Episode 215 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 22 - The Epicurean View Of Happiness

Date: 02/24/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3715-episode-215-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-22-the-epicurean-view-of-happiness/

Summary

Continuing De Finibus Book Two, section 27 (page 66 of the Reid edition). Cicero’s observation that “different thinkers make happiness consist in different things” prompts a wide-ranging discussion stepping back from the details of the text to examine what the Epicurean view of happiness actually is.

Key sources analyzed: Torquatus’s Book One vision of the ideal life; Diogenes of Oenoanda Fragment 32 (“shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life”); Diogenes Laertius section 122 on the two Epicurean types of happiness — complete happiness such as the gods have (admitting no increase) and the happiness humans experience that admits of increase and decrease; and the opening of the Letter to Menoeceus, which starts with the gods (correct understanding leads to a mental pleasure of security) and death (removing fear of death makes the mortality of life enjoyable).

Cassius argues that Cicero’s attack on Epicurean happiness — that if happiness can cease to be present then it was never real happiness — treats happiness as a Platonic absolute. The Epicurean response is that human happiness is a dominance of pleasures over pains; it fluctuates, and Epicurus says as much when he describes two distinct types. Joshua raises the question of why Lucretius ends the poem on the plague of Athens — Stephen Greenblatt’s view that it is a test of whether the reader has grasped the philosophy — and quotes Nature’s speech from Lucretius Book 3 (“why do you not take your leave like a guest well satisfied with life?”). Cassius ends with the leaky vessel analogy from Lucretius Book 6 and connects it to the Epicurean expansion of pleasure to include all non-painful states.

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.

This week we continue our discussion of Book Two at section 27, which is page 66 of the Reid edition. Last week we had just about completed our discussion of friendship and Cicero’s attack on the Epicurean basis of friendship, and we were moving into this discussion of happiness. That’s where we’ll spend most of our time today as well, because we really have the need to step back and take a look at where we are in general and realize some of the themes of the arguments that Cicero has been presenting, and think about what really is going on here on this ultimate question of happiness.

Cicero starts section 27 by saying: “We dwell too long upon very simple matters. When once we’ve concluded and demonstrated that if everything is judged by the standard of pleasure, no room is left for either virtues or friendships.” And then: “Whereas the whole importance of philosophy lies in its bearing on happiness, and it is from a desire for happiness alone that men have devoted themselves to this pursuit — whereas some place happiness in one thing and some in another, while you place it in pleasure, and similarly on the other side all wretchedness you place in pain — let’s first examine the nature of happiness as you conceive it.”

Rackham says in that same section: “Different thinkers make happiness consist in different things. According to your school, it consists in pleasure, and conversely misery consists solely in pain.”

The key thing I wanted to focus on by comparing separate translations is this issue that different thinkers make happiness consist in different things. So while we talk about happiness as if everyone understands what happiness means, if there’s one thing we get out of this discussion with Cicero arguing with Torquatus, people can have very, very different meanings of the word happiness.

Cassius:

Now we should start probably by trying to focus in on what we know Epicurus considered happiness to be. Section 16 of Book One, Torquatus had said this: “If then even the glory of the virtues on which all other philosophers love to expatiate so eloquently has in the last resort no meaning unless it be based on pleasure, whereas pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically attractive and alluring, it cannot be doubted that pleasure is the one supreme and final good and that a life of happiness is nothing else than a life of pleasure.” The Reid translation ends that same sentence by saying “that a life of happiness means nothing else but a life attended by pleasure.”

So at least here in Book One of On Ends, Torquatus has set out that Epicurus is identifying a life of happiness as being a life of pleasure. And now that’s pretty similar to what we know from Diogenes of Oenoanda. We have Fragment 32: “If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into what is the means of happiness and they wanted to say the virtues — which would actually be true, it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not what is the means of happiness but what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature, I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people, being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end, are in no way an end but the means to the end.”

So we have those two sources and there are numbers of others, and of course the Letter to Menoeceus. Diogenes Laertius had said in section 122: “The Epicureans say also that there are two ideas of happiness: complete happiness such as belongs to a god, which admits of no increase, and the happiness which is concerned with the addition and subtraction of pleasures.” So if he’s right, the Epicureans were talking about two different types of happiness — one belonging to a god and one which can be increased or decreased, which presumably is not the type of happiness that the gods are experiencing.

Joshua:

Well, Cassius, when we’re talking about issues relating to ethics, it seems like it’s a good idea to go back to really the only surviving work directly written by Epicurus that bears on the question of ethics, and that is the Letter to Menoeceus.

So I have the Hicks translation in front of me and the first paragraph turns out to be interesting: “Greetings. Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he has grown old, for no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come or that it is past and gone is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet come or it is no more. Therefore both old and young ought to seek wisdom. The former, in order that as age comes over him he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been. And the latter in order that while he is young he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since if that be present we have everything, and if that be absent all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”

Cassius:

This seems to foreshadow what you’re talking about when it comes to this idea of a complete happiness, because a lot of the Epicurean understanding of happiness centers around issues relating to fear. And it’s precisely this fear that Cicero thinks he’s got his best argument on — he thinks that you’ve got all these pains that you cannot get away from in life. And therefore, since happiness in your ideal is nothing but pleasure and you can’t get rid of pain, then your whole definition of happiness is warped and unattainable.

But the letter to Menoeceus takes as its starting point that happiness is attainable. It’s attainable at any point in your life. It’s never too early to start looking for it, and attaining it has something to do with getting rid of fear.

And what’s important when you look at section 122 from Diogenes Laertius, which is that opening paragraph of the Letter to Menoeceus, is that he says there, “we must meditate on the things that make our happiness, seeing that when that is with us, we have all.” So when he says “seeing when that is with us, we have all” — that’s a strong indication that happiness is attainable. And so Cicero is agreeing with Epicurus that the entire end and aim of philosophy is the attainment of happiness. We’re right on track so far. But then after that, we have to get to the most important question: what does happiness really mean? That’s the problem.

Joshua:

And when you look at the principal doctrines, it has basically the same format. He talks about happiness, he talks about the gods, he talks about death, and then he talks about pleasure.

