EPICUREAN LIBRARY [FREE EBOOKS]

EPICURUS
(341-270 B.C.E.)

“Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when he is old grow weary of his study. For no one can come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul. And the man who says that the age for philosophy has either not yet come or has gone by is like the man who savs that the age for happiness is not yet come to him, or has passed away.”

Marble bust of Epicurus. Roman copy of Greek original, 3rd century BC. London.

E-BOOKS // FREE DOWNLOAD:

“EPICUREA”
Cambridge Classics
Edited by Hermann Usener
2010, 530 pgs.
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Hermann Karl Usener (1834-1905) published his monumental Epicurea in 1887. The volume is a collection of Epicurean texts and citations from a wide range of classical authors including Arrian, Cicero, Diodorus, Euripides, Plato and Seneca. The volume includes critical texts of Epicurus’ most important letters: Letter to Menoeceus, Letter to Herodotus and Letter to Pythocles, preserved by the third-century compiler Diogenes Laertius. The letters give important summaries of Epicurus’ philosophy. Usener’s pioneering work represented the first attempt to deal critically with the manuscript traditions behind Epicurean texts. His reconstructions of the texts included in this volume are based on a thorough understanding of the trajectories of textual transmission. Each text is supported by a detailed critical apparatus, and another apparatus records manuscript glosses and scholia. This work provided for the first time accurate and reliable texts for the critical study of Epicureanism.

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“LIVES OF EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS” – BOOKS 6-10
Diogenes Laertius
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This rich compendium on the lives and doctrines of philosophers ranges over three centuries, from Thales to Epicurus (to whom the whole tenth book is devoted); 45 important figures are portrayed. Diogenes Laertius carefully compiled his information from hundreds of sources and enriches his accounts with numerous quotations. Diogenes Laertius lived probably in the earlier half of the 3rd century CE, his ancestry and birthplace being unknown. His history, in ten books, is divided unscientifically into two ‘Successions’ or sections: ‘Ionian’ from Anaximander to Theophrastus and Chrysippus, including the Socratic schools; ‘Italian’ from Pythagoras to Epicurus, including the Eleatics and sceptics. It is a very valuable collection of quotations and facts. The Loeb Classical Library edition of Diogenes Laertius is in two volumes.

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“Epicurus and His Philosophy”
by Norman Wentworth DeWitt
(1954, 396 pgs)
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Epicurus and His Philosophy was first published in 1954. In this volume, the first comprehensive book in English about Epicurus, existing data on the life of the ancient philosopher is related to the development of his doctrine. The result is a fascinating account that challenges traditional theories and interpretations of Epicurean philosophy. Professor DeWitt demonstrates the fallacy of centuries of abuse of Epicurus and the resulting distortion of most discussions of Epicureanism that appear in standard philosophical works…

[+] Book Review at JSTOR

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“St. Paul and Epicurus”
by Norman Wentworth DeWitt
(1954, 212 pgs.)
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St. Paul and Epicurus was first published in 1954. Everyone who is interested in the meaning of the Bible will find this a revealing study, for it opens up a new window on the New Testament, a window that was walled up centuries ago by prejudice. Professor DeWitt throws new light on the writings of the Apostle Paul by showing how they were influenced by the teachings of the Greek philosopher Epicurus. That Epicureanism could have a place in Christian religion may come as a surprise to those familiar with the conventional concept of the philosophy of Epicurus. As demonstrated in the meaning of the English word epicure, derived from the name of the ancient philosopher, the modern world has long associated Epicurus with the indulgence of sensual pleasure in food and drink. But,as Professor DeWitt makes clear both in this volume and in its predecessor, Epicurus and His Philosophy, the pleasures which the ancient Greek espoused as constituting the chief good of life were not the pleasures of the flesh. The merit and the lure, however, of the Epicurean ethic, which allied happiness with pleasure, were so appealing and so widely acknowledged that Paul had no choice but to adopt it and bless it for his followers with the sanction of religion. He could not, though, admit indebtedness to a philosopher who had long been accused of sensualism and atheism, and there was no choice, therefore, but to consign Epicurus to anonymity. Through his scholarly investigation into the Epicurean source of certain portions of the Epistles, Professor DeWitt provides new explanations or translations for seventy-six biblical verses. The close scrutiny of biblical passages is carried out, not in a spirit of vandalism, but in a quest for accuracy, and the result is a challenging, readable, and absorbing book.

