Episode 200 - Lucretius Today 200th Episode: Retrospective, Recap, and Looking To The Future
Date: 11/10/23
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3462-episode-200-lucretius-today-200th-episode-retrospective-recap-and-looking-to-the/
Summary
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Transcript (Unedited)
Section titled “Transcript (Unedited)”Cassius:
Welcome to episode 200 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at epicureanfriends.com. We will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.
This week is episode 200, and we have back with us one of our podcasters, Don, who’s been an integral part of the series. We don’t have everyone who’s participated throughout the years, but we want to thank everyone who’s been a part of the podcast since it began. And we’ll spend a few minutes talking about the history of the podcast and then a wider discussion about how we got to where we are, where we think we might like to go, and of course, how the podcast might proceed in the future. We have no intention whatsoever of slowing down. We’re still in the middle of book two of Cicero’s own ends, and we’ll be back to our normal schedule next week to continue wrestling with Cicero. But we wanted to take the opportunity to have a general retrospective on where we’ve been and where we’re going.
We started the podcast back in January of 2020, so we’ve been going now for over three years. What we decided to do was to use Lucretius’ poem as a framework for going through and studying and discussing Epicurean philosophy. So we named it Lucretius Today rather than Epicureus today because Lucretius is one of the most well-known exponents of Epicurean philosophy in the history of the world. His putting together the poem for purposes of explaining Epicurean philosophy to his friend Mimeus is very parallel to where learning Epicurean philosophy for ourselves at the same time that we’re explaining it to other people. So from January 11th of 2020, we continued with Lucretius all the way for some 92 episodes.
Since then, we’ve been going through specific writings from the Epicurean text. We first went to the Torquatus narrative in Cicero’s own ends, book one, because it is an unbroken presentation of the Epicurean ethics. In 2022, we’ve turned over to the letters of Epicureus, starting with the letter to Herodotus, the letter to Pythocles, the letter to Menorchius. We then turned briefly to Diogenes of Oinoander and went through some of the key sections of the inscription. And then after that, we turned to a long series of podcasts going through Norman DeWitt’s Epicurus and his philosophy.
We’ve also happily been able to have interviews with several distinguished guests. We interviewed Dr. Emily Austin, author of the Living for Pleasure book that came out last year. We interviewed Dr. David Glidden, who has written extensively in the past on Epicurean polepsis. And we just recently interviewed Dr. Marcelo Boreri, co-author of the book Epicurean Political Philosophy, Theory, and Practice. So we’ve been going through lots of background information on Epicureus. And we’re here today to talk about the challenges that we’ve run into and some challenges that we continue to face in the study of Epicurean philosophy. That’s where we are today and what we hope to present. So with that, thank you, Don, for being back with us today. We have Joshua Kalosyni and Martin as well.
Don:
As far as I have been concerned, I joined the forum in February of 2020. So as far as I could see, there’s always been a Lucretius Today podcast from my perspective. So I found it interesting that I came in right at the beginning and was able to follow through. And that was one of my first introductions to the philosophy here at the forum. So thank you all for initiating that project.
Cassius:
You know, we have almost a whole new set of podcasters now from when we started. That calls to mind, I need to give special thanks to Martin, who was with the very first podcast and has been throughout the entire series continuously with us. So thank you especially, Martin. And maybe that’s one comment we can link to Lucretius as well, is that many people find out about Epicurus and are drawn to Epicurus in the first place because of Lucretius. His physics are so well known. And from that, find out that they’re interested in Epicurean philosophy. And although you are a scientist of a sort, Martin, I’m recalling that you did not start out reading Lucretius.
Martin:
It was Epicurus himself. So I read the accent text following a lead which had nothing to do with the philosophy itself. And that’s how I got into it. And I saw that his philosophy was, of course, much more systematically and really worked out as a philosophy what I had been doing for most of my life already.
Cassius:
And I know, Joshua, you have engineering type training, not necessarily science, but I gather Lucretius played a special role in your interest in Epicurean philosophy.
Joshua:
Oh, yeah, definitely. I’ve been really interested in poetry generally, particularly since college, and took several courses on it, continued to read poetry after college, started writing a little bit of my own. And Lucretius to me is the cornerstone of the surviving literature of Epicureanism from the ancient world. It’s absolutely indispensable and so, so fascinating when you compare it to the literature of that time and the literature of today. It really stands apart in many ways. It’s part of this epic cycle, starting with Homer, Lucretius, Virgil, Dante, John Milton, right? Some of the greatest long-form poems that have ever been written. But even in that set, Lucretius, in many ways, stands apart. And really, as I said, truly indispensable. And we’re so lucky that it survived. Everything we know about Lucretius rests on the survival of basically two 9th century manuscripts, in addition to Niccolò Niccoli’s copy of Paggio Braccellini’s copy of a 9th or 10th century copy of a third manuscript. So it’s amazing that we have as much as we have. We are missing a lot, but Lucretius is essential for filling in the gaps.
Don:
And to sort of jump off to what Josh was saying there, it seems that Lucretius was sort of given pride of place, even in his own lifetime and briefly after in the Roman period itself, because it seems to have been like the exemplar of what people look to as like, that’s what Latin poetry is supposed to be. And the whole idea of those tenuous links that we have, like a couple manuscripts that we have to thank for having the existence of Lucretius himself and so many other documents, it’s just mind-boggling that we have anything from the ancient world. And having those little tenuous links that have brought those kinds of things to us in the modern time is just fascinating.
Joshua:
I just wanted to add in that when I came to Epicureanism, I did not know about Lucretius until the question that was asked on the forum to enter, which was, “Who is the most famous Epicurean poet?” And then I had to look that up and discovered it was Lucretius. So I’m a little late coming on board with Lucretius, and as far as the podcast, I think I didn’t start until you were doing the letter to Minosius. But as far as Lucretius, I’ve really begun to enjoy it. The poetry, especially the opening of the poem that he made, the opening is so very beautiful, and so many other parts of it as well. And the Humphreys version is the one that I really enjoy the most. And I really got into it when starting to listen to it being read by Cassius. Can you help me out here? I’m forgetting.
Cassius:
Charlton Griffin. Yes. And it’s like, that really made it come alive for me. There’s just so many beautiful parts to it. Yeah. And one of the things that we should do today as we’re going through this discussion, we may end up pointing to people in the future back to this episode 200 as sort of an orientation to the podcast history. So I’d like to make sure we comment on our thoughts as to whether each of these is a good place for a new person studying Epicurus to start, or what we would tell a new person to Epicurus or a new person to the podcast about what they would expect to find in starting to read Lucretius or starting to listen to a particular series.
Lucretius especially is a very complicated situation because I know personally, I had a real hard time for years trying to get off the ground in studying Epicurean philosophy by reading Lucretius. I just was not oriented to what to expect in the opening of the book and just in general what the poem was going to cover. And so it took me a series of starts and it was not until I came across the audible.com version of the Charlton Griffin reading of Lucretius that I began to get past these initial hurdles. Because listening to it read by someone who sounds like they understand what he’s saying, whether he really understands it or not, it’s a different question. But hearing it read was a much easier way for me to absorb the material than trying to read through it myself.
And of course, one other comment about approaching Lucretius that everybody should realize is the openings not only of book one, but the opening sections of all of the six books. They are excellent orientations to the general attitude towards Epicurus and his ethics that have really very little to do with the physics that are embedded in the rest of the poem. So a new reader of Lucretius or a new listener to the podcast, we want to pay, I think, particular attention to the opening sections of each of the six books. And they’ll find that those are much easier to read and contain a lot of interesting material. So I wonder if anybody else has any comments on whether Lucretius is the place they would recommend people to start. If so, why? If not, why not?
One quick question for Casius is, is the Charlton Griffin audio available for free online or is it through Audible?
