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Epicurus Today

Episode 185 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 37 - Chapter 14 - The New Virtues 08

Date: 08/04/23
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3226-episode-185-epicurus-and-his-philosophy-part-37-chapter-14-the-new-virtues-08/

Summary

Section titled “Summary”

Episode 185 covers the final sections of Chapter 14 (“The New Virtues”) in Norman DeWitt’s Epicurus and His Philosophy, focusing on the Epicurean attitude toward the present and multiple dimensions of gratitude. The discussion begins with Epicurus’s emphasis on the urgency of present action: since there is no immortality, the present moment is the sole opportunity for meaningful action, illustrated by a scene from Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens. The episode then examines Epicurus and Metrodorus on the folly of procrastination (Vatican Sayings 14 and 30; Horace’s sapere aude, incipe), followed by Epicurean attitudes toward fortune and necessity — defiant preparedness for the inevitable, including death and bereavement, and healing through grateful recollection (Vatican Saying 55). DeWitt’s footnotes on Plato’s Phaedo and Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations provide context for Epicurus’s rejection of life-as-preparation-for-death. The episode explicitly rejects anti-natalism, contrasting it with the Epicurean gratitude-centered embrace of life. Additional sections cover gratitude to teachers (Ionian science vs. state-centered Platonic philosophy; the Hippocratic oath), gratitude to nature (nature as ethical teacher), and gratitude to friends (Horace on reciprocal patronage). The episode concludes with the fruits of gratitude — Epicurean embrace of emotions versus Stoic suppression, Vatican Sayings 19, 35, 47, and 69, and Diogenes of Oenoanda Fragment 3 — culminating in the affirmation that the happy life is the grateful life. Emily Austin’s Living for Pleasure is briefly referenced in connection with Lucretius’s account of the Athenian plague. Callistheni closes with reflections on practical Epicurean exercises around free will, preparing for death, developing emotional intelligence, and gratitude.

Transcript

Section titled “Transcript”

Cassius: Welcome to 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. Each week we’ll walk you through the Epicurean texts and we’ll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. 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. We’re now in the middle of a series of podcasts intended to provide a general overview of Epicurean philosophy based on the organizational structure employed by Norman DeWitt in his book, Epicurus and His Philosophy. Now let’s join the discussion.

Cassius: Welcome to Episode 185. We are continuing in Chapter 14 of DeWitt’s book and the chapter subheading this morning is “Attitude Towards the Present.” We’ll talk about that for a few minutes and then a series of subheadings devoted to gratitude. And as we’ve been discussing throughout, we’re talking about the new virtues. And what DeWitt has done is go through all of the Epicurean texts — it seems like not only Epicurus and Lucretius, but Horace and different other people who are making comments about the same things — and he’s bringing together observations about different aspects of life that are clearly significant to the ancient Epicureans. That starts off the section by saying: “The choice of the proper attitude towards the past and the future is simple as compared with the choice of attitude towards the present. In the former instances” — which means the past and the future — “only thought is involved. In the latter, as to the present, both thought and action. Other choices may be made at leisure; the choices and decisions of the present admit of no postponement.” The real emphasis, I think, that we need to take from this is that the chief factor of choice was the denial of immortality — which means the chance for happiness is confined to the here and now — and that the effect of this was to endow the present with urgency as affording the sole opportunity for true action. We’ve discussed this several times in the past. There’s an episode in Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens that I think is a good illustration of this: where in the story of A Few Days in Athens, it’s Hadea, I think, the female friend of Epicurus, who is crossing a stream in the middle of a storm and whose horse is basically dislodged. She falls into the water, and so they are presented with an urgent need to do something, if they can, to save her. And Frances Wright illustrates it by having Theon, the younger person, spring first into action — he goes out into the stream and makes an effort to save her. And in the story it sounds like he’s faltering, and so Frances Wright has Epicurus himself at the last minute go in and save both of them. With the point being made there: you wait until the proper time to take action, but when the proper time is there, you take it with urgency and diligence and vigorousness. You’re going to time your action according to when it is going to produce the result that you want. And when the time comes to act, you’re not going to delay. You’re going to go ahead and do what is necessary. There are times when you can act, and there are times when it’s too late to act. There are times when it’s too early to act. But the present is the only opportunity that you do have to act, and so it’s therefore really important to be taking all this into consideration and realizing that life is not a preparation for an eternity in heaven thereafter. Life is all you have, and when you have this perspective, you’re going to be more serious and act more diligently and urgently than people who think that, oh, this is just a prelude for playing those harps in heaven after you die.

Joshua: Right, Cassius, or for people who think that without this being a prelude to heaven it’s entirely meaningless and that we would just be better off not existing. So it’s between both of those extremes. Throughout this whole book, it seems like I’m finding Epicurus to be threading this path between two extremes. In this case, it’s the extreme between the belief in immortality and, on the other side, nihilism — the belief that nothing really matters. So it’s true that he’s denying immortality, but to go as far as nihilism is something well beyond the pale of what Epicurus is actually doing here. And Horace’s advice — which we’re going to get to a little later down here — carpe diem, seize the day, or “pluck the ripe fruit,” as I think John prefers to translate, hardly makes sense in a world where nothing has any meaning. So that’s the other problem to be avoided.

Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, DeWitt uses not only that example from Horace that most people are familiar with — the carpe diem — but one that people are less familiar with: sapere aude, incipe, which DeWitt translates as “dare to translate wisdom into action; make a beginning.” That sounds like an elaboration on three words there, but: wisdom, action, and then — yeah — make a beginning.

Joshua: Yeah, you just don’t take the knowledge that you have and just think about it. You use that knowledge and apply it and then take action based on it.

Cassius: And so DeWitt goes on and cites several examples where the folly of procrastination was preached by both Epicurus and Metrodorus. And he says, Seneca quotes Epicurus: “Among other vices, this characterizes folly: it is always just beginning to live.” And then: “It’s vexatious to be always just beginning the life of wisdom.” And then adding to that, Vatican Saying 30: “Some men devote life to accumulating the wherewithal of life, failing to realize that the potion mixed for us all at birth is a draft of death.” Vatican Saying 14: “We’re born once and cannot be born twice, but must to all eternity be no more. And fool that you are, though not a master of tomorrow, you postpone the hour, and life is frittered away in procrastination, and each one of us goes on making excuses till he dies.”

Joshua: So we got a hint there, Cassius, of what the answer is to my question, which is: what are we supposed to avoid procrastination in doing? And it says here, “beginning the life of wisdom.” That’s what we’re supposed to avoid procrastination in doing. So it’s not necessarily the case that procrastination in general is a great moral evil. It’s that you’ve only got a limited amount of time really to figure this stuff out. And Epicurus certainly thought that your happiness as a human being depended on having answers to these questions. And so postponing the question is going to have an impact on your present happiness, but also on your future happiness. So that’s the great problem it seems like.

Cassius: Yes, and DeWitt talks about an application of that — the necessity of dealing both with the slings and arrows of fortune as well as the compulsions of necessity. And he says that the general attitude towards fortune is one of defiance, and that even when fortune appears to be showering you with blessings, you should be cautious and not count on those continuing. “Nature teaches us when unfortunate not to set great store by good fortune, and without being upset to accept the good things from fortune and to take a defiant stand against the seeming evils from her hand.” And he cites again Horace: “Remember to keep the spirit calm when the going is steep, not less restrained from overweening pride when things go well.” The attitude expressed by Horace — nil admirari, never to be taken by surprise. And that this is not to be confounded with Stoic apathy. The Epicurean did not suppress his emotions, but controlled them by preparedness.

Joshua: So again, the question, Cass, is: what are we preparing for? What is it that we’re supposed to always be ready for in this trouble of procrastination when it comes to wisdom and philosophy? What is the issue? What’s going to jump out of the bush? I guess is where I’m at on this.

Cassius: But the answer, I think, is you have to prepare now in order to forestall. Epicurus said that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours and so forth. There’s all of these different — you could call them forces at work in our lives — everything from chance to free will to fortune and so forth. The goal here is, as far as it’s possible to do so, to have free will be the guiding force in your life and to forestall these other forces where it’s possible to do so. And in order to do that, you have to prepare for it in advance.

Joshua: Yeah, at least two major categories of things that we’re preparing for here. The idea of fortune — the things that happen not necessarily by accident, but just things that you have no control over. There are certainly all sorts of things from disease to wars to all sorts of other things that we have no ability to control, but to some extent we have an ability to predict the possibility of. And so we can take steps to minimize what might happen, just like all of us tend to walk towards the inside of the house when there’s a tornado approaching — all these things like this, that you take steps to become aware of your circumstances, aware of those things going on around you, and you take the proper appropriate steps to forestall the calamities that could happen. And there are certainly many aspects — although you can’t stop a tornado — there are many lesser issues from just the deterioration of your roof over time and so forth. You know things are happening that need to be dealt with to maintain a happy life. So he’s talking about those things, some of which you can predict, some of which you cannot predict. He’s also talking about the necessity of certain things that we have no control over, such as death itself, in the sense that we know that death is going to happen, and there are ways to take steps to be prepared to better handle it when it does occur.

Cassius: So it says: “Here too, the secret of remaining happy is preparedness.” And he says Epicurus says: “Necessity is an evil, but there’s no necessity of living with necessity as the principle.” One example that he gives here is your simple or self-sufficient life allows you to deal with many more of the hazards that you come into contact with than are those people who are just living on the edge of luxury, spending every dollar that comes in — they’re not able to absorb the hits that do occur as well as the person who is much more self-sufficient. In relation to death, there was a debate about how to deal with bereavement when one of your close friends or relatives passes away and whether you should basically wail or scream, yell out in the face of death like certain cultures seem to favor. He says Epicurus recommended recognition of the inevitable but ruled out the wailing that was widely invoked. Vatican Saying 55: “We must heal our misfortunes by grateful recollection of those who have passed on and by recognizing that what is done cannot be undone.”

Joshua: Right. So it’s recognition of the inevitable, because this is part of the issue of what we’re talking about here. If you think about things like surprise — you shouldn’t be surprised by your own mortality. That should be something that you’ve had well in mind for basically your entire mature life. So when it comes, you’re not going to act like someone who feels like they’ve been robbed or cheated, because you’ve known your entire life that this was going to happen. Some people have this desire to sort of block this thought out. They don’t want to think about their own death, and it’s going to be that much worse for them when it comes. Or the deaths of those close to them — it’s going to be that much worse to them when the day comes.

