Epicureans, stoics, and skeptics (in "The Dream of Reason")

“...In addition to matters of style and approach, large differences between Stoicism and Epicureanism emerge in their almost entirely opposed views of nature. Although the Stoics agreed with the Epicureans that most people do not realize what sort of universe they are living in, and so are bound to end up confused in their attitudes to life, they thought that the Epicureans were just as ignorant as anyone else—if not more so. There was just one thing the Epicureans were right about: that everything was physical. In opposition to Plato and Aristotle, both the Epicureans and the Stoics were firm materialists. There were not two worlds, as Plato had said, consisting on the one hand of ordinary physical things and on the other of ideal Forms and souls. According to the Stoics, Plato’s ideal Forms were really just concepts in the mind, which is a physical thing, and so were themselves fundamentally physical. As for the soul, Plato was wrong to suggest that it consisted of some non-material stuff, and Aristotle was wrong to say that it was not made of any sort of stuff at all. For the Stoics and the Epicureans, it was made of the same material stuff as everything else. Still, on every other question about nature, the two Hellenistic schools were at loggerheads. 

The Epicureans said that the world is the unplanned product of haphazard forces; the Stoics said it is rationally organized down to the last detail. The Epicureans said that the universe does not operate with any purposes in mind and that the gods are permanently on holiday; the Stoics retorted that a beneficent God, or providence, is thoroughly in charge and always on the job. The Epicureans said that the course of nature is not wholly determined in advance—there are, for instance, random swerves of atoms; the Stoics said that everything unfolds according to fate in an inexorable chain of cause and effect, and, moreover, that it will unfold in exactly the same way again and again in a cycle of cosmic creation and destruction. The Epicureans held that each person is completely free in his actions; the Stoics denied this, because of their belief in fate (though they still held that people are morally responsible for what they do). The Epicureans said that reality consists of atoms colliding by chance in the void to form everything we see; the Stoics said that matter is suffused with a sort of fiery breath (pneuma) that animates, organizes and directs it into various shapes and forms, and that atoms have nothing to do with it...”

— Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance by Anthony Gottlieb

  

Also see

Graceful-life philosophies

I mentioned in my posted introduction to students that I consider myself a kind of epicurean, and invited them to tell us on Opening Day (for extra credit) what that means. This might help.

"Where the Hellenistic philosophies excelled was the production of what could be called secular religions. They were based on self-help–oriented doctrines often borrowed from the earlier philosophers but interpreted and presented in a way that made more direct sense to a lot of people. I'm calling them graceful-life philosophies to distinguish them from other philosophy. Their goals were practical happiness, and they were not merely theoretical about it: they provided community, mediations, and events. In this they were more like religions, but they did not identify themselves as religions and they had remarkably little use for God or gods. 

The Hellenistic graceful-life philosophies had a lot in common. The experience of doubt in a heterogeneous, cosmopolitan world is a bit like being lost in a forest, unendingly beckoned by a thousand possible routes. At every juncture, with every step, one is confronted with alternative paths, so that the second-guessing becomes more infuriating even than the fact of being lost. After a direction is chosen, one is constantly met with another tree in one's path. What do you do if you come from a culture that had a powerful sense of home and local value, and now you are lost in something vast and sprawling, meaningless and strange? The stronger your belief in that half-remembered home, the more likely you are to panic, to grow claustrophobic among the trees and beneath their skyless canopy. Hellenistic men and women felt a desperate desire to get out of the seemingly endless, friendless woods. 

The graceful-life philosophies of this period were able to achieve an amazing rescue mission for the human being lost in the woods and bone-tired of searching for home. They did this by noticing that we could stop being lost if we were to just stop trying to get out of the forest. Instead, we could pick some blueberries, sit beneath a tree, and start describing how the sun-dappled forest floor shimmers in the breeze. The initial horror of being lost utterly disappears when you come to believe fully that there is no town out there, beyond the forest, to which you are headed. If there is no release, no going home, then this must be home, this shimmering instant replete with blueberries. Hang a sign that says HOME on a tree and you're done; just try to have a good time. Thus the cosmopolitan doubter looks back on earlier generations with bemused sympathy—they were mistaken—and looks upon believing contemporaries with real pity, as creatures scurrying through the forest, idiotically searching for a way out of the human condition. After all, it isn't so bad if you just settle in and accept a few difficult ideas from the get-go."

— Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson by Jennifer Hecht

Thomas Jefferson: "I too am an Epicurean..."

And see The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt...

And Stoic Pragmatism by John Lachs...

And Epicureanism: A Very Short Introduction by Catherine Wilson

From old posts on Epicureans and Stoics--

In Happiness we turn to the Epicureans, who I generally and favorably distinguish from their Stoic cousins as more assertively pursuant of happiness, less accepting of unhappy fate, more inclined to assign disappointment not to an abstract "nature" with which we've failed to "harmonize" but to a correctable failure to identify and deconstruct our various worries and fears. The Stoics and Epicureans both offer good therapy, but the Stoics sometimes seem too quick to accede to conditions we might have hoped to alter. Acceptance, when all attempts to ameliorate an unwelcome status quo have failed, is admirable. Premature acceptance is unfortunate.

