Episode 013 - Properties, Qualities, and the Trojan War
Date: 04/10/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1500-episode-thirteen-properties-qualities-and-the-trojan-war/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 013 features Cassius, Elaine, and Martin (with Charles present but not feeling well) returning to the same Daniel Brown passage read at the close of Episode 012. Elaine re-reads the section covering essential conjuncts, events, time, and the Trojan War (Book 1, around line 439), and the group spends the episode unpacking three distinct topics embedded in that passage: the distinction between essential conjuncts and events; the nature of time; and the meaning of the Trojan War example.
On essential conjuncts versus events: Cassius opens by noting that Lucretius uses the category of “events” (Latin eventum) where most translators use “accidents” — and argues that “event” is the better choice because it implies consequence rather than arbitrary luck. Elaine adds that Stallings uses “quality” and “consequence” for the same two categories. The central philosophical point is that events — liberty, slavery, poverty, war, concord — are not third kinds of things alongside body and void; they are real occurrences but have no existence independent of the moving bodies that produce them. You cannot take matter apart and find liberty inside it. Cassius contrasts this with Aristotle’s concept of essences residing within things, and with Platonic ideal forms — both of which Lucretius is implicitly rejecting. Elaine extends this to note that none of the so-called virtues can be demonstrated as properties of matter either; they are events we perceive and label, not things. Charles adds a point about determinism: if events are not essential properties, they need not be predetermined — they could happen or not happen, which is consistent with the swerve.
The Buddhist concept of “emptiness” (śūnyatā — interdependent arising, impermanence, no independent existence) is contrasted with Epicurean physics: Buddhism denies stable irreducible existence, while Epicurus affirms exactly that — atoms have unchanging, eternal properties. Cassius cites Diogenes of Oinoanda’s reply to Heraclitean flux: Epicureans acknowledge that flux exists but deny that it moves so fast as to make certainty impossible. The lengthy exchange on objective versus subjective reality ends with a clear formulation: Epicurus holds that there is an objective reality (atoms and void exist whether observed or not) but that all perception of it is irreducibly subjective (through the senses). Elaine warns against conflating “subjective” with “mere opinion” — subjectivity is simply the only mode of perception available to creatures with senses, and it is not something to be ashamed of. She also notes that “objectivism” in Rand’s sense — the claim that we can objectively perceive reality — is not the Epicurean position.
On time: Martin explains that Epicurus’s intuition that time is not an absolute parameter is borne out by relativity — time in Newtonian physics was taken as absolute, but Einstein showed that time depends on the reference frame of the bodies involved. Martin also notes that some physicists derive a “multiverse” from a general state equation independent of time, with time serving as an ordering parameter for the possible states. Elaine clarifies a correction to something she had read: “time crystals” are real (non-equilibrium matter structures that repeat in time) but are not evidence that time itself is a form of matter.
Closing: Elaine discusses the Trojan War as moving from abstract categories of events (poverty, war) to a specific and emotionally resonant one familiar to Roman readers. Cassius adds a possible rhetorical reading: by invoking the Trojan Horse, Lucretius may have been reminding his Roman audience to be suspicious of Greek philosophical trickery — with Platonism as the Trojan Horse hidden inside seemingly reasonable arguments. Martin agrees it was the outstanding event of its era.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 13 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. Find out more about the nature and goals of our podcast at LucretiusToday.com, where you can download a copy of the text that we read from each week.
In Episode 13, we move to a discussion of Epicurus’s view on whether reality is objective or subjective, and we explore how Epicurus categorized the things we experience around us as being either the properties of bodies or the qualities of bodies. The properties are also called essential conjuncts, and these are essential and unchanging, while the qualities are also called events — which are inessential and change depending on context. Whether properties or qualities, all of our experiences arise from the nature, movement, and combinations of the atoms, and cease to exist when the atoms which compose the bodies disperse. Today we’ll discuss Epicurus’s views on this issue and apply it to the example that Lucretius gave us — the story of the Trojan War. Our text begins today at approximately line 439 of the Daniel Brown edition. Let’s now join our discussion with Elaine reading the text.
