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/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”The 100th episode concludes the justice section of Torquatus’s presentation in De Finibus. Joshua reads lines 53–54, where Torquatus states that justice is not to be wished for on its own account but because it brings agreeableness, and closes with the declaration that pleasure is “the supreme and ultimate good.” The panel then broadens the discussion with supplemental material on the same theme.
Discussion includes: the key insight that natural desires are easily satisfied without wrongdoing; the Robert Bolt play A Man for All Seasons and Thomas More’s argument for defending even the wicked under law (“I give the devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake”) as an illustration of justice being a means, not an end; Thomas More’s Utopia and its surprisingly Epicurean undercurrents; Les Misérables and A Tale of Two Cities as examples of justice pursued to extremes producing injustice; a discussion of martyrdom from an Epicurean perspective, using Giordano Bruno and the Epicurean who confronted Alexander the Oracle-Monger (“what right had he to be the only sane man among madmen?”); Fragment 32 of the Diogenes of Oenoanda inscription — the famous passage where Diogenes says he is “shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks” that pleasure is the end and the virtues are means, not ends; and letters between Cassius Longinus and Cicero during the civil war in which Cassius cites Epicurean philosophy in defense of a life of virtue grounded in pleasure.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
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 review of Lucretius’ poem and we’ve turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero’s On Ends for further elaboration of Epicurean philosophy. Today we continue with that material and conclude our discussion of justice starting around line 53. We also include a discussion of Fragment 32 from the Inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda. Now let’s join Joshua reading today’s text.
Joshua:
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 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:
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. 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. Because these are the last paragraphs in the Torquatus material that are devoted directly to the discussion 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.
So let’s go back and first pay attention to 53 and 54. The first of the material that we’re quoting today is almost 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 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 is in the results which are produced by the wrongdoing.
So he’s linking together this issue that the really important things of life don’t require wrongdoing.
Joshua:
I think you’re right. That is an interesting connection he makes between natural and necessary desires and the way he connects that to justice. I guess part of what he’s saying is that nature doesn’t dispose us to wrongdoing, because it certainly would be a problem if nature structured things so that the things we really need always required wrongdoing to get them. 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 we really need are relatively easy to get without it.
Cassius:
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 that does not invite philosophy as a solution to any problem. If that were the situation, we almost wouldn’t be the kind of species capable of philosophy.
There’s another passage that comes to my mind about this. 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. You do see echoes of several things here.
And to continue with the next sentence: “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. To be the 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 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 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.
Joshua:
Right. And this sentence 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, the same thing he had to say about courage — that they’re not ends in themselves but instrumental toward pursuing what is the proper end of life, which is pleasure. And 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 of weeks previously about Thomas More and Utopia. And the video I posted was a scene from the film based on Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons.
In that scene, there’s a particular moment where Thomas More sends an unscrupulous man away, and the prosecutor is unhappy that he’s let him go. He says he should be locked up. And Thomas More says he should go free until he’s broken the law. 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 persecuted by his enemies. He wants the protection of the law himself.
And what he says in that film is: “I give the devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.” The just thing to do might be to pursue the villain to the ends of the earth and throw aside any law that stands in the way. But for the sake of society, for the sake of safety, for the sake of every one of us who might find ourselves falsely accused — it’s important to moderate our pursuit of justice by the law. 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 an end in itself. 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 goal which is the proper end.
Cassius:
I have forgotten about that. Before I launch into all of that, Martin, do you have any thoughts at this point?
Martin:
Just go ahead. I have nothing to say.
Cassius:
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 I now have a great new respect for Thomas More, because one of the things Utopia features is that More made sure that the society of Utopia got rid of all the lawyers. That’s one of the first things it does. So he’s obviously very perceptive about that.
And yes, I watched the video that Joshua posted. I do recommend everybody look at that clip. It took me a while to get a handle on exactly what was going on because I didn’t have the background of the scene. But by the time you get to the end of that clip, Thomas More is clearly showing that he’s not arguing for the bad man he has just released because he thinks there’s some abstract principle to be gained. He makes it very clear that he is allowing this person the protection of the law because he wants that same protection himself.