Cassius: Yes, and there’s certainly ways to get prepared to deal with that, although when it does affect you directly with one of your loved ones you’ve been around for many, many years, there’s just an undeniable impact that it’s going to have on you. I had a friend just recently talking to me about how his mother had passed away and his father was distraught — and of course people who have a belief that the soul is immortal and that people are going to go to heaven are confronted with all these questions about the most deepest assumptions they’ve made about life. And it’s far better to have thought about these things ahead of time than to wait for the impact to hit you and then be sent reeling much more out of control than you would be if you’d thought about these things previously.

We can probably transition onto the next subheading because one of the ways that Epicurus does talk about dealing with these problems of life — even in his own situation, the pain he was in when he was about to die — is this issue of gratitude that DeWitt is going to talk about for the rest of this chapter. Gratitude has many, many different functions and aspects to it, but one of them in dealing with the death of a friend or death of a relative is to be grateful for the time that you did have with that person. Again, talking about Frances Wright, there’s a particularly good section in A Few Days in Athens. You may feel very sorry that you’ve lost this person, but you knew it was coming, and would you have preferred not to have ever known this person in the first place? Because the price of knowing someone and having pleasure from being their friend or their relative is knowing that at some point either you or they is going to die first. But you would not give up the joy of having gone through life with that person. The thought of giving it up because you’re just so scared of the pain of losing them is a terrible way of approaching life based on the many texts where Epicurus talks about this.

In fact, we should probably take a slight detour. You’ve already referred to it, Joshua. We’ve had reason recently to be discussing from the Letter to Menoikeus where Epicurus goes into all of this in detail. “Nothing terrible in life for the man who truly comprehends — there’s nothing terrible in not living — and that the man speaks idly who says that he fears death not because it will be painful, because it’s painful in anticipation, and that the wise man neither seeks to escape life nor fears the cessation of life, for neither does life offend him nor does the absence of life seem to be an evil. And just as with food, he does not seek simply the larger share and nothing else, but rather the most pleasant, so he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time but the most pleasant.” That’s a line that we need to come back to regularly because it’s a very clear statement that length of time is not the primary way you judge the pleasures that you go for. It’s the most pleasant and not necessarily the longest. And then here’s the part that’s most relevant to what we’re talking about right now: “And he who counsels the young man to live well and the old man to make a good end is foolish, not merely because of the desirability of life, but also because it’s the same training which teaches to live well and to die well. Yet much worse still is the man who says it is good not to be born, but once born make haste to pass the gates of death. For if he says this from conviction, why does he not pass away out of life? For it’s open to him to do so if he had firmly made up his mind to this. But if he speaks in jest, his words are idle among men who cannot receive them.”

So there’s just no doubt in Epicurean philosophy that Epicurus believes that life is desirable, that death is undesirable — it’s not something to be afraid of when it comes — but life is desirable while you have it and you should take advantage of it and not just constantly be concerned about the suffering that is there, because life is going to be with you only for a short period of time and it’s worth having despite the suffering. You know, we’ve got Principal Doctrines 3 and 4 that talk about how pain is manageable — that it is generally short if intense, and if it goes on for a long time it’s usually manageable — and then again, if for some reason you’ve got an unmanageable pain that there’s no way out of, there is always death as a relief from that pain. So there’s ways to manage the situation and not just become comatose or immobilized by the suffering that you see around you. It’s up to you to take steps to deal with these issues in an intelligent way and make the best use of the time that you have available to you.

We’re going to go into several very interesting sections here in this beginning of gratitude related to death. It talks about the cultivation of gratitude: “Moreover, it lies in our power to bury as it were unhappy memories in everlasting oblivion and to recall happy memories with sweet and agreeable recollection,” which is what Epicurus was doing as he was in pain right before he died. And one of the interesting ways that this question becomes a controversy is that Solon apparently took the position that he refused to judge a man happy until death had placed him beyond the reach of misfortune — the bottom line being, you don’t know whether you’ve got a happy life or not until you’re dead, apparently, is the position that Solon was taking. Epicurus in contrast, in Vatican Saying 75, said: “The adage which says ‘look to the end of a long life’ bespeaks a lack of gratitude for past blessings.”

Joshua: You were talking a little bit ago, Cassius, about the Letter to Menoikeus and this anti-natalist position — that we would be better off if we had never been born. This virtue of gratitude here in this section completely refutes that approach, or at least for Epicurus it does, because life is something that we should have gratitude for — and not just looking back after we die should we have gratitude for life. All throughout our life, our past blessings are a store of pleasure for us to draw on until we die. So that’s a very interesting approach from Epicurus and it relates to this issue of gratitude. What you’ve experienced in the past is your storehouse — this is your treasure house — as a way of looking at it. This is something that you can rely upon for the rest of your life even in bad times. I think that’s the approach here, and for that we should have gratitude.