Elaine: [reads Daniel Brown’s 1743 translation]
Again, whatever is must either act itself, or be by other agents acted on, or must be something in which other bodies 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 to 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 is to 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 state subdued by war, we must not say that these things do exist now in themselves, since time irrevocably past 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 places 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 its belly in the night the armed Greeks. From whence 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 the space where things are carried on.
Cassius: For the next several episodes we are deep into the details of atoms and void, and we’re going to find that the subject matter is not repetitive so much as — we’re just going to have to keep focus on what the big picture is so that we don’t lose touch with where we come from.
Yeah, in this section I break it down in at least three different ways in my mind about what these passages are talking about. I see the first part of it setting up the issue of what it means to be a property or quality, and what is this essential conjunct, and this issue called events — that’s very deep and we need to spend significant time on it. But then it immediately switches over to the issue of time, and that’s a huge issue in itself. And then there’s the issue of what he’s even talking about when he discusses the Trojan War. I think that’s all related, but it’s the third topic that we need to be clear about what we’re talking about.
So the first one: he’s introducing the issue of essential conjuncts versus events or accidents, after first reminding us that there’s nothing except bodies and void. Now on that point, in my mind I find myself needing to be clear about what we’re talking about with bodies, because I think it’s possible to switch back and forth between the context of an atom itself versus the combination of atoms that we experience. We don’t see or touch or smell or feel directly the atoms — but we do experience the bodies. So he’s talking to some extent about both. But by the time he gets to discussing the difference between essential conjuncts and events, I think at that point he’s clearly talking about bodies in the sense of combinations of atoms. So let’s talk about that for just a minute — do you guys agree with that distinction that I’m raising? Because let me say one more thing: an atom is where he is saying that you have an eternal, unchanging property. The atom has certain attributes — size, shape, weight, and maybe the full list is something that we’ll discuss later on — but these properties of atoms are essentially eternal and never change. So when you start talking about things that change in any way at all, you’re talking about a body, which is a combination of atoms. Right?
Elaine: So I do think there’s a lot in this. But the examples that Lucretius is giving are not atoms — they’re bodies, which are combinations. But he’s giving these as examples of properties or qualities that are essential — weight to a rock, heat to flame. So he’s not getting all the way down to the level of atoms before he’s going to call it this essential conjunct, or quality/property that can’t be separated without what Munro calls “obliterating shock.” That’s great. But it is something essential to whatever the body is, even if the body is a combination of atoms.
Cassius: Yeah, I think he uses “body” for both — for those which are composed of atoms and for the atoms themselves. Yeah. But when he’s talking about the essential properties, the intrinsic qualities — he is not just talking about atoms. He’s also talking about combinations. And I think it’s pretty clear — he gives good examples of the kinds of things: wetness of water, and so on. But that’s essential to that body. But then he contrasts with that events that don’t affect the nature of touchable things. An event — let’s say, of rock-throwing — if you didn’t knock off part of the rock, the rock is still the rock. But the rock-throwing was an event.
I think the reason this seems significant to me — and maybe has more to it than meets the eye at first, and why we need to talk about it — is because it’s such a big issue in general about whether everything in the universe is something that we’ve used subjectively, or whether there is what some people will call objective truth, and where the differences are. And so he clearly has previously — or else is going to be saying — that the atoms themselves have unchanging, eternal properties that exist regardless of whether we observe them or not. The atoms are the things that have existed and will always exist and just never change. But we don’t perceive those directly — what we perceive are the combinations of atoms. And so at this level of what we experience, that also derives from the atoms. And maybe this is the number one point that I think is so critical: that whether we’re talking about qualities or properties or events or essential conjuncts or whatever, all of those are ultimately deriving from the atoms and their eternal properties.
The point being: when Lucretius is taught from the very beginning about how Epicurus taught limits and boundaries — the borderlines, the benchmarks set forever — those benchmarks do exist, and come into the world of perception — or “the shores of light,” as he says — because of the unchanging properties of the atoms. So the implication here is that there is a limitation to the combinations of atoms and the qualities of things that ultimately derive from the properties of the atoms. It’s not absolutely anything goes.