Cassius:

Yeah. And Principal Doctrine Two: “Death is nothing to us. For the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling or no perception. And that which is without feeling or without perception is nothing to us.” And in the Letter to Menoeceus, that’s exactly where he goes next. He says: “Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality.”

And he says: “Nothing’s terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there’s nothing terrible in not living. And those men are idle who say that they fear death, not because it will be painful when it comes but because it’s painful in anticipation.” The wise man doesn’t seek to escape life nor fear the cessation of life. “Just as with food he does not simply seek the larger share and nothing else, in life he seeks the most pleasant” — he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time but the most pleasant.

Joshua:

This is really the correct framework for understanding Cicero’s objection, Cassius. He’s going to be pushing throughout the next several paragraphs and pages this emphasis: you say happiness is a life of pleasure, and you can’t continuously have sensory pleasures. So therefore you can’t hold on to it forever. You’re going to have to be afraid of losing it, and you’re therefore not going to be able to live a happy life because of your definition of happiness being tied to pleasure.

Cassius:

That’s the answer that I think Epicurus is telling us about, and I think it makes a lot of sense. And if you’re going to be applying and working with Epicurean philosophy, it’s that kind of approach — expanding and understanding the full definition of pleasure — that’s the key to everything.

Now, book three of Lucretius, where he does deal with this question of death and why we’re afraid of it and whether we should yearn for eternal life even though we don’t have it — this is the only place in the entire poem where Epicurus is mentioned by name. And the mention is that Epicurus who gave us this philosophy is also dead and in the grave, just like this whole litany of other names, right? He names a whole bunch of people, all of whom did great things in their own time and all of them are now dead.

Joshua:

You know, Cassius, last week one of the things I remember you were saying that was particularly memorable was how as we look at our own lives, we don’t always consider ourselves happy every day. We want to be happy and there are days that we are happy and yet there are days when problems and pains get the best of us and we just simply don’t consider ourselves as happy as we could be on that particular day. That takes us back to that question of what does happiness mean when Epicurus talks about the kind of happiness that the gods have versus the kind of happiness that admits of increase and decrease.

Presumably under an Epicurean theory, the gods — being immortal and blessed — don’t have to deal with pleasures going up and down and pains going up and down. They have nothing but pleasures to deal with. Now whether as humans we can attain to such a state is an interesting question, but clearly most of the time we’re dealing with a combination of pleasures and pains.

Cassius:

And so the person who is able to think these things through and understand the philosophical position will be able to have confidence in his life that he’s always going to have more reason for joy than for vexation, as Torquatus said. Happiness in Epicurean terms for human beings appears to me to be, based on these texts that we’re reading, a dominance of pleasures over pains. And corollary number two: the dominance of pleasures over pains means the dominance of all types of pleasures over all types of pains. Yes, Cicero, you’re occasionally going to have bodily pains that are intense. But you’re always going to have available to you, in an Epicurean understanding of life, mental and some bodily conditions that constitute pleasure that you can offset against those pains.

That is the Tetrapharmakon, if you will. Cicero earlier in the text mocked this as Epicurus’s panacea for everything that ails you. But that’s exactly the terms the Epicureans would have put it in — that philosophy does that for you. The pursuit of happiness through philosophy is a project of removing fear, of coming to terms with death, of balancing pleasures against pains.

Let me cap this off by quoting from Book One of On Ends, section 21, where Torquatus says: “Wherefore, if the doctrines I have stated are more dazzling and luminous than the Sun itself, if they are drafts drawn from nature’s spring, if our whole argument establishes its credit entirely by an appeal to our senses — that is to say to witnesses who are untainted and unblemished — if speechless babes and even mute animals almost cry out that with nature for our governor and guide there is no good fortune but pleasure, no adverse fortune but pain, and their verdict upon these matters is neither perverted nor tainted — are we not bound to entertain the greatest gratitude for the man who, lending his ear to this voice of nature, as I may call it, grasped it in so strong and serious a spirit that he guided all thoroughly sober-minded men into the track of a peaceful, quiet, restful, happy life?”

Joshua:

Now, this book on Cicero is not done — Cicero has further objections yet. Do you want to get into some of those now?

Cassius:

We’ll get into at least a few of them today before we quit. But to try to keep sort of a theme — the theme that seems to be growing through a lot of this to me is that people are using these words in different ways and we have to get comfortable with very basic disagreements about what words mean. Happiness seems so clear and yet it’s being defined by these opposing philosophers in dramatically different ways.

One of the problems we run into in debating philosophy and talking back and forth with opposing schools is that people just get tired and they get jaded by “you’re just playing a word game.” It can be discouraging to think about how there are people who will come reading Epicurus who think that in fact Epicurus is telling them that there is a way philosophically to live a life of continuous sensory stimulation, and it becomes disappointing to them when they realize that’s not what he’s saying. He doesn’t have a magic wand; he is not able to promise you continuous sensory stimulation from the day you were born to the day you die. He can’t promise you those things, and it can become discouraging.

But the reality is Epicurus is not just playing a word game. He’s telling you things about unreasonable expectations, about the harm of pursuing ideals outside of reality, about looking to supernatural beings that don’t exist for guidance. He’s saying things that are very, very practical that have to be considered. And one of them is to adjust your expectations as to what happiness really means.

Joshua:

Cassius, you’ve said a lot of really good stuff there, and there’s really only one direction I can take this. One of the longest-running debates surrounding the poem of Lucretius is this question of why did he end the poem on the most horrifying scene he has laid out for us in the entire work — the account of the plague in Athens. The question people ask is: this is supposed to be a poem about pleasure, about philosophy that’s supposed to make us happy, about removing pain. So why are we ending here on the darkest, most dire note in the entire poem?

This horrifying account of a disease that there is no stopping, that just sweeps through the population, that levels every class, every condition — and people are literally dying in the streets. And the question people have asked is: was it intentional? Is this how Lucretius meant to finish the poem?

