Episode 012 - Nothing But Combinations Of Matter And Void
Date: 03/30/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1493-episode-twelve-nothing-but-combinations-of-matter-and-void/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 012 opens with Charles and Elaine reading back-to-back passages from Daniel Brown’s translation of Book 1: Charles reads the passage (around lines 401–431) where Lucretius asserts that all nature is either body or space — nothing else — and challenges anyone who doubts it to come forward with as many objections as they like; Elaine reads the following section on essential conjuncts versus events (accidents), introducing Lucretius’s distinction between properties inseparable from a thing (weight to stone, heat to fire, tactility to body, untouchability to void) and properties that come and go without affecting the thing’s nature (slavery, poverty, war, peace). The episode then turns almost entirely to philosophical discussion rather than text exegesis.
The main theme is why the physics must be understood before the ethics — and why Neo-Epicureans who skip straight to the Letter to Menoeceus reliably go wrong. Elaine gives the key illustration: once you grasp that there is no absolute perspective outside the senses and that feelings are part of reality, you cannot arrive at the idealistic social prescriptions that Neo-Epicureans commonly draw from Epicurus. Cassius reinforces this with Norman DeWitt’s “chain reasoning” concept: Epicurean arguments form a chain where each link refers back to the preceding observation, and a broken link early on corrupts everything that follows. Charles adds, from his experience moderating online Epicurean spaces, that approximately 98% of self-described Neo-Epicureans focus exclusively on ethics with no engagement with physics or canonics, and that this predictably warps their view of pleasure. Julie, who admits she was once in that category herself, observes that the physics/ethics disconnect is partly a product of modern compartmentalization — familiar to anyone who grew up making peace between science class and Sunday services.
The group also addresses Stephen Jay Gould’s “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” as a historically useful but ultimately unsatisfying compromise between science and religion (Martin traces the separation to the Galileo-era conflict), the standard is-ought problem (resolved, Elaine argues, only by restoring feelings to their place in the canon), and the persistent misreading of Menoeceus as Epicurean minimalism (Julie defends the letter at the end, pointing to the passage where Epicurus links the pleasant life to sober examination of all choices and avoidances). Charles notes that a simple reading of Diogenes Laërtius’s biography of Epicurus — which records his endorsement of both pleasures of rest and pleasures of action — exposes the inconsistency of the minimalist reading. The episode closes with Cassius quoting Emerson’s “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” in the context of top-down abstract principles versus Epicurean grounding in pleasure, and a personal coronavirus note of well-wishes to all panelists.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 12 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, author of 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 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 start with today’s episode, let me remind you of our three ground rules. One: our focus is on classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it, not on how modern commentators interpret it today. Number two: our approach is not Neo-Epicurean but Epicurean, and we aren’t going to try to sell you Stoicism, Humanism, Buddhism, or Marxism. Epicurus was unique and we aren’t going to put him in a box of conventional modern morality. Number three: we don’t approach Epicurus as either a minimalist, a hedonist, or an atheist as those terms are commonly used. We’re going to study Epicurean philosophy exactly as Lucretius taught it, and that means that feeling, pleasure, and pain are the guides that nature gave us to live by — not gods, not idealism, and not virtue ethics — and it also means that the supernatural does not exist. 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.
In Episode 12 we’ll continue our discussion of the void and introduce the issue of the properties and qualities of material things, and what that means for issues such as time and for existence and non-existence. We’ll be discussing this over several episodes and we hope you’ll join us. Now let’s get started with today’s episode, with Charles reading the first part of today’s text, followed by Elaine with the second part.
Charles: [reads Daniel Brown’s 1743 translation]
I could by many arguments confirm this system of a void and fix your faith to what I say, but these small tracks I have drawn to such a searching mind will be enough. The rest you may find out without a guide; for as a staunch hound once put upon the foot will nose soon the mountain game from their thick covers, so you in things like these will one thing by another trace, will hunt for truth in every dark recess and draw her thence.
But if you doubt, or in the least object to what I say, I freely promise this, my Memmius: my tuneful tongue shall, from the mighty store that fills my heart, pour out such plenteous draughts from the deep springs that tardy age I fear will first creep through my limbs and quite break down the gates of life before I can explain in verse the many arguments that give a light to one particular.
