Episode 100 - Concluding On Justice With A Shout To Keep The Virtues In Their Proper Place
Date: 12/17/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2274-episode-one-hundred-concluding-on-justice-with-a-shout-to-keep-the-virtues-in-th/
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Transcript
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Welcome to Episode 100 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.
Of Lucretius’ poem and we’ve turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero’s own ends for further elaboration of Epicurean philosophy. Today we continue with that material and conclude our discussion of justice starting around line 53 and we also include a discussion of fragment 32 from the inscription of Diogenes of Oinoan. Now let’s join Joshua reading today’s text. For the passions which proceed from nature are easily satisfied without committing any wrong. We must not 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 because it renders life safer and more replete with pleasures. 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 accolades 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 and pleasure is the only thing which invites us to the pursuit of itself it attracts us by reason of its own nature and 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 life attended by pleasure. Okay Joshua thank you for reading that today. That’s lines 53 and 54 from the Torquatus.
Material that we’re going through right now. And this is going to be our third episode where we’re still talking about the justice section. But rather than move on and read more in Torquatus today, I think what we could most profitably do is finish up these passages on justice and then wrap back around and pick up the entire question of the virtues here. Because these are the last paragraphs in the Torquatus material that are devoted directly to the discussion of the issue of virtue versus pleasure as the goal of life. And this is such a big important part of not only the Torquatus material, but of most of the discussions we get into nowadays online and as we discuss Epicurus and Epicurean philosophy with ourselves, it’s worth making sure we bring in as well some other material that we’ll talk about as the podcast episode goes on. Because this topic is treated just about any time you see a discussion of Epicurean philosophy you’re going to see this time.
Of virtue versus pleasure being a large part of the conversation. So let’s just go back and first pay attention to 53 and 54. And it looks like the first of the material that we’re quoting today is almost kind of harking back to the natural and necessary issues again, because he says that the passions which proceed from nature are easily satisfied without committing any wrong and that while we must not submit 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 is in the results which are produced by the wrongdoing. So he’s linking together, it seems to me, this issue that the really important things of life don’t require wrongdoing. I think you’re right. That is an interesting connection he makes between natural and necessary pleasures or desires and the way he connects that to justice. I was going to jump in right there and say that I guess part of what he’s saying is that is not disposing us to.
Commit things that we consider to be wrong, because it certainly would be sort of a problem if nature structured things so that the things we really need always require wrongdoing to get them. That would be a very perverse situation, but that’s not the way things are. There’s no necessity for the strife that some people get into and the fierce competition. Nature doesn’t dispose us to wrongdoing since the things that we really need are relatively easy to get without wrongdoing. Right, and to imagine a scenario in which the passions which proceed from nature need to be satisfied by committing wrongdoing, that’s a scenario to me that does not invite philosophy really as a solution to any problem. If that were the situation, we almost wouldn’t be the kind of species that would be capable of philosophy. Another passage that comes to my mind about this, I don’t know that I’ll be able to quote it, and I’m not sure if it’s a Vatican saying or not, but there’s one about giving thanks to nature, because she’s made things that are important.
Easy to get, forget the rest of the detail, but you do see echoes of several things here. OK, and to continue the next sentence, someone 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. Object of esteem and affection is agreeable just because it renders life safer and more replete with pleasures. So he’s going down this road again of saying that not only is wrongdoing. Wrongdoing going to produce anxiety and concern and fear about being punished. But the opposite is true, that when you’re acting in ways that we consider to be just, that’s going to bring about a very large amount of agreeableness on its own, because you will naturally in the way that humans work, you’ll become the object of affection and esteem. And therefore your life becomes safer because the people around you value you as opposed to finding you a threat. rat. Right. And this sent.
Really encapsulates the core argument that he’s been making all the way through this discussion of the virtues, isn’t it? This is the same thing he had to say about temperance, this is the same thing he had to say about courage, that they’re not ends in themselves, but they are instrumental toward pursuing what is the proper end of life, which is pleasure. And the same as we’ve been saying, the same is true of justice. The question was raised, Cassius, I think by you in the last episode, is it possible to pursue justice too far? And I think we kind of came to the conclusion that it certainly was. What I ended up doing was I posted a video to the forum, because we had been talking a couple weeks previously about Thomas More and Utopia, which has sort of large Epicurean undercurrents, but not a thoroughly Epicurean book. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone starting out with Epicurean philosophy. But he does use it for a thought experiment to explore Epicurean philosophy. And the video that I posted was a scene from the a film based on Robert.
Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons. And in that scene, there’s a particular moment where you’ve got this sort of immoral man. Thomas More is the Chancellor of England and there’s a prosecutor in the scene as well. And Thomas More sends this sort of unscrupulous man away and the prosecutor is unhappy that he’s let him go. He said he should be locked up. And Thomas More says he should go free until he’s broken the law. And granted, Robert Bolt is writing at a time when I think the play was written maybe during the Red Scare and when you had allegations of communism that were sort of shutting down free speech in the humanities. This is the same time period, I think, that gave us The Crucible by Arthur Miller, which is a metaphor for the same problem. But the end result of what he’s saying is that we establish these laws not merely to pursue justice but to moderate ourselves in the pursuit of justice because justice itself is not the goal. One of the goals that he does mention in that film is the.
Devil. He said, I give the devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake. The just thing to do might be to pursue the villain, as it were, to the ends of the earth and to throw aside any law that stands in the way of bringing justice to him. But for the sake of society and for the sake of safety and for the sake of every one of us who might find ourselves falsely accused in cases like that, it’s important to moderate our pursuit of justice by the law. And I think that what I’m trying to get here is that the mere establishment of law as a tool to moderate the pursuit of justice implies that justice is not the end in itself. It’s not necessarily the case that a society that operates that way thinks that pleasure is the end in itself. But it at least seems to understand on a basic level that the pursuit of justice is not an end in itself and that there is some other object or goal which is the proper end. I’m rambling. Does any of this… Let’s first of all, I have forgotten about that.
