Episode 101 - Corollaries to the Doctrines of Epicurus - Part One
Date: 12/22/21
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2283-episode-one-hundred-one-corollaries-to-the-doctrines-part-one/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”A shortened holiday episode with only Cassius and Martin present. Martin reads De Finibus lines 55 and the first sentences of 56, where Torquatus states three corollaries: (1) people do not err about pleasure and pain themselves but about the means by which these results are brought about; (2) mental pleasures and pains arise from bodily pleasures and pains, so Epicureans who deny this are out of court as “unskilled thinkers”; (3) nevertheless, mental pleasures and pains greatly surpass bodily ones in their influence on happiness and wretchedness, because the mind perceives past and future while the body perceives only the present — making anticipated eternal torment or joy far more potent than any momentary physical sensation.
Cassius uses this occasion to reject the characterization that Epicureans care only about bodily pleasures, pointing to this passage as direct evidence that mental pleasure and pain are central to the Epicurean life. Cassius closes with end-of-year reflections on the podcast, appreciation for Martin’s unbroken attendance at every episode, and the reminder that Epicureans should conduct all their discussions “as if Epicurus were watching.”
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 101 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius and together with our panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and we’ll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.
At this point in our podcast, we’ve completed our first line-by-line review of the poem and we’ve turned to a presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero’s On Ends. Today we move past the issue of the relationship between virtue and pleasure and we begin the discussion of several important corollaries to Epicurean doctrine. We have a special shortened edition today due to the year-end holidays, but we’ll be back soon with our full-length episodes. For today, let’s join Martin reading today’s text.
Martin:
I will concisely explain what are the corollaries of these sure and well-grounded opinions. People make no mistake about the standards of good and evil themselves — that is, about pleasure or pain — but err in these matters through ignorance of the means by which these results are to be brought about.
Now we admit that mental pleasures and pains spring from bodily pleasures and pains. So I allow what you alleged just now: that any of our school who differ from this opinion are out of court. And indeed I see there are many such, but they are unskilled thinkers.
I grant that although mental pleasure brings us joy and mental pain brings us trouble, yet each feeling takes its rise in the body and is dependent on the body. Though it does not follow that the pleasures and pains of the mind do not greatly surpass those of the body.
With the body indeed we can perceive only what is present to us at the moment, but with the mind the past and future also. For granting that we feel just as great pain when our body is in pain, still mental pain may be very greatly intensified if we imagine some everlasting and unbounded evil to be menacing us.
And we may apply the same argument to pleasure, so that it is increased by the absence of such fears. By this time, so much at least is plain: that the intensest pleasure or the intensest annoyance felt in the mind exerts more influence on the happiness or wretchedness of life than either feeling when present for an equal space of time in the body.
Cassius:
Martin, thank you for reading that. To our listeners, today is December the 19th of 2021 when we’re recording this. And due to the Christmas and holiday season, we have only Martin and I of the panel here today. So we’re not going to attempt to read more than what Martin has just read and we’ll probably have a very brief episode. But we don’t want to cancel the episode entirely — we have people who subscribe to the podcast and will expect to see it appear in their podcast application. And we don’t want to disappoint people who look for one approximately once a week.
So Martin and I are going to talk about what he just read for a few minutes, and maybe say some things in general about how much we appreciate our listeners who download the podcast and listen each week and who comment to us on EpicureanFriends. And we’ll have a more normal length episode in the coming weeks after things settle down from the holidays.
For today, Martin has read lines 55 and the first lines of 56 in the Torquatus material. And when we started out, I was thinking that we could read that and there would not be much in it. But as I listened to Martin read it, there’s so much in all of this material.
What we’re doing now: we finished in this Torquatus section the discussion of the relationship of pleasure and the virtues. He’s gone through each of the four classical virtues and explained how pleasure is the end of each of them. And he’s come to the end of that section. And so he says here that he’s now going to explain some of the corollaries of these basic points.
The first thing he says is repeated from earlier — people don’t mistake the standard of good and evil in themselves. In other words, they recognize pleasure and pain without a problem. But they err in the more abstract issues through ignorance of the means by which pleasure and pain are to be brought about.