But now I shall go on to finish regularly what I begun. All nature, therefore, in itself considered, is one of these: is body, or is space in which all things are placed and from which the various motions of all beings spring. That there is body, common sense will show — this as a fundamental truth must be allowed, or there is nothing we can fix as certain in our pursuit of hidden things by which to find the truth or prove it when it is found. Then if there were no place or space we call it void, bodies would have nowhere to be, nor could they move at all, as we have fully proved to you before.
Cassius: Thank you, Charles. And so, Elaine, if you could read the next part.
Elaine: [continues Daniel Brown’s translation]
Besides, there is nothing you can strictly say is neither body nor void, which you may call a third degree of things distinct from these. For every being must in quantity be more or less, and if it can be touched, though near so small or light, it must be body and so esteemed. But if it can’t be touched, and has not in itself the power to stop the course of other bodies as they pass, this is the void we call an empty space.
Again, whatever is must either act itself, or be by other agents acted on, or must be something in which other bodies must have a place and move. But nothing without body can act or be acted on, and where can this be done but in a vacuum or empty space? Therefore, beside what body is or space, no third degree in nature can be found, nothing that can ever affect our sense or by the power of thought can be conceived.
All other things you’ll find essential conjuncts, or else the events or accidents of these. I call essential conjunct what’s so joined into a thing that it cannot, without fatal violence, be forced or parted from it — is weight to stones, to fire heat, moisture to the sea, touch to all bodies, and not to be touched essential to the void. But on the contrary, bondage, liberty, riches, poverty, war, concord, or the like, which do not affect the nature of the thing, but when they come or go the thing remains entire — these, as it is fit we should, we call events.
Time likewise of itself is nothing. Our sense collects it from things themselves — what has been done long since, the thing that present is, and what’s to come. For no one, we must own, ever thought of time distinct from things in motion or at rest. For when the poets sing of Helen’s rape, or of the Trojan states subdued by war, we must not say that these things do exist now in themselves, since time irrevocably passed has long since swept away that race of men that were the cause of those events. For every act is either properly the event of things, or of the place where those things are done.
Further, if things were not of matter formed, were there no place or space where things might act? The fire that burned in Paris’s heart, blown up by love of Helen’s beauty, had never raised the famous contests of a cruel war, nor had the wooden horse set Troy on fire, discharging from his belly in the night the armed Greeks. And once you plainly see that actions do not of themselves subsist, as bodies do, nor are in nature such as is a void, but rather are more justly called the events of body and a space where things are carried on.
Cassius: Okay, thanks, Elaine. Generally I don’t find this translation as hard to read, but just as a side note: it really interests me that what we are used to seeing — the phrasing of things — has really changed. The grammar, everything is different, and it’s more striking for some reason in these verses than previously. I’m not sure why. This last part that Elaine read is particularly difficult, I think, and there are issues in it not only in the phrasing but one of the things I want to talk about today is the choice of words. One of the reasons I like this particular translation is that he uses the word “events,” which is closer to the Latin eventum that is used, but virtually everybody else chooses to use the word “accident” — which to me has a different connotation. And something we’ll talk about — but I’m doing what I did not want to do, which is talk about this section first, because if we talk about this section now we’ll never go back to the first section. Let’s first talk about what Charles read from around lines 401 to 431. That’s kind of a continuation from last week. Again, one of the things about it — this is the reference to the fact that now, just given the information about matter and void, you have enough to basically uncover all the rest of everything. He uses the analogy of the hound using the scent of game to find it. He says basically: you’ve got the scent now, and one thing by another you can trace out for yourself every dark recess and draw it out. So he’s saying that we’ve got a really important part already done. Go ahead, Elaine.
Elaine: Oh, I was just going to say — it’s obvious that this is kind of the emphatic “I’ve really nailed it now.” You know, there’s just nothing you can say that can overcome what I’ve told you. And if you think there is, oh, just let me have it, because I could just keep going endlessly until I’m dead.
Cassius: Yeah, there’s no end to the argument for reality that can be made. But I also think what you just mentioned about once you’ve got it, you can see it for yourself — that applies to the whole of Epicurean philosophy. And where I see errors in Neo-Epicurean perspectives is that they never got this to begin with. And so then everything else they say, they’re losing the train of it somehow as they move from the physics to the ethics — something happens where they’re losing their grasp on it. But if you ever really get a full handle on it, it will reward you in that you will see where people are making mistakes, not just about the philosophy, but in thinking about life, which really is the philosophy. Even if they’re not Epicureans, you’ll see: oh, this is where they’re going wrong. So it’s definitely worth our listeners’ time to persist in this, really get convinced of the fundamentals, and then the rest is easy.
