Episode 003 - So Great Is The Power of Religion To Inspire Evil Deeds!
Date: 01/30/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1389-episode-three-so-great-is-the-power-of-religion-to-inspire-evil-deeds/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 003 covers On the Nature of Things, Book One, approximately line 81 — the famous passage in which Lucretius uses the sacrifice of Iphianassa (Iphigenia) as his primary example of the evil that religion can inspire, culminating in the line Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum (“So great is the evil that religion could prompt”). Martin reads the passage from the 1743 Daniel Brown translation; the panel then compares translations (Munro, Bailey, Smith, Stallings) and discusses the Latin etymology of religio and suadere. Cassius notes Voltaire’s prediction that this line would last as long as the world — itself echoing Ovid’s tribute to Lucretius.
The episode broadens into extended discussion of parallel texts: Diogenes of Oenoanda’s Fragment 20 (on why righteous behavior does not depend on the gods), the Letter to Pythocles (on superstition and the signs of weather), and the Velleius section of Cicero’s De Natura Deorum (on the nature of Epicurean gods and the principle of isonomia). Cassius also recommends Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens for its summation of the corrupting power of supernatural religion. The episode closes with the Torquatus passage from Cicero’s De Finibus describing the highest form of pleasant life — which the panel interprets as also describing the life of the Epicurean gods.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 3 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we’ll walk you line by line through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. Be aware that none of us are professional philosophers, and everyone here is a self-taught Epicurean. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian Professor Norman DeWitt.
Before we get started with today’s episode, let me remind you of our three ground rules. First, the opinions stated on this podcast are those of the people making them. Our aim is to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it, not to tell you what we think Epicurus might have said or should have said in our opinion. Second, in this podcast we won’t be talking about modern political issues. How you apply Epicurus in your own life is entirely up to you. Over at the EpicureanFriends.com web forum, we apply this approach by following a set of rules we call not Neo-Epicurean, but Epicurean. Epicurean philosophy is not a religion. It’s not Stoicism. It’s not Humanism. It’s not Libertarianism. It’s not Atheism. And it’s not Marxism or anything else. It’s unique in the history of Western civilization. And as we explore Lucretius’ poem, you’ll quickly see how that’s the case. Third, be willing to re-examine whatever you think you already know about Epicurus. Epicurus will show us that Epicurus was not focused on fine food and wine, like some people say, but neither did he teach that we should live like a hermit on bread and water, as other people say. Epicurus taught that feeling — pleasure and pain — are what nature gave us to live by, and not God, idealism, or virtue ethics. More than anything else, Epicurus taught that the universe is not supernatural in any way, and that means there’s no life after death, and any happiness we’ll ever have comes in this life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion.
As we get started today, remember that the home page of this podcast is LucretiusToday.com, and there you can find a free copy of the version of the poem from which we’re reading, and links to where you can discuss the poem between episodes at EpicureanFriends.com. In this episode we have with us Charles from the United States and Martin from Germany, and we’ll be discussing the passage from Book One that appears at approximately line 81. Martin, could you read that for us?
Martin:
[Reading from Daniel Brown’s 1743 translation:]
Yes. “But in these things, if here you will suspect you are learning impious rudiments of reason and entering on a road of weakness, so far from this, reflect what such prejudice deeds religion has produced. By her inspired, the Grecian chiefs, the first of men, at Aulis, Diana’s altar shamefully defiled with a virgin’s blood — her virgin hair a fillet bound which hung in equal lengths on either side of her face. She saw her father, covered with sorrow, stand before the altar. For pity to his griefs, the butchering priests concealed the knife. The city at the side overflowed with tears. The virgin, dumb with fear, fell upon her knees on the hard earth. In vain the wretch, princess in distress, pleaded that she first gave the honored name of father to the king. But hurried off and dragged by wicked hands, she trembling stood before the altar. Alas, not as a virgin, the solemn forms being to be done, drawn with pleasing force to Hymen’s noble rites, but a chaste maid just ripe for bridal joy — a victim by a father’s hand, only to make a kind, propitious gale for gracious ships.” Such scenes of villainy could religion inspire.
