Episode 093 - Torquatus on Ethics Torquatus Leads Us Forward Into Conflict Over Epicurean Ethics
Date: 10/25/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2231-episode-ninety-three-torquatus-leads-us-forward-into-conflict-over-epicurean-eth/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”A major milestone: the podcast has completed all six books of Lucretius’s poem. The episode opens with a revised and extended version of the original podcast introduction, reorienting listeners for the new direction. From here the panel will work through Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum (Book One especially), in which the character of Torquatus — a historical Epicurean — presents the Epicurean case for pleasure as the goal of life.
Background discussion covers: the historical context of De Finibus (written during Cicero’s forced retirement in the Roman civil war); why Cicero’s portrayal of the Epicurean position is probably accurate despite his personal opposition (he had Epicurean friends who would have called him out on gross misrepresentation); the identity of Torquatus and Triarius as characters; and the distinction between Cicero’s Academic Platonist position and the Stoic position he is not actually defending.
Joshua reads De Finibus Book 1, sections 5 and 28–31, from the J.S. Reid translation (1883). The panel then works through the text, focusing on: pleasure as the telos and as the summum bonum (the “climax and standard of things good”); whether pleasure is self-evident from observing infants and animals, or requires elaborate logical proof; the three positions described in section 31 (Epicurus himself just points; some later Epicureans felt compelled to argue logically; Torquatus represents a third, argued position); and a long tangent prompted by Martin about Bertrand Russell, set theory, and whether mathematical abstractions really map onto sensory reality — connecting to the Epicurean question of whether “pleasure” as a word adequately captures the self-evident feeling it names.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to episode 93 of Lucretius Today. As a foreword to this episode, we’ve now come to a major milestone in the history of the podcast. We have completely gone through the entire poem, and from here we’ll be looking to take a new direction to assist in the study of Epicurus. I’m reminded that over the last year we shortened the opening of the podcast so that regular listeners would not have to hear the same introduction over and over every episode. But now that we’ve finished the poem, this is a good opportunity to remind everyone where we started and where we’re still going. Here’s a slightly updated version of our original introduction.
This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius and together with our 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. First, our aim is to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it — which is not necessarily the same as what modern commentators interpret it as being. We’re bringing you our own perspective on Epicurean philosophy, unfiltered through traditional academic viewpoints, and we hope that our fresh perspective will encourage you to rethink the meaning of Epicurean philosophy for yourself. Second, we won’t be talking about contemporary political issues in this podcast and in fact we will stay as far away from them as possible. At the EpicureanFriends.com forum we term this approach not Neo-Epicurean, but Epicurean. We want everyone to understand that Epicurus had a unique philosophy of his own. Epicurus was not a Stoic, a Humanist, a Buddhist, a Taoist, an Atheist, or a Marxist, and it is very unfair to Epicurus and to ourselves to try to force Epicurus into one of those modern boxes. Epicurus was unique and in many ways a rebel against the mainstream Greek philosophy that most of us have inherited in one form or another today. Epicurus must be understood on his own terms and not through the lens of any conventional modern morality or political viewpoint. Third, Lucretius’ poem is mainly concerned with the many details of the Epicurean view of the nature of the universe. But we’ll always try to relate those details of physics to show how they were translated directly into conclusions about the best way to live. Lucretius will show that Epicurus was not obsessed with luxury, as many opponents have always alleged. But neither did he teach minimalism or asceticism, as many modern commentators allege. Epicurus taught that feeling, pleasure, and pain are the guides that nature gave us by which to live. And what that means is that Epicurus taught that we are not intended to shape our lives based on ideas about supernatural gods or about idealist abstractions or about absolute notions of virtue of any kind. More than anything else, Epicurus taught that the universe is not run by supernatural gods or by fate, and that there is no life after death. That means that any happiness we’ll ever have must come in this life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive to you, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you’ll find a thread for the discussion of each of our Lucretius Today episodes.
Now let’s discuss where we are as we start our 93rd episode of the podcast. We’ve now completed our first full reading of the poem, so where do we go now? Here is the plan for the way forward.
Think of yourself as just having been led through the forest of nature by Lucretius, our faithful Epicurean guide. Lucretius has led us through virtually every aspect of Epicurean philosophy — from the nature of pleasure as the guide of life, to the formation and operation of the universe through the combinations of matter and void, to the issue of the inevitability of death and the end of life, to matters of how to determine what is true and how to think about life in the rest of the universe. Lucretius has led us in both the examination of the trees of the forest as well as of the forest itself, showing us how to go back and forth between the big picture and the details and how they relate to each other to form both a forest and individual trees.
Now that we’ve finished the poem, we’ve come to the edge of the forest. Ahead of us in a clearing we see a number of camps of different philosophers, each with separate banners, but all carrying not only their own books but also swords and shields which tell us that there’s danger ahead that blocks our path forward. Our previous guide, Lucretius, tells us that it’s time for him to step aside. In his place, he introduces us to someone new: Torquatus, the latest leader from an old Roman family of distinguished military background. Torquatus tells us that he, too, like Lucretius, is a follower of Epicurus, and that he is now going to lead us forward through dangerous territory. Torquatus tells us that we must be prepared to encounter many philosophers who disagree with Epicurus’ conclusions about the proper goal of life, and he tells us that a new method of exploration may be necessary as we encounter these opponents. He tells us, in fact, that in order to get past these enemies it will be necessary for us to learn about weapons which Epicurus and Lucretius have already warned us against — weapons which go by the name of dialectical logic and virtue. Paradoxically, Torquatus tells us that these weapons can bring great good to us when used properly, but that they can also destroy us if used improperly, and that therefore we must understand how they operate before we can use them ourselves without being destroyed.
With that as background, over the next several weeks our guide will be Torquatus — a character in Cicero’s book De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, whose full title means something to the effect of On Good and Evil Ends. This first episode is considerably longer than our past episodes, but in this introduction we’ll lay the groundwork for those that follow, as we examine the most contentious and yet the most important issues surrounding Epicurean ethics and how to live. Now let’s join our panel with today’s discussion.
We’ve now finished the poem and we need to talk about where we go from here. One of the big issues that developed even in the ancient world among the Epicureans was the relationship of virtue and pleasure in Epicurean ethics. Since Cicero himself was familiar with Lucretius, and basically the poem has set the foundation for the physics and included some of the ethics, I think this text stands as probably one of the most condensed debates about the ethics in which the actual Epicurean side is presented very well. So we can probably just talk in terms of this episode being: we’ve finished the poem and the general outline of the physics and everything, but now we can turn to what developed as the real points of contention between the Epicureans and the Stoics and other philosophies in the ancient world, and use this text as the basis for discussing that. Does that make sense?
