Mark Alfino

Fall 2007 Grad Seminar Page for Mark Alfino

Reading and Reserach Interests

• Hellenistic conceptions of discipline, virtue, and happiness.
• Materialism and Theology in Hellenistic Philosophy.

Reading Log

9/11: Here are some notes I've been working from: [General_Notes_on_Stoicism.doc]

I'm going to focus on AA.Long's opening chapters on Epicureanism for the 9/4 class. I should have something to offer from my responses to that reading. Alfino 10:37, 29 August 2007 (PDT)

Here's my reading notes, with ample suggestions for place we might raise some questions together:

"Chapter 35: The Garden of Epicurus", Green, Peter. Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Berkeley, Calfornia: University of California, 1990.

Chapter 35: The Garden of Epicurus

Athens, Spring 306, Epicurus' main philosophy set.

Important that Epicurus' system was a quasi-religion: mem. texts, no alternative views.

-"he suffered from chronic intestinal complaints. and died, finally, in great pain, of strangury and renal calculus." 619

-motivations for empircal knowledge exclusively practical, to show how ataraxia follows from understanding nature and the gods (similar to Stoics)

Green says he's not really an empiricits, but I think we can look at his empirical reasoning abilities in admiration. Good research question.

Green's indictment: "Whether ataraxia could be described as an ideal or a noble goal is debatable: a Buddhist is more likely to assent to the proposition than a Western humanist. Epicurus certainly believed it was. But a major achievement? There is (one wants to protest) more to Hfe than conquering the fears and superstitions associated with death, the jealousies and failures inherent in ambition. What Epicurus offered was mere quietism, near-total negation, a wholesale repudiation of Hellenistic life, politics, society, eschatology. With no afterlife to look forward to, the best that Epicurus could still do with this present existence was to sit Still and try to achieve a state of negative harmony, untroubled by the demons of unreason or power, and, like Gerard Manley Hopkins' nun, "out of the swing of the sea." 626

629: " der. As De Witt says, "the first missionary philosophy was a natural preparation for the first missionary religion. ... It would have been singularly easy for an Epicurean to become a Christian.""'

630: "To kill fear, to pursue happiness and friendship, in a world where the former was considerably more widespread than the latter, was an objective as praiseworthy as it was elusive. There is a ringing defiance about the "fourfold remedy," the tetrapharmakos: "The gods are not to be feared, there is no risk to run in death, the good is easy to get, the bad easily borne with courage.""'* A hint of Nirvana here, though no Greek would ever tolerate that kind of voluntary self-eclipse. There is more to life, in the end, than ataraxia.

Long, A. A. Hellenistic Philosophy. 2nd ed. California: U of California Press, 1986.

Notes: Chapter One: Introduction

Hellenism: 323bc - 31bc : victory of Octabian over Mark Antony

-major writers of Hellenism were immigrants to Athens from Other places? Where? What do we know about these places?

-Long downplays the thesis that Hellenistic philosophy is a response to instability: p. 3

-Some details about Alexander and Diogenes. discuss a bit.

-Both Epicureanism and Stoicism principally recommended themselves as philosophies for reducing suffering and achieving happiness.

-Early or pre-Epicurean: "Aristippus' importance rests on his claim that pleasure is the goal of life. He advanced this thesis long before it was adopted by Epicurus, and Epicurean hedonism, though possibly influenced by Cyrenaic views, differs from them in significant respects. " p. 8

Interesting point on p. 9 that Platonists and Peripatetics never achieved wide appeal and were beat in popularity by Stoic and Epicurean ideas.

Stoics were trying to retain some version of the declining Olympian gods, by giving them allegorical itnerpretations.

"Eastern religious ideas infiltrated into the Mediterranean world. Some embraced them; others chose Stoicism or Epicureanism instead." 12

Chapter Two: Epicurus and Epicureanism

"his slogan 'live quietly* was not a revolutionaiy denundation of contemporary society but a prescription for attaining tranquillity. "16

17: spread of Epicureanism in Med. world.

Oenoanda - note.

Epicurus 341-270 Lucretius 94 - 55, after that: DL, Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch.

19 and ff: good intro to Epicurus as empiricist.

first glance at his cosmology and willingness to trim metaphysical claims to closely match empirical evidence.

transmission theories of perception 21, atomist sense theoyr, 23: sounds like a neural network view of consciousness.