Before I launch into all of that, Martin, do you have any thoughts at this point or shall I launch into it? Just go ahead. I have nothing to say. First of all, I spent much of last night going through and reading Utopia because I couldn’t sleep. And I found that there’s basically three sections of it. And the one we’re talking about is section two, it seems like, where this person describes his visit to Utopia and so forth. And I now have a great new respect for Thomas More because one of the things he experienced, including in Utopia, is that he said that the Society of Utopia made sure to get rid of all the lawyers. That’s one of the first things it did. So I think he’s obviously very perceptive to that. So with that background, too, and of course, I watched the video that you posted. And I do recommend everybody look at that clip that Joshua has posted. It took me a while as I was listening to it to get a handle on exactly what was going on because it didn’t have the background of the scene. And there were times when I thought that Thomas,
And that scene was going a little bit far in terms of praising justice. But yes, in the end, I do think it was very clear that Thomas More was saying that he would defend the devil himself, basically, if the devil had not at that moment violated the law. And he makes it very clear that the reason for that is that he wants that same deference himself. He doesn’t want to be tracked down and basically persecuted by his enemies. He wants the protection of the law himself. And so I think by the time you get to the end of that clip, he clearly is showing that he’s not arguing for the bad man who he has just released because he thinks that there’s some abstract principle to be gained by it. He makes it very clear that he is allowing this person protection of the law and the legal system because he wants that same protection. So I think that was an excellent illustration. And what? And when you. you actually,
The play or watch the film or read about Thomas More’s life, what you will find is that he was himself the victim of a prosecutorial witch hunt. He was not given the kind of deference that you’re speaking of now, which is, I think probably why Robert Bolt chose this particular moment in history as being analogous to the time that he was writing. And Joshua, when you bring up the idea of the prosecutorial witch hunt, one of the things going through my mind as you were talking, what is the very, very popular musical play Les Miserables? And I can’t say the French. I’m sure I butchered the title of that, but there’s a prosecutor in that story who I think does represent exactly the bad thing that we’re talking about. And Joshua, I hope you’ll be able to explain the story better than I can when, when I finished butchering what I remember about it. But what I remember is that he represents a prosecutor who was going to just move heaven and earth,
Put this particular person, the hero of the story in jail because he stole bread or something like that. He was persecuting him, realizing that the punishment was far in excess of the crime, but he was doing it because he thought it was the right thing to do. Can you correct my presentation of that, Joshua? No, I can’t. You’re not a Les Miserables fan? You know, I’ve never even seen it. I think probably I would like it if I had seen it, but I just haven’t seen it. Well, the only thing I’ve seen is that musical version, and if I can remember, I will post it to the forum because he sings a song. I think it’s called Stars or something where he basically makes the point that I think I raised in an earlier episode, Liz, a legal maxim about let justice be done, though the heavens fall asunder or something like that. And I think that’s the issue that Epicurus is arguing against. You do care about the consequences of enforcing the law. If it’s going to result in something that we, didn’t conclude to be unjust.
And in Les Miserables, there’s that example. And this is a good example that you’ve got from Thomas More, too. Right, because I assume that Les Miserables, does that take place during the French Revolution? It does. It does. And the basic, very short version of the story is that this Jean Valjean or something who is the hero steals bread because his family is hungry, something to that effect. And then he just gets put in a chain gang and becomes a criminal. And so the whole story is about how the legal system. But then he escapes. He escapes from the chain gang or something like that. So the story is about how this prosecutor is going to track him down to the ends of the earth and put him back in the chain gang for no reason other than his devotion to this abstract idea of justice and without regard completely for all of the human tragedy that comes from all the people who are injured by what he’s doing. A punishment that far exceeds the crime. Right. And I think the same concept is expressed as well in another text, which derives its setting. from the French Revolution which is.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens in which sort of the climax of that novel is that one character actually puts himself on the executioner’s block in place of another. He’s willing to give his life that the other man may live and that’s also something we see in Epicurean. In fact, I wonder if you have it in the… I scroll down here but Epicure says that there will be time when the wise man might even go as far as dying for a friend. Right, I don’t have it on this episode list at the moment. But yes, absolutely he would. Okay, so there we’ve got your illustration of Thomas More. You’ve got Utopia, you’ve got Les Miserables, you’ve got A Tale of Two Cities. This is a common theme in literature in Western civilization that justice pursued to an extreme end for its own sake can easily lead to injustice. And so that’s a common theme. It ought to equally be common and equally be understood that the pursuit of any virtue.
Can end in itself can turn out to produce the worst kind of practical result. In fact, you could probably just go down a list of most of your classic movies and in many cases what you’ve got is these characters who pursue some vision of justice or vision of virtue in their mind. They’re trying to be courageous or trying to be wiser. They’ve got some goal in mind that they are pursuing single-mindedly without regard for the consequences of pursuit of that goal. And so over and over, that just leads to disaster. And I think that’s what Epicurus is saying about the pursuit of justice here and then in virtue in general. So maybe we go to 54, which is basically just summarizing the very same point again. And I believe I’ve substituted the word accolades here for encomium. This is where that encomium comes in. But if the accolades pass 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, and pleasure’s the only thing.
To pursuit of itself and attracts us by reason of its own nature, then there can be no doubt that of all things good, it, meaning pleasure, is the supreme and ultimate good. That a life of happiness means nothing else but a life attended by pleasure. And there’s lots of phrases in that section that you could pick out and just, again, continue to hammer the same point. And it opens up by saying that the accolades of the virtues which the eloquence of all other philosophers runs riot. He’s making the point that all these other Greek philosophers, all these other philosophers in most philosophies, it seems like, at least in Western civilization, they just go immediately to this point of trying to define what they think virtue is. And they set that up as a goal and as an abstraction, as a goal that has to be pursued of and for itself. And it just leads to disaster over and over again. Right. And I think one thing that he captures here rather nicely.