Don:
We’re all cogitating over the wondrousness of your words. That’s what we’re doing.
Cassius:
Right, of course. Of course they’re so brilliant. That’s right.
Joshua:
I do think it’s interesting, because right there at the beginning he talks about not going to talk about the natural science — he’s just going to talk about pleasure. So we sort of covered all the natural science stuff in Lucretius, and now we’re looking specifically at that pleasure topic.
Cassius:
Right. I think that is the point. We probably need to talk for a few minutes as well about what this is that we’re reading from and what this whole book of De Finibus is about. And of course there is some discussion of some of the physics in the part we’re not going to be discussing, but that’s what they choose to focus on when they start talking about whether Cicero likes Epicurus or not and whether he respects him. Cicero includes some of his criticism of the physics, but then Torquatus here narrows it down and says, well, what we’re really fighting about is the ethics. So that’s what we’re going to talk about.
The big parts that stick out in my mind: this is the time period of the Roman Civil War — I think it’s before Cassius and Brutus had been defeated at Philippi — but Cicero is in sort of a forced retirement and he’s churning out books on philosophy as a way to spend his time, is what I understand is going on here. We know from other material that Cicero had even attended some Epicurean lectures early in life and he was very familiar with Greek and with Greek philosophy in general. The title of this book is De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, so Cicero was setting out to just do a survey of the existing systems and compare their ethics, their positions on what the ends of life are supposed to be.
And another important point: everybody considers Cicero to be a Stoic, but this book is among the material that pretty clearly shows that he did not consider himself to be a Stoic. We’re going to be reading from Book One mostly of De Finibus, but when you get further into Book Two and the rest — I think there are five books — Cicero really tears into the Stoics in my view at least as much as he does against the Epicureans. Cicero considered himself to be sort of an heir to the Plato-Socrates line and even Aristotle, and he considered the Stoics to be really — as we criticize them often — playing word games with the word “virtue” and obsessing over things that didn’t mean anything, basically undercutting themselves by being so focused on logic and carrying it to an extreme.
Don:
Hair splitters. Hair splitters, yes.
Cassius:
Hair splitters. So even though we’re not going to be able to convey all that in our discussions, everybody needs to realize that Cicero does not consider himself to be arguing from a Stoic position but from a more general Greek-philosophy Platonic position. And of course in our podcast we’re not going to include any of Cicero’s arguments, at least to start with — we’re trying to get people oriented to what the Epicurean arguments were. So before we spend too much time on the criticisms, we need to focus on understanding first what the Epicurean position was.
Joshua:
Well, hopefully we can do that in the future as well, because there are books such as Plato’s Philebus and the Nicomachean Ethics from Aristotle that contain debates about these very same issues that Epicurus would have been familiar with. But again, that’s beyond the scope of what we’re going to do as well.
Don:
Sounds like you have a twenty-year plan there.
Cassius:
Yeah, well, as soon as we get our podcasters committed to the goal, the panel will charge through all of those things. I have a feeling the panel needs a little bit of a break right now after finishing almost two years of Lucretius, but there’s a lot to do and so little time, Don. So little time.
Don:
There you go.
Cassius:
Anybody want to say something else about what they understand the background of this material to be?
Joshua:
It is interesting, Cassius — as you mentioned, he’s putting this together in sort of the context of the trauma of the last civil war that ended the Roman Republic. There was a turn in Greek philosophy around the time that Alexander the Great swept south across the Greek peninsula, and it was a change toward a more personally applicable understanding of philosophy. This is where Epicureanism comes from, this is where Stoicism comes from. There’s a deep connection between these philosophies and a kind of worldly trauma. So you got worldly trauma when Epicurus was starting this stuff; we’ve got worldly trauma here with Cicero; I’d probably make an argument we’ve got a little bit of worldly trauma with us right now.
Cassius:
We sure do. Now let’s talk about that for just a minute. There’s another word that — somebody correct me on this — some of these well-known commentators describe this whole period as some kind of age of disillusionment or decline from the prior confidence of the earlier Greek period. I’m not frankly sure that I agree that that’s exactly correct, but certainly what you just said, Joshua, is clearly one of the frameworks that a lot of people use when they read about this period.
Joshua:
Yes, definitely. They successfully fought off the Persians, and then they had this distinction between Hellenists and barbarians. And it turns out it was a Macedonian — which from a Greek point of view was a barbarian at the time — who swept through their civilization. So I would expect some changes. But where I see it extending, when you read a lot of these general commentators, is that they take the conclusion that because they were going through this upheaval they just turned inward and abandoned their prior confidence in everything — they were just trying to reconcile themselves to lesser standards, abandoning their confidence in life and in their understanding of everything. And that, to me at least, is something you could not associate with Epicurus. They’re just trying to find comfort from the pain of life, and they’re just going to turn and live in their cave to the extent that they can — which is a perspective I strongly disagree with.
Cassius:
Absolutely. Obviously trauma is a part of life, and these guys were going through a traumatic period. And one of the things that I know I’ve read about Cicero is that he particularly was affected by — I think it was the death of his daughter or something like that. And the commentators will say that Cicero was turning strongly against Epicurus the later in life he got, as these bad things were happening to him. He’s negative about any kind of positive outlook on life. He’s looking for discipline. He’s looking for ways to extend that Platonic “noble lie” to the citizens of Rome so they can stand up for their civic duties. At least that’s my perception of it. So he’s writing this book for that purpose, and that factors into what we’re going to read, because we really don’t know exactly where this material comes from. I think I’ve read that Cicero had texts from various schools that he was largely quoting from or paraphrasing — he may even say that somewhere. So in this Epicurean section, he presumably had in front of him some Epicurean texts that he was either paraphrasing or quoting. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s presenting it in exactly the same way that an Epicurean would present it, and people debate a lot as to how accurate what he’s writing here really was.
Yeah. That’s one of my — oh, go ahead, Martin.
Martin:
Yeah. I agree in principle on the spirit of what you’re saying. So the Civil War was going on, but I need to make a correction. Cicero was killed — murdered — before the Battle of Philippi. That means the power struggle was not yet finished at the time when Cicero was already killed, because in all this there were also person-to-person rivalries. Cicero and Antony were essentially rivals, and Antony had Cicero killed. And later on, Antony lost to Octavian. So it’s a bit more complicated, but I agree that in this period he was essentially caught up in a complicated civil war — not just one side against another, but multiple people with different interests against each other.
