Episode 049 - Conclusions On Death And The End of Book Three
Date: 12/21/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1800-episode-forty-nine-the-end-of-book-three/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 49 concludes Book Three with Martin reading the final passages, lines 1024 through the end. The text opens by disposing of Cerberus and the Furies — there are no such things in nature, and the real torments are those suffered here on earth by the guilty conscience, by fear of punishment, by the mind that can find no end to its miseries. Then comes the great parade of famous dead: good King Ancus who long since bid adieu to life; Xerxes, who bridged the Hellespont and insulted the waves, now covered in darkness; Scipio, the thunderbolt of war and dread of Carthage, given his bones to the earth like any slave; Homer, the sole sovereign of the Muses; Democritus, who met death cheerfully when he felt his mind decaying; and Epicurus himself, who excelled the whole world in wisdom and outshone all around him as the midday sun outshines the stars — and yet is dead. Why, then, should the ordinary person repine and grieve? Discussion focuses on the tone — not cruel mockery, but the same point made last week: no matter how great and mighty you were, you died, and Lucretius places the audience in company with the greatest human beings who ever lived.
The second passage addresses the inner misery of those who don’t live by reason — the man who rushes to his country house as if all were on fire, then immediately yawns, falls asleep, and posts back to town; unable to escape himself though he sticks close against his will. Elaine introduces The Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long, a book on dopamine that distinguishes the hedonic treadmill of insatiable striving from the productive use of dopamine to arrange one’s environment for actual enjoyment — exactly Lucretius’s contrast between the restless fool and the person who searches into the nature of things. Vatican Saying 14 is cited as the core message: “We are born once and cannot be born twice but for all time must be no more, but you who are not master of tomorrow postpone your happiness. Life is wasted in procrastination and each one of us dies while occupied.” A critical textual correction is discovered mid-discussion: the phrase “the pleasure we covet eagerly exceeds everything we enjoyed before” was missing the crucial qualifier “as long as it is absent” — which completely changes the meaning. The full sentence — that coveted pleasure exceeds everything only as long as it is absent, but once possessed is immediately displaced by longing for another — confirms Elaine’s reading: it is the endless seeking for an imaginary pleasure, not the pleasures of real life, that is the treadmill problem.
The final discussion concerns the eternity of death: “he that died today is to all purposes as long dead as he that died a thousand years ago.” The panelists discuss the temptation to feel superior to the dead, or to feel sorry for figures like Thomas Jefferson who never had modern technology — Charles’s point being that the value of a life is not determined by the time period in which it is lived. Principal Doctrine 19 — infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time if one measures by reason — is carefully qualified: the Epicurean gods demonstrate that infinite time is in some sense better (there is more area under the pleasure curve), but what Lucretius argues is that the height of pleasure is not increased by more time, and the imaginary better pleasure that is always just out of reach will never arrive. Book Three closes after 49 episodes and the better part of a year, having devoted its entire length to the single topic of the mortality of mind and soul. Martin’s quietness is explained as a function of his time zone in Thailand. The episode closes with Vatican Saying 26 — “Whether the discourse be long or short, it tends to the same end” — applied analogously to the length of a life — and Vatican Saying 47: “I have anticipated the fortune, I have closed off every one of your devious entrances… when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life… we will leave from life singing aloud a glorious triumph song on how well we lived.”
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 49 of Lucretius Today. 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. For anyone who’s not familiar with our podcast, please check back to Episode 1 for a discussion of our goals and our ground rules. If you have any questions about those, please be sure to contact us at EpicureanFriends.com for more information. In today’s episode, we finish Book Three, starting about line 1024 of the Latin text, and we conclude the discussion of the mortality of life and death. Now let’s join Martin reading today’s text.
Martin: Besides Cerberus and the Furies, and Hell void of light, belching flames from its jaws — there are no such things in nature, nor ever can be. But the fear of sore punishment in this life for distinguished crimes and the rewards of villainy affright us: the prison, the terrible fall from the Tarpeian rock, stripes, executioners, the gallows, melted pitch, torches, and suffocating smoke. And if there be none of these, yet the mind, conscious of guilt, is ever in dread of these tortures — it stings us to the heart and lashes us with rods not to be endured. Nor has the wretch a prospect of any end to the miseries he suffers, nor what can set limits to his punishment, and he fears lest these tortures should fall the heavier upon him in death. So that the fools live as deplorable a life as if they were really in hell.
