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Epicurus was not at all interested in what we would call the problems of mass society, and he thought civic politics was just trouble and to be avoided by the wise.

Catherine Wilson

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Catherine Wilson
Age: 40 †
Born: 1822
Born: January 1
Died: 1862
Died: October 20
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Epicurus
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Oddly, since by now I've written quite a lot on early modern philosophers, I didn't care for the history of philosophy, which I thought dull and obscure, until I got a minor job writing articles for a children's encyclopedia in the history of science and began to make connections between science and philosophy.
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People formerly seemed unable to evaluate a woman's c.v. or to accept a range of personal and communicative styles from the exuberant and confident to the sober and pedantic. It's much better than it was, and a number of male philosophers have been extraordinarily helpful in detecting and criticising everyday sexism in the profession.
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Claims like 'Slavery is wrong' are not fully common-sensical, so they must be at least partly theoretical.
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A moral rule is essentially 'advantage-reducing.' It prohibits you doing something you could do that would serve your interests at someone else's expense.
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You can find many philosophy papers on the themes of 'love' and 'friendship,' most of which are cheerful and somewhat anodyne you don't find many on the loss of friends, relatives, and lovers from death or alienation, though it happens all the time.
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In the old systems, hierarchies emanate power from above to below through forms of line management and are ideologically supported by cosmologies and theologies featuring celestial rulers and their deputies - the 'rule of the best.'
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Even if the gods did exist, the Epicureans argued, they didn't care about us. Rather, everything comes from nature, and all that really exists are atoms and void, moving and congregating.
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You can reasonably make the intellectual journey from thinking it's permissible to eat shrimp to thinking it's not permissible, or vice versa, whereas our slavery journey was uni-directional. We are as certain we are not going back to that old kind of slavery as we are that we aren't going back to the geocentric universe.
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People should be able to develop their abilities and interests and have access to such goods as friendship, artistry, and nature and a political voice. It's possible to be poor and yet have all this, but in a polarized society, and one where culture and adventure have been thoroughly monetised, it is a lot more difficult.
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Epicurus recommends bread and cheese as the staple, and his emphasis is more on avoiding pain than on seeking pleasure, insofar as pleasure-seeking tends to be followed by painful after-effects.
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I don't see how being a faster runner, or a better mathematician makes you 'deserve' access to a better life, or more influence on policy, in the absence of a social decision to play that game in the way it's proposed to be organised for some set of benefits.
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People's wants are not fixed they generally want what others in their chosen comparison class appear to be enjoying and what advertising presents to them as attainable for them and as bringing happiness.
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The moves to contractualism and utilitarianism required some extra ingredients besides mortalism, the denial that God is in charge of the world, and the doctrine that physical and psychological pain are the greatest evils.
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If you live in an acquisitive society you are likely to be acquisitive, but it isn't deeply rooted in human nature, except in the sense that it's deeply rooted to be psychologically receptive to your peers and to advertising.
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Gentlemanly, principled, helpful behaviour by older men vis-a-vis young women goes unnoticed, but it deserves real moral credit, and we could use more first-person testimony from the beneficiaries and practitioners about that too.
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Outside of mathematics and logic, there are common sense truths, such as that it is snowing that normal observers, in a specified context can agree on, subject to vagueness considerations, and theoretical truths, such as that snow is crystallised water vapour, and maybe in-between truths.
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We have to gamble, and sometimes lose as George Ainslie argues this keeps the appetite for life sharp.
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I had the idea that there were secret laws of the universe that could explain the baffling human reality around me, and that philosophers maybe had the key to them.
Catherine Wilson
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Epicurus thought of justice as an agreement to prevent people harming and being harmed.
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Even if you just want to make a simple clothing item for yourself or go for a long hike in the forest - something we imagine requires absolutely no resources - you have to go to the store and buy a lot of stuff, and probably use a car.
Catherine Wilson