Atlantis, also known in Greek mythology as the island of Atlas, was "the oldest surviving wonderland in Greek philosophy," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised):
"Plato is the earliest and chief source for the story, said to have been told to Solon by Egyptian priests, of a huge and wealthy island ... outside the Pillars of Hercules which once ruled 'Libya ... as far as Egypt' and 'Europe as far as Tyrrhenia [Etruria] until, in an expedition to conquer the rest, its rulers were defeated by the Athenians, the island shortly after sinking overnight beneath the Atlantic after 'violent earthquakes and floods'".
All of the legends about Atlantis can be traced back to two of Plato's dialogues: Timaeus and Critias. According to Wikipedia, "Some ancient writers viewed Atlantis as fictional or metaphorical myth; others believed it to be real. Aristotle believed that Plato, his teacher, had invented the island to teach philosophy. The philosopher Crantor, a student of Plato's student Xenocrates, is cited often as an example of a writer who thought the story to be historical fact. His work, a commentary on Timaeus, is lost, but Proclus, a Neoplatonist of the fifth century AD, reports on it."
"At the start of the Tang dynasty, in the early 7th century, a young wandering monk embarked on a 16-year long voyage from the imperial capital Chang’an (today’s Xian) to India to collect Buddhist manuscripts. At the time Chang’an was six times bigger than Rome at its height, with a population of over one million – the epicenter of Asian civilization." Source: UNZ Review (2019).
3D animation of ancient Chang'an.
"History ended up converting Xuanzang into a legend and a national hero in China – although in the West he would never reach Marco Polo levels of popularity.
"Xuanzang had embarked on a quest that still resonates today. He wanted to know whether all men – or just an enlightened few – could attain Buddhahood. There was only one way to find out: ride all the way to India and bring back Sanskrit texts to China, especially from the Yogacara school of Buddhism, which professed that the outside world did not exist: it was merely a projection of one’s consciousness."
Epicurus taught that pleasure or happiness is the goal of life, but Epicureanism isn't just mindless hedonism:
"Epicureanism argued that pleasure was the chief good in life. Hence, Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one's lifetime, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure. Emphasis was placed on pleasures of the mind rather than on physical pleasures. Unnecessary and, especially, artificially produced desires were to be suppressed ... Further, Epicurus sought to eliminate the fear of the gods and of death, seeing those two fears as chief causes of strife in life. Epicurus actively recommended against passionate love, and believed it best to avoid marriage altogether. He viewed recreational sex as a natural, but not necessary desire that should be generally avoided." (Wikipedia)
Peterson's argument here is distinctly Epicurean.
According to the philosophy of Hedonism, the purpose of life is to maximize pleasure and avoid suffering. This is very similar to Epicureanism -- in fact, some would say that the two schools of thought are identical in this regard -- but to Epicurus the ultimate goal in life is to achieve a state of tranquility called ataraxia, "a lucid state of robust equanimity characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry." (Wikipedia)
With its emphasis on ataraxia, Epicureanism could be called a form of asceticism, "a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals," (Wikipedia) but that's not really accurate because Epicurus taught that pleasure is the main goal of life and all pleasure is sensual pleasure because we are material creatures. He was concerned with the rational search for pleasure and his advice basically boils down to being moderate in all things:
"No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves." -- Epicurus.
Drinking is a perfect example of what Epicurus was talking about. I used to be a heavy drinker, though I never matched the intake of famous boozers like Charles Bukowski or Hunter S. Thompson (I'm not sure anybody could). I really enjoyed getting plastered out of my mind, but I eventually had to give it up after I started to get hangovers that would sometimes last for days. The pleasure-pain ratio was way out of balance and the message gradually sank into my spongy brain that a couple hours of drunken pleasure weren't worth two or three days of "headache, drowsiness, concentration problems, dry mouth, dizziness, fatigue, gastrointestinal distress ... light sensitivity, depression, sweating, nausea, hyper-excitability, irritability, and anxiety." (Wikipedia)
I miss my hedonistic days, though. Self-restraint is all well and good, and there's no doubt that living a virtuous life will help you get into Heaven, but everyone knows that true paradise can only be found in the snake-cult temple of Thulsa Doom deep inside the Mountain of Power.