Thus you may justly reason with yourself: the good King Ancus has long since bid adieu to life — a better man by much than such a wretch as thou — and so have many kings and potentates of the earth who ruled over mighty nations. Consider, even, he that he himself, who formerly made a road over the white sea, gave a passage to his legions to march over it, and taught them to walk upon the salt deep, who despised and insulted the waves and the roaring of the ocean — this Xerxes, covered with darkness, has breathed out his soul out of his body long ago. Scipio, that thunderbolt of war and dread of Carthage, has given up his bones to the earth, as if he had been the meanest of slaves. And to these the founders of arts and the inventors thereof, and first the companions of the Muses — the mighty Homer, the sole sovereign of them all — he sleeps quietly in the same grave with the rest.
Besides, when a ripe old age gave Democritus warning that the strength of his mind decayed, he met death halfway and cheerfully obeyed the summons. Epicurus himself, who excelled the whole world in wisdom, and darkened all about him with his superior lustre, as far as the bright midday sun outshines the stars, is dead, and his light of life run out.
Shall thou, then, repine and grieve to die — whose life is little more than a scene of death while thou livest with eyes open — who wearest the greater part of thy life away in sleep, who snorest and art ever dreaming while still art awake, and hast thy mind always tormented with empty fear, nor art able to find what is the malady that troubles thee, when thou, restless wretch, borne down on all sides by the severeness of misery, wanderest in the uncertain mazes of doubt and error?
But if men would really consider, as they ought to do, that they are pressed down by the natural weight of their own minds, and find out the cause whence this proceeds, and whence so heavy a load of evils torments their breasts, they would not spend their lives as we now see they do — not knowing their own desires, but every one striving to change his situation, as if that was the way to ease him of his burden. One tired at home leaves his noble seat and goes often abroad, but returns suddenly again, for he finds no relief by shifting his place. He also hurries and drives full speed to his country house, as if he was all on fire and he came to extinguish it. He no sooner sets his foot within the doors but he presently begins to yawn, or falls heavily to sleep, and strives to forget himself, or else posts his heart back and returns to town again. Thus he tries always to fly himself, but that’s as safe, as it must be, out of his power to escape. He sticks close to him against his will, and sorely torments him. The restless fool does not know the cause of his disease. If he thoroughly did, everyone would give up all other pursuits and apply chiefly to search into the nature of things — I do not mean to trouble himself about the events of the present hour, but inquire into the doubtful state of eternity after death, which is everyone’s concern and which must be the lot of all mankind.
Lastly, how many evils does a fond desire of life oblige us to apprehend, though they may never happen? But there is a boundary fixed to the age of man — we cannot avoid the stroke of death; die we must. Besides, we are ever running on in a circle of the same actions and ever pursuing them, nor does living on afford us any new delight. The pleasure we covet eagerly exceeds everything we enjoyed before, as long as it is absent; but when we have it in possession, we long passionately for another, and the same thirst of life hangs upon us, still gaping for more. And yet we know not what fortune the time to come may produce, what chance may happen to us, or how the scene will end. Nor can we, by living longer, take off a moment from the length of death. It will always be as if we had been dead ever so long. Though you live ever so many ages, the state of death will be still eternal. And he that died today is to all purposes as long dead as he that died a thousand years ago.
Cassius: Thank you for reading that, Martin. That brings us to the very end of Book Three, and a lot of good material today to talk about.
I found what I thought might be a mispronunciation. I think that the proper name, even in English, would be something different than what I heard — but is it Carthage? Yes — and we don’t put any different ending on it in English. Okay, good. So you had it correct. And if you didn’t have the text in front of you, listeners would understand because you referenced Scipio.
Elaine: Scipio Africanus, I believe.
Cassius: Now that’s another word. Is it Scipio or Skipio? I’ve always said Scipio, but I’m not sure what the proper Latin would be.
Martin: Scipio. It’s probably a hard C sound because C in Latin is a hard sound. But this is often speculative about how they really pronounced it, because if you go to other Romance languages, the combination of C with I afterwards is rather pronounced as S, so we don’t know what the correct one would be in ancient Roman.