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“A Life Worthy of the Gods: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus”
by David Konstan
(2008, 200 pgs)
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Epicurus, and his Roman disciple Lucretius, held that the primary cause of human unhappiness was an irrational fear of death. What is more, they believed that a clear understanding of the nature of the world would help to eliminate this fear; for if we recognise that the universe and everything in it is made up of atoms and empty space, we will see that the soul cannot possibly survive the extinction of the body – and no harm to us can occur after we die. This liberating insight is at the core of Epicurean therapy. In this book, Konstan seeks to show how such fears arose, according to the Epicureans, and why they persist even in modern societies. It offers a close examination of the basic principles of Epicurean psychology: showing how a system based on a materialistic world view could provide a coherent account of irrational anxieties and desires, and provide a therapy that would allow human beings to enjoy life to the fullest degree.

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“Epicurus and His Gods”
Andre-Jean Festugière
(Harvard, 108 pgs)
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Table of Contents

PREFACE

I THE STATE OF RELIGION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE HELLENISTIC AGE
II THE LIFE OF EPICURUS
III EPICUREAN FRIENDSHIP
IV THE RELIGION OF EPICURUS
V EPICURUS AND THE ASTRAL RELIGION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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“Epicurus On Freedom”
Tim O’Keefe
(Cambridge, 2005, 186 pgs)
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The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-271/0 BCE) has attracted much contemporary interest. Tim O’Keefe argues that the sort of freedom which Epicurus wanted to preserve is significantly different from the ‘free will’ which philosophers debate today, and that in its emphasis on rational action has much closer affinities with Aristotle’s thought than with current preoccupations. His original and provocative book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in Hellenistic philosophy.

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“Facing Death”
James Warren
(Oxford, 2006, 256 pgs)
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The ancient philosophical school of Epicureanism tried to argue that death is “nothing to us.” Were they right? James Warren examines the arguments they offered and evaluates their success, setting them against modern philosophical accounts of how death can be a harm. He also asks whether a life free from all fear of death is an attractive option and what the consequences would be of a full acceptance of the Epicureans’ views.

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“Epicurus and the Epicurean Tradition”
Jeffrey Fish, Kirk R. Sanders
(Cambridge, 2011, 281 pgs)
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“The Greek Atomists and Epicurus”
by Cyril Bailey
(1964, 619 pgs)
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“Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom”
David N. Sedley
(Cambridge, 2008, 254 pgs)
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This book studies the structure and origins of De Rerum Natura (On the nature of things), the great first-century BC poem by Lucretius. By showing how he worked from the literary model set by the Greek poet Empedocles but under the philosophical inspiration of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, the book seeks to characterize Lucretius’ unique poetic achivement. It is addressed to those interested both in Latin poetry and in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.

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“Lucretius: On the Nature of Things (1873 press)”
Titus Lucretius Carus, translation by W.H.D. Rouse
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“The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius”
Stuart Gillespie, Philip Hardie
(Cambridge, 2007, 382 pgs)
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Lucretius’ didactic poem De rerum natura (‘On the Nature of Things’) is an impassioned and visionary presentation of the materialist philosophy of Epicurus, and one of the most powerful poetic texts of antiquity. After its rediscovery in 1417 it became a controversial and seminal work in successive phases of literary history, the history of science, and the Enlightenment. In this Cambridge Companion experts in the history of literature, philosophy and science discuss the poem in its ancient contexts and in its reception both as a literary text and as a vehicle for progressive ideas. The Companion is designed both as an accessible handbook for the general reader who wishes to learn about Lucretius, and as a series of stimulating essays for students of classical antiquity and its reception. It is completely accessible to the reader who has only read Lucretius in translation.

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“Oxford Readings in Lucretius”
Monica R. Gale
(Oxford, 2007, 400 pgs)
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This book gathers together some of the most important and influential scholarly articles of the last sixty to seventy years (three of which are translated into English here for the first time) on the Roman poet Lucretius. Lucretius’ philosophical epic, the De Rerum Natura or On the Nature of the Universe (c.55 BC), seeks to convince its reader of the validity of the rationalist theories of the Hellenistic thinker Epicurus. The articles collected in this volume explore Lucretius’ poetic and argumentative technique from a variety of perspectives, and also consider the poem in relation to its philosophical and literary milieux, and to the values and ideology of contemporary Roman society. All quotations in Latin or Greek are translated.