And so he’s got a series of comments that are very interesting about the ways he thinks people make mistakes in evaluating pleasure and pain. The first of those is: we admit that mental pleasures and pains spring from bodily pleasures and pains. And anybody who wants to say that that’s not true — and there are some people even within the Epicurean school who have different opinions, he says — those people he calls unskilled thinkers and says you have to understand that mental pleasures do spring from bodily pleasures and bodily functions. So there’s always this unbreakable tie between what we do mentally and the physical operations of our bodies. If you think there’s a break from those two things, then you’re just out of court as an Epicurean.
Martin, you jump in on me anytime when you want to comment. But since it’s just the two of us, I’ll try to set the stage and then make sure you come into the conversation too. That issue has come up a lot in the past — the issue of the relationship between mental pleasures and bodily pleasures. We think everything is material, the result of combinations of matter and void. So everything, including every thought we have, is ultimately a manifestation of material interactions. But then there’s also the other level of just thinking about your personal thoughts versus the feelings of your body, like your hand or your foot or your kneecap. Any thought there, Martin, on the relationship of mental pleasures and bodily pleasures or pains?
Martin:
Actually, I might have to have an opinion on it, because for me it just doesn’t matter, especially this one.
Cassius:
Yeah, I would expect that you would not have much problem with that, as scientifically oriented as you are. I think the issue he’s discussing is that some people are disposed to think that the mind and the spirit are somehow not bodily — that they’re not a function of physical operations. That would probably be a religious viewpoint, that there’s some kind of a divine spark or that there’s some kind of totally different substance that the soul is made of and that the mind might be something you could sever from the body. I think that’s what he’s doing — emphasizing that that cannot be true.
Martin:
Yeah, but the thing is — there is a distinction even for Epicureans. It makes sense to make a distinction between mental pleasures and bodily pleasures, especially when you characterize the differences. From that point they’re clearly separate. But whether now all mental pleasures spring from bodily pleasures or not — it just doesn’t bother me. Maybe some do, maybe some don’t. Doesn’t matter.
Cassius:
Right. I would think you’re talking about just that you can categorize things differently. It certainly makes sense to categorize the operations that go on inside our mind as different than the operations that go inside our toes or our feet. But ultimately there’s a connection.
I’ll proceed to the next point, which I think is what he’s going to focus on for most of this paragraph. He says: “I grant that although mental pleasure brings us joy and mental pain brings us trouble, yet each feeling takes its rise in the body and is dependent on the body.” So that’s a point everybody should basically be in agreement on — that there’s a bodily connection between all of our pleasures and pains. We’re not going to have pleasures and pains outside of our body or apart from it. The soul does not exist outside the body.
But here’s a point that is not intuitive for everybody until they start thinking about it. He says: “though it does not follow that the pleasures and pains of the mind do not greatly surpass those of the body.” In other words, just because the pleasures of the mind are dependent on the body, that doesn’t mean that the pleasures and pains of the body are greater than those of the mind. Because he says: “with the body indeed we can perceive only what is present to us at the moment, but with the mind the past and future also. For granting that we feel just as great a pain when our body is in pain, still mental pain may be very greatly intensified if we imagine some everlasting and unbounded evil to be menacing us.”
I think what he’s talking about there, Martin — specifically when he talks about “everlasting and unbounded evil” — he’s saying the mind can make you think that you’re going to be tormented in hell for an eternity or rewarded in heaven for an eternity. When the mind amplifies its concerns by thinking about eternity, the mind’s impact on our pleasure or pain can be greatly more than the body’s, since the body doesn’t really have memory — the body just feels what it’s feeling at the moment. Would you agree with that?
Martin:
That is one of the big things where they’re different.
Cassius:
Where they’re different — that the mind has memory of past and anticipation of future, while the body only has the present?
Martin:
Yes, exactly.
Cassius:
Well, there’s only one more sentence left that we read today. He says: “By this time so much at least is plain, that the intensest pleasure or the intensest annoyance felt in the mind exerts more influence on the happiness or wretchedness of life than either feeling when present for an equal space of time in the body.”
