Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- lucretius_today_special_series_-_eahp [2022/10/17 17:13] – cassiusamicus
+++ lucretius_today_special_series_-_eahp [2023/03/21 16:07] (current) – cassius
@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 This is the introductory chapter of the book. Discussion threads at Epicureanfriends.com are **[[https://www.epicureanfriends.com/board/526-chapter-one-a-synoptic-view-of-epicureanism/|here]].**A Collapsible / Interactive outline of the major points of Chapter One is **[[http://www.newepicurean.com/overview.htm|here]]**
-  *
+  * **The Historical Background of Epicurean Philosophy**
-**The Historical Background of Epicurean Philosophy**
       * It is important to emphasize that at one and the same time Epicurus was both the most revered and most reviled of all founders of Greco-Roman philosophical schools.
       * For seven hundred years Epicurus was very popular throughout the Greco-Roman world. His images were displayed, his handbooks memorized and carried by students, and on the twentieth of every month his followers assembled in his name.
       * Throughout the same period Epicurus' enemies ceaselessly reviled him, and he was attacked by Platonists, Stoics, and Christians, and his name was an abomination to the Jews.
       * Therefore much of what has been written about Epicurus in both the ancient and modern world is wrong.
-  *
+  * **Epicurus employed teaching devices which are important in understanding his philosophy.**
-**Epicurus employed teaching devices which are important in understanding his philosophy.**
       * Setting The 'Attitude' or (diathesis, Greek). This device stresses at the very beginning the attitude to take toward the subject. For example, the Principal doctrines set the attitude to take toward gods, death, pleasure, and pain.
       * Start With An 'Outline' or the 'Synoptic View.' This means starting with the 'big picture' before proceeding to detailed discussion of the finer points, so that the fine points are kept in perspective. Epicurus' teachings were therefore presented in order from the general to the particular.
@@ Line 236: / Line 232: @@
 ===== Chapter VIII - Sensations, Anticipations, And Feelings =====
+  * Introduction:
+      * Podcaster Note: It appears that among the biggest points of this chapter is to show that Epicurus did not assert that we believe only what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Isn't that what is asserted when people think of Epicurus as an Empiricist? One of Dewitt's big points here - and i think he is right? - is that Epicurus taught that you do believe a lot more than what you can simply see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Obvious example is: atoms!.
+      * Epicurus was not an empiricist, but people claim that he was and so they ignore the other two legs of the canon, pleasure and pain, which are outside the standard definition o "empiricism."
+      * The three criteria are neither three aspects of a single capacity nor yet three discrete capacities which function separately from one another. They act in together and in sequence.
+      * Sensation is irrational and merely registers a quality, for example, sweetness. It is the intelligence that says, "This is honey," and it is the Feelings that report, "I like it" or "I don't like it:'
+      * When once this genetic approach has been recognized it becomes easy to discern that the three criteria correspond to three levels of experience, which may be styled somatic. social. and emotional. {Cassius' comment - It is not clear to me that this "three levels of experience" analysis is especially significant. Does it lead somewhere?)
   * Sensations
+      * The Sensations in the meaning of the Canon denote the five senses. vision. hearing. smell, taste. and touch. and nothing else.
+      * They qualify as criteria because they are direct physical contacts between the living being and the external physical reality.
+      * They also qualify as criteria because they are irrational. are incapable of memory. and pronounce no judgments.
+      * Sensation is incapable of memory. It can no more recall a given stimulus than a house can recall the impact of a ball thrown against its wall. The sensation merely registers a stimulus, a melody, for example; it is the memory that says, "I have heard this before"; it is the intelligence that says, "Home Sweet Home."
+      * The confusions are two in number.
+        * __The first__  is between concepts of "truth" and concepts of "value:' It is quite possible for a sensation to be true reand yet valueless as a criterion. A square tower, for example, appears at a distance to be round; the sensation is true, relative to the distance, but false to the facts.
+        * __The second__  confusion is between primary and accessory or derivative notions. This is to say that the ideas represented by the Twelve Elementary Principles of Physics are primary while all other ideas are derivative. The former are ennoai, the latter are ep;no;a;.
+      * The chief ambiguities are also two in number. In the dictum of Epicurus that "all sensations are true" both terms are ambiguous.
+        * The English word sensation, like the Latin sensus, is employed to render various words and phrases in Greek,
+        * while the word true, like its Latin and Greek equivalents, may have anyone of three meanings:
+          * first, absolutely true, as the statement that two and two make four is true, or
+          * second, relatively true, as the distant view of the tower is true, though false in detail, or
+          * third, real, in the sense that the sensation corresponds to a real object, such as an ox.
   * Epicurus Not An Empiricist
+      * Focus on how the deductive nature of much Epicurean reasoning, plus anticipations and feelings is not what is generally included in Empiricism
   * Anticipations
   * The Account of Laertius