Cassius:
Okay, and that last line — Munro says “So great the evils to which religion could prompt.” And then Bailey says “Such evil deeds could religion prompt.” And as we’ll discuss today, that’s one of the most famous lines in the entire poem. Where would we like to start? Let’s just go back to the very first sentence — the first sentence is particularly interesting because he’s preparing the reader, acknowledging that the reader may think that he’s being impious by listening to Epicurean philosophy. But in fact the opposite is true. You’re not entering upon a road of wickedness in studying Epicurus — in fact the reverse.
Charles:
I’m not sure if it’s significant, but the 1743 and the Stallings edition — Stallings translates as “so potent was religion in persuading to do wrong” — and both of those capitalize “Religion.”
Cassius:
You know, in citing the Stallings version, you’ve used a word that I think probably is more appropriate there, because the Latin is suadere — S-U-A-D-E-R-E — and that seems to be obviously the root of “persuade.” So clearly one of the things being said here is that religion persuades to evil.
Charles:
Yeah. The 1743 capitalizes V for “villainy” and R for “religion,” but as far as what’s in the original Latin, probably none of it’s capitalized. It’s a good contrast, because Lucretius opens up by saying that the reader is suspecting that they’re approaching reason — a type of rationality that would be considered impious. So on the grounds of not being rational, religion would then persuade —
Cassius:
To evil, yes. And that line that we’re discussing now — I see that the Martin Ferguson Smith footnote says this is a famous line which Voltaire predicted would last as long as the world. I haven’t been able to find the exact quote from Voltaire where he said that, but that’s the one that is in Latin as Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
Charles:
When I first looked up quotes from Lucretius online months ago, that was basically the one I had seen the most.
Cassius:
Right. So maybe Voltaire was right. I’ll probably edit out what I’m about to say, but I’ve never been satisfied with translations from Latin in the sense that — you know, often into English we’ll go to the end of the sentence and pick up something at the end and then bring it around to the beginning of the sentence so it’ll make the most sense.
Charles:
Well, yeah, that’s not how Latin works.
Cassius:
No, it’s not. And it can’t be how Latin works because Romans were no more mind readers than we are. They could not have waited. The sentence has to make sense as soon as you start saying it. And so when it says tantum religio, I’m not so sure — it may be “so much religion has the power to persuade to evil things” — that would be lining the words up into something that makes sense as you say it.
Martin:
We speak Germanic — and as we all know, English and German are kind of backwards in structure compared to the Romans, which are Latin-based. So it’s up to the translator, if they want to twist it that way.
Cassius:
But if I’m a Roman and I’m hearing tantum religio, the first concepts in my mind are going to be tantum meaning something like “so much” and then religio means “religion.” So if you chop that sentence off right there and stop talking, you would be saying “so much religion” — and you could just translate that in a lot of different ways.
Charles:
Well, tantum means “only.”
Cassius:
Well — “only religion could suadere.” One of the online services I use is Whitaker’s Words — if you google Whitaker’s Words, you come up with that translation engine — and under tantum it translates tantus or tantum as “of such great size, so great, so much,” and “only” is one of the ones they use, but it is the fourth one in line. So it’s again a very hazardous thing to translate from an ancient language. I use Google Translate and another Latin translation engine both at the same time — I like to cross-reference multiple different engines. But tantum has different synonyms: “only” is the first one that shows up, then “so,” and “alone,” or “to such a degree” or “such an extent.”
Charles:
Which one does that come from — did you say Google?
Cassius:
Yeah. So anyway, I guess this paragraph is starting out by saying that Lucretius is acknowledging that Memmius — or someone else reading this — may have been led to believe that he’s going to be teaching impious things. But in fact, as Lucretius is going to illustrate, the reverse is probably the case, because it’s not Epicurean philosophy but religion that produces the most outrageous evils. Now — we’ve done some reading. Elaine did some googling into the background of the story of Iphianassa — however you want to pronounce that — and there are apparently various versions of the story. Basically the bottom line is that the king is willing to sacrifice his own daughter so that the priests can supposedly deliver for him a favorable wind for his ships as they launch off. We are supposed to naturally view this as horrible — as I think 99.9% of us would — and as an example of how religion leads us off into the most horrible of deeds. Apparently the story has various versions, in some of which she is not killed. It’s saying here: “Classical dramatizations differ on how willing the father or daughter was to this fate; some include trickery, such as claiming she was due to be married to Achilles. But Agamemnon did eventually sacrifice Iphigenia — her death appeased Artemis and the Greek army set out for Troy.” One of the paragraphs that Elaine found reads: “It is clear that Lucretius treats the name Iphianassa as a synonym for Iphigenia. Homer and Sophocles mention a daughter of Agamemnon called Iphianassa, but in neither author is she the daughter who was sacrificed at Aulis — in several versions rescued at the last moment by Artemis. The first known mention of the sacrifice was in the Cypria, where according to the summary of Proclus the daughter was called Iphigenia.”