Charles: Well, it depends on what period of Latin, because there’s different pronunciations across different eras. Wikipedia says Scipio.
Martin: I think in classical Latin, that shift didn’t happen — that happened later in church Latin, similar to Italian, where having the I after some consonants changes them.
Cassius: Well, the one that I did not look up — who’s going to tell us who good King Ancus was?
Charles: Ancus — Ancus Marcius. I’ve read about him. He was a king of Rome.
Martin: He was. I forget who the first king was, but Ancus must have been one of the early ones. That means he was before the Republic, because the kings were these other people who ruled over the area before Rome became a republic.
Cassius: Tarquin was one of the last ones, right?
Charles: Kind of. You know, there’s the legend of Romulus and Remus, and Romulus founded Rome — not necessarily the Republic, rather the Kingdom of Rome. But generally speaking, yes, Ancus was Roman. He would have to be, because he came after Romulus.
Martin: But that means that these foreign people later took power, because after Rome overturned those foreign kings, it immediately became a republic.
Cassius: To call a king good must place him early in the line, because the Tarquin kings were the last ones. I think that’s who the first Brutus forced out, if I remember correctly, to start the republic.
Martin: No, that must be different — because what we’re talking about here is something 500 BC and before, and Brutus killing Caesar was 500 years later, at the end of the Republic.
Cassius: No, I’m talking about the first Brutus — there were two Brutuses. Oh, I see. Yes — that’s the analogy where the conspirators encouraged the second Brutus, of Julius Caesar fame, to follow the course of his ancestors, because the first Brutus had been the one who overthrew the kings and set up the Republic.
Charles: It says here he was the fourth king of Rome, and he was elected by an assembly of the people.
Cassius: He was an elected king — that’s interesting.
Charles: The fourth king of Rome. It lists him as 642 to 617 BC, and his successor was Lucius Tarquinius.
Cassius: Okay, the Tarquins were not considered so good, I guess. And then Rome had two Tarquin kings. But it’s so interesting to think of a king as being elected.
Charles: Well, maybe not by popular vote, but appointed. It says elected by an assembly of the people and then ratified by the Senate.
Martin: I mean, it was not that unusual in the past. The Holy Roman Emperor was elected, even though it looked like the prince of Austria would always have it. With few exceptions from about the mid-medieval age, the emperor was elected — though it had to do with the Catholic Church. There were dedicated electors, like a board, rather than a general will of the people — a bit like the Electoral College.
Cassius: Okay. We’ve got a lot of pretty good material in these three paragraphs. This first paragraph reminds me of “Ozymandias” by Shelley.
Elaine: Oh, yes! “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.” It’s you know, all these great, mighty people have come to death. There’s nothing more of them — so it doesn’t matter how great and mighty you are. This is the same point in Epicurus: these great kings, everybody dies.
Cassius: I see myself also in this, Elaine — a little bit of what you were talking about last week in terms of, maybe humor is not exactly the right word, but when he says: why should you think you should live forever when all these great people of the past are dead now? From Xerxes to Scipio to Democritus to Epicurus and Homer — that’s probably a pretty effective argument, depending on the person. It certainly has always struck me as a good way to put yourself in your place when you think you deserve to live forever and you think about these other people who obviously did not, no matter how powerful or smart they were.
Cassius: Maybe before we get to the end of that first section, though — because most of that first section is devoted to the comparison — there is the opening statement about the horrors of the world: “nor has the wretch a prospect of any end to the miseries he suffers.” That’s a continuing theme of what we keep talking about: Epicurus shows that there are limits to pain. It’s not possible to suffer eternally. And whether you consider “what’s bad is easy to endure” to be oversimplified or not, there is a limit to pain through death.
And then of course, going back to the humor of it: “Shall thou, then, repine and grieve to die, when thy life is little more than a scene of death while thou livest with eyes open, and who wearest the greater part of thy life away in sleep, and snorest and art ever dreaming while still art awake?” Those are pretty challenging lines.
Elaine: No apologies there.
Cassius: And I do think that kind of argument is intended to have the same effect that we’re making of it right now. He’s not trying to be overly harsh. He’s pointing out: just think about the realities of the world, and how you’re no different than anybody else — you’re going to be dead just like all these other people were. And how much less have you done with your life than Epicurus did, or Democritus, or even Xerxes or Scipio — people who did so much with their lives and were still not rewarded with any kind of eternal life. So why should you be? “You who are borne down on all sides by the severest of misery and wandering in the uncertain mazes of doubt and error.”
