Episode 213 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 20 - Only Epicureans Define Pleasure As You Do! Why Do You Lie?
Date: 02/06/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3683-episode-213-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-20-no-one-but-you-epicureans-define-p/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Continuing De Finibus Book Two, sections 23–25. Cicero accuses the Epicureans of deception: “You keep one set of clothes at home and another when you walk abroad — outside all show and pretense, but your genuine self concealed within.” His charge is that Torquatus uses the language of the Stoics in public (duty, equity, honor, loyalty, uprightness, morality) while secretly believing everything is done for pleasure. The episode analyzes this charge and argues that Cicero is misrepresenting the situation — Torquatus has explained his position at length, and Cicero is simply ignoring the explanation.
Cicero then moves to friendship: if friendship is based on advantage, then you will desert your friend as soon as he becomes disadvantageous. His examples include Damon and Phintias (the Pythagorean friends: Damon was condemned for attempting to kill the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, but his friend Phintias stood in as guarantor while Damon went to put his affairs in order; the tyrant was so moved he pardoned both) and Orestes and Pylades (each willing to die in place of the other). Cicero argues that the Epicurean theory of friendship as founded in mutual advantage cannot produce this kind of devotion.
Discussion includes: two medieval Italian Epicureans — Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti and Farinata degli Uberti, both placed by Dante in the sixth circle of hell for denying the afterlife; their families were allied by marriage in an attempt to bridge the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict; Joshua notes this conflict forms the historical backdrop for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The episode closes with the Epicurean response to Cicero’s friendship challenge: friendship starts in mutual advantage but develops into genuine affection; the Epicurean analysis of when to maintain or break a friendship always comes back to pleasure and pain, including the mental pain of abandoning someone you love.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things, the most 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.
We’re continuing in Book Two of Cicero’s On Ends and today we’re going to be picking up approximately in the middle of page 61 of the Reid edition — section 23 in the Roman numeral organization.
Where we were last week: the most memorable aspect was that Cicero was arguing that the theory of pleasure that Epicurus was advocating is so disreputable and shameful that you cannot publicly take that position in the Senate or in the courts or in any kind of public place. And since you yourself, Torquatus, would be ashamed to say this in public, you should be ashamed to say it in private to us as well, because you should always be the same and consistent in your positions.
In section 23, Cicero continues this line of argument and says: “I understand, Torquatus, that you’re telling me that I, Cicero, do not understand the meaning of the word pleasure.” And Cicero gets sarcastic and says: “Yes, that’s such a hard subject. I understand when you talk about atoms and spaces between universes — spaces which do not and cannot exist according to me — but apparently I’m not able to understand what you mean by pleasure, which every sparrow knows so well.”
“Well, let’s put that argument aside, Cicero says, and for the time being, let me just tell you that I understand what you say pleasure is and what you intend it to be. But the problem I have, Torquatus, is that you seem to be calling two separate things by the name of pleasure. One time you intend it to mean something that’s active and produces a variation, but at another time you speak of another type of supreme pleasure which is incapable of increase — and this you say is present when all pain is absent. Let me for the moment grant that this is pleasure. But you still can’t go before any public meeting and say that you do everything that you do with the view to avoiding pain.”
And then in the opening of section 24, Cicero proceeds to basically call Torquatus and the Epicureans liars. He says: “Consider then whether you ought not to avoid adopting our language along with opinions of your own. If you were to disguise your features or your gait in order to make yourself appear more dignified, you would be unlike yourself. Are you a man to disguise your language and say what you don’t think, or to keep one opinion for home as you might keep a suit of clothes and another for the streets, so that you bear on your brow a mere pretense while the truth is concealed within? Consider, I pray you, whether this is honest.”
And the Rackham version says: “Well then, are you sure that you have any right to employ our words with meanings of your own? If you assumed an unnatural expression or demeanor in order to look more important, that would be insincere. Are you then to affect an artificial language and say what you do not think? Or are you to change your opinions like your clothes and have one set for indoor wear and another when you walk abroad? Outside, all show and pretense, but your genuine self concealed within? Reflect, I beg of you, is this honest? In my view, those opinions are true which are honorable, praiseworthy, and noble, which can be openly avowed in the Senate and the popular assembly, and in every company and gathering, so that one need not be ashamed to say what one is not ashamed to think.”
Joshua:
So how do we respond to that charge?
Cassius:
Easily, easily. Let me pick up here, Cassius, with something that was at the end of what you read there. He says: “I believe that those tenets are true which are moral, praiseworthy, and noble, which are to be proclaimed in the Senate, before the people, and in every public meeting and assembly — for fear that men should feel no shame in thinking what they feel shame in stating.” In other words, if you’re not willing to say it, then you shouldn’t think it.
Joshua:
My initial response is that if Cicero is placing his test of truth on what people say in Congress or in the Senate or in the Assembly, he’s going to be wildly misled. You have to assume that when people stand up to give a speech, they’re pumping themselves up a little bit. Cicero was a very vain person himself. He was very much the kind of person who, as we see in some of his trial speeches like the Catilinarian conspiracy example, was not above embellishing the record to make himself look good.
But that’s not really the big question. The big question is: should Epicureans who think differently stand up and say what they think publicly? In the United States in the 21st century, you couldn’t run for office and say that you don’t believe in God and win that office. In fact, there was the son of a former president from the last century who was asked if he was considering running for office. And he said: “I can’t run for office. I’m an atheist. No one’s going to vote for me.” Cicero would say that’s probably a good thing. But that kind of sets up a false test of what is true — because whether the propositions of atheism or theism are true or not does not depend on the opinion of the populace.
Thomas Jefferson claimed himself to be an Epicurean in his private letter to William Short, but not in any kind of public statements as president, as far as we know. Even in his case, as well known and strong a person as he was, he measured his language to fit the circumstances of the people he was talking to and reserved the specific endorsement of Epicurus to his private letters.
Cassius:
And Epicurus says he would rather not be understood but at least be saying the right thing, than to just simply go along with the whims of the multitude. That’s one of these issues that you get when you do step into the public arena.
But if anybody’s being deceptive and manipulative here, it is Cicero — because Torquatus has previously explained this at length and Cicero is simply ignoring Torquatus’s explanation. He’s acting as if everything Torquatus has said about pleasure being both sensory stimulation and also every other activity that’s not painful has never been said. And in fact Cicero to some extent admits even right here that Torquatus has given this explanation. It’s just that Cicero refuses to accept it.
An Epicurean isn’t going to sit back and say, okay, maybe I’m lying. He’s going to dispute that in this situation or any other where he’s accused of misrepresenting something. Epicurus had always stressed clarity, honesty, and the rightness of speech. And an accusation that Epicurus had one set of clothes at home and another set of clothes when he goes out in public is just a slander and defamation of Epicurus’s character, which Epicurus and any Epicurean would reject.
Joshua:
And there’s another point to be made — how much time did the Roman Senate spend talking about the telos of Greek philosophy? What is the good? Probably no time at all. So it’s very possible for someone like Torquatus to go into a setting like that and use words like virtue and morality, which have their place in Epicurean philosophy, and never get as far as saying that in the context of Epicureanism, which is the school I adhere to, those things are subservient to pleasure as the good. The conversation probably doesn’t even get that far.