It is not available for free. I think it can be purchased on Amazon for a reasonable price. And of course, Audible has, I think, free offers and free subscriptions. But Charlton Griffin is a professional who has read many classic works. And he’s a very, very good voice artist. I think you might call somebody like that. Yeah, you’ve mentioned him several times and Calicini giving an enthusiastic thumbs up too. I’m definitely intrigued to try and get a hold of that. Yeah, he has a booming voice. And sometimes I wonder if it’s exactly the right tone to use. But the way somebody reads Lucretius can make all the difference. And whether it comes across as sort of an airy poetry type thing or in Charlton Griffin’s hands, it almost comes across like a preacher giving a sermon. It’s extremely forceful and assertive.
Well, I think that brings up a good point too. I mean, you mentioned tone and I think that there are so many ways. I mean, I do not read Latin. So according to the authorities, Lucretius is like the epitome of Latin poetry. That’s one of my sort of my goads to try and learn Latin. But I mean, there’s so many different translations of Lucretius too that you have that it really depends on the translator as well.
Right. Right. Right. And Charlton Griffin uses the Rolf Humphreys translation, which is one of the ones we regularly cite, but by no means is the only one, nor did it be accurate to say it’s really the best. But it’s an example of the different tones that people come across. I know everybody has almost their favorite translations. There’s the Martin Ferguson Smith one that’s probably the current best academic translation. But then Stallings and many, many other people that we could mention and probably should mention. But let’s keep it in the framework of do we recommend this is the place to start? Joshua.
Joshua:
Yeah, I can certainly talk about that in part because I think this is probably where I did start. This is a few years ago now. But I know that it was my reading of Stephen Greenblatt’s book, The Swerve, that actually got me really interested in this. I must have been somewhat interested or I wouldn’t probably have reached for that book. Although I have read his other work, Will in the World, which is a biography of William Shakespeare. And it’s also excellent. But it was probably the reading of that book. And then that must have led me right into reading Lucretius. And one thing I can say about reading Lucretius, particularly for people who find it somewhat dry, somewhat challenging, somewhat dated, is to sort of focus yourself in such a way that you read every line, every passage, every sort of topic in the poem, while constantly contextualizing it in its time period. Right. This is not the best of current, right? This is not the best of current, I don’t know, pick something. But for its time, what it establishes is that it’s possible at this point. There was a recent one of these new atheists who said that it really wasn’t until Charles Darwin that you could justify a materialist understanding of nature. But really, when you read Lucretius, that’s exactly what you get is a justification of a materialist understanding of nature. And the fact that it happened in about 50 B.C., prior to Jesus Christ, prior to the Gospels, is such a fascinating story that he tells. And it gets better if you are able to see what has led to that story. And part of that is reading other philosophers, right? There’s this whole debate on motion in the ancient world. Is motion impossible, as Parmenides and Zeno of Alea thought? Or is motion happening so fast, as Heraclitus thought, that knowledge really becomes impossible because things are changing too much? It’s on that scene that Epicurus and Lucretius, who is reading Epicurus, are formulating their understanding of nature, dealing with these previous objections and handling them very well. A book that I would recommend to people, which has nothing to do with Epicureanism, but is very good training for this kind of contextualization, is The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard and Howard Reed. Because those guys are able to make Babylonian astrology look like the best new thing on the block in terms of science and so forth. And it happens because we’re not going to compare the astrologers or Thales, for example, with modern physics and judge it by that standards, because that would be unreasonable. Instead, we’re going to judge it by the standards that preceded it. For example, Thales basically articulates the existence of a universe or a cosmos that can be explained in purely natural terms. And that, compared to modern physics, which is, of course, a very specialized and detailed branch of science, is almost, if you put it in those terms, you can almost ask yourself, well, why am I even doing this? But if you compare it to what came before, that sets you up, I think, for the best possible approach to reading Lucretius, and not just Lucretius, but these ancient Atomist philosophers in general, and even their predecessors, who were doing work with early kinds of materialism. Because it keeps the story much more engaging, if you look at it through that lens. Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more, Joshua. I think you’re absolutely spot on that we have to sort of take it within the context of the world he was in, and to realize how forward thinking Lucretius and Epicurus and the physics of the philosophy are precursors of what we have today in science and the scientific method and that sort of thing. I think it’s a fascinating thing to put it in its historical context, but then to also keep in mind the ideas that it led to and that it could have led to, too. The fact that we lost so much of that during the Middle Ages and the late antiquity is just heartbreaking in some ways. So putting that in the context, I think, is a really good point. Yeah, if you see that story, you see how Aristotle gets latched onto as sort of the arbiter of how we explain nature throughout the Middle Ages, in addition to Claudius Ptolemy and his work on astronomy. That’s the explanation that people cling to throughout the Middle Ages. But in both of those cases, they start with very wrong assumptions in many ways. Exactly. And it leads to geocentrism all the way up until the Renaissance. It leads to the Catholic Church’s doctrine of the transubstantiation. That’s directly based on Aristotle, his substance versus accidents. So tracing the idea of these thoughts and how they weave together and how they compete with each other throughout a moving timeline through history is a very, very interesting project. And it’s one that is always ongoing, right, because you can never really know enough to say that you’ve completed that task. Now, Cassius, you asked a different question, which was, would I recommend this as a place to start? And, you know, I think people just come to philosophy in general, Epicureanism in particular, in different ways. To me, it’s not so much where you start that is going to dictate the path you walk. It’s your openness to reconsider what you think you know is going to be the key thing there. But I started with Lucretius after reading Stephen Greenblatt, and I’m still here. So I think it’s not the worst possible thing you can do. Some people might say, I think Martin has said, you know, you start with either the basic texts of Epicurus themselves. In fact, Norman DeWitt himself said, return to the texts themselves because most of the scholarship has been hostile. And I don’t think that’s a bad argument either. Yeah, you’ve made, Joshua, several references to making sure you don’t start with wrong assumptions and being willing to challenge what you think you might already know, which may not be true about Epicurus. And that’s also something that we are continuously dealing with in the study of Epicurus, is how do you get oriented to this all in the first place? Lucretius would seem to be a good place for that because the whole purpose and intent of his poem was to explain Epicurean philosophy to his friend Mimeus. But there is so much detail, perhaps, in Lucretius that it becomes a monumental task to wade through it all and not be deterred by just all the detail and all of the specific allusions to Roman Greek mythology, all the details of Adamism that are in there. And so one of the things that we did after we finished the Lucretius series of our podcast was we turned, as you’re saying, Joshua, to the original material that’s left. Specifically, we went through Epicurus’ letter to Herodotus, his letter to Epithocles, and his letter to Menorchus. So let’s talk for a few minutes about the ups and downs of going through those as a way to get oriented with Epicurean philosophy. Specifically, to start with, the letter to Herodotus, which most people look at as physics and fairly dry. I think what we found and what people will find as they read through each of these letters, and especially that one, is that there’s an awful lot more to it than just ancient physics. Because Herodotus starts out by talking about all of these important issues of knowledge in terms of being clear about things, defining your terms, defining the things that you wish to talk about. And he stresses this idea that you’ve got to have in your mind a command of an outline of the subject or a overview of the subject. The line is to the effect that you don’t always need the specifics of a philosophy, but you almost always need to know the general outline of the philosophy. And you have to be able to go back and forth between the outline level and the detail level in order to apply the philosophy with any degree of accuracy and success. You just can’t constantly stay in the weeds or chasing rabbits down those rabbit trails. You have to be able to come up for air and understand the conclusions that come from the details that you’ve been pursuing. But you have to understand how the details fit together with the overview, or you lose focus and you go off in different directions that are not consistent with the overall philosophy. So let’s talk about the letter to Herodotus for a moment. I think when we were going through it, people were commenting that there was so much more in