Episode 105 - More From Torquatus On The Key Doctrines of Epicurus
Date: 01/19/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2339-episode-one-hundred-five-more-from-torquatus-on-the-key-doctrines-of-epicurus/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Martin reads De Finibus line 62 (the passage on the wise man being continually happy), and the panel goes through each element carefully. The passage mirrors similar lists in Diogenes Laertius and is treated as one of the most authentic, condensed statements of what the ancient Epicureans considered foundational.
Discussion covers: “He keeps his passions within bounds” — the only Epicurean reason not to pursue a pleasure is that it brings greater pain; “About death, he is indifferent” — carefully distinguished from indifference about when one dies (the state of being dead has no fear because you are not there to experience it); “He holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread” — the Epicurean gods are not deistic clockmakers, they did not create the universe, and imputing such attributes to them is actually impious; “He has no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life if that be the better course” — the contextual Epicurean analysis of when dying might be the better option, including giving one’s life for a friend, with an important caveat about not taking suicide lightly; and the passage on the wise man’s pleasure from comparing his life with the fool’s (the opening of Lucretius Book 2, “it is sweet to watch the ship struggling at sea”).
The episode closes with Sidney Morgenbesser’s famous quip — “Who do you think you are, Kant?” — as an illustration of why Epicurus’s contextual approach is superior to the Kantian categorical imperative. Cassius previews the next episode: a focus on Epicurean epistemology (lines 63–64), the role of the senses, and the Epicurean rejection of pure logic as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 105 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 review of the poem and we’ve turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero’s On Ends. Today we return to Torquatus and look more closely at his list of core Epicurean doctrines. Now let’s join Martin reading today’s text.
Martin:
But these doctrines may be stated in a certain manner so as not merely to disarm our criticism, but actually to secure our sanction. For this is the way in which Epicurus represents the wise man as continually happy. He keeps his passions within bounds. About death he is indifferent. He holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread. He has no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life if that be the better course.
Furnished with these advantages, he is continually in a state of pleasure, and there is in truth no moment at which he does not experience more pleasure than pain. For he remembers the past with thankfulness and the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness. Nor is he in dependence on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present. He is also very far removed from those defects of character which I quoted a little time ago. And when he compares the fool’s life with his own, he feels great pleasure. And pains, if any, befall him have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reasons for joy than for vexation.
Cassius:
Martin, thank you for reading that for us today. We’ve just been talking before we started recording this episode, and we’re going to attack these passages a little differently than we normally would. We would normally read the entire section that we’re aiming to talk about today and then come back and start at the beginning. But there’s one thing about these passages that I think is worth stressing.
This section of Torquatus is, in my view, probably one of the best, most authentic, most reliable statements of what’s really important in Epicurean philosophy from the ancient Epicurean’s point of view. And we’ve pointed out in discussions on the forum that there’s a mirror here between what we’re about to discuss and what Diogenes Laertius has preserved in his biography of Epicurus as sort of a list of his doctrines. We’re going to talk about the wise man, and there’s all sorts of questions about whether these things apply only to the sage or whether it applies to everybody. But the point I think I would want to emphasize as we start today is that these are the topics that the Epicureans come back to again and again as the important things about following the Epicurean worldview or way of life.
Now, as we do that, we’ve just read what is paragraph 62, which is found in section 19 depending on what text you look at. What we’ve just discussed is the issue of pleasure, and we’re going to talk about this in detail.
So this first paragraph of his summary of what’s important does very much mirror the Principal Doctrines. It starts out talking about pleasure as the goal of life. I would suggest what’s going on here is it’s almost like he’s planting a flag. In the ancient world and even today, you can divide the philosophies up according to what they really ultimately identify as their symbol or their chosen designation of what life is really about. The Stoics do that with virtue. Plato and Aristotle are pretty much in that same camp. Then you’ve got the religions that use the flag of God and piety. And the Epicureans, from that perspective, focus on pleasure as the guide of life as opposed to virtue or religion or the gods or reason or logic or something like that.
So the first step in this presentation of what’s really important in Epicurean philosophy — just like in the Principal Doctrines — is to identify how the intelligent person is going to identify pleasure as the goal or the guide of life. So let me stop monopolizing the discussion here and throw it to Martin and Joshua on the first substantive sentence: “He keeps his passions within bounds.”