And when you actually see the play or watch the film or read about Thomas More’s life, what you will find is that he himself was the victim of a prosecutorial witch hunt. He was not given the kind of deference he was speaking of, which is probably why Robert Bolt chose this particular moment in history as being analogous to the time he was writing.
Joshua:
And Joshua, when you bring up the idea of the prosecutorial witch hunt, one of the things going through my mind is the very popular musical Les Misérables. And I can’t say the French properly — I’m sure I butchered the title — but there’s a prosecutor in that story who I think represents exactly the bad thing we’re talking about. He was going to move heaven and earth to put the hero, Jean Valjean, back in chains 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 give us a better presentation of that story?
Joshua:
No, you’ve got it. I’ve never even seen it, in fact. I think probably I would like it if I had seen it, but I just haven’t. The only thing I’ve seen is the musical version. I will post a clip to the forum because he sings a song — I think it’s called “Stars” or something — where he basically makes the point that raised in an earlier episode: “let justice be done, though the heavens fall” — the idea being that he is willing to do anything to enforce the law, regardless of the human consequences. And I think that’s what Epicurus is arguing against — you do care about the consequences of enforcing the law, and if it’s going to result in something unjust, that matters.
Cassius:
And this is a good example. I assume Les Misérables takes place during the French Revolution? It does. And the story is about how the legal system — having once labeled someone a criminal — locks him into that identity forever, regardless of what he becomes afterward.
And I think the same concept is expressed in another text deriving its setting from the French Revolution, which is A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, in which the climax 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 philosophy — Epicurus says the wise man might even go as far as dying for a friend.
So there we’ve got your illustration from Thomas More, Utopia, Les Misérables, A Tale of Two Cities. This is a common theme in Western literature: 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 understood that the pursuit of any virtue as an end in itself can turn out to produce the worst kind of practical result. You could probably just go down a list of most classic works of literature and in many cases what you’ve got is characters who pursue some vision of justice or virtue single-mindedly without regard for the consequences — and it leads to disaster. And I think that’s what Epicurus is saying about the pursuit of justice, and about virtue in general.
So maybe we go to section 54, which is basically summarizing the very same point again. I’ve substituted the word “accolades” here for “encomium” — this is where that word came in from the original text.
“But if the 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, and 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 — meaning pleasure — is the supreme and ultimate good, and that a life of happiness means nothing else but a life attended by pleasure.”
And there’s lots of phrases in that section you could pick out and continue to hammer the same point. It opens by saying that the accolades of the virtues, which the eloquence of all other philosophers runs riot over — he’s making the point that all these other Greek philosophers, and most philosophers in Western civilization, just go immediately to this point of trying to define what they think virtue is and set that up as a goal and as an abstraction to be pursued of and for itself. And it just leads to disaster over and over again.
Joshua:
And I think one thing 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 there? Someone harping on virtue. 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 that Epicureans are constantly scooping up people all across the crossroads — the implication being that Epicurean philosophy is reaching ordinary people far more effectively than the high-minded stuff.
And 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 books that were written were not thought fit to be preserved. And so we have a 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. And when you read Greek drama, philosophers do not come out well on stage. They are made to look like fools repeatedly. And I think that’s exactly the kind of thing Torquatus is talking about here.
Cassius:
And I also see there, Joshua, an echo of what Torquatus has previously said in line 36, where he already made that point and is now hammering it home here — that all these stories and all this praise of virtue as its own goal is just meaningless, and can even be harmful, unless you look behind it and think about what the ultimate goal of what you’re doing really is.
One thing I’m going to slip in here — I do have to give Cicero credit for the fact that when he was quaestor in Lilybaeum in Sicily, he set himself the task in his free time of finding the lost grave of Archimedes. So his interest in the past is not exclusively related to praising the virtue of illustrious men. He does sort of walk the walk there. And I’m talking about giving Cicero his due — he was obviously extremely proud of himself and likes to be praised, which is off-putting, but he did seem to at least make an effort to live up to some of his own goals. He didn’t seem like as much of a hypocrite as some of the others.