Cassius:
Cicero’s got this idea of the Roman Senate as a place where the truth is spoken with nobility and praiseworthiness and morality and so forth. And if it’s anything like any other governing body I’ve had experience with, I have to cast serious doubt on what he’s saying there.
Okay, Cicero has set up this problem for us in the context of discussing the Roman Senate or the Roman law courts. But I do think that Cicero’s question is directly applicable to us today as we discuss Epicurean philosophy with our friends around the internet, or how we present it on social media and so forth. The practical problem that Cicero is throwing in Torquatus’s face — we too, who talk about Epicurus as being a good guide of life, have to face this challenge of being able to articulate what we mean when talking about pleasure as being in the very center of the philosophy. And the key to that is to communicate what is being discussed in a way that people can understand — and that does need clarity and persuasiveness and compassion and the ability to communicate things to people who in many cases have never been exposed to this kind of argument.
Now let’s go ahead and jump forward a bit because Cicero then transitions to a different topic. After saying that you’re not being consistent between your private and your public speech, what Cicero says is this:
“Again, how will friendship be possible? How can one man be another’s friend if he does not love him in and for himself? What is the meaning of ‘to love’ from which our word for friendship is derived — except to wish someone to receive the greatest possible benefits even though one gleans no advantage therefrom oneself? ‘It pains me,’ says he, ‘to be a disinterested friend.’ No — perhaps it pays you to seem so. Be so you cannot unless you really are. But how can you be a disinterested friend unless you feel genuine affection? Yet affection does not commonly result from any calculation of expediency — it’s a spontaneous growth; it springs up of itself. But you’ll say I’m guided by expediency. Then Sisero says — then your friendship will last just so long as it is attended by expediency. If expediency creates the feeling, it will also destroy it.”
And: “What pray will you do if, as often happens, expediency parts company with friendship? Will you throw your friend over? What sort of friendship is that? Will you keep him? How does that square with your principles? You remember your pronouncement that friendship is desirable for the sake of expediency. If, says Carneades, you know that a snake is concealed somewhere and that someone by whose death you will gain is intending to sit down on it unawares — you will do a rascally action if you do not warn him not to sit down, but still you would not be punished, for who could prove that you knew?”
And then Cicero ends this section with: “Will you go bail with your life to a tyrant on behalf of a friend, and die in your friend’s dead? — as the famous Pythagorean did to the Sicilian despot? Or will you say you are Orestes so as to die in your friend’s stead? Or, supposing you were Orestes, would you say Pylades was lying and reveal your identity?”
Joshua:
So what Cicero means there at the last part is there are two examples from what would have been commonly known to the Romans. One was the story of a Pythagorean who came in front of a tyrant of Syracuse. The other being a story of a pair of friends called Orestes and Pylades and the story of what happened to them in a particular confrontation when they were about to be killed.
Martin:
The Pythagorean example — Damon tried to kill the tyrant so that means it was really extreme. And then because he wanted to have his daughter married he had then his friend be there as a guarantor and walked away for a few days to arrange his things, and if he had not come back in time his friend would have been executed. And then when he came back, the tyrant got a change of heart and pardoned them both.
Joshua:
Thanks for fleshing that out. I know this mostly from the poet Schiller — I’m not sure how much license Schiller took, but the German title is Die Bürgschaft, which in English might be rendered “The Guarantor.” And in the poem Damon and Phintias are in this extreme situation, but they are loyal to each other, and the tyrant of Syracuse was so impressed that he pardoned them and said he wished he had such close friends as they were to themselves.
So the other situation with Orestes and Pylades is sort of similar — the king wished to kill Orestes but didn’t know which one of the two was Orestes. So both of them stepped forward and claimed to be Orestes, each willing to die in the other’s place. Rather like the famous scene in the Spartacus movie: “I am Spartacus.”
Cassius:
Yes. So these people are such good friends that they’re willing to give up their lives for their friends. And so Cicero has come up with these examples to show that this is what friendship is all about. But if you’re an Epicurean and you believe that friendship comes from the advantage you gain by having this person as a friend, then you’ll never have that kind of a friendship relationship and you’ll never have any friendship at all — because you’ll want to desert your friend as soon as that friend becomes disadvantageous for you.
Joshua:
That’s Vatican Saying 23: “Every friendship in itself is to be desired; but the initial cause of friendship is from its advantages.” Actually the word “friend” appears 13 times in the Vatican Sayings — it’s a much more fleshed out understanding of friendship. “The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship — of these the former is a mortal good, the latter an immortal one.”
Cassius:
And we should answer directly what Cicero is asking. What is the Epicurean position about what you should do when your friend becomes disabled or becomes sick, or in any way a burden to you? That’s not going to change even with temporary inconveniences — but let’s go with the full weight of Cicero’s example. You’ve got a lifelong friend who all of a sudden is a burden to you. What do you do with that friend at that point?
Well, the Epicurean understanding of friendship is that it starts out in mutual advantage — can I borrow a cup of sugar, do you want to borrow my lawnmower, whatever that is, that’s kind of how it starts out. But that’s not always the mode that keeps friendship together. Cicero and Atticus met when they were young boys in school, being able to talk over the lessons after they were over — there’s advantage in that mutual advantage. But what develops is genuine affection and feeling and love.
And here in the letter that we have in Cassius Longinus’s letter to Cicero — Cassius says at the beginning: “I assure you that on this tour of mine there is nothing that gives me more pleasure than to write to you, for I seem to be talking and joking with you face to face.” That’s not mutual advantage in any calculating sense — that’s affection. And if you were to abandon such a person in a disadvantageous situation, the number one factor that’s probably going to be foremost in your mind is your own analysis of how you see your conduct in relation to your friend. You would have such a feeling of regret and sorrow about what you’ve done or what you’ve lost that you would not be able to live well for yourself — and that self-assessment of your conduct is not a logical analysis or duty to God; it is a direct feeling, an emotional response that is a matter of pleasure and pain.
Cicero keeps talking about advantage as if the issue of advantage is how much money you’re making from this friend or how many times you’re going bowling with them — but that’s not the only kind of advantage you get in life. The advantage is this mental approval and mental feeling of pleasure that comes from the attachment.
Joshua:
I have been looking for historical examples of Epicureans who exemplify the kind of friendship Cicero is challenging here, and I’ve found an interesting pair — though the historical record is colored by Dante’s interpretation. In the 12th and 13th centuries in Italy, you had this dipolar situation with the Holy Roman Empire in the north and the papacy in the south, vying for political control over the Italian city-states. And the Italian city-states were divided along this fault line into two factions: the Guelphs, who were pro-papacy, and the Ghibellines, who supported the Holy Roman Empire.
And so just like any other situation where you have internecine warfare, you also have people who otherwise like each other end up on opposite sides. Two such people are Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti and Farinata degli Uberti. Farinata was a leader of the Ghibelline faction in Florence, and Cavalcante was the leader of the Guelph faction. They were both considered to be Epicurean philosophers, both considered to have been atheists, both charged for heresy on that account. And in fact they tried to bridge the divide between these two factions by joining their houses — Farinata degli Uberti’s daughter was married to Cavalcante’s son in an attempt to stem the bloodshed.
And there was another reason Cavalcante might have admired Uberti — as Dante also admired Uberti — because while the Ghibellines had basically taken control of Florence, there were many people in that faction who wanted to raise the city to the ground. But Uberti was a Florentine, and he said: “I am a Florentine before I am a Ghibelline. If you try to do this, I will defend this city with my own sword.”