Joshua:
Actually, I want to go back a couple of clauses earlier. Cassius, you’ve given a good introduction to these paragraphs. But I think there’s another thing that could be said here. When you read the ancient Epicureans, you get a sense that there was an anxiety they had about presenting their ideas to other people. And the anxiety stems from an understanding that these doctrines will not be well received by everyone.
When I read this first sentence, it calls to mind this famous passage from Lucretius, where he’s talking about the sick boy who’s made to take the nauseous wormwood — but in order for him to get it down, you’ve got to daub the rim of the cup with honey. And so this paragraph here, where he’s talking about the wise man — this is kind of the honey that makes the bitter medicine go down, isn’t it? This is: if it’s been hard for you to take in these doctrines, maybe this will help. Maybe if we present what we view the wise man as being, that’s a kind of honey that’s going to make the doctrines easier to take in. Because as you go through with these things, it doesn’t sound like the Epicurean life as the antagonists of that school understood it to be. So there’s an analogy there to Lucretius and the wormwood and the honey.
Cassius:
That’s a really important point. I will echo what you just said, Joshua, and also bring up the point that we need to remember the context in which we’re reading this. You don’t only have the factor that some people are going to resist this and need it presented like the wormwood rimmed with honey. Part of the context in which this discussion is taking place is literally that Torquatus is in Cicero’s house and they are basically debating philosophy. This is not like Epicurus’s letter to a student — it’s not even like a lecture to a general audience. Torquatus is debating Cicero about the key aspects of Epicurean philosophy. And in a debate with another highly intelligent person, you’re going to present things in a different way than if you’re talking to a random person on the street who doesn’t know what you’re talking about. You’re going to talk in a kind of a high-level way in which you presume that the person you’re talking to understands the basics.
Joshua:
Yeah, and when I read through these, I think I see a way in which these are tailored toward a particular audience. So when we read these, he almost seems sure the Epicurean system is vastly different to these other systems. But there is a sense in which he’s saying that he can even present this in a way that even a Stoic might look at this and think, well, it’s not as bad as I maybe originally thought. I don’t want to come across as saying that there’s some deep connection between Epicureanism and Stoicism — that’s not true at all. But I can see a way here in which Torquatus is tailoring his message to the audience he’s trying to reach.
Cassius:
Yeah. They were all talking in this context of debating philosophy in this period of time. And so it would be natural that they’re all regularly talking about the same topics and then just explaining their different perspectives on them.
Okay. So: “He keeps his passions within bounds.” What does it mean really for us to say he keeps his passions within bounds?
Joshua:
I guess what this means for me — going back to what Torquatus said a little bit ago: “not merely to disarm our criticism, but actually to secure our sanction.” The people he’s talking to will have heard the sort of slanders about Epicurus of these nightly orgies and these just stuffing his face with food until he has to throw up so he can eat more. But the first thing that he, right out of the gate, says is: he keeps his passions within bounds. So that’s the first stake he’s putting in the ground. This is the first characteristic I want you to know about the wise man. Do you think it’s important that he put that first or is there no significance to the order?
Cassius:
I would say it’s probably important because it’s such a common problem and common issue. And how much pleasure should you pursue? So it’s got to be important. Martin, what do you think?
Martin:
I agree that he keeps his passions within bounds, mentioning it at the beginning — that he wants to emphasize it by putting it there early.
Cassius:
There’s a limit to how much detail we can go into on each one of these topics. But on that one, I think there’s probably an obvious way in which Epicurus advises you to keep your passions within bounds. If we had to list one aspect of keeping your passions within bounds, what would you suggest as Epicurus’s major method of doing so? And I’m not talking about the natural and necessary distinction, although that’s probably part of it. What is the biggest thing that keeps your desire for pleasure within bounds, Joshua?
Joshua:
To me, the only reason not to pursue pleasure is if that pleasure will entail more pain. So the key here is, in my view, choice and avoidance.
Cassius:
Exactly. I think that’s the ultimate answer — other than for the fact that some types of pursuits of pleasure bring pain, in the Epicurean worldview there’s really no reason not to pursue that pleasure. The reason you don’t pursue some pleasure is because some pleasures bring more pain than it’s worth.
Martin:
Yes, I fully agree.