24: Direct Images - weird

disembodied causally efficacious direct images. ???? Explanations?

(maybe made clearly by the film-strip view of consciousness coming later)

-interesting evidence, especially at p. 27 of empiriciaal reasoning advances. Epicurus really comes across as more inductive than Aristotle. and, in the following.

32ff: background in atomism, how you do ontology in ancient materialism.

finite / infinite divisibility37: the swerve. importance to theory of free will. what does this look like today? compatiblism?

41: arguments against divine involvement: (this would be great to have summarized in a short handout. Anyone?)

46: problem of god's body. why he can't have one. Hard to act with a body.

- add/losing atoms, not something that happens for god.

48: again with the "direct images" someone help!

views on death 49

view of self, view of special "no name" atoms of the soul. round ones!

film strip view of vision and thought 55

57: we are sources of swerves! (need for an open system) --relation of body/thought great description p. 57.

ideas of pleasure in relation to cessation of pain - v. important p. 61

67: limit to pleasure

Justice, friendship,theory of society.

74: remarkable passage at the end here, but also a little weird. Anyone?

"Next Morning Blogs"

Unfair to Epicurus? Applied philosophy and foundational philosophy 9/5/07

Some of you are noticing, even at the speed of our "drive by" treatment, that we have in Hellenistic Philosophers a different breed. Why aren't they giving systematic foundational accounts? Epicurus pretty much cribs Democritus, though there is an original expression of it in both the "film-strip" idea of csness and the swerve. He seems interested in epistemology, but doesn't find the need for all the machinery of Aristotle's Theory of Soul. Like the Stoics, he's not too worried about giving a wholly materialist account of soul. Weren't there supposed to be insuperable difficulties with that? But then, isn't that the research agenda (naturalism) that is producing such great results in neuro-philosophy?

If Epicurus looks "unsophisticated" or unconcerned about lots of the more speculative metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, it may be because he's doing applied philosophy. (Also, I think he sees in Plato and Aristotle the philosophical machinery of empire, and he's rejecting all that.) In applied philosophy, you often avoid filling in too deep a metaphysical grounding because you want your analysis to be a "negotiated solution" (especially in business and medical ethics issues in which there are clear and fundamental compteting values, and the patient (or business deal) is waiting). Another way of putting this is "you don't wait for the system" (Kierkegaard made fun of Hegel's "system" which was, of course, never complete). You especially don't wait for a complete philosophical system that will yield a deductively arrived at result.

So what are Hellenistic applied philosophers doing and how do we evaluate them? The difference between our Hellenistic philosophers (at least the Epicureans and Stoics) and modern applied ethicists is that Epicurus isn't just trying to settle a business ethics problem. He's trying to suggest a philosophically grounded way of living that will be demonstrably efficacious within one's own lifetime. That poses a significantly different problem than "creating a system" (from which you might infer an ethic for living). That doesn't mean you cut him slack on foundational issues, but it does mean acknowleding that his focus may be elsewhere. We should ask whether some reconstruction of his practical concepts would provide a more complete set of recommendations for hedonism. (I think there are philosophers who have pursued this project and it would be a great topic for someone.) The standards for evaluation of a practical philosophy need to engage the assumptions that must be made when one's goal is "advice for living". As a case study, you look at Plato's dismal efforts to be an applied philosopher with Dion in Sicily. It just wasn't his strength!

So, for evaluating an applied philosopher, additional thought on friendship and how that fits in with tranquility might be in order. We should also add a more complete analysis of types of pleasures in addition to sensual and social. There's intimacy, community, pleasures of achievement, pleasures of concentration. Epicurus' radically simplified world may have room for these. Remember, any empirical results from hedonic psychology would be in the spirit of Epicurean epistemology. That something you dualists have more trouble availing yourselfs of!

In the end, I don't really evaluate an ancient philosopher in a comprehensive way, as if I'm lining him or her up with contemporary ones, and putting him on trial. But I do think we can "mine" these philosophers for intrinsically fascinating issues, some really different thinking, and some resources for our contemporary projects.

Please shoot me a quick email about how the seminar is going for you at this point. I've got tons of time to meet with students, so don't be shy about coming in. Hope O'Dougherty's was fun. I'll look forward to joining you all some time.

Mark