Joshua:
Right, and for Cicero in particular it would have been the height of hypocrisy to be as corrupt as some of his peers. It’s 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.” That almost is a reference back to some of the epistemological and canonical aspects of pleasure as something that you feel — not something that requires 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.
Cassius:
I think in most cases you cannot say the same thing about justice or wisdom. They’re not automatic.
Joshua:
No, really, there’s only one other thing you can talk about in that way, and it’s the other side of the same question — and it’s pain. Pleasure and pain do occupy a space of their own, and the space they occupy is more immediate to the living creature than things like justice or temperance or courage.
Cassius:
I think this is really the foundation of the whole argument, because that’s the thing that distinguishes pleasure from these other arguable goals: 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 abstractions such as virtues 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 them.
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, but the feeling is the feeling.
Joshua:
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 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 talk about something that 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?
Cassius:
Not really a rich history of Epicureans being martyrs, you mean?
Joshua:
Yeah, yeah. Or even whether there’s any value in it.
For me, my initial reaction — and I can’t think of many ancient Epicureans martyred for the cause — one of the figures I’ve always admired, despite his not being a thorough Epicurean, was Giordano Bruno. He was a friar in Italy in the Renaissance who had read Lucretius and was taken with the idea that the universe was infinite and eternal. Of course, an infinite and eternal universe is the death knell for the kind of desert monotheism that was dominant in Europe at the time. So he formulated this idea that the other bodies you see in the night sky are places in the universe similar to where we live, that the universe is infinite and eternal, that it might be inhabited in other worlds, that it is made of atoms and void. So he really did adopt a large measure of Epicurean physics in particular.
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 de’ Fiori in Rome. And nowadays there is a statue in the Campo de’ Fiori of Giordano Bruno with his hood pulled up, sort of glowering in the direction of Vatican City. They’ve placed the statue so it faces Vatican City. So for people who are aligned with inquiry and interested in science and things like this, Giordano Bruno has kind of become a martyr for science, as it were.
So this raises the question of how martyrdom should figure in Epicurean philosophy. Do you have any response to that?
Martin:
Well, it would be difficult to see under which circumstances being a martyr would be conducive to pleasure. So that would be something really weird.
Cassius:
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?
Joshua:
Well, that’s the interesting question, isn’t it? Because dying for a philosophy doesn’t have quite the same eternal importance as dying for your faith. So I almost think the Epicurean perspective here would be: keep your head down, really.
Cassius:
Well, I don’t know about that. I think you’ve certainly hit the big point — martyrdom implies you’re giving your life for a cause, as opposed to for a friend necessarily. And there must be this implication of a cause, which therefore means some kind of an abstraction to some degree.
Let me ask you this question, because Socrates is another figure who was unjustly executed — made to swallow the hemlock, though he 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 is that quite martyrdom in the same way as Christian martyrdom? Because I don’t think Socrates was dying for a cause in the same way. Or he might have considered himself dying for the cause of free inquiry.
What seems to me to be my first response is that there’s a big difference between being forced to give your life for that of a friend versus making a decision to die for a cause. It seems like in most cases, in giving your life for a friend, you’re kind of forced to do it by circumstances. But in the Socrates example — I think it’s pretty clear that he didn’t have to die. 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 survives somewhere else.
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 will risk their lives for what they believe in — and of course we can start with the example of Cassius Longinus himself. But a martyr is one of these Christians who willingly goes into the lion’s den to continue saying that he’s a Christian to the last moment because he won’t renounce Jesus. And to me that’s what I’d always think of as a martyr. I would think in most cases an Epicurean is going to fight and attempt to arrange the circumstances so he doesn’t have to die. He’s not going to just walk into some situation and willingly give up his life to show that his mind can triumph over pain or death.