It’s like those pictures where you have the vase or the woman’s face. Once you’ve seen both, it’s not going to be confusing to you anymore. The same way with this philosophy: if you really get a full handle on it, you will see where people are making mistakes.
Julie: Can you expand on what you just said? I’m not sure I follow — how the Neo-Epicureans, what part of this do you think they’re not getting, and how does that lead them to some other conclusion?
Elaine: Well, so — I think there are many examples, but one example would be how they can wind up thinking that there is an ideal social system that every individual should endorse. So if you start with the physics, and start with matter and void, and you realize that there’s no possibility of an absolute perspective, and that we apprehend reality through our senses — that we apprehend reality subjectively, that we don’t have any other way to apprehend reality, and that feelings are also part of this — if you keep that firmly in mind, you’re not going to arrive at an idealist recommendation to people that they should always have one viewpoint or another. It would be silly. Does that make sense?
Cassius: Yes, it does. Thank you very much. I think that’s an excellent explanation. I couldn’t have approached saying it better myself, and I think you’re right that there are many examples. One thing that comes to my mind in the context: later on, I think it’s in Book Four, when Lucretius is talking about the relationship between reason and the senses, he uses the example of building a building like an architect. If you don’t get the foundation right, then the building is eventually going to collapse, because the foundation was never laid properly. And in many ways the philosophy is like building a building — or building any kind of structure that relies on its foundation. You have to start at the beginning and have the foundation correct, and then make everything else consistent with the foundation, or else you’re just going to be lost and it’s eventually going to collapse. DeWitt talks about it, I think, in the sense of chain reasoning. He likes to talk about the fact that many of Epicurus’s arguments are a chain — you make one observation, you add another observation, you add something else, and you’re always referring back to your initial observations, and you can never allow there to be a contradiction and forget your first observation. We’re talking about contradictions last week, but this is where it really comes into play.
Charles: Polyvalent logic — yeah, I’ve heard of it and I have to look up exactly where I heard that in the context of Epicurean philosophy, but it kind of struck me because I hadn’t really noticed it anywhere else except in DeWitt. But I do want to touch on the concept of Neo-Epicurean. I would say just from moderating the Discord, all these people who had joined, browsing the subreddit, and just generally finding a lot of places online — people who would identify as Epicureans — the vast overwhelming amount, I’d say probably close to 98% of anybody who we could say is Neo-Epicurean, focus exclusively on the ethics. There is no physics, there is no canon of truth, no canonics — yep — and if you lose those, you’ll get into weird things with your ethics, right?
Yes. I forget — it’s either Philodemus or On Ends — but without the physics, this is very much like what you said, Elaine: because they do not understand the foundation of physics in regards to Epicurean philosophy, they get lost or confused on how pleasure is viewed. It’s always viewed as — for them, it opens up the door to simple pleasures, ideal pleasures.
Cassius: Yes, yes.
Charles: I’ve never heard or even seen anywhere a Neo-Epicurean talking about even the swerve — a concept that I think would be kind of pronounced among that crowd.
Cassius: Yeah, oh I agree. I’m so glad you brought that up, and I don’t know how to get them to see it other than if we just persistently come back to the physics and proceed from there.
Charles: Yeah, that’s one of the reasons we’re doing this. And I like to connect Epicurean philosophy to a lot of key terms found in the philosophy to make it more approachable. But if a person wants to understand this, they have to take it upon themselves to see the truth, as Lucretius just wrote to Memmius.
Cassius: I mentioned to several of you that I was really pleased with the results of last week’s episode — how I really thought it would be very helpful for anybody to listen to that no matter how much they knew about Epicurus or Lucretius, that it was a really good grounding in what Epicurean philosophy is really all about. But at the same time I also acknowledged to myself that you were using the figure 98%, Charles — I acknowledged that probably 98% of the people who listened to that episode would say to themselves: “What are you guys talking about? Epicurus is all about pleasure and pain and ethics, and you have spent an hour thinking he’s talking about something besides those things.” And they just wouldn’t even relate to it. But you have to do this — you have to understand the basic orientation towards the universe before you can consistently apply the rest of it, or even before you can consistently understand the rest of it. I’m not even going in the direction of whether you agree or disagree with Epicurus — you don’t even understand Epicurus if you don’t understand first that most of what he’s talking about is an orientation towards the universe at large, and only then does he derive the issue of pleasure and pain and how to live. But he starts at what he considers to be the basics: the physics, and if you want to call it canonics — the way you look at the physics.