When he says, over which the eloquence of all other philosophers especially runs riot. There’s something kind of repugnant about that, isn’t it? Someone harping on virtue. Yes. There’s something very off-putting about that. I think Cicero himself sort of expresses the other side of that coin when he says in that famous passage, Epicureans are constantly scooping up people all across the crossroads. Did they understand what Epicurus meant when I, Cicero, do not? I’m sure I’m butchering that quote. The idea here is these philosophers have walled themselves off in a sense in their gymnasium or whatever it may be, their stoa. Because one thing we have to keep in mind here is that what has survived from antiquity is a very particular cross-section of ancient culture. Most people were not writing books, and so we don’t hear from them at all. Many people who were writing books were writing books that were not thought fit to be.
Whether for reasons of orthodoxy or eloquence or literary value. For one reason or another, they just weren’t preserved. And so we have this very narrow sense of what Greek culture and Greek philosophy was really like. But if Don were here, he’d probably make the case that if you want to get maybe a better understanding of what the common people were thinking, you might look to drama as a key to that clue. And when you read Greek drama, philosophers do not come out well. On the stage, they are made to look like fools repeatedly. And I think this is exactly the kind of thing that he’s talking about. And I also see there, Joshua, an echo of what Torquatus has previously said himself. I’m looking back up at line 36, where he’s previously said, there is one field in which the eloquence of your school, he’s referring to the stoics there, has been want, especially to Vaughn itself, and your own eloquence in particular, for you are an.
Investigator of the past. And I mean the stories of illustrious and heroic men and the applause of their actions viewed as looking not to any reward but to the inherent comeliness of morality. So he’s previously made that point and hammering it home here that all these stories and all this praise of just virtue as its own goal is just meaningless and can even be harmful unless you look behind it and you think about the fact, well, what is really the ultimate goal of what you’re doing? One thing, I’m going to slip this in here, I do have to give Cicero credit for, is when he was quaestor, which was a bureaucratic role in the Roman Empire, in the city of the colony, really, of Lili Bayou, which is in Sicily, he set himself the task in his free time, I think his role was fairly minor, really. It was more or less collecting taxes and maybe hearing local bureaucratic disputes. but he set himself the task.
Of finding the lost grave of Archimedes. So his interest in the past is not exclusively related to the philosophy of illustrious men and praising their virtue. He does sort of walk the walk there. Granted, the lost grave of Archimedes has again been lost, so there’s no value for that to us. Yeah, I don’t recall that Cicero himself was ever particularly persecuted because he robbed his provinces or did any of the… the standard corruption that some of these other guys were accused of. I mean, and I’m talking about giving Cicero his due, as you were talking about. He’s obviously extremely proud of himself and likes to be praised and likes to talk about his own exploits and things that are kind of off-putting, but he did seem to at least make an effort to live up to some of his own goals, it seems like. He didn’t seem like as much of a hypocrite as some of the others, it seems like to me. Right, and for Cicero in particular, it would have been the height of hypocrisy,
To be as corrupt as some of his peers. You know, probably worth commenting, even though it’s only a brief phrase in this section, where it says, pleasure is the only thing which invites us to the pursuit of itself and attracts us by reason of its own nature. See, that almost is a reference back to some of the epistemology, some of the canonical aspects of pleasure as being something that you feel. It’s not something that requires, there’s a lot of analysis before you realize whether it’s desirable or not. It’s just something that nature gives you directly to be attractive to you. The word pleasing is what we’ll use, but he’s making the point that there’s a difference in kind between pleasure versus virtue. Pleasure is something you immediately, without processing, feel to be attractive to you, or desirable. I think in most cases, you cannot say the same thing about a.
Justice or wisdom, things like that. They’re not automatic. No, really, there’s only one other thing that you can talk about in that way, and it’s very much just the other side of the same question, and it’s pain. Yes, yes. So pleasure and pain do occupy sort of a space of their own, and the space that they occupy is more immediate to the living creature than things like justice or temperance or courage. I already forgot the other virtues, but… They must not be as important as pleasure. Yeah, I think this is really the foundation of the whole argument, because that’s the thing that distinguishes pleasure from these other arguable goals is that nature does not provide us a faculty to immediately recognize anything else other than pleasure and pain. We can certainly think about things and process them and come up with opinions and decide which other abstract such as virtues,
Or are most likely to lead to pleasure or to pain. But in terms of something that is not subject to mistake, it’s only pain and pleasure and our immediate feeling of it that is not subject to mistake. And even if you want to go down the road of all those hypotheticals about attaching electrodes to your brain and programming someone to make you feel pleasure or pain, you’re still feeling the pleasure or the pain at that moment. You may not understand the source of it and so forth, but the feeling is the feeling. Yeah, and most of it happens between the ears, as it were. The brain is the principal organ involved here, regardless of the kind of pleasure that it is. It’s experienced in the mind. And the physical pleasure, of course, is transferred by the nervous system to the central organ, which is the brain. So if the brain is connected to the pleasure machine, then the pleasure is real, regardless of whether the stimulus is artificial or not. I do want to sort of talk about a little bit.
It sort of just occurred to me. Before we get away from the subject of justice, how would you say that the issue of martyrdom factors into how Epicureans should view the history of their school? There’s not really a rich history of it, is there? Not really a rich history of Epicureans being martyrs, you mean? Yeah, yeah. Or even whether there’s any value. For me, my initial reaction is, and of course I can’t think of any ancient Epicureans, except for maybe Ludwig, Lucian, who was on the verge of being perhaps murdered, in one instance, according to his own account. One of the figures I’ve always admired, despite his not being a thorough Epicurean, was Giordano Bruno, who was, I think, a monk or a friar in Italy in the Renaissance, who had read Lucretius, I believe, and was taken with this idea that the universe was infinite and eternal. And of course, the idea that the universe universe is infinite and.
Eternal and that is the death knell for the kind of desert monotheism that was dominant in europe in the time and of course it’s still dominant and so he formulated this idea that the other planets were or the other bodies that you see in the night sky are just places in the universe and they’re similar to the place that we live in which is also just in the universe and the universe is infinite and eternal and that any of these other worlds might be inhabited that the universe is made of atoms and voids and void so he really did adopt a large measure of the epicurean physics in particular and was i think he fled to england to avoid persecution if he had stayed there he probably would have been safe but he went back to italy and was arrested and eventually was executed in the campo di fiore in rome and nowadays there is a statue in the campo di fiore of giordano bruno with his hood pulled up and he’s uh he’s sort of glowering.
