggest problem is avoiding being fat.
We used to have deities for fertility. IVF makes the miracle of a virgin birth from fantasy to reality.
We used to pray to gods of war for the destruction of our enemies. Now, with atomic bombs, we are capable of destroying almost every living thing.
Continue on, for every almost every deity in the Parthenon of ancient religions.
Lots of modern tech too quickly + humans = bad.
Humans haven't evolved for all this tech and will keep taking it in stupid directions: (Grey dense mega-cities, junk food, junk entertainment/metaverse, sedentary isolated lifestyle, hedonism, addiction, drugs (1/4 US women on psych meds, antibiotics resistant super bugs), globalism (pandemics can spread in days to everywhere), p0rn/online dating, pollution, AI gene editing (where the AI takes over), mass techno AI surveillance state, brain chips, turning in to cyborgs, global financial crashes, etc).
Compare that to living a simple life with friends/family in a tight knit rural community.
Develop tech... but slowly....... Do we need 7G brain-chip internet in our cyborg bodies tomorrow?
In (some) non-anglophone countries, education includes not only learning how to do, but also learning how to get along: not only savoir-faire, but also savoir-être.
a) The Epicurean belief that emotional disturbance/perturbation is basically bad stymes emotional thriving. In a podcast with fellow Stoic Massimo Pigulicci, therapist and Stoic Scholar Donald Robertson points out that this idea is very close to the statement "anxiety is bad", a belief that correlates strongly with a host of pathological mental conditions/states.
b) The Epicurean aversion to anxiety pushes us away from political engagement and many other activities that root us in the murk of life.
That being said, there are still many profound insights to be gleaned from Epicurus' thought.
[1] https://archive.org/details/TheHistoryOfWesternPhilosophy/pa...
[2] https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/bertrand-russ...
2. Does a Wise Man (from a Stoicism's point of view) really must to care about politics more than just learning? From my understanding there are things that are way better than politics, for example Math. Anyway we the small men are compelled to go wherever the society goes and the more number of big brains will care about this, the less really cool things will we receive. Stupid men can not obtain mathematical knowledge for us, so maybe they are better utilized by doing politics? While wise men will do some really awesome things?
Congenital insensitivity to pain and anhydrosis (CIPA) is a condition where a person is incapable of feeling pain- the pain sensing nerves aren't properly wired up into the brain.
On the one hand, wonderful! You'll never have to suffer the effects of physical harm.
On the other hand, you'll never learn the motor control and dexterity needed to interact with potentially dangerous objects, and may go extended periods of time not realizing that, for example, a fractured bone has become infected.
Experiencing anxiety is a primer for the brain to cope and endure difficult situations. Without it, you are essentially setting yourself up for failure when something out of your control happens.
When you explore the answers to these questions, you may develop an appreciation for the magic of the dark, the anxious, and the frightening.
> The Epicurean belief that emotional disturbance/perturbation is basically bad stymes emotional thriving. In a podcast with fellow Stoic Massimo Pigulicci, therapist and Stoic Scholar Donald Robertson points out that this idea is very close to the statement "anxiety is bad", a belief that correlates strongly with a host of pathological mental conditions/states.
More so than Stoicism? Stoics are notorious for emotional equamnity, a lot of the philosophy is about avoiding distress when things go badly and anxiety when they may go badly. It hardly seems like a philosophy that encourages or supports anxiety.
> The Epicurean aversion to anxiety pushes us away from political engagement and many other activities that root us in the murk of life.
I don't think being "rooted in the murk of life" should be a goal in itself. As with any other kind of pain or suffering, Epicureanism would tell us that political engagement may be worth enduring if the ultimate benefits outweigh the costs. But I don't think we need to be pushed towards more political engagement than currently; quite the opposite, we need a philosophy that can tell us when it's worth stepping back.
Philosophers also have their flaws. Hedonism as seen by Epicurus has been taken to an extreme in this modern world and likely back then too. People may live too much of a Kierkegaard “aesthetic” life rather than an “ethical” one. This of course is the main argument that they can choose either/or. We constantly hear of people refer to this pursuit of happiness or aestheticism through the hedonic treadmill that one can’t get off. Instead their happiness remains at a baseline regardless of accomplishments throughout life.
Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is not a realistic way to live. The existentialists all argue this as quoted at the beginning with perhaps a misunderstood Nietzsche idea of the last man and the “overman” who overcomes the wasteland by rejecting excess pleasure and embracing pain as a source of strength. The last man being the end of man due to complacency who only seeks pleasure.
Overall I quite enjoyed this article, it feels as if the author is trying to defend Epicurus in the sense that he is wildly misunderstood. He looks to have a book on literary gardens that looks quite interesting. Will probably pick it up.
In fact, of the philosophers we know from that era, Epicurus was the only one who wasn't an aristocrat. He came from a middle class background and he at his most "hedonistic" probably would have thrown a positively simple party compared to an average evening at Plato's.
“In physics, where he is the most pretentious, Epicurus is a perfect stranger. Most of it belongs to Democritus; where he deviates from him, where he endeavours to improve, he spoils and worsens it.” - Cicero
“Of this great man [Democritus] we scarcely know anything but what Epicurus borrowed from him, and Epicurus was not capable of always taking the best.” - Leibniz
Epicurus' philosophy very much reminds me of Goethe's regarding perception of colors (contrasted with the objective position of Newton regarding colors). As I am aging I am becoming convinced that the experience is the meaning, and youthful insistence on "meaning of life" is precisely pre-mature. (And as a Persian, I think he also made the right call regarding the crown of Persia ..)
[The quotes are taken from Karl Marx's school thesis btw.]
The comment above is using the quotes of people who didn't understand modern science ('physics' meant the study of nature) to dismiss the guy who in retrospect was the closest to modern science.
For example, Lucretius (the Epicurean poet) nailed survival of the fittest and roughly described Mendelian trait inheritance nearly two millennia before Darwin.
But I very much doubt Cicero or even Leibniz would have recognized that as a correct understanding of nature.
As for Lucretius preceding Darwin by 2 millennia, then consider that the idea of survival of the fittest by itself is not a scientific theory in the modern sense that makes predictions that can be verified. Basically one can explain anything with it by defining what “fittest” means post-factum. The science begins when one tries to predict with it things like speed of evolution or the existence of species not yet observed in paleontological records. There is nothing like that in Lucretius works AFAIK.
Lucretius's De Rerum Natura is the only extant work from antiquity to explicitly describe the claim that what we see around us started from senseless primordial beings that through intermediate mutants came to be what we see around us via the process of survival of the fittest in relation to reproduction.
It also claimed that trait inheritance occurred as the result of a "doubled seed" from each parent.
It theorized that quantized matter must be governed by a degree of uncertainty in outcomes for free will to exist ("the swerve").
That light was also quantized and what we see is the result of these quantized parts moving very quickly.
That thunder and lighting might occur at the same time but one moves faster to reach us.
That the entire world was the result of primordial quanta randomly interacting.
That this was not the only world like it, but was one of an uncountable number of worlds all from this random process.
So that's great that a bunch of idiots in antiquity who had no idea what was actually correct thought that Democritus was superior (who they also claimed was just ripping off Mochus of Sidon) and Epicurus the lesser. But their opinions are hardly authoritative given they would have also claimed most of the above wasn't true.
The Epicurean understanding of nature was outstanding in retrospect with the exception of his local cosmology.