SO I think that instead
SO I think that instead of not updating my web page umm… ever, I will incorporate it into my class schedule and use it as a way to keep a online notes of all of the stuff that I think is uhh note worthy. I think this is a good plan. As you may have been able to tell from the title of this post I am now reading Epicurus, and what better way to thrust us into study of him than with some of his own provocative words…
“The man who alleges that he is not yet ready for philosophy or that the time for it has passed him by, is like the man who says that he is either too young or too old for happiness. Therefore we should study philosophy both in youth and in old age, so that we, though growing old, may be young in blessings through the pleasant memory of what has been; and when young we may be old as well, because we harbor no fear over what lies ahead.” - Letter to Menoeceus
So now with that out of the way I feel like doing so notes, hehe…
Looking back at the quote that I just put up it maybe easy to see what is at the center of epicurus’ philosophy, Happiness. He supports this with the very practical observation that when a person is happy they have every thing, but that when a person is unhappy they will do nearly every thing possible to fix it. I think that it would be worthy to note that epicurus thought that the best life was not the life led in public, but rather a life led in quite. He thought it best to live anonymously focusing on life’s simple pleasures. it is also worthy to note that when Epicurius lived he was completely non discriminating in who he admitted to study with him in his sect, Women, Men, slave, and other, were all welcome. This is interesting only because other philosophers of his day (ancient Greece), Aristotle for instance, held as major tenants of their own philosophies the inequality of different groups and people. SO in this respect Epicurus has been able to transcend his time and maintain that much more cultural relevance to our own time. Sorry for that aside.
The First Principles: the good life
the Gods:
I think that Epicurus makes a very interesting observation in his discussion of first principles in regard to the good life and god. He says that “the impious man is not he who confutes the gods of the majority, but he who applies to the gods the majority’s opinions” I think that what he means by this is that it is not the concept of god that makes religion bad, but rather it is the people who use god to justify their own positions. And then use that as ground for saying that every one else is wrong. Again I think that Epicurus was able to transcend his time with this line of thought.
Death: “death is nothing to us” words to live by, courtesy of Epicurus. Because all life is in sensation, and death is the absence of sensation, when we exist death is not present and when death is present we do not exist. ” We must keep in mind that the future is neither completely ours or not ours, so that we should not fully expect it to come, nor lose hope, as if it were not coming at all.”
The Moral Theory:
The goal of the happy life is the health of the body or the calm of the soul (or to avoid pain and fear). “WE have a need of pleasure at the time we feel pain owing to an absence of pleasure. when we do not feel pain it is because we are no longer in need of pleasure” therefore he declare that ” pleasure is the beginning and the goal of the the happy life. It is hard not to see the simplicity of this argument. He has taken a very simple observation based on what he see as “life” and then uses that as the bases for his philosophy, it is hard to go wrong when that is done. When feeling is used as the base of the “goodness” of everything, does it not lend it not make for an ethics that is so subjectively shaky that it can hard be called an ethics at all? I mean I would be hard pressed to try and tell you that what you thought felt good in fact did not, even if I was sure that it did not feel good to me. How is conflict of this sort dealt with inside of this system? ( I guess I will just have to find out)