Episode 191 - Cicero's On Ends - Book One - Part 02
Date: 09/15/23
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3313-episode-191-cicero-s-on-ends-book-one-part-02/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 191 continues the reading of Cicero’s On Ends, Book One. The episode opens with Torquatus beginning his formal response to Cicero’s criticisms, proposing to defer the defense of Epicurean natural science and focus the immediate debate on pleasure as the standard of good. The discussion highlights that this framing — treating pleasure as the disputandum — was significant because Cicero himself had said Epicurus’s chief claim was in natural science, and what is truly revolutionary in Epicurean philosophy is the understanding that nature proceeds without divine intervention.
The episode covers: Torquatus’s argument from nature (every creature from birth seeks pleasure as its supreme good, observed as directly as fire being hot or snow being white); the debate within the Epicurean community about whether simple observation suffices to prove the point or whether elaborate argument is needed; the modern problem of death being “hidden” from everyday experience; Torquatus on choosing pain when the result is greater pleasure; the two-feelings doctrine (pleasure and pain, no neutral middle state; the absence of all pain is itself the highest pleasure); the Chrysippus hand statue argument and Torquatus’s decisive reply (the hand not in pain is in pleasure — Chrysippus was arguing against the Cyrenaics, not Epicureans); and the “blessed life” thought experiment from section 12.
The episode closes with a discussion of whether philosophy is necessary for a happy life, sparked by Callistheni’s question. Joshua offers a passionate objection to the idea that one cannot be happy without studying philosophy, comparing it to being told one cannot know peace without Jesus. Cassius draws the discussion to a close by connecting it to Frances Wright’s character Hadiiya in A Few Days in Athens and to the Letter to Menoikeus’s opening injunction.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 191 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. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts and we 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.
This week, we continue our discussion of Books One and Two of Cicero’s On Ends, which are largely devoted to Epicurean philosophy. On Ends contains important criticisms of Epicurus that have set the tone for the standard analysis of his philosophy for the last 2,000 years. Going through this book gives us the opportunity to review those attacks, take them apart, and respond to them as an ancient Epicurean might have done.
Last week, we concluded at the end of section seven, and so we are on page 11 of the Read edition near the top of the page with Roman numeral seven. At this point, we are about to turn the conversation back over to Torquatus. Cicero says here, after I had said this, Triarius said with a slight smile: “You have, I may say, banished Epicurus entirely from the company of philosophers. What concession have you made to him, but that whatever his style, you understand his meaning? In natural science, his deliverances are unoriginal, and in themselves such as you do not accept. Whenever he has tried to make improvements in them, they have turned out to be corruptions. He had no skill in logic. In declaring pleasure to be the supreme good, he betrayed in the first place — by that very proceeding — narrowness of vision. In the second, he was a plagiarist once more, for Aristippus had maintained the same tenets earlier, and better too. You added in conclusion that he was uneducated as well.”
Joshua:
Right, so then Cicero picks up the thread, saying: “Triarius, I cannot in any way avoid stating what I do not accept in the system of a philosopher with whom I disagree. Pray, what would hinder me from becoming an Epicurean if I accepted the doctrines of Epicurus? So the adverse criticisms passed on each other by men who disagree are not to be censured. It is reviling and insult, and passionate conflicts and obstinate encounters in debate, which always seem to me unworthy of philosophy.”
And so at this point, Torquatus begins his narration. He says, “Without adverse criticism there can be no debate, but if you do not object, I have a reply I should like to make to what you have said.” And Cicero says, “Of course I want to hear your reply — do you think we were doing it for any other reason than that?” And Torquatus says, “Do you prefer that we should run over the whole system of Epicurus or confine the inquiry to the one subject of pleasure, on which the whole dispute turns?”