Cassius: Yeah, I think this is a tremendously important issue because you see it regularly where people for whatever reason come to this conclusion that they would have been better off if they had never been born, and they look around at the suffering in life — of animals or other human beings — and say they would have been better off if they had never been born. There may be some circumstances where that could be argued in good faith, but to take that attitude in general, to look at life or all humanity and say that humanity would be better off if it had never been born — it’s got to be one of the most negative and nihilistic and absolutely depressing outlooks that you could possibly have on life. And so it’s not surprising that Epicurus is going to be dealing with that here, because if you’re placing all of your emphasis in life on the experience of pleasure and happiness, then what could be the most reversed and upside-down perspective than to say that happiness is just not worth it because the suffering that comes in life is just so overwhelming and so debilitating that it takes all the pleasure out of life? There’s something very, very wrong about that, at least from the position of Epicurus, and everybody I think needs to take a position on that. And they often come to that question during these very difficult times of life when something happens to them — they say, “I wish I’d never been born.” Well, that’s a very short-sighted way of looking at things that Epicurus is specifically denouncing. It’s not only wrong philosophically, but it’s just a very impractical and very debilitating perspective. It undercuts your ability to continue on with life successfully if you take that position. The argument is certainly one that takes seriously, because people do make it. But if you become doubtful about the answer to that question, you’ve got lots of trouble ahead of you, and you need advice and analysis such as Epicurus provides to pull you back from that kind of brink before you jump off into the abyss entirely.

Joshua: Yeah, and part of this relates, of course, to religion and the idea that without it, you would be nothing — that without my belief, life would be unlivable, not worth living. This belief makes actually life very difficult for some people, that they have to cling on no matter how hard it is to sustain that in the face of all the evidence. They have to cling on because otherwise, what would be the point? Well, the point — at least part of the point for Epicurus — is what DeWitt says at the end of the section here: “The happy life is the grateful life, terminating at last in the fullness of pleasures in old age.”

Now, before we leave this section, here’s the part that I wanted to emphasize because I took the time to look up a couple of DeWitt’s footnotes here. His last paragraph in the section is: “No less radical was his parting with Plato, whose espousal of the contemplative life along with the belief in immortality was bound to result in construing life as a preparation for death.” In footnote 111 here, there are two sources that I’m going to take the time to talk about for just a minute. DeWitt continues: “Epicurus, denying immortality, was equally bound to think of life as narrowly confined to the interval between birth and death and consequently to construe it” — as you just said — “as a preparation for a happy and triumphant old age. For this victory over death and the grave, he found the cause in gratitude for past blessings. The happy life was the grateful life, terminating at last in the fullness of pleasures in old age.”

But I don’t want to pass over these footnotes — footnote 111 — where DeWitt is citing, without quoting here, both Plato in his Phaedo and Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations. And you hear somebody say, “Well, the contemplative life combined with immortality leads you to think that life is a preparation for death,” and you hear somebody say that and say, “Oh, that’s an exaggeration. That’s not the way it really is.” But that is exactly what Plato says in the Phaedo. I encourage people to look that up — I’ll put the links in the show notes. But Plato says: “Then the true philosophers practice dying, and death is less terrible to them than to any other men. Consider it this way: they are in every way hostile to the body, and they desire to have the soul apart by itself alone. Would it not be very foolish if they should be frightened and troubled when this very thing happens, and if they should not be glad to go to the place where there is hope of attaining what they long for all through life — and they long for wisdom — and of escaping from the companionship of that which they hated? When human loves — wives or sons — have died, many men have willingly gone to the other world, led by the hope of seeing there those whom they long for and being with them. And shall he who is really in love with wisdom and has a firm belief that he can find it nowhere other than in the other world grieve when he dies and not be glad to go there? We cannot think that, my friend, if he is really a philosopher, for he will confidently believe that he will find pure wisdom nowhere else than in the other world. And if this is so, would it not be very foolish for such a man to fear death?” So there’s Plato talking about that: if you really value wisdom, then you realize that the body is the problem that traps you and keeps you separate from pure wisdom. So why not embrace death? Because then when the soul is freed from the body, you’re going to have pure wisdom, which is what you’re looking for in the first place.

And then DeWitt also cites in Tusculan Disputations section 30, line 74: “But these reflections were of long standing and barred from the Greeks. But Cato left this world in such a manner as if he were delighted that he had found an opportunity of dying, for that God who presides in us forbids our departure hence without his leave. But when God himself has given us a just cause — as he formerly did to Socrates and later to Cato and often to many others — in such a case, certainly every man of sense would gladly exchange this darkness for that light. Not that he would forcibly break from the chains that held him, for that would be against the law, but like a man released from prison by a magistrate or some lawful authority, so he too would walk away, being released and discharged by God. For the whole life of a philosopher is, as the same philosopher says, a meditation on death.”

Cassius: Now, I think the point DeWitt is making here is that Epicurus has a very, very different emphasis than this traditional Platonic, Socratic view that in the duality of the body and the soul wrestling with each other all through life, we should welcome the release of the soul from the body. If you believe that there is no immortal soul, as Epicurus believes, you’re not welcoming the release of the soul from the body, because you know that that brings nothingness after that. You’re not afraid of it. You’re going to be in pain when it happens. But you’re not going to welcome it, because the things that are good to have occur while you’re alive.

