Episode 097 - The Virtues As Instrumental For Pleasure: Temperance and Courage
Date: 11/26/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2254-episode-ninety-seven-the-virtues-as-instrumental-for-pleasure-temperance-and-cou/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Martin reads De Finibus Book 1, sections 47–54, covering temperance, courage, and justice as virtues instrumental to pleasure, plus the final summary argument that pleasure is the supreme good. Charles returns to the panel, rejoining Cassius, Martin, and Joshua after Don begins his sabbatical.
Discussion covers: the four cardinal virtues (wisdom, temperance, courage, justice) and where Epicurus’s presentation of them agrees and diverges from the Platonic/Stoic tradition; temperance as self-discipline rather than “being in the middle” — Cassius rejects the Aristotelian golden mean as a standard; Joshua’s note that virtue lists are historically deployed to control people, especially women, citing Boccaccio’s De Mulieribus Claris and Leontion’s polemic against Theophrastus (and Cicero’s complaint about the “license” the Garden extended to women); Thomas Jefferson’s four-virtue outline in his letter to William Short; the courage section and its implicit defense of suicide (“make our exit from life… as we would from a theatre”); and the story of Marcus Curtius and the Lacus Curtius in the Roman Forum, which Joshua uses to discuss courage as ultimately in service of something beyond itself.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 97 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, 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 we’ll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. 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. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.
At this point in our podcast, we’ve completed our first line-by-line review of the poem and we’ve turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero’s On Ends. Today we continue with that material starting with line 47, and we have Charles back with us for the discussion. Now let’s join the panel with Martin reading today’s text.
Martin:
And on the same principles we shall assert that even temperance is not desirable for its own sake but because it brings quiet to our hearts, ensues them, and appeases them by a kind of harmony. Temperance is in truth the virtue which warns us to follow reason in dealing with the objects of desire or repugnance. Nor indeed is it enough to resolve what we are to do or omit, but we should also abide by our resolve. Most men, however, being unable to uphold and maintain a determination they have themselves made, are over-mastered and enervated when the image of pleasure is thrust before their eyes, and surrender themselves to be bound by the chain of their lust. Nor do they foresee what the issue will be, and so for the sake of some paltry and needless pleasure — which would be procured by other means if they choose, and with which they might dispense and yet not suffer pain — rush sometimes into grievous diseases, sometimes into ruin, sometimes into disgrace, and often even become subject to the penalties imposed by the statutes and the courts.
Men, however, whose aim is so to enjoy their pleasures that no pains may ensue in consequence of them, and who retain their own judgment which prevents them from succumbing to pleasure and doing things which they feel should not be done — these achieve the greatest amount of pleasure by neglecting pleasure. Such men actually often suffer pain, fearing that if they do not, they may incur greater pain. From these reflections it is easily understood that intemperance on the one hand is not repugnant in and for itself, and on the other that temperance is an object of desire not because it flees from pleasures but because it is followed by greater pleasure.
The same principles will be found to apply to courage. For neither the performance of work nor the suffering of pain is in itself attractive. Nor yet endurance, nor diligence, nor watching, nor much-praised industry itself, nor courage either. But we devote ourselves to all such things for the purpose of passing our life in freedom from anxiety and alarm, and emancipating both mind and body so far as we can succeed in doing so from annoyance.
As in truth, on the one hand, the entire stability of a peaceful life is shaken by the fear of death, and it is wretched to succumb to pains and to bear them with abject and feeble spirit, and many have through such weakness of mind brought ruin on their parents, many on their friends, and some on their country — so on the other hand, a strong and exalted spirit is free from all solicitude and torment, as it scorns death, which brings those who are subject to it into the same state they were in before they were born. And such a spirit is so disciplined to encounter pains that it records how the most severe of them are terminated by death, while the slightest grant many seasons of rest, and those which lie between these two classes are under our control, so that if we find them endurable, we may tolerate them; if otherwise, we may with an unruffled mind make our exit from life when we find it disagreeable, as we would from a theatre.
