Quizzes Sep 17 & 19-under construction (please collaborate, class)

We're NOT meeting Tuesday, I encourage your attendance at the Constitution Day Suffrage panel in the Tucker Theater at 2:30. If you were there, or were at Al Gore's Monday event, post your thoughts. We'll catch up on Thursday. Let's build these quizzes together: I'll do chapter 1, let's do ch 2-4 (post your quiz and discussion questions in the comments section & claim a base for each). Stoics & Epicureans @dawn-LISTEN... Democritus & the Sophists-LISTEN... Urgency & the Epicure-LISTEN

Epicureanism: A Very Short Introduction, ch 1-4

ch1
1. For most of history, Epicureanism has conjured what image? Did J.S. Mill share that view?

2. Epicureanism asserted that there's "nothing to be feared or hope for" from what?

3. What Epicurean view did Cicero agree with? What alternative doctrines contrary to Epicurus's did Stoics subscribe to?

4. How did early Christians and Muslims regard Epicureanism?

Discussion Questions

• Why do you think Epicureanism has so often been errantly confused with "swinishness"? Do we humans have difficulty conceiving a difference between pleasure and hedonism?
• What kinds of pleasures do you consider most relevant to your happiness? (Or if you prefer, to your good life?) Do you agree with Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics (contra Epicurus) that sensual pleasures are inferior to those of the mind?
• COMMENT: “All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.” ― Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things: de Rerum Natura
• COMMENT: “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
• What do you make of Epicurus's "piety towards the gods" (according to Diogenes Laertius), in light of the Epicureans' reputation for considering them irrelevant (at most) to our happiness?
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ch2 [post your questions please, in comments]
(Thanks, Martin)

1. How did the Epicureans come to believe in the early theory of atoms?

2. What pre-Socratic philosopher deemed the theory of atomism impossible?

3. By what time did an early version of Epicurean atomism become popular?

4. How did Epicureanism eventually become compatible with Christian doctrine?

Discussion Questions

• 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...)
• Do you subscribe (like the Stoics) to belief in a "divine plan for the good of the universe, including human choices and decision"? 12 Is a choice a real choice, if it's foreordained?
• Does the image of "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
• COMMENT: "Neither incorporeal souls nor bodiless divinities exist, according to the atomist, exist, and magic... is impossible." (14) Is the atomist's world less fearful than the supernaturalist's, and thus more prone to happiness? Is it more hopeful? (17) Less pervaded by "spirits"? (19)
• Do you find a "top-down imposition of order and harmony" in the world more intuitively plausible than the atomists' bottom-up vision of a universe becoming gradually more ordered and complex as time goes by? 16
•  Is there any reason, on Epicurean or other grounds, to treat the "underlying reality" of atoms as any more or less real than the world of everyday experience and perception?
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ch3 [post your quiz & discussion questions please, in comments]

1. What was the aim of scientific understanding, for Bacon and Descartes? 31

2. What were Locke's and Hume's laments? 33

3. How was Aristotle both correct and incorrect about how the seasons changed? Pg. 27 (Max)

4. What did the Epicureans regard as the most important contribution of philosophy to life? p. 28 (Ed)

Discussion Questions

• If you believe(d) "His eye is on the sparrow," are you (would you be) happy? 27
• "Fearfulness promotes vigilance and caution" but may also reflect mistaken beliefs...28 Which prevalent contemporary fears are worth keeping, and which are a mistake? 
• Do you think "the oppressive anticipation of punishment" 29 in a punitive afterlife is a significant cause of fear and suffering? Is the doctrine of eternal damnation inhumane?
• 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?
• In light of the uncertainty in ongoing medical research (35), is the idea of a "moon shot to cure cancer" (etc.) realistic?
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ch4 [post your questions please, in comments]

1. What was Epicurus's view of soul? 38

2. The Epicureans were the target of what ostensibly-Stoic argument for the view that the universe was made for us? 41

3. What do the life cycles of plants and animals indicate? Pg. 39 (Max)

4. What were the two Epicurean ideas that helped bridge the apparent gap between non-existence and the richly populated world, and the gap between matter and life? p. 44 (Ed)


Discussion Questions

• "The ancient Epicureans did not find the appearance of life overly puzzling." Did they lack imagination or a sense of wonder? Or do we lack an appreciation of the fecundity of nature?
• Was it plausible, prior to Darwin, to think that "variation and selection" or "time,chance, and the forces of the environment" could produce new species of life? Was the Epicureans ontology "rather thin" compared to other more popular creation accounts? 43
• What do you think of David Hume's "slight emendation"? Must finite particles, given an infinity of time, inevitably produce everything under the sun? (This sounds a lot like Nietzschean eternal recurrence, btw)
• What should we say to the "monkeys-with-typewriters" scenario, and generally to the idea that no conceivable expanse of time is sufficient to account for the complexity of our world? 45
• Do the "loves and desires of animals" (including the human animal) generally stabilize and sustain life? Do they conduce to our happiness? 50 Or do they contribute as much to destability and strife? Was old Empedocles right about love and strife being active principles of life? Do amorous motives really pervade nature, or does amor have nothing to do with it? (What would Schopenhauer say?)
• 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? 
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Cicero's "On the Nature of the Gods"-featuring a dialogue between a Skeptic, a Stoic, and an Epicurean-



On the Nature of the Gods-Gutenberg etext. Report suggestion: each member of your group can defend a different speaker/philosophy as represented in this dialogue.
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Superfans... Are they happy? Are you a fan(atic) of anything trivial (like baseball, Star Trek, a pop musician, etc.)? Are you prepared to fight about it? Has our politics become another fan-platform? Is there a healthy-and-happy way to pursue fandom?

Superfans: A Love Story
From “Star Wars” to “Game of Thrones,” fans have more power than ever to push back. But is fandom becoming as toxic as politics? 

...“Fan” is short for “fanatic,” which comes from the Latin fanaticus, meaning “of or belonging to the temple, a temple servant, a devotee.” The vestal virgins, who maintained the sacred fire of Vesta, the goddess of hearth and home, were the Beyhive of their day. But “fanatic” came to be associated with orgiastic rites and misplaced devotion, even demonic possession, and this may explain why fan behavior is often described using religious terms, such as “worship” and “idol.” (One Trekker at Comic-Con told me that the show “replaced religion for a lot of people.”) NYker