it than they thought was there. Because, of course, it’s generally devoted to aspects of natural science that don’t always jump out at you as being critically interesting. I would definitely be one of the people that I thought those episodes were very enlightening. They were a lot more in the letters than I really had appreciated before, because I came to Epicurus through the Stoics and that sort of thing. And I think one of the first things I read was probably book 10 of Dioges Laertius with the biography and that sort of thing. I think I skipped over Herodotus and Pythocles. It’s like, oh, we got weather and we have like stars and we have, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. But, oh, here’s this letter of Mennochus. It looks interesting. But you all did an excellent job in pulling out the really pithy parts of the letters to Herodotus and Pythocles, especially Pythocles. I know you asked specifically about Herodotus, but there’s a lot more in there about how do we know things and what path do we take in trying to decide on conflicting views and that sort of thing. That I thought was just fascinating. So those letters have a lot more into them than what I had originally thought. And the podcast is exactly where I came to learn that. Especially on that point you just mentioned, Don. I think people tend to think that Herodotus is natural science in the world right around us. And Pythocles is the stars and weather and so forth. I think you mentioned that. But there’s the deeper aspect of it that Herodotus deals with issues that are to some extent right in front of us and which the senses have the ability to gather a lot of information about. And you see then Epicurus’s chain of reasoning that he applies when he has the ability to test things immediately with the senses. And the difference with Pythocles is not so much necessarily that it’s just weather, but it’s the issue that these issues in the sky, you do not have the ability to get up close to and sense and gather the same level of accuracy of information as you do about things that are right in front of you. And so in Pythocles, you get confronted with this fascinating aspect of the manifold possibilities about how you have to wait. And that may be in Herodotus as well, but especially in Pythocles, how you have to wait if you don’t have enough information to form only one single conclusion and several conclusions appear to be possible, that it’s irrational and improper to select only one conclusion and say that as your pet theory and nothing else can possibly be true. So rather than serving as a weather forecast guide, Pythocles turns out to be an interesting guide to thinking about issues where you don’t have all the information that you would like to have. Exactly. I think that’s right on point. One of the things I find interesting was that I only recently discovered that Pythocles was an 18-year-old that he was writing the letter to. So that’s one of the things that surprised me. This young man was asking questions and Epicurus was trying to provide a deeper understanding for these things. Because evidently, maybe he was having problems in that particular area and Epicurus was like, well, here, let me explain to you how you need to approach that, which I think is almost endearing to take that approach to somebody who’s still young in the philosophy and writing an entire letter to them to sort of assuage their fears and anxieties. Let me jump in here on the letter to Herodotus because I think it’s absolutely fascinating. And Lucretius does an excellent job of expanding on some of Epicurus’ points here. But this is kind of the letter that gives you the bedrock of atomic physics, right? There are bodies, there is void. The void is how we get things like water seeping through the walls of caves, smells penetrating into other rooms of your house. So for the most basic sort of introduction to the atomism, the letter to Herodotus is really, really excellent for that. And it’s not enough, as we always say on this podcast, it’s not enough to just go to the letter to Monoichius and get a basic grounding in the physics and think you’ve got it all figured out. Because every part of the philosophy, the canonics, the physics, the ethics, they are always interlocking with each other in interesting ways. The ethics proceeds from the physics. Our knowledge of the physics proceeds from the canonics. So it’s a good letter for that. And like I say, it’s a very basic education in ancient atomism. And Lucretius expands on it in a number of interesting ways by pointing out when a statue is placed outside the walls of a city and you walk by the statue, people over time rub part of the statue as sort of good luck or signifying they’ve arrived. And over time, it wears away the statue. It polishes it. And the evidence there is, well, something must be getting rubbed away in order for the statue in that part to get thinner and thinner and thinner. And that’s one of the manifold number of reasons that the Epicureans pointed to atomism as the best explanation of nature. Now, by saying all these good things about the letter to Herodotus and the letter to Pythocles, we don’t by any means mean to slight the letter to Monoichius, because that is the centerpiece of Epicurus’ ethics presentation. It’s the letter that most people, if they’re familiar with anything that Epicurus has written, it’s the letter to Monoichius. It’s the most constantly quoted and the most featured letter of all of the original writings of Epicurus. And it deserves the status that it has been given. Now, we haven’t actually done a separate section in our podcast episodes about the principal doctrines or the Vatican sayings or the rest of Vodogenes Lurchius in his biography of Epicurus. But we generally come back to the letter to Monoichius over and over because it is a very systematic overview of the key principles of the Epicurean worldview. It doesn’t talk about physics to any degree, and it doesn’t talk a lot about epistemology. But the topics that are covered in the letter to Monoichius are vitally important to everyone who wants to take home the points about how to live according to Epicurean philosophy. And so I know that Don, in particular, has devoted a lot of his personal attention to going through the Greek involved in the letter to Monoichius and pulling out the depth of detail that is contained within each of the sentences within it. And so as we begin to talk about the letter to Monoichius for a few minutes, the issue that we run into is the people who start and maybe stop at the letter to Monoichius may not be getting the depth of understanding that they would if they would go to these other letters and go to Lucretius and go to the other material that we talk about. Because it’s not necessarily easy on the face of the letter to Monoichius on all sections of it, especially in regard to absence of pain, to come away with a clear understanding of what he’s saying. But you can get a much clearer understanding as you go through these other letters and other materials. Well, let’s talk about the letter to Monoichius for a few minutes. And again, whether it’s the best place to start or not, by default, it ends up being the place that many people start. So what would we tell people about starting with the letter to Monoichius in their study of Epicurus? Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. That was one of the first places that I started as one of the things that sort of surprised me about the depth of the philosophy and that sort of thing. I think you say rather well that it’s a good starting place, but it’s not necessarily where you want to end, too. It’s definitely within a wider context that you have to keep in mind. So I think as an introduction, I think it’s good, but hopefully it spurs people to dig a little bit deeper because I think a lot of people just take a lot of the things at face value and sort of like, oh, I have it all. I’ve got a complete understanding of Epicurian philosophy from this one letter. And I think providing it a wider context really brings out the topics that it discusses in a much more helpful way. And you can sort of misconstrue some of the things in there, I think, if you don’t really dig into the philosophy and use it as the starting place instead of just the ending place. So the letter to Minosius was episode 134. And that first episode was called Context and Opening of the letter. And I remember specifically having kind of a feeling come over me that I hadn’t ever felt before because there was something as that episode was unfolding, especially in the first part of it. I was like, wow, this is something that people who have not heard about Epicureanism before, if they hear this, they’re going to get just as excited about Epicureanism as I feel. Because I think it is a very good place for people to start with Epicurean philosophy. It was like almost a pep rally kind of feeling, but good and informative. I don’t remember how the episode ended. It might have started out bigger and then kind of got a little quieter as the episode progressed. But just the same, that’s one episode that I would recommend for people to listen to if they haven’t yet done so. And there are a number of episodes, like four episodes that we did for a letter to Minosius or three. I can’t remember. It was episodes 134 to 140. So about six. And that’s in contrast to the DeWitt material. We spent like 10 or 11 months on the DeWitt material. So if you’re looking for a really kind of condensed introduction, I know I’ve been sort of hyping up the letters to Herodotus and the letter to Pythocles. But that’s a pretty good place to start. It’s just six episodes. And as we’ve been saying, it really is a foundationally important text for Epicurean philosophy in general and Epicurean ethics in particular. My eye is caught next by the fact we spent several episodes with Diogenes of Oinoander’s inscription. And there’s a lot to be said about that and a lot that it contains. It’s unfortunately more fragmentary than we would like it to be, but it still contains some very useful information. And just what we do know about it is a fascinating addition. It’s very similar to Lucrezia’s poem