These facts enable us to see that cowardice and weakness are not blamed, nor courage and endurance applauded, for what they are in themselves, but that the former qualities are spurned because productive of pain, while the latter are sought because productive of pleasure.
Justice is left to complete our statement concerning the whole of virtue, but considerations nearly similar may be urged. Just as I have proved wisdom, temperance, and courage to be linked with pleasure, so that they cannot possibly by any means be sundered or severed from it, so we must deem of justice, which not only never injures any person but on the contrary always produces some benefit — not solely by reason of its own power and constitution whereby it calms our minds, but also by inspiring hopes that we shall lack none of the objects which nature when uncorrupted craves.
And as recklessness and caprice and cowardice always torture the mind and always bring unrest and tumult, so if wickedness has established itself in a man’s mind, the mere fact of its presence causes tumult. If moreover it has carried out any deed, however secretly it may have acted, yet it will never feel assured that the action will always remain concealed. In most cases the acts of wicked men are at first dogged by suspicion, then by talk and rumor, then by the prosecutor, then by the judge. Many have actually informed against themselves, as in your own consulship. But if there are any who seem to themselves to be sufficiently barricaded and fortified against all privity on the part of their fellow men, still they tremble before the privity of the gods, and imagine that the very care by which their minds are devoured night and day are imposed upon them with a view to their punishment by the eternal gods.
Again, from wicked acts what new influence can accrue tending to the diminution of annoyances equal to that which tends to their increase — not only from consciousness of the actions themselves but also from legal penalty and the hatred of the community? And yet some men exhibit no moderation in money-making or office or military command or wantonness or gluttony or the remaining passions, which are not lessened but rather intensified by the trophies of wickedness, so that such persons seem fit to be repressed rather than to be taught their error.
True reason beckons men of properly sound mind to pursue justice, fairness, and honor. Nor are acts of injustice advantageous to a man without eloquence or influence who cannot easily succeed in what he attempts nor maintain his success if he wins it. And large resources, either of wealth or of talent, suit better with a generous spirit, for those who exhibit this spirit attract to themselves goodwill and affection, which is very well calculated to ensure a peaceful life. And this is all the truer in that men have no reason for sinning, for the passions which proceed from nature are easily satisfied without committing any wrong. Nor must we succumb to those which are groundless, since they yearn for nothing worthy of our craving, and more loss is involved in the mere fact of wrongdoing than profit in the results which are produced by the wrongdoing.
So one would not be right in describing even justice as a thing to be wished for on its own account, but rather because it brings with it a very large amount of agreeableness. For to be the object of esteem and affection is agreeable just because it renders life safer and more replete with pleasure. Therefore, we think that wickedness should be shunned, not alone on account of the disadvantages which fall to the lot of the wicked, but much rather because when it pervades a man’s soul, it never permits him to breathe freely or to rest.
But if the encomium passed even on the virtues themselves — over which the eloquence of all other philosophers especially runs riot — can find no vent unless it be referred to pleasure, pleasure is the only thing which invites us to the pursuit of itself, and attracts us by reason of its own nature. Then there can be no doubt that of all things good, it is the supreme and ultimate good, and that a life of happiness means nothing else but a life attended by pleasure.
Cassius:
Martin, thank you for reading that text today. That was relatively long and relatively complicated, and before we jump into it, there are several background comments I’d like to make.
First — the very last line you read contains a word that many of our listeners are probably not familiar with. Section 54 reads, “But if the encomium passed even on the virtues themselves.” The word “encomium” has largely passed out of modern English usage but means accolades or praise. So the sentence would really mean: “But if the praise or accolades passed even on the virtues themselves over which the eloquence of all other philosophers runs riot can find no vent unless it be referred to pleasure.” I wanted to call attention to that for anyone who got tripped up on it.
And this section is so packed with tremendously important information that it takes many readings and much listening to get to all the details contained within it. There’s no way in a single podcast that we can do justice to all the deep material that’s in here. We’re going to do the best we can to at least point out the major issues.