In the direction of Vatican City. They’ve placed the statue so it’s facing Vatican City, or at least that’s my understanding of the situation. So for people who are, I guess, aligned with inquiry and interested in science and things like this, Giordano Bruno has kind of become a martyr for science, as it were. And there’s objections to all of that. So, but it does raise the question of how martyrdom should figure in Epicurean philosophy. And I’m wondering if you have any response to that. Well, Martin, you want to take that first? Yeah, it would be difficult to see under which circumstances being a martyr would be conducive for pleasure. So that would be something really weird. Yeah, giving your life for a friend is one thing, but the word martyrdom, what should we consider the definition of that to be, Joshua, for purposes of this discussion? Well, that’s the interesting question, isn’t it? Because dying for a philosophy, it doesn’t have quite the same, I don’t know,
No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t have the same eternal importance of dying for your faith, really. So I almost think that the Epicurean perspective here would be keep your head down, really, right? Well, now, I don’t know about that. Of course, it’s like a chord when you say something like that. I think you’ve certainly hit the big point, is that martyrdom to me implies you’re right. You’re giving your life for a cause as opposed to a friend, necessarily. I don’t think you’d say that if you gave up your life for a friend in a battle, you wouldn’t necessarily call yourself a martyr. So there must be this implication of a cause of some kind, which therefore means sort of an abstraction to some degree, I guess. Let me ask you this question, because Socrates is another figure. Yep, very good. Who was unjustly executed, I think, made to swallow the hemlock, took it of his own accord. He wasn’t forced. He took the cup and sort of passed judgment on his judges while they were executing him. But he is celebrating.
Who made a courageous stand for free inquiry? That’s not quite martyrdom in the same way as Christian martyrdom, for example, is it? Because I don’t think Socrates was dying for a cause. Or he might have considered himself dying for the cause of free inquiry that you’re talking about. I guess what seems to me to be my first response, Joshua, would be that there’s a big difference between being put in a position where you’re forced to give your life for that of a friend. I think of there being more concern. There are more compelling reasons in those situations that you aren’t normally going to offer to do it just for the sake of something less than saving the other person’s life. It seems like in most cases, in giving your life for a friend, you’re kind of forced to do it. But it seems to me that the examples you’re raising, like Socrates, I don’t think Socrates had to die. And I think it’s pretty stupid of him to do what he did. Why do you have to live in Athens if they want to kill you, if they want to throw you out? Then go somewhere else.
Your philosophy is somewhere else, it seems to me. In fact, I think you could probably question whether the word martyrdom would really ever apply under an Epicurean calculation. I definitely think Epicureans will fight for what they believe in and they will risk their lives for what they believe in. And of course, we can start with the example of Cassius himself, Cassius Longinus himself. And I even put in today’s show notes some of the material that I wanted to at least briefly mention there. So I think an Epicurean is going to fight. Fight for his or her beliefs and even risk his life if necessary. But a martyr is one of these Christians who willingly goes into the lion’s den so he can continue to say that he’s a Christian to the last moment because he won’t renounce Jesus and God. And to me, that’s what I’d always think of as a martyr to some higher cause where you willingly do something. I would think in most cases an Epicurean. And certainly Cassius was doing. this you’re gonna fight you’re.
Gonna attempt to arrange the circumstances so you don’t have to die you’re not gonna just walk into some situation and willingly give up your life just to show that you’re a stoic and your mind is gonna have triumph over that bullet or something so I think that’d be kind of one of the first hurdle of analyzing martyrdom from an epicrym perspective you would always attempt to calculate a way around it or out of that and even then if somebody’s forcing you to say something upon penalty of your death you’re gonna that would be a perfect example of whatever you want me to say if you’re gonna let me go whatever you want me to say I’ll do it that’s kind of what I mean by keeping your head down because what Giordano Bruno did was exactly not that interrogated for years on end and consistently and clearly continued to express his opinions about the nature of the universe I don’t know the facts of why he went back to Italy though why did he not stay in England yeah that’s a good question apart from of course not.
A good question in general that but my memory of the case is that he was so annoying to his prosecutors that they drove two nails through his lips one virtually and one horizontally first of all to shut him up but second of all to make the shape of the cross so that is sort of the opposite of I think the suggestion that may be and I think I probably agree with you I think Socrates probably should have taken the obvious and clear escape route that was available to him I think you’ve raised a very interesting question and maybe the Socrates example is even more likely to be the answer. I think you’ve raised a very interesting question and maybe the Socrates example is even more likely to be the answer. I think you’ve raised a very interesting question and maybe the Socrates example is even more likely to be the answer. I think you’ve raised a very interesting question and maybe the Socrates example is even more likely to be the answer. I think you’ve raised a very interesting question and maybe the Socrates example is even more likely to be the answer. I think you’ve raised a very interesting question and maybe the Socrates example is even more likely to be the answer. clearer to most people because I don’t know the facts of the Bruno situation myself but I think the fact situation of Socrates is relatively clear that he was tried and executed because he refused to stop teaching what he wanted to teach in Athens and so apparently it’s implied in that that Socrates was just not willing to go somewhere else and that was always a problem I have with that decision is I don’t understand the necessity of staying there Martin, anything?
I think actually he died for a cause. I mean, it may not be an easy cause to tell this one name, but I think it’s also for his credibility. So that means that he will uphold what he was basically fighting for with his teachings. Yeah, and as I think about it, maybe I’m being a little harsh in the sense that, okay, an Epicurean is going to make, I think, the decision based on what is his life going to be like if he does this? Or what is his life going to be like if he doesn’t do a certain thing? And so maybe an Epicurean could look at the Socrates situation and say, if I recant in front of my friends, I’m going to be so embarrassed the rest of my life that it’s not going to be worthwhile for me to continue. And so I guess an Epicurean could make that kind of a calculation that his credibility that you’ve raised, Martin, and his future reputation, among other people. Those things are so important.
