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]

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.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

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

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Strewth, yeah, Rhodri (and Hieronymous), death! Good point! Think about it all the time! Here's me the other day giving it a bloody good think!

[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.

[(Anonymous)]

You mean you worry more about your hairline than about your death?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[33mhz.livejournal.com]

reconciled to death than before?

Last I heard, he refuses it.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Fine, but keep your hands off my goddamn rabbit.

[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.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do still wear a lens. But no, there's no danger of the same thing happening. What's risky is storing contact lenses. If you use daily disposable lenses it's much safer. I advise people never to store lenses.

[(Anonymous)]

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

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Of course--hair is a far graver matter than something as inconsequential as death. Why would you worry about the one thing you'll never be there for?

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

[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