And for that reason — because there’s so much in the Torquatus material — one of our panelists here, Joshua, has consented to produce for us a single reading of the entire material. We’ll have that posted as a special section with links to where people can find it and listen to the entire selection in one piece. It’s really some of the best material on ethics anywhere in the Epicurean texts, and I understand the full-length reading takes approximately an hour. We really appreciate Joshua doing that.
One other piece of housekeeping: today we have back with us one of our panelists from the past, Charles, who is rejoining us today as Don goes on sabbatical.
So with all of that background, here we are: Martin, Charles, Joshua, and I will attempt to hit some high points on this section. Where we were last week — if we go back to line 47 where Martin started reading today — we finished last week with the introduction that all of virtue is useful in Epicurean terms only for its productiveness in serving pleasure. Wisdom was introduced as the first example. In this section 47, we’ve turned our attention to temperance as another example of the principle. So now that I’ve bored everybody with that lengthy introduction — who would like to start commenting on temperance?
Joshua:
It’s worth noting that in here temperance itself is just another virtue. He’s going to go through a list of several virtues — and there’s sort of a classical list that most of these philosophers would generally turn to, with wisdom being one and temperance being another.
Cassius:
Was the list a source of contention? Whether there was a list and how to rank them, is that what you mean?
Joshua:
Yeah. What is virtue? Right. There’s also that.
Martin:
I know that when Thomas Jefferson wrote his letter in which he talked about Epicurean philosophy, he listed the virtues. I think I’ve read he followed the list of virtues included by Cicero here in this text.
Joshua:
That’s interesting. I did not know that.
Cassius:
One of the commentators I read said that. But yes — at the very end of his letter to William Short, Jefferson said he appended an outline of Epicurean philosophy that he had produced years earlier, and he actually outlined the list and contrasted them with their corresponding vices.
So we’re starting with temperance, which presents an interesting problem, doesn’t it? Because when you’ve made pleasure the goal of life, the immediate problem you invite is sort of what you might call the Cyrenaic problem — the problem of the heedless pursuit of pleasure. So the question is: if you’re going to pursue pleasure as the goal of life while also trying to avoid pain and trouble and anxiety and annoyance, how do you steer a path between all-sensual-pleasure-all-the-time and avoiding pain and anxiety?
And temperance would seem at first to be a great answer to that problem. Temperance is the virtue in which you keep your heedless pursuit of pleasure down to a minimum so that you can pursue what the actual goal in life is — which for the Epicurean is pleasure unmixed with pain. But of course what he says here is what he’s been saying all along: temperance, just like everything else we’re talking about, is not something you pursue for its own sake. You pursue it because it’s instrumental in the life of pleasure that the Epicurean is trying to organize for himself or herself.
Joshua:
Right. To drop back for just a second — I looked up the Jefferson list. Jefferson’s four virtues were: one, prudence. Now, is that the same as wisdom? Jefferson’s list of four was prudence, temperance, fortitude or courage, and justice. And then he said the opposing vices were folly, desire, fear, and deceit. Are there four principle virtues, or might there be five? Is wisdom and prudence the same thing, or are they separate?
Martin:
There is some overlap between them. It’s kind of like foresight and being careful.
Cassius:
Being wise is something not everybody can achieve, but everybody can be prudent.
Martin:
That’s a good point, because this is something that comes up again and again in Epicurean philosophy. When you read Diogenes Laertius and the biography of Epicurus that he gives in Book 10, one of the things he does is go into this list of what the wise man will do and won’t do. And it’s never clearly articulated — sometimes the word “sage” is used in translation — how attainable the state of being a sage or a wise man is for the average person. I certainly wouldn’t call myself a sage. And I probably think there’s no point in my life when I’m going to call myself a sage. So it does invite a difficult question of how you apply what Epicurus is advising when you do not consider yourself to be wise or a sage. Are those two separate things?
