Episode 133 - Letter to Pythocles 07 - Conclusion Of The Letter
Date: 08/06/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2614-episode-one-hundred-thirty-three-letter-to-pythocles-07-conclusion-of-the-letter/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Joshua reads sections 112–116, completing the Letter to Pythocles: comets, fixed stars (with Polaris as a possible referent), wandering stars or planets, falling stars, the weather-signs of animals, and the final exhortation — “give yourself up to the study of the beginnings and of infinity and of things akin to them and also of the criteria of truth and of the feelings.” Cassius flags an important translation discrepancy in section 116 where Bailey inserts “a small thing gives the greatest pleasure” — a reading not found in Hicks or other translators — and the group uses this to reinforce the standing principle that no single translation should be trusted uncritically, especially where the language could be colored by the translator’s theological assumptions. The central epistemological statement of the letter — “to assign a single cause for these occurrences when phenomena demand several explanations is madness, and is quite wrongly practiced by persons who are partisans of the foolish notions of astrology” — receives extended commentary as perhaps the sharpest formulation of the multiple-explanations principle anywhere in the Epicurean corpus. Martin raises the authenticity of the letter itself, noting that his 1980 German translation by Hans Wolfgang Kraut includes a much shorter version of the letter attributed to Epicurus — essentially just two sentences — and raises the possibility that what we have read over the past several weeks is a letter in the style and philosophy of Epicurus but not written by him directly. The episode closes with a discussion of the final paragraph’s call to study “beginnings and infinity” and “the criteria of truth and the feelings” as the framework that makes all particular explanations possible, and with an announcement that the podcast will next turn to the Letter to Menoikeus.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 133 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host Cassius, and today we complete our discussion of Epicurus’s Letter to Pythocles. Let’s join Joshua reading today’s text.
Joshua: Comets occur either when fire is collected together in certain regions at certain intervals of time in the upper air because some gathering of matter takes place, or when at certain intervals the heaven above us has some peculiar movement so that stars of this nature are revealed, or when they themselves at certain seasons start to move on account of some gathering of matter and come into the regions within our ken; and their disappearance occurs owing to the opposite causes to these. Some stars revolve in their place — which comes to pass not only because this part of the world is stationary and rounded, the rest revolving, as some say, but also because a whirl of air is formed in a ring around which prevents their moving as do the other stars; or else it is because there is not a succession of appropriate fuel for them but only in this place in which they are seen to be fixed. That some of the stars should wander in their course may be due to the reason that from the first they were so constrained by necessity that some move along the same regular orbit while others along one associated with certain irregularities; but to assign a single cause for these occurrences when phenomena demand several explanations is madness, and is quite wrongly practiced by persons who are partisans of the foolish notions of astrology, by which they give futile explanations of the causes of certain occurrences, and all the time do not by any means free the divine nature from the burden of responsibilities. What are called falling stars may be produced in part by the rubbing of star against star and by the falling out of fragments wherever an outburst of wind occurs, or else by the meeting of atoms productive of fire when a gathering of kindred material occurs, and there are other ways in which this result may be brought about, quite free from superstition. The signs of the weather which are given by certain animals result from mere coincidence of occasion, for the animals do not exert any compulsion for winter to come to an end, nor is there some divine nature which sits and watches the outgoings of these animals and then fulfills the signs they give. For not even the lowest animal, although a small thing gives the greatest pleasure, would be seized by such foolishness, much less one who was possessed of perfect happiness. All these things, Pythocles, you must bear in mind, for thus you will escape in most things from superstition and will be able to understand what is akin to them. And most of all give yourself up to the study of the beginnings and of infinity and of things akin to them, and also of the criteria of truth and of the feelings and of the purpose for which we reason out these things. For these points when they are thoroughly studied will most easily enable you to understand the causes of the details; but those who have not thoroughly taken these things to heart could not rightly study them in themselves, nor have they made their own the reason for observing them.
Cassius: Thank you, Joshua. We are going to complete our study of the Letter to Pythocles today and we have some good summary material on epistemology to cover. Before we dive in, I want to flag a translation issue. We have been using the Cyril Bailey edition, and here at the very end of the letter in section 116, Bailey has what I think is a very puzzling line: “for not even the lowest animal, although a small thing gives the greatest pleasure, would be seized by such foolishness.” Most translators, including Hicks, do not have “a small thing gives the greatest pleasure” at all. Hicks reads: “for such folly as this would not possess the most ordinary being if ever so little enlightened, much less one who enjoys perfect felicity.” Don has added notes to the thread about this discrepancy, and it appears that Bailey has introduced a quotation that other translators do not find in the text. This is one more reminder that we should never put too much reliance on a single translation.