The ancient "philosophy" known as Cynicism was founded by the Greek rhetorician and philosopher Antisthenes, one of Socrates' students, but the most famous Cynic was the notorious Diogenes who lived like a dog on the streets, urinated on people who insulted him, masturbated in public, and generally opposed society and its conventions in favor of a more "natural" way of life:
"Diogenes was a controversial figure. His father minted coins for a living, and Diogenes was banished from Sinope when he took to debasement of currency. After being exiled, he moved to Athens and criticized many cultural conventions of the city. He modeled himself on the example of Heracles, and believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used his simple lifestyle and behaviour to criticize the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt, confused society. He had a reputation for sleeping and eating wherever he chose in a highly non-traditional fashion, and took to toughening himself against nature. He declared himself a cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world rather than claiming allegiance to just one place. There are many tales about his dogging Antisthenes' footsteps and becoming his 'faithful hound.'" (Wikipedia)
Diogenes could be called a mystic or an ancient hippy or just an obnoxious street bum; one way or another, he attracted a lot of followers. According to Wikipedia, he "made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and often slept in a large ceramic jar, or pithos, in the marketplace. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts, such as carrying a lamp during the day, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He criticized Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates, and sabotaged his lectures, sometimes distracting listeners by bringing food and eating during the discussions. Diogenes was also noted for having mocked Alexander the Great, both in public and to his face when he visited Corinth in 336 BC."
According to the story, Alexander asked Diogenes what he wanted and the mad philosopher replied: "Move out of the way; you're blocking the sun."
Cynicism was influential in various ways but the hardcore philosophy of Diogenes couldn't be taken very far as a philosophy because it was based more on action than dogma:
"Cynicism was never a formal philosophical school but rather a way of life grounded in an extreme primitivist interpretation of the principle 'live according to nature'. Diogenes having discovered the true way of life, there was relatively little diversity or development within Cynicism, though 'hard' Cynics (rigorous exponents of the original prescription, found at all periods) can be distinguished from 'soft' Cynics (who compromised varyingly with existing social and political institutions), practical Cynicism from literary Cynicism (Cynicism as written or written about), and Cynics (in some sense) from those influenced by Cynicism." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edition revised).
Cynicism as a way of life was basically a form of primitivism in the philosophical sense of living "beyond civilization." The supposed spiritual benefits of returning to a "state of nature" have influenced people throughout history in one way or another. Traces of Diogenes' philosophy can be seen in the lives of medieval hermits, monastic orders, the various back-to-the-land movements, hippie communes, technology-free summer camps, survivalism, the Tiny House Movement, and activities like primitive camping and extreme ultralight backpacking, just to name a few examples.
The idea that a lifestyle like Diogenes can lead to wisdom is true enough in one sense, but it can also be pernicious. For example, I knew a homeless hippy who was so poor he had to eat discarded hamburgers he scrounged from fast-food dumpsters. When I asked him why he lived like that he said it was because "he wanted to be free," but he didn't seem to realize that his poverty was a form of slavery in itself. Ultimately, characters like Diogenes, who lived by begging, couldn't exist without the civilization they despised.
Meanwhile, we seem to have a lot of Diogenes types wandering around on the streets of our cities. They're nowhere near as smart as the original, though.
When the Greek philosopher Epicurus died in 270 BC, he left his house and garden in Athens to one of his disciples, Hermarchus of Mytilene. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), "[Hermarchus] and his followers lived together, secluding themselves from the affairs of the city and maintaining a modest and even austere standard of living, in accordance with the Master's teaching. They included slaves and women."
Their community was called the Epicurean School or "The Garden" after the house's garden. According to the OCD, "the school was much libeled in antiquity and later, perhaps because of its determined privacy and because of Epicurus' professed hedonism. The qualifications that brought this hedonism close to asceticism were ignored, and members of rival schools accused the Epicureans of many kinds of profligacy.
"In Christian times, Epicureanism was anathema because it taught that man is mortal, that the cosmos is the result of accident, that there is no providential god, and that the criterion for the good life is pleasure." (OCD)
According to Epicurus.net, "Epicurus's philosophy combines a physics based on an atomistic materialism with a rational hedonistic ethics that emphasizes moderation of desires and cultivation of friendships. His world-view is an optimistic one that stresses that philosophy can liberate one from fears of death and the supernatural, and can teach us how to find happiness in almost any situation."