And I want to remind listeners here, especially in case somebody is listening to this out of order: when we say “atoms,” always remember we’re not talking about the modern chemical atoms that we mean the elemental particles that cannot be further subdivided.
Elaine: I think that what you’re pointing out is something that definitely Epicurus would agree with, but I think the focus of this section is slightly different. Looking at what Stallings uses for those two words — “quality” and “consequence” — I really think he’s trying to distinguish between events and things, to make sure that people don’t think events are the same thing as things. And we should ask ourselves why that would be important. To me, it’s because we don’t want to say that there’s ever going to be three things — there’s either always matter or void, that’s it. Events are not a third type of thing.
Cassius: Elaine, I completely agree with what you just said. Let me come at it from another direction — one that bothers me at times. And this is what you just said: it relates to the issue of whether there are Platonic ideal forms in some dimension. But it also relates to what Aristotle said, in the sense of there being essences of things that reside within them. Now Lucretius has here used the word “essential conjunct,” so we need to think about the implications of how there can be an essential conjunct — like the sea has moisture, or fire has heat, and stones have weight. What does it mean, from an Epicurean point of view, for weight to be an essential conjunct of a stone, but not be sort of a mystical essence like Aristotle might have said is residing within the stone?
Elaine: That’s obviously down to the atom. I agree with you on that — you couldn’t say that any of these things have these essential characteristics unless the particles and the way that they combined resulted in that. But I think the big contrast here is what you just said initially, that we should really focus on now: liberty is an event. It’s a consequence — it is not a property of any of the bodies. And so there’s no ideal realm of liberty, and there’s no “thing” called liberty. You can take apart matter, you can dissect it, you’re never going to find liberty. And that’s my opinion — that that is the critical thing that he is laying out here. And if people don’t keep that in mind, they’re also going to forget that you’re not going to find honesty in matter either. None of the so-called virtues — there’s no way you can demonstrate them as properties. But they are events that we perceive as, you know, being honest. It is not in the thing.
Cassius: Let me be Plato’s advocate for just a moment, though. Okay, Elaine — you may never be able to take apart a relationship and find liberty, but ultimately, if you were to take apart fire — can you find heat within fire? Don’t you ultimately, even according to Epicurean viewpoints, ultimately find atoms and void within fire? So where is the dividing line? If everything just gets reduced back to atoms and void, then have you really got anything?
Elaine: Yeah — because at some point you can actually feel heat. But the senses — I think that’s the key.
And so none of these concepts are things you can touch. However, you can perceive events and attach a concept to that mentally. But it doesn’t mean that your concept has touchable reality — ever.
Cassius: I do think that’s an important way to look at this. Martin, are you having any thoughts?
Martin: Not in addition.
Cassius: And of course, Charles, I know you’re not feeling well — feel free to chime in at any point.
Elaine: Yeah, I also see a hint of trying to establish that these events aren’t preordained by anything — that they aren’t determined.
Cassius: Yeah, I see that in there too. He doesn’t explicitly say it, but yeah, it’s in there, right? Because if it’s not an essential property, then it could happen or could not happen.
Elaine: Yeah, definitely. Great. It’s only implied, because the last half — where he talks about bondage, liberty, riches, and poverty — those are directly perceived, they relate back to the senses.
Cassius: Right. Very good.
I want to bring in a contrasting view from Buddhism. There’s this concept called emptiness — which people get confused about, and there will be straw-man arguments over it — but it does not, as far as I understand it, mean void. What it means is that the Buddha said that things had no existence in and of themselves, that everything was interdependently arising, so everything was transient and also interdependent, and therefore had no independent stable existence. But that’s in contrast to Epicurus, who said the atoms have this stable, irreducible existence — that there are elementary particles that have existence. And the choice of which one of those things you’re going to say is true has huge consequences for where you’ll proceed after that.