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“The Birth of Physics”
Michel Serres
(2001, 109 pgs)
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The Birth of Physics focuses on the largest text still intact to reach us from the Ancient Greek Atomists – Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura – but mobilises everything we know about the related scientific work of the time (Archemides, Epicurus et al) in order to demand a complete reappraisal of the legacy. Serres argues that the Greeks had all the mathematical resources to formulate an adequate picture of the physical principles acting on matter. Crucial to his reconception of the Atomists’ thought is a recognition that their model of atomic matter is essentially a fluid one – they are describing the actions of turbulence. Recognition of this fact throws in relief the force of this ancient thought with respect to the recent disciplines of chaos and complexity. It explains the continuing presence of Lucretius in the work of such scientific giants as Nobel Laureates Schroedinger and Prigogine. This book is truly a landmark in the study of ancient physics and will promote not only more work in the area but also stimulate a more general rebirth of philosophical interest in the ancients.

JOAN BAEZ: “Arguably the world’s most famous female folk singer, known for her distinctive, sweeping soprano and her accomplished interpretive skills.”

Joan sings The Beatles, “Let It Be”:

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1966: Martin Luther King and singer Joan Baez marching to the Grenada, Mississippi school that was being integrated. Baez supported the effort financially. ©1976 Bob Fitch/Take Stock / The Image Works.

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From Chris Strodder’s “The Encyclopedia of Sixties Cool”

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Joan and Bob, together,
(listen to her album of Dylan songs):


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OTHER FULL ALBUMS:

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FULL CONCERTS

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Joan sings some classic Marley ragga…

And why not trip on with caliente Cuban
“Guantanamera!”

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Artist Biography by William Ruhlmann

Joan Baez – The most accomplished interpretive folksinger of the 1960s, Joan Baez has influenced nearly every aspect of popular music in a career still going strong. Baez is possessed of a once-in-a-lifetime soprano, which, since the late ’50s, she has put in the service of folk and pop music as well as a variety of political causes. Starting out in Boston, Baez first gained recognition at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, then cut her debut album, Joan Baez (October 1960), for Vanguard Records. It was made up of 13 traditional songs, some of them children’s ballads, given near-definitive treatment. A moderate success on release, the album took off after the breakthrough of Joan Baez, Vol. 2 (September 1961), and both albums became huge hits, as did Baez’s third album, Joan Baez in Concert, Pt. 1 (September 1962). Each album went gold and stayed in the bestseller charts more than two years.

Joan Baez in Concert, Pt. 2 From 1962 to 1964, Baez was the popular face of folk music, headlining festivals and concert tours and singing at political events, including the August 1963 March on Washington. During this period, she began to champion the work of folk songwriter Bob Dylan, and gradually her repertoire moved from traditional material toward the socially conscious work of the emerging generation of ’60s artists like him. Her albums of this period were Joan Baez in Concert, Pt. 2 (November 1963) and Joan Baez 5 (October 1964), which contained her cover of Phil Ochs’ “There But for Fortune,” a Top Ten hit in the U.K.

Farewell, Angelina Like other popular folk performers, Baez was affected by the changes in popular music wrought by the appearance of the Beatles in the U.S. in 1964 and Dylan’s introduction of folk-rock in 1965, and she began to augment her simple acoustic guitar backing with other instruments, initially on Farewell, Angelina (October 1965). It was followed by a Christmas album, Noël (October 1966), and Joan (August 1967), albums on which she was accompanied by an orchestra conducted by Peter Schickele. Baez continued to experiment in the late ’60s, releasing Baptism (June 1968), in which she recited poetry, and Any Day Now (December 1968), a double album of Dylan songs done with country backing, which went gold… READ ON AT AMG ALL MUSIC GUIDE

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RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING:

“In his study, Markus Jaeger explores the coalescence of Joan Baez’s work as a singer and songwriter with her endeavors as a political activist throughout the last fifty years. He illustrates an American popular singer’s significance as a political activist–for her audiences and for her opponents as well as for those victims of politically organized violence who have profited from her work. Mingling popular culture with political activism can be a helpful means to achieve non-violent societal progress. Joan Baez’s work offers an excellent example for this hypothesis.” DOWNLOAD EBOOK IN PDF FROM LIBGEN.ORG (230 pgs, 2010)

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Check this out: my Pinterest Pin-Party dedicated to Joan Baez

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Gran Finale:
BBC’s Imagine // Joan Baez

“The Joyous Cosmology – Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness”, by Alan Watts (1915-1973) – Preface by Daniel Pinchbeck

Introduction by Daniel Pinchbeck

The Joyous Cosmology inevitably sends me into a state of poetic euphoria and anarchistic delight. Alan Watts wrote this wonderful little book in the early 1960s: that long-lost moment of innocence when psychedelic substances like LSD and psilocybin were starting to permeate the culture of the modern West but no final decision had yet been made on their utility or fate – or their legality. It was a time when a handful of philosopher-poets had the chance to muse on the power of these compounds — “to give some impression of the new world of consciousness which these substances reveal”, Watts wrote.