Now, I personally think that this is a very, very important passage, because a lot of times in Epicurean philosophy we get confronted with the question: all you’re interested in is the pleasure of the moment and bodily pleasures. And if you have secured yourself against bodily pain and secured yourself a supply of bodily pleasures in those departments, you’ve done all that an Epicurean should really care to do. And I always reject that interpretation. If somebody wanted to argue it, this is a passage I would cite, because he’s saying that the activities of the mind exert more influence on happiness or wretchedness than pain or pleasure that occupies an equal space of time in the body.
You certainly can’t go too far with that — you’ve got to have the body sustained and out of pain and experiencing the basic pleasures of food and water and so forth in order to survive. But I think it’s pretty clear that he’s saying you don’t want to discount the pain and pleasure that comes through your mental activities, because those can have more influence on the happiness or wretchedness of life than the pain or pleasure of the body.
Before I go too much further on that, Martin, what do you think?
Martin:
Yes, I mean, I would agree with that one too.
Cassius:
Well, I’ve mentioned this several times over the podcast and written about it on EpicureanFriends that I think sometimes, as we discuss the issue of abstractions, we can sometimes come across as saying that abstractions are something negative and that we shouldn’t worry about. But a passage like this would emphasize that the activities of the mind are extremely important in our ultimate happiness or wretchedness of life. And if somebody wanted to criticize Epicurus and say that all you’re interested in is wine, women, and song or the actual physical pleasures of life, this would be one of the best passages to cite to make clear that the Epicureans understood fully that the activities of the mind — the pleasure or pain of the mind — exert even more influence on happiness or wretchedness than just simply the pain and pleasure of the body.
I guess what he’s saying specifically here is that mental pain and pleasure of a minute in the mind can exert much more happiness or wretchedness than a minute of pain or pleasure in the body. And probably I should say “can,” because it depends on what type of activity you’re engaged in. But I don’t think there’s any way around the emphasis here: mental pleasure and pain should not be discounted. Based on this passage, pursuing mental pleasure and avoiding mental pain is even more important to us than pursuing physical pleasure and pain — while always remembering that you have to stay alive and you have to have the basics of life in order to experience anything beyond the basics.
Martin:
Yes, it’s like that. So I have no contention on this one.
Cassius:
Yeah. I hesitate being so sweeping in some of that characterization because it takes me back to thinking about how dangerous it is in Epicurean philosophy to take an absolute position on a particular pleasure or pain or a particular activity. It seems like you’ve always got to evaluate it in the context of what’s going to happen to a particular person at a particular time. If you were just simply to say “mental pain and pleasure is more important in life than physical pain and pleasure,” would that be going too far?
Martin:
Yes.
Cassius:
Because it sounds like some kind of a formula that a Stoic or Plato would come up with. It’s overbroad unless you have a context to it. You’ve got to understand the position a particular person is in at a particular time and place. Because everybody at every moment in every place cannot take the position that reading the Letter to Menoeceus is the most important thing they can do at that particular time. It may be that they need to go out and get something to eat or repair their roof or make sure they have clothing or fire for the cold weather.
You can’t sweepingly say that something is always true to everybody at every moment. So with that limitation, I think we’ve still got a very important point. An Epicurean is not going to stop by securing a roof over his head and enough food to eat and enough air to breathe and enough water to drink. He’s going to be concerned about his mental pleasures and pain as well — and in many circumstances even more so.
Martin:
It’s nicely described and agreeable.
Cassius:
Right. I think so too. So if any of the other panelists that we have, or anybody on the forum, wants to ask a question about 55 and the first sentence of 56, we can come back in the next episode or future episodes and address those. I agree with what you just said, Martin — it’s relatively uncontroversial but also relatively important, especially for people who are just starting to read Epicurean philosophy. But once you think it through, it should be non-controversial. And if somebody thinks that it is controversial, then we might turn to what Torquatus has said here and consider those people to be unskilled thinkers, as he says early in 55. Because it ought to be clear — it would actually be an absurd position to argue that an Epicurean is only concerned about bodily pleasures. No matter how often that is repeated, it’s never been supported by the text.