Now, that is an interesting thing there — Torquatus is saying that the whole dispute turns on pleasure. Cicero has said earlier that Epicurus’s chief claim to fame was in his physics. And probably behind all of the dispute is the question of whether there is a supernatural God directing the universe, creating things, rewarding people after death, and so forth. But Torquatus is suggesting that the central issue is pleasure. In the Planudean anthology, Epicurus’s name comes up in a few epigrams, and in all of those epigrams his name comes up because of his atomism — which gives me reason to understand that it was really his atomism that people were engaging with in the ancient world, more so perhaps than just his claim that pleasure was the telos, the goal of life. Cicero is setting this up as if it is Torquatus’s idea to focus only on pleasure as the question that needs to be addressed. Torquatus says he will leave natural science to another occasion — when he will demonstrate that the doctrine of the swerve and the Sun’s apparent size were correct, and that Epicurus criticized and set right many blunders of Democritus.
Cassius:
Yeah, I mean, that is something we talk about all the time — if you are looking for really the most revolutionary idea in Epicurean philosophy, it is not just pleasure-seeking, which has become the easier target. It is this understanding that nature exists and proceeds without divine intervention. That is the key claim. That is the claim that turns everything else on its head. So it is good to see that point made here.
Now, one of the things we talked about in the last episode of the DeWitt series was these early Renaissance figures like Lorenzo Valla, Cosma Raimondi, and Farinata degli Uberti and their engagement with Epicurean philosophy. One of the sources we read indicated that most of them were writing before the widespread circulation of Diogenes Laertius and of Lucretius. So the books they must have been working with at the time primarily was this book — Cicero. So the tone that Cicero sets becomes hugely important for all of the later understanding of Epicurean philosophy until just the last few centuries.
Joshua:
Yes, and that is something you hinted at earlier, Cassius. Now we are up to section nine, where Torquatus begins his discussion. Torquatus starts out by setting the stage and saying that what we really need to be talking about is what is the climax and standard of all things good — and this, in the opinion of all philosophers, must be such that we test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing. And he then says Epicurus places his standard in pleasure, which he lays down to be the supreme good, while pain is the supreme evil.
Cassius:
Okay, so Cicero has set up the discussion with his criticisms of Epicurus. Torquatus says: I will come back to natural science and even epistemology later. Let us go straight into the ethics and discuss whether pleasure is the goal — because you have said Aristippus did it better, that this is the system most unworthy of the human race, that Torquatus’s ancestors did not seek pleasure but virtue and glory, and that Epicureans do not value mental pleasure. All of these things resolve themselves back down into: what is the standard by which we judge all our actions? Is it pleasure, wisdom, piety to the gods, virtue, or something else? And Torquatus answers simply by saying Epicurus places this standard in pleasure.
Joshua:
Right, and we cannot really avoid reading this, which is the next part. “Every creature, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure and delights therein as its supreme good, while it recoils from pain as its supreme evil, and banishes that so far as it can from its own presence, and this it does while still uncorrupted, and while nature herself prompts unbiased and unaffected decisions.” This is how we know that it is pleasure that is the telos, the proper end of all behavior in human life. These facts, he continues, are simply observed, just as the fact that fire is hot, snow is white, and honey sweet. He rests his proof not on formal argument, but on observing infants and very young animals — lower orders of animals who do not even have the capacity to form an idea of what they are doing. Still, they seek after pleasure and avoid pain.
Cassius:
Yeah, Joshua, it is really interesting to me how the more time you spend reading Epicurus, over time your understanding changes. We did the review of Torquatus many months ago at this point. This time, as we go through it, I bet we will come up with some different perspectives. And one of the things that I think bears emphasis is that right after the part you just read, Torquatus is going to say that this is an issue that is debated within the Epicurean community. Some people agree with Epicurus that simply observing pleasure and pain in operation in nature is all you need to do — that it is not even appropriate to launch into any long, logical debate in support of it. Torquatus himself says he does not really agree with that position and thinks it is a good idea to get into an elaborate debate about it.