in the sense that you have someone who is fully convinced of the benefits of Epicurean philosophy spending a lot of resources getting the word out to other people. We could almost have named this the Diogenes of Oinoander podcast, at least from the point of view of his focus on spreading the word to other people. There’s one website we should mention. It’s in Catalonia out of Spain that contains the full text of what’s left of the inscription. There’s a lot of good material in Diogenes of Oinoander, especially in terms of his commentaries, very similar to Lucrezia’s in a way, in terms of looking out at people around him and seeing Lucrezia’s terms, their hearts in darkness. In Diogenes of Oinoander’s terms, he’s talking about them as sheep catching the diseases of fear of the gods and so forth from one another and needing help and getting rid of that. One of the important things I think about Diogenes is that he shows the longevity of the text, too, because he will quote texts that we have from Epicurus and show that there was a long tradition of reading these texts and preserving these texts because he’s so much farther along than even, you know, Philodemus and the other earlier Epicureans that we can see that since he’s including that in his wall inscription, those texts were kept in the tradition for centuries. And he’s the last of the major exponents of Epicurean philosophy, I think, that we have. I don’t know that it’s clear what year the wall was erected. Don, do you have a recollection of what people think about that? I do. Okay, Joshua, go ahead. It was originally thought that it dated to the latter half of the second century, but more recently and based on word usage and the word they used was epigraphical reasons. They’ve dated it to the period of the reign of Hadrian. So centering on about the year 130 with 10 or 15 years on either side of that. And do I remember that Diogenes Laertes is after that? Yeah, Diogenes Laertes, it’s so handy because we’ve been working on a timeline, which I posted an early draft of to the forum just this morning. So we don’t have firm dates for some of these people. Diogenes Laertes is estimated to have flourished between 225 and 250 AD. And actually, Lucian, Lucian of Samosata, or Samosata, however you pronounce that, is slightly after Diogenes Laertes and Wanda and working in the same area in Asia Minor. He died in around 175 AD. Discussing the time sequence in which these writers occurred gives me an opportunity to go back to another series of episodes. We originally did a series devoted to the Torquatus presentation of Epicurean Ethics that is in Cicero’s Own Ends Book 1. And even as we speak, we’re currently going through Book 2 of Cicero’s same book, Own Ends. And that leads us into a discussion of the secondary material that contains a lot of important information, not just Cicero, but also Plutarch, which we have not gotten to yet. But, of course, Diogenes Laertes himself probably deserves to be considered part of the secondary literature. He’s not necessarily an Epicurean himself who’s writing. And so we’ve been discussing and have discussed often the pitfalls of the secondary literature, how Cicero and Plutarch both are strong opponents of Epicurean philosophy, but they have preserved within their works arguments of the Epicureans that we otherwise would not have access to today. I don’t think anybody would suggest that reading Cicero’s or Plutarch’s Verses of Epicureans are a good place to start. However, once you’ve got a foundation in where Epicureans is coming from, I do think there’s a lot of value in reading the material that they’ve left. Yeah, I certainly agree with that. And you all have done a good job on the book two of On Ends sort of countering Cicero’s arguments that I think has been really helpful. And that’s one of the things I would be interested sometime to hear the Plutarch material being gone through and with the same sort of fine-tooth comb, so to speak. One of the things with Plutarch is that he preserves so many sections of Colati’s material that he’s railing against, and he’ll include sections of the Epicurean texts themselves. So I think, Cassius, you’ve even mentioned on the podcast how important these authors like Cicero and Plutarch are, and that without them railing against them, we wouldn’t have the actual text that they’re railing against. Right. Bringing a critical eye to reading Epicurean material is a really important thing to do, no matter what source almost you’re reading. Even when you’re reading Epicurus himself, you have to understand that Epicurus uses words and phrases in ways that are significantly different than what you will expect if you’re not familiar with them to start with. And you can read something that appears to be absolutely clear on its face, but then when you realize later that he has a different definition or perspective on what a God is or what virtue means or what pleasure means and so forth, then you get a gut check on how much you should rely on your initial impressions of reading something. Because it has different levels of meaning depending on your understanding of his use of the words. That actually reminds me of Dr. Emily Austin. Whenever we interviewed her, that she talks about even reading him in Greek is sometimes difficult to know for sure what he’s saying. So she brought up that even in the original text that you have to be careful of how you’re interpreting him and that sort of thing. But I thought the Dr. Emily Austin interview and the other academics that we’ve been able to interview have been just an excellent addition to the podcast as well, in addition to the panel discussions, that they’ve really brought in some interesting perspectives that maybe otherwise we wouldn’t have had access to. Yeah, let’s transition now to talk about what we might call the modern books on Epicurus. So obviously we’ve spent a lot of time going through the Norman DeWitt book and anybody who’s familiar with the podcast knows of our varying opinions and ups and downs and interpretations of DeWitt’s. And we probably should just include within that the fact that we’ve interviewed Emily Austin and her book Living for Pleasure and Dr. Glidden on his work on prolepsis and Dr. Boeri and his book on Epicurean political theory. And I think there’s a whole list of other people that we would like to interview as well. There are. We won’t name them necessarily here now, but I know there’s a whole list of people that we would like to have on the podcast at some point. None of which has led us, I think, to a universal consensus on every aspect of Epicurean philosophy. I think what we have seen over the years is we’ve gone through the podcast and as our podcasters and people on our forum have interacted with each other, that we largely have significant consensus on most of the key issues that are involved. And that consensus, while we have some differences within it, it’s not like you can point to one particular book, whether it’s DeWitt or anybody else, as reflective of that consensus. It really is important for each individual to read this material for himself and herself and come to their own understanding of it, because there’s so much that’s been lost over the years and so much that is open to varying interpretation. My gosh, the whole issue of the Epicurean gods, all of these issues that are so controversial could just become consuming if you follow them to the exclusion of trying to keep your mind focused on the big picture. But I think all of us would agree right now that perhaps Emily Austin’s book, Living for Pleasure, is one of the best places if someone’s listening to this podcast and they haven’t started reading into Epicurus and they wanted a general book to start with. That’s probably one that would be on the top of our list. But let’s talk for a few minutes about recommendations in terms of the modern literature. Yeah, I will jump in and give an enthusiastic thumbs up for Dr. Austin’s work. I think that it’s a little light on the physics and epistemology, and I think we’ve mentioned that before. But as a general, accessible, easily readable, conversational introduction, I don’t think there’s anything better out there right now. If somebody just wants to dip their toes into Epicureanism and get a good idea of what it’s about, she does a really good job of providing a balanced view of the necessary and natural desires and all that sort of categorization. And just in a very approachable and conversational style. And so I definitely would recommend her book as one of the first introductions of people. And one of the things about DeWitt and anybody who’s been on the forum for any length of time knows that I have my issues with DeWitt. His tone and his writing style are somewhat hard to get around sometimes. His Christian allusions and things that always sort of rub me the wrong way. But he does have, I will say, a really good systematic view of everything. He covers everything from the atoms and void all the way up to the historical context and stuff like that. And I almost wish there was somebody out there who could take his book and write it in a more modern style. And I think it would be a pivotal text if someone would be able to do that sometime. It’s just I find it hard to get around his writing style and things like that. I hesitate to say that it’s a good first stop. I know, Cassius, you will probably disagree with me on that. But it has some really good reference material in it, I guess, is what I could say, too. And a really good way of organizing things. Discuss. Yeah, it’s the sweeping aspect of it. Most people just end up focusing almost exclusively on the ethics. And some people will talk a little bit about the physics. Very few people talk at all about the epistemology. And to find out issues of the canon and epistemology, you basically have to go to these detailed academic articles that are just not accessible for the lay person. To really read and absorb. But DeWitt attempts to go through the entire philosophy. And he’s successful sometimes, and sometimes he’s less successful. But he does bring a sympathetic treatment of it. Sometimes perhaps we might think that he’s speculating more than he should