Cassius:
I hate to sound like that’s such an important point, but maybe it just jumps out at you that really, ultimately, Epicurus’s restraint on pleasure is to acknowledge and observe that there’s pain out there that comes if you don’t pursue pleasure prudently. And it’s not an ascetic restraint.
Joshua:
Right. Because I have a quote down here, and if you look at the thread on the forum — that’s not what Torquatus means here when he says “keeping his passions within bounds.” He doesn’t mean shunning pleasure and pursuing poverty, ignorance, hardship, and death. This is not an ascetic claim. Pleasure is good. There’s no mistaking that. But sometimes you have to forbear or delay pleasure if, indeed, it will bring more pain. And then the reverse of that — you have to occasionally endure pain to get at a greater or more long-lasting pleasure.
Cassius:
Right. Okay. Let’s try to do the same thing with each of the topics — try to give a little explanation without going so slow we never get finished.
“About death, he is indifferent.” Joshua, what do you think about death? He is indifferent. What does that mean?
Joshua:
Well, as I said, I think this is framed in a way to convince other people. So this actually would be an example of something that a lot of people find distasteful in Epicurean philosophy — they don’t want to hear that death isn’t bad or isn’t good. And putting this second on the list is important because sort of in the Roman upper echelons of society, Stoicism was a huge part of things. And part of the reason it was a huge part of that was because it was synonymous with the military duty of the aristocracy. And so for an Epicurean not to be seen clinging to life in an unseemly way — I think that puts a good light on things. But obviously, this is a hugely important part of Epicurean philosophy: death is nothing to us.
Cassius:
Yeah. And in this particular translation, the word used is “indifferent,” which really is a potentially explosive word. Martin, what is your take on the Epicurean view that is summarized here as “about death, he is indifferent”?
Martin:
I mean, what it means is that we should not fear the state of being dead.
Cassius:
Yeah. The word “indifferent” particularly sticks out at me as something we need to be careful with, since the Stoics use that. Because I don’t really think that “indifferent” would be the right term if you’re talking about when you die. If you were truly indifferent about death, then you might say, “I don’t really care whether I die five seconds from now or not.” And the truth of the matter is, I do care that I don’t die in five seconds — we’ll never finish the Torquatus section and I want us to finish. So I’m not indifferent about when I die. I’m indifferent about the state of being dead, which has no fear in it because you don’t feel anything. You’re not there to experience it. But about the issue of how long you remain alive — I don’t think you’re indifferent about that. I think you do everything you can to stay alive as long as you have good reason to think that you can experience more pleasure than pain.
Joshua:
Yeah. I mean, I do agree with you that Epicureans are not necessarily indifferent about when they die or how they die. You almost have to read this sentence from the perspective of being dead. When you die, you’re not going to care because you’re going to be dead. That’s how I read it. The way I don’t read it is: sitting here right now, I’m not thinking to myself, “I don’t care if I die right now or not.” That’s not true. But when I do die, I don’t think I’ll care. I hope I won’t care.
Cassius:
I think you’ve hit the point there, Joshua. When he says “about death” — he’s really focusing on, as Martin said, the state of being dead. He’s not talking about when you die, how you die, all these other things that are separate issues.
Okay. So, Joshua, now that you’ve solved the hard problem, the easy one is going to be: “the wise man holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread.” So since that’s so easy, you can quickly summarize that for us, right?
Joshua:
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, as I’ve been harping on, I think each of these is tailored to a particular listener. And we’ve got Cicero, who has this interesting quote — I’m going to find it in a minute — but he says something to the effect that: “I believe in an eternal soul and I would rather not have this belief stripped of me while I’m alive. I would rather be wrong about this and not know it while I’m alive.” So we know that Cicero was well aware of the Epicurean views of the gods because of his own studies and because his own work On the Nature of the Gods contains the long explanation by Velleius of the Epicurean position on how you prove that gods exist.
So Cicero certainly understood there was a very elaborate theory of the gods in Epicurean philosophy. But for right now, as a summary of what this point would be: “he holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread” — probably focusing just on the issue that you don’t fear the gods, which is the Tetrapharmakon formulation.
Cassius:
Martin, what would you say is the important aspect of telling somebody that the wise man holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread?