One aspect of that strikes me as interesting when you think about Lucretius’s poem — where in De Rerum Natura does he really spend a lot of time arguing in favor of pleasure as the good? At this point I would say Lucretius has chosen to follow Epicurus’s position. He starts out in Book One with a relatively long section observing how Venus — or nature, or pleasure — is the motivating guide of human life. People call it the Hymn to Venus. But it is basically: look here, look at how the world operates — everything is chasing pleasure as its goal. And it could be that what Lucretius has chosen to do, in not extending that argument into a full book, is simply follow what Epicurus said here. There is no way to be more convincing about nature’s guidance through pleasure and pain than simply to observe how things are. So this little section seems to me to be particularly enlightening about the way the Epicureans were talking among themselves about how to prove this point.
Joshua:
Right, and Lucretius talks about this extensively in the Hymn to Venus without really giving an argument for it. He is pointing to the way that these animals behave. And as he says, Venus is sola gubernans — the sole governor of these things — where the birds and wild beasts leap in carefree fields, cross raging rivers, seized with joy and eagerness. All follow you, no matter where you lead, through seas and mountains, roaring streams, the leafy tenements of the birds, and fields now turning green, as you inspire all hearts with tempting love, and through desire bring out new generations, each in accordance with its kind. So it is not just that individual animals pursue pleasure, but the whole operation of procreation and the new generation of the species is entirely wrapped up in this goal of the pursuit of pleasure.
Cassius:
Yes, and one thing I left out of our summary of what Cicero had said last week is that the premise of this discussion is that it is appropriate to look at what nature is actually doing as your proof of what you should do yourself. And that is really the heart of where Cicero objects — because his objection from last week, which we talked about in terms of it being unworthy of the human race, was the phrase: nature has created and shaped us for higher aims. So the background argument through all of this is that there are somehow higher goals than what we observe nature to be doing in the rest of the animal world.
Joshua:
Yeah, and of course he is coming off a tradition of Plato and Aristotle — the old Academy tradition — where the idea is that nature as it appears is accident or event which conceals the real substance of things, that the true nature of things is hidden from our sight and we need to, as it were, uncloud our own eyes through philosophy in order to really see into the heart of things. So this superficial display of the pursuit of pleasure that you see in lower orders of animals conceals the real destiny and ambition of mankind, which is far higher in aim than what the animals are doing. We should not look to them because we have our own destiny as a thinking species.
And that recalls what you discussed more at length last week, Cassius, about Democritus and his positions — that he ends up in the direction of skepticism, saying that truth is something you cannot really find; maybe if it exists at all, it is dimly at the bottom of a well. And that position is one that Epicurus was rejecting.
Cassius:
I know some people kind of pull back from the idea that studying philosophy is a requirement for the best life, but I am not sure that Epicurus has not taken that position. There are many passages throughout Epicurus where he takes the position that unless you spend time to study nature, you are not going to be as happy as you could be if you did take that time. But that is something to come back to at the end of the episode.
Joshua:
Yeah, I see what you are saying. I do think that people are able to come at it, in part because philosophy has informed so much of how we understand things anyway — it has formed the way we are educated. We study natural science in school, so we come with some kind of understanding already. And presumably many people will go on to study these things even after they leave school.
To me, it is an interesting question to observe that while Epicurus stresses the benefits of philosophy and the study of nature, in the end the conclusion you reach after doing that is that it is observation itself which is the key — that your logical analysis is really not the key. It is almost as if he is saying that if you have the confidence to accept your senses and what they are telling you, you are going to be okay. But most people do not seem to have this confidence, or under pressure from others who say they are wrong, they give in. So it may be more that you need philosophy to overcome the objections of these other philosophers if you are concerned about them. And I think of Frances Wright’s book again, with her character Hadiiya — who seemed to stand for that proposition. She was very headstrong that she understood all these things without much book learning. And Frances Wright, through Epicurus in that book, does not really rebuke her on that.
Let me take up one issue there, Cassius — which is that in one particular area of our lives, I think we are actually worse off than the average Greek peasant farmer in the third century BC. And that is that in the way we have structured our society today, death is almost entirely hidden from us. All the weird and difficult aspects of the process of a body dying and decaying are concealed. People do not really die at home anymore. The wake is no longer in the home. That is all done by professionals elsewhere, and people often die in the hospital. This phenomenon of the so-called hidden death, I think, has set people up for a problem when they come to the end of their lives, because they have not really come face-to-face with this problem before.