Joshua:
I found it interesting — whatever Martin just said about Cicero arguing against them — I looked up the two people that Cicero uses as characters in this dialogue, and I found it interesting that Cicero actually argued against them in trials in the Senate. So he had a history of arguing against these people that he’s now putting words in their mouths in this work.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s a very important point for somebody who’s not familiar with that background. Lucius Torquatus, who’s the main speaker here — the historians do agree that he was an Epicurean — but there’s no reason to suspect that he ever actually wrote these words. Cicero is using this as a device, almost like a Platonic dialogue, to go back and forth and just using characters that stand for particular things.
I don’t know who this Gaius Triarius was — did you find anything about that name?
Joshua:
According to one of the sources I saw, it’s a Gaius Valerius Triarius. He also argued against Cicero twice in trials against the same person, on opposing sides of trials for extortion and for electoral corruption. And he married a friend of Servilia — which was Cato’s half-sister and the mother of Brutus. So he was in that circle of friends of Cato and Brutus.
Cassius:
Well, I think in the book itself he displays them as friends. I get the impression they were, because I also saw that — especially with Torquatus — Cicero and he were both part of the group they called the boni, the “good men.” These were the people that were standing up for traditional values and the importance of the Senate and so forth. So I think they did have good relations, especially in their views on the Republic and the Senate, but it just so happened that in a trial they were on opposing sides — almost like two lawyers who argue against each other in court and then go out for a drink afterward.
Don:
Yeah. It’s almost exactly like the legal profession.
Cassius:
And what we’re reading — I don’t gather that Triarius has very much to say, at least in this portion. And now that I think about it, I’m not even sure Triarius is considered to be an Epicurean. I think he’s there in the dialogue as a sort of neutral observer, or else he eventually sides with Cicero or something like that.
In all the material that we’re going to read over the next several weeks on the podcast, it’s all reputedly coming from Torquatus, who is a member of an old Roman family and talks about that here in the text. What else should we talk about as background?
The main thing is this period they were writing in. We mentioned briefly in the Lucretius material about the region around Naples — the area of Cumae — being a well-known place for the well-to-do to have villas outside of Rome, and that this was sort of a normal sort of thing to do there. And every time I do read through this book, I come up with the conclusion that if I had to have a book on a desert island, I would probably prefer to have Diogenes Laertius first, because he has all the Epicurean material in it. But this book by Cicero is a very good, sweeping view of the competition between the schools, and there’s a lot of really good material that helps focus on what the big issues are. That’s what he’s doing here: he’s going to turn everybody’s attention to what they think is the heart of the debate about what the goal of life is.
And I think I’ve read that Epicurus actually began teaching before Zeno did, but then Zeno, who established the Stoics, came along slightly later. What do you guys understand to be the historical relationship between those two schools?
Joshua:
Yeah, I think that’s absolutely correct. I don’t have the dates for you off the top of my head. People generally talk about the Stoics because that’s the school that people know about and they hear about modernly, and they don’t really even think about what sequence they might have come in. But to some extent the Stoic focus on virtue could arguably be something of a reaction to Epicurus focusing on pleasure the way he did.
Cassius:
I think the focus on pleasure goes all the way back to Aristotle and the Philebus, so that’s a big debate that had been raging for decades if not a century or more. And then the role of logic is apparently a part of this too. At any rate, this will help with the distinction between Epicureans and Stoics to go through this material.
Cassius, there is a point that you’re fond of making — one of Cicero’s dearest friends of course was Atticus, who we know had affinity for the Epicurean school. And you’ve made the point previously that his portrayal of Epicurean philosophy is probably accurate because if it wasn’t accurate his friends would have come down on him for it.
Joshua:
So that’s something to keep in mind as well. Yeah — the point people debate, because there are sections here in this presentation where some people allege it’s not representative of Epicurean philosophy. In fact, one of the reasons it’s good for us to take this text up is that you really don’t hear this text discussed in Epicurean circles as much as you’ll hear the Letter to Menoeceus discussed for the ethics. People will go to that letter, highlight everything they want to talk about there, and move on. This text is the real critical distinction and debate between the Epicurean position and the other positions. There are very strong statements here about the nature and the role of pleasure, discussions about justice and wisdom, and this is where we’re really going to go into the issue of virtue.
Cassius:
People today don’t normally look to these sections because it’s not something they consider to be the most important thing about Epicurus, and when they do come to these sections they’ll often say, “Well, this is really not a very good representation of Epicurean philosophy — Cicero was arguing against it and misrepresenting it.” The point you raised, Joshua, was just that in the time Cicero lived he had a lot of Epicurean friends including Atticus, and in my argument, even though he was arguing his case and would not have placed Epicurus in the best light, he had some restraints on that — because if he’d outrageously misrepresented Epicurus there would have been a lot of people around him who would have criticized him for that. And I think in some of the material we’re going to read here in the opening he even says that he’s priding himself on how accurately he’s going to represent this material.
Joshua:
Yeah, and I think having that view in mind — that Cicero is definitely out to make an argument but also had to fairly put out the Epicurean position — is a good one to keep in mind. Because I think what he does is put out a fairly accurate point-by-point Epicurean position here, and then in his arguments against them in the next book he sets up straw men he can knock down easily by just focusing on one individual little point here and there and not really taking the whole sweep of the philosophy in mind.
Cassius:
Yes, I think that’s exactly right. And some of those things might be good jumping-off points for discussions on the forum where we can dig into those and get other people’s thoughts. Having this as an exposition from literally the ancient times, when there were original capital-E Epicureans out there, is an important source document.
So with that — I think Joshua, you’re going to read for us. We’re going to begin in Book One around what is listed as section 5, around line 13, and then we’re going to skip over some of Cicero’s argument against Epicurus so we can focus on understanding Epicurus’ position first. Our plan for today in this first episode is to read approximately lines 13 and 14, then skip to line 28 and read through line 31, which would take us up to but not include section 10. And the text that we’re going to be reading from is one by J.S. Reid, published in about 1883. You’ll normally see on the internet a text by H. Rackham, and that’s a pretty good text too. But as we got ready to prepare this podcast we compared the Reid text and the Rackham text, and I think several of us came to the conclusion that there are aspects of the Reid version that are a little bit more literal than what Rackham has done. It’s certainly ideal to compare the two, but for purposes of reading on the podcast we’re going to read the 1883 J.S. Reid edition.
Joshua:
To begin with the easiest opinions, let the theory of Epicurus first enter the arena. It is to most people thoroughly familiar, and you will perceive that I have set it forth with an exactness which is not commonly surpassed even by the adherents of the school themselves, for my desire is to find truth and not to confound, as it were, some opponent. Now the tenets of Epicurus concerning pleasure were once carefully advocated by Lucius Torquatus, a gentleman trained in every department of learning, and I replied to him while Gaius Triarius, a particularly serious and well-instructed youth, was present at the debate.