He wants to preserve those even at the cost of his death. So yeah, I guess you could make an Epicurean argument for that kind of end-of-life decision. I don’t think we can easily construct something like this for an Epicurean. Because as an Epicurean, you don’t have to have this credibility with respect to virtue. So every other Epicurean will understand it then, that under this condition, you don’t uphold whatever virtue was. You might keep other people in the position and let themselves execute. But an Epicurean is a proper reasoning that will normally not choose that. So I don’t see easily anything where we can give an Epicurean justification for a situation like that. So credibility is not a thing. It just doesn’t make sense to sacrifice the life for credibility. How would you respond to Martin there? Well, I think Martin raised…
I think Martin raised a point because one thing that Socrates, even though one of his accusations was atheism, he did not actually discount the afterlife. He gave a number of possibilities for what the afterlife could turn out to be. But if he had accepted the prevailing Greek conception of the afterlife, the key currency in that is reputation, right? Achilles lives on the happy aisle because everyone remembers his name. And Socrates, by virtue of having given his life… But he did not accept his life rather than recant his beliefs, has attained exactly that same kind of fame. So it is possible that something like that featured into his calculation that would not feature into the calculation of an Epicurean. I was agreeing with everything you said until the very last comment. You know, I think an issue that is brought up in our discussion right this second is this question of what is the role of abstractions such as virtue in the first place. And I know that in the past… we have.
Frequently talked as if abstractions are of necessity. They’re just not as important as pleasure or pain. But I think there’s an intersection of the two when you start thinking about that. I mean, the reason we have abstractions in many cases is they bring us pleasure. It’s because the pleasure you get from your sense of devotion to a particular ideal, you may be mistaken about that ideal. You may be getting pleasure from serving God when our Epicurean physics would tell you that there is no supernatural God and you’re just being foolish because you’re doing things that are not justified by the facts. But even in that context of religion, that’s part of the letter of Menezeas, is that it’s better to believe in a false religion than it is to believe that the universe is so deterministic that you have no ability to affect your future. So I guess where I’m going, Joshua, is you see where I’m going. Can you not get so attachment to.
Your goal, that that pleasure that you get from that attachment is worth more to you than continuing your life in the knowledge that when the chips were down, you denounced that goal which you hold so highly. Yeah, certainly that’s a possibility. And of course you’re also considering the generations of people that are coming after you and considering that quite possibly by making a courageous stand when you did, you enabled them to do the same. Yes, and of course you’re not thinking that you’re going to profit in the future after your death because you know as an Epicurean that you’re dead. After you’re dead, you’re not going to be receiving any more pleasure due to the esteem of these people in the future. At this moment, now while you’re alive, it is a tremendously pleasing thought to you that this future esteem could be coming to you. I believe there’s a reference to that in one of the texts. In fact, it may be another section of Dodge and of Oinoander.
Appreciation of things that will happen in the future being a pleasure to you but that’s where I’m going with this is it not possible under an Epicurean calculation to see the present pleasure of something that’s going to happen after you’re dead being so important to you that you would rather die than give up that feeling of pleasure now but I don’t think this is based on an idea or abstraction it would be something I think of my grandchildren so and if I do something I think which will increase their pleasure in some way in whatever weird reasoning that might be that I could understand but not for an idea I think we really would need a specific case where we really can see that I think in the abstract this this remains a possibility which is very unlikely to happen so we would need to construct real cases where this would make sense I don’t think I wouldn’t agree that this can be justified just in the abstract now there are.
Other ways we can do this there’s another way I think there’s another way I think that we can explain this further for us now oh you think so you think yeah I feel confident because it’s so clear right no I don’t mean to be sarcastic I do agree with what Martin just said Joshua what do you think well okay so it’s difficult for me to abstractly come up with a concrete concrete case one might almost say impossible but what about Martin and his grandchildren that’s where I’m going down the road of agreeing with Martin you do need to think about specific people and specific circumstances you shouldn’t just think about some idea and the grossest sense of the word abstract what about Martin’s present feeling of pleasure at the benefit that he’s going to give to his grandchildren by giving up his life I’m not even sure that’s quite what Martin was saying the idea that there’s a present feeling of pleasure that present feeling of pleasure is not essential to a feeling of altruism you know you might feel some sense of anxiety anxiety or even.
Pain when you’re being killed, but you’re doing it not for any present pleasure necessarily. You could be doing it for present pleasure, but it’s also possible you’re doing it just because you think that other people’s future pleasure has a value in itself. And I’ll let Martin correct me if I’m wrong on that. Yeah, I mean, it may happen, but again, you really need to construct some case. It’s not so much that it’s definitely going to kill me, but rather that there’s an increase in chance. And that is then something which then similarly like saving a child from danger. So that one, we discussed this in the past already, that one would be no hesitation for an epic career. And I meant this in a similar way, so that we don’t need to save them maybe from an immediate danger, but something like a potential danger in the future. And they will be glad if we sacrifice this sacrifices now to prevent.
It. Let me give you the only case that I do know of from the ancient world, specifically involving an Epicurean. Cassius, you did mention the situation to do with the Roman Civil War, but I mentioned earlier Lucian or Lucian of Samosata who wrote Alexander the Oracle Monger. And in that story, he gives an account of himself as sort of launching this private campaign against Alexander the Prophet, who was the most powerful figure in the region. And he mentions at least in one specific case where Alexander actually did suborn his murder. He was given passage on a ship and Alexander’s men were on the ship or he had paid the captain or something to have him killed and thrown overboard. And it was only the captain’s bad conscience that kept him from going through with it. Otherwise, history might have turned out very different for Lucian. We do have a clear case here where he is putting himself.
In danger to stand up to what he, I think, quite fairly sees as this insanity of a guy who is sort of pushing people out of their money to give oracles from a talking snake. Joshua, I’m glad you brought up Alexander the Oracle Monger because I didn’t think about the example that you just raised. What I was thinking when you started talking about it, remember there’s the other example in that story about the Epicurean who confronted Alexander and was almost stoned to death or something to that effect. And Lucian makes the comment that the Epicurean should not have done that because why would you, now that you remember it, what did it say, Joshua? This is one of my favorite quotes and I hope I can remember it accurately. He said, what right did he have to be the only sane man proud full of madmen? Yes, yes, yes. Certainly he believed that that that particular guy, sort of.