Martin, are you still with us?
Martin: Yes, I’m listening.
Cassius: Anything to add on this point so far?
Martin: No.
Charles: I would like to just briefly touch on — I wish I could get this in numbers, but we don’t know — that one section from the Letter to Menoeceus, the one that gets cited all the time. It’s about a paragraph long. I don’t think it’s expounded that well in the Cyril Bailey translation that we have on the site. But it’s the one where it says “by pleasure we mean…” Yes. For some people, that is the most lengthy comprehensive explanation of Epicurean philosophy. That paragraph is all that matters to them.
Cassius: Charles, I’ve never understood the obsession with that paragraph, because it leads you towards simplicity and it leads you towards sort of an idealistic statement of what ultimate pleasure should be. But go ahead — I’m sorry to interrupt you, Charles. You go ahead.
Elaine: Well, hold on — let me look up another translation. So — based on a conversation I’m having with someone who is definitely not an Epicurean, who would consider themselves more toward Platonism but who’s willing to discuss these things — I’m noticing that when you are like Epicurus, believing that it’s important to study nature to find out how things are — what the nature of things is — you’re going to take a bottom-up approach. You’re not going to accept conclusions that are abstract and that don’t agree with the bottom-up construction of reality, right?
Cassius: Yeah.
Elaine: But there are the top-down people who really think that it’s more important what the abstract ideas tell us to do and how they should form our decision-making than it is the bottom-up view — not realizing that these abstract ideas came from our brains, which doesn’t mean that they’re accurate. And if they’re not in accord with the bottom-up view, they’re not really of any use. We certainly shouldn’t let our decisions be guided top-down by these abstract things that we’ve happened to come up with. We should start at the beginning and remember how things really work when we’re making decisions.
Cassius: Yes, Elaine — my perspective on that is absolutely what you just said. The conclusions not only come from the foundation — I would emphasize: you cannot understand the conclusions unless you understand the foundation. Because the paragraph that Charles is referring to — which we probably could spend the rest of the episode talking about if we allow ourselves to, and we should not do that today — that paragraph, in my position, is totally reconcilable with the physics and the canonics and the things that we’re going through in the basics of Lucretius and what Epicurus wrote in the Letter to Herodotus. But if you do not understand where he’s coming from about everything being judged by the senses, then you can take that paragraph and look at the abstractions of it and come up with what I think is a totally different and contradictory conclusion against the fundamentals. And so when we get to that paragraph — whether we choose to spend an episode on it or however we get to it — my answer to what that paragraph means is that it is clearly stated and totally consistent with Epicurean philosophy as written. But it has to be understood in the context of the fundamentals — and if you understand the fundamentals, you’re just not going to reach these conclusions about an idealistic or an overly simplistic view of pleasure that people want to read into it because of their own pre-existing dispositions, which are not in any way based on the Epicurean fundamentals.
Cassius: Anybody else?
Charles: Yeah, so — even for people who are new to Epicurus or don’t know much about him — it will always be important to note how distinct he was. He was sort of heterodox to the Hellenistic era. He went away from Aristotle, he went away from Plato. He was a rabble-rouser. And he was kind of outside the famous dialectical method of Greece at the time, as well as the sophistry of Athens and all that. He has to be understood without the other influence of the Greeks — except against Plato, but that’s because so much of Epicurean philosophy is a refutation of Platonism. It wouldn’t make sense for anybody to group Epicurus even with Roman philosophers or anybody else. It’s one of those schools where you have to understand it for its own merits. You have to read the source material and understand the foundation. That’s what I wanted to add.
Cassius: Okay. Anybody else right now?
Julie: Yeah, I want to add in. So I will admit that when I first started studying Epicurean philosophy, I was one of those people who only cared about the ethics. And it was Cassius that helped me see that the physics was important. But I want to say, on behalf of everyone who tends to focus more on the ethics, that I think it’s just — you know, part of our society today and the way that we work — that we kind of compartmentalize everything. And if you go through the physics, there’s just this tendency to go, “Yeah, duh,” you know, like whatever. And it’s hard to make that connection. That’s why I asked Elaine to elaborate — because it’s hard to make that connection between the physics and some of the things you end up thinking about in terms of the ethics, because it’s just not in our nature these days to connect them back. It’s very common, I think, for people to be science-based and yet then have these other beliefs that are in no way supported by their science, but they just tend to not even make that connection. So I think that’s excellent that we covered that, and I think that’s one of the things that we can do with this podcast — draw those connections — because it’s not an easy connection to make.