Martin:
That he does not cling to the traditional superstitions about the gods — that they may do damage to people, that they mix with human affairs.
Cassius:
Yeah. That they don’t intervene in human affairs. They’re not going to punish their enemies and reward their friends. They’re not going to send you to heaven or hell. They don’t pay attention to us and don’t tell us what to do. All those things would be part of that.
And to expand on what Martin just said: Epicurus actually considered it impious to attribute those attributes to the gods. Because there clearly is an aspect here that the gods are being identified as the blessed way of life. And the pious person is going to consider the gods to be totally blessed and totally the highest form of life possible. So if you start thinking that the gods are throwing thunderbolts at their enemies and giving banquets for their friends, then that trivializes the gods and is actually impious.
Joshua:
So that’s one component. And then the other components of “true views concerning the eternal gods” are: they’re not supernatural; they don’t exist in a realm separate from matter and void, because nothing exists in a realm separate from matter and void; they are made of matter; they live in the universe; they came out of it just like we did; they did not create the universe; and they don’t interfere in human affairs.
So this is not the deistic gods. I need to clarify that point, because sometimes you do get some confusion on this. The gods of the Epicureans are not deistic. Deistic gods are always gods that create. The Epicurean gods do not create. They are removed — that part is true — but they did not create the universe. They are younger than the universe. Although the universe doesn’t really have an age in Epicurean cosmology since it’s infinite in both directions.
Cassius:
I’d like to echo what Joshua said on the issue of this not being the deist model. What I always think about when I think of deism — such as Thomas Paine and his Age of Reason, or other deists of that 18th century period — is they would use this “clockmaker” model. That God was the clockmaker who made the clock and then just lets it run on its own and doesn’t interfere. And that is absolutely not Epicurus’s model at all. There is no clockmaker. There is no supernatural maker. Lucretius states specifically that the gods could not have made the world because they would have needed a pattern to go by if they had made the universe — as one of many arguments about why they didn’t make the universe.
So Epicurus is not a deist philosopher at all. And that’s an important point for a lot of newer students to get a handle on, because they’ll immediately think, “Well, this is very similar to Thomas Paine or others identified as deists.” And this is not that.
Joshua:
Benjamin Franklin has this famous quote where he said he set out to write a book disproving deism, and he ended up agreeing with it. So there was a particular time and place in, like you said, the 18th century where deism really was ascendant. But this is not that.
Cassius:
Yeah. We could talk a long time about that because at one point in my life I was convinced that deism was probably the best position to take, or at least a harmless one. But that’s something that’s changed in my viewpoint since reading Epicurus. You’re wanting to do your best to dispel all of the anxieties that you could dispel. And if you just leave that issue out there, then you’ve left something unresolved that you could deal better with by following Epicurus’s view on that.
And Joshua, you said something earlier about whether we could tell what was important by the order the items came in. As we move to the next item, I’m a little frustrated because he sort of goes back to discussing death. But I don’t know that that’s his fault — these Latin writers, who knows what order these things are listed in if you go back to the Latin?
Joshua:
Right. Because word order in Latin does not change meaning. You can put the words in any order — it might change the mood or the voice of the passage, but it doesn’t change the meaning of what’s being said. Although I should clarify, when you study Latin they’ll say: this sentence can be read in Latin, but no Latin writer would have written it like that. The word they use to describe this is “Latinity” — how it should most gracefully and beautifully be written.
Cassius:
Well, the reason that came up is because we’ve already dealt with “about death, he is indifferent.” But now, as we read the sentence, we’re back discussing: “he has no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life if that be the better course.” Which is, as we were discussing earlier, a different issue than just simply the state of being dead.
How would you explain what they mean there by “no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life if that be the better course”?
Joshua:
Right. So what we were saying a little bit ago is: we are not concerned about the state of death or being dead, because we won’t know that we’re dead and we won’t have any opportunity to suffer by that. But we did say that we do have some concern about when we die. So this passage here sort of ties that up in a little knot. But then there’s the way out — it says “if that be the better course.” When is dying the better course?
There is one particular example I can think of from the ancient Epicurean texts: laying down your life to protect a friend. That would be an example in Epicurus’s view of a better course.