Of his proper path when he did that, and was very quickly punished for it. I don’t know that I can analyze that episode to a conclusion, but definitely somebody who wanted to really pursue the process of thinking about Socrates taking the hemlock and doing what he did, versus what would an Epicurean do, that episode from Alexander the Oracle Monger is definitely something to consider. Because you’re right, Lucian is so sarcastic or so humorous at times. I sometimes wonder, wonder if I really understand whether he’s making a joke.
So it could be that when he says what right has he to be the only sane person maybe that’s kind of ironic humor and he’s actually admiring what the guy did I don’t know I certainly think it’s ironic and rather scathing but yes but that epicurean and the story did not end up being killed and Lucian doesn’t seem to have endorsed the idea that he should have given his life in order to expose the oracle so which brings up an interesting point seems to be saying in his own actions is the way to attack this particular problem is not to present yourself as a person who’s going to die for it but to stand slightly aloof from it and just satirize it incessantly and hoping that intelligent people will eventually well you know what you’re doing now just where you’re hitting pretty close to home in our own epicurean.
Epicurus because there’s a lot of people who don’t necessarily agree with some of the points of epicurean philosophy and none of us are advocating that we go out and go into Times Square in New York and douse ourselves with gasoline and burn ourselves as a martyr to epicurean philosophy nobody’s suggesting that kind of thing is very good you have to approach these things intelligently I think would be the real point there is that you want to pose and bring up and discuss these things as much as you can but you know there’s a time and a place and a way to do everything and not make yourself a martyr like the person in the Alexander the Oracle monger story was about to become this is about making the right risk calculation and taking some risk is okay so that is the one Lucian did by himself taking a path where he would have had a little bit of a risk but not with high probability but being there in a crowd of madmen and then telling them something They’ve no gains.
Alexander, that one had a higher probability to be very ineffective, plus putting the person at a high risk. So this is a wrong way to do this. I mean, nowadays we have similar cases in India where we have these religious nut jobs demonstrating some physical experiment and misinterpreting it under some religious purposes. And there are some groups of Indians who try to. But then they show up there as one or only a few person with a big group of these not really sane people. And that is just the wrong approach. Yeah. When somebody who wants to get ready to go give a public speech on Epicurean philosophy, you probably don’t want to go to downtown Mecca or downtown Medina or downtown Jerusalem or any of these places you’re talking about in India as well. You want to choose a place and a time.
Your words are going to be considered rationally and you just don’t do things that are stupid. You present. You say India. I could probably think of a few places in Indiana. Well, that’s exactly right. I mean, just just in the general sense of being polite and diplomatic, you don’t go into your local church or your local synagogue or mosque and just walk up to the front and start giving a lecture on atheism. It’s just not. And of course, that’s I’m not saying Epicurean. Epicurean would do that. But just this is a time and a place for things. And you have to use your head when you talk about controversial matters. Well, I did want to include in today’s episode just a couple of other texts that are important to this proposition that virtue is not an end in itself. And one of the ones that I think is the most clear on this topic comes from the inscription of Diogenes of Winnowander. It is fragment 32. And in our episode notes, we’ll have a. link to the.
Inscriptions website over in Catalonia in Spain one of the best websites for the text of the wall of Diogenes of Ornander which that would be a whole episode in itself talking about it but there is in this fragment 32 a section that seems very very clearly directed to what we’re.
Joshua has volunteered to read this because it’s talking about shouting so Joshua I can read it do I start with let’s just start with where it says I shall discuss folly shortly in the virtues and pleasure now the context of course being that this fragment it’s a fragment it’s not in context with a lot of text before and after it but it’s apparently well preserved enough that this is a Martin Ferguson Smith translation he’s the expert on the inscription and this particular paragraph is very clear in meaning and basically stands on its own for anybody who’s done any reading in epicurean philosophy because as we’ve been talking about for now three episodes this issue of the relationship of virtue and happiness and pleasure is a core topic and then this phrase occurs in fragment 32 so that’s probably enough introduction well let me give one more little tidbit about who he was and as very little as we know about who he was Dr. I can use diages.
However you want to pronounce that we only know about him from this inscription and from the location of the inscription in the town that he lived in in what would have been an area of quite expensive real estate which he filled with this very long inscription this is the longest inscription surviving from the ancient world so the conclusion is he was probably a wealthy merchant or something but certainly also he was an Epicurean as you learn from his introduction to the inscription and he says I shall discuss folly shortly the virtues and pleasure now gentlemen the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into what is the means of happiness and they wanted to say the virtues which would actually be true it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this without more ado but since as I say the issue is not what is the means of happiness but what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature.
I say, both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people, being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end, are in no way an end, but the means to the end. Let us, therefore, now state that this is true, making it our starting point. Suppose, then, someone were to ask someone, though it is a naive question, who is it whom these virtues benefit? Obviously, the answer will be man. Virtues certainly do not make provision for these birds flying past, enabling them to fly well, or for each of the other animals. They do not desert the nature they live and by which they have been engendered. Rather, it is for the sake of this nature that the virtues do everything and exist. Joshua, thanks for reading that. I want us to discuss.
But I want to give it also this content. For as long as I’ve been reading Epicurean philosophy, and I’m sure until the day I die, it is going to be an issue with people who have read Stoicism and other types of philosophies, that virtue is the goal. And so it’s important for us to understand what is the difference between the Epicurean perspective on virtues versus the Stoic perspective on virtues. And it’s what we’ve been saying for these last three episodes and for the entire series. I think we’ve talked a lot about this. I think we’ve talked a lot about it. We’ve talked a lot about it. I think we’ve talked a lot about it. I think we’ve talked a lot about it. I think we’ve talked a lot about it. But what is the right way to describe this relationship? And as this fragment points out, the question is not what’s the means of happiness, but what is happiness? Happiness is a word that ends up just often obscuring the discussion as opposed to really enlightening because everybody has their own.