Cassius:
I am really glad you brought that up. I think that is a very important point. You have Seneca recording that Epicurus had said, meditate on death. You have apparently something of an art form among the people of that time — skeleton cups, skeleton drawings of Epicurus and other philosophers. And you just do not have today the constant companionship and experience of death of people around you. Many people live in cities; they do not even necessarily have pets or other animals to observe their deaths. And you mentioned going into a hospital and dying — if you went into a hospital with COVID-19 over the last couple of years, you were isolated from your family. The family did not even see the person in their final moments or final weeks before they died. And which suggests that finding ways to get back in touch with death would be an important part of teaching Epicurean philosophy, because even if you do not talk about it, it clearly is one of the issues that most people wrestle with throughout their lives. Suppressing it and putting it off and not dealing with it until you are much older is a recipe for not being ready to confront it when it does occur.
Okay, it looks like section 10 here is where Torquatus is going to launch off and discuss the essential point: “Surely no one recoils from or dislikes or avoids pleasure in itself because it is pleasure. But because great pains come upon those who do not know how to follow pleasure rationally. Nor is there anyone who loves or pursues or wishes to win pain on its own account just because it is pain, but rather because circumstances sometimes occur in which you can seek some great pleasure at the cost of exertion and pain.”
One thing worth commenting on here is that Torquatus’s argument presumes that it is simply natural to pursue pleasure and avoid pain — the issue is not that we do not understand that, but that we make mistakes in how we do it. He says: “Who again would have any right to reproach either a man who desires to be surrounded by pleasure unaccompanied by any annoyance, or another man who shrinks from any pain which is not productive of pleasure? But in truth, we do blame and deem most deserving of righteous hatred the man who, enervated and depraved by the fascination of momentary pleasures, does not foresee the pains and troubles which are sure to befall him because he is blinded by desire.”
This has always struck me as interesting because I do not know that the Stoics really fit under that category. This is perhaps a little more charitable to the enemies of pleasure than I would be myself — I think there are people who do in fact worship pain because they think there is something good about it, and who avoid pleasure because they think there is something intrinsically bad about it.
Joshua:
Yeah, and it is somewhat more nuanced because one of the features of early monastic Christianity was the idea that we have to in some way imitate the suffering of Christ on the cross — the goal is not pain, but we have to go through that, imitate his experience of pain, feel it really deeply, in order to purify ourselves for the real purpose, which is of course to go to paradise. When we will experience pleasure beyond any ability the human mind has to understand — we will have that there, but here we have to pursue pain because that is how we get closer to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Worth probably noting that I think the Catholic Church has gotten away from that position.
Cassius:
Yeah, this reminds me also of something that Emily Austin said about her book Living for Pleasure. I think I remember her saying she started to title it something like Doing Pleasure Right, which rings a bell with what Torquatus is saying here. The argument you are about to hear from Torquatus is addressed to people who want to do pleasure right. And much of his extensive argument about the virtues and how to look at them is going to be an explanation of how you can pursue pleasure correctly. But if you do not accept that pursuing pleasure is a legitimate goal in the first place, these issues of doing it right are not necessarily going to make any impact on you — if you take the position, like you just mentioned, of certain strands of Christianity, that there is something intrinsically good about pain and intrinsically bad about pleasure.
So I think the next thing we have here is his response to what Cicero has to say about Torquatus’s ancestors, the famous Romans who had behaved so gallantly in certain instances. He says: “You a little while ago showed at once your copious memory and your friendly and kindly feeling for me by quoting the examples of my forefathers. Now I ask, what interpretation do you put upon the actions of these men? Do you believe that they attacked the armed foe, or practised such cruelty towards their own children and their own flesh and blood, absolutely without giving a thought to their own interest or their own advantage? Why even the beasts do not act so as to produce such a tumult and confusion that we cannot see the purpose of their movements and attacks. Do you believe that men so exceptional achieved such great exploits from no motive whatever? What the motive was I shall examine presently. Meanwhile I shall maintain this, that if they performed those actions which are beyond question noble from some motive, their motive was not virtue apart from all else.”