be and so forth. But it’s almost like Lucretius in the way that Lucretius does combine epistemology, physics, and ethics in his poem. And that’s, I think, where we’re sort of missing in the modern world, as you’re saying, Don. An Emily Austin-type book that went further and went through all of the major aspects of the philosophy would be a welcome addition to everything. So that it just doesn’t stop at the letter to Menorchius and the ethics like most of the books do. Yeah, and I think you all in the podcast from the very beginning, too, and on the forum have done a good job. And I’ve tried to do my part as well, is that you really have to build Epicurean philosophy from the ground up and start with the physics. You know, you start with some very basic assumptions, you know, atoms and void and that sort of thing. And as you build on it, you see where he’s getting his ethics from. It’s not just he’s making up ethics out of the blue and sort of pulling things out of the air, but it’s actually built on that foundation of the physics and knowing how to know things and all that kind of stuff. And it eventually leads you to the letter to Menorchius. But I think that a lot of people just sort of take the top bricks in the wall and say, oh, here, I’ll just take these. It’s not, you know, the wall, it’s not important. But I think that having that foundation, really, it does give you a much broader perspective and a much firmer perspective on Epicurean philosophy in general. While we’re talking about the modern books, I don’t want to ignore Francis Wright’s A Few Days in Athens. I don’t think even everybody here on this podcast has at this point read the entire book of Francis Wright. But she’s a fascinating figure. And her book is in many ways, I would almost say, a brilliant exposition of Epicurean ethics. I continue to be amazed at how well written it is. Sometimes we think today in terms of let’s write some screenplay or some light presentation of Epicurean ethics about what life was in the garden and so forth. And that would be a great thing to do. But I quickly realized how difficult a task it would be. But A Few Days in Athens, for those who have not read it, it is an amazingly detailed exposition, I guess, is the word I want to use. Although that’s not the best way of expressing how she takes the information that comes from the ancient text and turns it into a story in ways that I think are extremely perceptive. And while she has some areas in ways that she does follow Epicureus totally, it’s really an interesting book for those who have any interest in the fact that she was a prominent female social reformer in the early 1800s. A friend of Thomas Jefferson and a friend of Jeremy Bentham knew these utilitarians in England and so forth. And a brilliant mind of her own. And I think it would be remiss if we didn’t at least mention Katherine Wilson’s book, How to be Epicurean, too, that I think that was the first sort of popular book for a general reader audience that I think that I ran across. And I think it does a good job in some general ways. I think we even discussed maybe it gets a little too political. But I think she does a good job, too, of providing a good broad perspective on the philosophy itself. But sorry, she still can’t hold a candle to Emily Austin as far as I’m concerned. But I think it is a good, solid book to include in your reading. Yeah, I’ve read Katherine Wilson’s book, and I agree that hers is probably second right now to what I would recommend behind Emily Austin. Another thing I wanted to bring up about Katherine Wilson’s book that Emily Austin continues on in hers is that Katherine Wilson was one of the first that I saw to really bring out the differences between Epicureus and the Stoics. There is such a tradition in modern writing about Epicureus to sort of bring the two of those together and talk about them as if they’re almost exactly the same thing. I think in terms of Martha Nussbaum’s book on therapy of desire that a lot of people have read that I think talk about Epicureus and the Stoics as if they’re more similar than they really are. They come down on the side of Stoicism when they think that there’s a difference between the two. But Katherine Wilson has been willing to say in her books some things that I think were very helpful in pointing out the superiority of Epicurean philosophy over Stoicism. And I know Emily Austin shares the same point of view. And I should not neglect to say this, that probably the reason that the Epicurean Friends Forum exists and the way we ended up going in a different direction from where we started, which was as a Facebook philosophy group dedicated to Epicurus, is that there’s such an emphasis on Stoicism out there nowadays that discussion in general philosophy groups turns so much on Stoicism that people who want to discuss Epicurus can hardly get in their own words. It’s because you just get crowded out by the discussion of Stoicism. But both Katherine Wilson and Emily Austin do a very good job of pointing out the inconsistencies and differences between those two approaches, which remains a significant issue for those people who are trying to study Epicurus. I would definitely agree, yeah, because I mean, I think I mentioned briefly that I came through it through looking at Stoicism and that sort of thing. Nussbaum’s book was actually one of the first books I actually bought at the used bookstore, and I remember reading the Epicurean sections. And one of the things that I liked about Epicureanism from reading her book was that it did invite all the levels of society in and women and the enslaved and all that sort of were welcomed into the garden. I thought that was such a novel approach in the ancient world. I do fully agree that there are other issues with Nussbaum’s work and her interpretation. But the sections where she talks about life in the garden and that sort of thing, I thought was just really interesting and really piqued my interest. And I haven’t actually gone back and looked at her book since I initially looked at it. But those sections that she puts in with the characters that she uses to convey what the philosophy was doing, I thought were interesting and sort of made me want to delve deeper. So I’m glad that I found other materials after hers. So I’m actually somewhat deficient on my reading of some of the modern literature. Of course, I’ve read Emily Austin’s book in advance of our interview with her on this podcast. But I have not read Catherine Wilson’s book, and I’m sure there are a lot of other great works out there that I haven’t even touched, unfortunately. But, you know, I mentioned it earlier in the episode in regards to Lucretius. And this is a very, very controversial pick. But Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve is really fascinating. And it’s so fascinating that I continue periodically to listen to it on Audible again and again and again. It’s such a comprehensive survey, not necessarily of the philosophy itself, but of the history of it and all of the different names that are associated with it in all these different time periods. People that would otherwise generally just pass under the radar. And so for that, it’s indispensable to me. But one thing I will say about that book is that there is a chapter, and I think it’s chapter 8 or chapter 10. And this is the chapter where Stephen Greenblatt just puts in a number of subheadings or bullet points on the major outline of the philosophy. And that part in particular, I think, is actually a really, really good condensed introduction to Epicurean philosophy. And if you don’t want to read through however many hundred pages of papal renaissance court intrigue and the Council of Constance and the book hunting aspect of it and the life of medieval scribes and so forth, which there is a lot of all of that in this book. But that one chapter in particular, I thought was really good as sort of my introduction. And it was good for clarifying some of the major points. I will second that, Joshua. I think you’re absolutely right. That is a nice little condensed summary of the philosophy and that sort of thing. I think this discussion we’re having here brings up, in my mind at least, how much do you have to read? I think that Martin, whenever we started out, had an interesting take that he found that how he was living his life before he discovered Epicurean philosophy, sort of that’s what brought him to the philosophy itself, that it sort of mirrored what he was already doing and sort of resonated with him that way. And I know Cicero rails against people that, you know, it’s like, oh, that any Tom, Dick or Harry can come into the garden and they welcome them in. And it’s like, do they know Epicurean philosophy better than me? Oh, my heavens. You know, that sort of thing. So I’m curious to get, this is sort of out of left field, I suppose, but I’m curious, how much do you think people have to read to really get the philosophy? I know that we have numerous academic papers on the forum in the files section. We have books that we’ve been talking about. We’ve been talking about all those sorts of different texts and everything. But I’m curious as to how much do you have to know to sort of start, for lack of a better way of putting it, living as an Epicurean? I know that Philodemus had talked about, you know, you have to return to the books and you have to know the books and that sort of thing. But I’m curious if anybody has any opinions. But I thought that it’s an interesting sort of thing since we’re talking about all the books and texts that we brought up here. I totally agree. That is an excellent question. And there’s really no one solid answer that anyone’s going to be able to give you. One thing I would caution is that brevity tends to invite misconstruction or error, right, in interpretation. If you just take, for example, the principal doctrines, even though that’s like Epicurus’s personally curated list of like, these are the 40 most important things that you need to know. Just because he wrote them down like that, if we’re taking that textual argument that it was Epicurus who wrote them down, and Cicero cites the Curiae Doxi or the principal doctrines as coming