Episode 205 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 13 - The Nature of Morality
Date: 12/15/23
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3582-episode-205-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-13-addressing-cicero-s-contentions-on/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Continuing De Finibus Book Two, sections 15–16. Cicero moves from the comparative survey of philosophers to his positive case for virtue as an end in itself: “By what is moral, we understand something of such a nature that even if absolutely deprived of utility, it may with justice be eulogized for its own qualities apart from all rewards or advantages.” He presents the four cardinal virtues — wisdom/prudence, justice/truthfulness, fortitude/courage, and temperance/orderliness — and argues that men of good character pursue these for their own sake, not for pleasure.
Cassius and Joshua note that: (1) Cicero’s appeal to “the best men” is circular — he defines the best men by his own morality; (2) Cicero’s real foundation is not reason but divine natural law, as made explicit in his De Re Publica: “There will be one law, eternal and unchangeable, binding at all times upon all peoples, and there will be, as it were, one common master and ruler of men, namely God, who is the author of this law.” Joshua connects this to St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans and traces how this Ciceronian framework became the foundation of Christian natural law theology.
The Euthyphro dilemma (is something good because God likes it, or does God like it because it’s good?) is discussed as showing why Cicero’s foundation is problematic on its own terms. Cassius adds that Epicurus would reject both horns: there is neither an omnipotent God nor an absolute good. Lucretius Book 5 on the development of civilization through mutual agreements — not divine law — is quoted. The violin salesman analogy illustrates how Cicero uses rhetorical bling to substitute emotional effect for logical foundation. The episode closes with Cicero quoting Epicurus saying that morality divorced from pleasure “raises a clamor of empty sound.”
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Episode 205 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 are continuing to discuss Book Two of Cicero’s On Ends. We’ve now made it up to section 15, which appears on page 48 and 49 of the Reid edition. Where we left off last week was that Cicero was saying he is now going to turn his attention less from comparing Epicurus to these other philosophers — which we’ve been doing for the last several weeks — and just focus on what is really one of the ultimate questions that’s involved. He cites Chrysippus as saying that this is the real battle between the philosophies: this issue between virtue and pleasure, and whether pleasure can have any role in the good, the ultimate good, the supreme good, or not. Chrysippus taking the position, of course, that it could not.
And what Cicero says he’s going to do to try to get at the root of this question is he refers back to Epicurus taking the position that there’s nothing good and desirable in and of itself other than pleasure. And he says that if I can show you something, Torquatus, that is desirable in and of itself and not for the pleasure that it brings, then I will basically have destroyed your arguments in Epicurean philosophy.
So what we’re going to be doing today is discussing the nature of morality and how Cicero is looking at it in distinction to the way Epicurus is looking at it. And I think we will ultimately come to the root of the question — that this is where the ultimate issue lies, the nature of morality.
The section we’re starting on is around line 45 and Cicero says: “By what is moral, we understand something of such a nature that even if absolutely deprived of utility, it may with justice be eulogized for its own qualities apart from all rewards or advantages.” That’s a long way of saying that virtue is an end in itself, it doesn’t need a reward, it doesn’t have anything to do with rewards, and any reward that might be there is certainly not pleasure, but it’s desirable in and of itself.
And what Cicero says is: “Now the nature of this object cannot be so easily understood from the definition I’ve adopted, though to a considerable extent it can, as from the general verdict of all mankind, and the inclinations and actions of all the best men, who do very many things for the sole reason that they are seemly, right, and moral, though they see that no profit will follow.”
And that’s something that evokes Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics. In the end, Aristotle comes up with as his test of what people should do: look around to see what the best men of Athens do and use that as your guide, as if that were not circular and lacking in foundation. But that’s exactly what Cicero says here — that you may not be able to understand it from the definition I adopt, but what you should look to is the general verdict of all mankind and the inclinations and actions of all the best men.
Joshua:
Yes, Cassius. You’re right to say first off that he’s employing an argument that is circular and redundant. He’s saying that we should look to the best men to understand morality. But how is he defining the best men? Of course he’s defining it by reference to his morality. So that doesn’t get us anywhere. That’s a terrible place to start. But it’s not unusual for Cicero to start there, because one of his ongoing occupations is extolling the lives of eminent Greeks and Romans. In fact, as I mentioned previously, he complains about the Epicureans and their failure to do this in Book One.
How do the best men themselves learn to do what they decided to do? Where did they get it from? That would be a part of the circularity.
Cassius:
Exactly. At the very end of this paragraph, we’re going to get to his answer on that question. He starts out by saying: “Men are different from other animals, but they most especially differ in this, that they possess reason as a gift of nature, and a sharp and powerful intellect which carries on with the utmost speed many operations at the same moment, and is, if I may so speak, keen-scented, for it discerns the causes of phenomena and their results and abstracts their common features, gets together scattered facts, and links the future with the present, and brings within its ken the entire condition of life in its future course.”
This is not a consequentialist approach to morality — he’s not saying that we can see what’s going to happen in the future based on our actions in the present, so we should act with that in mind. He’s got a different foundation for morality, but he is throwing a lot up here at the beginning.
And then he gets into his four, as he calls them, meritorious qualities — the four cardinal virtues in Cicero’s mind.
The first virtue is described by this sentence: “And this same reason has given man a yearning for his fellow men and an agreement with them based on nature and language and intercourse, so that starting from affection for those of his own household and his own kin, he gradually takes wider range and connects himself by fellowship first with his countrymen, then with the whole human race. And as Plato wrote to Archytus, bears in mind that he was not born for himself alone but for his fatherland and his kindred, so that only a slight part of his existence remains for himself.”
Wisdom as a virtue — or prudence, as it is sometimes called — requires understanding your place in civilization and the duty that you owe to other people, to your family, to your country, so much so that when you take all of that into account in Cicero’s view, there’s very little left for yourself. Your life is lived in the service of other people. That’s the first virtue.
Joshua:
Before you go on, I make the comment that there’s a lot in there that Epicurus would agree with. These things that Cicero’s talking about — that reason does — are important aspects of life. And Epicurus, as we know, endorses the use of reason and endorses the use of your mind. It’s not the issue with Epicurus. It’s not that he denounces wisdom and reason by any stretch of the imagination. He’s simply questioning the foundation of whether reason alone will get you to the right end point.
Yeah. And as we’re going to see later, I’m going to quote from Lucretius in Book Five when he talks about the development of man from a condition not unlike that of the lower orders of animals, until you get to a point where you have tribes and then towns and then kingdoms and civilization. And Lucretius does talk about where this stuff comes from — as Cicero says here, “a yearning for his fellow men and an agreement with them based on nature and language” — Lucretius talks about all of that, but he has a different understanding of how that takes place. It doesn’t come from God, in other words.
Cassius:
Right. It reminds me of Torquatus in Book One talking about how people are beguiled by the glamor of the name of virtue. And as what you’ve read already in this first element for wisdom and what we’ll continue to read throughout the rest of the day, Cicero’s just throwing up these glorious terms, these wonderful things that everybody admits are desirable and wonderful in themselves. And it’s almost as if he’s appealing to reason and to logic, but in the end he’s ultimately appealing to this emotional attachment that we do have for the good things that come from these virtues.
Again, Epicurus does not denounce the virtues. He simply makes the point that the virtues are tools for happy living. They’re just not ends in themselves. And Cicero’s attempting to evoke this emotional framework of “yes, the glory of wisdom and reason is so great, we must bow down to reason itself” — but that’s not the foundation, that’s not the logical starting point or the end point.
That’s a very important thing to say. Cicero here is at the end of his career as a lawyer, as a statesman, as a person who engages with crowds in a way to get them to do what he wants them to do. If you read some of his orations in court, either defense orations or prosecutions, you get an appreciation for how Cicero knows how to get people feeling the emotions he wants them to feel. And you’re right to point out that in this whole long paragraph here, there is a very lofty tone, a very high-minded understanding of morality, expressed in such a way that people will instantly fall over themselves to agree with him. It’s very effective. If expressed in the dry, monotone, computer-like voice of a Mr. Spock, this argument probably would not have the same effect. But you get a lawyer, statesman, and brilliant orator like Cicero getting emotion in his voice as he’s saying all these things. It’s the emotion of the argument that carries the persuasiveness of it — which is sort of contradictory to everything he’s saying. It’s not the logic of the argument, it’s the emotional pull of it that ends up being persuasive.
