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

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:

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?