Cassius: Elaine, that’s where I was going earlier with the idea of keeping the chain in mind. Because I could see a Buddhist — or someone listening to what you just said about Buddhism — might say that well, Epicurus says that everything is changing constantly too, in the sense that atoms are constantly moving, and Epicurus says that everything that comes together eventually blows apart at some point in time as well. So yes, none of the bodies are eternal, it’s all constantly moving, everything’s composed of atoms — what’s the difference between Buddhism and Epicurus on that? And we need to say: well, those are events. Those are not irreducible things. They’re events. The bodies, even if they’re temporary, are composed of irreducible particles. You can’t say that they don’t exist.
Elaine, that reminds me: in Diogenes of Oinoanda there is a section that says that some people say that the flux exists and it moves so fast that it’s not possible to ever be certain of anything. But Diogenes of Oinoanda says that we Epicureans don’t hold to that — we acknowledge that the flux exists, but not that it moves so fast that we can never be certain of anything.
Elaine: Right. It’s not chaos. And so elementary particles have properties.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s really the direction I wanted to go from the very beginning. When you use the word “chaos” — if there were not an underlying system that gave consistency to everything, then ultimately it would be chaos. There would be no way to derive any stability in your observations, or any confidence that things are going to be the same tomorrow as they are today or the same two minutes from now as they are right now. You’d have a deer-in-the-headlights stare because everything was moving around you so fast that you were basically hypnotized by the motions. But it would not be possible to live if that were really the nature of reality for us. The nature of reality — all good and evil comes to us through the senses, yes. And then are you ready to move on to time?
Elaine: It’s probably a good time to do that. Yes. Time — go ahead.
Elaine: So I have seen people get confused over “time likewise of itself is nothing” — that does not mean that we are saying that time doesn’t happen. We’re saying it is not a thing. It’s an event. Time is the change — our observing the changing events of matter. But it is not itself a thing. Although I hope Martin can comment on this — I remember vaguely reading some article a few years ago about somebody who thought that there might be such a thing as a “time crystal” that would kind of change everything. But I don’t know — words that I don’t think should be used together. “Time” and “crystal.” Well, but there was this idea that it could actually be a particle. If that could be demonstrated, we would have to revise our thinking — it wouldn’t change matter and void, but if time is part of matter somehow… I can’t wrap my head around how that would be. Martin, have you read about that?
Martin: No, and it would be nonsense from my perspective. Time is a parameter by which to order events. So for example, one of the fundamental ways to arrive at some kind of multiverse is to come up with a general state equation for the universe, and this one is independent of time. And then you can derive from it all kinds of viable solutions — and that’s why some people then claim the multiverse. But because in that equation there is no time, time then helps us to arrange all these possible states in sequence. So time becomes the ordering parameter. And also — this is quite important — it’s not an absolute parameter. It depends on the bodies to which we reference it. So if the bodies of reference change, the time changes. There are formulas by which to translate time from one reference system into the other. And this is quite surprising — that Epicurus came up by himself and said time is not absolute, which is quite different from Newton’s physics, where until Einstein time was taken as an absolute parameter.
Cassius: Right. I think it’s phenomenal that he concluded that. Gee — this kind of thing just blows my mind that he was that perceptive.
Elaine: I was just going to say: I googled this “time crystal,” and apparently whatever article I read when some of the research came out was poorly worded — which, yes, should not surprise me. There are time crystals, but it is an atomic structure that repeats in time. It’s a non-equilibrium matter that is intrinsically out of equilibrium and changes over time repeatedly. So not like “time is matter,” but — it’s still interesting. I just want to make sure and correct that in case any listeners thought there was some other thing called a time crystal implying that time itself is a substance.
Cassius: So Martin, it is pretty clear that Epicurus is saying here that time does not exist on its own. It seems like I read somewhere that maybe the Stoics or some other group had even in Epicurus’s time asserted that time was a thing — but I can’t find my reference to that right now. But the bottom line for listeners would be that Epicurus is asserting that time does not exist on its own. It is simply an attribute of the movement of bodies. Is that everybody’s understanding of this?
Elaine: Yeah. And it’s also different from saying time is an illusion — which some people —
Cassius: Right, right. Epicurus is not saying that. He’s just saying that it’s an event. In fact, there’s an elaboration on this in the Letter to Herodotus that I wish we had in front of us right now, but I don’t have that section and we won’t try to get into it today. But I know that this is also discussed in the Letter to Herodotus as well. It’d be easy to mess that up — easy to say, “Oh, time is imaginary.” No, no, no, no.
