Daily reminder that Epicurus wrote over 300 works on philosophy, natural science and ethics that are all lost.
just read horace
Moreover what did survive of his philosophy did so through Lucretius, who was essentially the ancient Roman equivalent of a redditor.
Lost natural science works are completely obsolete and not a big deal
>>25249608>redditOpinion disckidsrtbbmmmmmm
>>25249480Good. reddit faggot philosophy.
Is Epictetus worth it tho
What could have possibly made this man so chill?Without divine providence Schopenhauer and Nietzsche descend into the pits of madness and despair. But Epicurus? He was at peace with the world and himself. He believed in no afterlife. He was content with the life given to him, living it in modesty and good spirits, without demanding more.What could this man have possibly known to adopt such an attitude?
>>25249632Not to downplay Epicurus' achievements, but many ancient people didn't believe in anything similar to the Christian afterlife. Christianity probably made the desire for an afterlife much stronger than it would normally be.
>>25249630Epictetus is the only good surviving source on Stoicism. It feels like actual pedagogy. Seneca is basically just “here’s my diary desu” and Marcus Aurelius’ Redditations is just a bunch of random quotes that normalfags worship for some reason.
>>25249480Good
>>25249480There's a reason that they are lost and other works of ancient Greece aren't. It's because the ones that aren't lost are the ones people thought were worth preserving. So I wouldn't worry about it
>>25249651Marcus Aurelius wrote about thoughts to meditate on in your daily life. Not really comparable to someone creating philosophical arguments intended to convince or teach others or persuade of philisophical concepts. I think you failed to understand the purpose or even the content itself.
>>25249657Not really. The only reason Aristotle and Plato gained such prominence is because they were somewhat compatible with later Christian beliefs which caused medieval scholars to soigasm over them as noble pagans and make them the center of Scholasticist tradition.During periods like the 1st century BC for example Epicurus and the stoics were a much bigger deal than Aristotle.
>>25249651Good to hear as I've been eyeing a really nice volume on him. Seneca I've read "brevita della vita" (brevity of life I guess) and letters to lucilio. I liked them but unfortunately i'm still mostly wasting my time
>>25249642Christianity is poison.
>>25249678*religion is poison
>>25249672I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if there's some new discovery that early Christians deliberately destroyed Epicurus' works.
>>25249651Seneca is way more enjoyable to read than either Epictetus or Aurelius though.
>>25249686I don't think they did, at least not intentionally. Monasteries just didn't copy them.There was a serious period of church censorship against his ideas, but that was in the 16th and 17th centuries when most of his writings were already lost. Ironically this is what led to his rehabilitation in the 18th centuries with the enlightenment.
He is *very* culturally influential for somebody whose body of work does not survive.Robert Boyle was directly inspired by him when he coined the corpuscular theory of matter, which is the precursor of modern atomic theory. Hume was a fan of his.Charles Darwin wrote how he was directly inspired by him when devising the theory of evolution.Marx was directly inspired by Epicurean materialism when devising his own materialist worldview.He gave us the problem of evil which has tortured Christians for millenia.He made the "being dead is like before you were born" comparison which is basically what every fucking atheist today says if anyone expresses fear of death.
>>25249480the last thread about this guy was whining that epicure means foodie
>>25249722>Robert Boyle was directly inspired by him when he coined the corpuscular theory of matteratoms had always been believed in until the few hundred years of pdes and continuous media before chemistry pointed towards atoms again in a few ways
>>25249480The Christfags have got it coming.After Rome went Christian there was a purge of anything that looked like dissent. Fuck Christfags.
>>25249608I can't imagine being so brainraped by a Mongolian anime imageboard that you describe ancient Roman classics as "Reddit."
>>25249672
>>25249842neoplatonism is aids, the science is settled, philosophers become Christians and gays wear bras
>>25250079All romans are spiritual redditors.
>>25249686Yes I'm sure you'd love it if your jewish academia randomly """"discovered"""" Christians discriminated against your philosopher.
He was based for making christkeks seethe for thousands of years
>>25249480Yet they're still all less valuable than if we found Hericlitus' On Nature
>>25249480Epicurus? More like Epic Bacon.
>>25250098>the science is settledDamn, bad news for the Christfags.
>>25249480Hopefully he wasn't an insufferable retard, actually.
>>25249728The frogs are responsible for that, 19th century fine dining became known as Epicurean banquets or something along that line.