But... are Epicureans good citizens? Have they retreated too deeply into their Garden to engage responsibly in the affairs of the polis? That's one of the questions we first raised when we last took up this topic in this course. It's still open. We may be stardust, and golden, and billion year old carbon (etc.), but aren't we also every bit as much products and stewards of our own time and place? Can we be Epicurean communards and still discharge the duties of properly concerned citizens?

...

LISTEN. It's on to Catherine Wilson's Epicureanism: A Very Short Introduction in Happiness today.

We're catching up, since Tuesday's class was pre-empted by the panel discussion on Suffrage and the Constitution. The Epicureans famously retreated to their Garden commune, in pursuit of life's simpler and less mediated pleasures. Would they have been engaged at all in the sort of civic activism that brought women the vote in 1920, or that is attempting to bring young people out to vote in 2020, or that tomorrow will bring citizens (the younger the better) out to demand action on the climate crisis? Would they have acknowledged any "urgent need of acting now," if that perturbed their garden delights? Where can we find the right balance between personal gratification and public commitment?

Those are some of our questions today. Others include

• Is it in fact foolish to fear "complete and personal annihilation"? -“To fear death, then, is foolish, since death is the final and complete annihilation of personal identity, the ultimate release from anxiety and pain.” ― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things... Gutenberg etext
• Do you think Epicurus was on the right track in thinking of atomic "swerve" as a "basis for free will"? 11 If they swerve randomly and unpredictably, how does that refute or challenge determinism? Or is his point that we can try to emulate their example and be random and unpredictable ourselves? Is random unpredictability really another name for freedom? (Remind me to tell my undergrad pub story...)
• Does Epicurus's analogy of atoms to "dust motes dancing in a sunbeam" remind you, as it does me, of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot ("a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam" 12)? Do you see any parallels between Sagan's cosmic philosophy and Epicureanism? What about the "multiplicity of worlds" hypothesis vs. the view of Christian salvation as limited to "one small corner of the many world universe" etc. 16
• Do you think it will ever be possible to discover how and why the structure and activity of atoms in the brain and nervous system give rise to consciousness and the subjective feeling of selfhood?
• Do you agree that generation and dying are symmetrical processes? 51 In other words, do each of us owe the world a death? Do you find beauty and consolation in that perspective? Is death a peaceful sleep and a dispersal of spirit and soul atoms? 

Talking about these things is indeed an Epicurean delight, or can be. But gathering in the streets to demand social justice and climate sanity can too. A good Epicurean knows when to take a break in the conversation and go pound the pavements.

What matters most to an Epicurean

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9/11

The class of '27 wasn't yet alive on this dark date, but those of us who were will never forget where we were and what we were doing…

"Today is the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 22 years ago on this date, in 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two of the planes were crashed into the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center; a third crashed into the Pentagon. On the fourth, which was bound for Washington, D.C., passengers attempted to take control of the plane and it ended up crashing near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Altogether, nearly 3,000 lives were lost — all the passengers and crew on board the planes, thousands of people who worked at the World Trade Center or were near the buildings, more than 100 in the Pentagon building, and hundreds of rescue workers.

On September 11, 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said: "Ten years have passed since a perfect blue sky morning turned into the blackest of nights. Since then we've lived in sunshine and in shadow, and although we can never unsee what happened here, we can also see that children who lost their parents have grown into young adults, grandchildren have been born and good works and public service have taken root to honor those we loved and lost."

And President Obama said, 'Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11.'"

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/twa-from-monday-september-11-2017?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Questions Sep 12

 Epicureans and Stoics, LH 4-5; FL 7-8, HWT 6-8

LH

1. According to Epicurus, fear of death is based on what, and the best way to live is what? Are (or were) you afraid of death, or of dying? Are you more afraid of losing others?

2. How is the modern meaning of "epicurean" different from Epicurus's? Do you consider yourself epicurean in either sense of the term?

3. What famous 20th century philosopher echoed Epicurus's attitude towards death? Do you agree with him?

4. How did Epicurus respond to the idea of divine punishment in the afterlife? Is the hypothesis of a punitive and torturous afterlife something you take seriously, as a real possibility? Why or why not?

5. What was the Stoics' basic idea, and what was their aim? Are you generally stoical in life? 

6. Why did Cicero think we shouldn't worry about dying? Is his approach less or more worrisome than the Epicureans'?

7. Why didn't Seneca consider life too short? Do you think you make efficient use of your time? How do you think you could do better?

8. What does the author say might be the cost of stoicism? Is it possible to be stoical but also appropriately compassionate, caring, sensitive to others' suffering, etc.?

HWT

1. Who were the three great founders of American pragmatism?

2. When does philosophy "recover itself" according to John Dewey, and what should it not doubt according to Charles S. Peirce? 

3. What did Richard Rorty say pragmatists desire?

4. As earlier noted in Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland, Karl Rove said what about "reality"? What do you say about what he said?