The way it ends up: they both die, Uberti is exhumed and posthumously condemned by the Inquisition for atheism, Cavalcante is also damned to hell in Dante’s Inferno for atheism. And they are laid in the same tomb side by side in the Inferno. And part of their punishment is they can see the past and they can see the future but they can’t see the present. So these two, while they lay side by side in the tomb, are no longer allowed to interact with each other.
The fact that Dante laid them side by side in the same tomb would seem to suggest that there was something — either past friendship or the potential for friendship was there.
Cassius:
And this conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines — though not specifically with these two men — is the backdrop for Shakespeare’s great play Romeo and Juliet. The Capulets, Juliet’s family, were a prominent Guelph merchant family in Italy. And the Montagues were a prominent Ghibelline aristocratic family historically, not just in the play.
Joshua:
So that’s where the story comes from about you know — Cicero says here in the text that the word for friendship comes from the word for love. And Romeo and Juliet is an interesting story of that and what can go wrong, especially when it mingles with one of Cicero’s favorite things, which is politics.
Cassius:
It’s pretty easy to see why Cicero is spending so much time talking about friendship because it is a very real life experience that all of us go through. We get lots of pleasure from our friends and then we also run into these situations where you have hard decisions to make about whether a particular friendship needs to be extended or not.
We have not finished with this topic yet because next week when we come back with section 26, Cicero is going to dive deeper back into what Torquatus has said previously about friendship. So we’re going to be continuing on to debate this question next week as well.
But for today let’s go ahead and come to a conclusion. Callistheni, any closing thoughts?
Callistheni:
Yes, when it comes to rebuttals for today — that came up about not talking about pleasure except for in private — what are our rebuttals on that?
Cassius:
Well, I would say the main thing is that in many cases you can and should talk about these things in public, but you must explain and make sure your audience understands what you’re talking about. That’s probably to me the most important takeaway from this whole discussion. If you’re dealing with a Cicero who is going to refuse to listen to you and never consider your definitions and your explanations, then you’re wasting your time — and you better worry that you are in a situation like Lucian’s Alexander where communication is just not going to help and you don’t even try. But there are many situations where people are to some extent open-minded and willing to listen. And where people are capable of understanding you and willing to listen, then you certainly should explain to them what you’re talking about.
There was a really good movie with Spencer Tracy called Inherit the Wind, and it’s based on a play about the Scopes monkey trial. There’s a quote from the film in which the lawyer representing Clarence Darrow is talking to John Scopes and says: “It’s the loneliest feeling in the world. It’s like walking down an empty street listening to your own footsteps. But all you have to do is to knock on any door and say, if you’ll let me in I’ll live the way you want me to live and I’ll think the way you want me to think, and all the blinds will go up and all the doors will open and you’ll never be lonely ever again. Now it’s up to you — you just say the word and we’ll change the plea.”
That is of course — if you honestly believe that the law is right and you’re wrong.
Joshua, your closing thoughts?
Joshua:
I mentioned this historical conflict in Italy and how you had Epicureans on both sides of that conflict — just as you had Epicureans on both sides of the conflict in the Roman civil war of the first and second triumvirates. It’s interesting that Lucretius’s poem had not been rediscovered at that point. Diogenes Laertius’s book had not been translated from Greek into Latin at that point. So the text that these early people who were calling themselves Epicureans were using as justification for that — oddly enough — was this book right here, the one that we’re reading. Cicero’s On Ends survived into the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance prior to the rediscovery and reintroduction of the other Epicurean texts.
So Cicero, while being so hostile to the Epicureans, has actually given them a foothold in those centuries where most of the Epicurean books were thought to have been lost.
Cassius:
That’s right. Okay, well with that, let’s go ahead and close today’s episode. We’ll come back in a week. In the meantime, please drop by the forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about anything we’re talking about. We appreciate your time as always, and we’ll see you again soon.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote On the Nature of Things, the most 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.
We’re continuing in Book 2 of Cicero’s On Ends, and today we’re going to be picking up approximately in the middle of page 61 of the Rackham edition. It’s section 23 in the Roman numeral organization. Where we were last week, the most memorable aspect of it was that Cicero was arguing that the theory of pleasure that Epicurus was advocating is so disreputable and shameful that you cannot publicly take that position in the Senate or in the courts or in any kind of a public place. And since you yourself, Torquatus, would be ashamed to say this in public, you should be ashamed to say it in private to us as well, because you should always be the same and consistent in your positions and should not take a position in private that you’re not willing to take in public.
So in section 23, Cicero continues this line of argument and says that I understand, Torquatus, that you’re telling me that I, Cicero, do not understand the meaning of the word pleasure. And Cicero gets sarcastic and says yes, that’s such a hard subject — that I, as Cicero, I understand when you talk about atoms and intermundia, spaces which do not and cannot exist according to Cicero, but on the other hand apparently I’m not able to understand what you mean by pleasure, which every sparrow knows so well.
Well, let’s put that argument aside, Cicero says, and for the time being let me just tell you that I understand what you say pleasure is and what you intend it to be. But the problem I have, Torquatus, Cicero says, is that you seem to be calling two separate things by the name of pleasure. Cicero says that one time you intend it to mean something active and that produces a variation, but at another time you speak of another type of supreme pleasure which is incapable of increase, and this you say is present when all pain is absent, and you call it stable pleasure. Let me for the moment grant that this is pleasure, but you still can’t go before any public meeting and say that you do everything that you do with the view to avoiding pain. If you think that saying that you’re trying to avoid pain can be made with honor and dignity and say that both during your terms of office and your whole life you intend to do everything according to your own interest and you don’t intend to do anything other than what’s profitable, nothing except for your own private sake — what kind of uproar will there be? Or what hope will you have of becoming consul, which right now, as you are now, you’re very well assured to become?
Do you mean then to follow a system that you adopt when alone and in the company of your friends, but you don’t venture, you’re not willing to proclaim it or make it public? In reality, when you go into court, when you go into the Senate, what you’re always sounding like is you’re using the language of the Peripatetics and of the Stoics. You’re talking about duty and equity, honor and loyalty, uprightness and morality, everything worthy of the empire and of the Roman people, all kinds of dangers that you’re going to face for the commonwealth, that you’re going to face death for your country. You talk in that way. We simpletons, Cicero says, are overcome, but I suspect what you’re doing is laughing in your sleeve, because among the phrases you’re willing to talk in public, splendid and noble as they are, no place can be found for pleasure — and not merely for the pleasure in activity, which all men in town and country, all I say who speak Latin, call pleasure — but even for this stable pleasure which no one but you entitles pleasure.
In the opening of section 24, Cicero proceeds to basically call Torquatus and the Epicureans liars, deceivers. Cicero says: “Consider then whether you ought not to avoid adopting our language along with opinions of your own. If you were to disguise your features or your gait in order to make yourself appear more dignified, you would be unlike yourself. Are you a man to disguise your language and say what you don’t think, or to keep one opinion for home as you might keep a suit of clothes and another for the streets, so that you bear on your brow a mere pretense while the truth is concealed within? Consider, I pray you, whether this is honest. I believe that those tenets are true which are moral, praiseworthy, and noble, and which are to be proclaimed in the Senate, before the people, and in every public meeting and assembly, for fear that men should feel no shame in thinking what they feel shame in stating.”