Cassius:
Martin, would it be going too far to say — because as I’m listening to Joshua, when we read “if that be the better course,” isn’t it fair to say that in Epicurean philosophy, anytime you discuss what the better course is on anything, you’re always looking to the question of whether it’s going to bring more pleasure than pain? So would it be going too far simply to say: your choice of when you die is controlled by whether you think that living on is going to bring you more pleasure than pain? And if you think that living on is going to bring you more pain than pleasure — is that the definition of when you would want to die?
Martin:
Yes.
Cassius:
Single-word answers on that question will probably need to be expanded. So can you expand on that?
Martin:
Man, you expanded on it already, so I couldn’t add more.
Joshua:
The fundamental question here is, like you said: if dying gives a better calculus on the pleasure-pain question, we might choose to die. It’s kind of difficult to imagine what that would look like. I can think of a couple of situations where it might. For example, if you’re really facing a horrible, fatal disease, that would be one example of a case where you might choose that. But Epicurus also says that pain that is prolonged is not so intense that you can’t find more pleasure in life to counterbalance it.
But I think it is fruitful to ask ourselves why dying for a friend comes out the way it does in the pleasure-pain calculus. For me, what that means is: you would rather die for the friend than go on living knowing that they died and you did nothing about it. Now you’ve got the sort of black cloud of pain hanging over your life, whereas the friend who was a tremendous source of pleasure — if you had laid down your life for them, that would have been the better course. Can you think of any other examples?
Cassius:
Joshua, I think what you just stated is exactly the way I would analyze it: there’s going to be something about the circumstances of that person’s death, and all of the different circumstances as a whole, where some option is available to you that if you chose it, you could save that person’s life. And if you decline to save that person’s life, you’re going to live on in circumstances where that decision is going to weigh on you so heavily for some reason that you’re not going to want to live any longer because there’s going to be so much pain in thinking about what you did or didn’t do in that situation.
I guess there probably are a lot of situations — just pull out a mother and a child, where the mother could give the child a kidney at the cost of her own life. I use the mother-child because there’s that bond in that relationship that pretty much everybody admits is one of the strongest bonds there can be. You’d have to set up the scenario that really, it would not be every scenario and every friend at all.
I mean, suppose you’ve got a friend who’s 99 years old and you’re 30 — that friend is really the most important person possible to you, but you know that person is going to die pretty soon anyway because they’re 99. If you’re 30 laying down your life for a 99-year-old, I think you have to take into account the pain that you’re bringing to the 99-year-old. They would almost certainly prefer that you didn’t do that.
Joshua:
Yeah. My grandfather died last year, maybe the year before. There’s no circumstance in which he would have wanted me to die for him at that age. By God, he would have been very disappointed in me, I think.
Cassius:
Right. And so what we’re saying is that the circumstances are going to control that decision just like they control every other. And I think that in saying that, we can identify what the error would be. The error would be to think that just because person X is your friend, you’re going to give your life for them in every circumstance. That’s just not the analysis. You can’t generalize it to: just because someone has the status of your friend, you’re going to give your life for them. That would be the Stoic, Platonic, formulaic way of trying to come up with a universal rule that is just clearly not what Epicurus would be talking about. “If that be the better course” is always a contextual question and not resolved by just a category, as Aristotle might try to do.
Okay. “Furnished with these advantages, he is continually in a state of pleasure. And there is in truth no moment at which he does not experience more pleasures than pains.” And Joshua, you’re going to explain the bull. I always want to say something else — what’s the name of the bull, Joshua?
Joshua:
Yeah, it’s the Bull of Phalaris.
Cassius:
Yes. So is Epicurus being ridiculous, suggesting that the person who is tortured by being boiled alive — has Epicurus “jumped the shark,” as they say, in suggesting that there is in truth no moment at which the wise man does not experience more pleasures than pains?
Joshua:
Well, certainly Cicero would think he had gone way over the edge on that point. But when I think about it now, I think Epicurus placed a lot of stress not just on the pleasures of the moment, but on the pleasures that we remember from the past and the pleasures that we anticipate in the future. And so the present moment becomes a very small component of things when you consider that broad timeline that you can dip into at any point to relive those pleasures of the past or to imagine the pleasures of the future that you are going to enjoy. I know that doesn’t really answer the question.
