runner -> RE: Grief (Mar. 7 2014 18:17:23)
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Miguel, thanks for the Epictetus reference. Epictetus was clearly a Stoic, and, as such, took a rather sterner view of what our responsibilities and our pleasures ought to be than the Epicureans--stiff upper lip, and such. The Stoics took rather a dim view of the Epicureans, as did many other philosophical schools of the time, and one can see why, as the Epicureans preached a life of quiet enjoyment of mind and body, and not messing about in your neighbor's business. But their equal--maybe even more important--contribution was the then-crazy idea that the world could be understood by the human mind--could be figured out--without recourse to gods or the supernatural. In order to avoid the then as now dangerous charge of atheism, the Epicureans postulated that the gods exist, but live in a dream space outside our universe, and have no interest in or influence on the affairs of the actual, physical world. Lucretius' work, de Rerum Naturae--On the Nature of Things is fascinating reading, in that Lucretius has a sort of plausible explanation for just about everything, based, by our standards, on just inspired imagination, and much of it is nonsense. But one is impressed by the effort, and by the modernity of the idea, which we have to wait until Galileo for, that the world can be explained and understood.
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