Joshua:
Exactly, yeah. Who doesn’t want to do the best he can for his family or for his country or whatever? He is very good at rallying the crowd to get on his side. Which is interesting because the next virtue is justice, or truthfulness. Cicero writes: “And seeing that nature again has implanted in man a passion for gazing upon the truth, as is seen very clearly when being free from anxieties, we long to know even what takes place in the sky. So led on by these instincts, we love all forms of truth — I mean things trustworthy, candid, and consistent — while we hate things unsound, insincere, and deceptive: for instance, cheating, perjury, spite, and injustice.”
By staking out his claim here that he has grasped morality as an objective or absolute truth, it’s very easy to stand on that eminence and look down on these pleasure-seeking philosophers like Epicurus and make them out to be moral lunatics, people who don’t love truth or who will, given the chance, cheat or perjure or commit injustice. He takes this throne from which to give his argument, and it’s so based on emotion and passion even as he says that reason is his foundation. But it’s clear that reason is not his foundation. He’s relying on the effect of powerful speech to get his views across.
Cassius:
Joshua, each step along the way I think I’m going to end up saying much the same thing. But it’s important to say — and it begins to irritate me as I listen to this current one as well — as if the Epicureans were not interested in looking up at the sky and wanting to know what takes place, and as if the Epicureans don’t themselves love all forms of truth and don’t value things that are trustworthy, candid, and consistent, and as if the Epicureans don’t hate insincere and deceptive and cheating and spiteful and unjust people. That’s not the point, Cicero.
Everybody does, as you’re saying, have these positions. But the question is not do they have the positions. The question is where these positions came from, how do they arise, and where are they going? And you’re just ignoring the fact that there is no supernatural God, there is no central spot in the universe that has absolute truth in it. And you can reason yourself all day long down the path as far as you want to go, but you’ll never understand even what Cicero you’re saying here, unless you feel the good things that come from those benevolent aspects that you’re talking about, and you feel the bad things that come from the painful aspects of it. Pleasure and pain is what makes it all go round.
Joshua:
Yeah, Cassius. And as you said last week, Cicero is very careful at the bottom of page 48 to say that the contest is not between me and Torquatus. When I go into all these crimes against humanity that I’m going to describe, I’m not accusing you, Torquatus. You’re just confused. If you only thought about this a little bit, you would come around to my side. And then you’re right, it is kind of an infuriating approach to this stuff.
So his third virtue is fortitude, or indomitability. He says: “Reason, again, brings with it a rich and splendid spirit suited to command rather than obedience, regarding all that may happen to man as not only endurable but even inconsiderable, a certain lofty and exalted spirit which fears nothing, bows to none, and is ever unconquerable.”
Who doesn’t want a certain lofty and exalted spirit which fears nothing, bows to none, and is ever unconquerable? It seems like everybody wants this, right? And Epicurus said the same thing. We agree on the objective. What we disagree on is the foundation. And we still haven’t gotten to that yet — that’s coming up in a little bit.
He sets those three apart — wisdom, justice, and fortitude as sort of the three main classes — and then he adds that there is a fourth class, which he describes as orderliness or temperance. He says: “Now that we have marked out these three classes of things moral, there follows a fourth imbued with the same loveliness and dependent on the other three. In this is comprised the spirit of orderliness and self-control.”
So in this one, it is dependent on the other three, I guess is what he’s saying.
Cassius:
It’s always been confusing to me and still is. Is he saying that you can be wise but not temperant? It’s always seemed to me that temperance was kind of redundant over and against wisdom. But apparently there’s a distinction. Like you said, Cicero says temperance is dependent on the others.
And again, once more to mention — it’s not like Epicurus does not advocate temperance and self-control. My gosh, half of Epicurean philosophy seems to be about the practical advice he gives to people about how in fact to keep your desires under control. So again, there’s no difference in the appreciation for the tool. It’s just that we don’t appreciate the tool for itself. We appreciate the tool for what it brings to us.
Joshua:
Yep. Now this is the way that Cicero sums this up. He says: “When the analogies of the spirit have been recognized in the beauty and grandeur of outward shapes, a man advances to the display of moral beauty in his words and deeds, for in consequence of the three classes of meritorious qualities which I mentioned before, he shrinks from reckless conduct and does not venture to inflict injury by either a petulant word or action and dreads to do or utter anything which seems unworthy of a man.”
Cassius:
Joshua, my reaction to that would be that this is just another example of this worship of the word beauty in the Platonic background. There’s this issue that there’s something in the beautiful that makes it the same as the good, and that the good is always going to be beautiful. I suppose they’re going for this emotional reaction of approval. Maybe beauty is their way of connecting with the feeling of pleasure, but they try to distance it from pleasure itself — as if beauty has a value aside from the pleasure it brings.
Which of course reminds us all of Epicurus saying that he spits upon the beautiful unless it brings pleasure. This continuing issue: does a thing in itself have value, or is it valuable for the feeling that it brings to us, the pleasurable feeling?
So the next thing I have here is a quote from Cicero’s De Re Publica. This kind of relates to the question of morality and gives us an understanding of his foundation of ideas like justice and so forth. He says:
“There is in fact a true law, namely right reason, which is in accordance with nature, applies to all men, and is unchangeable and eternal. By its commands this law summons men to the performance of their duties. By its prohibitions it restrains them from doing wrong. Its commands and prohibitions always influence good men, but are without effect upon the bad. To invalidate this law by human legislation is never morally right, nor is it permissible ever to restrict its operation, and to annul it wholly is impossible. Neither the Senate nor the people can absolve us from our obligation to obey this law, and it requires no Sextus Aelius to expound and interpret it. It will not lay down one rule at Rome and another at Athens, nor will it be one rule today and another tomorrow. But there will be one law, eternal and unchangeable, binding at all times upon all peoples, and there will be, as it were, one common master and ruler of men, namely God, who is the author of this law, its interpreter and its sponsor. The man who will not obey it will abandon his better self, and in denying the true nature of a man, will thereby suffer the severest of penalties, though he has escaped all the other consequences which men call punishments.”
This is talking here about justice. One thing I particularly note about this — natural law as it relates to Christianity, which was adopted more or less wholesale from Cicero here — it’s very clear that he takes this as his foundation. His foundation is: there is a God, this God has authored a law, this law is unchanging, eternal, and it is incumbent on man at all times and in all places to follow this law, and anyone who fails to follow this law will be punished by this God.
I’m very glad you brought this quotation up here. I first came into contact with it 40-some years ago and I’ve seen it reported in a number of legal decisions in the United States in the last decades. I remember strongly at that time when I came across it — I was firmly in the Ciceronian camp, admiring the things about Cicero that I was reading, his attempts to save the Republic and so forth. I thought this was one of the best statements I had read of what would clearly be the appropriate understanding of the law and understanding of justice in general. But it also set me on the path that eventually led me to where I am today in studying Epicurus and taking the absolutely opposite position.
It’s a good reminder that you have to be flexible and willing to revise your opinions when things change. But this encapsulates the heart of the issue of justice and the heart of much of the difference between Epicurean philosophy and all the other Greek schools. If you accept that there is an absolute supreme being who emanates this kind of law out into the world, this is where you end up. But if you end up questioning that there is such a source of right and wrong, all of it falls away, and you end up seeing that Epicurus’s perspective is where everything does in fact follow from nature — as opposed to this fictional form of nature that Cicero is talking about.
Joshua:
I don’t have much I can add to the way you’ve described it because I think you did a great job of explaining what it means. But I’ve always thought this is one of the best citations that you can come up with to show this authoritarian position that there’s a divine order of things. And if you believe there’s a divine order of things, this is where you end up. If you don’t believe there’s a divine order of things, Epicurus shows the way to a productive life of happiness.