Cassius: Okay, so that takes us to the second passage, which goes back into the way to remedy that burden. “If men would really consider it.” Go ahead, Elaine.
Elaine: Yeah, this one’s really interesting. It makes me think of “wherever you go, there you are.” All these people trying to run away from themselves — from one thing to the next — but they’re still not happy. And I am reading — I recommend this, even though I haven’t quite finished it; I’m a little more than halfway through — there’s a book called The Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long that talks about dopamine and the sort of striving kind of experience that’s described here. Where you don’t ever actually get what you’re looking for. And then there are the here-and-now kinds of pleasures — serotonin, endocannabinoids, endorphins — which is savoring your pleasure now instead of always seeking after. I really love this book so far because it talks about two separate kinds of dopamine action in the brain. This sort of endless, impossible-to-satisfy striving — that’s the hedonic treadmill, where you can’t ever be happy, and that’s what people mean when they write articles saying “you can never be happy, so quit trying.” That’s what they’re talking about — it is unsatisfiable. Versus another action that dopamine has in the brain, which is that it helps you establish control over your choices and your environment. You’re using your brain to make decisions and arrange things for your pleasure that you can actually enjoy.
So we know we do enjoy life — and Epicurus knew that we have pleasure. So we can use this sort of seeking function as a way to make decisions. This first thing he describes — “every one striving to change his situation as if that was the way to ease him of his burden” — well, I wouldn’t take that in isolation, because Epicurus did talk about making good decisions. Making wise decisions for our pleasure.
Cassius: So it’s really important not to read this paragraph and think, oh well, just give up, because you can never be happy. That’s not the message here. And in fact I would say the full message of the paragraph is the opposite, because it closes on the point that if the restless fool would really act reasonably, he would think about the fact that he’s going to be dead for eternity in a relatively short time. And that has always meant to me that you have such a limited amount of time to do the things you’d really like to do — so don’t waste the time you have. And you would think there’s just so much in that paragraph. “If men would really consider, as they ought to do, that they are pressed down by the natural weight of their own minds… they would not spend their lives as we now see they do — not knowing their desires, but striving to change the situation.” They would act differently.
The purpose of this philosophy is not just to know some fact — it’s to act differently after knowing the fact of what life is all about and what limits exist in nature. It’s like Vatican Saying 14. I just keep coming back to it, but I think it’s obvious how it relates to the text. Vatican Saying 14: “We are born once and cannot be born twice but for all time must be no more. But you who are not master of tomorrow postpone your happiness. Life is wasted in procrastination and each one of us dies while occupied.”
Charles: That is definitely a core message of Epicurus. Though that one’s a bit tongue-in-cheek compared to the others.
Cassius: But it’s a message that has lots of different ways it needs to be thought about. “The restless fool does not know the cause of his disease. If he thoroughly did, everyone would give up all other pursuits and apply chiefly to search into the nature of things. I do not mean to trouble himself about the events of the present hour, but to inquire into the state of eternity after death, which is everyone’s concern and which must be the lot of all mankind.”
I mean, that’s just a great command in my mind — that everybody ought to put things into a different priority. If they would realize that this is the only life they have and that they won’t have anything after death, most people in my mind would live differently if they really understood that and kept it in the front of their minds.
Elaine: Well, and even more than that. Because let’s imagine these at least very long-lived Epicurean gods that we propose — at least hypothetically, they’re still having pleasure; that’s how we know who they are, whichever creatures out there have mastered the art of pleasure. They don’t have mortality to egg them on. So I think even more important in the nature of things is that there is not this absolute way that everybody is supposed to live. When you search into it, you find there’s no absolute morality, no absolute virtue — and so that sets you free to find out how it is that you want to live. That’s the only way to get anywhere close to the status of the Epicurean gods: to enjoy your life. To me, that’s way more important than just the mortality argument, because you could live eternally and be miserable.
Cassius: Martin. Yes. Any thoughts on what we’ve seen today so far?
