Episode 219 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 26 - Cicero Continues His Attack On Epicurus' Position On Pain
Date: 03/23/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3748-episode-219-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-26-cicero-continues-his-attack-on-epi/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Sections 29–30 of De Finibus. Section 29: Cicero uses Sophocles’s Philoctetes — a hero suffering ten years with a festering wound — to mock Epicurus’s formula as “a mere parrot’s lesson,” and argues that real courage (virtue for its own sake) is the only genuine remedy for pain, not Epicurean calculation. Panel responses: research shows vocalizing pain actually extends tolerance; Diogenes of Oenoanda Fragment 32 confirms that virtues as tools for enduring pain are exactly the Epicurean position (virtue is a means to pleasure, not an end in itself); crying out in pain is entirely consistent with the claim that a wise person can nonetheless be happy.
Section 30: Cicero quotes Epicurus’s deathbed letter to Hermarchus — “I write this while passing a happy and my last day” — and attacks: how can mental recollections outweigh bodily pain if Epicurus teaches that all pleasure ultimately comes from the body? Panel: the mind is rooted in the body in Epicurean philosophy, so the objection collapses; Cicero is being willfully obtuse about a position he understands perfectly well.
The discussion broadens to why Epicurean denial of eternal punishment is so philosophically central: Lucretius Book One on how fear of endless punishment prevents happiness; Lucretius Book Three on the absence of Hades; Nietzsche (The Antichrist, Section 58) on Epicurus combating the roots of what became Christianity; Erasmus’s The Epicure on Christ as “the most true Epicurean”; Tertullian’s ghoulish De Spectaculis passage delighting in the eternal damnation of poets, philosophers, and athletes; and John Stuart Mill’s father on religion as a moral evil. Closing: the death of Atticus (March 31) and the Easter season as context for why Epicurus’s denial of the afterlife remains urgent.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 219 of Lucretius Today. 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 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’re continuing in Book Two of Cicero’s On Ends and we focus today on Section 29. Last week we were discussing Cicero’s criticism that Epicurus did not properly distinguish between greater and lesser pleasures — in terms of longer versus shorter ones, or more tasty versus less tasty in the sense of food — and he tried to trap Epicurus into being construed as saying that all pleasures are exactly the same. We ended up concluding that there’s a context to what Epicurus is saying in which you can understand that they are the same in some respects but not the same in other respects, and ultimately came back to the continuing observation that Cicero is trying to take things out of context and place them in negative lights that are not at all the way Epicurus was explaining them in his original text. We talked a little last week about the issue of death, but in Sections 29 and 30 here we really get back into some of the key aspects of Cicero’s criticisms of Epicurus’s attitudes towards death. The linkage was that Cicero was complaining that Epicurus’s views on pain were woefully inadequate. So let me quickly go through Section 29. Cicero says this:
Again, when you say that great pain is short while prolonged pain is light, I do not understand what it is you mean, for I am acquainted with instances where pains were not only great but also prolonged for a considerable time. And yet for enduring them there is another and truer method, of which you who do not love morality for its own sake cannot avail yourselves. There are certain maxims — I might almost say enactments — concerning courage, which prohibit a man from being womanish in the midst of pain, so he must think it disgraceful, I do not say to feel pain, for that certainly is occasionally inevitable, but to make that old rock of Lemnos ghostly with the roarings of the Philoctetes, which by echoing back the shrieks, cries, groans, sighs, dumb though it be, returns the sounds of lamentation. Let Epicurus chant his prophecy to such a one if he can — one whose veins within him, tainted with poison from the serpent’s tooth, bubble with foul torments. Says Epicurus, hush, Philoctetes, your pain is short. But for nearly ten years already he’s been lying sick in his cave. If it is long, ‘tis light, for it has its pauses and sometimes slackens. First, it’s not often so. Next, what is this slackening worth when not only is the recollection of past pain fresh in the mind, but the dread of the future and imminent pain causes a torment? Let the man die, says he. Perhaps it’s best so. But what becomes of your saying that there is always a balance of pleasure? For if that’s true, see that you be not committing a crime in advising death. Rather use language such as this: that it is disgraceful, that it is unmanly to be weakened by pain, to be broken by it and conquered. For your maxims, if ‘tis hard, ‘tis short, if ‘tis long, ‘tis light, are a mere parrot’s lesson. Pain is usually assuaged by the soothing application of virtue — I mean loftiness of spirit, endurance, and courage.