Now this is an extension of the earlier charge. You’re not just using words improperly and failing to follow the dictionary and respect our definitions. You’re actually disguising your true intent. You’re deceiving people and basically keeping one set of clothes — one Sunday suit to wear to church — and then you’re dressing entirely different when you go out. That’s what he’s accusing the Epicureans of: double talk and deception.
It’s always good to compare different translations, and today I’ve pulled out the Rackham version to read the opening of section 24 where he’s making this charge of deception. Cicero says according to Rackham: “Well then, are you sure that you have any right to employ our words with meanings of your own? If you assumed an unnatural expression or demeanor in order to look more important, that would be insincere. Are you then to affect an artificial language and say what you do not think? Or are you to change your opinions like your clothes and have one set for indoor wear and another when you walk abroad? Outside, all show and pretense, but your genuine self concealed within? Reflect, I beg of you, is this honest? In my view, those opinions are true which are honorable, praiseworthy, and noble, which can be openly avowed in the Senate and the popular assembly, and in every company and gathering, so that one need not be ashamed to say what one is not ashamed to think.”
And before we go further, it’s well to go back and recall what the general situation is here that has led to this charge. The pleasure that Epicurus is talking about is not limited solely to the active sensations and stimulations of the senses. It’s also including every activity in life, all those things that Cicero is also praising, so long as they are not painful. In other words, when you say there are only two feelings, and everything you’re feeling is either one or the other — if what you’re feeling is not painful, then it is pleasurable — Epicurus is extending this word “pleasure” to cover all these other activities of life that Cicero embraces but refuses himself to consider to be pleasure.
And so Cicero continues his attack: you’re employing our words — words like virtue and courage and justice, especially the word pleasure — with meanings of your own. This is insincere and deceptive, according to Cicero. How do we respond to that charge?
Joshua: With a bit of a struggle? Easily, easily. Let me pick up here, Cassius, with something that was at the end of what you read there. The first paragraph of section 24, he says: “I believe that those tenets are true which are moral, praiseworthy, and noble, which are to be proclaimed in the Senate, before the people, and in every public meeting and assembly, for fear that men should feel no shame in thinking what they feel shame in stating.” In other words, if you’re not willing to say it, then you shouldn’t think it. Cicero is worried that the Senate house is full of people who are saying one thing but thinking another.
Cassius: Right. And ultimately the point being that you have to be able to say both in private and in public the same thing with the same level of confidence and without any fear of being overheard. You have to be confident that you mean what you say and say what you mean.
Joshua: My initial response in reading this, Cassius, is that if Cicero is placing his test of truth on what people say in Congress or in the Senate or in the Assembly, he’s going to be wildly misled. You have to assume that when people stand up to give a speech, they’re pumping themselves up a little bit, right? Cicero was a very vain person himself and thought a great deal of his own service to his country and so forth. As we see a little bit in this book, but you see it much more in some of his trial speeches — like with the Catiline conspiracy, for example — Cicero is not above embellishing the record to make himself look good. So he must know that you can’t look to what people say in the Roman Senate for your guide to the truth. And if that is your guide to the truth, like I say, you’re going to be misled.
But that’s not really the big question. The big question is: should Epicureans who think differently stand up and say what they think publicly? In the Senate of the United States in the 21st century, you couldn’t run for office and say that you don’t believe in God and win that office. In fact, there was the son of a former president from the last century who was asked if he was considering running for office. And he said: “I can’t run for office. I’m an atheist. No one’s going to vote for me.” Cicero would say, probably, that’s a good thing — you shouldn’t vote for someone like that. But that kind of sets up a false test here of what is true, because whether the propositions of atheism or theism are true or not, it does not depend on the opinion of the populace.
Cassius: There’s a lot of interesting aspects of it to think about. You know, we talk about Thomas Jefferson claiming himself to be an Epicurean in his private letter to William Short, but not doing so in any kind of public statements to the Congress, as far as we know, or made as president. So even in his case, as well known and strong a person as he was, he measured his language to fit the circumstances of the people he was talking to, and reserved the specific endorsement of Epicurus to his private letters. Of course, when you think about his work on the Declaration of Independence and the pursuit of happiness and so forth, he worked to bring those concepts into the public view as best he could. But it certainly is a challenge.
As we discussed last week, Epicurus says he would rather not be understood but at least be saying the truth that would help people — whether they understood it or not — than to go along with the crowd. And that’s one of these issues that you get when you do step into the public arena. You’ve got to deal with the fact that you’re dealing with people who don’t understand you and are probably hostile to you, and you have to be very careful in the way that you word things.
But as a hypothetical, at least, maybe the Senate of 50 BC is not a place where you can go in and declare that the gods are totally blissful and do not run the universe. Maybe you cannot go into the Senate of the United States in 2024 and state that the gods are blissful and immortal and do not intervene in human affairs. But that doesn’t mean that you have to totally misrepresent or fake what you’re saying to people in public. Cicero’s challenge is a good one, I think, that you need to have a single face. You have to be consistent. I believe one of the statements of Epicurus and Diogenes Laertius is that the wise man is the same when he’s awake and when he’s asleep. So it’s a challenge here of consistency that has to be met.
And just as you were saying, Joshua, the way these assemblies work, you’re going to be a fool if you accept their standards as your definition of what is true and correct and wise and noble, because these assemblies are frequently not true, wise, and noble. But at least when you’re not facing a situation where you could be stoned to death — like the situation you mentioned last week with Alexander the Oracle Monger — in those situations where opinions can be stated freely, they should be stated freely. And I think Cicero’s challenge is valid to that extent.
But the ultimate way through all of this problem is again to be clear about the definition of pleasure as Epicurus is advocating it. And you would not go into the Senate or the court and simply say the word “pleasure” without explaining that you don’t mean just sex, drugs, and rock and roll. A person who is self-aware and aware of his own situation is going to be aware of whether the people he’s talking to understand him or not. If you walk into the Senate in Rome in 50 BC, you better be speaking Latin or they’re not going to understand you. Likewise, if you’re going into a public arena where you know the people do not normally think of pleasure as anything other than immediate sensual stimulation, you’re going to have to explain what you’re talking about in order to be understood.
And Epicurus was capable and willing and thought it was important — as we can see in his letters — to explain the meaning of the words that he’s talking about. He’s not being deceptive. Cicero is accusing him of adopting our language along with opinions of your own. He’s not just using words like “gods” without explaining that he doesn’t believe that gods are supernatural and intervene in human affairs. He’s explaining those things so that when you listen to his discussion you can understand what he means. Same thing with pleasure.
And Torquatus is simply not being allowed here in section 24 to give the comeback that an Epicurean would give if he’s hearing these accusations. Because an Epicurean isn’t going to accept calmly that he is being accused of a lie. He’s not going to sit back and say “okay, maybe I’m lying.” He’s not going to accept that. He’s going to dispute that — in this situation or any other where he’s accused of misrepresenting something. Epicurus had always stressed clarity, honesty, and the rightness of speech. Those are things that Epicurus valued very highly and promoted to his students. An accusation that Epicurus had one set of clothes at home and another set of clothes when he goes out in public is just a slander and defamation of Epicurus’ character, which Epicurus and any Epicurean would reject.