"The philosophy of Epicurus (341–270 B.C.E.) was a complete and interdependent system, involving a view of the goal of human life (happiness, resulting from absence of physical pain and mental disturbance), an empiricist theory of knowledge (sensations, together with the perception of pleasure and pain, are infallible criteria), a description of nature based on atomistic materialism, and a naturalistic account of evolution, from the formation of the world to the emergence of human societies." Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Comment: Epicureanism sounds reasonable to me. It's not surprising that Christians would have attacked it so vehemently.
Widely considered to be one of the founders of modern medicine, Aelius Galenus, aka Galen (129-200/216 AD), the Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher, was one of the giants of Western civilization. "His dominant influence on later generations, comparable only to that of Aristotle, is based on his achievements as a scientist, logician, and universal scholar, and on his own self-proclaimed insistence on establishing a medicine that was beyond all sectarianism. [According to Galen,] the dissension of earlier science could be conquered by an eclectic rationality based ultimately on notions in which all shared, and be turned into a stable system of Galenic medical and practical philosophy." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. revised.
The "Great Fire" here refers to a fire that occurred in Rome in 192 AD, not the famous fire that happened during the reign of Nero.
"In 2005 Antoine Pietrobelli, a student from the Sorbonne in Paris, was looking at microfilm copies of old manuscripts from the Vlatadon monastery in Thessalonica, modern Greece, when he made an extraordinary discovery. Among a collection of medieval texts he found a copy of a letter written by the ancient Greek physician Galen. ‘On the Avoidance of Grief’, thought to have been destroyed during the Middle Ages, provides remarkable new insights into the global trade of the Roman Empire at the height of its power. It also reveals how ordinary people dealt with crisis and despair, for the events it refers to foreshadowed an era of unparalleled political and economic decline in the ancient world; and this previously lost account tells the story of a great disaster that befell the city of Rome in the late second century AD." Source: Notes In History.
According to History of Information, "Galen was motivated to write ['On The Avoidance Of Grief'] in 192 CE after a large portion of his library, his supply of medicines and medical instruments, and wax molds for the casting of new instruments that he had invented, and other valuable items were destroyed when a devastating fire burned the Temple of Peace (Forum of Vespasian) and nearby storehouses on the Via Sacra, the main street of ancient Rome, where his property was kept. Galen chose to keep his library there because the storehouse also held some of the imperial archives, and was kept under military guard. The fire that destroyed Galen's library also burned all the public libraries on the Palatine Hill."
Video from 2013. If the Buddha existed he was born earlier than previously believed.
"Reliable factual data on the life of Siddhartha Gautama is very scarce. His historical biography can be, to some extent, pieced together by comparing early Buddhist texts from different traditions. These accounts are filled with myth and legendary stories that slowly but surely changed the initial attributes of the biography of the Buddha. The final form of these texts were written down many centuries after the death of the Buddha. The true words and accounts of the Buddha were merged with legendary additions from oral traditions. Moreover, it seems obvious that the editors of the final versions of the many biographies of the Buddha made their own additions and shaped the contents of the texts according to their own interests in order to support their own philosophical and religious ideas." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Comment: It's hard to separate fact from fiction when it comes to a legendary figure like the Buddha. The sources for his life are muddled and contradictory, but at least they provide us with a description of what he looked like and a detailed biography, which is a lot more than we have for Jesus, who I've always believed to be a purely legendary character. Whether these accounts of the Buddha are historically accurate is another question altogether.
For what it's worth, the scholarly consensus appears to be that the Buddha actually existed. However, this argument from consensus doesn't prove that he existed any more than it proves that Jesus existed. Technically, it doesn't constitute evidence at all. Still, the sources do give us a fair amount of information about the Buddha's life, which suggests that the legends might be based on a real person. We have tentative dates for his birth and death, his lineage, birthplace, etc., though all of these details appear to be speculative to one degree or another.
Some of the stories about the Buddha are clearly mythological. For example, "some legends say that when Gautama was born the earth shook, rivers stopped flowing, flowers fell from the sky, and a lotus flower sprang from the place where he first touched the earth." (Myths Encyclopedia). Call me a cynic, but I think it's safe to say that none of that stuff actually happened.
Some of the less outlandish details about his life -- his royal birth, for instance -- also strike me as being probably mythological, though there's nothing inherently unbelievable about them. I also don't believe that anyone, anywhere, has ever achieved nirvana, a state of mind free of "desire, aversion, delusion, suffering," etc., so I would scratch that off the Buddha's resume as well.