Martin: I don’t have any additional comment. It sounds all correct to me. Though even when I just read it, the way Lucretius put this with his poetry — I find it darker than I would prefer to see it. But we know the background, that he is fully in Epicurus’s philosophy, so we know how it is meant.
Cassius: Right. And I just see — when you say dark versus whatever — I see maybe not exactly humor but: “he also hurries and drives full speed to his country house as if all was on fire and he came to extinguish it, and no sooner sets foot within the doors but presently begins to yawn, or falls asleep, and strives to forget himself, or else posts his heart back and returns to town again.” I mean, that’s just humorous ridicule of what a lot of people do. We all know people like that.
Martin: Yes. I’m not sure we’re not all that way ourselves at times, when we just try to escape something without doing what’s necessary to deal with it. Superficially, my commute between Bangkok and Ayutthaya is somewhat like that.
Cassius: Yeah. Well, okay, why don’t we go to the third passage. This goes back to the variety discussion that we had last week, Elaine. “Besides, we are ever running on in a circle of the same actions and ever pursuing them, nor does living on afford us any new delight.” Any thoughts on that since last week?
Elaine: I mean, we could look at this as saying that the end of variety is a problem. I’m really not sure if that’s the message. I don’t find it to be true that the end of variety is a problem. Even though I really technically don’t think I’ve ever reached the end of variety, let’s say it were possible — I’ve been in situations where my activities were very similar, and I still enjoyed life. So I’m not convinced that’s the point. I’m thinking that he’s saying: this is your life, these things that you’re discounting, you’re thinking there’s some greener grass out there — some new thing that you’ve never imagined that’s going to be better. That’s not it. You can’t learn how to enjoy what you’ve got. In my article on your site, Cassius, there’s no fancy pleasure — there’s not some kind of bliss that you can only imagine and have never experienced. Your pleasure is the pleasure that you’ve had. To me, that’s a more reasonable interpretation.
Cassius: I think he’s completely agreeing with you, Elaine, and he’s shooting down the position that we have to have variety. I think his position is yours: variety is nice, you like life, you enjoy the pleasures that come to you — but he’s making the point that you don’t have to have infinite time. Well — okay, it’s a little more than just that you don’t need variety. It’s that this thing that people do, where they’re searching for some imaginary pleasure that is somehow better than what’s real — that’s not going to happen ever. You’re never going to get there. There’s no such thing. That’s a little bit different from what you’re saying, which I think is awesome, but what I think this is pointing to is: look around at reality. This imaginary stuff just doesn’t happen.
Charles: I can’t help but notice a similarity between the last line of the second sentence — “nor does living on afford us any new delight” — about how infinite time does not equate to infinite new pleasures, which is an extension of the whole debate on variety. Though I can’t really see the next sentence about the pleasure being coveted as an example of the treadmill problem.
Cassius: You say you can see it as an example of the treadmill? No — I can’t. What do you see it as instead?
Charles: I think he’s just using that as a comparison, comparing it to the idea of wanting to live more.
Cassius: Well, there’s the last paragraph — it breaks down into a couple of different thoughts. There’s a boundary to the age of life, we cannot avoid death. Then he throws in the part about “besides, we’re ever running in a circle of the same actions.” So he’s making the variety argument — as you said, Charles, I don’t know that that’s the treadmill argument. It’s just the argument that Epicurus is making in different ways: that an infinite time of life does not necessarily have more pleasure in it than a limited time of life. That’s exactly the statement of one of those Principal Doctrines — that the mind affords a complete life by reflecting on the limits of life.
So this is the treadmill part: “the pleasure we covet eagerly exceeds everything we enjoyed before, and when we have it in possession, we long passionately for another, the same thirst of life hangs on us still gaping for more.” That’s yes — that’s the hedonic treadmill. And it’s a real thing. I’m glad he acknowledges it.
Elaine: But it just fascinates me that it’s a different brain activity, a different brain chemistry that gets people in that trap, versus actually experiencing the pleasure of what I could call savoring. And I should clarify about what I said earlier — I meant that Lucretius is not endorsing the issues brought up with the treadmill, because the comparison there is completely obvious. And the treadmill is what people use to argue against pleasure. And I’m saying Lucretius, despite that text, is obviously not doing that.
Cassius: Yeah, he’s not saying that in a negative light. That’s my point — I agree.