Joshua: And of course the Hicks version is the more biting one. The gods don’t sit watching for animals to go out and then fulfill their omens — that kind of folly would not possess even the most ordinary person, let alone a being of perfect happiness. That is a sharp piece of sarcasm against the religious view of nature as divine communication.
Cassius: Now on comets: Joshua, you were reading about these last night. Why are they particularly difficult to understand in the ancient world?
Joshua: Because of their periodicity. A comet may not return for decades or thousands of years. When one appears to someone who has no model for what they are, it just hangs in the sky for months and then vanishes. It could be seen as auspicious or as a doom-sign, but either way it is anomalous and unpredictable. And there is still the tradition today of what are called comet vintages — particularly good wine harvests thought to follow a comet in the sky. The greatest comet vintage ever recorded was 1811. There is almost certainly no connection, but people still sell wine under that label.
Martin: I saw perhaps one comet, very distantly. Not worth remarking on.
Cassius: Halley’s Comet — Joshua, did you see it?
Joshua: It last appeared in the inner solar system in 1986 — two years before I was born. The good recent one was Hale-Bopp in 1996, when I was about eight. I could see the tail on that one. What I was trying to figure out last night was when the next good comet is coming, and it turns out that is surprisingly difficult to predict even today — you know when they will be in a certain part of the solar system, but how bright they will appear from Earth is very hard to forecast in advance.
Cassius: The section on stars that revolve in their place versus those that wander — it seems likely the fixed stars refers to something like Polaris, which appears stationary while everything else rotates around it.
Joshua: That is what I think too. And Polaris has only been the pole star for basically all of recorded human civilization, but that will eventually change. Due to the precession of the Earth’s axis — the slow wobble of the Earth as it rotates — there will come a time when Polaris is no longer the fixed point and a different star takes that role.
Cassius: And the wandering stars — he says “if indeed it is the case that their movements are such” — which shows him allowing for the possibility that what we see is an artifact of our perspective as observers on a rotating earth. The senses report accurately what they receive; the error is in the assumption we make afterward that what we see directly reflects what is happening.
Joshua: And that leads to the central statement: “to assign a single cause when phenomena demand several explanations is madness.” That is probably the sharpest formulation of the multiple-explanations principle anywhere in the surviving Epicurean texts. He is emphatic — not merely cautious but forceful — and he links the failure to a specific named target: partisans of astrology who “give futile explanations and do not free the divine nature from the burden of responsibilities.”
Cassius: Which connects to the whole arc of the letter. Epicurus is not doing astronomy for its own sake. He is showing that you can approach phenomena with a coherent method and arrive at explanations that eliminate the fear of divine interference — without ever having to single out one cause as the only possible truth.
Joshua: I want to emphasize the closing paragraph, which I think is one of the best in the whole letter. He says: give yourself up to the study of the beginnings and of infinity and of things akin to them — that is, atoms and void — and also of the criteria of truth and of the feelings and of the purpose for which we reason out these things. And then: those who have not thoroughly taken these things to heart could not rightly study the details, nor have they made their own the reason for observing them. He is saying the details are not the goal. The physics, the epistemology, the feelings as criteria of the good life — those are what make the details meaningful. If you don’t understand why you are studying weather and comets, you will not understand what you find.
Cassius: And that is the connection between this letter and the letter to Menoikeus, which we will turn to next. Once you understand that the universe is natural, that there are no supernatural gods directing it, that your life will not continue past death — then the question of how to use the time you have becomes urgent and concrete. The physics provides the foundation, and the ethics follows from it.
Martin: One observation I should have raised at the beginning. My German translation by Hans Wolfgang Kraut, published in 1980, attributes to Epicurus a much shorter letter to Pythocles — essentially just two sentences. That is a very different letter from what we have been reading over the past several weeks. The letter we have clearly expresses Epicurean philosophy and has Epicurean style and methods. But it is possible that it was not written by Epicurus himself.
Cassius: I am glad you raised that. I have read the same thing — that some question the authenticity of the letter. Joshua, what is your understanding?
Joshua: I have seen the same references but have never found a detailed explanation of why people doubt it. The style and philosophy are consistent with Epicurus. Perhaps a student or follower compiled it from Epicurean sources or wrote it in the master’s name. It is something we can pursue in the thread.
Cassius: With that in mind, the letter has been enormously valuable regardless. Some sections have been challenging, but the epistemological material — the multiple-explanations rule, the refusal to desert phenomena in favor of myth, the closing call to study beginnings and infinity — these are as good as anything in the Epicurean corpus. Next week we begin the Letter to Menoikeus. Thank you both.
Joshua: Thank you. Goodbye.
Martin: Thanks. Bye.