Yeah, and we’re still going to get into Lucretius here in a minute, but I do want to quote Paul’s epistle to the Romans. He says: “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or else excusing, one another.” And a historian here is quoted as saying: “There can be little doubt that St. Paul’s words imply some conception analogous to the natural law in Cicero — a law written in men’s hearts, recognized by man’s reason, a law distinct from the positive law of any state or from what St. Paul recognized as the revealed law of God.”
This is a clear bridge between virtuous paganism and Christian theology. This is where you’ll find Cicero and Aristotle.
Cassius:
And if you reference that back to the quote from Cicero’s De Re Publica — “it will not lay down one rule at Rome and another at Athens, nor one rule today and another tomorrow. So it’s going to be the same everywhere, all the time, no matter the circumstances. This one true law never changes. And if you violate it, you are running from God, you’re running from yourself, and you’re going to suffer the severest of penalties.” If you accept that there is an absolute supreme being who emanates this kind of law out into the world, this is where you end up. But if you don’t, Epicurus shows the way.
Joshua:
Absolutely. Now, Plato had a dialogue called Euthyphro, a Socratic dialogue. If I remember — I haven’t looked this up recently — the general plot is that Socrates is on his way to his trial and he meets a man who is on his way to denounce his own father for impiety to the justice system of Athens. And Socrates thinks, wow, this guy must really understand piety well if he’s willing to denounce his own father on that charge. Of course, Socrates is going to talk circles around this guy and get him to realize in the end that he knows nothing about piety.
But what results from Euthyphro is the Euthyphro dilemma. The dilemma is basically this: if we say that piety is what is loved by the gods, is it loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? And whichever answer you take there, it involves you in a whole raft of problems. Are God’s commands moral because they come from God? Or does God command them because they are moral — that is, are they moral absent God?
The problem is, if you take the first view — that God’s commands are moral because they come from God — then you’re essentially saying that morality is arbitrary. That when God tells Abraham to sacrifice his own son as he does in the Old Testament, that’s a moral requirement. And then when God says later in the text that child sacrifice is so horrible it never would have crossed his mind — that’s an inconsistency. So the dilemma is: is morality arbitrary? Or is morality absolute, and God is merely a transmitter of this morality? A delivery boy of moral news? In either case, you end up with a lot of problems.
Cassius:
Cassius, let me add some additional thoughts to that. I think what you’ve been talking about is really important. Because the question seems to presume that there is an absolute good on the one hand, and of course when we talk about God, we’re talking about some supreme omnipotent being that controls everything, knows everything, creates everything. Both of those premises are things that are rejected in Epicurean philosophy. There is no supreme God who’s creating and deciding things for the rest of the universe, and there is no absolute good.
One of the themes in some humanist websites is “good without God.” And certainly Epicurus could define good in a way when you talk about pleasure. But if you stick with this idea that there’s an absolute good but you try to just separate it away from God, you’re still going to have all sorts of problems that Epicurus would say were caused by your inaccurate understanding of what “good” really is. Because in Epicurean philosophy, there’s nothing good except pleasure. There’s nothing bad except pain. And they are good and bad because of the feelings that nature has given to us, and not for any other reason.
So the additional twist I wanted to add is: we’re hitting hard today on this issue that morality doesn’t come from God. But the other side of the equation is also important — there is no single law at Rome and at Athens that is the same today and tomorrow. You can look as long as you like for a foundation for that. But ultimately, and when you check into Epicurus’s views on justice in the last ten Principal Doctrines, it’s always based on the circumstances on the ground and the people involved at the particular time. What’s good and bad derives from pleasure and pain and it does not derive from any kind of absolute foundation, including reason, logic, or other speculation built on human reasoning. As Torquatus told us, Epicurus said: “Nature gives us nothing other than pleasure and pain to determine what to choose and what to avoid.” That’s the foundation which we keep coming back to. This absolute rule that Cicero is talking about just doesn’t exist.
Joshua:
Right, Cassius. And when you enter the Lucretian universe, it’s very clear that you are entering a world in which this absolute morality does not exist. This divinely ordained morality does not exist.
If I quote here from Lucretius, this is Book Five. He’s got this extensive treatment of the early history of mankind, how mankind learned to control fire, how he learned to build himself huts, how he learned to wrap animal skins around himself to keep himself warm. Sort of the culmination of this process is this:
“Then once they had acquired huts, hides and fire, and women linked up with man had moved into one home and learned marriage customs, and they saw themselves creating offspring — at that point, the human race first began to soften. Fire meant their freezing limbs could no longer tolerate the cold so well under heaven’s roof, and children soon shattered the stern character of parents with their endearing charms. And then neighbors began to join in mutual agreements seeking not to harm each other or to be harmed, and they entrusted children and the race of women to the care of all, pointing out with vocal sounds, gestures, and broken words that it was right for all to have pity on the weak. And though they could not create universal harmony, nonetheless, large numbers would faithfully keep their word, or else the human race would even then have been entirely killed off, and breeding could not have kept up their generations to this very day.”
What Lucretius here is saying is that if mankind had not come together to form covenants out of mutual agreement, if mankind had not agreed on some basic level not to harm or to be harmed, then mankind could not even have gotten as far as Lucretius. Whether that’s true or not is an interesting question, but it’s very clear here what is at the root of what Lucretius is saying: that morality does not come from on high. Morality does not absolute or objective. Morality develops out of the agreements that we make among ourselves.
Cassius:
I’ve quoted recently Mr. Galloway from the Continental Congress in the American Revolution who said: “I have looked for our rights in the laws of nature and could find them only in the bonds of political society. I have looked for our rights in the Constitution of the English government and I found them there.” There is no absolute moral natural basis to this idea of rights. You only have rights so long as rights are protected. And you have to look to the agreements that we make with each other for this source of justice and for our understanding of morality. You have to look to how that relates to pleasure. You have to look to how that relates to avoiding pain.
Joshua:
I think you’re doing a great job explaining the defects in what Cicero is talking about here, Cassius. I can come up with an analogy to add onto it this way.
Cicero is just loading on more and more of this glorious wording — as if we’re talking about a salesman. It’s like a salesman giving a spiel on something is really what’s going on here. The violin salesman walks up to you and he shows you this violin and he starts talking about: look at the fine wood grain of the violin, look at the way the strings are tight, look at the beautiful finish, the roundness of the hole in the middle, the beautiful black winding keys for the strings. Look at all the detail — look over here, look around the back, look at the bottom, look at the top, look at the sides. He says it’s so beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and he works up your enthusiasm for the violin. But in the end, a violin is valuable because it brings pleasure in hearing it played. Did it not bring pleasure, all of the rest of the detail involved in putting the violin together would be of no account and would be of no use to you whatsoever.
This technique — and I’ll have to pursue further the idea of how salesmen do these things — it’s the bling, the gloss of glamor that a salesman is putting on that is what’s so attractive in the way Cicero presents it, and it’s why he’s so successful. But in the end, it is the pleasure that it brings which is the ultimate reason for wanting anything. So we always keep coming back to that. And yet it’s fascinating almost to see how effective this kind of an argument can be. And that’s why Diogenes of Oenoanda ends up having to say on his inscription that he’s going to shout to all Greeks and non-Greeks that virtue is not the end in itself — it is pleasure that’s the end. It’s really interesting how arguments can be presented in a deceptive way. And I think that’s what Cicero is doing here.
Cassius:
So Cicero goes on in section 15 as we come to the end of today’s episode. He says: “Here you have a picture of morality, Torquatus, finished and complete on all sides, which is wholly comprised in these four virtues concerning which you also talked. Your friend Epicurus says he is altogether ignorant of the nature and properties assigned to morality by those who make it the measure of the supreme good. For if he says they judge all things by the standard of morality and declare that in morality pleasure has no part, they raise a clamor of empty sound. These are the very words he uses, without understanding or seeing what meaning must needs be put on this term morality. For according to the language of custom, those qualities alone are called moral which are vaunted by the talk of the people. And these qualities, he says, although they are often sweeter than certain of the pleasures, are still desired for the sake of pleasure. Do you not see how extensive is this disagreement?”