There’s even a book called Epicurus the Sage — is there a status of being a sage that is different from simply being a wise man? Or does “sage” mean a teacher or some particularly wise man? And wisdom is one of these superlative virtues that, if you’re wise, there are supposedly no degrees of wisdom.
Cassius:
Well what he calls it here is wisdom and “unwisdom.” Yeah, let me just do a quick search — there are all sorts of references to this. One page I’m reading says that in Books 2 and 4 of Plato’s Republic, Socrates introduces and describes the four chief virtues needed for justice to thrive in a polis. He presents them as courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom. So it sounds like there are four cardinal virtues, and though different words can be used for each, there are four of them: prudence, justice, courage or fortitude, and temperance.
Joshua:
I would think that temperance could be subsumed into prudence, but they’re apparently different for some reason.
Martin:
I would put temperance under moderation myself.
Cassius:
Okay. I think moderation and temperance are two words for the same thing. But wouldn’t you put temperance and moderation under wisdom or prudence? Well, out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made — this is an arbitrary category of virtues and it really has no meaning.
Joshua:
Yeah, I think you’re right about the arbitrariness. It would be imprudent not to moderate.
Cassius:
Martin, this is also I think something the Catholics are big into. Is there something that stands out about how to divide these up four ways?
Martin:
No, I don’t recall this from Catholic religious education. They are much more concerned with sins rather than virtues.
Cassius:
Yeah, well, maybe it does go back all the way to Socrates and Plato and the Republic, and that’s where this list of four comes from. After Pope Gregory the First released his list of seven deadly or capital sins in AD 590, a list of seven capital virtues was identified — chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Since you have that list, what was “vainglory” changed to?
Joshua:
Vainglory is pride. Pride’s always in most lists of sins somewhere.
Cassius:
I guess what we have here is that Epicurus was working in his time period with what Plato and Socrates had come up with as four. So where we are in the picture probably is that last week he introduced wisdom or prudence, and now we’re on temperance or moderation, and then he’ll turn to courage and justice. That’s a long way of winding around to what we’re focused on now.
And I think where moderation comes in in the Epicurean life is: you are the master builder of your own happiness. Epicurus is the master builder of human happiness, but you’re the architect of your own life and you have to take responsibility for it. Moderation is another tool in the toolkit that you can use — you’re not required to use it, but it’s another tool that can help you in your calculus of choice and avoidance. It can help you lay the foundation for a maximization of pleasure over a whole human life, as opposed to just heedlessly pursuing pleasure in the here and now.
Joshua:
I can tell that we’re not going to get far in the text that Martin has read today because I want to stay with this one for a while. Because what you’ve just reminded me of, Joshua — I really have a problem with moderation and temperance in the first place. The others make sense to me: justice, courage, and wisdom all make sense. But I’ve always had a particular issue with just “being moderate,” being in the middle, moderation for the sake of moderation. There’s a famous phrase — it’s actually traceable back to Cicero, I know I’ve read that — “Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” So let’s stick with that as a way to discuss this. That’s the sense in which moderation I think is questionable to me. Courage, wisdom, and justice all ring true as superlative — you don’t want to have anything other than as much courage as you possibly can, as much justice, as much wisdom. But why would anybody ever aim for moderation as a goal?
Martin:
Unless — it’s not moderation in total, but because moderation may mean discipline. For example, in the past it was very hard for me to be moderate in eating very delicious food. I would overeat some type of food, and only when I got older did I manage to gain this ability to be moderate in my food intake.
Cassius:
Okay — that’s the sense in which I think it’s clear what we’re talking about. The ability to control yourself and look to the big picture and realize what you’re about to do is going to cause harm. That’s a self-discipline concept. To me, that’s not being moderate — it’s disciplining yourself.
Joshua:
I was looking up a citation a little bit ago — “out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made,” that’s Immanuel Kant. The problem is, if you were to ask Plato, I think he would say something like the opposite: that if a person were to study a pure system like geometry, they could emerge with an understanding of the four virtues that derive from this mathematical fact, and there’s a golden mean that you can study by looking at geometry, and you can arrive at something abstract but also totally true in all places and all times.