FL

1. The people we call the American founders were what?

2. Who was Jonathan Edwards and how was he like Anne Hutchinson?

3. Who was John Wesley and what did he demand of his followers?

4. Who was George Whitefield and what did he "implant" in American Christianity?

5. What did Thomas Jefferson tell his nephew?

6. What was Immanuel Kant's "motto of Enlightenment"?

More discussion questions:

• Have you experienced the death of someone close to you? How did you handle it?
• Do you care about the lives of those who will survive you, after you've died? Is their continued existence an alternate (and possibly better) way of thinking about the concept of an "afterlife"?
• Do you consider Epicurus's disbelief in immortal souls a solution to the problem of dying, or an evasion of it? Do you find the thought of ultimate mortality consoling or mortifying?
• How do you know, or decide, which things you can change and which you can't? 
• Were the Stoics right to say we can always control our attitude towards events, even if we can't control events themselves?
• Is it easier for you not to get "worked up" about small things you can't change (like the weather, or bad drivers) or large things (like presidential malfeasance and terrorist atrocites)?  Should you be equally calm in the face of both?
• Is it possible to live like a Stoic without becoming cold, heartless, and inhumane?
• What do you think of when you hear the word "therapy"? Do you think philosophers can be good therapists? 
• Do you think "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is an appropriate goal in life? Can it be effectively pursued by those who shun "any direct involvement in public life"? 
• If the motion of atoms explains everything, can we be free? 
• Is it true that your private thoughts can never be "enslaved"? 

ALSO RECOMMENDED: De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods) Cicero's dialogue between a Skeptic, a Stoic, and an Epicurean... & JMH's smart commentary on it in Doubt: A History*... LISTEN (Sep '21)... Natalie Haynes on Lucretius and Epicurus (BBC radio podcast)... Feb 1 (more on Epicureans & Stoics)

Epicureanism: The Original Party School

Permanent Link to this Comic: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/133  

 ==

Philosophers in this comic: Epictetus. In The Enchiridion Epictetus gives the advice that in order to avoid suffering, we should not become too attached to particular things, so that when they inevitably end we are not caused undue harm. He starts with the fairly straightforward example of a cup that we like breaking:

With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed.

He then proceeds immediately to what seems a quite more drastic example:

If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.

Some may find that living in such a way is strange, to say the least.

Permanent Link to this Comic: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/264

==

Stoicism Man...The Next Great Stoic competition... Stoic apathy 

Over the years I've made a few slideshows (see "Oliver's slideshows" in the sidebar). Here's one: 

Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics from Osopher

Pursuing happiness with Arthur Brooks…and Oprah

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxA_4TdOl7P/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Feel the Bern

Happy 82d, Senator! 🎂

"Sanders says his interest in politics began at a young age. He says: "A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including 6 million Jews. So, what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.

On his way to becoming a U.S. senator, Sanders was active in the Civil Rights movement while at the University of Chicago, served as the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for three terms, and has also been a Head Start teacher, a carpenter, and a filmmaker.

Sanders is fond of calling himself"democratic socialist," saying: "All that socialism means to me, to be very frank with you, is democracy with a small 'd.' I believe in democracy, and by democracy I mean that, to as great an extent as possible, human beings have the right to control their own lives. And that means that you cannot separate the political structure from the economic structure. One has to be an idiot to believe that the average working person who's making $10,000 or $12,000 a year is equal in political power to somebody who is the head of a large bank or corporation. So, if you believe in political democracy, if you believe in equality, you have to believe in economic democracy as well."

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/twa-from-friday-september-8-2017?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

“What’s your ikigai?”

"What are your reasons for living? What gets you going in the morning? What is your purpose in life? These are tough questions about which philosophers, novelists, and now increasingly scientists have been working for literally millennia.

There is a single Japanese word that encapsulates all such questions: ikigai. According to the Oxford English Dictionary ikigai is "a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living."

So a very good, and deceptively simple question is: what's your ikigai?"
…
https://open.substack.com/pub/figsinwinter/p/whats-your-ikigai?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Concern for the health of American democracy

Today, at the initiative of the George W. Bush Institute, U.S. presidential foundations and centers for thirteen presidents since Herbert Hoover released a statement expressing concern about the health of American democracy. The statement notes that while the diverse population of the United States means we have a range of backgrounds and beliefs, "democracy holds us together. We are a country rooted in the rule of law, where the protection of the rights of all people is paramount."

"Americans have a strong interest in supporting democratic movements and respect for human rights around the world because free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home," the statement reads. "But that interest is undermined when others see our own house in disarray." Without mentioning names, it called on elected officials to restore trust in public service by governing effectively "in ways that deliver for the American people." "The rest of us must engage in civil dialogue," it said, "respect democratic institutions and rights; uphold safe, secure, and accessible elections; and contribute to local, state, or national improvement."

Traditionally, ex-presidents do not comment on politics, and this extraordinary effort is the first time presidential centers have commented on them. Because this step is unprecedented the Eisenhower Foundation chose not to sign, although it commended the defense of democracy. But the centers for Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all did.