Cassius:
Well, one part of it is that he’s just got finished saying that the wise man will have no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life if that be the better course. So the person who’s about to be thrown into the Bull of Phalaris, if he has the option, will probably decide to commit suicide at that point rather than be tortured. I don’t think a wise man would test the issue by saying, “Let’s hook up a scope to me and decide if I’m really feeling a balance of pleasure while I’m in my last moments of consciousness being boiled alive.” I mean, that would make no sense and nobody would do something like that.
That’s what Cicero continuously tries to do — take something out of context, turn it into some kind of a universal rule, and make Epicurus look ridiculous by suggesting it was a universal rule. But when you realize that Epicurus is not into universal rules, then a lot of those criticisms can be dealt with.
Cassius:
And then he elaborates. “For he remembers the past with thankfulness and the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness. Nor is he in dependence on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present.” He’s also far removed from those defects of character, and when he compares the fool’s life with his own, he feels great pleasure.
Is that just an elaboration of what we’ve already discussed, Joshua, or do you think there’s something new there?
Joshua:
The reason he does not ever experience more pain than pleasure is because he remembers the past with thankfulness and the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness. But then he says: “nor is he dependent on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present.” I guess there’s a criticism here to be made of people who spend their whole lives not focused on pleasure, not pursuing philosophy, but just driven toward things that are out of their control and might forever remain out of their control.
Cassius:
I believe that mirrors something that’s said in the Letter to Menoeceus. There is an issue of the free will aspect of things — that there’s no fate involved in terms of being dependent on the future. You realize that some things are in your control and some things are not in your control. So you enjoy what you have while at the same time you plan for the future, but you’re not putting all your eggs in the basket of the future.
I think the main point is that the wise man has both the pleasures of the past, the present, and the future to be aware of in his full mental consciousness. He’s not consumed with the past, he’s not consumed with tomorrow, and he’s not consumed necessarily with just the immediate moment either.
Joshua:
No. And that’s a point I would hammer home: you’re going to have a lot of people tell you that you need to live in the moment, enjoy the present. And I don’t think that’s all there is to life. I think that remembering the past and anticipating the future is part of it — and the future doesn’t have to just be anxiety. Yes, the uncertainty of the future is unavoidable. But it doesn’t just have to be anxiety. I think probably I’m going to experience pleasure in the future — I don’t know that for sure, but I think that’s true. If you knew for sure that it were not true, you’d be back in the issue of whether you needed to terminate your life.
Cassius:
Yeah, exactly. There’s a comedian named John Mulaney, and he’s got this bit where he’s talking about people telling him to live in the moment. And his response is: “Don’t bother. The moment is mediocre at best.” Well, it’s an obvious truth that sometimes the present immediate circumstances are not exactly what we would like them to be.
Joshua:
Yeah. And sometimes remembering the past or anticipating the future, or just getting lost in ideas — I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I dabbled heavily in Buddhism and this whole mindfulness meditation, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing to do, but I don’t do it anymore. So I think that sort of says it all as far as it goes for me. But don’t feel bad for not living in the moment — because people are going to want you to feel bad if you don’t fully enjoy the present. Sometimes just getting lost in your thoughts is not necessarily a bad thing.
Cassius:
And I’m sure Martin, who is the efficient type, has probably heard the cliché: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. If you don’t spend time thinking about the future and preparing for the future, that’s going to lead in many cases to disaster. And if you don’t think about where you came from and your history, then you’re not going to learn the lessons of your mistakes. So the past, the present, and the future are all part of the mix.
Before we move too far past the points about crossing the boundaries of life and being indifferent to death and terminating your life under certain circumstances — we always need to be aware that there are people out there who are not in the best mental status. And suicide is a significant problem, especially today in the United States where most of our listeners probably are. Somewhere here Torquatus also talks about life being like a theater where you get up and walk out when the play ceases to please you. But all those references to the potential that you might at some point choose to end your own life are in the context of his statements that you very much in general do not want to do that. You very much in general are appreciative of the benefits that life brings. And there are many passages you could use to emphasize that you do not lightly terminate your life. The Letter to Menoeceus has several references to that — about the person who ends his life without a really good reason to do so being a very foolish person.
