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- Welcome and news / requests for new topics.
- Please help us stay on topic.
- Every session let’s try to cover questions like:
- What is the context of this section?
- Why included at this point in the presentation?
- What are the major points Lucretius is making?
- What are the implications of these points?
- Notes on New Topics / Announcements
- Last week we discussed:
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- Sophistry discussion - Protagoras and Epicurus’s attitude toward him. Also Pythagoras -
- Visible elements can’t be first bodies since what we see is changing.
- In terms of being happy::
- is happiness real or an illusion?
- if man is the measure of all things, are we totally in control of whether we are happy? or is there any “outside” aspect? Does a tree falling in a forest when no one is around make a sound?
- This week we will continue with Lucretius Book 1:734.
- Question about Hume - (empiricism) (Need more on this on the forum on both Hume and Hobbes)
- Issues of meaning of skepticism and knowledge - was there a point that we ‘knew” that atoms exist? When was that? Have we reached it yet?
- Teaching new students what is important. Is seeing things as they are the starting point? Requires some kind of education to see things as they are. How does one do that? Can’t tell them just to “look closer” can you? What do you give them to help?
- Analogy of learning to draw and its application to Epicurean philosophy (or anything else)
- Repetitive techniques
- Can’t just look at something and immediately presume it is true. Yes it is moving you, but a lot of things could be bringing distortion.
- Particularly of sensation to receive only what is present…
- References to Telos
- steady contemplation.. health of body and serenity of soul
- “this is why we say that pleasure is the end… of a completely happy life
- When we say pleasure is the goal…
- whom do you consider better… limit of good things…
- Cicero’s On Ends… Telos is such that we measure all other things by it…
- Bryan’s comments — the last one he mentioned is not telos but paros (?) - because there are natural limits we can talk about fulfillment — telos is well translated as fulfillment. Goal is the peras - the limit. The telos vs peras -
- Disturbance focuses on pain. Natural healthy state includes exhilaration and excitement pantelos - (fully complete) peras refers to natural limits. deep-set bondary stones are not goals. peras more in Herotodus, telos is more.
- book 25 referencing praise and blame. poorluconsti
- Bryan = was full elimination of bodily pain really the goal?
