[lbo-talk] Atheism

Chris Doss itschris13 at hotmail.com
Wed Dec 31 02:04:08 PST 2003



>
> > which neither a Christian nor an ancient Greek
>
>Protagoras? Epicurus?
>
>Carrol

The Protagoras we know of is mostly a strawman in Plato who may not even have existed. Epicurus was interested in the _good life_ not _what is intrinisically good_. The Greeks after all tended to think of "goodness" that was something intrinsic in things that had very little to do with their utility for human happiness and alot to do with their immutability and eternality (e.g. the heavenly bodies).

Most Greco-Roman philosophers would have thought treating "man as the measure of all things" was petty and ignoble -- Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Stoics. Actually I think this is even true of the Epicureans and the Skeptics in their way. The point of ancient philosophy after all was to escape the world by linking yourself with the eternal (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus) or by demanding as little from it as much as possible (the Skeptics, Stoicsm Epicureans).

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