Pocket Notes on Epicurus

[imomus]

As I get older I find myself spending more and more time "in the empire of the senses". Not in the kind of extreme, obsessive pursuits that phrase implies, though. No, just enjoying my body, my sense impressions.

Swimming, being scratched, sex, alternating between the sauna and neck-high dips in cold water, playing with my rabbit in the garden, meeting an artist and talking about art, sniffing herbs at the local market, enjoying the patterns of Turkish headscarves, taking photographs, discovering a charmingly shabby wabi sabi room (Kim's Vietnamese store on Lausitzer Platz!)... These are the sort of things that make my day.

Which brings us to Epicurus, a thoroughly sensible old satyr born in February 341 Before the Christian Era. Christ -- a short-lived, life-disliking guerilla -- is so important for us that we throw the whole calendar into reverse when he arrives, seeing everything before him as a lead-up, and everything afterwards as a consequence of his 33 turbulent years stuggling with his Father, the devil and Rome. He's so important that we've turned our seasonal agricultural festivals (the winter one, the spring one) into events in Christ's life (his birth, his death). When they're clearly really about, you know, winter and spring and natural planetary cycles. Alas, Christ isn't quite important enough for us to ask our leaders to follow his teachings, like the ones about refraining from killing or taking revenge.

But anyway, there are other philosophers. Bloody good ones, some of them, who would make life better if we listened to them. Epicurus lived to a ripe old age and believed that politics and argument was a waste of time. Here are some of the elements of his thinking, plucked from the Wikipedia entry about him:

* All good and bad derive from the sensations of pleasure and pain.

* If pain is chosen over pleasure in some cases it is only because it leads to a greater pleasure. (I lowered myself into that cold water yesterday knowing that the hot sauna would feel even better afterwards.)

* Moral reasoning is a matter of calculating the benefits and costs in terms of pleasure and pain. (Yes, but for whom? Is altruism a sensual pleasure?)

* Epicurus was commonly misunderstood to advocate the rampant pursuit of pleasure, when what he was really after was the absence of pain (both physical and mental, i.e., anxiety) - a state of satiation and tranquility that was free of the fear of death and the retribution of the gods. (This sounds quite similar to "the middle way" in Buddhism.)

* The opinion of the crowd is, Epicurus claims, that the gods "send great evils to the wicked and great blessings to the righteous who model themselves after the gods", when in reality the gods do not concern themselves at all with human beings. (Ha, I'm thinking about Kafka when I hear that!)

* Epicurus explicitly warned against overindulgence because it often leads to pain. For instance, in what might be described as a "hangover" theory, Epicurus warned against pursuing love too ardently. However, having a circle of friends you can trust is one of the most important means for securing a tranquil life. (Research has actually shown this to be the case. Drugs don't make you happy, but trustworthy friends do.)

* In contrast to the Stoics, Epicureans showed little interest in participating in the politics of the day, since doing so leads to trouble. He instead advocated seclusion. (I think this is a very "Japanese" attitude to politics.)

* Epicureans reject dialectic as disoriented: parelkousa. (I'm fond of dialectics, but it's quite possible that pursuing them is a big mistake, in terms of happiness, anyway.)

* Epicurus, in his work On the Canon, says that the criteria of truth are the senses, the preconceptions and the feelings. Epicureans add to these the focusing of thought into an impression. (Some people are really down on people who think with their senses, preconceptions and feelings. You're supposed to think analytically, hold out for evidence, and leave your feelings out of it. But books like Blink show we do a lot more with our gut feelings than we know, and do it, on the whole, rather well.)

* All sense impressions are real, while opinions are not real and tend to change. (Opinion is over-valued. But it's easy to share opinions. To share impressions well you really have to be an artist.)

* Epicurus taught at home. His garden can be compared to present-day communes. He admitted women and slaves into his school. (That's very important. There's nothing worse than a talking shop where everyone's the same gender, the same social class, the same race, and it's all opinion, opinion, opinion).

Perhaps I'll take my Pocket Notes on Epicurus into the sauna with me next time. Not literally, of course. In that hot pine cabin where the scented air reaches around your back like scalding fingers, nobody has pockets.

Comments

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Epicurus was so Tao!