Cassius: Rather than go on to Section 30, I think there are several issues that have been brought up there that we will want to talk about at length. One of them is the first paragraph where Cicero is complaining that Epicurus has said that the wise man will cry out when he is under torment. Diogenes Laertius records that Epicurus had said that the wise man will be happy while he’s on the rack — but then a sentence or so later Diogenes also says that Epicurus stated that the wise man, though wise, is still going to cry out in pain when he is under torture. So let’s start first with this allegation and determine whether we agree with Cicero or disagree with Cicero that the wise man who is really happy should not cry out in pain. What do we think about crying out in pain when we’re under torture? Is that embarrassing for the wise man, since the wise man is supposed to be confident that he’s happy and that he has the ability to experience more joy than vexation? The way of asking the question: is it a contradiction in Epicurean philosophy to state that a wise person is going to cry out ever in pain? Is an Epicurean supposed to be immune to pain? Does that contradict Epicurus’s confidence that a wise man can always be happy?
Joshua: I don’t know if this is helpful, but there has been research in this area. The subjects were able to tolerate pain longer when they were allowed to vocalize their suffering — that’s the upshot — that when you do this in the laboratory setting with people who are made to experience pain in one way or another, those who have to suffer the pain silently aren’t able to suffer it as long. But if you’re allowed to shout and be angry about it, you can actually tolerate it longer.
Cassius: When you say “be angry about it,” that recalls that Diogenes Laertius also says that Epicurus said the wise man is going to feel his emotions more deeply than other people will. So that would mean that Epicurus is actually saying that you’re feeling this pain more deeply. I’ve never heard that vocalizing the pain could allow you to endure it longer, but that would imply it has some physical basis for alleviating pain. And if that’s the case, just like we today take pain medications, there’d be no reason under Epicurean theory not to do anything you could to minimize the experience of pain.
Joshua: Is it contradictory to say, as Epicurus says, that the wise man will be happy even under torture and that the wise man will cry out in anguish under torture? Certainly there’s no contradiction there, I don’t think. I don’t know what it’s like to be happy while you’re being tortured. I’m not going to pretend I have the ability to be happy when I’m under torture because I’ve never been tortured, so I don’t know. But certainly there’s no contradiction in saying that in the balance of pleasure over pain that the philosopher is able to summon in that moment, he’s able to be happy because of that. But also the pain is still very much there and still very real. And so crying out in that moment doesn’t at all seem to contradict what he said.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, that would lead us back into discussing what happiness really means. You could certainly see the possibility of taking the word “happiness” as a concept and then drilling down into exactly what that concept means in terms of its definition. That would be one approach versus just the experience of saying that you feel happy. Well, is feeling happy really saying that you’re feeling a series of pleasurable feelings at this particular moment? And so therefore there’s a different viewpoint of happiness than to say that you feel happy while you’re being tortured — that’s very possibly not the perspective that Epicurus is looking at. To experience happiness in your life is a concept you could apply to the person who is temporarily in extreme pain. So I agree with you that there’s no contradiction here. It’s again Cicero attempting to idealize a concept of happiness that must not allow certain things in his definition. And of course we haven’t really addressed Cicero’s point that the Epicurean cannot deal with pain through the method available to the Stoics and others — by saying “have courage” and thinking that courage is an end in itself. We need to be clear there as well that that whole approach is something that Epicurus would reject. But that’s the direction Cicero drives his accusation. I was struck by Cicero calling “if ‘tis hard, ‘tis short, if ‘tis long, ‘tis light” a “mere parrot’s lesson” — and that instead pain is assuaged by the soothing application of virtue, loftiness of spirit, endurance, and courage.
Joshua: Yeah, which is all to the good for Epicurus. I mean, if pain is the bad, as you said a little bit ago, Cassius, anything that you can do to alleviate pain is in service of the good — which is pleasure. So virtue, loftiness of spirit, endurance, and courage would be in support of the good, which is pleasure.
Diogenes of Oinoanda says essentially the same thing in Fragment 32 of his inscription when he says this: 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.
Cassius: So if virtue, as Cicero describes and defines it, helps you to endure pain, that’s not at all an impediment to pleasure being the good according to Epicurean philosophy. Again, you have to understand the meaning of pleasure in this context and that virtue is subservient to that pursuit and not something that you pursue in and of itself.