Joshua: Part of what’s so remarkable, Cass, is that we know that this is the position of Plato. We know that this is the position of many of these thinkers who are looking to life beyond the grave not only as a continuation of life, but as something better than life. Cicero, I think, has a quote. He says that “I believe in the immortality of the soul, and I would not have this belief wrested from me. Even if it’s false, I would not have this belief wrested from me while I was still living.” So the idea that this should be a great comfort for people is one that’s made repeatedly. But what I find is that I’m not really sure that that works. And of course, the most famous example of this — and I’m not going to quote it — is the soliloquy in Act Three, Scene One in Hamlet: “To be or not to be. That is the question.” And it goes on and on. We say that it’s even better beyond the grave, but we’re all still very afraid of dying. It seems to be one of the great problems with this approach. It doesn’t seem to work.

Cassius: Yeah, it doesn’t seem to work practically. And if you take an Epicurean position that you’re going to evaluate everything by the evidence that you have, it doesn’t work philosophically. It’s a position that is filled with contradictions and filled with violations of the evidence that we have in front of us about how the world works and how life works. I think the subject that we’re talking about right now is one of the very most important subjects in Epicurean philosophy that needs to be stressed at the very beginning of any person who wants to get involved with Epicurus. We’re going to evaluate the way you live your life according to the knowledge that after you die, you’re not going to be around anymore to do anything else. You’re not going to be rewarded. You’re not going to be punished. And if you understand that and take it to heart fully, I don’t think it’s reasonable to take the position that Epicurus was consumed with running from fear, with running from pain. Because if running from pain is your number one goal, it’s very easy for you to escape pain by just simply terminating your life. Those people who say that don’t really mean it — they don’t in most cases carry through with that — because it doesn’t make sense, it’s not the way nature works, and it’s not an intelligent thing to do. But again, when you know that your time is short, you’re going to take steps to use the time productively. But if you think your time is unlimited, if you think that life is a preparation for death, then you’re going to sit back and take whatever comes with a tra-la-la attitude of “well, my treasure is in heaven, I’m going to see my Redeemer when I die and I just can’t wait for that.” You’re going to live your life in an entirely different way that has not necessarily anything to do strictly with pleasure and pain — but you’re going to take everything, I think, more seriously, evaluating what is the best way to spend the time that you have.

Cassius: Okay, the first of the examples that address his next section — gratitude to teachers — is something that he cites several examples about. Epicurus analogized the relationship between teacher and pupil with that of a father and child. He gives the example of Lucretius talking about how we learned from Epicurus as if he was our father. And using the example here that the relationship between a teacher and the student that he’s teaching should be personal and ethical — you’re going to look out for their interest as a father would for his child. It’s not just a transaction between someone who’s buying knowledge and someone who’s selling knowledge. It’s a relationship of affection and respect and desire for the well-being of the student.

Joshua: You know, Cassius, I just now made this connection in my mind between what DeWitt says about Lucretius and Epicurus as a sort of father figure in philosophy, and what he immediately says after that about Agamemnon, who is the father of Iphigenia and symbolizes the old sort of religious approach that Epicurus was rebelling against. In the case of Epicurus, the mode of approach here is to foster philosophy — which is what Lucretius is trying to do with his poem — and in the case of Agamemnon, he actually, it’s a human sacrifice, he actually kills his own daughter. So there’s a kind of symmetry there, or a contrast, that I didn’t really latch upon until just now, but I do find that rather interesting.

Cassius: Yeah, a father who places his religious views above the life and interest of his child in the case of Agamemnon, and in the case of Epicurus, it’s a father who is pursuing both what he thinks is the truth, but also realizing that the goal is to benefit the living person and to have him live the life that’s happiest for him — rather than from some other supposedly higher goal of the nation or the state or the religion or virtue even.

Well, there’s one thing I do want to quote here because it draws this distinction between Ionian science and the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in that group. So DeWitt interestingly enough here quotes the Hippocratic oath. He says: “I will look upon him who has taught me the art” — the art of medicine, that is — “as I do my parents and will share with him my livelihood. If he is in need, I will give him money.” This is part, says DeWitt, of the genuinely anthropocentric ethic of Ionian science, as opposed to the state-centered philosophy of Athens and Plato.

Joshua: You know, I did a video on this, and that’s available on Cassius’s YouTube account, about the origin of the Epicurean school — which was not in Athens really, it was on the other side of the Aegean, on the coast of Asia Minor. So this is this discipline of Ionian science that he’s talking about, the discipline that looks to the raw facts of nature for its information about philosophy rather than geometry and speculations of that kind. So I do find that rather interesting. He’s got this bit in here about “I will give my teacher my money,” and I don’t support that as much. The focus on, as DeWitt says here, the anthropocentric ethic as opposed to the state-centered philosophy of Plato is something worth drawing out.

Cassius: Yeah, he calls it “state-centered,” but I think more of an abstraction-centered philosophy — thinking that there’s some idealism, some ideal out there that transcends the human relationships that are involved. The real-life relationships of the living people involved are always going to trump the abstract idealism of a Plato or an Aristotle or the abstract idealism of virtue that the Stoics would advocate. Again, another opportunity to say something to distinguish Stoicism from Epicureanism. That is the deal here. When you drill down into Stoicism, Stoicism is virtue as an end in itself. Stoicism makes no sense if you strip it from its foundations of an idealism, theistic-centered viewpoint that there is an idealized virtue out there that people should put above everything else. Epicurus totally rejects that kind of analysis.