Some people think, like George Santayana, that if Lucretius had survived he would have finished the poem differently. But I incline myself to the view of Stephen Greenblatt, who said that what Lucretius does here at the end of the poem is he sets up a test for us. You’ve read these seven thousand lines. You’ve been exposed to the central arguments in Epicureanism about how to pursue happiness and why that’s possible and what you need to do to attain it. And at the very end of the poem, he throws up death and pain and destruction. And the philosophy, if it works, is supposed to carry you through the bad time — not just the good time.

Cassius:

Right. Before you can say you really understand Epicurus and what Epicurus is trying to accomplish.

And what you said about the ending is consistent with what Emily Austin says — she points out that in the original story of what happened, the people of Athens are recorded to have sort of put aside some of their pre-existing concerns about formalities of life and just did what they could to enjoy what was available to them at the time. And maybe if Lucretius had gotten a little further, there would have been another section describing that part of what happened.

But regardless of whether he intended to include it, that is the same place that we come to — just what you said, that death and pain are parts of life. There is no escaping either one of them. And we have to have the right attitude towards them and decide whether we’re going to let that ruin our lives, or whether we can come up with an understanding of life that incorporates death and incorporates pain that still allows us to enjoy life and live it in a way that we consider happy.

Joshua:

Let me quote, Cassius. This is from Lucretius Book Three, where he deals with this question of death and sorrow and questions related to mortality. This is nature speaking to humanity. Nature says:

“Why is your distress so great, you mortal, that you indulge in sorrowful laments to such excess? Why do you moan and weep at death? For if the life you had before, which is now over, was pleasing to you, and all its good things have not leaked away, as if stored in containers full of holes, and disappeared without delighting you, why do you not take your leave like a guest well satisfied with life? You foolish man, and with your mind at ease accept a rest which will not be disturbed. But if all things which you enjoyed have been frittered away and come to nothing, and life offends you, why seek to add on more, which once again may all be squandered foolishly, and leave without providing pleasure? Instead of that, why do you not end your life and troubles? For if I can discover or invent nothing more to please you, then everything always is the same. And if your body is not yet shriveled up with years, your limbs not yet worn out and torpid, still all things will stay the same even if you keep going and outlast all living races.”

Cassius:

Yes, Joshua, you take your leave like a guest well satisfied with what he has received.

I’ve always focused on the first part of that — the leaky vessel can’t be filled. But there’s a second part which is that whatever does come into the vessel gets tainted as with a foul odor. And I think I would now draw an analogy to what we’re talking about in terms of the definitions of pleasure. Cicero’s perspective — the non-Epicurean perspective — taints and imbues with a foul odor many things in life that are not in fact painful but that we don’t appreciate to be pleasure. The Epicurean perspective helps you not only seal the leaks in the vessel but to fill the vessel and keep it full as full as possible with pleasures rightly understood as being much broader than just sensory stimulations.

When he says in the Letter to Menoeceus that you don’t go for the most food but for the best food, the most pleasant — this idea of understanding that more is not necessarily better, that longer life is not necessarily a better life — the issue is what is the most pleasant. And that’s not length of time, that’s not quantity of material goods, it’s not quantity of sensory stimulation — it’s pleasure fully understood.

Okay, and so with that, let’s close for the day. As always, we invite you to drop by the EpicureanFriends forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about our podcast. We thank you for your time today. We’ll see you next week. Bye.

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.

This week we continue our discussion of Book Two at Section 27, which is page 66 of the Rackham edition. Last week we had just about completed our discussion of friendship and Cicero’s attack on the Epicurean basis of friendship, and we were moving into this discussion of happiness. That’s where we’ll spend most of our time today as well, because we really have the need to step back and take a look at where we are in general and realize some of the themes of the arguments that Cicero has been presenting and think about what really is going on here on this ultimate question of happiness.

Cicero starts Section 27 by saying: “We dwell too long upon simple matters. When once we’ve concluded and demonstrated that if everything is judged by the standard of pleasure, no room is left for either virtues or friendships. So then, whereas the whole importance of philosophy lies in its bearing on happiness, and it is from a desire for happiness alone that men have devoted themselves to this pursuit, and whereas some place happiness in one thing and some in another, and while you place it in pleasure, and similarly on the other side, all wretchedness you place in pain, let’s first examine the nature of happiness as you conceive it.” Rackham says in that same section: “Different thinkers make happiness consist in different things. According to your school it consists in pleasure, and conversely misery consists solely in pain.”

The key thing I wanted to focus on by comparing translations is this issue that different thinkers make happiness consist in different things. And so while we talk about happiness as if everyone understands what happiness means, if there’s one thing we get out of this discussion with Cicero arguing with Torquatus, people can have very, very different meanings of the word happiness.

Now we should start probably by trying to focus in on what we know Epicurus considered happiness to be. Section 16 of Book One, Torquatus had said this: “If then even the glory of the virtues on which all other philosophers love to expatiate so eloquently has in the last resort no meaning unless it be based on pleasure, whereas pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically attractive and alluring, it cannot be doubted that pleasure is the one supreme and final good and that a life of happiness is nothing else than a life of pleasure.” That’s the Rackham version. Rackham ends that same sentence by saying that a life of happiness means nothing else but a life attended by pleasure. So at least here in Book One of On Ends, Torquatus has set out that Epicurus is identifying a life of happiness as being a life of pleasure.

Now that’s pretty similar to what we know from Diogenes of Oinoanda. We have Fragment 32: “If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into what is the means of happiness and they wanted to say the virtues — which would actually be true — it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not what is the means of happiness but what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature, I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end, are in no way an end but the means to the end.”

So we have those two sources and there are numbers of others. And of course in the Letter to Menoikeus, Diogenes Laertius says a number of different things about happiness that are going to be relevant to what we’re discussing today. And so the most important thing we can do as we think about the fact that Cicero has asserted here that everybody seems to agree that happiness is the goal of life, but what they differ about is what that word happiness means — Diogenes Laertius had said in Section 122: “The Epicureans say also that there are two ideas of happiness: complete happiness, such as belongs to a god, which admits of no increase, and the happiness which is concerned with the addition and subtraction of pleasures.” So if he’s right, the Epicureans were talking about two different types of happiness — one belonging to a god and one which can be increased or decreased — and which presumably is not the type of happiness that the gods are experiencing, if they have complete happiness.