And so I identify with this section of Diogenes very closely because we’re never going to escape this question. It’s going to be something that’s brought up over and over and over again to the point where you’re going to really feel like shouting at the other person who’s talking. Why don’t you understand this? It is so important. You must not get confused about this. There’s only one goal, and the goal is either virtue or it’s pleasure or it’s something else. It’s something else. But don’t mix. Don’t mix these things up and get the ends and the means confused with each other. Don’t transfer the goal from the place of the means to that of the end. Make sure you’re clear in your mind about what is the means and what is the end. So that’s a brief one there. But Joshua, Martin, what are your reactions to Diogenes’ quote? Martin? I just wanted to answer the question. I agree. Joshua? Yeah. So you mentioned a little bit ago, how do we define happiness and does happiness,
Pleasure, and pleasure mean to you as a person? If you’re a person, what do you mean by happiness and pleasure? What does it mean? What does it mean to you? What is the ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure? What is the ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure? And Joshua, what does it mean to you as a person? I just don’t know. The ultimate goal is happiness and pleasure. That’s the ultimate goal. And so I’m just thinking about the ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure. The ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure is happiness and pleasure. The ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure is happiness and pleasure. The ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure is happiness and pleasure. So the ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure is happiness and pleasure. That’s the ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure. The ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure is happiness and pleasure. The ultimate goal of happiness and pleasure is happiness and pleasure. Thank you very much. Joshua, I think you’re right. I think this is a good way to sum up the problem. Joshua, before you go to the next passage, let me just make the point that that is almost an exact mirror of what we just read in line 54 because Torquatus concluded his section on justice by saying that a life of happiness means nothing else but a life attended by pleasure. And so that’s what Diogenes is saying here too, is that a life of happiness is a life of pleasure. Happiness and pleasure are intimately connected. Well, in the next section. He discusses if virtue is not the end of life, which it’s not. He says, what is it? Who is it to whom these virtues benefit? And he says that the answer is man. He says the virtues exist for men that they don’t apply.
To birds or other animals, they don’t apply to other living things. He says they exist in a sense for the nature which they live and by which they have been engendered, which is to say for human nature. And it doesn’t even make sense to talk about virtue in the context of these other species. Joshua, when you were reading that, I’ve always struggled with this particular section. And I don’t know exactly, even at this moment, what I think is the most important aspect of it. But another way of looking at it might be. That if you focus on the issue of they do not desert the nature with which they live and by which they have been engendered, rather it is for the sake of this nature that the virtues do everything and exist. It could be that what he’s saying is that birds might have their own virtues. But maybe the point is, is that virtue is not an abstraction that you can separate from a bird or from a man. In other words, the point being virtue is not. not an end in itself.
It’s not a thing in itself. There’s no virtue atom. There’s no virtue part of a bird that you can dissect the bird and find the virtue, just like you can’t dissect a man and find the virtue in a man. Is that possibly relevant to this? Or because you see, I’m kind of reacting against the idea that is it necessary to say that birds don’t have virtues? So I’m going with that question. Is that what he’s saying? Is he saying that birds don’t? Have virtues? And if so, why? I think what you said is certainly true. You can’t dissect a bird or a man and find, you know, the virtue organ or the virtue atom. I do think he is more specific here, though, when he says they do not desert the nature which they live and by which they have been engendered, which I think is human nature. And because human nature is the exclusive domain of pleasure or not a pleasure, sorry, a virtue. And because there’s nothing particularly special about humans, it doesn’t make sense to conclude.
The virtue is the end, is the proper end of life, because the proper end of life must be something that arises out of nature. And the only thing that nature gives rise to that is common, not just to humans, but to other animals as well, is pleasure and pain, that those are the key. Martin, what do you make of that sentence where it says the virtues do not make provision for these birds flying past?
Or for each of the other animals, they don’t desert the nature with which they live. Can you make sense of that? Yes. Animals don’t have virtue. Virtue doesn’t matter for animals. OK, so you’re agreeing with Joshua’s initial point is that virtue is not something that he’s applying to an animal at all. No, no. I’m not clear because I can see the possibility that he’s saying that a virtue is a concept that might apply to an animal. But I don’t have a strong opinion about that. So that’s what we’re… That’s what we’re doing. We’re discussing. Especially with this writing, enabling them to fly well. I mean, this is obviously a pun, so making a joke out of it. So it just doesn’t make sense that the birds are virtuous and thereby fly well. So this is just a joke. Well, if he’s talking about the classical virtues of courage, wisdom and temperance.
And the nature of the human being, then it’s not a joke.