Joshua: Right, because what you really find when you go out there is nature. And our next section is gratitude to nature.

Cassius: It says the duty of gratitude to nature is on record in these words: “Lead is due to blessed nature because she has made life’s necessities easy of acquisition and those things that are difficult of acquisition unnecessary.” The true basis, says DeWitt, of the debt to nature, however, is to be found in her function as a teacher. She is not to Epicurus, as she was to Aristotle, merely the creative force in the universe. She was also the aggregate of animate experience and especially of human experience. It’s because of nature, for example — and this is me talking now — that we know that pleasure is the good. It’s because of nature that we know that pain is something to be avoided. And so for these gifts, what do we owe to nature? A sense of gratitude.

Joshua: Yeah, like in the opening of the very first section of Lucretius, where we’re talking about how Venus — the force of nature or pleasure — is the motivating force of everything that happens for all living creatures. It’s not a matter of nature doing it for our specific benefit, that she’s expecting Joshua or Cassius or any individual to give thanks to her directly and that she’s going to acknowledge that thanks and that you’re going to have this personal relationship with Venus. There’s no discussion of a personal relationship with Venus, but there’s an acknowledgement that the way things are — nature and the pleasure that nature gives us and the pain that nature gives us — is basically, as DeWitt says here, an ethical teacher. “Nature teaches us to think the gifts of fortune of minor value and to know that when we are fortunate, we are unfortunate.” And he gives a series of analogies here where, for example, true justice is the justice of nature, and he refers to the true end of life as “the end of nature,” and the true attitude toward desire consists of recognizing the limits of nature.

Cassius: And these are things that are not to be dismissed as irrelevant or something that we should just forget about, but we should actually be grateful that these things are here. I would say that’s part of the general attitude that life — when you’re not experiencing pain — is indeed a pleasure, and that you are recognizing that the idea of living is a valuable, highly desirable thing. That while you’re not in some kind of an unmanageable pain, you’ve got something that’s very, very worth having and worth experiencing. And if you internalize that attitude, you’re not going to have this nihilistic “run from pain, run from fear, run from every little possible trouble that’s out there,” but you’re going to engage with your life and manage it for the best effect.

Then gratitude to friends — and DeWitt, Horace, and Epicurus’s comments as well — that there’s a reciprocity involved in friendship, that the relationship of friendship is reciprocal. An example that comes from Horace: that the relationship between a patron and his client also has to have that reciprocity. Horace apparently says: “The good and wise man declares himself willing to assist the deserving, and I too shall show myself deserving in proportion to the merit of my benefactor.”

Joshua: Right. That seems to be having something to do with the vagaries of the Roman system of cultivating the arts, but also of cultivating political careers using patronage — that didn’t have copyright like we have today. So if you can’t get rich off publishing a book, for example — and Horace, if you could have gotten rich off publishing a book, certainly would have, because he was one of the most widely read authors of his day — what you need if you want to make money at that is people who were already very wealthy, who would have this sort of social obligation to foster the arts and to foster the next generation of statesmen. So that was well ingrained and built into the Roman system. It’s probably that that he’s talking about there. But just as he says there, just because I’m taking money from the benefactor doesn’t mean I’m just mooching off of him. It’s a reciprocal relationship. In gratitude for what he is doing for me, I’m also going to write beautiful poetry. Cicero, in the Civil War, has some — I think he’s an officer, for example, in the Civil War. So he’s not just sitting there taking money; it’s a reciprocal relationship, to foster the best of Roman culture as they saw it, I think is what is being described there.

Cassius: Okay, the final section of this chapter is entitled “Fruits of Gratitude,” and it starts out by making another comparison between Epicurus and the Stoics. He says: “Unlike the Stoics who came after him, Epicurus entertained no distrust of the emotions. To the wise man, he ascribed an exceptional depth of feeling, and at the same time, he was mindful of expediency. Emotions under proper control contribute to happiness, and happiness is a form of the advantageous.”

Joshua: This reminds me, Cassius — I just read an article, basically the claim was that pop Stoicism is actually dangerous and not helpful because they’re completely misreading ancient Stoicism and just focusing on trying to suppress emotion to the greatest possible degree. That’s not a helpful approach, and Epicurus is so far from that approach that he actually ascribes to philosophers an even greater capacity to feel emotions or to fully understand them.

Cassius: DeWitt is pointing out that depending on the foundation, depending on the starting point of your analysis here, you’re going to arrive with different results. If you start out like a Stoic and you think that emotions are to be distrusted and are to be basically suppressed or repressed — and that emotions are deceptive and things to be minimized — then you’re going to end up with a personality and a life which is a particular way. If you take the position that emotions and pleasures are things to be enjoyed, things to be embraced and used to live happily, then you’re going to end up with another type of result.