Martin:
I think actually he died for a cause. It may not be an easy cause to name, but I think it’s also for his credibility — that he would uphold what he was basically fighting for with his teachings.
Cassius:
Yeah, and as I think about it, maybe I’m being a little harsh on Socrates in the sense that — okay, an Epicurean is going to make 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? 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. So I guess an Epicurean could make that kind of a calculation — that his credibility and his future reputation among other people are so important to him that he wants to preserve those even at the cost of his death. So yeah, you could make an Epicurean argument for that kind of end-of-life decision.
Martin:
I don’t think we can easily construct something like this for an Epicurean. Because as an Epicurean you don’t have to have credibility with respect to virtue. So every other Epicurean will understand it then, that under this condition you don’t uphold whatever virtue was. Credibility is just not a thing that justifies sacrificing your life. It just doesn’t make sense to sacrifice your life for credibility.
Joshua:
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 isle because everyone remembers his name. And Socrates, by virtue of having given 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 — something that would not feature into the calculation of an Epicurean.
Cassius:
I was agreeing with everything you said until the very last comment. The reason I wanted to keep that possibility open is this question of what is the role of abstractions such as virtue in the first place. I know that in the past we have frequently talked as if abstractions are of necessity just not as important as pleasure or pain. But I think there’s an intersection of the two when you start thinking about it. 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, but even in that context of religion, it’s part of the Letter to Menoeceus that it’s better to believe in a false religion than 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 — can you not get so attached to your goal that the pleasure 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 the goal which you hold so highly?
Joshua:
Yeah, certainly that’s a possibility. And of course you’re also considering the generations of people coming after you and considering that quite possibly by making a courageous stand when you did, you enabled them to do the same.
Cassius:
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. But at this moment, now, while you’re alive, it is a tremendously pleasing thought that this future esteem could be coming to you. I believe there’s a reference to that somewhere in the texts — appreciation of things that will happen in the future being a pleasure to you now.
But Martin, I think you’re right that we really would need a specific case where we really can see this. In the abstract, this remains a possibility which is very unlikely to happen. We would need to construct real cases where this would make sense.
Martin:
And there’s another way I think that we can explain this further for us. 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 — similarly to saving a child from danger, which we discussed in the past — an Epicurean would have no hesitation about. I meant this in a similar way: that we don’t need to save them maybe from an immediate danger, but from some potential danger in the future. And they will be glad if we make sacrifices now to prevent it.
Joshua:
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 of Samosata, who wrote Alexander the Oracle-Monger. 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 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 to have Lucian killed. And it was only the captain’s bad conscience that kept him from going through with it.
But we do have a clear case here where Lucian is putting himself in danger to stand up to what he — quite fairly — sees as insanity: a man who was pushing people out of their money to give oracles from a talking snake.
Cassius:
Joshua, I’m glad you brought up Alexander the Oracle-Monger because there’s also the other example in that story about the Epicurean who confronted Alexander and was almost stoned to death. And Lucian makes the comment that the Epicurean should not have done that. 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. Lucian says that this Epicurean, by confronting Alexander in a crowd of his followers, had no right to be “the only sane man proud amid a crowd of madmen.” Yes, yes. That particular man certainly departed from 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 think about Socrates taking the hemlock 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 and so humorous at times that I sometimes wonder whether he’s making a joke about the whole thing — whether he’s actually admiring what the guy did. I certainly think it’s ironic and rather scathing. But the Epicurean in 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 to expose the oracle.
What Lucian seems to be saying in his own actions is that the way to attack this particular problem is not to present yourself as someone who’s going to die for it, but to stand slightly aloof from it and just satirize it incessantly — and hope that intelligent people will eventually understand what you’re doing.
Cassius:
You know what, you’re hitting pretty close to home in our own Epicurean work. Because there are 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 into Times Square and douse ourselves with gasoline as martyrs to Epicurean philosophy. You have to approach these things intelligently. There’s a time and a place and a way to do everything. Not making yourself a martyr like the person in Alexander the Oracle-Monger was about to become. This is about making the right risk calculation.