And he goes on to say that if they had done it purely for virtue, he says he would be sorry to be descended from one so abominable and so cruel. But if he did those things to enforce military law by his self-inflicted pain, and by fear of punishment to control the army in the midst of a critical war, then he had in view the preservation of his fellow countrymen, which he knew to involve his own. And then Torquatus: “All such arguments are upset when once the principle of choice which I have just described has been established, whereby it is either pleasure which is neglected for the purpose of obtaining pleasure still greater, or you incur pain for the sake of escaping still greater pain.”
Joshua:
Yeah, this is a section of Cicero’s criticism where he is allowing Torquatus to respond at length, and I think pretty well here. Torquatus is definitely responding directly to what Cicero said and arguing that it is not the immediate bodily pleasure of fighting your enemy or punishing your son that factors into the equation — it is the eventual pleasure you get from the subsequent results of what you have done that produces an overall positive balance of pleasure over pain. And that really does get back into the issue, which will come up a little later in the dialogue, about mental pleasure versus bodily pleasure. None of these things that the Torquati did would have been particularly pleasurable to them bodily, directly and immediately, by any means — but they led to consequences, both bodily and mental over time, which outweighed the exertions required. As Torquatus is saying here, all these arguments against pleasure are upset when the principle is accepted that you incur pains for the sake of escaping still greater pains.
Right, now one of the things that is going to become very important in this dialogue is the question as to whether there are three states — pleasure, pain, and a neutral state in which you feel neither pleasure nor pain — or whether there are only the two states. He says: “Epicurus refused to allow that there is any middle term between pain and pleasure. What was thought by some to be a middle term, the absence of all pain, was not only itself a pleasure, but the highest pleasure possible. Surely anyone who is conscious of his own condition must needs be either in a state of pleasure or in a state of pain. The feelings are two, as Epicurus says.”
So this becomes a crucial part of the understanding of pleasure in the whole dialogue. He goes on to say: “Epicurus thinks that the highest degree of pleasure is defined by the removal of all pain, so that pleasure may afterwards exhibit diversities and differences, but is incapable of increase or extension.”
And now, Cassius, your favorite section.
Cassius:
Yes, the hand argument with Chrysippus. But I tell you what, I do not know how successful we are being in going quickly through Torquatus here, but what you just read is so very, very important, because so many questions are answered here when you look at exactly what Torquatus is saying. For the pleasure which we pursue is not that alone which excites the natural constitution by a kind of sweetness and sensual enjoyment. You are also looking for these other pleasures — mental pleasures, different types — not just constant euphoria. There are all sorts of other pleasures in life including the ones that Cicero told Torquatus not to talk about: things like poetry, literature, and history.
Joshua:
Right, and Lucretius is almost equally frustrating on this point, isn’t he, Cassius? Because one of the questions that came up in DeWitt’s book was this question of what DeWitt called the summum bonum fallacy — and whether pleasure should properly be understood as the telos, the goal or the end of life, or should be understood as the greatest good, the summum bonum. And Lucretius has instances in which he refers to pleasure as dux vitae, the guide of life. So pleasure is the guide. And yet in the proem to Book Six he refers without naming pleasure to the summum bonum in those terms — that Epicurus had revealed to us what the summum bonum was, but then he does not say what it was. So sometimes you wish these people would finish their thoughts.
Cassius:
Well, in Cicero’s case, we can potentially blame him for intentionally not presenting it in the clearest fashion. But I tell you what, when you look at some of these sentences here, I think it is an extremely important sentence right here around line 38 that you have already read, Joshua: “Surely anyone who is conscious of his own condition must necessarily be either in a state of pleasure or in a state of pain.” I think if you take that sentence and really think about it, you cannot come to any other conclusion than that Epicurus is labeling every experience — everything you are conscious of in life — as either pleasurable or painful. And if it is not painful, it is pleasurable. And if it is not pleasurable, it is painful. And of course in the very next sentence, where he talks about the highest degree of pleasure being defined by the removal of all pain, so that pleasure may afterwards exhibit diversities and differences but is incapable of increase or extension — there is no doubt when a sentence like this occurs that Torquatus is saying that Epicurus held that pleasure certainly exhibits diversities and differences. So it would be pretty perverse to simply say that the height of pleasure is when pain is absent without acknowledging that there will be different and diverse types of pleasures being experienced at that point.