That the executive director of the George W. Bush Institute felt obliged to take a step that is a veiled critique of today's Republican Party—Bush's party—is a sign of how deep concern over our democracy runs. David Kramer, the Bush Institute's executive director, said the statement was intended to remind Americans that democracy cannot be taken for granted and to send "a positive message reminding us of who we are and also reminding us that when we are in disarray, when we're at loggerheads, people overseas are also looking at us and wondering what's going on."

…

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/september-7-2023?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

The secret to life, according to Russell

Bertie actually had more interesting things to say about this in his Conquest of Happiness...

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cw1YsyGs0IB/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=ZGUzMzM3NWJiOQ==

Jane Addams

John Dewey's friend and inspiration...

Today is the birthday of social reformer and peace activist Jane Addams, born in Cedarville, Illinois (1860). When she was in her 20s, she and her friend Ellen Gates Starr took the Grand Tour of Europe, an excursion that was popular for young people at the time, in which they traveled widely before choosing marriage or school. Addams had already graduated from the Rockford Female Seminary in 1881, but she also suffered depression, and physical pain related to a childhood disability, and she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do.

Addams and Gates toured the social settlements in London, which were housing units dedicated to assisting the large influx of immigrants to the city. The social settlements were created as a response to issues created by poverty, education, and urbanization. While in London, Addams visited a vegetable market and was appalled at the sight of vendors throwing bread and food in the air as a sport for paupers. The paupers clawed and scraped for tiny morsels of food. Addams was struck by how inhumanely the poor were treated. She and Gates vowed to do something when they returned to Chicago. She said, "We have all accepted bread from someone, at least until we were fourteen." For the rest of her life, she never forgot the sight of the paupers in London, their hands raised desperately in the air for food. Even watching dance performances and doing calisthenics reminded her of their desperation.

Addams lived in Chicago's 19th Ward, which was populated mostly by immigrants from Poland, Mexico, Greece, Russia, and Bohemia. She was alarmed by the number of women who were forced to leave their children at home to go to work. Some of them even tied their children to chairs to keep them safe. She and Gates raised money from other wealthy women, and found a large mansion in need of repair. They named it Hull-House, and within two years, they were serving 2,000 residents a week.

Hull-House held classes in cooking, English language, and citizenship, and even operated a day care, library, art gallery, and a kindergarten. Addams was a firm believer that education could lift children from dire circumstances. She said: "America's future will be determined by the home and the school. The child becomes largely what he is taught; hence we must watch what we teach, and how we live."

Addams was a prolific and ardent supporter of peace, cofounding The Women's Peace Party and serving as the first president. She was so committed to change within the city of Chicago that she took a post as the garbage inspector for the 19th Ward at a salary of $1,000 a year. She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Yale University, and she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Jane Addams lived at Hull-House until her death in 1935. She once said: "I am not one of those who believe — broadly speaking — that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislatures, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance."

Her books include Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922) and 20 Years at Hull-House (1910).

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/twa-from-wednesday-september-6-2017?r=35ogp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Questions SEP 7

 Skepticism-LH 3. FL 5-6, HWT 4-5.

LHP 3

1. How did the most extreme skeptics (or sceptics, if you prefer the British spelling) differ from Plato and Aristotle? What was their main teaching? Do you think they were "Socratic" in this regard?

2. Why did Pyrrho decide never to trust his senses? Is such a decision prudent or even possible?

3. What country did Pyrrho visit as a young man, and how might it have influenced his philosophy?

4. How did Pyrrho think his extreme skepticism led to happiness? Do you think there are other ways of achieving freedom from worry (ataraxia)?

5. In contrast to Pyrrho, most philosophers have favored a more moderate skepticism. Why?

FL

1. What did Anne Hutchinson feel "in her gut"? What makes her "so American"?

2. What did Hutchinson and Roger Williams help invent?

3. How was freedom of thought in 17th century America expressed differently than in Europe at the time?

4. Who, according to some early Puritans, were "Satan's soldiers"? DId you know the Puritans vilified the native Americans in this way? Why do you think that wasn't emphasized in your early education?

5. What extraordinary form of evidence was allowed at the Salen witch trials? What does Andersen think Arthur Miller's The Crucible got wrong about Salem?

HWT

1. Logic is simply what? Do you consider yourself logical (rational)?

2. What "law" of thinking is important in all philosophies, including those in non-western cultures that find it less compelling? Do you think it important to follow rules of thought? What do you think of the advice "Don't believe everything you think?"

3. For Aristotle, the distinctive thing about humanity is what? How does Indian philosophy differ on this point? What do you think is most distinctive about humanity?

4. According to secular reason, the mind works without what? Are you a secularist? Why or why not?

5. What debate reveals a tension in secular reason? How would you propose to resolve the tension?

==

An old post on skeptics...

==

Pyrrho was an extreme skeptic, who'd abandoned the Socratic quest for truth in favor of the view that beliefs about what's true are a divisive source of unhappiness. But most philosophers do consider themselves skeptics, of a more moderate strain. 

The difference: the moderates question everything in order to pursue truth, knowledge, and wisdom. They're skeptical, as Socrates was, that those who think they know really do know. But they're still searching.  Pyrrhonists and other extreme ancient skeptics (like the Roman Sextus Empiricus) find the search futile, and think they can reject even provisional commitment to specific beliefs. 