Elaine: I think that’s absolutely right, and I had a similar reaction in that — well, I grew up, my dad was a physicist, my mother was a mathematician. I grew up with scientists, and so I also thought, “Duh,” making the connection between physics and ethics. I thought, well, why wouldn’t anybody do that? And then the more I started observing how people spoke, I thought, oh — they’re not doing that. They’re exactly as you say, compartmentalizing it. I just never imagined that anybody would do that. It didn’t cross my mind that that was possible. But now I see it, so now I understand why it is so important to hammer on the physics — where I didn’t before. And so I have Cassius’s to thank for that. And I think I still do it sometimes — every now and then I catch myself and go, ah, you know, I’m not making this connection, so if I say something, please correct me.
Cassius: Same here. Same here. People are used to compartmentalizing, I think, for so many different reasons. But one of them: if you’ve got a religious background, how can you not compartmentalize? Because the absurdities and the ridiculous things that are taught in religion — when you go in on Sunday and listen to the preacher talk, you pretty much have to just wash that out of your mind in order to survive and live in the real world, because it is so ridiculous and so absurd. And people are used to just taking ethics and not worrying about where it comes from, and they pick and choose from sources that are totally contradictory with each other. But that’s not what Epicurus is doing.
Elaine: No, it’s not. And I want to make another point about that, since you mentioned how they have to do that in religions. That was — I think it was Stephen Jay Gould — correct me if I’m wrong — who talked about the two magisteria. Was he the one? I may have that wrong, but that’s what comes to my mind. But the idea is that there is the realm of science, in fact, and then this other realm of religion — which is almost more like art. But the problem is — this is where people who are progressive Christians or of other religions will get into trouble — because they say, “Well, it’s metaphor, and we’re using it symbolically, and we can still do that.” The problem is that they forget what they’re doing, and they take their abstractions as if they’re accurate. Even the abstractions they arrived at are not grounded in reality. And so they’re guided by things like “love every person” — instead of the sensible thing: if you look at reality from the ground up, people are different from each other, so use your brain and treat people differently according to how they act and whether they’re causing you pain or not. They’re guided by these overarching abstract principles that they will argue are as real — but in a different magisterium than the magisterium of science. But you can’t really do that and make good decisions about life that will lead you to pleasure.
Martin: I mean, the separation between physics and ethics is very widespread, and this was actually a result of the conflict that arose at the time of Galileo between Christianity and the upcoming scientists. So in a way, to get out of this, it was separated like this. So this was something developed over time.
Elaine: Oh right, I just meant his phrase. I think he was the one who coined that phrase. But yes, I agree with you — it well preceded him. He just used that word to describe it.
Martin: It was essentially a compromise so that both sides could go ahead. Otherwise, with all the evidence coming up, the consequence would have been a complete refutation of Christianity.
Charles: I was going to say — since we’re still kind of on the topic of foundations and physics — we still have a few more sections to go, including the section of the Letter to Herodotus.
Cassius: Yes, we sure do have a lot more to go, but we don’t necessarily have to do it today. So if somebody has things they think are important, we can continue. Because the other parts that follow are going to take a long time to discuss, so we may not have any choice but to break it up. Anybody?
Elaine: Yeah, one more thing I would say is that for listeners who are still clinging to either religious beliefs or abstract kinds of things like Humanism — with these abstract ideals that are not grounded in science — it’s going to be hard for you to get the rest of it if you hang onto that. So it’s really important. Is Lucretius convincing you of how reality works? Do you see any room in there for a truly abstract ideal? Or will you at least try out this possibility that reality is working as Lucretius says? If you at least try on that position, it’ll be so much easier to see how the rest of it works — both in Epicurean philosophy and in your life. This is not going to be a philosophy that’s compatible with hanging onto any of those abstract notions, those ideals.
Julie: I would also like to add that I think with a lot of religions there’s a certain benefit that people see and they want to believe it — and so that’s part of the pull. And I think for Epicurean philosophy it takes a lot more time and effort to see the benefit. So in addition to us making these connections, which I think are important, I think as we go through — and I think we’ve been pretty good about this too — we should pull in some of the ethical concepts if they relate to what we’re talking about, because that can help listeners start to understand the philosophy better. Because I do think it takes a little bit more time than the promise of some religions.