It’s always important to talk, whenever we start talking about issues of death and so forth, that even though death can be a release from pain, even though death can be the right choice for people in certain situations, that is not generally at all the right choice. It is not generally the only option we have. And Epicurus is all about thinking about the past, the present, and the future and coming up with ways to achieve pleasure, even under adverse circumstances. If you reach the point where you’ve concluded that ending your own life is the only option, you really have — in almost every case — not understood what Epicurus is talking about in terms of his positions on death. Martin or Joshua, on that point, do you guys have something to add?
Joshua:
No, no. I mean, it’s one thing to do it out of a sense of love and compassion for a friend. And it’s another thing entirely to do it out of a kind of deep depression that you have no control over. And if your arm was broken, you’d go see a doctor. So if your mind is troubled in that way, don’t feel shame — go see a doctor.
Cassius:
Yeah. So I’m totally lost. Where are we?
Joshua:
We had basically gotten through the point that the wise man is going to consider both the past, the present, and the future in ordering his mental state.
Cassius:
And now we are basically at the point where Torquatus says that the wise man is very far removed from his defects of character, which he quoted a little time ago. He’s just referring to what’s already been discussed. And then we probably should not ignore that he closes this section by listing the example of the pleasure that we do get when we compare the fool’s life with his own.
That’s the opening of Book Two of Lucretius, where he says it’s sweet when we are safely on land to see the ship struggling at sea. And we always have to deal with the issue of whether he’s being a jerk or whether he’s making a legitimate point. In Book Two, he says it’s not that we take pleasure in the misfortunes of others, but that we ourselves are aware of the benefits that we’ve achieved by having a good, sound philosophy of life and not exposing ourselves to those pains that come when you don’t.
Joshua:
Yes. I brought this up on my screen before we started today, because I think that’s such an important passage in Lucretius to bring up. The way he caps it off, he says: the real problem with most people is not the sort of circumstances of suffering that they find themselves in, but it’s that they make the wrong choices about what to pursue in life. And he says: “Oh, pitiable minds of men, oh blind intelligences, in what gloom of life, in how great perils is past all your poor span of time, not to see that all nature barks for is this: that pain be removed away out of the body, and that the mind kept away from care and fear enjoy a feeling of delight.”
Cassius:
And the wise man, when he looks out and compares the fool’s life with his own — he feels great pleasure. And pains, if any, before him have never power enough to prevent the wise man finding more reason for joy than for vexation.
I think that’s exactly hitting on this point of why a person who’s depressed or in adverse circumstances should not lightly entertain suicide. The truth is that there are so many opportunities in life — almost in any circumstance — to find pleasure that makes life worth living. When you think about the pleasures of the past, the possibilities of the future, the good things of the present, including how easy it is to experience pleasure just by thinking about the fact that you’re not suffering all sorts of pains that you could be suffering — if you really were looking at the big picture and having a correct philosophy, you’ll see that life is generally an experience in which pleasures predominate over pain. This is not a situation where it is better never to have been born. This is not Buddhism. This is not some dark nihilistic philosophy. This is not Hobbesian — life is not “nasty, brutish, and short.”
Joshua:
That was Thomas Hobbes.
Cassius:
This is not a Hobbesian universe in which we are fated that our lives are nasty, brutish, and short. If we use the correct philosophy, if we pursue life in ways that are possible to just about everybody in just about every circumstance, then life does not have to be nasty, brutish, and short, and so depressing that we wish we had never been born. I think if you had to summarize the opposite of the Epicurean philosophy’s attitude towards life, that would be the way to look at it. That’s the opposite.
And with that, we finally made it through a paragraph.
Joshua:
That’s all we’re going to make it through today, I’m afraid.
Cassius:
But I really think this has been a really important paragraph focused on pleasure. Section 63, which comes next, is really going to change the focus away from just pleasure itself to the issue of a confrontation of the Epicurean view of epistemology to some extent — physics as well. But we’re going to move away from just the focus on pleasure to the importance of understanding that Epicurus’s approach to knowledge and physics and science are so important in achieving the goals that we’ve been discussing.
This is probably the time for closing thoughts for section 62. Martin, closing thoughts for today.
Martin:
No, I have nothing for closing.
Cassius:
All right, Joshua.