Martin:
This is about making the right risk calculation, and taking some risk is okay. What Lucian did — taking a path where he would have had a little bit of a risk but not a high probability of death — that’s different from showing up alone among a crowd of madmen and telling them something that angered them. That had a higher probability of being very ineffective, plus putting the person at a high risk. Nowadays we have similar cases in various countries where people try to challenge religious performances before crowds of followers. And that is just the wrong approach. You need to choose a time and a place where your words are going to be considered rationally.
Cassius:
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 walk up to the front and start giving a lecture on atheism. I’m not saying an Epicurean would do that — but there 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. One of the ones I think is most clear on this topic comes from the Inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda. It is Fragment 32. In our episode notes we’ll have a link to the inscription website, which is one of the best websites for the text of the wall of Diogenes of Oenoanda — which would be a whole episode in itself to talk about.
But Fragment 32 contains a section that seems very clearly directed at what we’ve been discussing. Joshua has volunteered to read this, because it’s talking about shouting.
Joshua:
Now, the context of course being that this is a fragment — not in context with a lot of text before and after it — but it’s apparently well preserved enough that this Martin Ferguson Smith translation stands clearly 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, happiness, and pleasure is a core topic, and this phrase occurs in Fragment 32. Let me give one more little tidbit about who Diogenes was. We only know about him from this inscription and from the location of the inscription in what would have been a very expensive area of the town. The conclusion is he was probably a wealthy merchant or similar, but he was certainly an Epicurean as you learn from his introduction to the inscription. This is the longest surviving inscription from the ancient world. So that’s probably enough introduction.
He says: “I shall discuss folly shortly in connection with 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 — 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 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.”
Cassius:
Joshua, thanks for reading that. I want us to discuss it, but first I want to give it this context. 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.
What is the right way to describe this relationship? 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 often just obscuring the discussion as opposed to enlightening it, because everybody has their own definition.
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 again to the point where you’re going to really feel like shouting at the other person: why don’t you understand this? There’s only one goal, and the goal is either virtue or it’s pleasure — 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.
Joshua, Martin, what are your reactions to Diogenes’ quote?
Martin:
I agree.
Joshua:
Yeah. I think 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: a life of happiness is a life of pleasure. Happiness and pleasure are intimately connected.
Cassius:
In the next section, Diogenes discusses — if virtue is not the end of life, which it’s not, what is it? Who is it to whom these virtues benefit? And he says that the answer is man. He says virtues exist for men; they don’t apply to birds or other animals. They exist for the nature with 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 other species.
Joshua, when you were reading that, I’ve always struggled with this particular section. But another way of looking at it might be this: that the point Diogenes is making is that virtue is not an abstraction that you can separate from a bird or from a man. There’s no virtue atom. You can’t dissect the bird and find the virtue, just like you can’t dissect a man and find virtue in a man. Is that possibly relevant to this? Because I’m kind of reacting against the idea that it’s necessary to say that birds don’t have virtues. Is that what he’s saying?
Joshua:
I think what you said is certainly true — you can’t dissect a bird or a man and find the virtue organ or the virtue atom. But I do think he is more specific here when he says “they do not desert the nature with which they live and by which they have been engendered,” which I think is human nature. And because 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 — those are the key.
Cassius:
Martin, what do you make of that sentence where it says the virtues do not make provision for these birds flying past?
Martin:
Animals don’t have virtue. Virtue doesn’t matter for animals.
Cassius:
Okay, so you’re agreeing with Joshua’s initial point that virtue is not something Diogenes is applying to an animal at all. But I don’t have a strong opinion myself about whether Diogenes is saying that virtue might apply to an animal. What he does with “enabling them to fly well” — that’s obviously a pun. He’s making a joke of it.
Martin:
So this is just a joke. You see, 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.
Cassius:
And is he just ridiculing the whole idea that there’s somebody that virtues benefit besides the person himself? Either it benefits him or it doesn’t benefit anybody at all.