What do we think Epicurus is saying about what kind of happiness is attainable by human beings?

Joshua:

“Greetings. Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he has grown old, for no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come or that it is past and gone is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet come or it is no more. Therefore both old and young ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that as age comes over him he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that while he is young he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since if that be present we have everything, and if that be absent all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”

So he doesn’t start out necessarily by giving us a good definition of the word happiness, but he does give us some of the basic architecture. Happiness is the thing that we are striving for. If we don’t have it, we do everything to win it. If we have it, then we have everything. We should pursue it when we’re old, we should pursue it when we’re young. It is associated with a kind of fearlessness — the young person pursuing philosophy and thereby attaining happiness will have no fear of what is to come. This seems to foreshadow what you’re talking about when it comes to this idea of a complete happiness, because a lot of the Epicurean understanding of happiness centers around issues relating to fear. And it’s precisely this fear that Cicero has pointed to as the reason that Epicurus’ understanding of happiness fails in comparison to the Stoics. It’s this fear that happiness is going to abandon us at precisely our darkest hour that is the reason that we can’t be happy in the first place. That’s Cicero’s argument. He says: “For if the life of happiness may cease to be, then it cannot be really happy.” It has to be permanent, or it wasn’t ever there in the first place. That’s probably farther than I would go, but the Letter to Menoikeus takes as its starting point that first of all, this is important — happiness is attainable. It’s attainable at any point in your life. You can attain it when you’re young, you can attain it when you’re old. It’s never too early to start looking for it, and attaining it has something to do with getting rid of fear. And basically the whole rest of the letter then is his advice about how to go about attaining happiness, which he summarizes by saying: “Those things which without ceasing I have declared to you, those do, and exercise them, holding them to be the elements of right life.”

Cassius:

I find it very interesting to do what you’ve just done and compare this Section 122 from Diogenes Laertius, which is that opening paragraph of the Letter to Menoikeus, to what Cicero has been saying here. Because Section 122, as you were saying, has a lot of interesting information in it about the importance of happiness and when to pursue it. And I think you’re right — he says that it is attainable, because the sentence says “we must then meditate on the things that make our happiness, seeing that when that is with us we have all.” So when he says “seeing when that is with us, we have all,” I think that’s a strong indication that it’s attainable, and that’s a very important point.

And so Cicero is agreeing with Epicurus that the entire end and aim of philosophy is the attainment of happiness. So so far along this comparison, I think we’re right on track, because frankly, as I look at Section 122, there’s a lot about the importance of happiness but there’s not a lot of definition — just as you said — about what happiness really is. So in the first paragraph we have a consistent approach about the importance of happiness, but we then after that have to get to the most important question, which is what does happiness really mean and of what does it consist? That’s the problem. Everybody talks about happiness as if everybody understands it. Everybody agrees that it’s very important, but when the definition of the thing you’re after varies so strongly, then the appearances can be a little bit deceiving about how closely in agreement people really are.

So that’s a great start for the analysis and now you’re about to go further into the next section of the Letter to Menoikeus and talk about the gods. But if we were to follow Cicero’s pattern, Cicero thinks the next thing that you’re going to say after you emphasize the importance of happiness is he thinks Epicurus is going to jump into pleasure. And to some extent he does later on in the letter, but he doesn’t do that immediately.

Joshua:

Yeah, it sort of appears that Cicero is following the framework of the Nicomachean Ethics. I haven’t read enough of this to know, but Aristotle lays out the same problem — the same problem that Cicero lays out, and the same problem that Epicurus lays out. He says: “Since all knowledge and all purpose aims at some good, what is this which we say is the aim of politics, or in other words, what is the highest of all realizable goods? As to its name, I suppose nearly all men are agreed, for the masses and the men of culture alike declare that it is happiness, and hold that to live well or to do well is the same as to be happy. But they differ as to what this happiness is, and the masses do not give the same account of it as the philosophers, for the former take it to be something palpable and plain, like pleasure or wealth or fame, and the philosophers on the other hand have thought that beside these several good things there is an absolute good which is the cause of their goodness.” And of course Aristotle is going to place that in a life of virtue and wisdom, or knowledge — pure wisdom contemplating absolute truth.

Cassius:

Joshua, before you go further, I want to make one more point. So Cicero expects, at least in this presentation in Section 27, that Epicurus is going to immediately start jumping into his definition of pleasure. And it might be tempting to say that Epicurus does not do that, that Epicurus waits until later on to start talking about pleasure. But if we take Torquatus and Epicurus seriously about what pleasure really means — that pleasure is not just stimulation of the senses — then these things that we’re about to talk about, the practices that are the first principles of the good life, I don’t think we should exclude these things you’re about to talk about from the definition of pleasure. Because the definition of pleasure with Epicurus is so broad that certainly sex, drugs, and rock and roll are part of pleasure, but also the rest of pleasure is life when you’re not in pain. And these things that you’re about to start talking about in terms of what Epicurus is focusing on are periods of your time in your life when you’re happily enjoying life in its normal regular events, even when you’re not stimulated by ice cream and cake. So anyway, I didn’t mean to interrupt you there, but I think it’s fair to take the position that what Epicurus does is start explaining the life of pleasure and the life of happiness. And he’s talking about the most important aspects of this life of pleasure.

Joshua:

Yeah, and when you look at the Principal Doctrines, it has basically the same format. He talks about happiness, he talks about the gods, he talks about death, and then he talks about pleasure.

Cassius:

Yes, I’m still always balancing this stimulation of the senses versus other kinds of pleasure.

Joshua:

Right, right. You’re right to say that when he talks about the gods and removing fear from that source in your life, that registers as pleasure, because fear registers as a kind of pain. And so when you remove it, it registers as pleasure. And don’t stop just with removing the fear — he’s also talking about believing that a god is a blessed being enjoying his blessed and immortal existence. So believing that they’re blessed and immortal would be a pleasurable experience, I would think, a pleasurable feeling. The first thing to quote from the Letter to Menoikeus is: “First of all, believe that a god is a being immortal and blessed.”