I mean, in general the issue of illusion is something that’s very important here, because Epicurus acknowledges that illusions can occur — there’s a long discussion in Book Four of illusions — but everything is not an illusion, and it’s important to accept things as we see them, as we sense them. And so, circling back on that first paragraph: time is not an illusion — it’s an event. Liberty is not an illusion, if you remember that it’s an event. It doesn’t have separate existence in an abstract realm — there’s no such thing. But you can be free. And you can have poverty, you can be at war. We know that people can be at war. But the concept itself doesn’t have its own existence — it’s just a word describing an event. Would you agree?
Elaine: Yes, yes. I would agree with that.
Cassius: At this moment, when you’re discussing the illusions, Elaine — I would want to throw in one of the things that I come back to often: my criticism of those who use the word “accident” to describe this. I like the word “event” more than I like the word “accident,” because to me the word “accident” would imply that you could have the same arrangements of atoms but by accident you would experience them a different way tomorrow or five minutes from now than you do today. To me the word “event” is much more like “consequence,” and it ties what we’re experiencing to the movement of the atoms and void, and doesn’t imply that there’s some luck or force of luck out there that is going to change things tomorrow.
Elaine: Well, but you don’t want to lock that into determinism, so I’d be careful. You do want to maintain probabilistic events.
Cassius: Yeah, it’s clear — there’s clearly some ambiguity here and the need to be precise about it. Because you do have the swerve, and you have subjective experiences from person to person. And so you don’t have in general this objective reality that people want to assert is out there. But at the same time, I do think that your experiences are — again I think the word is “limited” — I think there are limits to what the atoms will do.
Elaine: Yeah. Okay. I agree with that.
Now, I would just — to be picky with words — I wouldn’t say that we’re saying there’s not objective reality. I’m saying that I think we should say there’s not objective perception. And maybe there’s not objective reality, depending on how you define the word — I… wait, wait, wait, wait.
Cassius: Yeah.
Elaine: Where I’m going with this is — I think that Lucretius is doing what has to be done here and dividing some things into different areas. Liberty, war, concord, and things like that — which are events — are much more subjective than things like weight and rocks and heat and fire. But that doesn’t mean that those things are always going to be perceived in the same way. It’s really only the atoms themselves that are always the same.
Elaine: I think we’ve got to be careful here that we’re not mixing up the word “objective.” So “objective” just means that it is a real thing — that it exists whether we observe it or not. And I think it’s pretty clear that Epicurus came down on the side that there is an objective reality. But “subjective” means how we perceive it. Can we actually perceive it other than as subjects? And I think it’s pretty clear also that he said: no, we perceive it through our senses.
Cassius: Elaine, where’s the realm of objective reality in the categories we’re talking about today? Is slavery, poverty, riches, liberty, war, concord — is that the realm in which objective reality exists?
Elaine: Okay, wait a minute — I was about to get there. So we would say: what we’re perceiving as a rock has existence whether we’re looking at it or not. But we can only perceive it subjectively. The same thing is: if we watch an event that we’re going to call poverty or war, I would say Epicurus would say there were things happening — because an event can’t happen unless there are bodies moving. So the actual event is happening. But it can only be perceived subjectively. And since each subjective perception has its own feelings about that depending on the subject, it’s going to be experienced differently. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. And that also doesn’t mean that an event is a thing. The bottom line would be that there’s no objective standard as to the meaning of the word “poverty.” There is no objective standard. There’s a consensus-subjective — like, when you say the word “poverty,” even if you don’t agree on the details, most people are going to know that you’re describing your perception of an event that they would probably see as similar. But that’s true of all language to some degree.
Cassius: So let’s ask the same question about weight to rocks. Is that an objectively true observation — that rocks have weight?