And there’s another point to be made, which is: how much time did the Roman Senate spend talking about the telos of Greek philosophy — what is the good? Probably no time at all. So it’s very possible for someone like Torquatus to go into a setting like that and use words like virtue and morality — which have their place in Epicurean philosophy — and never get as far as saying “well, in the context of Epicureanism, which is the school I adhere to, those things are subservient to pleasure as the good.” The conversation probably doesn’t even get that far.
I can’t speak for Torquatus or what he said in the Senate when he was serving in that capacity, but certainly it’s possible to stand in front of that assembly and speak to the matter at hand without addressing your whole philosophical backstory, right?
Joshua: Yeah, if anybody’s being deceptive and manipulative here, it is Cicero, because Torquatus has previously explained this at length and Cicero is simply ignoring Torquatus’ explanation. He’s acting as if everything Torquatus has said about pleasure being both sensory stimulation and also every other activity that’s not painful has never been said and has no meaning. Which is just blatantly deceptive — that’s probably the right word. And in fact, Cicero to some extent admits even right here that Torquatus has given this explanation. It’s just that Cicero refuses to accept it.
I quoted Norman DeWitt last week, which I’ll summarize now. He said that it takes no courage to stand in front of the assembly and say that virtue is the supreme good — even hypocrites will applaud you. But it did take courage for Epicurus to say that pleasure was the supreme good. And if you think about the Roman Senate, it’s true that if you get up there and say that pleasure is the supreme good, you’ll probably be roundly rejected. But probably people who are rejecting you publicly will be applauding you privately. People who are shouting you down on the Senate floor will also be thinking about some of the pleasurable experiences that they had recently that they don’t want to tell the people about. And the same is true on the other side. If you publicly proclaim that virtue is the good, people will applaud you, but privately some people will be disagreeing with you.
Cicero’s got this idea of the Roman Senate as a place where the truth is spoken with nobility and praiseworthiness and morality and so forth. And if it’s anything like any other governing body I’ve had experience with, I have to cast serious doubt on what he’s saying there.
Cassius: Yeah, well, as we always try to do, bringing this home to our own experiences in the modern world — Cicero has set up this problem for us in the context of discussing the Roman Senate or the Roman law courts. But I do think that Cicero’s question is directly applicable to us today as we discuss Epicurean philosophy with our friends around the internet, or how we present it on social media. I know we’ve been working on some revisions to some of the opening pages of our Epicurean Friends website lately to make some of these issues more clear.
I do think that what this brings home is the importance in modern Epicurean discussions to focus on this question of what exactly does pleasure mean. Because though a lot of things have changed in the last 2,000 years since Cicero raised this argument, I don’t know that we’re in a much different situation today than we were in 50 BC. If you start out by talking about pleasure as the goal of life, most people who have not been exposed to direct philosophical debate are going to presume that you mean wine, women, and songs — sex, drugs, and rock and roll, all the different clichés that you can come up with for the kind of stimulative pleasures that Epicurus and Cicero agree are included within the word pleasure. But knowledge of anything else being included within the word pleasure is probably almost as foreign today as it was in 50 BC.
So we do have, I think, the practical problem that Cicero is throwing in Torquatus’s face. And we too, who talk about Epicurus as being a good guide of life and a good theory of philosophy to live by even today, have to face this challenge of being able to articulate what it is we mean when we’re talking about pleasure as being in the very center of the philosophy. The books that are written about Epicurus — Emily Austin’s book Living for Pleasure, many of the books in which Epicurus is discussed — will feature the word pleasure, as well they should. But then the challenge becomes to give more body to the meaning of the word and to begin to show that it has much more subtlety of meaning than you might think when you first pick up a book at an airport vendor.
If you’re going to be honest, if you’re going to be the same in public and in private, if you’re going to be consistent in your life, then you need to have the ability to explain these things in a way that you can, with confidence, communicate in almost any venue. There are certainly venues you’re not even going to attempt to communicate it in, but we’d like to think that the world is a little more enlightened than it was in 50 BC and that there are more opportunities to explain these things today than there were then.
This is only tangentially related, but what about those situations where I disagree with the general view of things, but I wish for that view to prevail anyway? I can give a concrete example of that because I can point to this idea of rights. Do rights exist in nature? Do they come from God and so forth, or do we just make them up? And even though I think that rights don’t have any real existence, I would still, I think, prefer to live in a world where people thought that rights were found in nature.
And I can extend that, Joshua, because what you’ve just said reminds me there’s another modern concept people use today, the Overton window. And you’ve probably got a better definition of what the Overton window means, but my understanding is that it’s a window of opportunity or a window within which you can talk about certain subjects — that certain subjects, as long as they’re within this window, are allowable in the common discourse. But if you go to the left of the window or the right of the window in any way outside of the window, you are jeopardizing your own safety to some extent, or even the legality of discussing things. And so people today talk in terms of moving the Overton window in the direction that you want it to go to make your discourse more acceptable for it to be discussed in public. And that probably is an analogy for what we would like to see happen in the study of Epicurean philosophy — this window of understanding the full meaning of what Epicurus meant by pleasure needs to shift in our direction, so that it becomes more understandable to normal people that when you talk about pleasure you mean something more than sex, drugs, and rock and roll. What about the Overton window analogy — am I getting that right or totally wrong?
Joshua: Yeah, I have the Wikipedia page up here, and it says the Overton window is “the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.” And to the right of the page there’s a graphic, and it has the Overton window with arrows pointing up or down so you could slide the window up or down. And to the right of that there’s a list: things that are outside of the Overton window, things that are on the edge of the Overton window, things that are inside of it, things that are de rigueur or standard policy, and then it goes the same the other way until you get well outside — so those are “unthinkable,” “radical,” “acceptable” (right on the edge), “sensible” and “popular” inside, “policy” right at the center. And while that’s normally used in most conversations today talking about straight politics, I think it’s an obvious application — you could probably talk about the Overton window of religious discussion as well, or just anything that’s controversial, and whether the subject you’re talking about is acceptable to talk about or whether it’s so controversial that it shouldn’t even be mentioned.
Cassius: And I would say that what we’re talking about here is that while Cicero may be right in certain circumstances that you cannot even begin to have a discussion about Epicurean philosophy in a public place, the goal of what we ought to be doing — those of us who think Epicurus has really good things to say and important things for people to understand — is to explain things in such a way that this kind of discourse comes within the ability to discuss in more and more public places. And the key to that is to communicate what is being discussed in a way that people can understand — and that doesn’t have to be with lofty philosophical discourse or a precise scientific definition, but it does need clarity and persuasiveness and compassion and just the ability to communicate things to people who, in many cases through no fault of their own, have never been exposed to this kind of argument.