Cicero is giving a bit of Epicurus’s opinion here, and he says: “Do you not see, Torquatus, how utterly divergent his view of morality is from my view of God-ordained natural law that is the same in all places and in all times? Epicurus is saying he doesn’t even understand morality absent an understanding of its effect or relation to pleasure. What are you going to do, Torquatus? Are you still going to stand by this man, even though he professes that he does not understand morality or justice without reference to his own pleasure?”
And of course, we don’t have Torquatus’s answer here. Maybe it will come later on. But this is the test that Cicero sets up. He said at the beginning of this part that we’re talking about today that if he can establish one absolute moral truth — one thing that is moral and is desirable in and of itself and not by reference to any other thing — then all of Epicureanism will be in shambles. It will have collapsed in on itself.
Joshua:
Yeah. And I’m fascinated by one of the sentences that you read. Cicero says: “For if he says they judge all things by the standard of morality and declare that in morality pleasure has no part, they raise a clamor of empty sound. Those are the very words he uses.” I find that very interesting.
That’s basically the accusation that Epicurus makes against the Stoics and the Platonists and all the rest: that to praise morality just for its own sake is a clamor of empty sound, and that people who do that do not understand or see what meaning needs to be put on the term morality. As you said, you couldn’t get much more extensive a disagreement than that. But it’s really important to hit that home — that Epicurus considers argument based on absolute morality to be a clamor of empty sound, as if it says nothing at all.
Cassius:
Yeah. It’s a lot of hot air from the distinguished gentleman from Tusculum. It has no basis in reality — people are just talking, this very high-minded type of speech that Cicero employs to get people around to his own view is just noise. Because in the end, it doesn’t explain why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Cicero then says: “A famous philosopher, by whom not only Greece and Italy, but even all foreign nations have been thrown into excitement, declares that he does not understand what morality means if it does not lie in pleasure, unless perhaps it be some qualities extolled by the babble of the crowd. And then Cicero goes on to say that he does not only not hold such qualities to be moral, he actually holds them many times to be immoral.”
And we can agree with Cicero — and with Chrysippus as well — that this is an extremely extensive disagreement. This goes to the heart of the difference between these philosophies. You’re going to accept Epicurus and follow his advice and his understandings if you take the position that there is no central absolute divine authority promulgating this virtue that Cicero keeps talking about. Or you’re going to go with Cicero if you do.
So we’ll begin to close today’s episode on this question where we’re all agreeing that there’s an extensive disagreement involved here. And rather than go further, we’ll see if we have any closing comments from anyone. So Martin, any closing comments for today?
Martin:
I have nothing today, thanks.
Cassius:
Okay, thank you, Martin. Callistheni, any thoughts on the subjects from today?
Callistheni:
Regarding the stance of Cicero compared to Epicurus, it’s really tracing it down to the basic foundations of each of their worldviews — they’re really very different. And it’s almost going to be impossible for Cicero to understand Epicurus because his worldview is just so different. If you had Epicurus and Cicero and some kind of mediator between them trying to get each of them to really see things the same way, it would just be impossible because they’re not going to ever agree between the two of them.
Cassius:
Yeah, that’s a great point. While Epicurus took the position that his philosophy is true and therefore everybody could profit from it, it’s clearly not going to be the case that everybody’s going to accept it. And it goes back to the physics and to the canonics to a large degree. This is not just a matter of preferences as to vanilla versus chocolate ice cream. It comes back to these deeper questions of the nature of the universe and the nature of knowledge and how you arrive at conclusions of any kind. So it’s a great example of the necessity of seeing Epicurean philosophy as a coherent whole and not just an ethics-only viewpoint.
Joshua:
Yeah. There’s a quote I see occasionally attributed to Cicero, and I haven’t gone to the trouble of looking for it, but basically it goes like this. He says: “I believe in the immortality of the soul, and I would not have this belief taken from me while I am still alive. Even if it’s wrong, I don’t want that information while I’m still living.” So it’s a radically different approach.
Now that I’ve said that, I’m going to have to go find that quote. It’s a radically different approach to understanding nature and human life — whether to start with God and the immortal soul as Cicero does, or whether you start with early man living in huts and making fire for the first time, as Lucretius does. Where you start the conversation gives an indication of where you’re going to end up.
And one final thing I can say is that last week, Cassius, I mentioned that you did a video on pleasure. Well, this week I have to mention your outline on Epicurean philosophy, which is on the forum. This outline has the headings and the subheadings, and then under each subheading you have your citations — you can basically click through down to the sort of foundational text for each section. I thought it was very good. I don’t know if you have anything more to say about it right now, but it’s been very interesting to see this project and how it’s unfolded.
Cassius:
Yeah, thanks for mentioning that, Joshua. The main thing about it is that it all just stems from how Epicurean philosophy has to be seen as a whole. And many people will come through the forum, they’ll read the Epicurean philosophy pages on Facebook and other parts of the internet. And they’re just looking at the ethics because they’re just looking at their desire to be happy — they read some of Epicurus’s advice about attitudes to take and things to do and things not to do and so forth. And then they in many cases just move on because they don’t go further and examine the deeper foundations.
Using an outline form is exactly what Epicurus recommends in the Letter to Herodotus: you don’t always need the details but you do need the main headings of the philosophy. And ethics is only one of the three main headings. You’ve got major aspects of the physics and the canonics that feed directly into these questions that Cicero has been dealing with today. You cannot have Epicurean physics and Epicurean canonics and arrive at the conclusions that Cicero has reached here.
And as Callistheni said very well — a very important point — you can put all the mediators in the world in a room with these divergent positions and you’re never going to come to an agreement because they start with such fundamentally different principles that one of the two sides is going to have to change its fundamental principles for there to be any ultimate agreement.
That’s one of the things over the years we’ve talked about so many times — that people who come from Stoicism and start looking at Epicurus say: “Here are some good things with Epicurus and of course I’ll add them to the many good things I’ve already got from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.” To be charitable, it’s an effort that’s very difficult to do and come out with a coherent result, because the foundations are inconsistent. You’ve got to decide where you stand on these foundation issues before you go further.
That’s what the outline and everything we do at EpicureanFriends.com is really geared towards helping — to make sure that people understand where these issues come from and the reasoning behind the conclusions. And we try to always do that with the attitude that Epicureans throughout history are noted for: being friendly and upbeat and in good humor.
Okay, with that, we’ll close for this week. We’ll come back next week. In the meantime, join us at the forum and we’ll talk about this and anything else you’d like to talk about regarding Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll see you next week.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 205 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 are continuing to discuss Book Two of Cicero’s On Ends. We’ve now made it up to section 15, which appears on pages 48 and 49 of the Rackham edition of On Ends.
And where we left off last week was that Cicero was saying that he is now going to turn his attention less from comparing Epicurus to these other philosophers — which we’ve been doing for the last several weeks — and just focus on what is really one of the ultimate questions that’s involved. He cites Chrysippus as saying that this is the real battle between the philosophies: this issue between virtue and pleasure, and whether pleasure can have any role in the good, the ultimate good, the supreme good, or not — Chrysippus taking the position, of course, that it could not. And what Cicero says he’s going to do to try to get at the root of this question is he refers back to the fact that Epicurus took the position that there’s nothing good and desirable in and of itself other than pleasure. And he says that if he can show something, Torquatus, that is desirable in and of itself and not for the pleasure that it brings, then he will basically have destroyed the arguments of Epicurean philosophy — showing something that is desirable for itself and therefore is competent and has the jurisdiction to stand as the supreme good, of course dethroning pleasure in the process.
So what we’re going to be doing today — and as Joshua indicated last week, this is getting deeper than just a sort of comparative survey of philosophers — what we’re going to be doing today is discussing the nature of morality and how Cicero is looking at it in distinction to the way Epicurus is looking at it. I think we will ultimately come to the root of the question: this is where the ultimate issue lies — the nature of morality. The section we’re starting on is around line 45, and Cicero says: “By what is moral, we understand something of such a nature that even if absolutely deprived of utility, it may with justice be eulogized for its own qualities, apart from all rewards or advantages.” That’s a long way of saying that virtue is an end in itself. It doesn’t need a reward. It doesn’t have anything to do with rewards, and any reward that might be there is certainly not pleasure, but it’s desirable.