My view: we all have beliefs, whether we want to admit it or not. Even those who deny belief in free will, it's been said, still look both ways before crossing the street.

So let's try to have good beliefs, and always be prepared to give them up for better ones when experience and dialogue persuade us we were mistaken.

"Skepticism is the first step toward truth."
- Denis Diderot

Diderot, born #onthisday in 1713, is probably best known for editing the "Encyclopédie" - the 'dictionary of human knowledge'.

Find here Diderot's Wikipedia entry (oh irony  )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Diderot

Learn more in a 1.5 minute video about this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C71vkrsiyKE

==

Skeptic Magazine-

It's hard to take the legend of Pyrrho seriously. 

Skepticism cartoons...

 

"Rather appropriately for a man who claimed to know nothing, little is known about him..."*

Pyrrho

First published Mon Aug 5, 2002; substantive revision Tue Oct 23, 2018

Pyrrho was the starting-point for a philosophical movement known as Pyrrhonism that flourished beginning several centuries after his own time. This later Pyrrhonism was one of the two major traditions of sceptical thought in the Greco-Roman world (the other being located in Plato’s Academy during much of the Hellenistic period). Perhaps the central question about Pyrrho is whether or to what extent he himself was a sceptic in the later Pyrrhonist mold. The later Pyrrhonists claimed inspiration from him; and, as we shall see, there is undeniably some basis for this. But it does not follow that Pyrrho’s philosophy was identical to that of this later movement, or even that the later Pyrrhonists thought that it was identical; the claims of indebtedness that are expressed by or attributed to members of the later Pyrrhonist tradition are broad and general in character (and in Sextus Empiricus’ case notably cautious—see Outlines of Pyrrhonism 1.7), and do not in themselves point to any particular reconstruction of Pyrrho’s thought. It is necessary, therefore, to focus on the meager evidence bearing explicitly upon Pyrrho’s own ideas and attitudes. How we read this evidence will also, of course, affect our conception of Pyrrho’s relations with his own philosophical contemporaries and predecessors... (Stanford Encyclopedia, continues)

* 

10 Essential Works of Greek Philosophy

10 Essential Works of Greek Philosophy
https://www.thecollector.com/greek-philosophy-essential-works/

College Students: School Is Not Your Job

To get the maximum value out of those few golden years, treat them like leisure in the truest sense of the word.

...College freshmen who just arrived on campus have heard, from parents and politicians alike, that college exists mainly for the sake of work. Colleges themselves tout their graduates' employment rates, starting salaries and career networks as a major selling point.

Students have gotten the message. An overwhelming majority of first-year students tell pollsters that getting a better job is a major reason for going to college. Across 25 years of teaching at five universities in three states, I have heard students consistently call school their "job." Given the cost of attending a four-year college, it's reasonable that they want assurance their degrees will lead to higher earnings.

But the expectation that college will help them land a job has led too many students to approach college like a job in its own right: a series of grim tasks that, once completed, qualifies them to perform grimmer but better-paid tasks until retirement. That's a shame, because this mentality leaves no room for what college should primarily be about: not work, but leisure.

College is a unique time in your life to discover just how much your mind can do. Capacities like an ear for poetry, a grasp of geometry or a keen moral imagination may not "pay off" financially (though you never know), but they are part of who you are. That makes them worth cultivating. Doing so requires a community of teachers and fellow learners. Above all, it requires time: time to allow your mind to branch out, grow and blossom.

The 20th-century German philosopher Josef Pieper might have said that when students see college solely in terms of work, they deny their own humanity. Pieper points out in his 1948 book, "Leisure: The Basis of Culture," that the word "school" comes from the Greek "schole," which means leisure.

Pieper borrows his idea of leisure from Aristotle, who saw contemplation as the highest human activity and thus essential to happiness. "For we do business in order that we may have leisure," Aristotle wrote, implying that leisure must therefore be a greater thing than work...

For all but the most fortunate, earning power is an inescapable concern throughout a student's life. But if it's the only value that defines a life, then students don't need a true education at all. They don't need to construct a vision of the whole world and their place in it. They don't need to address the larger questions that arise through open-ended discussion with professors and peers. They just need narrowly focused training...

It's not easy to make space for leisure within universities that look increasingly like corporations. It's not easy to fit open-ended contemplation into a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. Still, at their best, colleges and universities offer an alternative to the culture that values people solely for their labor.