At the moment, I'm leaning towards the idea that there was a historical Siddhartha Guatama, mostly because the sources include things like his physical description and the kind of more-or-less concrete life story that we would expect from a biography of someone who actually existed. Once you strip away all the mythology and philosophy and cosmological nonsense like reincarnation, you still end up with the outline of a human life. I suspect, though, that if we could go back in a time machine, the Buddha would turn out to be a lot different, a lot more human, than the texts lead us to believe.
"A number of important theorists in ancient Greek natural philosophy held that the universe is composed of physical ‘atoms’, literally ‘uncuttables’ ... These philosophers developed a systematic and comprehensive natural philosophy accounting for the origins of everything from the interaction of indivisible bodies, as these atoms—which have only a few intrinsic properties like size and shape—strike against one another, rebound and interlock in an infinite void ... Atomists formulated views on ethics, theology, political philosophy and epistemology consistent with this physical system. This powerful and consistent materialism, somewhat modified from its original form by Epicurus, was regarded by Aristotle as a chief competitor to teleological natural philosophy." Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Epicurus and other atomists like Lucretius believed that there are an infinite number of atoms in the universe. This necessarily led them to the conclusion that the universe itself is infinite and that there are an infinite number of "worlds" out there. In other words, they were early believers in what we now call the multiverse, sometimes referred to as the "many worlds" theory.
The idea that there are other universes out there may sound outlandish, but the concept of the multiverse is taken seriously by many modern cosmologists.
The cosmologists in the video above are using the word "universe" kind of loosely. Technically, there can only be one universe, since the universe, by definition, consists of "all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies and all other forms of matter and energy." (Wikipedia) But if you consider the observable universe to be a kind of island or "world" consisting of millions of expanding galaxies then it's quite possible that there are other "universes" or expanding clouds of galaxies in the infinite cosmos, each of them created by their own Big Bang.
The Big Bang theory has a lot of problems, but never mind that. The idea that the universe has a boundary, i.e. that it's limited in size, and that it had a beginning makes no sense at all:
The universe is everything, so if something lies outside the bounds of the universe then that something is also part of the universe, which means that it doesn't lie outside the bounds of the universe at all. And if something happened before the Big Bang then it was also part of the universe (because the universe contains all Time and Space) so the universe couldn't have started with the Big Bang.
Thinking about these paradoxes is enough to drive you crazy. It's much simpler and a lot more logical to think that the universe is infinite and that it has always existed. My personal theory is that our observable "universe" or "world", as vast as it may be, is only a local feature of the one infinite universe that lies beyond our powers of observation.
Mind-boggling as it seems, our observable universe may be like an expanding nebula created by a massive explosion which was in turn caused by some cosmic event in the larger universe. In other words, our "universe" may be a kind of bubble in spacetime and who knows how many other "parallel universes" are out there in the incomprehensible infinity of space?
Maybe Epicurus and the Atomists were right after all.
Pliny the Elder was what we would now call a workaholic, totally absorbed in his writing. According to his nephew, Pliny the Younger, "the only time he took from his work was for his bath, and by bath I mean his actual immersion, for while he was being rubbed down and dried he had a book read to him or dictated notes. When traveling he felt free from other responsibilities to give every minute to work; he kept a secretary at his side with book and notebook; and in winter saw that his hands were protected by long sleeves, so that even bitter weather should not rob him of a working hour. For the same reason, too, he used to be carried about Rome in a chair. I can remember how he scolded me for walking; according to him I need not have wasted those hours, for he thought any time wasted which was not devoted to work. It was this application which enabled him to finish all those volumes of the Natural History." Source: Livius.
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), "Pliny was no philosopher. It may indeed be thought refreshing to have a view of the ancient world from an author who did not have some claim to the philosophical viewpoint ... there is an engaging personality at work..." Pliny's writing in the Natural History is "highly individual: as is the style and the imagery, which was often misunderstood in later antiquity, and can still baffle today." An ancient encyclopedia may sound dry, but the Natural History is an absorbing mixture of facts and fantastic stories. I first read the Penguin Classics selection from the encyclopedia on a cross-country flight years ago and couldn't put it down.
Here's a typical entry:
"Beyond the Scythian Cannibals, in a certain large valley in the Himalayas, there is a region called Abarimon where some forest-dwellers live who have their feet turned back behind their legs; they run with extraordinary speed and wander far and wide with the wild animals. Baeton, Alexander the Great's road-surveyor, states that these people could not breathe in another climate, and for that reason none had been brought to the neighboring kings, or to Alexander himself." -- Natural History. Source: Strange Science.