And what Cicero says is, quote: “Now the nature of this object cannot be so easily understood from the definition I’ve adopted, though to a considerable extent it can, as from the general verdict of all mankind, inclinations and actions of all the best men who do very many things for the sole reason that they are seemingly right and moral, though they see that no profit will follow.” And that’s something that evokes Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In the end, Aristotle comes up with, as his test of what people should do: look around to see what the best men of Athens do and use that as your guide — as if that were not circular and lacking in foundation. That’s exactly what Cicero says here: you may not be able to understand it from the definition I adopt, but what you should look to is the general verdict of all mankind and the inclinations and actions of all the best men.
Joshua: Yes, Cassius — you’re right to say, first off, that he’s employing an argument that is circular and redundant. He’s saying that we should look to the best men to understand morality, but how is he defining the best men? Of course he’s defining it by reference to his morality. So that doesn’t get us anywhere. That’s a terrible place to start. But it’s not unusual for Cicero to start there, because one of his ongoing occupations is extolling the lives of eminent Greeks and Romans. In fact, as I mentioned previously, he complains about the Epicureans and their failure to do this in Book One. But for the reason that it’s — as we’ve been saying here — a very circular approach to this problem: how did the best men themselves learn to do what they decided to do? Where did they get it from? That would be a part of the circularity.
Cassius: Exactly. At the very end of this paragraph, we’re going to get to his answer on that question. But he starts out by saying: “Men are different from other animals, but they most especially differ in this, that they possess reason as a gift of nature and a sharp and powerful intellect, which carries on with the utmost speed many operations at the same moment and is — if I may so speak — keen-scented, for it discerns the causes of phenomena and their results and abstracts their common features, gets together scattered facts and links the future with the present and brings within its ken the entire condition of life in its future course.”
Joshua: This is not — though you might be thinking so — a consequentialist approach to morality. He’s not saying that we can see what’s going to happen in the future based on our actions in the present so we should act with that in mind. He’s got a different foundation for morality. But he is throwing a lot up here at the beginning. And then he gets into his four, as he calls them, meritorious qualities — the four virtues in Cicero’s mind. I’m going to go over those quickly. Different translators have translated them differently, but I found a site that has the four virtues of Cicero as: wisdom, justice, courage or fortitude, and temperance. And in this paragraph he gives a sentence to describe each one.
So the first virtue is described by this sentence. He says: “And this same reason has given man a yearning for his fellow men and an agreement with them based on nature and language and intercourse. But starting from affection for those of his own household and his own kin, he gradually takes wider range and connects himself by fellowship first with his countrymen, then with the whole human race. And as Plato wrote to Archytas, bears in mind that he was not born for himself alone, but for his fatherland and his kindred, so that only a slight part of his existence remains for himself.” So wisdom as a virtue — or prudence, as it is sometimes called — requires understanding your place in civilization and the duty that you owe to other people, to your family, to your country, so much so that when you take all of that into account, in Cicero’s view, there’s very little left for yourself. Your life is lived in the service of other people. That’s the first virtue.
Cassius: Before you go on, Joshua, I’ll make the comment that there’s a lot in there that Epicurus would agree with. These things that Cicero is talking about that reason does are important aspects of life, and Epicurus, as we know, endorses the use of reason, and so endorses the use of your mind. That’s not the issue with Epicurus. It’s not that he denounces wisdom and reason by any stretch of the imagination. He’s simply questioning the foundation of whether reason alone will get you to the right end point.
Joshua: Yeah, and as we’re going to see later, I’m going to quote from Lucretius. In Book Five, we need to talk about the development of man from a condition not unlike that of the lower orders of animals until you get to a point where you have tribes and then towns and then kingdoms and civilization and all that comes later. And Lucretius does talk about where this stuff comes from. As Cicero says here, a yearning for his fellow men and an agreement with them based on nature and language — Lucretius talks about all of that, but he has a different understanding of how that takes place. It doesn’t come from God, in other words. What we’re going to find in a little bit is Cicero’s foundation for all of this: that it is a law of God which we live in accordance with, and if we don’t, we get horribly punished.
Cassius: Right. It reminds me of Torquatus in Book One talking about how people are beguiled by the glamour of the name of virtue. And as what you’ve read already in this first element for wisdom, and what we’ll continue to read throughout the rest of today, Cicero’s just throwing up these glorious terms — these wonderful things that everybody admits are desirable and wonderful in themselves. And it’s almost as if he says he’s appealing to reason and to logic, but in the end, he’s ultimately appealing to this emotional attachment that we do have for the good things that come from these virtues that he’s talking about.
Again, Epicurus does not denounce the virtues. He simply makes the point that the virtues are tools for happy living. They are not ends in themselves. And Cicero is attempting to evoke this emotional framework of — yes, the glory of wisdom and reason is so great, we must bow down to reason itself. But that’s not the foundation. That’s not the logical starting point or the end point. The starting point and the end point, as Epicurus says, is pleasure — the feeling of pleasure that puts us on this course in the first place, and that is the reason we pursue the course.
Joshua: That’s a very important thing to say. Cicero here is at the end of his career as a lawyer, as a statesman, as a person who engages with crowds in a way to get them to do what he wants them to do. If you read some of his orations in court — either defense orations or prosecutions — what you get an appreciation for is that Cicero knows how to get people feeling the emotions he wants them to feel. And you’re right to point out that in this whole long paragraph here there is a very lofty tone, a very high-minded understanding of morality expressed in such a way that people will sort of instantly fall over themselves to agree with him.
It’s very effective, this kind of argument. If expressed in the dry monotone computer-like voice of a Mr. Spock, probably it would not have the same effect. But you get a lawyer-statesman, brilliant orator like Cicero, getting emotion in his voice as he’s saying all these things — it’s the emotion in the argument that carries the persuasiveness of it. Which is sort of contradictory to everything he’s saying. It’s not the logic of the argument. It’s the emotional pull of it that ends up being persuasive.
Cassius: Exactly, yeah. Who doesn’t want to do the best he can for his family or for his country or whatever? Everybody has the desire, I think, to act on their understanding of justice or morality. And he is very good at rallying the crowd to get on his side. Which is interesting, because the next virtue is justice — or truthfulness. Cicero writes: “And seeing that nature again has implanted in man a passion for gazing upon the truth, as is seen very clearly when, being free from anxieties, we long to know even what takes place in the sky, so led on by these instincts, we love all forms of truth — in things trustworthy, candid, and consistent — while we hate things that are insincere and deceptive, for instance, cheating, perjury, spite, and injustice.”
Joshua: By staking out his claim here that he has grasped morality as an objective or absolute truth, it’s very easy to stand on that eminence and look down on these pleasure-seeking philosophers like Epicurus and make them out to be moral lunatics — people who don’t love truth or who will, given the chance, cheat or perjure or commit injustice. It’s wrapped up in this package of “I’m Cicero, I’m so wise, I’m so great, I suffer so much in the service of my country” — from which he takes the throne to give his argument. And it’s so based on emotion and passion when he says that reason is his foundation. But it’s clear that reason is not his foundation. He’s relying on the effect of powerful speech to get his views across.
Joshua, each step along the way, I think I’m going to end up saying much the same thing. But it’s important to say, and it begins to irritate me: as if the Epicureans were not interested in looking up at the sky and wanting to know what takes place. And as if the Epicureans don’t themselves love all forms of truth and don’t value things that are trustworthy, candid, and consistent. And as if the Epicureans don’t hate insincere and deceptive and cheating and spiteful and unjust people. That’s not the point, Cicero. Everybody does — as you’re saying — have these positions. But the question is not whether we hold the positions. The question is where these positions came from, how they arise, and where they are going. And you’re just ignoring the fact that there is no supernatural God, there is no central spot in the universe that has absolute truth in it. And you can reason yourself all day long as far as you want to go, but you’ll never understand what Cicero is saying here unless you feel the good things that come from those benevolent aspects that you’re talking about, and you feel the bad things that come from the painful aspects of it. Pleasure and pain is what makes it all go around. And you’re talking as if it doesn’t — but you’re using pleasure and pain as your motivation for your own discussion. It begins to irritate me.