Cassius:

You start out with the good side.

Joshua:

Exactly. And it’s the same thing in the Principal Doctrines, where he says: “A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being.” And in the Letter to Menoikeus it says: “First of all, believe that god is a being immortal and blessed, even as the common idea of a god is engraved on men’s minds. And do not assign to him anything alien to his immortality or ill-suited to his blessedness, but believe about him everything that can uphold his blessedness and immortality. For gods there are, since the knowledge of them is by clear vision. And they are not such as the many believe them to be, for indeed they do not consistently represent them as they believe them to be. And the impious man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many.”

Cassius:

So we have two things here. We have a definition of the life of happiness as it relates to the gods, and we also have the impact that a correct understanding of the gods has on the life of happiness of mankind. And you know, Joshua, I could draw another analogy with the opening of Book Two of Lucretius that we talk about regularly, which needs to be sort of decoded. But when you say that it’s sweet to think about your being immune from the problems that other people are having, you can almost look at the next sentence there of the Letter to Menoikeus when he says the statements of the many about the gods are not conceptions derived from sensation but false suppositions, according to which great misfortunes befall the wicked and great blessings by the gift of the gods. That’s sort of analogous to realizing that these people who have false notions about the gods are suffering because of those false notions, but you who have a correct notion are enjoying the blessedness, the sweetness of being immune from that problem.

Joshua:

Yeah, exactly. This is one of Lucretius’s major focuses in writing his poem. If he didn’t think it was possible to alleviate the causes of anxiety and frustration, then he wouldn’t have bothered putting pen to paper. The reason he did it is because he thinks that people are subject to false beliefs about the world we live in — about how it came to be, about what’s going to happen to it later, about our lives and about death and about the gods and so forth. And the project of his poem is to lead people to happiness by tearing down all of these false effigies that people have erected in place of a true understanding of human life, in place of a true understanding of death and so forth.

Cassius:

And death is where we go next in the Principal Doctrines. It is Principal Doctrine Two: “Death is nothing to us. For the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which is without feeling is nothing to us.” And in the Letter to Menoikeus, that’s exactly where he goes next. He says: “Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality.”

We’re kind of showing our hand here, because Cicero is going to go into this question specifically coming up shortly in the book.

Joshua:

Yes, he’s going to do that.

Cassius:

For now, though, I think I want to continue to emphasize when you look at the Letter to Menoikeus, you’re looking at — okay, death is nothing to us. And people often think, well, that’s not a particularly happy thought to be thinking about. But what Epicurus is doing here in the letter is stressing the good that comes from that opinion, that it makes the mortality of life enjoyable because it takes away the craving for immortality. And he doesn’t stop there. He says nothing is terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living, and that those men are idle who say that they fear death not because it will be painful when it comes but because it is painful in anticipation. He explains why that’s not something to be concerned about — because it’s either not here and it’s not painful, or when you’re dead you don’t experience anything so it’s not painful then.

He also says that the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, but at another moment they yearn for it as a respite from the evils in life. And he explains that the wise man doesn’t seek to escape life nor fear the cessation of life. And he says that just as with food he does not simply seek the larger share and nothing else, in life he seeks the most pleasant. So he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time but the most pleasant.

I guess the point I’m wanting to emphasize right now — we’re not trying to go through all of the Letter to Menoikeus in detail today — but the emphasis I think we could take from this is that what Epicurus stresses about the important aspects of a good life are things that, in the Epicurean definition of pleasure, are pleasures themselves. They’re not stimulations of the senses necessarily, but they are pleasures that underlie and constitute part of the pleasure that we’re seeking as our goal in life. And by failing to acknowledge that, that’s where Cicero goes off in his argument about “if happiness once won can be lost, then a happy life is impossible.” What he’s going to be pushing throughout the next several paragraphs and pages is this emphasis — you say happiness is a life of pleasure, and you can’t continuously have sex, drugs, and rock and roll and fish and all these things that go along with it. So therefore you can’t hold on to it forever. You’re going to have to be afraid of losing it, and you’re therefore not going to be able to live a happy life because of your definition of happiness being tied to pleasure.

But if Torquatus had been allowed to respond here, he would have said: yes, I tie happiness to pleasure, but I don’t tie pleasure to the stimulation of the senses. I tie pleasure to all of the things in life which are not painful, including the appreciation of all these things that we’re discussing now — in terms of the gods being blessed and immortal, in terms of death being something that gives us strength and courage and allows us to face life happily knowing that we don’t need an infinite span of time. These are the things that Epicurus talks about later on in the letter about why we’re not talking about continuous feasts and so forth, but we’re talking about these things that come from sober reflection on the nature of life. But failing to understand these things, Cicero is never going to be satisfied with this answer. But that’s the answer that I think Epicurus is telling us about and I think makes a lot of sense. And if you’re going to be applying and working with Epicurean philosophy, it’s that kind of approach — expanding and understanding the full definition of pleasure — that’s the key to everything.

Joshua:

Right, now this Book Three of Lucretius — where he does deal with this question of death and why we’re afraid of it and whether we should yearn for eternal life even though we don’t have it — it’s in that context. This is the only place in the entire poem, the only place in Lucretius’ poem, where Epicurus is mentioned by name. And the mention is that Epicurus, who gave us this philosophy, is also dead and in the grave, just like this whole litany of other names. He names a whole bunch of people, all of whom did great things in their own time, and all of them are now dead. So when it comes to understanding death, understanding that everyone who has gone before you has also died, you have to make sense of that. You have to make sense of death and its impact on life and its impact on happiness.

Cassius:

Yeah, it’s dealing with these real problems that Cicero thinks he’s got his best argument on, because everybody knows that we have death to deal with — not only our own, but the death of our friends. We have all sorts of things in life that cause us pain. And Cicero thinks that’s his trump card. He thinks that, well, you’ve got all these pains that you cannot get away from in life, and therefore, since happiness in your ideal is nothing but pleasure and you can’t get rid of pain, then your whole definition of happiness is warped and unattainable and ridiculous. It makes no sense. You define happiness as pleasure and pleasure is unattainable for you in a continuous way through life. He sort of thinks that wins the day for him, but it doesn’t — because of the wider definition of pleasure.