from Epicurus himself in this book, too, that we’ve been going through. So even if you start from that understanding, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to click in the right way, right, in your mind. It’s very possible to misread things. And the potential to misread things, I think, increases as you try to condense it and condense it and condense it. Which brings us also just to sort of what you said exactly right there, that the whole tetrapharmacos four-line remedy thing that a lot of people will point to as, you know, that’s, you know, everything you need to know about Epicurean philosophy right there. And I think what you were saying, Josh, is perfect because I think what you have in those condensations is a summary of the philosophy, but you have to know the context of the philosophy to know what those condensations are actually saying. Because it’s so easy, like you said, brevity breeds, well, it was perfect. I wish I would have written it down. But I think that you can misconstrue brevity for, you know, like this is all you need to know, whereas it’s a summary of, you know, X number of pages of other stuff that it’s referring back to. Yeah, and Don, that also needs to go further because one of the central problems of translating a document from Greek or from Latin into English is that the translator is making a series of choices. And the same condensation that I’m talking about happens there where one word in Greek can have a whole variety of meanings and connotations and subtext. But you can only pick one word when you translate it in English and the connotations might be different. The subtext might be different. I can take this time, Don, to champion your commentary and translation of the letter to Monoikius because it’s precisely that project of breaking the text down into what we would have called when I was in college a close reading, right? Break it down into sort of its smallest components and deal with it on that level before you put it all back together, because that’s going to give you a much better foundation in the text than if you had just picked up any random English translation and just started from there. And you can kind of mimic that actually by having two translations on hand and just comparing them or three translations and comparing them. And we’ve tried to do that throughout the throughout the history of this podcast. It’s a challenge to constantly have multiple documents in front of you, but it’s very, very rewarding. Well, you’re very kind. I appreciate the kind words for my translation. That was an interesting project. I hope to do maybe some more of that with some other texts as well. So thank you very much. Don, I particularly like the way you phrased the question, how much do you need to read? Because I’m looking at the clock in terms of our episode today, and I’m looking at this long list of topics that I wanted to discuss. But I think this is a good way to discuss the next section of things to cover today. You’ve asked, how much do you really need to read? Well, most of us on this podcast have probably read a lot more Epicurus than most people have read. Certainly not academics. We’re not professional philosophers. But we’ve been spending a lot of time over the last several years on this podcast reading deeply into these Epicurian materials. But I don’t think that any of us are going to say that we have reached our final understanding of what Epicurus was saying on a number of issues. And I think I can list a couple of those issues. In listing them, we’re not going to be able to resolve them. The reason I’m bringing them up is because we haven’t resolved them. But continuing to discuss them and talk about them is, I know, in my own case, leading me to different and new understandings of them that I had when I started. There are many issues that you just can’t pick up by a single reading of the letter to Menesius or even Lucretius. There’s questions on the proper perspective of the relationship between reason and propositional logic. That’s an issue that interests Martin a lot that we discuss frequently. And Epicurus has some strong things to say that people use against him as if he’s against learning and against logic when we don’t think that the truth at all. There are questions about how long do you want to live and just the issue of life itself. We were discussing a new variation of it today in terms of what happens when a child dies young and how do we look at that situation? Is that a bad thing for the child, bad thing for us and so forth? But the whole issue of coming to terms with the fact that we are mortal, we’re not going to live forever, but how long should we wish to live is a question that I think there are better ways of understanding than most of us, at least that I can currently explain. There’s a question of the issue of pleasure. Of course, we go round and round on different aspects of the different types of pleasures and how to choose between them and among them and categorize them. And I’ll go ahead and mention the terms catastrophic and kinetic pleasure. And depending on where you start in your reading on Epicurus on the Internet or in modern books, you’ll find people going off in this direction of dissecting pleasure into different aspects that lead to all sorts of different conclusions about what Epicurus was saying. And it’s a very complicated subject, which relates directly to one of the most famous terms in Epicurian philosophy in the letter of Minoistius. Epicurus says, by pleasure, we mean the absence of pain. And I know my own belief about what Epicurus is talking about has been changing over the years and is different today than it was certainly 10 years ago and probably different than it was 10 weeks ago. There’s so much depth of detail that simply reading a book and stopping is not going to be sufficient to allow you to understand and then apply the depths of all this, which again takes us back to what Epicurus said in the letter to Minoistius about the way to live as gods among men is to study these things and talk about these issues with other like-minded people and to continue to pursue them. And it may well be that there is no end point to that, that nobody, even Epicurus himself, was satisfied with the results of his study at any particular point in his life. It’s a continuing source of enjoyment and a continuing source of pleasure that becomes more and more important the older you get and in difficulties in life. So many different interesting aspects of these things. But I’ll stop on my list and just throw that out there that I think all of us have slightly different variations on takes on these issues that there’s no way to really stop and say that you’ve reached a final understanding and this is what I’m going to do. You have to live your life moment to moment and day to day and you have to make decisions. But on the other hand, the work of philosophy is never done, it seems like. I will put in a plug for the EpicureanFriends.com forum that I could almost guarantee you that I would not have stuck with the philosophy had I just been a lone ranger Epicurean out there in the world. The forum is such a valuable resource for discussing things and getting other viewpoints and being able to share things that you learn yourself and getting feedback from those from other of the forum members. I don’t know of any other place on the internet that does what the forum does. And so kudos to you, Cassius, and to Calicini for being the moderators, keeping things organized and that sort of stuff. I think it’s just absolutely invaluable. And I hope that people who are interested in Epicurean philosophy find their way there. I know I put a link on the Wikipedia page, so hopefully they’ll find their way there from there if nothing else. But the resources that the forum provides, the thoughtful people that are part of it, including on this podcast and some of the other ones who are regular posters on the forum, it’s just absolutely amazing the resources that it is. So I encourage people, if they come across this podcast by searching for Epicureanism on the podcast listings that they have, definitely check out the forum itself. It’s a great place to meet other like-minded people, so to speak. Basically, two things I want to do still today is talk about some of the texts we haven’t talked about. But in relation to what Don just said, talk about some of the projects that have come out of the forum, not just this podcast. I’ve already mentioned Don’s translation and commentary to the letter to Minoikius. Nate has done a lot of good work in terms of one I love in particular. He’s taken a map of sort of ancient Greece and Rome and Asia Minor and plotted various Epicurean communities that are known to have existed in places all over the ancient Mediterranean, including as far north and west as France, for example. It really gives you a new perspective on the philosophy, just like the timeline that we’re working on. At one point, I did a video on the early Epicureans and how they all sort of came to be a set. Don has another project. He did a video on the location of the garden in ancient Athens and to me kind of brought some clarity to the issue, I think, that was otherwise lacking. And we definitely invite and value that kind of contribution. And if I’m forgetting anything, please let me know because that stuff is so, so helpful. I’m glad you mentioned Nate, and there are other examples beyond Nate. But the general point is that engaging with others who are working on the same project is just a critically important way of keeping up your own enthusiasm. The people who have been part of the podcast and who post regularly on the forum, that’s what keeps your interest in applying the philosophy going. And it’s so much different than just reading a book and putting it off on a shelf again. The Internet allows us to do things that we would never have been able to do for thousands of years before, to stay in touch with people who are geographically dispersed, but who have the same interest and would like to pursue the same projects. As a team, the teamwork aspect of things, the group sourcing of the research and the work that we’re doing is so important