And the second paragraph here is where DeWitt expands on that. He says: “One of the foremost recommendations of gratitude was its value as a preserver of youthfulness” — “both when young and when old, one should devote himself to philosophy in order that while growing old, he shall be young in blessings through gratitude for what has been.” And then he contrasts that with Vatican Saying 19, referring to some unnamed person: “Forgetting the good that has been, he becomes an old man this very day.” Emphasizing, I think, the point that someone who has an attitude of gratitude toward life — who is enjoying his life, who’s appreciative of what he’s got, no matter how much or small it might be, who understands that life is pleasurable — that person is going to have a youthful embrace of life that is not corrupted, not jaded, not resigned to the awfulness of suffering and that you should just basically embrace death and hope for it to come. That’s two of the most opposite attitudes you could possibly have. And what this is emphasizing here is that Epicurus is connecting your attitude of gratitude for these things that you have with the better result — which is the much more positive and happy attitude towards life.

He quotes also Vatican Saying 35: “We must not spoil the enjoyment of the blessings we have by pining for those we have not, but rather reflect that these too are among the things desirable. The life of the fool is marked by ingratitude and apprehension.” And then Vatican Saying 69: “It is ungratefulness in the soul that renders the creature endlessly desirous of embellishments in diet.” What he says here at the end of that paragraph is: “The argument here subsumed is that gratitude is due to nature for rendering the necessities easy of acquisition and the luxuries difficult.” And then: “In the next chapter, gratitude for the blessing of friendship is extolled for its comforting and healing influence.” We’re kind of recapping what we’ve gone over earlier. Vatican Saying 55 is directly on point: “One should heal his misfortunes by grateful recollection of friends who have passed on and by reflecting that what has once happened cannot be undone.”

So where DeWitt goes as he begins to close this chapter here is he’s again telling us to confront this question of immortality. DeWitt actually uses the word that some people might look down upon Vatican Saying 55 as being “pathetic,” or look down upon it as saying, “Those poor Epicureans, they did not have the hope of immortality, so therefore they must have led miserable lives thinking that there’s no future for them after they die and they’re never going to see their loved ones again. Oh my gosh, how sorrowful that is.” But I think the Epicureans would throw that back in the face of someone who tried to argue that Epicureans are to be pitied. In fact, there’s a verse from Paul in the New Testament to the effect that no one is to be more pitied than a Christian if indeed there is no resurrection — something to that effect. That’s probably the issue that DeWitt is really hinting at here. It’s important to take a position on: is the soul immortal? Is there life after death? If so, then you’d better live your life preparing for eternity after death. You’d better live your life in conformity with what the priests tell you to do, with what these books tell you to do that supposedly have been delivered from divine revelation. You’d better study all of those as closely as you can and make all of your decisions as rigorously as you can in conformity with these dictates of religion — if you believe that to be true. But if you don’t believe it to be true, and if you believe that there is no immortality, that there is no life after death, then you’re going to live your life in an entirely different way. You can say that, “Oh my gosh, that’s pitiful that these people had no hope for life after death.” But I think they would turn it back on its head and say, “Oh my gosh, you are living your life in darkness. You are wasting your life thinking that you’re preparing for some eternity in heaven when it does not exist. You have been defrauded. You have been cheated of everything that life had to offer you.” And so I don’t think an Epicurean by any means would accept that it’s too bad that there’s no life after death. He would say, “I’m going to go with reality. I’m not going to put my hopes in something that has no proof of it. I’m going to use my time as best I possibly can while I have it.”

Joshua: I think it’s hard to overstate the significance of this issue. And what DeWitt is saying here is that Epicurus is not oblivious to the fact that it’s very difficult to deal with death, especially those of your loved ones. And he’s saying that what Epicurus was suggesting here is to think about the gratitude that you have for the time that you’ve had in life, the time that you’ve had with them, and realize that you wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world. You certainly would not give it up out of fear that you were eventually going to be in the pain of losing it. You would embrace it while you have the chance to embrace it. You would realize that life is temporary — that’s what nature provides — and you would be grateful to the scheme of things that you’ve been given the opportunity to experience it at least once yourself, which of course leads to some of the concluding passages from the Vatican Sayings. For example, Vatican Saying 47: “When necessity does remove us, spitting scornfully upon life and those who foolishly cling to it, we shall depart this life with a beauteous span of victory, raising the refrain that we have lived a good life.” Yeah, and more or less you get the same sentiment in Diogenes of Oenoanda, don’t you? Having contempt on life and so forth, but shouting aloud that he had lived well.

Cassius: Yeah, and so here’s the way Diogenes of Oenoanda stated it: “Having already reached the sunset of my life, being almost on the verge of departure from the world on account of old age, I wanted before being overtaken by death to compose an anthem, to celebrate the fullness of pleasure, and so to help those now who are well constituted. Now, if only one person or two or three or four or five or six or any larger number you choose — provided it’s not very large — or in a bad predicament, I would address them individually and do all in my power to give them the best advice. But as I’ve said before, the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing, for in mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another like sheep. For over its right to help also generations to come, for they too belong to us though they are still unborn, and besides, love of humanity prompts us to aid also the foreigners who come here. Now, since the remedies of the inscription reach a large number of people, I wish to use this stoa to advertise publicly the medicines that bring salvation. These medicines we have put fully to the test, for we have dispelled the fears that grip us without justification, and as for pains, those that are groundless we have completely excised, while those that are natural we have reduced to an absolute minimum, making their magnitude minute.”