Joshua:
I am wondering now: did Chrysippus have Epicureanism specifically in mind? The reason I mention that is because if you refer back to Don’s article and video on the location of the Garden in or near ancient Athens, it is adjacent to the Ceramicus district — northwest of the Acropolis, part inside the walls, part spilling out over the walls near where the Dipylon Gate was, on the Academy Road. And so I do not know if the statue was placed there because Epicureans would see it on their walk to the Garden, or because the Ceramicus was also the site of an important cemetery, with other funerary sculptures erected along this road. But certainly Chrysippus would have thought this was an argument to use against anyone who said pleasure was the good.
Cassius:
Yeah, Joshua, it looks like Diogenes Laertius, at least under section four of his biography of Epicurus, says: “Chrysippus tried to rival Epicurus in the amount of his writings, as Carneades tells us, calling him a parasite who fed on Epicurus’s books. Whenever Epicurus wrote anything, Chrysippus felt bound in rivalry to write the equivalent. And this is why he often repeats himself and says whatever occurs to him.” Chrysippus “felt bound in rivalry to Epicurus.” So whether the statue was erected for that particular purpose I am not sure, but certainly it could have been.
Joshua:
Right, and of course Cicero knew where the Garden was near the Ceramicus in ancient Athens, because he describes a walk with his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus along the Academy Road from the Dipylon Gate, in which they had — quote — “just passed by the Garden of Epicurus.”
Cassius:
You know, sometimes as I read this, I wonder if the indictment of Cicero for misrepresenting Epicurus is as much an indictment of my own lack of understanding — or of the different commentators in the many years since then — because here Cicero is presenting the key response to his own arguments. He is explaining, perhaps not as clearly as we would like, that Epicurus’s position was: if you are not in pain, you are in pleasure. And so it is pretty easy to take that as a foundation and logically apply it to realize that no matter what you are doing, if you are not in pain, you are in pleasure. And if you have totally eliminated all pains from your life — mental and bodily — then no matter what you are doing, you are at the height of pleasure, because you cannot experience anything more than full and complete pleasure. The elements of the argument are included here. It comes down to: do we accept the position that life in the absence of pain is pleasure? Or do we take the position Cicero is trying to argue, that pleasure means only immediate sensual gratification and nothing else? If you take the wider position of pleasure, a lot of this falls into place much more easily.
Joshua:
Right. The next section is section 12. And what we get now is Torquatus’s presentation of what Cicero has in mind when he thinks of the Epicurean life of pleasures. Torquatus says: “Again, the truth that pleasure is the supreme good can be most easily apprehended from the following consideration. Let us imagine an individual in the enjoyment of pleasures — great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily — with no pain to thwart or threaten them. I ask, what circumstances can we describe as being more excellent or more desirable than these? A man whose circumstances are such must needs possess, as well as other things, a robust mind, subject to no fear of death or pain, because death is apart from sensation, and pain when lasting is usually slight, when oppressive is of short duration, so that its temporariness reconciles us to its intensity, and its slightness to its continuance. When in addition we suppose that such a man is in no awe of the influence of the gods, and does not allow his past pleasures to slip away, but takes delight in constantly recalling them — what circumstance is it possible to add to these to make his condition better?”
I think Cicero is quite interesting on this, when he rather fairly gives an explanation of what the blessed life for an Epicurean looks like. And I think it is something you would have to concede is appealing.