And is he just ridiculing the whole idea that there’s somebody that virtues benefit besides the person himself? Is that what he’s doing? Is he just saying that it would be an naive question to ask? Who is it the virtues benefit if it’s not going to benefit the person who we’re talking about? Either benefits him or doesn’t benefit anybody at all. See, to me, I read that as he’s not talking about any given individual, even in an abstract sense. He’s talking about as a broad category. He’s talking about man. It’s people. It’s the human species alone, to our knowledge, that virtue has any benefit for. I have always struggled with whether there’s more meaning to that section than I’m able to put to it. But unfortunately, I haven’t seen much commentary on this to help me with that. And in your defense, what he’s doing here is he’s systematically building to a conclusion and we don’t have the conclusion. As far as I can tell, you know, the sort of the important kernel of the whole thing has been lost. So what he’s doing is… he’s saying in the,
The main section here, he’s just shouting out loudly to everybody because he wants everybody to understand. So clearly that the virtues are not ends in themselves, but a means to the end and the end is pleasure. And then he goes on in the second sentence, calling it a naive question. And if you’re confused still, then you need to ask yourself, well, who is it that the virtues benefit? If not the person,
What I like about diogenes and when Wanda is, he cares so much about this. He’s actually gone to the trouble and expense of building the wall around this sort of portico in this town center, and then assiduously carving the words into rock and not just a few words. I mean, this is a long, this is what is the wall like 60 meters long or something. And then two meters higher. I can’t remember what they decided it was, but it’s, this is a huge inscription. As I say, it’s the largest inscription, surviving from the ancient world. We almost needed an episode or two on that at some point in the future, because there’s a lot of good material in that. It’s a very fascinating area. There’s a lot of good information and pictures on the internet. I think this is an area of Turkey today. That’s difficult for outsiders to get to, but hopefully there’s even more material that at some point will be discovered as the fragments are examined further in the future. I think we’ve talked a little bit on the forum about,
Exactly the city of Rome found, you know, came to be in the state that it’s in with the Colosseum half destroyed. Right. Right. What people were doing for long centuries is just basically using it as a quarry and just cutting chunks off and being like, I need, I need this for my house. So let me drag this over here and mix that with some field stone. And that’s going to be my foundation. And it was kind of the same story with, with this wall is they’re, they’re finding these fragments, you know, they’re, and it’s not like they’ve all collapsed and fallen onto the ground. Uh, uh, directly adjacent to where the carving was. They’re finding them built into houses and stuff as like, we just needed some rock and this was the easiest rock we could get our hands on. But yeah, like you, I hope we see more same with, uh, kilanium papyri. Right. It’d be great to have more. Well, we’re going to run short of time very soon here. Uh, before we go to closing statements though, of the supplemental material that I’d listed in today’s episode notes,
And I’ve included a couple of sections of letters between Cassius Longinus and Cicero, which is relevant to all of what’s going on. Cicero had written this material from Torquatus that we’re reading from not too long before all this is going on. I don’t remember what year Cicero was killed. There’s one particular letter that Cassius wrote to Cicero in what says here, the latter half of January of 45 BC that I think can sort of summarize, where we end up with all of this. The part that I wanted to read is this. It said, Cassius says to Cicero, of course, this is in the middle of the revolutionary period there. I’m glad that our friend Panza was sped on his way by, you know,
And that not only on my own account, but also most assuredly on that of all of our friends, for I hope that men generally will come to understand how much all the world hates cruelty and how much it loves integrity and clemency and that the blessings most eagerly sought and coveted by the bad ultimately find their way to the good. For it is hard to convince men that the good is to be chosen for its own sake, but that pleasure and tranquility of mind, mind is acquired by virtue, justice, and the good is both true and demonstrable. Why Epicurus himself lays it down that to live a life of pleasure is impossible without living a life of virtue and justice. Consequently, Panza, who follows pleasure, keeps his hold on virtue and those also whom you call pleasure lovers, lovers of what is good and lovers of justice and cultivate and keep,
And so on. I wanted to include that for our friend Don. We talk a lot back and forth about how virtues and pleasure relate to each other, but that’s Cassius in the middle of a war that he’s eventually going to lose, citing Epicurean philosophy and talking about how the life of justice and virtue is the way to live a life of pleasure, but not getting confused about what the ultimate goal is between the two. So, okay, anybody have anything you’d like to include before we do a round? Well, the only thing I’m slightly curious about is this Panza character. What was he doing? Do we know? Panza was certainly on the senatorial side. I believe he was a consul at that particular time. If I remember my history, Panza was one of the generals that was leading in one of the armies on,
And, and you know, I don’t think Panza’s a happy ending. I’m afraid, I believe he was obviously all of them were defeated at some point, but that whole episode of the Roman civil war is very confusing, but this would seem to imply that Panza himself was very possibly an Epicurean as well because I don’t know the details of all this. There was apparently a whole series of these Roman generals who served under Caesar who supposedly converted to Epicurean philosophy during this time period, and I think Panza is reputed to be one of them. But I’ve seen references to the fact that somehow in Caesar’s army, there was some kind of Epicurean revival among some of Caesar’s people, a revival in the sense of people getting interested in the philosophy and converting. So that’s something I don’t know nearly as much about as I’d like to, but it’s apparently out there in some of the Roman history. Interesting. Yeah, that’s interesting to know. Well, the reason I asked was because of that bit about leaving the city in military uniform. It’s just that my understanding was that it was actually illegal to be,
Maybe a Rome wearing the cloak of a soldier anyway, who knows? But now that’s that’s interesting. And I do think this passage is for one thing. It’s reflective to me of the fact that there’s just so much stuff out there that I still need to read. Right. And in follow on to that, this has been very memorable to me too. I think Cicero’s response might not have been a response to that particular letter, but the one that I’d read also is this from Cicero to Cassius because they were joking back and forth between themselves. About Epicurean philosophy. And so Cicero wrote to Cassius. He said, I’m only sounding you now to see in what spirit you take it for if you were angry and annoyed as you’ll have more to say and she’ll insist upon your being reinstated in that school of philosophy out of which you have been ousted by violence and an armed force. In this formula, the words within the year are not usually added. So even it’s now two or three years since be which by the blandishments of force,
You sent a notice of divorce to virtue. And yet to whom am I talking? And this is Cicero to Cassius to you, the most gallant gentleman in the world, who ever since you set foot in the forum have done nothing but what bears every mark of the most impressive distinction. Why, in that very school you have selected, I apprehend there is more vitality than I should have supposed only because it has your approval. And so that’s Cicero specifically, making a appreciative remark about the school of Epicurean philosophy and saying that in Epicurean philosophy,
It would be more vitality than I should suppose because he was seeing what Cassius was capable of doing as an Epicurean. I’ve always thought that was a very interesting admission by Cicero. That’s a bromance there, isn’t it? Yeah, there really is. Yeah, this is this is good stuff. I’m glad you posted this. Hey, I’m sure we’re at the end of a normal length and we may have even gone too long. Martin, closing thoughts for today. No, I have not. Joshua. Oh yeah, no, I don’t have much left to say. We’ve been talking about. Justice and the virtues for for quite some time, the the basic core of the argument has not changed from the beginning. The whole idea that the virtues are not an end in themselves, but they are merely instrumental to the proper end, which is pleasure. We’ve got 14 pages of text based on that idea. Yes, this is going to be the end of our third episode devoted to this, and we are going to move on from there in the remainder of this text and the remainder contains a lot more good material to come. as we finish this.
And that’s why we wanted to go through it to supplement what we had done in the Lucretius Tech. So with that, we’ll close for today and we’ll come back next week. All right. Talk to you then. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.