Reading it again, I can’t help but recall my first forays into the soul-unfolding and mind-opening qualities of the visionary plants and chemical catalysts. Those first trips unmasked the brittle delusions of our current culture and revealed that deeper dimensions of psychic reality were available for us to explore. Watts is such a fluid stylist — such a master of evanescent, evocative, pitch-perfect prose — that it is easy to gloss over or to entirely miss the explosive, radical, even revolutionary core of his message and meaning: the Western ego, the primacy of self that our entire civilization is intricately designed to shore up and protect, simply does not exist.

When one uses the magnifying glass or microscope provided by one of a number of chemical compounds that, Watts cannily noted, do not impart wisdom in itself but provide “the raw 
materials of wisdom,” one finds nothing fixed, stable, permanent — no essence. Only relationship, pattern, flow. Watts’s psychedelic journeys provided experiential confirmation of the core teachings of Eastern metaphysics: that the Tao is all, that consciousness is “one without a second”, that there is no doing, only infinite reciprocity and divine play.

This book retains the freshness of precocious notebook jottings. It also, almost accidentally, gives a beautiful sense of life in the dawn of the psychedelic era on the West Coast, when groups of friends would gather in backyards beside eucalyptus groves to explore together, with the gentle humor of wise children, the infinite within. “All of us look at each other knowingly, for the feeling that we knew each other in that most distant past conceals something else — tacit, awesome, almost unmentionable — the realization that at the deep center of a time perpendicular to ordinary time we are, and always have been, one”, Watts wrote. “We acknowledge the marvelously hidden plot, the master illusion, whereby we appear to be different.”

Over the past forty or so years, we have suffered from the cultural delusion — put forth by a corporate media and government working overtime to keep consciousness locked up, as our industries suck the lifeblood from our planet — that the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s was a failure. Revisiting Watts’s Joyous Cosmology reminds me that the psychedelic revolution has barely begun. The journey inward is the great adventure that remains for humanity to take together. As long as we refuse to turn our attention to the vast interior dimensions of the Psyche — “The Kingdom of God is within” — we will continue to exhaust the physical resources of the planet, cook the atmosphere, and mindlessly exterminate the myriad plant, animal, and insect species who weave the web of life with us.

When on psychedelics, we tend to find that each moment takes on archetypal, timeless, mythological significance. At one point, Watts and his friends enter into a garage full of trash, where they collapse with helpless laughter. “The culmination of civilization in monumental heaps of junk is seen, not as thoughtless ugliness, but as self-caricature — as the creation of phenomenally absurd collages and abstract sculptures in deliberate but kindly mockery of our own pretensions.” Our civilization mirrors the “defended defensiveness” of the individual ego, which fortifies itself against the revelation of interdependence and interconnectivity, the plenitude and emptiness of the void.

We are lucky to have Watts’s testament of his encounters: The Joyous Cosmology is a carrier wave of information and insight, which has lost none of its subtlety, suppleness, or zest. It is also an expression of a larger culture process, one that is unfolding over the course of decades, through a “War on Drugs” that is secretly a war on consciousness.

Dr. Thomas B. Roberts, author of The Psychedelic Future of the Mind, among other works, has proposed that the rediscovery of entheogens by the modern West in the mid-twentieth century was the beginning of a “second Reformation”, destined to have repercussions at least as profound as those of the first one. In the first Reformation, the Bible was translated into the common vernacular, printed, and mass-produced, providing direct access to the “word of God”, which had previously been protected by the priests. With psychedelics, many people now have direct and unmediated access to the mystical and visionary experience, instead of reading about it in musty old tomes. As Watts’s scintillating prose makes clear – and all appearances to the contrary – the future will be psychedelic, or it will not be.

–Daniel Pinchbeck,
author of 
Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey 
into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism.
New York City, 2013.
Excerpted from “The Joyous Cosmology” © 2013 by Alan W. Watts. New World Library.

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was the author of more than twenty books, including The Way of Zen, The Wisdom of Insecurity, and The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. An acclaimed writer, philosopher, and student of Buddhism, he was also an Episcopalian minister, a professor, and a research fellow at Harvard University.

The Joyous Cosmology – download e-book in PDF at libgen.org (7 mb, Vintage, 1965)

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