Cassius: Good, yeah — so like you mean maybe reminding them that if they really understand this, they will be able to make decisions that will lead them to a much more pleasurable life.
Julie: Yes.
Cassius: Okay, yeah — the rewards are great. Okay. In the same context, I want to restate the point I made earlier in a few different ways. The point I would add: in order to really give Epicurean philosophy a chance or apply it consistently, you have to understand it. And you are going to confront interpretations of Epicurus that differ from each other. You’re going to find people who want to focus exclusively on the ethics and who drill down to a passage in the Letter to Menoeceus and come to the conclusion that Epicurus is all about absence of pain — and once you understand absence of pain, that’s all you need to know about Epicurus. And I just want to emphasize that I don’t think that’s the case at all. You can take that passage that people always point to and come up with different ways of looking at and understanding what it means. And the only way to really be fair to Epicurus — to understand what Epicurus meant — is to go back into his fundamental presumptions and start like he did, building from the ground up, until you get to that point. And what I would contend — and I think DeWitt and many other authorities would contend — is that if you do build from the ground up, when you get to that passage in the Letter to Menoeceus you will not conclude that the best life is eating bread and water and living in a cave. But you have to be ready to confront that controversy and evaluate it based on what Epicurus has taught about the nature of the universe — not what you understand having been brought up your whole life in church, or in college, or in a university philosophy class taught by professors who virtually all think that Epicurus is absurd.
Charles: Yeah, right. And for anybody who has read that section from the Letter to Menoeceus who are unfamiliar with Epicurus — a good way to understand when a person has kind of reduced the philosophy is to see how they fumble when it comes to reconciling this very simplistic and ascetic interpretation, where pleasure is absence of pain and just reasoning and simple pleasures. But when in that same interpretation they talk about other concepts — about recognizing pleasure as good — almost always there’s a fumble. Things won’t always line up.
Julie: To me it’s almost like they think there are two feelings: pain and void. That when you’re feeling what we would all call pleasure, you’re just getting fooled — that’s really pain — and what you really want is void.
Charles: Well, I have seen a lot of people who have written about Epicurus and only quote that section of the Letter to Menoeceus and maybe the other letters. They think that in removing desire and thus achieving pleasure through what they call the absence of pain, they have achieved ataraxia — because the concept is so similar to a lot of Platonic idealism. And also because of the Western fascination with Buddhism and the idea that removing desire is good and desire leads to trouble. There is also an idyllic fascination with tranquility, or cathartic states of being, which is why tranquilism and ataraxia always get tossed in with the word “blessedness.”
Elaine: Yeah, you know — I have thought, and this may be a little bit off topic, but it’s still related to our subject — this kind of dream that what we want is this idle state, that that’s the ultimate goal. I saw a study recently — I’ll try to find it — where what people think they really want to do is just have free time and not do anything. “I want to go on vacation and lay on the beach. I don’t want to do anything.” But when they’re given that in experimental conditions — when they’re put somewhere where they have nothing to do, which is what they think they want — if they’re given the flimsiest excuse to go run even some trivial errand versus continuing to sit there, in reality they’ll choose to go run the trivial errand. They don’t — it’s boring just to sit there. But when you’re doing something you don’t want to do, humans will sometimes make the mistake of thinking, “Oh, what I really want is to do nothing” — when in reality what they want is to do something pleasant instead of something unpleasant. So this weird way our brains sometimes work, we can fall under that illusion. And then when we read Buddhist literature about this desireless state and this total pure peacefulness where you’re doing nothing and just existing, it sounds like something we might want. But in reality it isn’t. That’s one of those abstract states that doesn’t really exist. That’s why for most people, prolonged meditation is boring. It’s not pleasant. I don’t think being a hermit in a cave with bread and water, thinking about pleasure, would be very pleasant.
Cassius: Right — boring, right. Are we going to have time to go over these last sections, or should we save that for next time?