Joshua: Yeah. And that’s the key. It’s the same thing in regard to virtue as a tool for pleasure — to say that virtue is also a tool for avoiding pain. There’s no contradiction at all. This is the continuing difference in perspective that Cicero wants to allege: that virtue is an end in itself, whereas the Epicureans are going to reject that and say that virtue is a tool for experiencing pleasure. And as we equate pleasure with the absence of pain, it means the same thing to say that virtue is a tool for avoiding pain. There’s no difference when you equate those two concepts.
Cassius: Let’s go ahead and deal with Section 30, because we’ve got a couple of charges being dealt with in regard to death, and then as we go through the episode today, I want to come back and take a global look at the death issue one more time. Cicero says this in Section 30:
Not to digress too far, hear what Epicurus says on his deathbed, that you may perceive how his actions are at variance with his maxims. Epicurus writes to Hermarchus: I write this letter, he says, while passing a happy day and the last day of my life. Pains of the bladder and intestines are upon me, so severe that their intensity cannot be increased. A wretched creature, if pain is the greatest of evils — we cannot call him anything else. But let us listen to the man himself. Still, all these are outweighed, he says, by elation of mind arising from the recollection of my theories and discoveries. But do you, as befits the feelings you have entertained from your youth for me and for philosophy, remember to protect the children of Metrodorus.
After this I do not admire the death of Epaminondas or Leonidas more than this man’s death. Though one of these, after winning a victory over the Lacedaemonians at Mantinea and finding that his life was ebbing away owing to a serious wound, asked as soon as he saw how things stood whether his shield was safe. When his weeping comrades had answered that it was, he asked whether the enemy had been routed. When he heard that this too was as he desired, he ordered that the spear which had pierced him should be extracted, so he died from the copious flow of blood in a moment of exaltation and victory. Leonidas again, the king of the Lacedaemonians, along with the 300 men whom he had led from Sparta, when the choice lay between a base retreat and a splendid death, confronted the enemy at Thermopylae. The deaths of generals are celebrated while philosophers mostly die in their beds. Still, it makes a difference how they die. This philosopher thought himself happy at the moment of death. A great credit to him. My intense pains, he says, are outweighed by elation of mind. The voice I hear is indeed that of a true philosopher, Epicurus. But you have forgotten what you ought to say. For first, if there is truth in those matters which you say causes you joy to recall — I mean if your writings and discoveries are true — you cannot feel joy since you now possess no blessing which you can set down to the account of the body, whereas you’ve always told us that no one can feel joy unless on account of the body, nor pain either.
I feel joy in my past joys, he tells me. What past joys? If you’re saying those relating to the body, I read that you set against your pains your philosophical theories and not any recollection of pleasures enjoyed by the body. If you say those relating to the mind, then your maxim is untrue that there is no joy of the mind which has not a relation to the body. Why after that do you give a commission about the children of Metrodorus? What is there about your admirable goodness and extreme loyalty — for so I judge it to be — that you connect with the body?
Cassius: Okay, so here in Section 30 Cicero has gone back to this attack that, oh Epicurus, you’ve said that all joy and pain in life ultimately comes from the body. Well, how do you think you can offset your happiness of mind against these pains of the body? Because these pains are coming from the body and your body is not generating any pleasure at that time.
Joshua: Yeah, this is just about infuriating to read. After all this time, Cicero still is fundamentally confused about the nature of pleasure in Epicurean philosophy. It’s true that pleasure does attend the body and that the body is endowed with senses that are remarkably adept at finding and gathering pleasure to itself. But he continues to minimize the mind as being a fundamental source and avenue of pleasure into our lives, and I find that really hard to respond to here after 70 pages of this.
Cassius: Cicero says: I feel joy in my past joys, Epicurus tells me. What past joys? I don’t quite understand what Cicero is saying there. Is he saying that the pleasures of the body are so transient and so momentary that not only is it impossible to grasp them and hold on to them, it’s definitely impossible to remember them after the fact and feel them as pleasure?
Joshua: Yeah, I think that’s part of it, but I also think he’s just being very basic and saying, Epicurus, you have said that all pleasures and pains come from the body, and he’s trying to say that the mind is not the body and therefore it’s not proper to offset any pleasures and pains from the mind against those of the body because you’ve said everything comes from the body.