So that’s Diogenes of Oenoanda expressing, again, the opposite. He’s not embarrassed. He’s not “woe is me, I’m a pathetic person because I have no future after death.” He’s proud of the choices that he’s made and happy with the results of his life. And even at the end of it, when he’s about to pass away, he is enjoying the benefits and the satisfaction, the meaningfulness that comes from telling other people that they can do the same thing and helping dispel the errors of those who are convinced that religion offers them something that it cannot hope to actually fulfill.

Joshua: You know, it occurs to me, Cassius, what a good counterpoint that really is to the end of Lucretius — this horrible account in the end of the sixth book of Lucretius’s poem about the plague in Athens. And gratitude, which is what we’ve been talking about, seems to play a role here, because one of the things that Lucretius describes in this plague is how people descended into a state of almost impiety, taking other people’s dead people off of the pyre so they could throw their own dead people onto the pyre. So, Cassius, I don’t know what my point with all of this is other than the urgency that we talked about when we started this — the urgency of life, because death is coming and it’s coming a lot faster than we would like. And you can take the position of Diogenes of Oenoanda and compose a fine anthem to your life. You can look at the last book of Lucretius and see things as rather brutal and somewhat heartbreaking, but the decisions you make about life are very important, and making them now — that the urgency of the present moment is paramount.

Cassius: Yeah, it’s a very good point, Joshua, and before we begin to close, I would emphasize it. As Emily Austin raised in her Living for Pleasure book, you can take the original version of the history of the plague of Athens and realize that at the end of Lucretius — where he may have been going there — is that those who survived the plague of Athens realized at that point that, having gone through this terrible experience, it had been seared into their minds the necessity to live the life that they had available to them and to pull back from all these idealistic positions that they might have been consumed with before the plague, and realize that it was time for them to live their lives while they had the opportunity to do so. So that’s one way that would be a fitting ending to Lucretius, and what you’ve just said from Fragment 3 of Diogenes of Oenoanda would also have been a very fitting ending. You cannot avoid in life that there is tremendous suffering, but the question is what you take away from that experience. Are you going to turn into a nihilist, existentialist, suffering-obsessed person who wants to go bury their head in the sand — or eventually even potentially commit suicide? Is that the direction you’re going to go from confronting suffering? Or are you going to realize that these bad things that do happen remind you to enthusiastically and urgently embrace the time that you have, to make the best use of the life that’s available to you? And it’s clearly the Epicurean position that you’re going to embrace life and be happy with what you’ve been given and have gratitude for the life that you’ve lived. And Vatican Saying 47: “Spitting scornfully upon life and those who foolishly cling to it, we shall depart this life with the victory song, raising the refrain that we have lived a good life.”

Okay, so the end of Chapter 14 here. What’s interesting about this whole chapter is we don’t talk about virtue very much. So it is worth going through. Callistheni?

Callistheni: This podcast has brought up that there are some Epicurean exercises, practices, which can be done. And I’m just going to say a few with regard to free will, which came up today — that is something to really consider, what that would mean and what personal responsibility would be. You’re personally responsible for your well-being. And then also preparing for death would be another kind of practical exercise. I’m not really giving specific exercises, but I’m bringing up the idea that these are things that should be thought about and time should be taken to contemplate these things — so not only your own death but the death of your loved ones, to prepare ahead of time for that. And then emotions are to be experienced. That came up today, which is an interesting thing, because it’s only through emotions that we get a motivating force to take action, or at least the things that are so pressing in life — we feel things come up in us and then we say, “Oh, I must do something now to deal with this situation.” So emotions are really important, and so as Epicureans it seems we should do some kinds of exercises to develop our emotional intelligence and our emotional awareness, because they really are helping us make our choices. It’s not like we’re going to make all our choices based on our emotions, but they’re really telling us what’s important to us and they can help us choose. In certain situations we’re going to also include reason and prudence and considering the outcome in the future of what the best outcome will be. But it just came to me that this is something very important — to spend time on becoming aware of one’s emotions and cultivating that. And then also gratitude was brought up today, so lots of exercises that could be done, contemplations to be done regarding gratitude — remembering one’s teachers, remembering loved ones who have passed away, and of course everyday kinds of gratitude for the good things that are happening and have happened. And yeah, so this has been an interesting podcast today for me, so thank you.

Cassius: Yeah, the whole chapter in terms of presenting a list of virtues really does amount to a list of things to do. The virtue presumably meaning exactly that — that these are strengths and things that should be pursued in order to live a happy life. Joshua?

Joshua: I don’t really think I can add much more to what Callistheni said. I think she has a very good approach to this, which is: it’s no good if it’s sitting in Norman DeWitt’s book on your bookshelf. Some of this has to find its way into your life as you live it, or there’s no point in even doing it really.

Cassius: Yes, that’s right. Well, it’s been a good chapter. Next week we’re going to come back and start Chapter 15, which is the final chapter in the book. It’s called “Extension, Submergence, and Revival,” and it’s going to be basically a survey of what happened to the Epicurean school in the years in which Christianity eventually took over and crowded out everything else. And so we’ll go into that chapter next week. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments about the podcast, please drop by the forum and let us know. We’ll do our best to answer them. We hope you’ll participate with us at EpicureanFriends.com in the study of Epicurus. So until then, thanks for your time today. See you next week.