>>25249630Enchiridion just makes sense to me. It's short and not hard to read, but it's pretty dense because he uses syllogisms to help you understand and analogies to illustrate them, so if you only read it once you'll lose the core principle he was trying to get across despite getting it the first time around.It's an extreme place to go for self-help. It's essentially a religious practice, a moral way of living, and if your life isn't shitty in some way then you have no need for it, it's going to sound retarded.
>>25250112Listen to yourself, larper. Your entire religion is built by and for jews.
>>25250918Shit's made up anyway. Imagine believing in Abraham lol.
>>25250692if your so mad why dont you name brothels stoic accomodations or whatever? call las vegas the city of platonic love
>>25250692wherefore art thou philosopher? deny thy father and refuse thy name, or, it being all the same, ill be no more religious
>>25249480>vapid boomer sophistry about nonexistencenot missing much, clearly.
>>25250918>Your entire religion is built by and for jews.Stop lying to yourself jidf. You and your ilk despise Christ, and you know it more than anyone else alive.
>>25251535I keep seeing this comic on /lit/, but I'm too dumb to understand the last panel.
>>25252286the last panel represents a sample sermon that putatively had been preached in some church somewhere. the comics author believes that church pastors lazily believe whatever they were told by a scientist about psychology and philosophy and never bothered to find out about the philosophical background of the first century roman empire into which the Lord was born
>>25252628But what does that have to do with Freud reinventing Aristotle's(?) terms?
>>25249480atheists think they're very clever, but really they just feel guilty about sex (this is a chemical process that's unavoidable), and then overreact by being domineering (hey look, nature doing its thang)
>>25249632He lived in a very good place and time.
>>25252743so freud scientifically renames subjects from philosophy like passive intellect to subconscious, casually including the heresy that unnatural concupiscence is natural to the subconscious. then, pastors dont read aristotle and aquinas philosophy because aristotle isnt Christian and aquinas is a tendentious papist from an old philosophical movement, but do hear all about psychology science because science is Christian, learning that freud was the first to describe the subconscious because no one had ever thought that they had a passive intellect and habits before freud science. then they say that stoicism is polytheistic because romans were polytheistic and stoics were romans in their sermons about Acts 17, where stoics are mentioned in the Bible. whereas you would expect a sermon about Acts 17 to include a true description of stoicism and the conversion of dionysius the areopagite. basically the comic accuses Christians and pastors of being comically ignorant and substituting bigotry for knowledge
>>25252743the deracination, the destruction of societys memory of the first century anno Domini, is done for the purpose of preventing knowledge of Jesus Christ. pilate grew up thinking he would vote one way or the other on the trial of socrates, but every schoolboy today does not grow up thinking he will be a basil the great or a julian the apostate.the destruction of the family is also for the purpose of preventing knowledge of God. fatherhood and marriage have been destroyed to prevent understanding of the analogies of God the Father and Jesus Christ having His church as a bride. those analogies are absolutely crucial because no one sees God but people have fathers and husbands
There are chances we get to reconstruct more of his work through the unraveling of Herculaneum library papyri. Its in large part devoted to works of Epicurean philosophy and by the Epicurean Philodemus, whose work is apparently in part commentaries on Epicurus' works.
>>25254218>Herculaneum library papyri.Tell us more pls.
>>25249480if they were worthwhile, they'd be preserved.
>>25254233They were deliberately sought out and destroyed by psychotic Christfags. Along with the pagan temples and idols, which were the best architecture and statuary of the ancient world. Christianity was literally the biggest disaster to befall Europe and the Middle East. Fucking philistines.
>>25249672Christianity was blatantly authored by Hellenized Jews that had read Plato.
>>25254227Old papyri that got carbonized after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The ancient library was discovered in the 18th century but most of it was illegible and progress was stalled. Advances in technology, specially in AI, can assist decipher the text beneath the carbonized papyri without damaging them as was feared before. All of the library is intact, and most of the work unraveled is of philosophical content. The books either belonged to philosopher Philodemus (who as of now appears to have authored most of the manuscripts) or some patrician interested in Epicurean philosophy, maybe a patron of the aforementioned philosopher.
>>25249480Alex Oconnor just released a video on Epicureanism today :)
>>25249480What are the chances a religious nutjob destroyed his works. Or maybe the Catholic church is hiding it in their basement. His quotes are awesome.