So moderation — when I think of the golden mean, I do think this is sort of central to a type of Greek culture. It’s Aristotelian. And I’m firmly against this idea of a golden mean, and I consider the golden mean to be almost trademark Aristotelian and not something that exists within Epicurus.
Cassius:
What is the golden mean to you, Joshua?
Joshua:
The golden mean, to me, is the idea that there’s some optimal point — not necessarily at the center between two proposals, but there’s an optimal point at which utility, aesthetics, beauty, all these things converge. And if you were to try to apply that to your life, that’s the kind of life you should live. Does that make any sense?
Cassius:
I think it makes more sense than most expressions of it that I’ve heard, but I think in common discussion it becomes “being in the middle for the sake of being in the middle.” There’s always too much of a thing, there’s always too little, and where you always want to be is right in the middle. I just don’t know that that makes any sense in Epicurean philosophy. I can see Plato and the Stoics and everybody else in a similar position — if you think virtue is the goal of life, then you go after virtue with every bit of energy that you have. You don’t go after virtue moderately. And from an Epicurean perspective, pleasure is the goal. You go after pleasure with every bit of energy that you have, and you would never describe that as moderation in the pursuit of pleasure. That’s a major disharmony in the way of looking at it.
Joshua:
Say you had two choices that resulted in different amounts of pleasure, each with no pain to follow. One was moderate, the other was much more pleasant. Why settle for less?
Cassius:
Yeah, why settle for less than the best? That underlies almost all this. You start out by defining what you think the best is, and then you go after the best with every bit of vigor that you have. If pleasure is the good in life and if it is the goal, then you want the purest pleasure that you can get.
Martin:
You’d want the most pleasure and the least pain. And yes — what Joshua said a minute ago — you’re going to end up making all sorts of decisions to avoid certain pleasures and engage in certain pains because of the final results you’re looking at. But you’re not trying to be moderate. You’re trying to be wise, prudent, self-disciplined. You’re trying to use self-discipline to navigate to the ultimate goal, which is the most pleasure. And it’s not specifically the amount of pleasure alone that’s the deciding factor — it’s the pain afterwards, it’s the full picture.
Cassius:
But you don’t pursue the full picture with less than every ounce of energy that you have. So there’s an issue of definitions here. The word “moderate” — to me, that’s like “lukewarm” in the New Testament: “because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” If moderation means lukewarmness, then nobody should have anything to do with it.
The other problem here is that the golden mean, or moderation, is a moving target — you define your position based on how people at the extremes are defining their position. And you’re defining where you are totally by where other people are, rather than by some other standard.
Joshua:
Exactly — you can’t hear that without just wanting to spit it out. That is repugnant — to define where you are based on where other people are. You define where you are based on where you think you ought to be. Maybe where other people are is a factor you consider, but it’s by no means the only factor or the main factor. That’s going along with the crowd. That’s letting the crowd define your goal and your action.
Martin:
I don’t think Joshua means it that way. It’s more that: what you do is your choice. But when you give it a label on the scale of moderation, that depends on what extremes are then proposed. Or what extremes you think are possible to you. I mean, just because you may be surrounded by a group of people, Joshua, who are completely wrong from your point of view — just because you look at the varieties of choices this group of people gives you, you’re not going to want to choose among any of them.
Cassius:
I think the outside things won’t really affect Martin’s choice — it’s more about what label you give it.
Martin:
Yes, it will just be: how do I communicate my choice? What label do I give in a way that can be communicated?
Cassius:
A bit further down, he says here: “Most men, however, being unable to uphold and maintain a determination they have themselves made, are over-mastered and enervated when the image of pleasure is thrust before their eyes.” So it was like Martin was saying earlier when he was talking about discipline. Temperance seems to be the key to establishing discipline. Why isn’t this a virtue then?