Cassius: The reason you might skip over that fragment: it looks like there is a significant error in that sentence as the text was read. “The pleasure we covet eagerly exceeds everything we enjoyed before” — what it should say is “the pleasure we covet eagerly exceeds everything we enjoyed before as long as it is absent; but when we have it in possession we long passionately for another.” So it should include “as long as it is absent.”
Elaine: Okay, that completely changes it.
Cassius: Yeah. I think that reinforces what Elaine is saying — it’s this endless seeking-after and then being dissatisfied, but that did not lead us to think we can’t enjoy life. That’s just a mistake in the way we’re going about it.
Elaine: Right. And just to focus on the corrected part: “the pleasure we covet eagerly exceeds everything we enjoyed before, as long as it is absent.” So that’s really just saying that your dreaming of this pleasure is only valid as long as you don’t have it. But when you get it, it’s immediately devalued by possessing it. And I can’t imagine anything more unproductive and insatiable than to be in a pattern of longing for something, and then immediately when you get it, losing the pleasure you thought you were going to find in it.
Cassius: Okay. And then the very last thought in that passage: “Nor can we, by living longer, take off a moment from the length of death. It will always be as if we had been dead ever so long. Though you live ever so many ages, the state of death will still be eternal. And he that died today is to all purposes as long dead as he that died a thousand years ago.”
I think I’ve seen that written with different emphases, but I guess the point is: if death is eternal, then in the end even though Scipio got a 2,000-year head start on us in being dead, in the end he’s going to be dead eternally, we’re going to be dead eternally, and it shakes out about the same way.
Elaine: Well, that’s one thing I think about. Sometimes I feel like you know, when you’re talking about anybody — whether it’s somebody two thousand years ago or two days or two weeks ago — you think to yourself “oh my, how sad that person is, because I’m still alive and they’re dead.” But in the end, we’re going to be dead soon ourselves, and we’re all going to be dead the same amount of time — basically eternally. So it’s one of those issues of looking at somebody else’s situation and comparing yours to theirs. And you can come up with some wrong conclusions, because just because they died last week, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve won the lottery by being alive another week longer.
Cassius: It’s not like Scipio was waiting patiently for all of us. So somehow we are in a better position than Scipio because we’re alive today and he’s not. What am I going for there, Elaine?
Elaine: Same work.
Cassius: Well, maybe I relate that to my thought: I think a lot of people today just automatically look back at people who are dead from the past and think “well, how dumb of them to be dead, or how superior I am because I’m alive today and they’re dead.”
Charles: I’ve heard that before, but I can’t quite put it into words because it’s so few and far between and it’s not quite the same — is it more like people who discount the opinions of those who’ve lived before, like they don’t have standing or jurisdiction over present decisions because they’re not here anymore?
Elaine: I think of it as: they’re not here anymore to observe what’s going on today, so they can’t really weigh in on our situation, nor would they have to face the consequences of the decisions. It can be a partially valid point. I’ve seen it in two instances. One — the one Elaine is talking about — that oh, how could Plato or Thomas Jefferson offer any worthy advice? They weren’t alive to, or they’re dead; what they experienced in their time is so vastly different from ours that any conventional wisdom isn’t applicable.
Charles: The second one I wanted to talk about is probably what was primarily in your mind, Cassius. It’s the feeling — maybe it’s occurred to you too — that you should feel sorry for Thomas Jefferson because he never had an iPhone.
Cassius: Yes! Okay, yeah. And that’s probably along the lines of: if Epicurus and Scipio and Xerxes and people like that are dead, then why should we think we deserve to live forever? An extension of that would be just to look back at Scipio and Epicurus and Xerxes and say: well, in their lifetime they did not have all the modern conveniences that we have, and so therefore — not necessarily a matter of whether I should listen to their opinion, but just a more general emotion that gee, wasn’t life a hundred years ago awful because they didn’t have these things. And I don’t know necessarily where that leads us, but I do think there’s a general point that life can be enjoyed in a lot of different circumstances. Just because we don’t live to see the technological advances that will take place ten years from now doesn’t mean that our lives are less worthy of living.