Cassius: Well, even before he gets to the mind, though, he says: I read that you set against your pains your philosophical theories and not any recollection of pleasures enjoyed by the body. That surprises me. Couldn’t you say, well, I do remember what it feels like to experience pleasure, even just in the body?
Joshua: Is he saying there that because you’re using the mind to remember it, you’ve suddenly invalidated the whole premise?
Cassius: I think so. I think he’s really drilling back down into the Epicurean position that the mind, the soul, the spirit — whatever you want to call it — is a part of the body. I think we generally agree in our discussions of Epicurean theory that there is no separate soul existence, there’s no dualism or anything else going on other than the body. And even though it’s useful for us to talk about mental pains versus bodily pains, the mind is still a part of the body. Tell me if you have a different perspective, but I think that’s where a number of these different phrases about all good and evil, pain, pleasure, ultimately springing from the body — that’s the thing.
Joshua: I don’t disagree. In fact, I’d be first in line to say that yes, everything that we experience as mental is and must be rooted in the body, because when the body dies, that part of us also dies.
Cassius: Right. So shouldn’t it be even more the case then — if the mind is not some separate thing but is rooted in the body — shouldn’t it be even more the case that the mind should be capable of remembering bodily pleasures?
Joshua: Right. You’re right that there’s no contradiction there. So then Cicero goes on to say, if you say those pleasures relating to the mind, then your maxim is untrue that there is no joy of the mind which has not a relation to the body. I don’t know what he’s on about here, because what Epicurus is saying is: I feel joy in the memory of my past joys. Why is it the case, Cicero, that the mind is incapable of recalling bodily pleasures? Why is it the case that the mind is incapable of recalling mental pleasures — and that that’s a problem because they’re pleasure unconnected with the body — when we know that the mind is rooted in the body? This is another moment where I’m struggling with Cicero, with what he’s even saying here.
Cassius: That’s right. The connection with the body, I think, makes that clear — which Cicero even acknowledges, using those very words: the mind is connected with the body. Now the last sentence here in Section 30 actually does make more sense to me than his previous criticism. He says: Why after that do you give a commission about the children of Metrodorus? What is there about your admirable goodness and extreme loyalty — for so I judge it to be — that you connect with the body? In other words, he’s saying, look, Epicurus, you’re dying. You’re setting aside money. You’re delegating people who are still alive to protect and care for and raise and educate the children of Metrodorus. Why are you doing that? You can’t possibly get any pleasure from it because you’re going to be dead before it even happens.
At least I understand what Cicero is saying here. And it’s rooted partially in the idea — and he’s already made this point — that Epicurean friendship is mercenary, solely based on utility. Now I don’t agree with that, and that’s not in fact what the surviving texts say. But that is Cicero’s point. And if you think that’s true, then you would ask yourself, why are you delegating this stuff for someone who can’t possibly help you? Because they’re children now, and by the time they’re grown up, you’ll be long dead.
There is the part which says that friendship is an immortal good. But he also says friendship dances around the world announcing to all of us that we must wake up to a life of blessedness. The problem, as we consistently have with Cicero, is he just doesn’t want to understand this stuff. It would be too hard to argue against it if he understood it properly, or if he let on that he understood it properly.
Joshua: Let me read from Plutarch. He talks exactly about this in the essay you mentioned recently about Epicurus making a pleasant life impossible — That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible from the Moralia. Plutarch says:
As to hens, we see every day how they watch over their chicks, dropping their wings over some and letting others climb on their backs or anywhere about them, and clucking for joy all the time. And though they fly from dogs and snakes when afraid only for themselves, if they are afraid for their chicks they stand their ground and fight valiantly. Are we to suppose then that nature has only implanted these instincts in fowls and dogs and bears — only about their offspring — to put us mortals out of countenance and to give us a bad name? Considering these examples for us to follow, while disgrace justly attaches to our inhumanity. For mankind only is accused of having no disinterested affection and of not knowing how to love except in regard to advantage. For that line is greatly admired in the theaters: man loves man only for reward. And this is the view of Epicurus, who thinks that the father so loves his son, the mother her child, children their parents, only for advantage. Whereas if the brutes could understand conversation, and if anyone were to introduce horses and cows and dogs and birds into a common theater, and were to change the sentiment into: neither do dogs love their pups nor horses their foals nor birds their young out of interest, but gratuitously and by nature — it would be recognized by the affections of all of them to be a true sentiment. Why it would be disgraceful, great God, that birth and travail and procreation should be gratis and mere nature among the beasts, while among mankind they should be merely mercenary transactions.