And then we were also drawing the analogy that there’s a lot of child sacrifice in some of the different ancient traditions — such as Abraham and Isaac. And I think Charles, you came up with another one in the Bible as well.
Charles:
And Jephthah, yes.
Cassius:
So Lucretius was apparently presuming that his readers or listeners would find child sacrifice to be abhorrent — as I think he was probably right in presuming. It’s quite a short paragraph actually.
Charles:
It is — the majority of it is just devoted to the detail of her appearance and the knives and the priests and tears and just the general emotional reaction to the scene, as opposed to containing a lot more content.
Cassius:
So clearly in this version she is definitely resisting — hurried off and then dragged, trembling. Okay — so another of the items I wanted to contrast this with was from the inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda, Fragment 20. Since the basic theme of this paragraph seems to be that not only does Epicurean philosophy not lead us towards evil, it is religion that in fact leads us towards evil — a similar point is made in Fragment 20. Let me read this quickly and we can compare the two points.
Fragment 20 says: “So it’s obvious that wrongdoers, given that they do not fear the penalties imposed by law, are not afraid of the gods. This has to be conceded, for if they were afraid they would not do wrong. As for all the others, it is my opinion that the wise are not righteous on account of the gods but on account of thinking correctly and the opinions they hold regarding certain things, and especially pain and death; and that ordinary people, on the other hand, are righteous insofar as they are righteous on account of the laws and the penalties imposed by the laws hanging over them. But even if some of their number are conscientious on account of the laws, they are few — only just two or three individuals are to be found among great segments of multitudes — and not even these are steadfast in acting righteously, for they are not soundly persuaded about providence. A clear indication of the complete inability of the gods to prevent wrongdoing is provided by the nations of the Jews and the Egyptians, who, as well as being the most superstitious of all people, are the vilest of all peoples. On account of what kind of gods, then, will human beings be righteous? For they are not righteous on account of the real ones, or on account of Plato’s and Socrates’s judges in Hades. We are left with this conclusion. Otherwise, why should not those who disregard the laws scorn fables much more so? With regard to righteousness, neither does our doctrine do harm nor does the opposite doctrine help; while with regard to the other condition, the opposite doctrine not only does not help but on the contrary also does harm, whereas our doctrine not only does not harm but also helps. For the one removes disturbances while the other adds them, as has already been made clear to you before.”
Really that last paragraph probably sums up the point being made in all of that material that I just read — because he’s saying: in regard to righteousness, Epicurean philosophy does not harm and in fact helps; while in regard to standard supernatural religion, it not only does not help, it also does harm. And Epicurean philosophy removes disturbances while standard supernatural religion adds them. That I think is basically the same point being made in this paragraph in Lucretius. Do you agree with that?
Charles:
I would, yes.
Cassius:
Okay. And I guess in regard to our discussion earlier — that Voltaire said this line would last as long as the world — he’s sort of echoing what apparently Ovid said, when Ovid wrote: “When a single day brings the world to destruction, only then will the poetry of the sublime Lucretius pass away.” I’m just taking a quick look at the Letter to Pythocles — in response to the question of whether there are other Epicurean texts directly on point about the corrupting power of religion — the Letter to Pythocles is directed much towards the gods, but nothing that would provide context to some of these paragraphs. The one passage in that letter that I think about often — it may have some slight relevance — is where Epicurus talks about the signs of the weather given by animals, and I’ll read this:
“The signs of the weather which are given by certain animals result from a mere coincidence of occasion — the animals do not exert any compulsion for winter to come to an end, nor is there some divine nature which sits and watches the outgoings of the animal and then fulfills the signs they give. For not even the lowest animal — although a small thing giving the greater pleasure — would be seized by such foolishness, much less one who was possessed of perfect happiness.” And then: “And most of all, give yourself up to the study of the beginnings and of infinity, and of things akin to them, and also the criteria of truth and the feelings, and the purpose for which we reason out these things. For these points, when they are thoroughly studied, will most easily enable you to understand the causes of the details.”