Joshua:
Well, you know, just like you did a couple of episodes ago, it helps if I just slow down and read exactly what the sentences say. The second sentence in line 47 actually defines what he means by temperance: “Temperance is in truth the virtue which warns us to follow reason in dealing with the objects of desire.” So what is it? It’s a faculty that warns us to follow reason. Now, reason — I would have thought reason was within the wisdom or prudence virtue. So what is temperance? Is it some kind of a warning device within us? Some kind of caution? For some reason that reminds me of some discussions a year or more ago when Martin and Elaine were talking about a feeling of being right about something. It’s almost like he’s saying that temperance is a feeling.
Cassius:
The word “warn” there jumps out at me as being somehow significant. Because if temperance is nothing more than using common sense in the way you pursue things, I just don’t see a difference between that and wisdom. Could be something more innate — like your gut, a gut feeling. A gut feeling of holding back before you commit all your resources in a particular direction before you’re really sure that you wish to. But it’s got to do with resolve and discipline and being able to look at an attractive hazard and stand back from it because you realize that it is a danger.
What happened here today with our time devoted to this subject is that I’ve always had a real problem with looking at the idea that being in the middle is a desirable place to be. I think it’s more the idea that being prudent and being cautious and being wise is something good — but I don’t want to be in the middle when I can see a better place than the middle. What I want is to have the ability to be in the middle if I want to, but also to be anywhere else that I identify as the right place to be.
Joshua:
From the examples, it sometimes seems like the most difficult thing is to be in the middle. What I read in those examples is just the difficulty in overcoming the lure of pleasure — obviously pleasure is desirable and attractive and you feel attracted to it, but sometimes you have to resist that feeling of attraction because you know something bad is going to happen to you if you give into it. I like your previous discussion about discipline. I see it as the ability to discipline yourself to tell yourself not to follow the pleasure of the moment when you see that a bigger pain lies behind it.
Cassius:
What are you going to say, Joshua?
Joshua:
Oh, just something I keep in mind anytime I hear this discussion about virtue. This has partly to do with my Catholic upbringing and Catholic education. It always seems like when you start listing virtues, when patience is a virtue or silence is a virtue or chastity is a virtue, there’s always a very clear chasm in the enforcement of these virtues based on things like gender. Women always tend to bear the brunt of this, in my view, when you start talking about virtues.
What it actually reminds me of is a book by Boccaccio called De Mulieribus Claris — “Concerning Famous Women.” One of the women he talks about, who catches the worst treatment from Boccaccio, is Leontion from the Garden of Epicurus — who wrote a notable polemic against Theophrastus, who at that time was the leader of the Peripatetic school. And Cicero makes the same point actually — not in this passage necessarily, but the word I see in translations is “license.” This was the license that prevailed in the Garden of Epicurus: it got so bad that even women thought they could write essays, thought they could challenge philosophers. So this is something to keep in mind when we’re talking about virtue lists — there’s one set of people who write the rules, and there’s another set of people who are expected to follow them.
Cassius:
Yeah, at least Cicero admitted her writing was good.
Joshua:
He did.
Cassius:
Well, one thing that comes to mind to say right now is: I picked the text that we read today to some extent because I was going as fast as we could since Don was about to take a sabbatical and I wanted to cover as much as we could while we had Don here. I think we accomplished that by introducing the overall issue that virtue is instrumental to pleasure, and we did that last week by talking about wisdom. But now that Don’s on sabbatical and we have more time, there’s no reason for us to force our way through these virtues that fast. It may be that we could stick with moderation today and come back to justice next week — courage, and even potentially justice, because those are huge topics, especially justice.
I’m not sure it’s going to cost us much time to move on to line 49 on courage, though. Should we do 49, or talk a little more about moderation and call it a day?
Martin:
I have nothing to add on moderation, so I would suggest let’s move to courage because I don’t have the impression there’s a lot more to talk about there.