Well, both of them having come to me in my villa at Cumae to pay their respects, we had at first a little conversation about literary matters, in which both took the greatest interest. Then said Torquatus, “I am quite of your opinion. Without adverse criticism there can indeed be no debate, nor is proper debate compatible with passion or obstinacy. But if you do not object, I have a reply I should like to make to what you have said.” “Do you imagine,” I answered, “that I should have said what I did were I not anxious to hear from you?” “Do you prefer then that we should run over the whole system of Epicurus, or should confine the inquiry to the one subject of pleasure on which the whole dispute turns?” “Well,” said I, “that must be as you decide.” “This is what I will do then,” said he. “I will expound a single topic, in that the most important. Natural science I shall leave for another occasion, when certainly I will demonstrate to you not only our philosopher’s doctrine of the swerving of the atoms and of the sun’s size, but will show that very many blunders of Democritus have been criticized and set right by Epicurus. At present I shall speak concerning pleasure, though of course I have nothing new to say. Still, I am sure you will yourself yield to my arguments such as they are.” “You may be sure,” said I, “that I shall not be obstinate, and if you convince me of your propositions I will freely give them my assent.” “I shall demonstrate them,” he replied. “If only you exhibit that impartiality which you promise. But I would rather deliver an uninterrupted speech than put or answer questions.” “As you please,” said I. Then he began to speak.
First then, he said, I shall plead my case on the lines laid down by the founder of our school himself. I shall define the essence and features of the problem before us, not because I imagine you to be unacquainted with them, but with a view to the methodical progress of my speech. The problem before us, then, is what is the climax and standard of things good? And this, in the opinion of all philosophers, must needs be such that we are bound to test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing. Epicurus places this standard in pleasure, which he lays down to be the supreme good, while pain is the supreme evil, and he founds his proof of this on the following considerations.
Every creature, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure and delights therein as in its supreme good, while it recoils from pain as its supreme evil, and banishes that so far as it can from its own presence. And this it does while still uncorrupted, and while nature herself prompts unbiased and unaffected decisions. So he says we need no reasoning or debate to show why pleasure is matter for desire and pain for aversion — these facts he thinks are simply perceived, just as the fact that fire is hot, snow is white, and honey sweet, no one of which facts we are bound to support by elaborate arguments; it is enough merely to draw attention to the fact. And there is a difference between proof and formal argument on one hand, and a slight hint and direction of the attention on the other. The one process reveals to us mysteries and things under a veil, so to speak. The other enables us to pronounce upon patent and evident facts.
Moreover, seeing that if you deprive a man of his senses there is nothing left to him, it is inevitable that nature herself should be the arbiter of what is in accord with or opposed to nature. Now what facts does she grasp, or with what facts is her decision to seek or avoid any particular thing concerned, unless the facts of pleasure and pain?
There are, however, some of our own school who want to state these principles with greater refinement, and who say that it is not enough to leave the question of good or evil to the decision of sense, but that thought and reasoning also enable us to understand both that pleasure in itself is matter for desire, and that pain is in itself matter for aversion. So they say that there lies in our minds a kind of natural and inbred conception, leading us to feel that the one thing is fit for us to seek, the other to reject.
Others again, with whom I agree, finding that many arguments are alleged by philosophers to prove that pleasure is not to be reckoned among things good, nor pain among things evil, judge that we ought not to be too confident about our case, and think that we should leave proof and argue carefully, and carry on the debate about pleasure and pain by using the most elaborate reasonings.
Cassius:
Thank you for reading that for us, Joshua. There’s a lot of important material even in these few paragraphs that we’ve read so far. Let’s deal with them in sequence and go back to the opening section first. Does anybody have any comments on lines 13 through 14?
Don:
Well, I do think the first thing to bring attention to here is the use of the word “arena.” And when you think of “arena” in Cicero’s age, you think of the Coliseum, you think of gladiatorial combat, opposing one person against another in more or less a fight to the death. So he’s sort of setting the stage there in that very first line — “enter the arena.”
Cassius:
And I know I’ve seen that kind of comment made by many of the commentators — that that’s what Cicero is doing, aligning these philosophies up just as if they were gladiators against each other.
Joshua:
If we just look up the etymology, “arena” refers to a kind of sand that was supposed to be used on the floor during ancient Roman combat to soak up spilled blood. So it really has the connotation of fighting here. A pretty visceral start to the discussion.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s a very good point. And my eyes immediately caught the next thing: “it is to most people thoroughly familiar.” That’s another important aspect — how well Epicurean philosophy had permeated Roman society by that point. It was not something peripheral like it is today but was one of the leading schools. And that’s another argument for saying he couldn’t just make up Epicurean philosophy whole cloth.
Don:
Yes, yes. In fact, Cicero complained somewhere — not the right place, but he said something about Epicurean philosophy having taken Italy by storm or something like that.
Joshua:
Here’s a question we didn’t discuss when talking about the text as a whole. Maybe we should talk a bit about what we think Cicero’s intended audience was here.
Cassius:
Good point. Well, doesn’t he start out — I’m not sure if it’s this book or several books — by writing them as a kind of letter to his son? I know the De Officiis is very famous as a letter to his son, and even this one may start out the same way. I’m gathering that Atticus and he had some kind of structured system of scribes and were actually duplicating different writings for purposes of disseminating them among at least the literate Romans. So I wouldn’t be surprised that he had in mind that this would eventually get out into wider circulation and was attempting to create a philosophical literature in Latin. And it really does have the feel of a Platonic dialogue — so he’s obviously aspiring to some sort of philosophical tradition that’s been around for centuries.
Joshua:
Yeah, exactly. And there was a little bit of that inferiority complex among Romans toward the Greeks — they were trying to duplicate the Greek philosophies and produce the same kind of material that the Greeks had produced.
Cassius:
Okay, so I’m not sure anything else catches my eye in lines 13 and 14. So what about line 28?
Joshua:
Yeah, that’s sort of where the rubber meets the road. Here’s what we’re going to talk about — he’s saying that pleasure is the point on which the whole dispute turns. At least in this presentation — I think there is reference in the rest of this too to Cicero criticizing Epicurus’ use of logic, his methodology in certain places, and there’s actually in the material we skipped some criticism of his physics as well. In fact, I guess that’s where — in 28 — there’s a reference to that. “I will demonstrate to you not only our philosopher’s doctrine of the swerving of the atoms and of the sun’s size” — so clearly there were issues even within atomism where Epicurus had deviated from Democritus and they were arguing about some of the physics. But at least for purposes of a book entitled On the Ends of Good and Evil, he’s going to focus on ethics.
Cassius:
I get a kick out of Cicero — “I’m not going to be obstinate, I’m going to be impartial” — yeah, right, sure you are.