But go ahead.
Cassius: Yeah. And as you said last week, or quoted last week, Cicero is very careful at the bottom of page 48 to say that the contest is not between me and Torquatus. The contest is between virtue and pleasure. When he goes into all these crimes against humanity that he’s going to describe, he’s not accusing you, Torquatus. You’re just confused. “If you only thought about this a little bit, you would come around to my side. You would see Epicureanism for the amoral monstrosity that it is. And I just need a little bit of time to get you around to my view.” But he’s not criticizing you. He’s just criticizing Epicureans. And you’re right — it is kind of an infuriating approach to this stuff.
So his third virtue is fortitude — or indomitability. He says: “Reason, again, brings with it a rich and splendid spirit suited to command rather than obedience, regarding all that may happen to man as not only endurable, but even inconsiderable. A certain lofty and exalted spirit which fears nothing, bows to none, and is ever unconquerable.”
Joshua: Who doesn’t want a certain lofty and exalted spirit which fears nothing, bows to none, and is ever unconquerable? It seems like everybody wants this, right? Including Epicurus — at the end of the Letter to Herodotus and the Letter to Pythocles he says basically the same thing. We agree on the objective. What we disagree on is the foundation. And we still haven’t gotten to that yet. That’s coming up in a little bit. He sets those three apart — wisdom, justice, and fortitude — as sort of the three main classes. And then he adds that there is a fourth class. And I’m not entirely sure what the relationship is. But anyway, it is orderliness or temperance. He says: “And now that we have marked out these three classes of things moral, there follows a fourth, endued with the same loveliness and dependent on the other three. In this is comprised the spirit of orderliness and self-control.” So in this one, it is dependent on the other three, I guess is what he’s saying. Sometimes you get the sense that if you just did one of these things, that would put you on the wrong course. You have to balance and weigh all of these moral qualities in their relation to one another in order to live the most moral life — the life of one of the best men.
Cassius: Yeah, it’s always been confusing to me and still is. Is he saying that you can be wise but not temperate? Temperance has always seemed to me kind of redundant over and against wisdom. But apparently there’s a distinction. And like you said, Cicero says the distinction is that temperance is dependent on the others. And again, once more to mention: it’s not like Epicurus does not advocate temperance and self-control. My gosh, half of Epicurean philosophy seems to be about the practical advice that he gives to people about how, in fact, to keep your desires under control. So again, there’s no difference in the appreciation for the tools. It’s just that we don’t appreciate the tool for itself. We appreciate the tool for what it brings to us.
Joshua: Yep. Now this is the way that Cicero sums this up or brings it all together. And this is somewhat airy, and I’m not even sure what he’s trying to say here. But he says: “When the analogies of the spirit have been recognized in the beauty and grandeur of outward shapes, a man advances to the display of moral beauty in his words and deeds. For in consequence of the three classes of meritorious qualities which I mentioned before, he shrinks from reckless conduct and does not venture to inflict injury by either a petulant word or action, and dreads to do or utter anything which seems unworthy of a man.”
Cassius: Joshua, my reaction to that would be that this is just another example of this worship of the word “beauty” in the Platonic background. There’s this issue that there’s something in the beautiful that makes it the same as the good, and that the good is always going to be beautiful. And I suppose they’re going for this emotional reaction of approval. Maybe beauty is their way of connecting with the feeling of pleasure, but they try to distance it from pleasure itself — as if beauty has a value aside from the pleasure it brings, which of course reminds us all of Epicurus saying that he spits upon the beautiful unless it brings pleasure. It is this continuing issue: does a thing in itself have value, or is it valuable for the feeling that it brings to us — the pleasurable feeling that it brings to us?
Joshua: So the next thing I have here is a quote from Cicero’s other work, The Republic. It relates to the question of morality and gives us an understanding of his foundation of ideas like justice and so forth. He says: “There is, in fact, a true law, namely, right reason. Which is in accordance with nature, applies to all men, and is unchangeable and eternal. By its commands, this law summons men to the performance of their duties. By its prohibitions, it restrains them from doing wrong. Its commands and prohibitions always influence good men, but are without effect upon the bad. To invalidate this law by human legislation is never morally right, nor is it permissible ever to restrict its operation, and to annul it wholly is impossible. Neither the Senate nor the people can absolve us from our obligation to obey this law, and it requires no Sextus Aelius to expound and interpret it. It will not lay down one rule at Rome and another at Athens, nor will it be one rule today and another tomorrow, but there will be one law, eternal and unchangeable, binding at all times upon all peoples. And there will be, as it were, one common master and ruler of men, namely God, who is the author of this law, its interpreter and its sponsor. The man who will not obey it will abandon his better self, and in denying the true nature of a man will thereby suffer the severest of penalties, though he has escaped all the other consequences which men call punishments.”
This is talking here about justice. And one thing I particularly take note of is natural law as it relates to Christianity, which was adopted more or less wholesale from Cicero here. But it’s very clear that he takes as his foundation of all of these objects: there is a God; this God has authored a law; this law is unchanging, eternal; it is incumbent on man at all times and in all places to follow this law; and anyone who fails to follow this law will be punished by this God.
Cassius: I’m very glad you brought this quotation up here. I first came into contact with this one forty-some years ago, and I’ve seen it reported in a number of legal decisions in the United States in recent decades. And I remember strongly at that time when I came across it, I was firmly in the Ciceronian camp, admiring the things about Cicero that I was reading in his attempts to save the republic and so forth. And I thought that this was one of the best statements I had read of what would clearly be the appropriate understanding of law and of justice in general. But it also set me on the path that eventually led me to where I am today — studying Epicurus and taking the absolutely opposite position. It’s a good reminder that you have to be flexible and willing to revise your opinions when things change.
But this encapsulates the heart of the issue of justice, and the heart of the issue of much of the difference between Epicurean philosophy and all the other Greek schools. I’m sure that some would say that this is mostly Stoic or mostly academic-Platonic and that many of the other Greek philosophers didn’t really go along with all of it. I would suggest that this attitude of there being one true law — consistent with reason and nature, that comes from God and can’t be escaped — is absolutely what’s been adopted in monotheistic Judeo-Christianity. It permeates the world, and it’s where a lot of things stand and fall. If you accept that there is an absolute supreme being who emanates this kind of law out into the world, then this is where you’re going to end up. But if you end up questioning whether there is such a source of right and wrong, all of it falls away. And you end up seeing that Epicurus’s perspective is where everything does, in fact, follow from nature — as opposed to this fictional form of nature that Cicero’s talking about.
Joshua: I don’t have much I can add to the way you’ve described it, because I think you did a great job of explaining what it means. But I’ve always thought this is one of the best citations you can come up with to show this authoritarian position: there’s a divine order of things, and if you believe there’s a divine order of things, this is where you end up. If you don’t believe there’s a divine order of things, Epicurus shows the way to a productive life of happiness.
Cassius: Yeah, and we’re still going to get into Lucretius here in a minute. But I do want to quote Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. He says: “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law” — in other words, they don’t have the Hebrew Testament, they don’t have the life of Christ to guide them, many of these people predated Christ — “when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.”
And a historian here in Wikipedia is quoted as saying: “There can be little doubt that St. Paul’s words imply some conception analogous to the natural law in Cicero — a law written in men’s hearts, recognized by man’s reason, a law distinct from the positive law of any state, or from what St. Paul recognized as the revealed law of God.”