Cassius:
Okay, so let’s talk just a few minutes today before we close about courage. It’s almost like going through these virtues so closely you keep coming back to the same issue — this whole discussion of virtue is so artificial and so arbitrary the way you categorize things, because everything seems to me to fall into wisdom. If you’re wise, you’re going to be courageous. At the same time it’s nothing more than being able to discipline yourself, as we were talking about in moderation, to realize that sometimes you have to go through bad things in order to get greater pleasure or avoid worse pain.
But the good thing about this one is I was noticing, as Martin was reading it, that this one is almost a repeat of some of the factors that Torquatus was talking about earlier — about imagining the man who’s living the best life. It talks about how it’s wretched to succumb to pains and to bear them with an abject and feeble spirit, and through weakness of mind you bring ruin upon yourself. But the courageous spirit will recall that the most severe pains are terminated by death and that the slighter pains grant many seasons of rest, and that those between the classes are under our control. “If we find them endurable, we may tolerate them; if otherwise, we may with an unruffled mind make our exit from life when we find it disagreeable, as we would from a theatre.”
So this is the source of the quotation about how we can choose to exit the theatre when the play ceases to please us — which is not necessarily a call to suicide, but is a reminder that ultimately if things get so far out of hand that death is a relief from even the worst of tortures, we have that option.
Joshua:
I’d like to frame this discussion with one of my favorite stories from ancient Rome. When you’re in the Forum in Rome and you have a tour guide, they’ll point out this little pit in the ground and say: that was the Lacus Curtius. And the story that goes along with that is that sometime in the very early history of Rome, there was a chasm, a huge hole in the ground — an abyss — that opened up in the Forum, and it was growing a little bit every day. People couldn’t figure out what caused it, so they went to the oracles and the augurs, and the response they got was: in order to close the pit, you have to throw in your greatest treasure.
And so people are bringing their prize gold and silver and statues and pearls and whatever else, and they’re just chucking riches into the pit. But the pit’s not getting smaller, it’s getting bigger. And finally a young man named Marcus Curtius sees all this going on and has an epiphany. He says — I can’t remember exactly the words — but it’s something like: “Romans, you’ve forgotten the most important thing about the Roman people. Our greatest treasure is not gold and silver.” And so Curtius, astride his horse and glimmering in armor, plunges into the chasm, and the earth closes in around him, and a spring bubbles up on the spot that bears his name.
Cassius:
That’s a fascinating story. I’m getting so into the story that I’m forgetting the moral you’re about to make of it. What’s the moral?
Joshua:
The moral of the story from the point of view of the Romans is simply that courage — courage is the principal virtue for a Roman to have. Brave men are their greatest treasure. Courage in arms, courage in war and conquering other nations. Really, to the point where it comes to identify an entire culture.
So what the story means to me is that from a certain point of view, courage is something worth living for in itself. But of course, what we’re reading here from Torquatus is that courage is instrumental in the pursuit of pleasure. And that’s something I had not really considered here, but clearly for Torquatus and Cicero to be talking about it, the context you’ve just been discussing is really important to think about. They’re not just seeing this as an off-hand list of nice things to think about — courage really was something that people of that period idolized as an end in itself, as something almost magical and worth dying for.
Cassius:
That’s worth dying for — you mentioned it. So we’re talking about the suicide angle. “We may with an unruffled mind make our exit from life when we find it disagreeable, as we would from a theatre.” So Curtius in the story is making his exit from life. But he’s not doing it for any reason to do with pleasure and pain — or so the story would have you believe.
Joshua:
I went to Wikipedia while you were talking. I found the Lacus Curtius article — it says it was a mysterious pit in the ground at the Roman Forum, exactly what you described. The most popular story, likely a myth glorifying Rome: Rome was endangered when a great chasm opened in the Forum. An oracle told the people they were to throw into the chasm that which constituted the greatest strength of the Roman people, and if they did, the Roman nation would last forever. After dropping many things into the ravine, a young horseman named Marcus Curtius saved the city by realizing that it was the youth of the city that the Romans held most dear. He jumped in in full armor on his horse, whereupon the earth closed over him.