>>25250079Socrates was the original redditor, Parmenides was 4chan
>>25254454>ParmenidesSo youre saying this guy was always mad because he was a virgin?
>>25254447>His quotes are awesome.that's the gayest quote I've ever seen.>death doesn't concern us, or something :)))
>>25255025Literally why would you be concerned about death if you are not alive to experience it?
>>25255076because when we're alive, we can (and do) think about our deaths, dumb fuck.
>>25255400Try to remember a time before you were born. Congrats, you now know what death feels like. Stop thinking about it.
For me, it is the thousands of burned Mesoamerican codices from the Aztec, Maya etcBernardino de Sahagun>...This, to the letter, has happened to these Indians at the hands of the Spaniards. They were so utterly trampled upon and destroyed, with all of their things, that no resemblance was left of what they were before. So now they are considered as barbarians...when in reality, in matters of governance...they are far ahead of many other nations that presume to be highly civilized. If even the little that has been found with great effort promises much profit, how much more might there be with all that could have been [found and discovered]"Jose de Acosta>Among the nations of New Spain there is great knowledge and memory of their ancient customs...they [had[ letters and books, with which they preserved... the deeds of their ancestors...in which the wisest Indians kept the distribution of time, and knowledge of plants and animals and other [natural things] as well as their ancient customs, and it was the result of great zeal and diligence. A missionary...thought that all of it must be witches’ spells...and insisted that they be burned...which was regretted afterward not only by the Indians but by curious Spaniards...The same fate has befallen other things, which...meant the loss of many memories of ancient and hidden things that might have been of...useDiego de Landa>These people also made use of certain characters...with which they wrote in their books their ancient matters and their sciences, and by these...curious signs in these drawings, they understood their affairs and...taught them. We found a large number of [these books]... and, as they contained nothing [that was not seen as]...lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and...caused them much afflictionFernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl:>I have always greatly desired to know about the historical events in this new world...no less important than those of the Romans, Greeks...and other great pagan republics...However...their histories were...burned...everything within the royal archives...this was one of the greatest losses that these lands ever suffered....all the memories of their antiquity and other things that served as writings and records were destroyed at that timeWhat is ironic is more survives of Mesoamerican history then most people realize, there may be less then 20 surviving Prehispanic books, but there are hundreds written in the early colonial period that document histories, plus thousands of Classic Maya inscriptions. We have more works written by Aztec authors in Nahuatl then we have works by Ancient Greek authors in Greek, for example. There's actually a lot to learn about if you want to get into the topic, schools just don't teach about itBut considering what we have is still only a small fraction of what could have survived if not for the burning, that only goes to show how much more we lost out on.
>>25249480>"The disappearance of Epicurus's work is largely attributed to:>Ideological Opposition: His materialistic and quasi-atheistic views were considered "ungodly" and dangerous by early Christian authorities, leading to the destruction of his texts.>Fragility of Material: Ancient papyrus scrolls naturally decay over centuries without careful preservation.>Hostile Doxography: Many critics, including the Stoics, actively misrepresented or mocked his ideas, leading to a decline in their circulation during the Middle Ages."smfh
>>25255421>Try to remember a time before you were born. Congrats, you now know what death feels like. >remember a time that is, by definition, impossible to recallwow, more sophistry. bravo epicuckurus.
>>25255568I know, this argument is super retarded but also extremely widespread now so it goes to show how influential this dude's ideas have been.
>>25255400So what? Think about something else.
>>25249678right.Christianity is turning people into jews.
>>25256029why do you think the jews turned into jews
>>25250114He is one of the Greats then.
>>25249480Insane how much the direct censorship and indirect scribal neglect of Christianity influenced the history of thought. All the works of Stoic logic and physics didnt fit the Christian worldview, while a few of the Stoic works of ethics did, and now thats all we have, and because of that we think of stoicism as when you are a tuff guy that dont show emotions. Epicurian philosophy was not tolerated at all, and now 'materialism' appears as if it was some new-fangled break with the past that only happens with modernity, when that couldnt be further from the truth. Plato and Aristotle were favored because they fit the Christian worldview well, and now all philosophy appears as 'footnotes to Plato' for some mysterious reason.
>>25256251>indirect scribal neglect of Christianitymeanwhile, forgetting those critical few centures before and after the Incarnation is the most important aspect of modern history and language arts education