Don:
Right, right.
Cassius:
If you flip to where Torquatus says he would rather deliver an uninterrupted speech than put or answer questions — that would appear to be a reference to the dialectical logic issue.
Joshua:
Right. So Torquatus is basically going to give a lecture, and then there’ll be a Q&A after it in which Cicero and he will engage in debate in the arena.
Cassius:
And I’m not equipped to go too far into this, but there’s an essay I refer to pretty regularly called “The Epicurean Criticism of Socrates.” We ought to at least touch on the aspect of that which involves the fact that Epicurus criticized the Socratic method of questioning and answering. To some extent Epicurus took the position that you just need to say what it is you want to say. You don’t need to play games with people. You don’t need to go back and forth, hide the ball, claim that you don’t know anything, and play games like that. You just need to put your cards on the table, and then once your cards are on the table you can talk about what you’re saying — but don’t hide everything behind a bunch of opaque poetry.
Don:
Yeah, and don’t argue for the sake of arguing. I get the impression that in the Socratic dialogues, so many times Socrates was just arguing for the sake of arguing and just trying to confuse people. And I do find it interesting along those lines that I can’t remember whether it’s a Fragment or Vatican Saying, but there is one that says the person who loses a debate actually is the luckier one because he learns more than the other person. So there is a sense of — we don’t know everything, we are ignorant of things. But to say, “Oh, I don’t know anything, but I’m going to be a clever wordplay kind of guy, and I’m going to twist your words” — Socrates was kind of a jerk.
Joshua:
No, not particularly.
Cassius:
Okay, well, we won’t try to go further into it, but I would definitely suggest that anybody who finds that point interesting go read that article on the Epicurean criticism of Socrates. They definitely were not holding the Socratic method up in the Epicurean school as the right approach.
What he’s saying here — Torquatus saying he wants to state his position in a narrative form without question-and-answer format — is that he’s going to present the big picture first, and then you can fit all the details into the big picture as you come into contact with them. Which is again what’s in the Letter to Herodotus about how important it is to have an outline of the philosophy — you don’t always need to know the details, but you do need to understand the big-picture points.
So that’s presumably what Torquatus is about to do. And the big picture — the issue we’re going to talk about — is what he goes into in line 29. Who wants to dig into that?
Joshua:
I think he does a good job of laying out the problem right there. What is the climax and standard of things good? And then he defines it: all philosophers must needs be such that we are bound to test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing. And Epicurus says that standard is pleasure. Everything is judged on whether it brings pleasure or not. And pleasure itself is self-evident and doesn’t need to be tested by anything else, really.
Cassius:
What you just raised there, Joshua — I would call attention to the fact that he hasn’t said the question is “what is the standard of things true.” He has said “what is the standard of things good.” There’s a difference, presumably, between what is good and what is true. Now, you’d presume that the good is true, but true is a wider concept even than good.
Joshua:
Good means what’s desirable — the things you should pursue. What is bonorum? And malorum. Yes. This might be a good time to talk about the Latin phrase summum bonum.
Don:
Yes, yes. Yeah, this is a perennially thorny problem. But of course the Greek use of the word telos — telos was the end, and pleasure was the end. And then in Latin it becomes summum bonum: the highest good.
Cassius:
Yes. And one of the problems I continually see — we see this all the time on the EpicureanFriends.com forum — is that when you use the phrase “highest good,” you’re inviting the presumption that there are other things which are good in themselves besides the highest good.
Joshua:
Yeah, and I think that’s exactly the point I’ve tried to make on the forum time and again. “Highest” does not mean “the best among different things like virtue and wisdom” — it doesn’t mean that pleasure is the best thing. It means that that’s the thing towards which everything points. The reason you exercise virtue is to gain pleasure. The reason you make wise decisions is to gain pleasure. So everything in the end points towards pleasure. And the use of the word “highest” is almost — melistos, I believe is the word in Greek — but the idea of the climax, or that it’s at the summit, points towards the fact that it’s not the best among rivals but…
Cassius:
Well, it is the best among rivals, isn’t it?
Joshua:
The way I always put it is: it’s not the first among equals. It’s a difference not in degree but in kind. All other things that we would say are “good,” in the common use of that word, are good by reference to — the word I keep coming back to is “instrumental goods.” They are instrumental goods in service to the highest — quote-unquote — good.
Don:
Well, one of the questions I hear you guys talking about is: is there more than one good?
Cassius:
Oh, there are a multitude of goods. But the only one that you can use as a standard, according to Epicurus and Epicurean philosophy, is pleasure. And he does say that here. What is the climax and standard of things good — the framing of the question assumes that there are other things that are good.
Don:
Exactly. Exactly.
Cassius:
And one of the reasons I think we picked the Reid translation here is because he uses a little bit of different wording than we commonly see — here is where some people are going to say, “the question is, what is the highest good?” But what Reid says is “what is the climax and standard of things good?” And I definitely see in my own mind a difference in meaning between the word “highest” versus “standard.” Now “climax” is pretty close to “highest,” but “standard” is a different term. The standard is the canon — the measuring stick, the yardstick, the plumb line — the thing you judge everything else by.
Don:
In surveying, we use the term “benchmark” as a reference point for elevation.
Cassius:
Exactly. So pleasure — and Lucretius in fact, in the Rolfe Humphries translation, does refer to it as the benchmark or the boundary stone set forever. It’s a reference point by which everything else is judged.
Don:
Yeah, and that boundary point is sort of conveyed by the whole idea of the Latin word finibus — it’s the final thing, the end thing, the thing you come to at the end of the trail.
Cassius:
I’m so glad you brought that up. Yes, absolutely. Well, let’s stay with this issue. The word “good” — you have to ask: why is something good? Epicurus says something is good if it brings pleasure. And the question “why is something good?” applies to all goods except for the highest good, which is pleasure. It doesn’t make sense to ask why pleasure is good. Pleasure is just self-evidently good.
Don:
Yeah, and it gets into that further down as well, because Epicurus says that exact thing. He says pleasure is good — of course pleasure is good, because it feels good. Because you know when you feel pleasure. All I have to do is point to it. Are you feeling pleasure now? Yeah. Well, there you go. That’s basically Epicurus’s position. Whereas it almost seems to me in the later sections that the later Epicureans almost got bullied into trying to use logic and rhetoric and fancy arguments as to why pleasure was good. And the original founder of the school was like — you don’t need to do that. It’s self-evident whenever you feel pleasure, you know you’re feeling pleasure.
Cassius:
OK, there’s so much here. The last thing you said there, Don, takes us down towards the end of this presentation for today. But I still want to say — even in this text here in line 29, it says “Epicurus places the standard in pleasure, which he lays down to be the supreme good.” Now when we use that phrasing, the “supreme good” — does that mean there is more than one good?