A clear bridge. This is a clear bridge between virtuous pagan — the noble pagan, not allowed in paradise in Dante’s works, but allowed to stand just outside the gates of hell; he doesn’t have to go into the Inferno because he was a noble pagan; most pagans are in the Inferno, but he is allowed to stand just outside the gates. This is where you’ll find Cicero and Aristotle. Because of this approach to understanding the law — founded on the instruction of a god, even if in the thinking of a Christian it’s a god they didn’t even know existed, the Christian god — this is where it takes us. It takes us right here, into the New Testament, into the letters of St. Paul. A universalist approach. Going back to the quote from Cicero: “It will not lay down one rule at Rome and another at Athens, nor one rule today and another tomorrow.” So it’s going to be the same everywhere, all the time, no matter the circumstances. The law never changes. And if you violate it, you are running from God, you’re running from yourself, and you’re going to suffer the severest of penalties — even if you escape what men call punishment — because there’s this lofty universal truth that applies to everyone. From Cicero’s point of view, it’s there, and our job is to get in contact with it and follow it. This is where so much of these philosophical issues comes down.
Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. Now Plato had a dialogue called Euthyphro — a Socratic dialogue in which, if I remember correctly, I haven’t looked this up recently, Socrates knows that he is going on trial very soon and one of the things he’s charged with is impiety. He meets a man who is on his way to denounce his own father for impiety to the justice system of Athens. And Socrates thinks to himself: wow, this guy is willing to denounce his own father on the charge of impiety — he must understand piety really well. And of course, anyone who’s read any Socratic dialogue will know what’s going to happen next. Socrates is going to talk circles around this guy and get him to realize in the end that he knows nothing about piety. But what results from Euthyphro is the Euthyphro dilemma. And the dilemma is basically this: if we say that piety is what is loved by the gods, is it loved by the gods because it is pious? Or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? And whichever answer you take there, it involves you in a whole raft of problems.
Are God’s commands moral because they come from God, or does God command them because they are moral — moral absent God, in other words? And the problem is, if you take the first view — God’s commands are moral because they come from God — then you’re essentially saying that morality is arbitrary. That when God tells Abraham to sacrifice his own son, as he does in the Old Testament, that’s a moral requirement. And then when God says later in the text that, oh, child sacrifice — “I didn’t know people were doing this, this is so horrible, it never would have crossed my mind” — that child sacrifice is immoral. So people want to have this idea of God as an unchanging moral nature. But really, if you read that book, he changes quite a lot throughout it.
So the dilemma is: is morality arbitrary, or is morality absolute and God is merely a transmitter of this morality — God is merely a delivery boy, in other words, of this moral news? In either case, you end up with a lot of problems. Depending on how you answer that question, you are involved in a whole raft of problems — problems relating to God’s alleged omnipotence, questions relating to free will, questions relating to God’s alleged omniscience, and so forth. All of these problems are wrapped up in here. But it happens because you take the view that Cicero takes: that morality, justice — these are unchanging moral laws that are the same everywhere, the same today and tomorrow, because they come from an absolute and unchanging authority, and that authority is God.
Cassius: Joshua, let me add some additional thoughts to that. I think what you’ve been talking about is really important and goes in a number of different directions that also include the issues that are out there today in terms of humanism. Because if we go back to what Socrates’ question was — is it good because God likes it, or does God like it because it’s good? — I would suggest that Epicurus would have a problem with both of the two major premises of that question. Because the question seems to presume that there is an absolute good. And of course, when we talk about God, they’re talking about some supreme omnipotent being that controls everything and knows everything and creates everything. Both of those premises are things that are rejected in Epicurean philosophy. There is no supreme God who’s creating and deciding things for the rest of the universe. And there is no absolute good.
As you say, when you think there is an absolute good, it creates problems with your theology of God. But it also creates problems in practical living. There is not a way — as the humanists would wish to do — of finding an absolute good without God. One of their themes on some of their websites is “good without God.” And certainly Epicurus could define good in a way — when you talk about pleasure. But if you stick with this idea that there’s an absolute good but you try to just disjoin it away from God, you’re still going to have all sorts of problems. Problems that Epicurus, I think, would say were caused by your inaccurate understanding of what good really is. Because in Epicurean philosophy, there’s nothing good except pleasure, there’s nothing bad except pain, and they are good and bad because of the feelings that nature has given to us, and not for any other reason.
So the additional twist I wanted to add there was: we’re hitting hard today on this issue that morality doesn’t come from God. I think it’s easy for us to focus on “it doesn’t come from God” without realizing that the other side of the equation is also important — that there is no single law at Rome and at Athens that is the same today and tomorrow. You can look as long as you like for a foundation for that. But ultimately, when you check into Epicurus’ views on justice in the last ten Principal Doctrines, it’s always based on the circumstances on the ground and the people involved at the particular time. What’s good and bad derives from pleasure and pain, and it does not derive from any kind of absolute foundation, including reason, logic, or other speculation built on human reasoning. As Torquatus told us, Epicurus said: “Nature gives us nothing other than pleasure and pain to determine what to choose and what to avoid.” Therefore, that’s the foundation, which we keep coming back to. This absolute rule that Cicero is talking about just doesn’t exist.
Joshua: Right, Cassius. And when you enter the Lucretian universe, it’s very clear that you are entering a world in which this absolute morality does not exist, this divinely ordained morality does not exist. And if I quote here from Lucretius — this is Book Five, he’s got this extensive treatment of the early history of mankind, how mankind learned to control fire, how he learned to build himself huts, how he learned to wrap animal skins around himself to keep himself warm — the culmination of this process is this. He says:
“Then, once they had acquired huts, hides, and fire, and woman linked up with man had moved into one home and learned marriage customs, and they saw themselves creating offspring — at that point the human race first began to soften. Fire meant their freezing limbs could no longer tolerate the cold so well under heaven’s roof, and children soon shattered the stern character of parents with their endearing charm. And then neighbors began to join in mutual agreements, seeking not to harm each other or to be harmed. And they entrusted children and the race of women to the care of all, pointing out with vocal sounds, gestures, and broken words that it was right for all to have pity on the weak. And though they could not create universal harmony, nonetheless, large numbers would faithfully keep their word, or else the human race would, even then, entirely killed off, and breeding could not have kept up their generations to this very day.”
You know, in the beginning of Book One, Lucretius has this invocation to Venus. When he’s talking about going to Mars and quelling the endless thirst for war — “I can’t do what I’m doing without peace” — he says that Venus is the sole governor of all things, with this sort of erotic energy. She causes the changes in nature, and new species to come up, and animals and plants and everything to propagate. And so it’s a great way of saying that morality does not come from on high. Morality is not absolute or objective. Morality develops out of the agreements that we make among ourselves.
I’ve quoted recently Mr. Galloway from the Continental Congress in the American Revolution, who said: “I have looked for our rights in the laws of nature and could find them only in the bonds of political society. I have looked for our rights in the constitution of the English government and I have found them there.” There is no absolute moral, natural basis to the idea of rights. Rights are protected, and you have to look to the agreements that we make with each other for this source of justice and for our understanding of morality. To look at how that relates to pleasure, you have to look at how that relates to avoiding pain. That’s this issue of “I don’t want to harm or to be harmed.”
So when you get down, as you say Cassius, to ground level, and see how these things work out in practice — we can point to what we would call moral behavior in other species of animals. We’ve talked about capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees and so forth, in the various experiments that have been done. But it’s decisions that are made among individuals in groups that determine what their sense of justice is. It is not an absolute law written on man’s heart. It is not an absolute moral principle detectable in the universe. As Alfred Tennyson said: nature is red in tooth and claw. Nature is barbaric. It’s impossible to look to nature and emerge with an understanding of absolute objective morality from that quarter. It does not exist there. It’s far too brutal an existence for that.
Cassius: I think you’re doing a great job explaining the defects in what Cicero is talking about here, Joshua. I can come up with an analogy to add on to it this way. Cicero is just loading on more and more of this glorious wording — it’s like a salesman giving a spiel on something, which is really what’s going on here. The violin salesman walks up to you and he shows you this violin and he starts talking about: look at the fine wood grain of the violin. Look at the way the strings are tight. Look at the beautiful finish, the roundness of the hole in the middle, the beautiful winding keys for the strings. Look at all the detail, look around the back, look at the bottom, look at the top, look at the sides. Isn’t it so beautiful? And he works up your enthusiasm for the violin. But in the end, a violin is valuable because it brings pleasure in hearing it play. Did it not bring pleasure, all of the rest of the detail involved in putting the violin together would be of no account and would be of no use to you whatsoever.