Elaine: No — this is not what he’s contrasting. That’s a property of the matter, whether it moves or not. But bondage isn’t a thing — it’s an event. That’s what he’s contrasting. As for the weight of a rock — when we call that an essential conjunct, I think that he is still pursuing it subjectively. So if you pick up a rock, you’re perceiving the weight subjectively. You might even have an opinion about it — you might say, “Oh, this is not very heavy,” because you have more muscle than somebody who’s weak.
Cassius: Are we saying here that Epicurus is just using the term “essential conjunct” instead of using the word “objectively real”?
Elaine: No, I don’t think so. I think it’s really important to understand that he was not saying that we could make an objective perception. We are always using our senses. We’re always perceiving subjectively — a hundred percent. So he is making a distinction between properties of matter and events where matter does things — and the names we use for those.
Cassius: In asking these questions I’m attempting to ask what I think many listeners might ask as they hear us talking about this. I’m not suggesting that my question is coming from an Epicurean point of view — although I’m certainly trying to get to the bottom of how you relate Lucretius and Epicurus’s perspective to the perspective of an Aristotle, or a Plato, or just any person on the street in the year 2020.
Elaine: Yeah. And I think — all these event-type words: you notice that they all have, at least for me, they all trigger a feeling — whereas the feeling I would get from a stone or fire or the sea or touch would depend on what events were going on. I just bring that up — he didn’t mention that here, but it seems interesting to me that all of the event words have emotional connotation with them, which will vary from person to person.
Cassius: I think that’s an important point, Elaine, too.
Elaine: Yes. I agree with that. And it’s just really important to not mix up the meaning of “subjective” with the popular meaning “opinion.” Opinion is part of subjective experience, but all experience is subjective. You don’t want to substitute one for the other accidentally.
Cassius: Well, we’re just so used to using these terms today — “objective” and “subjective” — and we have these connotations that go along with those words. When we hear the word “subjective,” people presume: “Well, that’s not really true, that’s just your opinion, it doesn’t make any difference.” On the other hand, when they hear the word “objective,” they think: “Well, God himself established that from the beginning of time and it’s never going to change — it’s going to be the same for everybody, at every time, in all places.” But really neither of those two words is exact. Certainly the English words are not being used in the translations here, and it’s a different perspective that we’re talking about here.
Elaine: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the reason I think it’s important to get over this is because other philosophical systems have different opinions. Some will say there is objective reality and we can actually objectively perceive it. Well, I think that’s “objectivism” — that would be Rand’s assertion that you can objectively perceive reality. And some people say that there is no objective reality — if you’re not looking at a rock, it’s not there. It’s only there if you’re looking at it.
So to understand the way that we’re using it here — it’s important to keep in mind all the time. That’s why I wanted to spend so much time on this, because I do think that common philosophical arguments end up going in very different directions on this particular issue. And people will just stop talking with each other, or get very emotionally involved, in simply the question of “is there an objective reality?” Because a lot of people — once they hear that somebody thinks there is no such thing as objective reality, whatever that means in their mind — they’re going to shut their minds and say that this person is just talking nonsense. And maybe that person is talking nonsense. But I think it’s important to get to the bottom of what the issue is so that you can begin to unpack it and get as much confidence and certainty as you can possibly get. There are limits to the degree to which you can get that confidence and certainty on things, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no confidence and certainty.
That’s what people are doing — they bat back and forth like a game of badminton or ping-pong. They go from absolute certainty one moment to absolutely uncertain and absolutely chaotic the next moment. And it’s not a matter of balance either — it’s not a matter of just coming down in the middle. It’s a matter of understanding a system that would give a rhyme and a reason and a way to unpack everything in a reliable way. And that’s what the atoms-and-void system does — everything ultimately goes back to those elements. That’s your reality.
Elaine: You know — some of the popular New Age kind of stuff is that you’re creating your own reality, everybody’s creating their own reality. And so if a person who believes that kind of thing sees me, they just believe I’m a product of their imagination — that I’m not a real person, right? So what we would say is: I’m real, I’m made of particles and void. But you can only perceive me subjectively. So obviously your own biases and feelings and experience and whatnot are going to affect your experience of seeing me significantly, and you’ll see me differently from how somebody else will see me. But that doesn’t change the fact that I exist whether you see me or not.