to moving forward. And again, I’m just able to list the things I want to talk about without pursuing them. But that leads into the challenges that we have faced and we continue to face in this project. But I’ve got several listed here that are going to be in the show notes. But the whole issue of keeping the focus on the big picture and not pursuing rabbits too far down their holes, everybody comes to the forum with particular interest. And it’s very easy to get diverted off into a specific trail of something that is important and yet can take the focus away from the big picture of what you’re doing and your understanding of the philosophy and the applying of the philosophy. And so you have to find ways to accommodate everybody, those who are just starting to read Epicurus, while at the same time, those who have read a lot of Epicurus, they’re going to have significantly different interests. And of course, again, a reference to the reason the forum exists, there’s a constant temptation to just, okay, Epicurus said this, let’s fit him into this pattern and compare him to Stoicism or Buddhism or Humanism or many other different isms that you might come up with. And just sort of develop your own eclectic view of things, which is ultimately what you’re going to do in a sense that you’re ultimately wanting to interpret and incorporate Epicurean philosophy in your own life. But if you don’t, first of all, understand what Epicurean philosophy is about on its own, then you never really, I think, can appreciate how it all fits together and how it may not fit together with other points of view. We regularly talk about different techniques for happier living. Everybody wants to live happier. Everybody wants to live more calmly and so forth. But you run into issues that techniques or practices that have been developed in a competing tradition may incorporate presumptions and incorporate issues that will take you down a road that would lead you very far from the direction that Epicurean points. So it’s very important to not just be like that bee flitting from flower to flower and gathering pollen without some idea of whether what you’re gathering is the type pollen that is going to be good for you or could potentially be very damaging. So we try to provide guidance on issues like that. And also, at the same time, in terms of avoiding being diverted, one of the things that is sort of characteristic of what we’re doing is that we don’t go off into partisan politics, especially with this recent interview we’ve done with Dr. Boeri. I think all of us have interests in partisan political matters in our own lives, in our own geographic areas and issues that confront us locally. But those can be so divisive that we’ve made the practical decision to put those aside for purposes of studying the philosophy and understanding that and not getting divided on issues that really aren’t core to the philosophy itself. Which leads me to the last on my bullet list here of challenges is to again reference Frances Wright, an amazing book that she wrote in A Few Days in Athens. And yet that book was issued relatively early in her life. And to my knowledge, she did not return to make a big point of Epicurean philosophy throughout the rest of her life, which I’m sure she had good reasons for doing. And in fact, in some of her later articles, you can see Epicurean aspects to it. But sometimes you can just come in like a shooting star or just burn out in Epicurean philosophy. And I think the major benefits come from appreciating it over time and not just putting it back on the bookshelf after you’ve read it, like most novels or other books that people read. Yeah, and I will say that the podcast and the forum really is a way to sort of refresh, and I will just make it personal, refresh my interest across time because there’s always new questions coming up on the forum. There’s always interesting topics coming up on the podcast. There’s new people coming in asking questions that those of us who have been doing this for a few years can provide some information from a perspective maybe that the newer member in the forum or the person just interested in Epicurean philosophy brings. And then on the other hand, there’s all of you that are versed in the philosophy, and then we get to throw ideas back and forth and refine our own understanding as well. So it’s a podcast and the forum really give a good, broad approach to the philosophy from a great number of different perspectives. Okay, and as we come to the end of the podcast today, we’re going to stop today, but we’re not going to stop the podcast for the future. We’re continuing on, hopefully for many, many episodes after this one. There’s projects that we’re working on. I know Don has mentioned an idea of trying to come up with a daily reading list of Epicurean texts, and there’s many projects that we would like to pursue. We’re frequently asked about, where can I find a collection of these Herculanean papyri? Where can I find a collection of all these fragments that people talk about, but which are contained, if anywhere, only buried in academic articles? Lots of projects that we can pursue to systematize the study of Epicurus, to make it more available and accessible to everyone. I know several of us, again, mentioning Nate, are working on collections of Epicurean material in new ways of combining it that are more accessible to everybody. And then just the issue of expanding the circle of participation among those who want to get more involved. We have regular weekly meetings that we make available to people who are interested in talking with us further. We have meetings on the 20th among those who are regulars with the forum. And so we’re constantly looking for new ways to expand participation to a wider group of people, while always trying to keep it consistent with the goals of the forum, that it be dedicated to Epicurean philosophy and not get hijacked off in a different direction for different agendas. Our goal is not to become gurus ourselves. We’re not starting a new religion. We’re not setting up a political organization. We’re just working to connect people who want to study and discuss Epicurus to benefit from the philosophy in their own lives. We’re a group of Epicurean friends. Exactly. Let’s use that as a way to begin to close the episode. Let’s go around the table and see who has thoughts as we begin to wrap up. Martin, we’ve traditionally for years gone with you first for closing thoughts as we have gotten to the end of an episode. Anything to add today? No. Thank you very much for everything you and Joshua and Don have said. So I pretty much agree with everything. So this relieved me from the effort to say the same thing. And what I want to confirm is that I also think that Emily Austin’s book is the best modern book philosophy-wise. I think it’s spot on. It interprets the philosophy as we do. And for how to live it, for those people who choose this philosophy, once having the rudimentary understanding, they can just follow their intuition. So after their understanding, they can sharpen the intuition how to live like Epicurean. And it doesn’t matter if they don’t really hit the optimum of pleasure or the maximum of pleasure. If they’re close to it, it’s already good enough. Perfect is not the enemy of the good, somebody said. Thank you, Martin. Calasini? I’ve enjoyed being part of the podcast. And it’s really helped me develop my understanding of Epicurean philosophy. For myself, I tend to be more focused on the ethics rather than the physics aspect of Epicureanism. As I was listening today, the thought popped in my mind about what it is that was so important for me in Epicureanism. It is a thought-changing way as one approaches dealing with life and seeking to find the best way of living, finding joy, finding pleasure. I think that Epicureanism. I think that Epicurean philosophy, the ethics of it, helps you turn your mind to what can you add into your life that brings pleasure. There are aspects, of course, where we’re going to make decisions if something is painful, that we take action to correct that and remove that pain. But I find for myself that the emphasis on adding in pleasure, moving toward pleasure, seeking out joy, and seeking out good things in life. This has been a life-changing thing for me. Because there are other philosophies or religions, I don’t want to name any names, but they put too much emphasis on suffering. And then the person involved in that is constantly looking around, oh, there’s so much suffering, and then it’s very depressing. So this is a different way of approaching life. The point is, seeing how one moves toward pleasure and moves toward the good, that is very important and life-changing in Epicurean philosophy. Okay, thank you, Calicini. Let’s go to Don next, and then we’ll wrap up with Joshua. Well put, Calicini. I think you said that very well. I will just say that it’s both an honor and a pleasure to be associated with the podcast. I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts on the forum as well. So I think, like I said, I said it earlier that I think it’s an invaluable resource for keeping one’s interest and for honing one’s understanding of the philosophy. And I look forward to continuing to be a part of the podcast and the forum in the future. So take it away, Joshua. Thank you, Don. One of the things that it’s occurred to me to say today is that, you know, Cassius says it all of the time. None of us are professional philosophers. None of us are here because of our credentials, in other words. We’re here because, for most of us, because we just happened to sign up on a forum one day. And it’s led to not only really interesting studies, but also like really good, true friendships. And that’s been absolutely priceless, really, for me. I suppose I should wrap this up by covering a topic we didn’t really get to, which is where do we go from here? And even though we don’t have firm plans, even beyond Cicero, there’s a whole wealth of stuff. Every time we finish another letter or book, I think, well, we’re running out of material. But there’s really so much stuff that we can do. There’s ancient sources we can talk about, like the