Yes, a college education will help someone earn more in a career. That's a good thing. But life is much more than work. I am certain that if students show an interest in questions beyond how to become better workers, if they exhibit a desire to learn for its own sake, they will meet people who are just as eager for it as they are. Jonathan Malesic 

Bowie on aging

Good way to think about it...

https://www.instagram.com/p/CwLBUhSu97C/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Questions SEP 5

Posting early this week so you can take Labor Day (Monday) off (if you don't procrastinate)... See you Tuesday. jpo

In CoPhi it's time again for Aristotle. This time last semester, on August 30, that serendipitously coincided with the lead-off slot I'd been asked to fill in the Honors Fall Lecture Series [slideshow]. It also coincided with the kickoff of our Environmental Ethics course's discussion of the Kentucky sage Wendell Berry, so I found myself looking for points of intersection between Aristotle and Wendell--specifically on the subjects of friendship and happiness. Having already noticed some affinity between Aristotle and Socrates, I then also detected an Aristotelian strain in the farmer-poet from Port Royal. That again leaves Plato the odd man out... (continues)

==

LHP 2

1. What point was Aristotle making when he wrote of swallows and summer? Do you agree?

2. What philosophical difference between Plato and Aristotle is implied by The School of Athens? Whose side are you on, Plato's or Aristotle's?

3. What is eudaimonia, and how can we increase our chances of achieving it, and in relation only to what? Do you think you've achieved it?

4. What reliance is completely against the spirit of Aristotle's research? Are there any authorities you always defer to? Why or why not?

FL

5. What did Sir Walter Raleigh help invent (other than cigarettes) that contributed to "Fantasyland" as we know it today? Was he a "stupid git," as the Beatles song says?

6. What was western civilization's first great ad campaign? Does advertising and the constant attempt to sell things to people have a negative impact on life in the USA?

7. What did Sir Francis Bacon say about human opinion and superstition? Do you ever attempt to overcome your own confirmation bias?

8. Which early settlers are typically ignored in the mythic American origin story? Also: what about the early "settlers" who were brought here against their wills and enslaved?

9. What had mostly ended in Europe, but not America, by the 1620s, and what did the Puritans think would happen "any minute now"? Why do you think people keep making this mistake?

HWT

10. What is pratyaksa in classic Indian philosophy, and how does the Upanishads say to seek it? 

11. There is widespread belief in India that the practice of yoga can lead to what? Do you think it can?

12. What is metanoetics, in Japanese philosophy?

13. What does ineffable mean?  Is it possible, though paradoxical, to use words to indicate something you can't put into words?

14. Unlike the west, religion in Japan is typically not about what? And what is it about to you?

Jimmy Buffett's changes in attitude (and mine)

 James William Buffett is gone at 76. At 66 I "don't do the things I used to do" either, and I too "still have a very happy life"...

He made so many people happy. We won't hear as much about the ones made miserable by an addictive, dissolute lifestyle romanticized by a talented son of a son of the beach.

But I still acknowledge and affirm the "moral holiday"* dimension of his life and work, as I did in Open Court's volume exploring the Parrotthead "lifestyle" and mindset. We do "have a right ever and anon to take a moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way" (Pragmatism), I'd just like to achieve it non-self-destructively. I'd like to exceed 76 and enjoy good health, clarity, energy, happiness, and freedom doing it.

"…By the time he wrote "Tales from Margaritaville" (1989), the first of his three No. 1 best sellers, he had abandoned the hedonistic lifestyle he had previously embraced.

'I could wind up like a lot of my friends did, burned out or dead, or redirect the energy," he told The Washington Post in 1989. "I'm not old, but I'm getting older. That period of my life is over. It was fun — all that hard drinking, hard drugging. No apologies.'
'I still have a very happy life,' he went on. 'I just don't do the things I used to do.'" nyt

So like him, I don't do the things I used to do either. Not piracy, drug-running, and Margaritas (much), in my case, but bourbon and beer. They held their charms. The possibility of a longer future, preferably longer than just another decade, now holds more.

Smooth sailing, JWB. Our Margaritaville flag out by the pool will fly at half-staff for you. You're really "licensed to chill" now.

*

* 

The arboreal meaning of life

https://www.instagram.com/p/CwfkzBAriLT/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

Closing the gap

Happy to report I've found the breach in security down in Dogland, a gap just wide enough for a wiener-shaped dog to squeeze through. Lucky it took her 5+ years to find it.

Virtual tour, map, & glossary of Ancient Athens

A Virtual Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Classical Greek Civilization in All Its Glory

https://www.openculture.com/2023/01/a-virtual-tour-of-ancient-athens-fly-over-classical-greek-civilization-in-all-its-glory.html

https://toot.community/@openculture/109728357109740501

Map of Athens intra muros
in Socrates and Plato's time

 

Academy

Gymnasium (palæstra) in the northern suburbs of Athens located in a park along the bank of the Cephisius dedicated to the hero Academus. It is in a grove next to that gymnasium that Plato established his school, that took the name "Academy" from it. But before that time, Socrates probably frequented the place, like many palæstræ in Athens, as can be induced from a mention of Plato at Lysis, 203a.

Acropolis

Name, meaning in Greek "higher city", given by the Athenians to the sacred rock in the center of Athens. Initially, the Acropolis was the city itself (Thucydides, II, 15, 3) and the center of public life, but when the city grew and democracy replaced kingship, public life move to the Agora and Pnyx and the Acropolis was restricted to a mostly religious role.