Charles:
And there are other ways in which this result may be brought about quite free from superstition.
Cassius:
Right. So it’s really a continuing theme — that superstition leads you to disturbance and to fear and to an unhappy life, while the study of nature gets rid of those problems and leads to the possibility of living happily. Which is sort of a variation on the theme of the corrupting power of religion versus the freeing or healing power of natural philosophy. Here he’s ridiculing the idea that the gods would pay attention to animals and change the seasons because of what the animals were doing — and in Lucretius he’s ridiculing the priests of Greece and Agamemnon for thinking they could persuade the gods to change the winds by sacrificing his daughter. It’s clearly a recurring theme of Lucretius and Epicurus and the whole philosophy: that supernatural religion is a corrupting influence which has to be dealt with through the study of nature.
I remember in this context — I believe it’s the final chapter of Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens — where she basically lays it all on the line, having Epicurus give a speech that pursues this theme very directly about how it is in fact supernatural religion that is the main corrupting influence of humanity. Charles, have you read A Few Days in Athens to the end?
Charles:
Not yet, no.
Cassius:
The last chapter is particularly good. And since we’re recording this and people may not be familiar with what I’m talking about — the book is written by Frances Wright, entitled A Few Days in Athens. She’s the female author from the time of Thomas Jefferson; she gave this book to Thomas Jefferson and he praised it. It’s available for free at a few days in athens dot com. It is a historical fiction in the style of an ancient Greek dialogue, and very well written and well researched — apparently very consistent with Epicurean philosophy. But it’s primarily directed towards ethical issues, and most of the book is devoted to contrasting Epicurus with Stoicism in a very interesting way. It has different sections on epistemology and other aspects of the philosophy. And there’s a confrontation between Epicurus and Zeno which is also very interesting, highlighting differences between Epicurean philosophy and Stoicism. But this last chapter is devoted to summarizing the problem with revealed supernatural religion.
Since we’re talking about the general topic of the relationship with the gods, there is also the obvious parallel to the Letter to Menoeceus, where Epicurus starts off by saying: “Believe that a god is immortal and blessed, even as the common idea of a god is engraved on men’s minds, and do not assign to him anything alien to his immortality or ill-suited to his blessedness.” Assigning to a god participation in the child sacrifice of Iphianassa is obviously something you would not assign to a god under a theory like that.
It’s pretty off topic, but I just had a somewhat humorous thought yesterday — have you seen 2001: A Space Odyssey by Kubrick?
Martin:
Many years ago, but yes.
Cassius:
I was wondering if the very ending — with the figure in space — would be a good representation of an Epicurean god to somebody very unfamiliar with the philosophy. Martin, do you want to comment on that?
Martin:
The movie is famous, but I have never watched it by myself.
Charles:
The first thought that comes to my mind — and I can’t remember the details of that scene either — is that you often read in philosophy about the difference between virtue and intelligence versus innocence. A fetus or a baby has the quality of innocence but doesn’t have necessarily much quality of intelligence or experience. His mind really hasn’t developed yet. I don’t think that’s off topic at all to discuss, because my picture of what the Epicurean gods are describing is not just some kind of an innocent or inexperienced life form — in fact, I believe they talk about the gods speaking Greek. Whether they’re joking about that or not, by means of referring to them speaking Greek, they presumably have pretty well developed senses of intelligence.
Cassius:
That’s just the first thought that comes to my mind — because I can’t remember what happened at the very end of Space Odyssey other than a fetus-like character. Is that what appeared on the screen?
Charles:
It’s Dave reincarnated. Dave was the astronaut who shut down HAL and survived. He went through the wormhole.
Cassius:
Okay. So that is a reincarnation of Dave. Maybe there could be a thread detailing this sometime. But like I said, it’s just quick speculation — because that is one thing that a lot of people who are new to Epicurean philosophy, or who are neo-Epicurean, have a lot of trouble grasping.
Charles:
Which part?