It’s this technique. And it’s the bling, the gloss of glamour that the salesman is putting on, that is what’s so attractive in the way Cicero presents it, and is why he’s so successful. But in the end, it is the pleasure that it brings which is the ultimate reason for wanting anything. So we always keep coming back to that. And yet it’s fascinating almost to see how effective this kind of argument can be — and why Diogenes of Oinoanda ends up having to say on his inscription that he’s going to shout to all Greeks and non-Greeks that virtue is not the end in itself: it is pleasure that’s the end. It’s really interesting how arguments can be presented in a deceptive way, and I think that’s what Cicero is doing here.
So Cicero goes on in section 15 as we come to the end of today’s episode. He says: “Here you have a picture of morality, Torquatus, finished and complete on all sides, which is wholly comprised in these four virtues concerning which you also talked. Your friend Epicurus — and Epicurus says he is altogether ignorant of the nature and properties assigned to morality by those who make it the measure of the supreme good. For if, he says, they judge all things by the standard of morality and declare that in morality pleasure has no part, they raise a clamor of empty sound. These are the very words he uses.” Without understanding or seeing what meaning must needs be put on this term, “According to the language of custom, those qualities alone are called moral which are vaunted by the talk of the people. And these qualities,” he says, “although they are often sweeter than certain of the pleasures, are still desired for the sake of pleasure. Do you not see how extensive is this disagreement?”
Cicero has given us a bit of Epicurus’ opinion here and he says: “Do you not see, Torquatus, how utterly divergent his view of morality is from my view of God-ordained natural law that is the same in all places and in all times?” Epicurus is saying he doesn’t even understand morality absent an understanding of its effect or relation to pleasure. “What are you going to do, Torquatus? Are you still going to stand by this man even though he professes that he does not understand morality or justice without reference to his own pleasure?”
And of course, we don’t know what Torquatus’ answer here is. Maybe it will come later on. But this is the test that Cicero sets up. He said at the beginning of this part that if he can establish one absolute moral truth — one thing that is moral and is desirable in and of itself and not by reference to any other thing — then all of Epicureanism will be in shambles. It will have collapsed in on itself. And so this is his test here of Epicurean philosophy.
Joshua: Yeah. And Joshua, I’m fascinated by one of the key references that you read — wait, Cassius, I mean, I’m fascinated by one of the key lines that you just read. Cicero says: “For if he, meaning Epicurus, for if he says they judge all things by the standard of morality and declare that in morality pleasure has no part, they raise a clamor of empty sound — those are the very words he uses.” I find that very interesting. Because that’s basically the accusation that Epicurus makes against the Stoics and the Platonists and all the rest: that the word “morality,” the phrase “morality” just for its own sake, is a clamor of empty sound. And people who talk that way do not understand or see what meaning needs to be put on the term “morality.” As you said, you couldn’t get much more extensive a disagreement than that. But it’s really important to hit home that Epicurus considers argument based on absolute morality to be a clamor of empty sound — as if it says nothing at all.
Cicero declares that he — Epicurus — does not understand what morality means if it does not lie in pleasure, unless perhaps it be some qualities extolled by the babble of the crowd. And then Cicero goes on to say that he does not only not hold such qualities to be moral — he actually holds them many times to be immoral.
Cassius: So again, looking at what Cicero says there — “Do you not see how extensive is this disagreement?” — that’s one thing I think we can agree with Cicero on as we begin to think about closing today’s episode: that this is an extremely extensive disagreement. And we can agree with Chrysippus as well that this goes to the heart of the difference between these philosophies. You’re going to accept Epicurus and follow his advice and his understandings if you take the position that there is no central, absolute divine authority promulgating this virtue that Cicero keeps talking about — or you’re going to go with Cicero if you do.
So we’ll begin to close today’s episode on this question. We’re all agreeing that there’s an extensive disagreement involved here. Rather than go further, we’ll see if we have any closing comments from anyone. Martin, any closing comments for today?
Martin: I have nothing to add.
Cassius: Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Martin. Callistheni, any thoughts on the subjects from today regarding the stance of Cicero compared to Epicurus?
Callistheni: It’s really tracing it down to the basic foundations of each of their worldviews — that they’re really very different. And it’s almost going to be impossible for Cicero to understand Epicurus because his worldview is just so different. And if you had Epicurus and Cicero and some kind of mediator between them trying to get each of them to really see things the same way, it would just be impossible because they’re not going to ever agree between the two of them.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s a great point. While Epicurus focuses that his philosophy is true and therefore everybody could profit from it, it’s clearly not going to be the case that everybody’s going to accept it. And it goes back to the physics and to the canonics to a large degree. This is not just a matter of preferences as to vanilla versus chocolate ice cream. It comes back to these deeper questions of the nature of the universe and the nature of knowledge and how you arrive at conclusions of any kind. So it’s a great example of the necessity of seeing Epicurean philosophy as a coherent whole.
It’s a radically different approach to understanding nature and human life — to start with God and the immortal soul as Cicero does, or whether you start with early man living in huts and making fire for the first time as Lucretius does. Where you start the conversation gives an indication as to where you’re going to end up.
Joshua: And one final thing I can say is that this week I have to mention your outline on Epicurean philosophy, which is on the forum, Cassius. So this outline — it’s got the headings and the subheadings, and then under each subheading you have your citations. So you can basically click through down to the sort of foundational text for each section. I thought it was very good. I don’t know if you have anything more to say about it right now, but it’s been very interesting to see this project and how it’s unfolded.
Cassius: Yeah, thanks for mentioning that, Joshua. The main thing about it is that it all just stems from how Epicurean philosophy has to be seen as a whole. And how many people will come through the forum, they’ll read the Epicurean philosophy pages on Facebook and other parts of the internet, just looking at the ethics — because they’re just looking at their desire to be happy — and they read some of Epicurus’ advice about attitudes to take and things to do and things not to do and so forth. And then they, in many cases, just move on because they don’t go further and examine the deeper foundations of the philosophy.
Using an outline form is exactly what Epicurus recommends in the Letter to Herodotus — that you don’t always need the details, but you do need the main headings of the philosophy. And ethics is only one of the three main headings, even if you start putting the major aspects of ethics in a list of subheadings. You’ve got major aspects of the physics and the canonics that feed directly into these questions that Cicero has been dealing with today. You cannot have Epicurean physics and Epicurean canonics and arrive at the conclusions that Cicero has reached here, because these positions about there being absolute laws and absolute morality that apply no matter where you are, no matter who you are, no matter when you are — you’ll just never even begin to consider anything like that if you understand the basics of Epicurean physics and Epicurean theories of knowledge.
And as Callistheni said, in a very important point, you can put all the mediators in the world in a room with these divergent positions and you’re never going to come to an agreement. Because they start with such fundamentally different principles that one of the two sides is going to have to change its fundamental principles for there to be any ultimate agreement. That’s one of the things over the years we’ve talked about so many times — that people who come from Stoicism and start looking at Epicurus, because they know that Seneca or Marcus Aurelius recommends some good things from Epicurus, will say, “Of course I’ll add them to the many good things I’ve already got from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and so forth.” And to be charitable, it’s an effort that’s very difficult to do and come out with a coherent result, because the foundations are inconsistent. You’ve got to decide where you stand on these foundation issues before you go further.
That’s what the outline and everything we do at EpicureanFriends.com is really geared towards helping — making sure that people understand where these issues come from and the reasoning behind the conclusions, and we can help people sort through whether they’re going to want to agree with these conclusions or not. We try to always do that. And I think Epicureans throughout history are noted for being friendly and upbeat and in good humor and so forth, and that’s the way we attack these issues. It’s good to be able to discuss these things intelligently with people of good faith, and that’s what we try to do. Okay, with that, we’ll close for this week. We’ll come back next week. In the meantime, join us at the forum and feel free to discuss anything else you’d like to talk about regarding Epicureans. Thanks for your time today. We’ll see you next week.