Agora

That part of Athens which was both the market-place and the center of public life in the time of Socrates and Plato. The Greek word "agora" comes from the verb "ageirein meaning "to gather" and designated initially the assembly of the whole people, as opposed to the council of chiefs (boulè). From there, it came to designate the location of that assembly and what happened on this location, hence its later meaning of "market-place". This is the place where Socrates probably spent most of his life, talking with whomever he chance met in the kinds of discussions Plato's dialogues so vividly depict.

Areopagus

Name of a hill of Athens dedicated to Ares (the name in Greek means "hill of Ares") on which met an assembly of elders which took its name. In the time of Socrates and Plato, the Areopagus had been deprived of most of its power after the reforms of of Ephialtes, around 462 B. C. (for more on the Areopagus, see the section on the history of Athens' institutions).

Ceramicus

Name of a public square and a suburb of Athens that owed its name to the fact that it was the potter's district (the Greek word for potter is "kerameus", from the word "keramos" meaning "clay"). The Ceramicus was also the place of burial for soldier dead in wars.

Coele

Attic deme.

Collytus

Attic deme.

Dipylon

A Greek word meaning "double gated", used as a name for the Thriasian Gate, on the northwest of Athens, leading toward the deme Thria and Eleusis.

Eleusis

Attic deme and location of famous mystery cults to Demeter ; see entry on that location

Long Walls

System of defense of Athens linking the city itself to its harbor in Piræus by two parallel walls, in order to protect the communication between the city and the sea against potential ennemies, that is, the link of the city with its food supply and naval forces. The Long Walls were built between 459 and 457 B. C. at the instigation of Pericles. Another wall further east was linking Athens to another one of its harbors, Phaleron.

Lyceum

A gymnasium (palæstra) in the eastern suburbs of Athens, named after the nearby temple to Apollo Lycean (from the Greek name "lukos", meaning "wolf", an animal dedicated to Apollo). The Lyceum seems to have been a favorite palæstra of Socrates , if we are to judge by the many mentions of it in Plato's dialogues : the Lysis takes place after Socrates is stopped while on his way from the Academy to the Lyceum (Lysis, 203a) ; in the Euthyphro, Euthyphro greets Socrates by refering to his habit of haunting the Lyceum (Euthyphro, 2a) ; at the end of the Symposium, Socrates is said to have left Agathon's house in the early morning, leaving everybody else drunk and sleeping, to go strait to the Lyceum (Symposium, 223d) ; and the discussion of Socrates with the sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus retold in the Euthydemus takes place in the Lyceum (Euthydemus, 271a). It is near that gymnasium that Aristotle established his school, which, for that reason, became known as the Lyceum.

Marathon

Attic deme and location of a famous victory of Athens over the Persians ; see entry on that location

Melite

Attic deme ; see entry on that location

Odeum of Pericles

A public building in Athens built by Pericles in 445 B. C. and initially dedicated to musical performances (the name "Odeum" comes from the Greek word "ôdè" meaning "song"). It hosted musical contests during the yearly festival of the Panathenæa. It was later used also for various other purposes, serving as a tribunal, a meeting room for the assembly and more.

Olympeion

The temple of Olympian Zeus.

Panathenaic Way

The road leading from the Dipylon to the Acropolis through the Agora, that owed its name to the fact that it was the road followed by the solemn procession (pompè) that constituted the high point of the festival of the Panathenæa, in which a new dress (peplos) was brought to the goddess in her temple of the Parthenon (see Plato's Euthyphro, 2c for a reference to this procession, that also inspired Phidias for the famous frieze of the Parthenon). The Panathenæa, celebrated in honor of Athena each year in the summer (during the month of hecatombæon, that is rouhgly July, the first month of the Athenian calendar), with a more solemn festival every four years (the "Great Panathenæa"), was one of the most important festivals of Athens. It was said to have been instituted by Erichthonius or Theseus at the time when he gathered all Attic tribes (the so-called synoecism) in one "city" and was a memorial of the Athenians' autochtony, their coming from the soil of Attica itself, as was the case with Erichthonius whose birthday was celebrated druing the festival. The Great Panathenæa included sports events and musical contests (Plato's Ion is supposed to take place when the raphsode Ion comes to Athens to compete in one such contest : see Ion, 530b) and were the occasion of a large gathering in Athens of people from all parts of Greece, especially from Athens' colonies. It is during one of these festivals of the Great Panathenæa that Parmenides and Zeno were supposed to have come to Athens and to have had with Socrates the discussion reported in Plato's Parmenide (Parmenides, 127a) and during another one that the discussions reported in Plato's Timæus and Critias are said to have been held (Timæus, 21a and 26e).

Parthenon

See commentary on the map of Acropolis for more on the Parthenon.

Phaleron

Harbour of Athens ; see entry on that location

Piræus

Main harbour of Athens ; see entry on that location

Pnyx

The hill of Pnyx was the location where formal assemblies of the people (the ecclesia) were held.

Sacred Gate

The gate northwest of Athens, next to the Dipylon, so called because it was through it that the Sacred Way leading to Eleusis was leaving the city.

Sacred Way

The road leading from Athens to Eleusis and further to Delphi. It was followed, during the celebration of the Great Mysteries of Eleusis, by the solemn procession leading officials and faithfuls from the Eleusinion, the temple of Demeter at the foot of the Acropolis, to the Telesterion, her temple in Eleusis.