You know, Joshua, last week one of the things I remember you were saying that was particularly memorable was how as we look at our own lives, we don’t always consider ourselves happy every day. We want to be happy and there are days that we are happy, and yet we feel like there are days when problems and pains get the best of us and we just simply don’t consider ourselves as happy as we could be on that particular day. That takes us back to that question of what does happiness mean when Epicurus talks about the kind of happiness that the gods have versus the kind of happiness that admits of increase and decrease. Presumably under an Epicurean theory, with the gods being immortal and blessed, the gods don’t have to deal with pleasures going up and down and pains going up and down. They have nothing but pleasures to deal with and so they can be said to have complete happiness that’s never diluted in any form.

Now whether as humans we can attain to such a state is an interesting question as well, but clearly most of the time we’re dealing with a combination of pleasures and pains. And what we will want to do — as Epicurus is saying those pleasures admit of increase or decrease — what we’re wanting to do as best we can, all the time, is to maximize our pleasures and minimize our pains so that we have a dominance of pleasure over pain. And if there are physical pains or things that we can’t get away from at a particular moment, then one of the ways to deal with those things is to focus on those things that we know we have access to, the pleasures that are available to us when pains are inescapable at that particular moment. And among the things that are pleasurable are these things that Epicurus is talking about — about attitudes towards the gods, attitudes towards death, and the general understanding that our pains when they do come are going to be manageable if they’re going to hang around for a while, and if they’re very intense they’re going to be short, and they are always escapable ultimately if they get bad enough.

So the person who is able to think these things through and understand the philosophical position will be able to have confidence in his life that he’s always going to have more reason for joy than for vexation, as Torquatus said. If we think, though, that happiness is an absolute term that requires there to be never any pain, then that’s a definition of happiness that maybe the gods can achieve, but most humans are not going to be able to, and it would therefore make no sense to set as a state that you have to be in every moment or else you are beating yourself over the head about it.

That point about Epicurean happiness is that it does not require pain to be banished every moment of your life, any more than it required it to be banished on Epicurus’ last days when he was in pain. Happiness in Epicurean terms for human beings appears to me to be, based on these texts that we’re reading, a dominance of pleasures over pains. And corollary number two, when you explain that, is: the dominance of pleasures over pains means the dominance of all types of pleasures over all types of pains. And yes, Cicero, you’re occasionally going to have bodily pains that are intense. Yes, Cicero, you’re occasionally going to have mental pains that are intense. But you’re always going to have available to you, in an Epicurean understanding of life, mental and some bodily conditions that constitute pleasure that you can offset against those pains.

That is the Tetrapharmakos that we just went through there. It’s a somewhat arbitrary designation to set off the first four of Epicurus’ Principal Doctrines and set them apart from the rest of the list. But it makes sense. It makes sense to talk about this in terms of a cure. Cicero earlier in the text — and we mentioned this in that episode — Cicero made light of this when he said that here is Epicurus’ panacea for everything that ails you, in his mocking sort of way. But that’s exactly the terms the Epicureans would have put it in — that philosophy does that for you, that the pursuit of happiness through philosophy is a project of removing fear, of coming to terms with death, of balancing pleasures against pains. And to do that, you have to understand pleasure and you have to understand pain. And once you have this all lined up here, which Epicurus does for us in the Principal Doctrines but also in the Letter to Menoikeus, this becomes pretty close to a good understanding of an Epicurean definition of the life of happiness.

Cicero himself doesn’t do that bad of a job in Book One of On Ends in the Torquatus material when he says: imagine a man living in the numerous and continuous enjoyment of vivid pleasures of body and of mind. He has no fear either present or in prospect, no fear of death or of the gods, and no pain. He has the memory of past pleasures and the anticipation of future pleasures. And Torquatus ends by saying: what life do we imagine to be more excellent or more admirable than this? That’s the life of happiness.

Joshua:

Yeah, it’s really interesting to think about how these arguments spin back and forth. Cicero thinks that he’s got Torquatus cornered by pointing out the pains of life, by saying, oh, Torquatus, you can’t possibly take the position that fear of everything is driving you to do everything you do in your life. You also, Torquatus, can’t take the position that everything you do is just out for pleasure. Again, he’s using words with negative connotations that don’t have to have negative connotations. The pursuit of pleasure is not necessarily a negative connotation, nor does the escape from pain necessarily have to mean that you’re just a scaredy cat running from everything.

You can look at the Tetrapharmakos as a tonic for sick people, or you can look at it probably more in the way that you just quoted Torquatus saying. You can talk about what is the best life, and it’s the same thing just with a different perspective on it. The life of the person who has holy opinions about the gods and who has no fears of death for all the right reasons is a very positive, strong vision of a person who is healthy. And that’s of course what you’re trying to get to by taking the tonic. And you can’t let Cicero back you into the corner that, oh, you’re sick and weakened, you’re just a worthless human being and that’s why you’re craving this pleasure and this escape from pain like some poor sick puppy. Torquatus is not a poor sick puppy. Torquatus comes from one of the greatest Roman families of his time, totally in command of his mental and bodily capacities, and living an active and enjoyable and substantive life. And he doesn’t see this as anything to apologize for at all. In fact, he’s standing up for it, as were many of the greatest men of that Roman period.

Let me cap that off by quoting from Book One of On Ends, Section 21, where Torquatus says: “Wherefore, if the doctrines I have stated are more dazzling and luminous than the sun itself, if they are drafts drawn from nature’s spring, if our whole argument establishes its credit entirely by an appeal to our senses — that is to say, to witnesses who are untainted and unblemished — if speechless babes and even mute animals almost cry out that with nature for our governor and guide there is no good fortune but pleasure, no adverse fortune but pain, and their verdict upon these matters is neither perverted nor tainted, are we not bound to entertain the greatest gratitude for the man who, lending his ear to this voice of nature, as I may call it, grasped it in so strong and serious a spirit that he guided all thoroughly sober-minded men into the track of a peaceful, quiet, restful, happy life? And though you think him ill-educated, Cicero, the reason is that he held no education of any worth but such as promoted the ordered life of happiness.”