Joshua:
There was a professor at Columbia University named Sidney Morgenbesser. And one day he was leaving a subway station in New York City and he lit up his pipe. A policeman tells him that there is no smoking allowed. And Morgenbesser replies that the rules cover smoking in the station but not outside. The officer concedes the point but says, “If I let you do it, I’d have to let everyone do it.” Morgenbesser replies, “Who do you think you are, Kant?” And finds himself off to the police station. And there, a colleague has to come down and explain the whole issue of the categorical imperative to the officers to secure his release.
That’s the anecdote I was looking for when you mentioned Cicero and his tendency to make a universal out of a specific example. That expresses it. Sidney Morgenbesser is his name — I’ll put that in the show notes too. Those are my closing thoughts.
Cassius:
Let me just comment on that — I do think that’s a common issue that people reading Epicurus are going to run into. They are brought up in sort of a humanist modern philosophy position that even though God should not be defining what is good, they’re convinced that there are these absolute goods out there. And the way they often get to the issue of an absolute good is by using this Kantian categorical imperative universalism process.
How would you explain what the categorical imperative means?
Joshua:
Well, the categorical imperative is a method that Kant suggested we use to determine what is the ethically right thing to do. He says: if you have something that you think you should do, to determine if this is the right thing to do, you have to imagine what would happen if everyone did it. And then the outcome tells you whether it’s the right thing or the wrong thing to do. “Can it be universalized?” — I guess that’s the test of whether something is ultimately ethically correct.
Cassius:
Yeah. And it can be pursued to absolutely ludicrous extremes, can’t it? Is it morally proper to sit in your car? Well, what if everybody was sitting in your car? Well, not everyone can sit in my car — it’s not big enough. So it’s very easy to derail the categorical imperative just with absurdity. That doesn’t really offer a philosophical objection to it, but it’s just not applicable in most cases. And I don’t think it’s a useful way to determine what is or is not ethical. And certainly Epicurus would not have used it.
I think, Joshua, your conclusion was exactly the right point: it’s certainly not something Epicurus would have looked at. Because the Epicurean universe is not one in which you universalize ethics. Maybe it all comes down to the ultimate point that Torquatus stated earlier: what does nature give us other than pleasure and pain in order to determine what to choose and what to avoid? Nature gives us the feelings of pleasure and pain. It doesn’t give us universal rules. And to look for universal rules, or to expect that you can test whether something is good by whether it can be universalized — that’s almost absurd in an Epicurean perspective. Because you can’t universalize ethics. When it comes to the issue of justice, of course, Epicurus takes exactly the opposite course — he says that there is no universal sense of justice and that it just means what people come together and decide that it means in particular places and times.
Let’s close the episode by letting me attempt to link where we are to where we’re going. We’ve just closed the episode by raising some deep philosophical questions that are very difficult to answer. And we can point back to pleasure and pain as Torquatus has previously done — and that states our conclusion. We’ve planted our flag that pleasure and pain are the motivating factors of life. But as you always do when you’re arguing with somebody else about philosophy, you have important questions about how to know anything is right or wrong. And how to dig into issues like categorical imperatives and universalist values that are really more technical issues of philosophy.
But in reality, in the modern world, if you’re in any kind of an educational environment, if you’re just reading into philosophy, if you’re reading different commentators, you’re going to be presented with all sorts of competing positions that are logically consistent within themselves, but which might not make sense to you. You’ve got to have a method for analyzing those things and deciding what is right or wrong. And that’s what we’re going to discuss next week. We’re going to start talking about Torquatus’s summary of the Epicurean method of philosophy — the approach toward knowledge, the role of the senses in ultimately deciding things, the removal of logic in a sense as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong that Plato and Aristotle suggested. And we’re going to do that all in the space of about an hour, using Torquatus’s summary as the way to do it. And so I’m sure that at the end of that episode, everyone will be totally satisfied that we’ve treated it thoroughly and completely. And that’s not true — but we’re going to talk about how you decide what’s true and what’s not true next week.
We’ve just been talking about this on the forum, about Epicurean epistemology. So I think this is good timing, and I look forward to it next week.
Joshua:
It’s probably going to be both sections 63 and 64 as we have them here.
Cassius:
And there’s tremendously good material here in Torquatus. So we’ll get to it as best we can. Thank you, Martin and Josh.
Joshua:
Thanks a lot. See you next week.
Martin:
Okay. Goodbye.
Cassius:
Goodbye.
Joshua:
Goodbye.