Don:
Oh, yeah, it means there’s more than one good. But what are other goods besides pleasure? I think that Epicurus lays it out whenever he talks about how he cannot live pleasurably without living wisely and honorably and justly. So justice, honor, and wisdom are all goods, but they are instrumental goods to the supreme good, which is pleasure. Pleasure’s the king and every other good serves the king.
Cassius:
Joshua, do you agree that wisdom is a good?
Joshua:
Well, Don does qualify it with the word “instrumental good.” Yes, he’s qualifying it. And here’s my issue — I just so thoroughly prefer the word telos, because it’s a Lucretian phrase and it’s certainly in here. It’s such a snake’s nest of problems otherwise.
Cassius:
Snakes in the arena, yeah.
Joshua:
Yeah. With telos, the air just clears, you know. When you start using the word telos instead of summum bonum, it just doesn’t invite the same kind of problems.
Cassius:
What’s a better English word for telos — end or goal?
Don:
Yeah, yeah.
Cassius:
Martin, do you agree that wisdom is a good?
Martin:
Yes.
Cassius:
Any way to elaborate? Do you need to use the word “instrumental good” to qualify what type of good it is? Because some people would argue that a good is something we want in and of itself. Don, do you disagree with the word “good”?
Don:
Yeah, well, there’s the rub. I mean, I think that’s what the whole argument — or discussion or combat in the arena — is about. You have people who feel that virtue in and of itself, like the Stoics, is a good in and of itself. You have people like Aristotle who feel that wisdom or philosophy is a good in and of itself. That’s what you should direct your life towards. And what Epicurus is saying is that pleasure is the good towards which your life should be directed. So I think there are any number of good things, but Epicurus’ position is that all those other good things are good because they bring pleasure. And that’s why pleasure is the standard — you judge every other good thing by whether it brings pleasure or not. And if it doesn’t bring pleasure, then you — in his words — spit on it.
Cassius:
So you do not restrict, Don, the use of the word “good” to something that is desirable in and of itself. I think that by your definition, only pleasure is good in and of itself. The other things are good because they bring what is good in and of itself, which is pleasure.
Joshua, do you agree with that?
Joshua:
I’m not suggesting you should or should not. This is a hugely complicated question.
Cassius:
Cassius, do you agree with that?
I believe — let me go ahead and preliminarily state what I think as of the time we’re recording this, which may change by the time we end the podcast. I reserve the right to extend and revise. I think what we’re wrestling with here is sort of a definitional issue. And I’m not so sure myself that Epicurus would himself have agreed with this paragraph at line 29.
Don:
Oh, I think Epicurus says exactly this in his extant writings and I’ll be happy to dig them up.
Cassius:
Well, what I’m referring to when I said I’m not sure he would agree with it is I’m not sure he would agree with this formulation: “the opinion of all philosophers must needs be such that we are bound to test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing.” I guess what I’m trying to articulate is that there’s a huge definitional issue here about what “good” means. And in the end I’m thinking that Epicurus is going to be saying — as explained in the next paragraph — that you don’t worry about the definition as much as you look to what nature is telling you to do through the senses. He’s saying that his proof of his conclusion does not come through logical reasoning but comes from observing what the young of all living things do. That’s the observational method: the only thing nature has given us is the senses to determine what to do and what not to do, and the senses are telling us that some things are pleasurable and some things are painful.
And I think he is in a sense rejecting a definitional approach to “what is the good.” But I could revise my mind about that — because I think that’s what’s actually discussed in line 31, where Cicero starts talking about some in the school who think it’s not sufficient to just look at what babies do and that we should go further and have an elaborate logical argument. So although I don’t have a final articulation of the way I would express that, I think that’s part of what we’re wrestling with here.
One of the things that causes me the most problem in all this that we’re talking about with the “highest good” is that there’s an implication that there’s only one highest good. And you’re defining it as the word pleasure. But the feeling of pleasure does not express itself to us in only one way.
Don:
No, I mean, yeah, I mean, you can find pleasure in any number of things. But it’s still pleasure. I mean, that’s the point, I think.
Cassius:
The relationship between the feeling and the word is what I’m trying to scrutinize here.
Don:
Well, I think that goes back to Epicurus’s contention that you have to use the commonly accepted meaning. Whenever somebody says “pleasure,” Epicurus’s thing is that everybody knows what pleasure is, everybody knows what pleasure feels like. And to try to twist it into something else — that’s exactly what he argued against Socrates, too. What does it mean whenever you say the word? What does it mean? And I think that whole idea in section 31 of the three different positions is kind of interesting. You have Epicurus himself saying, I’m just going to point to it and we don’t need any proof or formal arguments. You have the second group wanting a little more logical disputation. And then Torquatus, the character, is saying he agrees with the third position.
Cassius:
Yes. So there are three very different approaches to how you define pleasure or the goal or the standard. And my feeling is that the later Epicureans seem to have been almost bullied into trying to come up with a more logical, rhetorical argument for their position, whereas Epicurus was like: I’m just going to point to the kids and the animals — they go towards pleasure and they avoid pain — and that’s what nature is telling us is the highest good.
Before we maybe go into line 31, we really haven’t spent time on line 30, which is the statement of Epicurus’s actual position. Let’s talk about line 30. The text says: “Every creature, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure and delights therein as in its supreme good, while it recoils from pain as its supreme evil. And this it does while still uncorrupted, while nature herself prompts unbiased and unaffected decisions. So he says no reasoning or debate is needed to show why pleasure is a matter for desire and pain for aversion. These facts are simply perceived, just like fire is hot, snow is white, and honey sweet.” He’s affirmatively saying that you just simply point to it and observe it. It’s enough merely to draw attention to the fact.
But then what’s this part that follows, Don and Joshua and Martin? He then says there’s a difference between proof and formal argument on the one hand, and direction of attention on the other.
Don:
Well, I think he says in the later part of that section that proof and formal argument will give you things that you can’t actually see. And I think that goes back to your encouragement of people to read Philodemus’ On Methods of Inference. So proof and formal argument come in for things like the swerve of the atoms — things you can’t directly observe. Then the slight hint or direction of attention is what he’s talking about with pleasure, pointing to animals and babies. So there are some things you can just say, self-evident — like pleasure is good — whereas the swerve of the atoms and that sort of thing need proof and formal argument through inference.
Cassius:
I have a tangential line of questioning I’d like to pitch to Martin and see where it goes. Martin, you are no doubt familiar with Bertrand Russell and his Principia Mathematica, in which the project of that work was to scrap mathematics and start again from the foundation, proving everything as you go along — he starts off by trying to formally prove that one plus one equals two. I’m not mixing this up, am I?