It’s almost like this whole word “subjectivity” has been polluted and degraded and given such a negative connotation. But what it really simply means is that you’re using your senses — your vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste — and you’re coming to judgments based on the way your senses are allowing you to perceive whatever it is you’re talking about. And so it’s not something to be ashamed of, it’s not something to be apologizing for. It is your essence as a human being that this is the way you operate. And if you abandon your senses, or if you consider them to be something that’s unworthy — and that you’re a worm because you don’t have the god-like ability to know everything at every moment, to be omnipotent and omniscient and all those things — then you’re just totally off base from the way nature created you.
Cassius: Yeah, yeah. You’ve gotten into the mental illusion there. Yes, yes. We can probably go further and go ahead into the Trojan War story. Martin, do you have anything at the moment?
Martin: No.
Cassius: Probably rather than postpone it until next week, we ought to at least begin to touch on the passage about the Trojan War. Elaine, what do you think about that?
Elaine: So I would say: when he’s describing these events, first he talked about labels we put on kind of broad categories of events — like the event of poverty, which is pretty broad. And now he’s bringing up some specific events that his readers are going to be familiar with — the Trojan War — rather than something broad. So you might think: okay, well now that he’s getting specific, this is concrete in a different way, so those things could have their own existence. But he’s saying: no, even these specific events don’t have existence themselves — they are just events of the body and of space where it happens.
So the love, and the emotions, and the war, and the wooden horse — all of that — those were events. You can’t find them separate from the matter and the void. They did happen. They certainly happened to the people who were involved, and they were extremely important to those people. They’re extremely important to Lucretius. They’re extremely important to all of the Romans who understand their heritage — their story is that they descend from the Trojans themselves. So by no means is he suggesting that it’s not important that this occurred. But he’s saying that it’s not something that continues to exist in the present world — it’s something that has to be dealt with as an event that occurred at that particular time, just like the things that occur to us are events that happen at a particular time. But they’re not anything mystical or eternal in themselves.
So it’s not that it was imaginary, it’s not that it didn’t happen — which is the same with the words that he talked about in the beginning. There are things that will happen that will put those words on, and our opinions about what those words mean will be a little bit different. But the events happen. And the events are entirely dependent on matter and void — there’s nothing — you can’t touch the event, but you can touch the matter.
Cassius: Okay, well we might be ready to begin to wrap up for this episode. Martin, the story of the Trojan War here has always particularly interested me as I’ve read this passage. I do think that as we’re discussing it, it’s just ultimately an example of applying the observations that he’s made about atoms and void and events and properties and how they relate. But I’m wondering — how does the story strike you, Martin, in general? I know you have a very scientific or physics orientation. Does this strike you as odd anyway, or as particularly interesting, or particularly uninteresting? Do you ask yourself why he’s going into this?
Martin: I mean, for me it’s just an example of what an event is. And this was — probably for the ancient times more than today — something considered outstanding. So at that time, everybody will have heard about it.
Cassius: Yeah, it’d be like Columbus discovering the New World, or something like that — as a big event that people orient themselves by. You know, other than the fact that of course we’re talking Epicurean philosophy — and this applies to Epicurus too — I wonder if there’s not a tinge here, in citing the Trojan War, of reminding the Romans to be distrustful of some of these Greek philosophers. I gather that the Romans were not altogether impressed with all of the theories of the Greeks, and that he’s reminding the Romans to be careful about how the Greeks can be pretty tricky people — with this Trojan Horse.
Elaine: I didn’t think about that, but that is a good point. And there’s a Trojan Horse of Platonism in all of these philosophies — it really does bring some miserable stuff along, hidden in it.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s great. Yes, absolutely. All right, well this has been another good episode and we will continue next week. Unless somebody has something else? That’s all. Elaine, it might be nice to say something about where we’re going to go next week.
Elaine: This was Episode 13. Episode 14 goes back into how the atoms are solid and indestructible and therefore eternal. So we are going to be staying for quite a while with the attributes of the atoms and the void and the things that we derive from those attributes. So yeah, we’ll do that next week.
Cassius: All right. Martin, anything else? Thanks, as always. We’ll end at this point.