I quote this in contrast to the portrayal of Torquatus as a sickly coward running away. Epicurean philosophy, as he says here, is a draft drawn from nature’s spring. It’s not something to sip on in the poorhouse. It’s something to suck right out of the marrow of life and to be made strong by.

Cassius:

So that’s kind of where we end up on the Letter to Menoikeus and the Principal Doctrines and some of Book One. But Cicero is not done. Cicero has further objections yet. Do you want to get into some of those now?

We’ll get into at least a few of them today before we quit, but to try to keep sort of a theme for today, the theme that seems to be growing through a lot of this to me is that people are using these words in different ways and we have to get comfortable with very basic disagreements about what words mean. Happiness seems so clear and yet it’s being defined by these opposing philosophers in dramatically different ways — so dramatically different that by the time you finish the definitions they’re just totally different, and you cannot allow the common word to overcome the differences in meaning.

One of the problems we run into in debating philosophy and talking back and forth with opposing schools is that people just get tired and jaded. It can be discouraging, I think, to think about how there are people who will come reading Epicurus who think that in fact Epicurus is telling them that there is a way philosophically to live a life of continuous sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And it becomes disappointing to them when they realize that that’s not what he’s saying. He doesn’t have a magic wand. He is not able to promise you continuous sensory stimulation from the day you were born to the day at a hundred years old you die. He can’t promise you those things. And it can become discouraging to think, well, in the end this guy is just playing games with words, I didn’t need to bother to read any of this and it’s been a waste of my time. And they’ll put Epicurus aside like they put all these other philosophers.

The reality is, how many of us in life spend much time talking about these philosophers in the first place? Most normal, regular people don’t think about these guys anymore because they just see it as a waste of time, as something that never leads to anything. And so I think it’s important in this section of what we’re talking about to continue to focus on the fact that Epicurus is not just playing a word game. He’s telling you things about unreasonable expectations, about the harm of pursuing ideals outside of reality, about looking to supernatural beings that don’t exist for guidance. He’s saying things that are very, very practical that have to be considered. And one of them is to adjust your expectations as to what happiness really means — just like we were talking about last week in terms of what friendship really means. Does friendship require a death pact that you’re going to die for every one of your friends in any circumstance?

And so it’s important to keep a realistic view of what is possible. How many times am I going to say the perfect should not be the enemy of the good? But Epicurus is specifically telling us that there’s a type of happiness that’s complete that the gods have, but then there’s also a type of happiness that’s subject to increase and decrease. And when you go in that direction to start thinking about what he’s talking about there, it’s pretty clear he’s talking about the ordinary pleasures and pains of life that all of us have, and the fact that in the end it makes the most sense to experience as many pleasures and avoid as many pains as you possibly can — as long as you recognize that sensory stimulation is not the only kind of pleasure and not the only kind of pain.

Most people, when you think about it, come to easy agreement that there are all sorts of pleasures in life that don’t require you to be stimulated from the outside. But unless you think about that, you’re not going to appreciate it in the same way. It’s easy to get confused. It’s easy to lose sight of what’s possible to you, and the best way to lose sight of what’s possible to you is to start dwelling on these ideals and imaginary objectives that really are not possible to you.

Joshua:

Cassius, you’ve said a lot of really good stuff there, and there’s really only one direction I can take this — because one of the longest-running debates surrounding the poem of Lucretius is this question of why did he end the poem on the most horrifying scene which he has laid out for us in the entire work? This account of the plague in Athens. The question that people ask is: this is supposed to be a poem about pleasure, this is supposed to be a poem about philosophy that’s supposed to make us happy, about removing pain. So why are we ending here on the darkest, most dire note in the entire poem? This horrifying account of a disease that there is no stopping, that just happens to the city of Athens, that just sweeps through every class and every condition. You can’t hold up a bag of money to this disease to make it go away. It just levels the population, and people are literally dying in the streets.

And the question that people have asked themselves is, first of all, was it intentional? Is this how he meant to finish the poem? And some people think — I think George Santayana was a Harvard professor who thought that if Lucretius had survived, he would have finished the poem differently. But I incline myself to the view of Stephen Greenblatt, who said that what Lucretius does here at the end of the poem is he sets up a test for us. He sets up a test to see how well you’ve got this. You’ve read this book, the seven thousand lines. You’ve been exposed to the central arguments in Epicureanism about how to pursue happiness and why that’s possible and what you need to do in order to attain it. And at the very end of the poem, he throws up death and pain and destruction. And the philosophy, if it works, is supposed to carry you through the bad time — not just the good time. So I find that argument very compelling. But the question of why Lucretius ended the poem that way and how we’re meant to read that section of the poem is something you have to come to grips with before you can say that you really understand the poet and what he’s trying to accomplish there.

Cassius:

Right. Before you can say you really understand Epicurus and what Epicurus is trying to accomplish. And what you said about the ending is, I think, consistent with what Emily Austin says. She points out that in the original story of what happened, the people of Athens are recorded to have sort of put aside some of their pre-existing concerns about formalities of life and just did what they could to enjoy what was available to them at the time. And maybe if Lucretius had gotten a little further, there would have been another section describing that part of what happened after the plague of Athens as well. But regardless of whether he intended to include it or whether we just leave it where it is, that is the same place that we come to — just what you said — that death and pain are parts of life. There is no escaping either one of them, and we have to have the right attitude towards them and decide whether we’re going to let that ruin our lives, the fact that we can’t escape totally from death and pain, or whether we can come up with an understanding of life that incorporates death and incorporates pain that still allows us to enjoy life and live it in a way that we consider it to be happy.