Martin:
I’m not familiar with that specific Russell work, but I know this type of project existed. And I hope I’m not mixing up — there was one Russell who exposed a problem with original set theory, and that really caused a problem with mathematical logic. Only by redefining what sets actually are, how to narrow down what a set can be, could they save set theory. Because this is set theory: there was a very elegant way of building mathematics from the start with logic, and that one has been carried out — I think not so much by Russell himself, but there was a group of French mathematicians who gave themselves one code name — Bourbaki — and under this name they worked it out in every detail, and pretty much along that program, mathematics has been taught at universities ever since.
Cassius:
Yeah, he was involved in set theory as well. And it comes back to this idea — how do we know what we really think we know? For Russell and for the mathematicians who had bumped up against this problem, and part of the problem was — you had people like the ancient skeptics saying that no knowledge is really possible, we can’t really know anything. And so he began by proving what had hitherto been just accepted based on sensory observation — if you want to know that one plus one is two, I’ve got two cups of coffee sitting next to me: one from yesterday, one from today. I got one, I got one, together you have two. That was enough for me. It wasn’t enough for Bertrand Russell and the advanced mathematicians who were trying to re-establish first things.
I think that bears upon this question here, Joshua.
Joshua:
It does, yeah.
Martin:
The thing is, the consequence of building mathematics like this is that it becomes completely removed from reality. Mathematics stands on its own, independent of reality. And it’s rather by chance from this point that mathematics provides excellent tools to describe reality, but there is no fundamental reason why this should be the case. So this is just an empirical thing — that mathematics works in reality. But the way mathematics is built, it’s completely a construct of the mind. And in itself, it doesn’t refer to reality.
Cassius:
Joshua — what I hear you saying, for example, when you talk about the coffee situation: you have one cup of coffee and you have another cup of coffee. Do you really have two? What does “two” mean? Does two exist in reality, or is “two” just a word that in our minds we’ve decided to assign to what we observe as there being two cups of coffee?
Joshua:
Yeah. Well, what is “two”? Just because you say we have two of these things in front of us, it’s not like there’s nature sitting out there somewhere that says, “Yes, you’re right, Joshua. There are two there.” To some extent, does “two” really exist? Does “two” have a separate existence other than what humans give to it? That’s what I hear Martin saying too — mathematics allows us to predict and recreate and work with reality, but there’s no reality to mathematics in a sense. Right?
Martin:
So there really is a one-to-one correspondence. So it’s very clear how what we call in mathematics “two” — added by one plus one — matches what we see in reality if we put two cups of coffee together. You have a standard-sized cup, and you have something like a measuring device. And so you pour one cup into that measuring device and then another, and you see that it all adds up. You can make a one-to-one matching between what’s in the mathematics and what you see in reality.
Cassius:
Well, here’s a question. I have one cup of coffee and I have a second cup of coffee. If I pour them into a bigger cup and they’re both in the same cup, do I have two cups of coffee now or do I have one cup of coffee?
Martin:
Depends how you define the term “cup.”
Cassius:
Yes, exactly. So we’re going to have to start thinking about a standard length of our podcast and we’re going to have to figure out a way to extricate ourselves from the deep dilemma we are currently in. This issue we’re now discussing is so — go ahead, Don.
Don:
I don’t have a dilemma.
Cassius:
Well, you in particular have a dilemma, Don, because I was thinking of you exactly when you said that — because I’m going to relate this to, again, we’ve got to find a way one of these days to go through the Philebus as well. Because I sense that we’re in the middle of this very preliminary step of the Platonic dialogue of the Philebus, because I think what we’re talking about here is this issue of the one and the many, which I find so difficult to wrestle with. And even in Plato, early in the Philebus, he brings up this very issue and starts talking about how seductive and amazing it is that once people realize there is a question about the relationship between the one and the many, they just begin to explode in philosophy because they wrestle with this problem and it mesmerizes them. Because you’re talking about cups and coffee and the table in front of you — what is the reality of these different things that we are separating out in our mind as individual, as “many”? And yet are they all just simply one? And when we in our minds distinguish one cup from two cups or three cups — is there any universal standard that justifies us in doing that, or is it simply that that’s a functioning of our mind struggling to come to terms with reality?
And Martin almost stated this exactly before — this is a quote from Albert Einstein: “In so far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are uncertain; in so far as they are certain, they do not apply to reality.”
Joshua:
Oh, that’s a great quote.
Cassius:
Just to bring us back to Epicurus’s position here in section 30: I think that he doesn’t say it explicitly but it’s implied that he says these things — fire is hot, snow is white, honey sweet — and I would add: pleasure is good, one plus one is two. Except, as Martin is pointing out, honey and sugar and snow and fire exist in reality, we can touch them and hold them in our hands, and that experience does not actually exist purely in mathematical abstraction. Whereas “two” and “the good” — are those words appropriate to assign as single concepts to the many different experiences of pleasure and pair and sweetness and so forth? That’s the one and many question that has to be wrestled with.
Don:
Okay, okay — I’ll give you that one. Because as we close on section 31, Cicero says: “Others again, with whom I agree, finding that many arguments are alleged by philosophers to prove that pleasure is not to be reckoned not only among the highest goods but among things good at all.” So you have all these differences of arguments that are out there. And I think what Epicurus is doing in part is saying: you’ve got to cut through this maze. You can’t live your whole life in confusion about whether pleasure is good or not. You’ve got to come to some conclusion in your mind and have confidence in your conclusion as to what the telos is. And Epicurus’s answer is: look to the babies before they are perverted by these dastardly philosophers out there. Look to them — that’s where nature is speaking in its most uncorrupted and unperverted form, and that’s where you conclude that hēdonē or voluptas or pleasure is the goal. Not all these words we’re throwing out there. But Cicero says that he agrees with those who think you have to throw those words out there and construct elaborate reasoned arguments.
Which may be exactly what we are doing in this podcast — we may be following that primrose path that leads to disaster by thinking we’re going to define all these words in a way that makes sense to us. It may be that in the end the whole process of definition and logical reasoning is what Epicurus is saying you cannot rely on. Do you agree with that or disagree with that, Don? Is he saying your senses ultimately trump all the logic in the world?
Don:
I don’t know.
Joshua:
The thing is, if it’s a question about something that the senses are competent about, then they are superior to whatever the logic may produce. But in typical cases where we have a discrepancy like this, the logic has been applied wrongly. So that means it’s not correct logic — it’s something like dialectical nonsense that produces the discrepancy.