And so maybe as we pursue that line of thinking further, what we come to next is a good example of this in the discussion of friendship. Because this is what Cicero chooses to do: he’s willing to let go at the moment his question about definitions of pleasure and he starts talking about a particular application of it in terms of friendship. Right after he says that you should not be ashamed to say in public what you think in private, what Cicero says is this: “Again, how will friendship be possible? How can one man be another’s friend if he does not love him in and for himself? What is the meaning of to love — from which our word for friendship is derived — except to wish someone to receive the greatest possible benefits, even though one gleans no advantage therefrom oneself? It pains me, says he, to be a disinterested friend. No — perhaps it pays you to seem so. Be so you cannot, unless you really are. But how can you be a disinterested friend unless you feel genuine affection? Yet affection does not commonly result from any calculation of expediency — it’s a spontaneous growth, it springs up of itself. But you’ll say, I’m guided by expediency. Then,” Cicero says, “your friendship will last just so long as it is attended by expediency. If expediency creates the feeling, it will also destroy it. But what, pray, will you do if, as often happens, expediency parts company with friendship? Will you throw your friend over? What sort of friendship is that? Will you keep him? How does that square with your principles? You remember your pronouncement that friendship is desirable for the sake of expediency. I might become unpopular if I left a friend in the lurch. Well, in the first place, why is conduct unpopular unless because it is base? And if you refrain from deserting a friend because to do so will have inconvenient consequences, still you’ll long for his death to release you from an unprofitable tie. What if he not only brings you no advantage but causes you to suffer loss of property, to undergo toil and trouble, to risk your life? Won’t you then even take interest into account and reflect that each man is born for himself and for his own pleasure? Will you go bail with your life to a tyrant on behalf of a friend, as the famous Pythagorean did to the Sicilian despot? Or being Pylades, will you say you are Orestes, so as to die in your friend’s stead? Or, supposing you were Orestes, would you say Pylades was lying and reveal your identity, and if they would not believe you, would you make no appeal against your both dying together?”
Now, to make sense of that last part — there are two examples that Cicero is citing from what would have been commonly known to the Romans of his time. One was the story of a Pythagorean who came in front of a tyrant, and the other being the story of the famous Greek mythological friends Orestes and Pylades. The Pythagorean example is that this person named Phintias went in front of a tyrant of Syracuse. The tyrant of Syracuse was so impressed by their level of friendship for each other that he not only pardoned them for their crimes but supposedly the tyrant begged them to allow him to become one of their friends as well.
Joshua: Let’s add something really important — what was this story about Damon exactly? So Damon tried to help Phintias, who had been condemned, because he wanted to have his affairs in order. Damon stepped forward as the guarantor and Phintias walked away for a few days to arrange his things. If he had not come back in time, his friend Damon would have been executed in his place. And then when Phintias came back, the tyrant had a change of heart and pardoned them both. Thanks for fleshing that out — I had not read that level of detail but yes, it sounds like whatever they had done they were in extreme danger, and yet they were loyal to each other, and the tyrant of Syracuse was so impressed by that that he pardoned them and said he wished he had such close friends as they were to each other.
I know this mostly from the poet, so I don’t know how much license Schiller took — though he was also a historian so I guess he was fairly accurate from his sources. But basically what I know about it is mostly from a famous poem by Schiller. The German title is Die Bürgschaft — which would be in English something like “The Pledge” or “The Hostage.”
Cassius: Okay. And it sounds like the other situation with Orestes and Pylades is sort of similar — they were in a situation where the king wished to kill Orestes but didn’t know which one of the two was Orestes and which one was Pylades, so he asked them and was trying to determine which one was Orestes so he could kill him. Which of course put these two friends in the position: Orestes could admit that he is Orestes and be killed, or Pylades, who loved Orestes so much he didn’t want to see Orestes die, could have claimed “I’m Orestes” — a bit like the famous scene in the Spartacus movie, “I am Spartacus!,” where everybody stands up and says that they’re Spartacus so that the Romans don’t know which one to kill. I think that’s a sort of similar situation being described with Orestes and Pylades.
Joshua: Yes, yes — so I think we’re clear what Cicero means. These people are such good friends that they’re willing to give up their lives for their friends.
Cassius: Yes. And so Cicero has come up with these examples to show that this is what friendship is all about. But if you’re an Epicurean and you believe that friendship comes from the advantage that you gain by having this person as a friend, then you’ll never have that kind of a friendship relationship, and you’ll never have any friendship at all, because you’ll want to desert your friend as soon as that friend becomes disadvantageous for you to continue to keep.
That’s Vatican Saying 23: “Every friendship in itself is to be desired, but the initial cause of friendship is from its advantages.” Actually, the word “friend” appears 13 times in the Vatican Sayings — it’s a much more fleshed-out understanding of friendship. “The noble man is chiefly concerned with wisdom and friendship: of these the former is a mortal good, the latter an immortal one.” So not meant to picture the Epicurean sitting around waiting for his friend to die — although that does remind me of a story about Arthur Schopenhauer. An old woman had fallen down some stairs and Schopenhauer was deemed to have been legally liable, and when the old woman died, he wrote in Latin in his account book: obit anus, obit onus — the old woman has died, the burden is lifted. So that’s a bit morbid, but that’s what I thought of when Cicero said that you’ll be sitting around waiting for your burdensome friend to die. That’s not Epicurus’s view of this at all.
We’re going to go further into this. Let me go ahead and quote the rest of what Cicero says here before we sort of wrap up today talking about this subject, because it is a good example that Cicero has brought up — another challenge that has to be met. But Cicero says right after he talks about Orestes and Pylades: “Yes, Torquatus, you personally would do all these things, for I do not believe there is any high or noble action which fear of pain or death could induce you to forego. But the question is not what conduct is consistent with your character, but what is consistent with your tenets. The system you uphold, the principles you have studied and accept, undermine the very foundations of friendship, however much Epicurus may, as he does, praise friendship up to the skies. But you tell me Epicurus himself had many friends. Who denies that Epicurus was a good man and a kind and humane man? In these discussions it is his intellect and not his character that is in question. Let us leave to the frivolous Greeks the wrong-headed habit of attacking and abusing the persons whose views of truth they do not share. Epicurus may have been a kind and faithful friend, but — if my opinion is right, for I do not dogmatize — he was not a very acute thinker.”
So Cicero’s saying here: I’m not attacking the man. I’m not going to go for ad hominem attacks. I’m not attacking Epicurus the man. I’m attacking Epicurus the philosopher. He’s a wonderful, kind and humane man. He’s just not very smart, is what Cicero is saying. And when he says “if my opinion is right,” he has to hedge, because Cicero himself doesn’t take the position that anything’s really right or wrong — it’s always just probable.
Callistheni: Something that is not being addressed is: in reality, at what point would you no longer associate with a friend? In other words, when would you cut off a friendship? What kinds of things would justify that or require you to do that? Because there’s not clarity around pleasure — it’s like Cicero has difficulty juggling between how things are both pleasurable and at the same time there is virtue which leads to pleasure. It doesn’t have to be this ultimate goal of pure virtue. It’s like he wants to somehow keep it all separate because somehow he’s not able to weigh out the different things.
Cassius: Yeah, and we should answer directly what Cicero is asking. What is the Epicurean position about what you should do when your friend becomes disabled or becomes sick or in any way a burden to you? That’s not likely to change — even temporary inconveniences are one thing. But let’s go ahead with the full weight of Cicero’s example: you’ve got a lifelong friend who all of a sudden is a burden to you. What do you do with that friend at that point? How do you analyze the question?
I don’t think you can come up with an absolute rule of right and wrong that is particularly helpful. But what is the way that an Epicurean would analyze the question? Well, the Epicurean understanding of friendship is that it starts out in mutual advantage — can I get some sugar, do you want to borrow my weed eater, or whatever. That’s kind of how it starts out. Cicero and Atticus met when they were young boys in school, so being able to talk over the lessons after they were over — there’s advantage in that, mutual advantage. But that’s not always the mode that keeps friendship together, right?