Cassius:
Just the nature of the Epicurean gods in general. Right, yeah — that’s clearly a recurring issue. It’s so different from what almost everybody conceives. And since we’re just talking and recording this for others to listen to later — my understanding is that the most detailed explanation of the Epicurean gods that’s left anywhere is in Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, where he has an Epicurean speaker by the name of Velleius who gives the Epicurean position on the existence of the gods and says a few words about them. That’s probably the most detailed description that’s left anywhere.
Martin:
Wouldn’t the Letter to Herodotus be actually more detailed? Because it really explains why he thinks that these gods exist — he receives the image particles from the gods, not by direct sense perception.
Cassius:
What detail do you remember from that, Charles — are you scanning it too? Do you see?
Charles:
I am. I mean, the Letter to Herodotus is clearly where the discussion of physics and how the universe is eternal and boundless comes in — which is very close to the discussion of the gods in Lucretius. But I don’t know that it contains much more. I did find another reference to boundary marks there though — “the motions of the heavenly bodies and their turnings and eclipses and risings and settings must not be thought to be due to any being who controls and ordains or has ordained them and at the same time enjoys bliss together with immortality — for trouble and care and anger and kindness are not consistent with the life of blessedness.” That’s a reference to the stars rather than to the gods.
Yeah, there’s also: “Furthermore, we must believe that to discover accurately the cause of the most essential facts is the function of the science of nature, and that blessedness for us in the knowledge of celestial phenomena lies in this and in the understanding of the nature of the existences seen in the celestial phenomena and of all else that is akin to the exact knowledge requisite for our happiness.”
Cassius:
Well, that’s clearly relevant. But I don’t know that that’s the affirmative detail about the gods making images. I mean, there are many places where you can find this. Over at EpicureanFriends.com, under the Contexts tab, we have the Velleius section from On the Nature of the Gods, and in that one you see a lot of discussion. So let me read part of the Velleius section here:
“Anybody who, pondering on the baseless and irrational character of these doctrines, ought to regard Epicurus with reverence and to rank him as one of the very gods about whom we are inquiring. For he alone perceived first that the gods exist because nature herself has imprinted a conception of them on the minds of all mankind.” And then: “We believe the gods to be blessed and immortal — for nature, which bestowed upon us an idea of the gods themselves, also engraved on our minds the belief that they are eternal and blessed.”
Charles:
Yes, read that next paragraph — “For the divine form…”
Cassius:
“For the divine form we have the hints of nature supplemented by the teachings of reason. From nature all men of all races derive the notion of gods as having human shape and none other — for in what other shape do they appear to anyone awake or asleep? But not to make primary concepts the sole test of all things — reason itself delivers the pronouncement: for it seems appropriate that a being who is the most exalted, whether by reason of his happiness or of his eternity, should also be the most beautiful. But what disposition of the limbs, what cast of features, what shape or outline can be more beautiful than the human form? … If the human figure surpasses the form of all other living beings, and god is a living being, god must possess the shape which is the most beautiful of all. And since it is agreed that the gods are supremely happy, and no one can be happy without virtue, and virtue cannot exist without reason, and reason is only found in the human shape — it follows that the gods possess the form of man. Yet their form is not corporeal but only resembles bodily substance; it does not contain blood but the semblance of blood.”
Charles:
Yes — that’s the famous reference to quasi-blood and quasi-bodies.
Cassius:
And it continues. The next paragraph is about the images: “Because an endless train of precisely similar images arises from the innumerable atoms and streams towards the gods, and our mind, with keenest feelings of pleasure, fixes its gaze on these images. The second sentence in that paragraph too — ‘Epicurus not merely discerns abstruse and recondite things with his mind’s eye but handles them as tangible realities.’ And further: ‘He teaches that the substance and nature of the gods is such that it is perceived not by the senses but by the mind — not materially or individually like the solid objects — but by our perceiving images owing to their similarity and succession and recognizing their material.’ So he’s clearly saying that they are material beings — tangible realities is the way he’s handling them.