Joshua:
I think when you cut through logic, when you cut through language and dialectic, when you cut through eloquence and purple prose, when you cut through church and state and all this stuff — you’re going to get down to, on some very deep level, there’s a feeling. Right. And that feeling is pleasure. And I think it’s just self-evidently the good.
Cassius:
Well, that’s right. But I find unacceptable the word “self-evident.” Tell me what you mean when you say it is self-evident.
Joshua:
I mean — it doesn’t have to be supported by —
Well, let me use the lines: “The problem before us then is what is the climax and standard of things good, and this in the opinion of all philosophers must needs be such that we are bound to test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing.” That gets close to the idea of what I mean by self-evident. But it’s looking at the babies, looking at the little lamb…
Cassius:
When you say “look,” are you saying that the standard is sensation?
Joshua:
I’m serious — I’m deadly absolutely serious when I say that we have to pin this down. We must pin this down. We cannot be in this limbo.
Don:
Well, I don’t know if I’m the person to take you out the window and back here, because I don’t think I have an answer that’s going to satisfy you on that question.
Cassius:
Well, it’s related to the question of whether pleasure and pain are senses. But he’s clearly talking about senses — wait, they’re not senses. Pleasure and pain are not senses.
Don:
Okay. Well then, why does he say —
Cassius:
Are they feelings, though? And is a feeling a sense? Because he’s clearly talking about feeling — part of his reasoning in line 30 is: “Moreover, seeing that if you deprive a man of his senses there is nothing left to him, it is inevitable that nature herself should be the arbiter of what is in accord with or opposed to nature.” Now that sentence probably bears a lot of discussion, but he’s clearly talking about sensation. And of course in Principal Doctrine 2, that death is nothing to us because when we’re dead we have no senses — there’s some relationship between senses and pleasure.
Don:
Yeah, I mean, sensation and senses and — that’s the only way you can experience pleasure. It’s the only way you can experience pain.
Cassius:
When we extend it further towards inner sensations — emotions, and thoughts that are pleasurable — is that what you’re talking about?
Don:
Yeah, exactly. So if I evoke memories of the past, it can cause me both pleasure and pain. And Don — this is your department — this is why they use the word pathē, right? It’s affect — things that affect what you experience. Pleasure and pain are pathē.
Don:
Yeah, yeah. Things that happen to you. Yeah, pleasure and pain are pathē. And of course there’s that other word “passions” that has such a lot of baggage to it.
Cassius:
Yeah. Okay, well, we need to come to a conclusion for today — and by “conclusion” I mean in the widest possible sense, because we’re not deciding anything. And in fact I think that’s why we’re attacking this text and that’s why what we’ll be doing throughout the rest of this text — because we’ll turn to the individual examples of things that people say are good, and we’re going to be discussing whether they’re good in themselves or whether they’re good because they lead to pleasure. So we’ll have plenty of opportunity to come back to this question.
But at least today we have introduced the topic. And the issue needs no elaboration.
Don:
Exactly right, and that is not a joke.
Cassius:
No no, people may think it’s a joke and we’re laughing about it, but ultimately I do think that’s where it comes back to. And of course you’ve got the other position that Cicero is advocating — that in addition to observing it, you can also bolster your conclusion using logic. And I’m not rejecting that as a valid position, because I think that’s what we do see Epicurus doing — he’s out there writing all these books with all these logical arguments that support his conclusion. So Epicurus is not an enemy of reason and he’s not an enemy of explaining things.
Don:
I think there’s a really good distinction between reason and explaining things on one hand, and the formal logic stuff on the other. The word “logic” gets used in a general common-sense sort of way but also in a very formal academic way, so I think you have to distinguish between those two different things.
Joshua:
Suppose — and I don’t even know if I should introduce another thought experiment at this point in the conversation, but here’s my final observation. Suppose I was just standing there and somebody asks me the question: “How do you know that pleasure is the highest good?” And I just lift my arm and gesture to a pig rolling around in the muck. Have I answered the question? I haven’t used logic. I haven’t tried to prove anything. But have I answered the question?
Don:
That’s a very Buddhist sort of action too. Didn’t the Buddha literally have some sort of thing where somebody asked him a question and he was either silent or pointed to a flower?
Martin:
That is Buddhism to the core right there.
Cassius:
I don’t think that does answer the question, frankly. I’ll just go on record there. I think a fair reading of the question presumes a lot of facts that have to be explained. And you’ve set out your question as “highest good,” and I’m still struggling with the one and the many of that — whether there are many goods or is there a single highest good in reality. Because at the end of the podcast I have a feeling — and that’s a funny way of saying it — I have a feeling that the expression “highest good” is a purely conceptual construct of the mind, and that nature just simply calls us to pleasure through the feelings and sensations. But to equate what nature calls us to as the “highest good” is a human way of looking at it that has limitations built in.
Don:
Well, we are very human. We are only human.
Cassius:
Yes. All right, well, this is a good time to call time for today. Any concluding thoughts?
Martin:
I’m fine.
Cassius:
You’re fine? You should not be fine. You should be struggling with these core issues and just anxious to get back to it next week. I’m sure you are, though.
Joshua:
Well, I’ll just say this as I go through my week in anticipation of next Sunday — the question I’ll be trying to sit with is: how do we avoid the traps of language when language is the medium by which we’re discussing the traps?
Cassius:
Right. Which is, I think, the main problem.
Don:
I would agree with Joshua, but I’m going to try and go back and reread Sedley’s translation of On Nature Book 26, I believe it is, and see what Epicurus has to say about language. That would be interesting. But you’ve definitely given me food for thought. I’m not sure if I’ve changed my position yet, but I am certainly open to the debate. I think this is going to be a fun time in the arena.
Cassius:
Exactly. And I’m not sure that anybody’s trying to win the debate — we’re all trying to struggle towards the truth. And even whether we can define it, or whether we just simply have to point to those kittens and puppies and say “I’m going to do what they’re doing” — and when Cicero comes back to us and says that that’s the life of a cow, we’re going to say “moo.” And we’re not going to be intimidated by the idea that logic in the end can trump the way nature leads us.
Don:
Yeah. And that’s my take on those last two arguments — about the later Epicureans. I think that they were intimidated by the other schools and felt they had to come up with something more. And that’s where I’ll close.
Cassius:
And that’s exactly right, Don. That’s the decline and fall of the Epicurean school — that these later Epicureans essentially abandoned the field to the Stoics. They decided that you’ve got to have these elaborate logical arguments to defend yourself. They gave up their confidence in the original core positions of Epicurus — and certainly given large assists by Christianity, Judaism, and the different religions that didn’t like it — but in the end they lost their confidence in themselves by falling away from this basic position.
There you go. Good place to end. Good place to end. Okay — thanks again. We’ll do it again next week. Talk with you then. All right. Bye.