Epicurus

[(Anonymous)]

I'm up blogging and read your post. My latest revelazione
on the Satyriconian Muse was Daniel Tiffany's book _Toy Medium_
where among other things he chides the world for not following
a more Epicurean atomism. The book's subject is the Materia Poetica,
all kharma is bodily.. etc.. perhaps, my assoc. and paraphr..
anyway thought you'd appreciate it. Also Roberto Calasso's new
edition of Kafka's Zurau Aphorisms is really smart as well..
I'm turning 40 this year and getting a similar vibe. working in the
garden, enjoying my chinese paper bush and flying dragon sour orange..

thnks
Lanny Quarles
Portland OR..

http://www.phaneronoemikon.org/blog/phanero.html

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, now you're almost 50 and probably more of your life is behind you than ahead of you, do you find that you are more resigned and reconciled to death than before? Do you think more about it or less about it? Does it scare you less or more?

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Yes, Momus. You're nearly dead, for chrissakes. Are you petrified?

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

reconciled to death than before?

Last I heard, he refuses it.

since no one else is taking you seriously

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

I'm 48 because I skipped 47 because it's not a number I like, so I'm almost 50. I find I fear death less now because about 70% of the time I've had here has been unhappy. I'm very practical, and I'd kind of just like to whatever might be next, because, though it's always possible that starting tomorrow, my life will be filled with endless joy, I actually think the rest of my life will not be all that happy either. So I take a lot more risks now than I used to, because, well, why not?

Some might say "happiness is not what's important; what is important is what you contribute to your world. Look at all the wonderful art unhappiness has begotten us over the years." But I think happiness is the most important thing to strive for in this life, and if you just can't seem to get it, what's the point? I don't give a shit if my unhappiness has made the culture richer, it's not worth it to enrich a society at the expense of an individual's psyche

Ps. though I don't fear death in theory, I fear the associated pain hugely. And I'm petrified of experiencing the awareness that I am about to die, alone, and forever. So I am very afraid of death, but I'm not afraid of losing this life. I don't think

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Swimming, being scratched, sex, alternating between the sauna and neck-high dips in cold water, playing with my rabbit in the garden, meeting an artist and talking about art, sniffing herbs at the local market, enjoying the patterns of Turkish headscarves, taking photographs, discovering a charmingly shabby wabi sabi room (Kim's Vietnamese store on Lausitzer Platz!)... These are the sort of things that make my day.

I'd just like to note that it would be a really bad idea for me and you to go on holiday together. Just saying. Just in case.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You scratch my back, Rhodri, and I'll scratch yours.

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

Agent 17: Leri Activate Transhuman Circuits
Agent Leri: Circuit V engaged.

[steviecat.livejournal.com]

I've noticed myself feeling like that of late too. "The small things that give pleasure", as David Thomas once sang. Visuals, smells, birdsong... It seems to become more intense with age.

[st-ranger.livejournal.com]

I love reading your blog and look forward to it each night at mignightish, checking immediately. Often I find myself in vehement opposition to you, and I confess, there's a certain amount of "dismiss the fop" involved. But this entry: genius.

That being said, it's never been more of a pleasure (for me) to withold saying things I would eventually regret in the interest of allowing an important and powerful voice to be heard unimpeded.

Make sense? Maybe not.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It would have to be a very cold night in Siberia before I'd be bored enough to play Dismiss the Fop. And what would Whimsy do out there in the snow, anyway?

[(Anonymous)]

Momus do you wear a contact lens in your good eye? If so, aren't you a little bit afraid of getting another infection and going blind altogether?

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Man, there's a lot of people worrying about your state of health today. Do they know something you don't? Or is this the blogging mafia underworld doing their "nice head you've got there, shame if anything happened to it" routine?

[(Anonymous)]

If pain is chosen over pleasure in some cases it is only because it leads to a greater pleasure.

You could go even further and say that we, perhaps, build our own hell just to climb out of it. Example - fame and performing on stage are a focused kind of paranoia that we wrap our other paranoias inside, then discard.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Oh dear, I seem to have landed in my fourth grade Greek class accidentally.

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, do you feel any jealousy towards Rhodri Marsden, now that he's better known than you are?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

We'll have to have a Google Fight (http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=nick+currie&word2=rhodri+marsden)...