I have always struggled with whether there’s more meaning to that section than I’m able to put to it. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much commentary on this to help me. And in our defense, what he’s doing here is systematically building to a conclusion, and we don’t have the conclusion — as far as I can tell, the sort of important kernel of the whole thing has been lost.
What he’s doing in this main section is shouting out loudly to everybody because he wants everybody to understand 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.” If you’re confused still, then you need to ask yourself: well, who is it that the virtues benefit? And if not the person, then what?
Joshua:
What I like about Diogenes of Oenoanda is that he cares so much about this. He’s actually gone to the trouble and expense of building this wall around a sort of portico in his town center, and then assiduously carving the words into rock — and not just a few words. This is the largest surviving inscription from the ancient world. We almost need an episode or two on that at some point in the future, because there’s a lot of good material in it. 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.
Cassius:
And I think the fragments are still being found built into houses — just like how for centuries people used the Colosseum as a quarry. They’re finding fragments of the inscription built into walls and foundations. They just needed some rock and this was the easiest rock they could get their hands on. But yes, I hope we see more. Same with the Herculaneum Papyri — it would be great to have more.
Well, we’re going to run short of time very soon here. Before we go to closing statements though, of the supplemental material I’d listed in today’s episode notes — I’ve included a couple of sections of letters between Cassius Longinus and Cicero, which are relevant to all of what’s going on. Cicero had written this material from Torquatus not too long before all this is going on, and there’s one particular letter that Cassius wrote to Cicero in the latter half of January of 45 BC that I think can sort of summarize where we end up with all of this.
It says: “I’m glad that our friend Pansa was sped on his way. And 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 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, Pansa, 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, 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 Longinus — 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.
Joshua:
The only thing I’m slightly curious about is this Pansa character. What was he doing? Do we know?
Cassius:
Pansa was certainly on the Senatorial side. I believe he was a consul at that particular time. I don’t think Pansa had a happy ending. And you know, this would seem to imply that Pansa himself was very possibly an Epicurean, because there was apparently a whole series of these Roman generals who served under Caesar who supposedly converted to Epicurean philosophy during this time period. I’ve seen references to the fact that somehow in Caesar’s circle there was some kind of Epicurean revival among some of his people — 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.
Joshua:
Interesting. That’s interesting to know.
Cassius:
And I do think this passage is reflective of the fact that there’s just so much stuff out there that I still need to read. And in follow-on to that — this has been very memorable to me, and I think Cicero’s response to that particular letter is this, from Cicero to Cassius. They were joking back and forth with each other about Epicurean philosophy. And so Cicero wrote to Cassius: “I’m only sounding you now to see in what spirit you take it, for if you were angry and annoyed, you’ll have more to say and shall insist upon your being reinstated in that school of philosophy out of which you have been ousted by violence and armed force. In this formula, the words ‘within the year’ are not usually added. So it is now two or three years since — by the blandishments of force — you sent a notice of divorce to virtue.” And then: “And yet, to whom am I talking? 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 an appreciative remark about the school of Epicurean philosophy and saying that it would have more vitality than he should suppose because he was seeing what Cassius was capable of doing as an Epicurean.
Joshua:
It’s a bromance there, isn’t it?
Cassius:
Yeah, there really is. This is good stuff. I’m glad you posted all this.
Hey, I’m sure we’re at the end of a normal length and may have even gone too long. Martin, closing thoughts for today.
Martin:
No, I have nothing.
Joshua:
I don’t have much left to say. We’ve been talking about justice and the virtues for quite some time. 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 are merely instrumental to the proper end, which is pleasure. We’ve got a good deal of text based on that idea.
Cassius:
Yes, this is going to be the end of our third episode devoted to this. And we are going to move on from there — the remainder contains a lot more good material to come, and that’s why we wanted to go through it to supplement what we had done in the Lucretius text.
So with that, we’ll close for today and we’ll come back next week. All right. Talk to you then. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
Martin:
Thanks. Bye.
Joshua:
Bye.