Okay. Well, as I said when we started, we’re shorthanded because of the end-of-year holidays. And so we will have an abbreviated podcast today. But what we would take a moment to say here is — speaking for myself — how much I appreciate everybody who listens to the podcast, everybody who comments or asks questions on either our EpicureanFriends.com forum or any of the other locations on the internet where we sometimes post.
At the end of the year, you reflect on how much time has been invested. It’s been a big project to get to where we are. We’re now at our 101st episode. I never really thought we would get to 100 episodes when we first started this. But I do think that the podcast has been very helpful for all of us — certainly for me — in talking through things with people who are like-minded and improving our ability to understand and articulate some of these positions.
In fact, somebody made a comment to me just this past week that called to mind that we’ve never represented ourselves on this podcast to be experts in philosophy or even experts in Epicurean philosophy. We’re just advanced readers who have spent a lot of time reading Epicurus and attempting to study it for ourselves. None of us are trained philosophers. So we can’t claim that anything we say on the podcast is the latest scholarship from researchers who have spent a lifetime studying Greek and Latin and who know all the sources.
But I would say that I’m very pleased and even proud of the way we have had — over the last two years in discussing Epicurean philosophy — a very good attitude and tone and a supportive and encouraging atmosphere here on the podcast, which I hope we can always maintain, not only on the podcast but also on EpicureanFriends.com. Because it would be very uncharacteristic and contradictory for an Epicurean to be sour and mean-spirited and destructive in the way they argue, and disrespectful. We joke a lot. And obviously Epicurus himself had some very negative things to say about Platonism and Aristotle and other philosophers. And there are a lot of very emotional issues involved in many of the positions we discuss. But that doesn’t mean we can’t convey them in a positive spirit and an encouraging, benevolent spirit for everybody who participates or who listens to the podcast.
I forget the source of it, Martin, but I believe it was Seneca who recorded in Latin that the Epicureans used to say, “Do everything as if Epicurus were watching.” And although that’s obviously an analogy because he’s not watching, it’s still a good rule of thumb — that you want to conduct yourself in all your discussions as if you were holding yourself to the highest possible standards.
Anything in general you’d like to say, Martin, as we begin to close for today?
Martin:
No, nothing to add.
Cassius:
Well, let me say this specifically to and about you, Martin. You’ve made every episode that we’ve ever done of the podcast. And I really especially appreciate your dedication to it and your participation and all of the insight and perspective that you bring. Most of the rest of us are based in the United States and we have a particular perspective and background. But having you with your orientation in Germany, your European background, and spending a lot of time in Asia as well — you’re a real world traveler compared to most of us, certainly compared to me. I really appreciate your having been so regular on the podcast and all of your contributions. I hope we’ll continue for a long time to come.
Martin:
Yeah, it’s my pleasure. And unless I’m prevented by something really big and unexpected, I will keep going.
Cassius:
Good to know. Good to hear. And we may run into the same thing next week due to the New Year’s holiday. And if we do, we’ll probably do another short episode. But by the beginning of the year, we should be back to full strength with a full panel. And we’ll continue on through the rest of Torquatus — we’re probably three quarters of the way through the material here.
But we haven’t renamed the podcast because I’ve always considered Lucretius to be basically an apostle of Epicurus. His poem is all about transmitting Epicurean philosophy to other people. So I think it will always remain a good example to follow — that what we want to do is study Epicurus and be able to articulate his ideas to other people, which is I think what Lucretius was doing. He was not writing a poem just for the sake of writing a poem. He was transmitting Epicurean philosophy in an attractive way that would increase his own pleasure and the pleasure of people who were listening to him. And so I hope we’ll be able to do a little bit of that here.
OK, well, with that, we’ll close for today. Be back next week and we’ll continue on. Thank you, Martin. Talk to you soon.
Martin:
Thanks and bye.
Cassius:
Bye.
Martin:
Bye.