Cassius:
Yeah, Joshua, I see this as an elaboration and almost a commentary on what Epicurus is saying himself in the Letter to Menoikeus, in more specific terms. I do not think there is anywhere in Epicurean literature a better summary of what the core components of an Epicurean life would be from this Epicurean perspective. But let me ask this question about what you have just read. What kind of an argument is this? He says this can be easily apprehended from the following consideration. He is not necessarily giving a hypothetical — he is saying, let us imagine these things, let us visualize them. It is a kind of thought experiment where you put yourself into a situation mentally and think how you would respond. To what is it appealing? In the beginning, Torquatus said: look at nature, look at what the young of all species do, and you will see that they pursue pleasure and avoid pain. This seems to be a somewhat separate argument. He is no longer saying, look at nature. He seems to be saying, think about it, and then when you do, something is going to give you the answer. Is this an anticipation? Is this a prolepsis argument? What is it that causes you to realize the truth when you go through this?
Joshua:
Yeah, it is true that he does not again point to the foundation in Epicureanism of observing animals. And of course, people are going to disagree and say things like: a man who is not in awe of the gods is not happy, is not living a life of pleasure. But I think it is built on that same foundation. He seems to be saying that you can, like a Platonist, sit in your ivory tower and just think this into reality and it will be true. You do not need sensory observation to build it on.
What he is really inviting you to do is to reflect on your own experience of pleasure and pain. You do experience pain throughout your day. He is saying: think of that, and then think of this — a life completely free from pain, completely free from fear. He is leveraging your own experience of pain and pleasure, even regardless of whether you agree that those are the goal of life, in order to get you to accept his idea of the good life. As he says: “Nor indeed can our mind find any other ground whereon to take its stand, as though already at the goal.” There is something there about how the mind works — this just is going to click with you when you think about it.
And the part I did not read is the other side: “Imagine on the other hand a man worn by the greatest mental and bodily pains which can befall a human being, with no hope before him that his lot will ever be lighter, destitute of pleasure — a pitiable object, a life replete with pains.” That is part of the equation as well.
Cassius:
Okay, well, that is some deep material there. As we turn to section 13 of the book, Torquatus is going to launch off into a long discussion of virtue and how virtue for its own sake makes no sense as the goal of life. But we are going to reserve that until the next episode of our series. Let us go around and get any additional thoughts or closing comments for today. Martin.
Martin:
I have nothing to say.
Cassius:
Okay, thank you, Martin. Callistheni, any thoughts today?
Callistheni:
Yes — there was the topic of whether philosophy is necessary to live a happy life. And that is an interesting thing to contemplate, because it is really talking about the idea that you need to think about what brings happiness and you need to discuss and contemplate it. At least that is how I interpret it. And then within Epicureanism, it seems we have the contrast with previous schools of philosophy, which in a sense worship an abstract virtue and do not see virtue as a tool the way Epicureans do — virtue as that which guides one toward a pleasurable life. So it is important to see that contrast. It is subtle, but the emphasis really comes down to the practical application of virtue: not that you are going to worship beauty in the abstract, but that beauty is something to enjoy.
Joshua:
Yeah, I think I can comfortably rant for a little bit about this idea that I kind of sidestepped earlier. And it is this question of whether you have to study philosophy in order to be happy. The reason I am so resistant to it is because I have — and I am sure everyone here has been — on the receiving end of the same kind of treatment, but from a different source. You will see it on bumper stickers: “If you know Jesus, then you will know peace. But if there is no Jesus in your life, you will not have any peace — it is impossible to be happy, impossible to be fulfilled, impossible to be undisturbed by fear, if you do not have a relationship with Jesus.” This is the claim I have heard my entire life. And it has really led me to a position where I do not like to comment on someone else’s experience in a way that says: well, you say that you are experiencing happiness, you say that you are experiencing pleasure, but I know you are not — because you do not have the key ingredient, whether it is Jesus or Epicurus or virtue or any of these other things.