Now personally, I don’t want to go beyond this without mentioning the next paragraph, which I think is important, because it is the only reference I’m aware of to the term isonomia. The next paragraph says: ‘Moreover, there is the supremely potent principle of infinity, which claims the closest and most careful study. We must understand that in the sum of things everything has its exact match and counterpart. This property is termed by Epicurus isonomia or the principle of uniform distribution. From this principle it follows that if the whole number of mortals be so many, there must exist no less a number of immortals — and if the causes of destruction are beyond count, the causes of conservation are also bound to be infinite.’ And there’s no doubt that that paragraph is very difficult to understand and we don’t have enough detail to really parse out exactly what he’s saying. But I think it’s a sign of a deeper argument that’s not preserved here.
Charles:
And I relate this to Lucretius: “nature never makes only a single thing of one kind.” There’s a series of things being mentioned but not fully explained.
Cassius:
Right. Of course you could go on — the next paragraph talks about the mode of life of the gods and how they pass their days, and somewhere in here is where they say they speak Greek, I think. But I think this is the most detailed presentation that’s left to us — and it is worth noting that the book Epicurus wrote on the gods is now lost to history. Diogenes Laertius cites Epicurus as having written a book titled On the Gods, which is probably where all this would have been fully explained and fleshed out. But we don’t have it.
A couple of paragraphs down in this Velleius section, he’s still criticizing the Stoic and Platonic doctrines of theology, and he says: “An outcome of this theology was first of all your doctrine of necessity or fate… but what value can be assigned to a philosophy which thinks that everything happens by fate — a belief for an old woman, an ignorant old woman at that? And next follows your doctrine of divination, which would so steep us in superstition — if we consented to listen to you — that we should be the devotees of soothsayers, augurs, oracle mongers, seers, and the interpreters of dreams. But Epicurus has set us free from superstitious terrors and delivered us out of captivity, so that we have no fear of beings who we know create no trouble for themselves and seek to cause none to others, while we worship with reverence the transcendent majesty of nature.”
But I fear that enthusiasm for my subject has made me long-winded, and we will have to begin to wrap up our episode for today.
Charles:
Yeah, we kind of got a little sidetracked — not that I want to say “derailed,” but it definitely led into a different discussion from just Lucretius alone. The details of the life of the gods is a little different because Lucretius apparently did not get around to including that in his book — it’s certainly not in the section we discussed today. But this last paragraph from Velleius about how supernatural religion leads you into superstitious terror and captivity and fear and trouble pretty much is exactly what Lucretius was saying.
Cassius:
Yeah, it’s very clear that Lucretius knew about this — he just never had the time or opportunity to fully explain it, because the book is unfinished.
Charles:
I know there are commentators who argue about that — some say the book is finished and that he never intended to come back to it. But I think you’re right that it appears unfinished on that point.
Martin:
Yeah, I mean, I fully agree — pretty much with everything said. There was an instance in the Letter to Herodotus that does state that it can appear.
Cassius:
Also, in connection — if we’re talking about the life of the gods as part of this tangent — you’ve also got in the Torquatus section of De Finibus the issue where he describes what the best life would be. And I think that’s got to have some relevance to the life of the gods as well, because if he says the best life is this, then presumably the gods are experiencing the best life. Let me quickly read that:
“The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain. What possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable?”
To me, that means the gods can’t even be better than this. He says: “One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or pain. He will know that death means complete unconsciousness and pain is generally light if long and short if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration and its continuance by diminishing severity. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away but constantly renew their enjoyment and recollection — and his lot will be one which does not admit of further improvement.”
I’ve always thought this is one of the reasons why we should not conclude that a god is just some floating abstraction that doesn’t experience anything except some kind of generic pleasure — because the example here is “the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind.” And I think presumably, if that’s the most excellent and desirable existence we can conceive of, then presumably the gods are experiencing something like that too. If they speak Greek, they would not be giving up numerous and vivid pleasures of body and mind.
Charles:
Could also be a joke.
Cassius:
It could be. Although I don’t think this section was intended to be a joke — it’s the proof that pleasure is the ultimate good. He’s appealing basically to your just general sense of what it means to be a human: to think that pleasure is the best thing you experience. So what could be better than to constantly experience numerous and vivid pleasures of body and mind, undisturbed by any pain? Okay, we want to talk about closing comments and we’ll wrap up. Martin, anything in closing?
Martin:
I’m fine with finishing.
Cassius:
All right, well, thanks Charles and thanks Martin. We’ll be in touch during the week.
Charles:
Alright, well — enjoyed it again today. Talk to you soon.