Salamis

Island facing Piraeus in the Saronic Gulf ; see entry on that location

Sunium

Cape at the southern tip of Attica ; see entry on that location

Theater of Dionysus

The theater dedicated to Dionysus, at the southern foot of the hill of Acropolis, where dramatic contests were held during the festival of the Great Dionysia. It started, toward the middle of the VI century B. C., when the cult of Dionysus was introduced in Athens and a wooden statue (xoanon) of the god was brought from Eleutheræ and placed in a temple built on the sacred ground (temenos) consecrated to the god, as a simple round square near that temple that was used during the festival in honor of the god for the ritual dithyrambic dance performed in circle by masked men disguised in he-goats while the crowd was watching from the slopes of the hill. It evolved along with the evolution of the Dionysia that were the matrix from which comedy and tragedy were born in the Vth century B. C. Tiers and a stage, both initially made of wood, were added, probably soon after the Persian Wars, at a time when the festival included full blown theatrical performances, and it is not until 330 B. C. (that is, after Plato's death) that the wooden seats were replaced by stony tiers as we know them today. It is in this theater (probably the first theater in the world) that the masterpieces of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were performed for the first time.

Theseion

Temple dedicated to Theseus that was an asylum for slaves. The temple now called the Theseion, on a hill west of the Agora, was in fact a temple to Hephæstus, or Hephæstion. The actual location of the Theseion is not known.

"Rescuing Socrates"

"In my sophomore year of high school, I came upon a remarkable book in a garbage pile next to the house where we rented an apartment in Queens. It was the second volume of the pretentiously bound Harvard Classics series, and it contained a set of dialogues by Plato that record the last days of Socrates’s life. This first encounter with Socrates was as fortuitous as it was decisive. There is probably no better introduction to the life of the mind than Socrates’s defense of his philosophic activity in these dialogues. For over a decade, I have used these same dialogues every summer to introduce low-income high school students to a world that, almost without exception, had been until then inaccessible and inconceivable to them. The series of short dialogues are set in the days leading up to Socrates’s execution. He emerges in them vividly and heroically. Throughout his ordeal, he insists that “the good life, the beautiful life, and the just life are the same,”9 and that no matter what the city of Athens might threaten to do to him, he cannot give up the practice of philosophy. The youth of Athens love him, but the authorities find him an unbearable nuisance and, as Jesus would come to seem to the Romans, a dangerous political liability. Indeed, the citizens of Athens, finding seventy-year-old Socrates guilty of corrupting the youth and introducing new gods into the city, condemn him to death. Socrates accepts the verdict, rejects the plan his friends hatch to whisk him away from prison before the execution, and in obedience to the laws of the city he held dear, drinks the poison at the appointed hour, surrounded by the very friends he was accused of corrupting, and philosophizing to the very end. Every year, I witness Socrates bringing students—my high school students as well as my Columbia students—to serious contemplation of the ultimately existential issues his philosophy demands we grapple with. My students from low-income households do not take this sort of thinking to be the exclusive privilege of a social elite. In fact, they find in it a vision of dignity and excellence that is not constrained by material limitations. Some of these students, as was the case with me, will go on to elite colleges and find themselves surrounded by peers far wealthier and far better educated than they. Socrates whispers to them not to mistake these marks of privilege for true expressions of merit and to find in their own intellectual integrity a source of self-worth and self-respect that surpasses any material advantage their peers might have over them. When making the case for liberal education to low-income students and families, I often point out that there is a long tradition of steering working-class students toward an education in servitude, an education in obedience and docility, an education in not asking questions. The idea that liberal education is only for the already privileged, for the pampered elite, is a way of carrying on this odious tradition. It is a way of putting liberal education out of the reach of the people who would most benefit from it—precisely the people who have historically been denied the tools of political agency. I ask them to take a look at who sends their children to liberal arts colleges and at what liberal arts college graduates go on to do with their “useless” education. Far from a pointless indulgence for the elite, liberal education is, in fact, the most powerful tool we have to subvert the hierarchies of social privilege that keep those who are down, down."

"Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation" by Roosevelt Montas: https://a.co/4O2orUP

Socrates documentaries, podcasts

 

 

 

Why Socrates Hated (Political) Democracy (School of Life)...

Buddha... Confucius... Socrates and his Athens... Socrates and the Sophists (Philosophize This podcast)...

Podcast: In Our Time: Born in 469 BC into the golden age of the city of Athens, he has profoundly influenced philosophy ever since. In fact, his impact is so profound that all the thinkers who went before are simply known as pre-Socratic.In person Socrates was deliberately irritating, he was funny and he was rude; he didn’t like democracy very much and spent quite a lot of time in shoe shops. He claimed he was on a mission from God to educate his fellow Athenians but has left us nothing in his own hand because he refused to write anything down. With Angie Hobbs, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Warwick University; David Sedley, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University; Paul Millett, Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge.

Perfect friend

https://www.instagram.com/p/CwBDQSJhylJ/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==