Philodemus papyrus scrolls. There’s this Oxyrhynchus papyrus number 215, which some scholars think was written by Epicurus himself. Stuff we have hardly ever talked about. There’s a book called The Epicurean by Desiderius Erasmus, comparing Epicureanism unfavorably with Christianity, essentially. There’s a rather hostile poem called Lucretius by Alfred Tennyson. Satires by Horace and Lucien, one that Cassius has mentioned several times. This Hermotimus dialogue is a satire. Renaissance works by Lorenzo Valla, Cosma Raimondi, Julian Offred de la Maitre. So there’s a lot of stuff out there. I’m sure I’m missing plenty of stuff here, but there’s plenty of directions we can take this after we get done with Cicero. And of course, if nothing else, I’m always game for running back through Lucretius again. So there are fertile fields beyond, I guess is how I would cap it off. There sure are, Joshua. Before I close out for today, I’d like to go back to something Martin said a few minutes ago about how it’s not necessary, to reach perfection in an Epicurean life. And if you succeed in filling your life with the predominance of pleasure over pain, then that’s good enough. What Martin’s saying there is something I don’t think I fully appreciated myself until recently. So in closing this 200th episode, I’d like to make a point about something I think a lot of people struggle with in reading the letter to Menoicius and reading other aspects of Epicurean philosophy. What did Epicurus really mean by the, quote, absence of pain, unquote? What Martin has brought up is the important point that you don’t have to eliminate every ounce of pain from your life before you can experience pleasure. In other words, it’s not necessary to be totally pain-free before you can experience any pleasure at all. Just as we’ve been reading recently in the Torquata section of Onions, the key thing to see is that Epicureus held that there’s only two feelings, pleasure and pain. And what that means is when you’re not experiencing one, you’re experiencing the other. When you’re not experiencing pleasure, you’re experiencing pain. When you’re not experiencing pain, you’re experiencing pleasure. That means that no matter what you’re doing in your life, if what you’re doing is not painful, then what you’re doing constitutes pleasure under this Epicurean perspective. There’s nothing ascetic or hard to understand or exotic about this kind of pleasure at all. It’s any activity of your life where you’re not experiencing pain. For example, right now, when listening to this podcast, you may not be considering yourself to be experiencing the same kind of pleasure as if you were on a roller coaster or feasting at a banquet or dancing or doing any of the things that all of us associate with the more stimulating types of pleasure. But those stimulating types of pleasure aren’t the only types of pleasure that exist. And Epicureus considered all activities, all experiences of daily living that aren’t painful to be pleasure. That means that so long as this podcast isn’t bringing you pain, and as long as what you’re feeling right now is the kind of stable and normal experience of life that we all have day to day when some particular pain isn’t bothering us, then what you’re feeling is something that Epicureus tells us to consider to be as much under the definition of pleasure as the proverbial sex drugs and rock and roll. There’s a passage from page 240 of Norman DeWitt’s book that we’ve talked about a lot lately, and it’s worth reading again to emphasize this point. Here’s the quote. The extension of the name of pleasure to this normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form, freedom from pain of body and distress of mind, that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to this state was unjustified on the ground that two different things were thereby being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it is really superficial and captious. The fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state does not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it, nor that reason justifies the application, nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing. End of quote. If what DeWitt is saying is correct, and I think he’s right, then to me what you’ve got is a revolutionary way of looking at the whole pleasure and absence of pain issue. When you recognize that any activity, any experience, any feeling of daily life that is not painful falls under the definition of pleasure, then you remove the mystery from the absence of pain phrase. And you see how wrong it is to believe that Epicurus was telling people to become detached from the world or apathetic, like Stoics or Buddhists, or anybody who attempts to suppress emotion and detach from everyday life so that they can avoid every last possibility of pain. It’s not the avoidance of every last possibility of pain that is the goal of Epicurean philosophy. The goal of Epicurean philosophy is exactly what Epicurus said it was, pleasure. Pleasure widely understood, which includes any and all activities, experiences, and feelings of daily life that we don’t affirmatively find to be painful. This is how we see Epicurus experiencing pleasure on the last day of his life. When he had this terrible pain from kidney disease, but he was appreciating that his life remained worthwhile because he could offset against that pain the pleasure of all the good memories that he had from his past with his friends and his philosophy. This offsetting of pleasure against pain is the constant day-to-day experience that every Epicurean is going to have. We’re all going to experience pleasure and pain every day of our lives. But if we organize our minds and our lives properly according to Epicurean principles, we can confidently expect to experience a dominance of pleasure over pain. All this is explained forcefully by Torquatus in his argument with Cicero. But if you don’t get to that point in your reading, and this touches back on what Don was saying about how much reading you need to do. If you don’t get to the point of reading the texts that do survive and that do explain what absence of pain means, then you can just drift on and on and never get a firm idea of what that term means. And you’ll miss the real benefit of the philosophy if you think that Epicurus had some mysterious and unreachable definition of absence of pain. Also, as Don was talking about earlier in regard to the loss of so many texts, it’s also a tragedy to think about how close people can come to understanding Epicurus because they read what he says in the letter of Menorchius. They read, quote, by pleasure, we mean the absence of pain, unquote. But they don’t understand that the reverse is also true. By absence of pain, we mean pleasure. People get bewildered because just like Cicero, they insist on the customary definition of the word pleasure, which includes only those active or stimulated types of pleasures. And they don’t see that Epicurus was also including within the word pleasure all of the normal experiences of life that aren’t painful. As we’ve pointed out on the forum for years, Epicurus isn’t using the word pleasure or the term absence of pain to describe some kind of a fancy pleasure experience that only a few people can reach. And they reach only through asceticism or self-denial or some type of nirvana experience of lack of contact with the outside world. Epicurus is also not saying that there’s some kind of a worthwhile pleasure that comes when you somehow eliminated every ounce of pain from your life. It would be a tragic misreading of Epicurus to conclude those things. But unfortunately, a significant number of people seem to want to go in that direction. And they don’t read far enough to reach a common sense, pleasure equals absence of pain perspective. And so they end up backsliding into stoicism or Buddhism or worse. So just in that short comment Martin made a few minutes ago, you’ve got another example of how studying Epicurus with like-minded people can lead you to insights that you’re probably not going to be able to get if you don’t follow Epicurus’ advice and find those like-minded friends to discuss these things with. And find a way to apply these insights in your own life in a way that you yourself can understand. So I want to thank Martin for that comment. And now with that, let’s turn back to closing the episode today. Let me again thank all of our existing and our past podcasters for all of the work they’ve put into the 200 episodes that we’ve now been able to do over the last several years. I’m reminded again of what Epicurus says in the letter to Herodotus about how important it is to have an overview, outline view of the entire philosophy and how you don’t always need the details, but you need the key issues. And I know that’s what I do. And I think that’s what we’re all talking about here is that you use the study of Epicurean texts to come up in your own mind with your own systematic understanding of what the most important aspects are. And I know that I constantly continue to revise my own mental outline. I’m thinking about the fact that Thomas Jefferson did his own written outline and how written outlines can be useful as well. It depends on the type of person you are and whether you’re the person who likes to make lists and make outlines or whether you keep it all in your mind. But whether you do it on paper or on the computer or just mentally, constantly turning over the key aspects of the philosophy is a really important part of being able to apply it. And the podcast and the forum allow us to keep it fresh in our minds and constantly work on improving our formulations and our ability to understand it. So, again, I want to thank everybody who’s been a part of the podcast and been a part of the forum and thank those who’ve listened and who’ve shared information about the podcast with others on social media. We intend to continue for as long as we possibly can. So we thank you for listening today. Hope you’ll come back next week as we resume our normal sequence. And until then, drop by the forum and see us at EpicureanFriends.com. Thanks again for your time today. We’ll see you next week. Bye. Bye. you