Julie: There’s so much in these last —
Cassius: Yes, we’ll go into that next week, because the points we’ve been talking about in the last few minutes are so important and of such interest to so many people. I think we need to use the rest of the time today to just finish up this particular topic, because I want to go back and say the same thing again in a different way. There’s nothing wrong with that passage. It can totally be read in a way that is totally consistent with everything we’ve been talking about. I’m not suggesting that any of it is mistranslated or that any of it has been garbled. If you take it within the context of the full philosophy, it can make perfect sense. You won’t go down the rabbit hole that people who are not interested in the physics will follow it down — because you just won’t ever see it in that same way. I think about the DeWitt book — he touches on this a little bit, but he doesn’t really dwell on it, which is one of the things that makes the DeWitt book so valuable. He certainly does not leap to that part as the most important thing about Epicurus. He takes it at its proper time when he’s discussing the ethics and the Letter to Menoeceus. I just don’t think that he thought it was worth the time to devote a long extensive passage to why absence of pain is not the full message of Epicurean philosophy — because you’re just not going to ever be tempted by that, if you start with the basics. If nothing exists eternally but atoms and void — which means there’s no heaven, there’s no hell, there’s no supernatural God, there’s no realm of idealism and archetypes like Plato would suggest — how could you ever, once you really understand that and you know that there’s really no ultimate reward other than the way you live your life in the here and now? You’re just not going to be as tempted by this abstraction that can only be of benefit to you in your mind or in a future world or a future life. Those things aren’t going to do it — to me, I don’t believe a person who understands Epicurean perspectives on the nature of the universe is going to be tempted by that.
Elaine: Yeah. So maybe for readers who are a little bit on the fence about this — maybe some of this is new — a good thing is to just start noticing when somebody’s trying to do this two-magisteria thing. Notice when you’re doing it, notice when somebody else is doing it. That might actually be easier. And consider that those might be ideas that are susceptible to reality testing.
Cassius: Right. You know, I’ve heard this argument expressed in another way as well. Does anybody want to tackle the common statement that there is no way to derive an “ought” from an “is”?
Elaine: Yeah, you can’t do it unless you use feelings — and that is where they’re forgetting. So because we are Epicurean, we know that our feelings — which of course come from interactions of matter, the molecules in our brain, and so on — but they are real events. Our feelings — where we hadn’t got to the “events” yet, but that’s going to happen — they’re part of reality. And so that is where we get our “ought”: it’s what we want, it’s what we desire, what’s pleasurable — especially using wisdom to choose actions that are going to result in more pleasure than pain. And that is the only way you can get an “ought.” You cannot get it if you exclude feelings. And of course Epicurus puts feelings in the center of the canon of truth from his perspective — the feelings of pleasure and pain are equal with the senses and with what he calls the anticipations. Right?
Cassius: There’s no way you can just look at events minus feelings and have an ethics that makes any sense at all. Your feelings are your basis for ethics — and that comes as a shock to a lot of people.
Elaine: Yeah, especially in Western thought. We’re also used to the idea that we need to beat down our feelings or suppress them, because they get in the way or they’re not reliable. “You can’t trust them — they’re primitive. We need to have abstract principles to guide us.” Because we’re still “Paleo people” — is that one of the arguments you hear?
Cassius: I believe we are about to accomplish another episode that is going to make our record books as one of our best — along with last week’s. This one is going to be one of the best for newer people, or people who are not familiar with Lucretius or Epicurus, to listen to. But let’s make closing comments from here. Charles?
Charles: Well, I’m very much interested in taking critiques as well as misinterpretations — especially Neo-Epicurean perspectives — of the philosophy and explaining them and turning them on their heads. I think that’ll be more important in the future if we have a lot of people coming to the forums or the Facebook site as a result, or if we see some huge growth in people joining. But I also wanted to say that I’ve had some writer’s block for the past three weeks, but there’s one thing I want to at least formulate — it was a criticism I saw in Will Durant as well as countless articles online.
Cassius: Charles, what is the criticism in summary?
Charles: That Epicurean philosophy is seen as extremely individualistic. So how can it possibly be adapted over a huge population? How could there be an Epicurean state? What would an Epicurean society actually look like?
Cassius: Charles, you’re right — that may be too huge an issue to cover today. But I want to say this about it: I think all of us have strong opinions about what we personally think is the best way to live, and even what we think is more preferable in terms of societies. But one of the reasons we don’t spend a lot of time talking about that — at least in the way we’re going into things right now — is that unless you understand the philosophy, you end up just giving your own personal opinion and not grounding it in Epicurus at all. And what I think is probably the first step that would have to be taken before you could start talking about sociology or politics in an intelligent way is to first make sure you understand what Epicurus said in the first place — and that you’re applying Epicurean philosophy and not just some personal preference or Humanism or Marxism or whatever your other predisposition is. Which is, I think, what a lot of people are doing. So again, I think Epicurean philosophy has profound implications on society and politics — you can’t read the last ten doctrines on justice without realizing that Epicurus has huge implications for how people relate to each other in a society. But if the foundation is not there, then you’re not going to draw good conclusions about some of the more difficult issues like society and politics. And I think we have to start somewhere — which is getting the foundation in line before we go off and embrace very difficult and very emotional issues that drive people away before they even begin to understand what Epicurus is about. Having said that — Elaine, or anybody else, comment on that?