So Wikipedia says “youth” rather than courage specifically. Youth could also mean vigor.
Cassius:
But at any rate — just like you were saying, you could easily analogize that to the story that Torquatus has told about his own ancestors, that he sacrificed his son to save his friends and his fellow countrymen. Torquatus has already given an example of sacrificing your son for the sake of the greater pleasure. So you could say the same thing here — Marcus Curtius has given his life because it was going to save the city, and it was of greater importance to him, a greater feeling of significance, a greater feeling of pleasure, to save the city than to continue living. So you could easily in this scenario see that there are times — whether it’s suicide or you simply give up your life for the sake of your friend — you’re going to do it because you recognize that continuing to live would be worse for you.
Joshua:
Yeah, I don’t know how to talk about it any further than sort of what we’ve been saying the whole time. Courage — it’s a virtue like any other virtue. But even in the most extreme case he’s not pursuing courage just for the sake of courage. And Torquatus repeatedly asks, “What did he get out of it?” Well, he’s got a name for himself staked for all time in the Forum of Rome. That’s not nothing. He’s saved his family and his kin. And there has to be an ultimate final end here — which Torquatus and Epicurus and we think is pleasure, a life of pleasure.
And when you say “a life of pleasure,” that brings up the time element again. For Marcus Curtius, his life was over when he threw himself into the pit. But it was worth it to him for the moments that he continued to exist, to realize what he was doing and to compare the pleasure and feeling of satisfaction of what he was doing against what would have happened if he remained alive.
Cassius:
And in the version of the story that I’m familiar with, the pit is growing over time — so he’s going to be swallowed eventually. If he sticks around long enough, he’s going to end up in the hole anyway. So you can end up in the hole as a coward, or you can end up in the hole as a legendary martyr. As courage or bravery.
Joshua:
We’d have to know the facts of the case to understand whether he could have run away from it. But the way Wikipedia is reporting it, there’s something about it being limited: “as Rome was endangered,” but if they did throw their greatest thing into the pit, the Roman nation would last forever. So there was a reward in addition to just continued existence. It was maybe forever existence.
Cassius:
He got all the riches at the bottom.
All right, let’s talk about wrapping up for today. I think you’re right that justice is going to be a big topic. I have a lot more to say about justice than I do about any of these others.
Joshua:
Justice is controversial, yeah. But it’s also something that just matters to a lot of people. You could get a bunch of people to disagree on temperance and its value or utility, but I think there are very few people who don’t have some conception that a sense of justice is necessary.
Cassius:
I don’t want to open that door because we’re going to save that for next week. It’s kind of like your Roman example — at least I have the impression that in Rome at that time period, courage really was something they thought about all the time. They were military people, and it was something that was always at the tip of their tongue and the front of their minds. And to some extent, maybe justice today has overtaken that as something we constantly think about. But yes, we’ll talk about it next week in much greater detail.
So to wrap up this week — Martin, what closing thoughts do you have today?
Martin:
I have nothing further. I’m sorry I’ve talked so much today and talked over you so much, so I apologize for monopolizing.
Cassius:
Charles, this has been your first day back with us and we’ve continued the tradition of talking about closing thoughts before we end a particular episode. Do you have any today?
Charles:
Not really.
Cassius:
Well, we’re happy to have you back. As we’re recording this we’re about to go into Thanksgiving week, and that’s going to impact people’s schedules. I understand you may not be back next week, but we look forward to having you back as soon as you can after Thanksgiving.
Charles:
Yeah, I should be able to make it two weeks from now.
Cassius:
Great. Joshua, tune in next week and I’ll tell you a story about ancient Rome and the Tarpeian Rock.
Joshua:
The Tarpeian Rock! Great, excellent, excellent.
Cassius:
Okay, well thanks everybody for your time today. We’ll come back in about a week to continue going through the virtues. Next week we’ll analyze justice, so thanks for being here today and we’ll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.
Joshua:
Okay, thank you.