Joshua: Right. Epicurus’s brother, Metrodorus, had a brother named Timocrates, and Timocrates was considered to be a friend of the Epicureans in the garden — until he realized that he could get better advantage from going to the other schools of philosophy and lying about Epicurus and about the Epicurean garden to those other philosophers. “Epicurus is a licentious monster! They have nightly orgies!” — this is Timocrates slandering Epicurus across the city of Athens. That would be a good example of the time when you can break the bonds of friendship, although in that case Timocrates had already done that himself.
Cassius: And Josh, as we discussed when we were going over the Mark Twain What Is Man? discussion, you have this issue of self-approval and the feeling that comes from approving your own conduct. Your friendship may begin in some purely short-term arrangement in which you need a buddy to go bowling with, and so you both enjoy bowling. But over time, what develops is your enjoyment and your attachment to the relationship comes from the relationship itself. And if you were to abandon this person in a disadvantageous situation, the number one factor that’s probably going to be foremost in your mind is going to be your own analysis of how you see your conduct in relation to your friend.
I’ve always considered that probably what Epicurus is talking about when he says you would on occasion die for the friend is that what you would be balancing and considering is the fact that if you did not die for the friend — all the different circumstances that could be involved in these questions are complicated — but the issue is: what’s going to happen after that friend is gone, or after you’ve undertaken the conduct that we’re discussing here? A lot of people just could not live with themselves. And it’s not just because they have an abstract belief that God’s going to punish them or that they’ve violated some rule written in heaven. It’s that they themselves would have such a feeling of regret and sorrow about what they’ve done or what they’ve lost that they would not be able to live for themselves. And that self-approval or self-assessment of your conduct is not a logical analysis or duty to God — it is a direct feeling, an emotional response that is a matter of pleasure and pain. It’s still always a matter of mental or physical pleasure and pain by which you evaluate these things.
Cicero keeps talking about advantage as if the issue of advantage is how much money you’re making from this friend, or how many times you’re going bowling with them, or how much food he brings you or whatever. That’s not the only kind of advantage that you get in life with people. The advantage is this mental approval and mental feeling of pleasure that comes from the attachment. And Cicero may want to ignore that, but it should not be ignored, it does not need to be ignored, it’s rational to take it into account, and Epicurus is right to take it into account.
Joshua: The vast majority of people where it was temporarily in mutual advantage — no lasting friendship arose. It was simply that while we were in the same circle for the same conditions, we cooperated in some way, and after we moved on to other circles and separate circles, the contact was lost.
Cassius: Good point. Not every relationship of mutual advantage leads to the kind of friendship that we’re talking about here. It’s a very good point.
Joshua: Well, another thing — a friendship attachment can develop when both people are treating each other well and pleasantly, so that the friendship itself is a pleasant experience.
Cassius: Yes, there’s all sorts of things going on all the time in any relationship — they’re mental, they’re physical, and all sorts of feelings are involved. And you always have to go back, I think, to this issue that Epicurus says every feeling divides down between pleasurable and painful, and if it’s not painful it’s pleasurable. And so to me it would be just like considering your memories of good things in the past — as Torquatus has pointed out, by recalling the pleasures of the past, by thinking about the context in which things are happening, the wise man is always going to be able to find more reason to be happy than he is to be sad. And this would be one of those situations. You may have some present inconveniences with your friend, but when you weigh everything in the balance — considering all of the aspects of your life and the shortness of it and the non-existence that takes place after death — I think a lot of people would argue that these are really some of the most deeply felt feelings of life: your attachment to your friends and family, those people who are close to you. And those are not things that you’re going to weigh in terms of dollars and cents or money or immediate advantage, like Cicero wants to limit the word pleasure to be.
Again, this is where Torquatus ended up in his discussion of pleasure — saying that it is the Epicureans who place friendship on a sound basis. And in fact Cicero kind of says it himself right here: he says “affection does not commonly result from any calculation of expediency — it’s a spontaneous growth, it springs up of itself.” As if friendship just happens, as if God just says you’re going to be friends with that person or whatever. That’s not the way that friendship works, any more than justice occurs because God tells you what justice is. Just like we discussed how justice arises from human relationships and the recognition that it’s a whole lot better to agree not to kill each other than it is to just go about killing each other — friendship is going to be something that naturally evolves over time as well. And it’s not some kind of a divine commandment or Platonic logical ideal. It’s a practical situation that has a practical basis to it, and unless you understand the practical basis to it, then you’re just again building your castles on sand.
Joshua: You know what I found yesterday when I was looking for historical examples of this — I realized that the unpopularity of Epicureans, basically from late antiquity all the way up to today, has meant that there’s just not that many good examples. But the thing is, it wouldn’t even matter to Cicero if there were, because what he says here in section 25 is: “The question is not what consists with your disposition, but what consists with your philosophy.” He is ruling out the idea that Epicureans can be good friends from a philosophical standpoint — he’s just ruling that out of court.
But since we’re here, I thought I would talk about two people that we’ve talked about in the past and who are connected in some ways. I won’t say that they were friends necessarily, but the story is an interesting one. In the 12th and 13th centuries, primarily in Italy, you had this growing geopolitical problem: a sort of dipolar situation in Europe where you have the Holy Roman Empire in the north of Europe and you have the Papacy in Italy, and they’re vying for political control over the Italian city-states. And the great houses in these city-states were divided along this fault line into two factions — the Guelphs, who were pro-Papacy, and the Ghibellines, who were in support of the Holy Roman Empire.
And just like any other situation where you have internecine warfare, you also have people who otherwise like each other ending up on opposite sides for political reasons. And so much of what we know about these people comes from how they are portrayed in the sixth circle of hell — the circle of heresy — in Dante’s Inferno. Their names are Farinata degli Uberti and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti. Farinata degli Uberti was a leader of the Ghibelline faction in Florence, and Cavalcante was the leader of the Guelph faction — a wealthy, sort of merchant family. Most of the aristocrats ended up with the Ghibellines, and the nouveau riche, the merchant class, ended up with the Guelphs. So they’re on opposite sides, but in other ways they’re quite similar: they were both considered to be Epicurean philosophers, they were both considered to have been atheists, and they were both charged for heresy on that account.
And in fact they tried to bridge the divide between these two factions by joining their houses — Farinata degli Uberti’s daughter was married to Cavalcante’s son in an attempt to stem the bloodshed. There were other reasons that Cavalcante might have admired Uberti, as Dante also admired Uberti, because while the Ghibellines had basically taken control of Florence, there were many people in that faction who wanted to raze the city to the ground — much in the same way that the ancient city of Rome had razed Carthage. But Uberti was a Florentine, and he said: “I am a Florentine before I am a Ghibelline. We’re not going to do this. And if you try to do this, I will defend this city with my own sword.”
Anyway, the way it ends up is they both die. Uberti is exhumed and then posthumously condemned by the Inquisition for atheism. Cavalcanti is also damned to hell in Dante’s Inferno for atheism. And they are laid in the same tomb, side by side, in the Inferno. And part of their punishment is they can see the past and they can see the future, but they can’t see the present. So these two, while they lay side by side in the tomb, are no longer allowed to interact with each other.