The Natural History is a monumental achievement that opens a window into the ancient world as seen by an educated Roman. Pliny himself was the model writer and researcher and no matter what your personal interests might be his life represents a practical philosophy well-worth emulating today. In fact, I'd say that Pliny the Elder's approach to life is still the best philosophy available anywhere:
"Life is being awake. The Natural History is a monument to keeping alert, and to the useful employment of time. Pliny's energy and diligence astonished his nephew, were intended to impress his contemporaries, and still amaze today; they were, moreover, not a contingent habit of mind, but intended as an ethical statement. For all his defects of accuracy, selection, and arrangement, Pliny achieved a real summation of universal knowledge, deeply imbued with the mood of his time, and the greatness of his work was speedily recognized. It was a model for later writers ... and attained a position of enormous cultural and intellectual influence in the medieval west." -- OCD.
Pliny the Elder died in 79 AD during the eruption of Vesuvius:
"Pliny had received from Emperor Vespasian ... the appointment of praefectus classis (fleet commander) in the Roman Navy. On AD August 24, 79, he was stationed at Misenum, at the time of the great eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which destroyed and buried Pompeii and Herculaneum. He was preparing to cross the Bay of Naples to observe the phenomenon directly when a message arrived from his friend Rectina asking to rescue [the senator] Pomponianus and her." (Wikipedia)
Pliny landed on the shore near Herculaneum and was apparently overcome by poisonous gases from the eruption. "The story of his last hours is told in a letter addressed 27 years afterwards to Tacitus by Pliny the Younger." This letter is a gripping read.
Did The Buddha Exist?
Video from 2013. If the Buddha existed he was born earlier than previously believed.
"Reliable factual data on the life of Siddhartha Gautama is very scarce. His historical biography can be, to some extent, pieced together by comparing early Buddhist texts from different traditions. These accounts are filled with myth and legendary stories that slowly but surely changed the initial attributes of the biography of the Buddha. The final form of these texts were written down many centuries after the death of the Buddha. The true words and accounts of the Buddha were merged with legendary additions from oral traditions. Moreover, it seems obvious that the editors of the final versions of the many biographies of the Buddha made their own additions and shaped the contents of the texts according to their own interests in order to support their own philosophical and religious ideas." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Comment: It's hard to separate fact from fiction when it comes to a legendary figure like the Buddha. The sources for his life are muddled and contradictory, but at least they provide us with a description of what he looked like and a detailed biography, which is a lot more than we have for Jesus, who I've always believed to be a purely legendary character. Whether these accounts of the Buddha are historically accurate is another question altogether.
For what it's worth, the scholarly consensus appears to be that the Buddha actually existed. However, this argument from consensus doesn't prove that he existed any more than it proves that Jesus existed. Technically, it doesn't constitute evidence at all. Still, the sources do give us a fair amount of information about the Buddha's life, which suggests that the legends might be based on a real person. We have tentative dates for his birth and death, his lineage, birthplace, etc., though all of these details appear to be speculative to one degree or another.
Some of the stories about the Buddha are clearly mythological. For example, "some legends say that when Gautama was born the earth shook, rivers stopped flowing, flowers fell from the sky, and a lotus flower sprang from the place where he first touched the earth." (Myths Encyclopedia). Call me a cynic, but I think it's safe to say that none of that stuff actually happened.
Some of the less outlandish details about his life -- his royal birth, for instance -- also strike me as being probably mythological, though there's nothing inherently unbelievable about them. I also don't believe that anyone, anywhere, has ever achieved nirvana, a state of mind free of "desire, aversion, delusion, suffering," etc., so I would scratch that off the Buddha's resume as well.
At the moment, I'm leaning towards the idea that there was a historical Siddhartha Guatama, mostly because the sources include things like his physical description and the kind of more-or-less concrete life story that we would expect from a biography of someone who actually existed. Once you strip away all the mythology and philosophy and cosmological nonsense like reincarnation, you still end up with the outline of a human life. I suspect, though, that if we could go back in a time machine, the Buddha would turn out to be a lot different, a lot more human, than the texts lead us to believe.
Posted at 06:57 AM in Ancient Asia, Ancient Literature, Commentary, Culture, Philosophy, Religion | Permalink