Charles: That second instance is very similar — it’s where people lament the time in which they’re born. Either that they were born too far into the present, that they couldn’t explore the undiscovered continents, or that they were born too early, that they won’t be able to explore the solar system and galaxy. And so the rest of their life will be marred by the fact that what they anticipate will only happen when they’re dead. But in both cases, it’s all in reference to the time in which they’re living — whether it’s “Thomas Jefferson doesn’t have anything of value to add because he’s not alive like I am right now,” or “I can’t explore the solar system because of the technology that exists at the time I’m alive.”
The general topic I wanted to bring up is: just because I’m alive today, somebody who died a year ago is not by definition disadvantaged compared to me. There’s no reason for us to feel sorry for them necessarily. We can still feel sorry for ourselves that we don’t have their companionship or participation, but it’s not necessarily that the person who died a year ago got a raw deal. Everybody gets a set amount of time — some short, some long — and it’s a matter of how you use that time.
Charles: That’s something we’ve spoken about before — about whether Epicurus or Lucretius, if they were brought to the present and could examine all of the natural world and all the modern theories of science, what would that mean for their own writings? And the answer is that they wrote their observations against the competing theories of their own time. That doesn’t make it any less significant, just as a more modern understanding doesn’t make this text obsolete.
Cassius: Well, we haven’t necessarily gone into this direction ourselves based on just reading this Lucretius text, but I remember from the DeWitt book that he develops the argument — as he often does, DeWitt analogizes into a Christian framework — a way to take the sting out of death, a way to argue that a complete life does not require an infinite amount of time. That’s not necessarily all the arguments that Lucretius has been making here, but I think it’s an important one.
And to contrast it again and think about the way Elaine and I go back and forth on the logical side of things — there is more of the Principal Doctrines being made as logical argument here: that an infinite amount of time is not required in order to live a complete life. And that’s not necessarily satisfactory from an emotional point of view, but that’s what he’s arguing. If the mind is capable of understanding —
Charles: “The mind measures it by reason.” Yes — that’s Principal Doctrine 19, I believe.
Cassius: Yes. “Infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time, if one measures by reason the limits of pleasure.” How does that strike you, Elaine?
Elaine: I still think — to me, it has more to do with: it’s not discounting infinite time, because I think we can never take that argument, because it would completely undermine the idea of the Epicurean god, so it wouldn’t be consistent with the philosophy. So I think we don’t say that it’s not better in any way to have infinite time — that’s part of why the gods are happy. But what we say is that there is a continuation of the real pleasure that we have now, that there’s nothing special we haven’t gotten to yet. That’s really the way I think about it. Always when you’re reading this stuff, be careful that it’s consistent with what Epicurus says about the Epicurean gods, because a lot of things like “oh, it’s not better to live longer” — that wouldn’t be consistent with the philosophy, I don’t think.
Cassius: Yeah, and that’s not what it says. It doesn’t say it’s not better to live longer. But that’s exactly why Lucretius adds “there is a boundary fixed to the age of man.” It’s because that principle applies specifically to mortals — humans are mortal, and with that in mind these arguments apply.
Martin: Yes, if we were not mortal, the phrase would be very different. Or if we could achieve immortality through study — I mean, we’re saying the Epicurean gods are real material beings, so I would say they had to be subject to some kind of natural process. And just like any real beings, they figured out something — by whatever means — if we believe there’s some entity out there that’s gotten to that point.
Cassius: I’d be careful not to take this in a direction that suggests it’s a sour grapes argument — like “oh, it’s not going to be any better, so why not just end it?” That cannot be what he meant to say.
Elaine: Right, exactly. Anybody who would say that it’s just as good to live 20 weeks as 20 years — as a general rule, with no difference between living 20 weeks versus 20 years — that would be ridiculous. And Epicurus would not have taken a position so ridiculous. So that’s not his position.
Cassius: I would say he’s making another point, which is more of a logical point about the relationship between pleasure and time. Everybody wants to think “well, the more time, the more pleasure” — but that’s not necessarily so. And that’s what he’s pointing out, because more time also means more opportunities for pain, right?
Elaine: Right. Well, also: let’s say if you eat and you’re full, you’ve got the pleasure of being full. You’re not going to be more full. So it is — yes — if you think of time as the horizontal axis and pleasure as vertical, there is more area under the curve of pleasure with more time, if you’re actually having pleasure during that time. However, there’s no greater height of pleasure. It’s not more intense. It’s not fancy pleasure. It’s not better in that sense. But there is more of it — more area under the curve.