It’s an interesting story. The historical record is so colored by Dante’s interpretation of this and by the lack of other resources that it’s really difficult to gauge what their general feeling was for one another. But the fact that Dante laid them side by side in the same tomb would seem to suggest that there was something — either past friendship, or the potential for friendship was there.
And this conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, though not specifically with these two men, is kind of the backdrop for Shakespeare’s great play Romeo and Juliet. The Capulets, Juliet’s family, were a prominent Guelph merchant family in Italy, and the Montagues were a prominent Ghibelline aristocratic family historically — not just in the play. So that’s where the story comes from about those two houses. Cicero says here in the text that the word for friendship comes from the word for love, and Romeo and Juliet is an interesting story of that — and what can go wrong, especially when it mingles with one of Cicero’s favorite things, which is politics.
Cassius: Well, it is an interesting story, and it’s pretty easy to see why Cicero is spending so much time talking about friendship, because it is a very real life experience that all of us go through. We get lots of pleasure from our friends, and then we also run into these situations where you have hard decisions to make about whether a particular friendship needs to be extended or not, and what happens when something happens to your friend. Friendship creates lots of hard cases and very emotionally draining and emotionally charged situations that help us to illustrate what we’re talking about.
We have not finished with this topic yet, because next week when we come back with section 26, Cicero is going to dive deeper back into what Torquatus has said previously about friendship. So we’re going to be continuing on to debate this question next week as well. But for today, let’s go ahead and come to a conclusion. Callistheni, any closing thoughts?
Callistheni: Yes. When it comes to rebuttals for today — that came up about not talking about pleasure except for in private — what are our rebuttals on that?
Cassius: Well, I would say the main thing that has to be thought about in these circumstances is that in many cases you can and should talk about these things in public, but you must explain and make sure your audience understands what you’re talking about. That’s probably to me the most important takeaway from this whole discussion. Is it the case that you never can speak of Epicurean philosophy in public? Absolutely not.
As Frances Wright has Epicurus say in A Few Days in Athens, lots of times arguments between enemies don’t lead to anything, because you rarely are going to convert someone who is totally in opposition to your position. But there are many situations where people are to some extent open-minded and they’re willing to listen to your explanation. And where people are capable of understanding you and willing to listen, then you certainly should explain to them what you’re talking about. So the number one response to Cicero’s accusation that you can’t say this in the court or in the Senate is: maybe you can’t say it in all courts and all Senates, but there are many Senates and many courts where you can. And if you’re articulate enough and persuasive enough in the way that you talk, then certainly there is no fate in the universe, there’s no limitation that says you can never do something. You just have to be intelligent about the time and the place and the manner in which you choose to explain yourself.
There was a really good movie with Spencer Tracy in it called Inherit the Wind, and it’s based on a play about the Scopes monkey trial. And there’s a quote from the film in which the lawyer representing Clarence Darrow is talking to the teacher, John T. Scopes, who had been imprisoned for teaching evolution in schools. And the lawyer says to him in a sort of private setting: “It’s the loneliest feeling in the world — it’s like walking down an empty street listening to your own footsteps. But all you have to do is knock on any door and say: ‘If you’ll let me in, I’ll live the way you want me to live and I’ll think the way you want me to think,’ and all the blinds will go up and all the doors will open and you’ll never be lonely ever again. Now it’s up to you — you just say the word and we’ll change the plea. That is, of course, if you honestly believe that the law is right and you’re wrong.”
So while we would love to be able to stand up in the Roman Senate and get a hearing for what we have to say, the reality is sometimes that won’t happen. And you just have to intelligently decide whether it’s possible or not. Now Cicero is talking about this Roman Senate as if they would stone an Epicurean like they would in Alexander the Oracle Monger. But apparently this is a time in Roman history where Epicurean philosophy was relatively popular, so it may not be appropriate to just accept Cicero’s proposition that it would be impossible for a Roman Epicurean in 50 BC to talk about Epicurus in the Senate. I think it probably would be possible. It sounds like Caesar, it sounds like Antony, it sounds like many others were acquainted with Epicurean philosophy. So I don’t think we should accept on face value that it’s impossible even in his own time to discuss it. He’s writing a book for public dissemination about the whole Epicurean philosophy because he’s so concerned about its growth and its acceptance!
But you’re going to have to be willing to explain your terms. To go slightly further in answering what you said, Callistheni — you not only explain the nature of pleasure as Epicurus is talking about, you just don’t stop and say “I believe in pursuing pleasure in everything” period. And I would submit it’s also insufficient to say “pleasure is the absence of pain” and then stop without further explanation. There is a lot more to be understood about how there are only two feelings, pleasure and pain, and the meaning of calling absence of pain a pleasure — that also has to be explained. Cicero is right when he says if you go into the Senate and say “I live my life to minimize pain,” you’ve got to explain what you mean by that and how it has a sweeping application to all areas of your life both mental and physical. You can’t stop with the slogan that people don’t understand.
And again, wrapping this back up into what we talk about for our modern Epicurean presentations — I don’t think you can stop with sloganeering about pleasure as the absence of pain and then walk away and smile as if everybody’s going to understand you. I see that taking place a lot. I think it’s totally insufficient, and I think that’s the kind of thing that we need to work on improving ourselves as we move forward.
Joshua, your closing thoughts?
Joshua: Well, one thing I can say: I mentioned this historical conflict in Italy, and how you had Epicureans on both sides in that conflict — just as you had Epicureans on both sides of the conflict in the Roman civil war of the first and second triumvirate. It’s interesting that Lucretius’s poem had not been rediscovered at that point; Diogenes Laertius’s book had not been translated from Greek into Latin at that point. So the text that these early people who were calling themselves Epicureans were using as justification for that — oddly enough — was this book right here, the one that we’re reading. Cicero’s On Ends survived into the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance prior to the rediscovery and reintroduction of those other texts. So it’s interesting that Cicero, while being so hostile to the Epicureans, has actually given them a foothold in these centuries where most of the Epicurean books were thought to have been lost.
And interesting how it survives even today in the Latin forum and the Lorem Ipsum material that people always use even now as dummy text. You know about that, Joshua, and probably can explain it better than I can — but how Torquatus’s presentation of Epicurean ethics, about how men do not value pain for its own sake but because it can bring pleasure, that section of discussion in Latin in a mutated form survives today in that Lorem Ipsum. It’s certainly interesting that of all the things that could have been chosen to be used as dummy text over the centuries, a section of this book was preserved in that kind of way.
By the way, I didn’t know that was from the Torquatus section — that is interesting. Lorem Ipsum, like you say, is the dummy text. So if you want to compare two different fonts, you would put up one font and the text you would use to show off that font would be this Lorem Ipsum text. It’s a short paragraph of Latin gibberish that just shows you what the text is like without having you actually read words that color your perception of how you receive the font. Yes, it is gibberish, but — as the Wikipedia entry says — Lorem Ipsum is typically a corrupted version of De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, a first century text by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, with words altered and added to make it nonsensical. But it’s still very clear that the majority of it is right from Torquatus in Book 1.
Cassius: Okay, well with that, let’s go ahead and close today’s episode. We’ll come back in a week. In the meantime, please drop by the forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about anything we’re talking about. We appreciate your time as always and we’ll see you again soon. Thanks again for listening.