I fundamentally think people can work their way to some of these conclusions without spending their whole lives studying philosophy. I do it because I really, really enjoy doing it. But to say to other people that you think you are happy, but if only you had the knowledge and the experience of study that I have, then you would know that you are miserable — it is sort of like when people tell me: you know deep down that God exists because his laws are written on your heart. The only reason you do not follow him is because you want to sin. There is a term in psychology for this — gaslighting. And I am just really uncomfortable with it. So that is kind of my response to it. I do not mean to sound like I have this much venom for it, but to be on the receiving end of this is unpleasant — it is a bit of a Kafka trap, where even your denial that you are truly happy is turned against you. Does anyone else have anything maybe more constructive to say?
Callistheni:
I have a question, Joshua. So are you saying that your comprehension or understanding of the word philosophy is a given belief in a sense, so that it is more an object or a subject of something rather than an action that is done? Because I think I am coming from the idea of philosophy as a verb — something that you do. So it is the act of examining things and contemplating things. Maybe we are talking about two different things here.
Joshua:
Yeah, I guess I use it in both senses — as a kind of discipline that has an architecture with branches of study that you can explore, but it is meaningless unless you actually explore those things. It is meaningless unless you actually do have the kind of inquiry that Torquatus, Cicero, and Triarius are supposedly having in this dialogue. If you do not do it, it is like a bookshelf with books you do not read. But even then, I just do not think that happiness requires that. Here is the problem: there are some people — and I think I am one of them — who even if they wanted to, could not stop asking questions about the nature of the world we live in. We cannot stop asking questions about what happens when we die, and we cannot stop asking questions about the way that other people have framed their understanding of nature, especially if they are trying to push that understanding on us. My brain just chews on this stuff, and the fact that I get a lot of pleasure out of it is very valuable to me. But I do not feel like having someone come to me and say: you are never really going to be happy unless you study Stoicism, or unless you dig deeper into Plato’s ideal forms. So it is something that I do not like said to me, and I do not like saying it to other people. I think it is a bit presumptuous.
Callistheni:
Okay, thank you. So I think I understand a little bit more clearly. And I just want to say that I am going to need to do some more research regarding what philosophy could mean, because you are framing it a certain way, and I still come back to this idea that there is some kind of action going on — it is a verb, it is something that you are actively doing, not so much just a thing that you believe. I will do some research and post into the podcast thread.
Cassius:
I am glad we decided to stop where we did because that did lead to some interesting discussion. I will close us by going back to what we said earlier about Frances Wright. I have a feeling that the same issue might explain, to some extent, this character of Hadiiya in A Few Days in Athens, who I have always thought was otherwise somewhat mysterious to me — why Frances Wright would write this character into the book the way that she did. But Hadiiya’s distinguishing characteristic seems to be that she is dismissive of the need to go into extensive philosophical discussions. She is very aware of the issues, has a firm, confident understanding of the right answers to these questions, and criticizes the other schools she has visited. But she is very strong in the position that it is not necessary to immerse yourself in books all the time in order to have a happy life. Which may be, like I said, coming from the position that Joshua and Callistheni are talking about.
So that is something to think about. But I would say Epicurus’s concern about the need for philosophy is not going to arise in every case, because people who somehow grow up without corrupting influences — before they have been perverted by errors, as Torquatus is saying here when he looks at the young of all species — if you somehow escape and grow up without being perverted by incorrect philosophy, then you will not need to spend as much time in the books as you would otherwise. But because of our friend Cicero, and because of all these people who spend so much time laboring to convince us to pursue ideas that Epicurus has concluded are wrong, most people by the time they become an adult have been in many ways thoroughly corrupted with bad ideas about what happiness, pleasure, and life are all about. And if you have gotten to that stage, you are not going to be able to get rid of those ideas unless you do study philosophy.
The very first words of the Letter to Menoikeus: “Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when he is old grow weary of his study, for no one can come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul.” So there is clearly an emphasis in Epicurus — not just because he needed to have a school and make a living, but because he thought it a really good idea that you study nature and philosophy and thereby get the kind of confidence that allows you to live your life as happily as you possibly can.
Okay, with that, let us go ahead and close for the day. Please drop by the forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions. Thanks for your time today, we will be back in a week.