And again, that word happy is so open to ambiguity and different constructions. But there are several texts from Epicurus or Metrodorus — the fact that what are you going to think about at the end of your life? Are you going to sing a glorious triumph song that you have lived well? Are you going to just be filled with regret that you didn’t do things differently? Ultimately, there is no supernatural God who’s going to pat you on the shoulder or punish you for what you did. Ultimately, there are no Platonic ideals that you can measure your life against. In the end, it’s only going to be your assessment of the way you spent your time that’s going to matter to you, and you have to have an understanding of how you’re spending your time so that you can conclude — now or at the end of your life — that you’ve lived it well. And living it well has to have some kind of a meaning other than looking at Aristotle and Aristotle telling you, well, you should live like the good men of Athens have done, or Plato saying, well, you should live like the ideal forms tell you to do, or looking at somebody who says that there’s some supernatural God who’s telling you how to live your life. You’ve got to make the decision yourself as to which is the best way to live, that you don’t have regrets and that you’re happy, you’re pleased that you spent your life the way you did.

And when you add all this up in Epicurean philosophy of comparing the pleasures against the pains and doing everything you can reasonably to have friends and pursue all the different ways that Epicurus talks about to live pleasurably, then it just makes sense that this is the best way to spend your life given the evidence that’s in front of you.

So we’re beginning to come to an end for this episode today, but I think it was a good plan for us today to step back from this. We’ll come back next week and get back into Cicero’s detailed arguments. He goes into this issue about why should Epicurus call a god happy and eternal? If you take away his eternality, Jupiter won’t be a whit happier than Epicurus, since both of them are enjoying the supreme good which is pleasure. And Cicero sarcastically says: oh, but our philosopher is subject to pain as well. Yes, but he sets it at naught, for he says that if he were being roasted he would call out “how sweet this is.” Now, that’s a line that isn’t worthy, I think, of the nobility that Cicero would like us to think that he had risen to in life. Because Epicurus — as DeWitt talks about — is not saying that you should say “how sweet it is” to be roasted in Phalaris’s bull or to be turned around on the rack. Those things are not sweet. Pain cannot be mutated by philosophy into the sensory stimulation of pleasure. But there are offsetting experiences in life that can be offset against physical pains to give you an understanding of how you should live your life that makes it worthwhile, even though these obstacles do exist.

Okay, and so as we get near the end of the episode today, we can begin to end where we quoted Cicero at the beginning, where Cicero said the entire end and aim of philosophy is the attainment of happiness, and the desire for happiness is the sole motive that has led men to engage in this study, but different thinkers make happiness consist in different things. And what we’re trying to bring to you in this discussion today is insight into what Epicurus is telling us is the nature of happiness.

Maybe I can just end by reading this from Lucretius. This is Book Three, and he deals with this question of pain and death and sorrow and questions related to mortality. This is Nature speaking to humanity, and Nature says:

“Why is your distress so great, you mortal, that you indulge in sorrowful laments to such excess? Why do you moan and weep at death? For if the life you had before, which is now over, was pleasing to you, and all its good things have not leaked away, as if stored in containers full of holes, and disappeared without delighting you, why do you not take your leave like a guest well satisfied with life? You foolish man, and with your mind at ease accept a rest which will not be disturbed. But if all things which you enjoyed have been frittered away and come to nothing, and life offends you, why seek to add on more, which once again may all be squandered foolishly and leave without providing pleasure? Instead of that, why do you not end your life and troubles? For if I can discover or invent nothing more to please you, then everything always is the same. And if your body is not yet shriveled up with years, your limbs not yet worn out and torpid, still all things will stay the same even if you keep going and outlast all living races, or even more if you should never die.”

So we get this metaphor here that comes up again and again in Epicurean works — that life is like the man at the banquet. And the metaphor gives us advice on not just which kinds of food we should eat, not just whether we should take pleasure in being the guest or also in being the host and pouring the wine and so forth. But when it’s time to go, you take your leave like a guest well satisfied. Yes, Joshua, you take your leave like a guest well satisfied with what you have received.

Joshua:

There was a reference in there to the leaking vessel, and that took me back to Book Six of Lucretius. There’s another part of the leaking vessel analogy that I’ve always had a question in my mind about. In Book Six he says: “That it was the vessel itself which wrought the disease and that by its disease all things were corrupted within, whatsoever came into it gathered from without, yea even blessings, in part because he saw that it was leaking and full of holes so that by no means could it ever be filled, in part because he perceived that it tainted as with a foul odor all things within it which it had taken in.” I’ve always focused on the first part of that, that the leaky vessel can’t be filled. But there’s a second part of it, which is that whatever does come into the vessel gets tainted as with a foul odor. And I think I would now draw an analogy to what we’re talking about in terms of the definitions of pleasure. The things that come into that vessel are pleasures and pains — one or the other. But you’re not going to be able to fill that vessel just with sensory stimulations. Cicero is urging people who are neither in pleasure nor in pain from his perspective to take a position of, well, I’m not really experiencing anything, I’m just kind of living my life and I’m not experiencing pleasure. But Epicurus is telling us to consider everything in that vessel that’s not painful to be pleasure, even if it’s just the appreciation of life in its normal healthy state when it’s not in pain.

So further, I’d probably argue now that Cicero’s perspective — the non-Epicurean perspective — taints and imbues with a foul odor many things in life that are not in fact painful but which we don’t appreciate to be pleasure. And that the Epicurean perspective helps you not only seal the leaks in the vessel but to fill the vessel and keep it full — as full as possible — with pleasures rightly understood as being much broader than just sensory stimulations. And so maybe this vessel analogy, in addition to the banquet analogy, has some additional merit. Because when he says in the Letter to Menoikeus that you don’t go for the most food but for the best food, the most pleasant — this idea of understanding that more is not necessarily better, that a longer life is not necessarily a better life — the issue is what is the most pleasant. And that’s not length of time, that’s not quantity of material goods, it’s not quantity of sensory stimulation. It’s pleasure fully understood that is going to be the most complete when you have the least amount of pain with it.

Cassius:

Okay, and so with that, let’s close for the day. As always, we invite you to drop by the EpicureanFriends.com forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about our podcast. We thank you for your time today, and we’ll see you next week.

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Episode 216 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 23 - Why Does Epicurus Say Length Of Time Does Not Contribute To Pleasure? Next
Episode 214 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 21 - Cicero Argues For Idealized Friendship and Happiness Which Epicurus Rejects