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< As I get older I find myself spending more and more time "in the empire of the senses" >>

I'm going to promote myself from a 77% narcissist to an 83% narcissist, because I always see myself in Click Opera posts, I never am able to think about the ideas without placing myself in the middle of momus' comments and thinking about how they effect/influence ME

When I read your opening line, momus, I thought about Buddhism, not about hedonism, because I'm listening to "The Power of Now" and its focus on experiencing one's senses instead of listening to one's thinking. But as I read further, I started wondering if Epicurus wasn't Buddhist

Except since Epicurus was intent on avoiding pain, I suppose that is a form of attachment, so I suppose he wasn't Buddhist after all

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Here's what Deshimaru Taisen (http://www.zen-deshimaru.com/EN/sangha/deshimaru/q-r/0103.htm) had to say about the Middle Way. It's a nice demolition of Western binary oppositions:

"The final verse of the Hannya Shingyosutra is "Go, go, beyond, together, beyond the beyond to the shore of satori, to the wisdom of the Buddha'' - that is, the concrete intuition of the fundamental unity of all things: subject and object, body (or matter) and spirit, form and void. In Buddhism the middle way means not setting up an oposition between subject and object. The chief characteristic of European civilization is dualism. Materialism, for example, is opposed to spiritualism. Westerners are very fond of doctrines, of isms. Buddhism, they say, and Christianity. Their isms express the relative positions of what are taken to be distinct entities, but in reality the material and spiritual are one and cannot stand in opposition to each other. Both materialism and communism have opposed Christianity; but communism is not complete either, because it looks only at the material aspect of things, while Christianity looks only at the spiritual aspect and is just as incomplete. Some Christians are different, but for most traditional Christians their religion has to do with the spirit only. Spirit or mind and body are one thing, like the two sides of a sheet of paper. In everyday life they cannot be separated. One person is drawn to the mental or spiritual, another to the material or physical. If you want to understand, you must find the middle way. Spiritual is material and material becomes spiritual. Mind exists in every one of our cells and ultimately mind itself is body and the body itself is mind. The only things left in the end are activity and energy; they are not dualistic. The middle way integrates everything The highest dimension of all is mushotoku, the middle way. Zen is the middle way. But you must not misunderstand the word "middle": it means, in regard to material and spiritual, that you must embrace both, like the front and back of a sheet of paper. That's what makes Zen hard to understand. The middle way is the way beyond. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis: that is the form in which reasoning in the West is always set out. If material = thesis and spiritual = antithesis, then Zen lives the middle way, that of synthesis. Beyond synthesis."

I like the implication that soaking in a sauna and feeling fabulous in your body is also a highly spiritual activity. That's certainly how it feels to me...

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I knew Epicurus wasn't exactly 'epicurean', but I don't actually know much about what he is. This makes him sound pretty sane and level-headed (in a good way).

For some reasons I'm finding opinions to be particularly over-rated of late. It always seems to boil down to the Bigendians and the Littleendians.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Please elaborate.

New hedonist

[payoption07.livejournal.com]

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html

Seclusion for inclusion what a theory!

hermitary

[(Anonymous)]

Here's a lovely little website where surely much wisdom is contained.

http://www.hermitary.com/

[(Anonymous)]

Are these philosophies finding there way into any of the music you have been making recently? OK, I am really just curious about your next album, if you have got any start on it at all yet, I was trying to tie it in with your post today so as not to be completely off the subject

[(Anonymous)]

I miss my rabbit Nick. Hypnotize your rabbit by rubbing it between the ears on the top of it's noggin for me, they love it. They make the crunchy sound with their teeth and start to zone out.
-John FF

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Cats are like that too J, only with the base of the tail. A fact!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"Epicurus warned against pursuing love too ardently. However, having a circle of friends you can trust is one of the most important means for securing a tranquil life. (Research has actually shown this to be the case. Drugs don't make you happy, but trustworthy friends do.)"

I think Epicurus misses the point -- Buddhist philosophy states that it's attachment to the transient that causes the heart to ache, and it's totally right. Chasing love ardently is a type of attachment, but holding on too strongly to friendships is just another type of attachment.

Contentment is living in the moment, and accepting what it is.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think Epicurus misses the point

This is why I love the internet.

the wiki man

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

In 271 or 270 BC, the Greek Philosopher Epicurus died from a kidney stone blockage lasting a fortnight according to his successor Hermarchus and reported by his biographer Diogenes Laertius.

# 458 BC: The Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a live tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a stone.
# 270 BC: The poet and grammarian Philetas of Cos reportedly wasted away and died of insomnia while brooding about the Liar paradox.
# 207 BC: Chrysippus, a Greek stoic philosopher, is believed to have died of laughter after watching his drunken donkey attempt to eat figs.

I find I am really into walking these days. Not far, not anywhere just walking. Qi Gong helps.

[ofenheizung.livejournal.com]

Your blog reminded me of one of the coolest lines in Dantons Tod -

"Es gibt nur Epikuräer, grobe und feine. Jesus war der feinste"

Dr. O.

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

http://www.baalbek.org/contemplation.html