Elaine: I agree, I agree. And I guess my wrap-up would be this one phrase: “the rest you may find out without a guide” — that listeners can be sure that if they take the time to really understand how this works, it gets easy, and that it helps them practically speaking to have a more pleasurable life.
Cassius: Charles, I didn’t mean to cut you off — if you had more to say.
Charles: No, it’s a good point — to always stay focused on the source material. And because there’s not a whole lot written on the subject, it’s very loose territory that could be easily misinterpreted into adopting Marxism, Humanism, or something else. So yeah, it’s a very valid concern. But it’s one that I’ve seen especially from the Stoics who I have conversed with online.
Cassius: Other closing comments — Julie or Martin?
Julie: I have one. It’s switching back to an earlier topic — I feel like we’ve kind of picked on the Letter to Menoeceus a little bit today, so let me defend it, because I love the Letter to Menoeceus. I would like to point out that the particular paragraph we’re talking about — the last sentence or two in that paragraph — really kind of circles back beautifully to what we said today. Those last sentences say: “Instead, life is made pleasant by sober contemplation and by close examination of the reasons for all decisions we make as to what we choose and what we avoid.” And I think that if you take that to mean what we’ve been talking about — that every time you make a decision about what you’re going to do or not do, you link that back to the physics — then you’ll be consistent in your philosophy.
Charles: Yeah. There’s a point I want to say: it’s not the Letter to Menoeceus that is incorrect. It’s that interpretation — so contrived, saying Epicurus was like a minimalist sage — that doesn’t take anything else into account, that’s already filled with whoever is citing the Letter to Menoeceus’s own personal opinions or preconceived notions. So it’s not the letter that’s wrong.
Cassius: Right. That’s a really important point.
Charles: A good way to illustrate that is to compare it to Epicurus’s biography by Diogenes Laërtius. A lot of the stuff found in there isn’t consistent with what people who cite the Letter to Menoeceus with that very minimalist “pleasure is the absence of pain” approach — reading the biography of Epicurus kind of doesn’t line up with their interpretation. They’re not consistent.
Cassius: That’s a good point, Charles. The physics and Lucretius and the Letter to Herodotus are really essential and important foundations, but a lot of the inconsistency with that interpretation you’re talking about could be picked up if you just read the full biography from Diogenes Laërtius and read everything he said about how Epicurus endorsed both pleasures of rest and pleasures of action, as well as not being able to recognize good without his sensations. Right.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds — but you have to be consistent and go back to the foundations if you want to understand what Epicurus was talking about.
Elaine: Well, so how I take that quote: to me it should be applied to these abstract ideas. A foolish consistency in saying “truth is always a virtue and it has to be the right thing because it’s this abstract ideal” — no, it’s not always. There are exceptions: when telling the truth would be against pleasure. So let’s be consistent with our physics and with our goal of pleasure, but let’s not be consistent with just using tools religiously as if the tool is the thing itself.
Cassius: When I first used the quote I had to look it up, because it’s tempting to collapse it down and think that the quote is “consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” But yes — it is foolish consistency. And I think Epicurus would have liked that quote.
Martin: I have nothing to add.
Cassius: I can’t wait to listen to this episode again. I feel like if I listen to it again, there are going to be other gems that I’m going to pick up myself. This one’s going to edit down very well. The last one from last week turned out really well, and this one is going to be just as good if not better. So I really, really appreciate everybody’s contribution to this — it’s something that I’ve wanted to do for years, and I think it really moves us to a new level of communication of some of these ideas. I think we’re all starting to be a bit more comfortable with the format — when to speak, what to add.
Martin: Yeah. Yeah.
Cassius: Well, anything else before we close for today?
Julie: I don’t think so — we’ve had closing thoughts for the last half hour.
Cassius: That’s a good point. I guess my closing thought will just be personal to you all — and maybe this will be interesting for historical reasons: you know, we’re in the midst of the ramping up of the novel coronavirus pandemic, and I will be thinking about all of you this week and hoping that you are well.
Good thought. Okay — if no one has anything else, we will close for the week. Yeah, thanks again. Okay, thanks everybody. Have a good week. Okay. Bye.