Cassius: So we’ve got to distinguish between those two ideas.
Cassius: Well, let’s acknowledge where we are: we’re at the end of Book Three. We’re now halfway through the poem, after 49 or so episodes and the better part of a year. And Book Three has been devoted entirely — I was looking back to the beginning to see if there were any other major topics — but we left the atoms behind in Book Two, and Book Three has just devoted the entire book to the discussion of the mind and the soul not surviving after death, and what that means to us. That’s a huge part of Epicurean philosophy. A full one third of the first three books has been devoted to that single topic.
Now we’re going to switch in Book Four and come back to images and more epistemological issues, as opposed to this life-and-death question. But we’ve spent all of Book Three on the point that the soul and mind don’t last forever, they don’t go to hell and suffer forever. And even those people who yawn through life — “thou fool, who wastest thy time, why should you live forever? What more would you ask for than what you’ve already had?” Well, that’s the party of your life.
Cassius: Let’s talk about closing for the day then. Any closing thoughts from Martin?
Martin: No. And I want to say — not as a defense of Martin, but as an explanation — for people who may not listen to every episode, Martin is in Thailand and is in a very different time zone than we are. So Elaine and Charles and I are just getting up in the morning, at least should be just getting up in the morning, while Martin has good reason to be basically zonked out most of the time because of the time difference. But he still produces many very helpful comments.
Cassius: Charles, do you have any last thoughts for Book Three?
Charles: Not for Book Three. I’m very eager to start Book Four — it’s one I’ve been waiting for since we started.
Cassius: Yes! Finally here. It’ll be worth the wait. There’s a lot of good things in Book Four, including of course at the end of Book Four that’s where we get to the love advice, right Charles?
Charles: Yeah, originally it was more about the senses and the epistemology.
Cassius: Yes, so it’s on both ends. There’s a lot of good stuff in Book Four. Now, Elaine, any closing thoughts for the day?
Elaine: My main — I guess this whole chapter that we’ve just finished — is: don’t worry about what’s going to happen after you die; don’t spend a lot of time longing after imaginary things; focus on the life that you have now and enjoy it. Don’t waste your time.
Cassius: Yeah. I’m surprised my mic picks up on that noise — you got a very good mic! A very good mic. Let’s close with one of these good Vatican Sayings on not wasting your time. How about 26?
Charles: Which one’s 26?
Cassius: “You must understand that whether the discourse be long or short it tends to the same end.” Yes, that one’s always been a little dark for me — what exactly is meant there?
Charles: Well, whether a discussion or teaching session is short or extremely long — the point is something is gained at the end of it. Regardless of their length, they have the same purpose. And I was wondering if that applies analogously to the length of life.
Cassius: Yes, I think it does have an analogy here. Because the way it’s worded, I guess the point of 26 is that whether the discourse is long or short, it should still be judged by how well it achieves its purpose. And you can put brackets around “discourse” and replace it with many different words — “life,” “pleasure,” “desire” — and have the same meaning. Whether the life is long or short, it still should be measured by how well it achieves its goal of pleasure.
So whether the discourse, life, activity, desire — you have it there. Now, 26 may have a wider meaning than what we’ve just applied to it, but I think there is that analogy.
Cassius: And the one I was looking for was the one about shouting at the end of your life. Yes — okay. Vatican Saying 47. “I have anticipated the fortune, I have closed off every one of your devious entrances, and we will not give ourselves up as captives to thee or to any other circumstance. But when it is time for us to go — spitting contempt on life and those who cling to it vainly — we will leave from life singing aloud a glorious triumph song on how well we lived.”
I’m not sure “nicely” captures it, but “how well we lived” — that’s what we should strive to do: to be able at the end of life to say that we’re very happy about how we’ve spent our lives. And you can’t do it if you waste your time worrying about torment in hell, or rewards in heaven, or orders from God, or Platonic ideals that don’t exist. And that’s what Epicurean philosophy does, by showing you those are not valid ways to live your life.
Cassius: All right. Unless anyone has any final words, we will close Book Three and come back next week to Book Four.
Charles: Okay, well then we’ll talk next week. All right.
Martin: All right, thanks everybody.
Elaine: Thanks everybody.