Cassius: Yeah. I think it was the national pastime in ancient Greece and Rome to misconstrue everything Epicurus was saying. But since we’re on this topic, it is true that Epicurus said that friendship begins with advantage. And Lucretius in Book Five gives us the origin of all of these ideas when he says around line 1425:
Then once they had acquired huts, hides, and fire, and woman linked up with man and moved into one home, and learned marriage customs, and they saw themselves creating offspring — at that point, the human race first began to soften. Fire meant their freezing limbs could no longer tolerate the cold so well. Under heaven’s roofs, sexual habits made their strength diminish, and children soon shattered the stern character of parents with their endearing charms. And then neighbors began to join in mutual agreement, seeking not to harm each other or be harmed. And they entrusted children and the race of women to the care of all, pointing out with vocal sounds, gestures, and broken words that it was right for all to have pity on the weak. And though they could not create universal harmony, nonetheless, large numbers would faithfully keep their word — or else the human race would, even then, have been entirely killed off and breeding could not have kept up with their generations to this very day.
So it is true that friendship starts in advantage, and there’s nothing to shy away from in that. In fact, I think it would be even sillier to say what some people like to imply — which is that friendship is something like a soulmate idea, that you are two souls who have been separated and are finally linked together in this world. That’s not how it works. Friendship starts from advantage. But from the early stages of mutual advantage, you do derive genuine feeling and affection and even love for your friends. Otherwise, Epicurus would not have acclaimed friendship as frequently and as loudly as he did.
Joshua: Right. It seems to me you’re correct, Cassius, that the subject of friendship helps us respond to these kinds of accusations. And in fairness to Cicero, there are a couple of sources that he is attempting to use to bend the meaning in his direction. In Book One, Torquatus has said to him previously, in Section 17: We admit that mental pleasures and pains spring from bodily pleasures and pains. So I allow what you alleged just now that any of our school who differ from this opinion are out of court — and indeed there are many such, but they are unskilled thinkers. I grant that although mental pleasure brings us joy and mental pain brings us trouble, yet each feeling takes its rise in the body and is dependent on the body. Though it does not follow that the pleasures and pains of the mind do not greatly surpass those of the body. With the body, indeed, we can perceive only what is present to us at the moment, but with the mind the past and future also. For granting that we feel just as great pain when our body is in pain, still mental pain can be greatly intensified if we imagine some everlasting and unbounded evil to be menacing us. And we may apply the same argument to pleasure so that it is increased by the absence of such fears.
That’s an example of where Torquatus himself has said to Cicero very clearly that all pleasures and pains ultimately do come from the body.
Now, I don’t have the source other than DeWitt talking about it on page 237 of his book, but there’s another reference to the same principle where DeWitt says: Metrodorus, a more impetuous individual than the master, afforded exceptional opportunities to the adversary. In some publication he had written: the pleasure of the stomach is the beginning and the root of all good, and the things of wisdom and the refinements of life have their standard of reference in this. DeWitt says these words exhibit a shocking rawness and were employed as evidence for condemning Epicureans as out-and-out sensualists. But he also goes on to explain that pleasure is pleasure wherever found and the nature of it does not depend upon the organ affected. DeWitt says: The mind is an organ of the body, no less than the eyes or the ears. Nor does the pleasure of the mathematician in the last analysis differ from that of babes and sucklings. Strict logic is capable of arriving at such startling conclusions.
So that’s DeWitt’s reference there. But again, this is Cicero taking things out of the logical context in which the Epicureans had presented them.
Cassius: Well, you’re trying to say that everything mental in life really is just the same as a piece of skin on your hand, that there’s no difference. And everybody knows that the mind is separate from the body. And by saying that everything comes from the body, why in the world are you concerned about what happens to Metrodorus’s children, or your past recollections of people thinking about your philosophy, or anything else? Because ultimately Cicero alleges those are not attached to the body. And that’s just simply not the way the Epicureans are looking at it, because they contend that everything is ultimately attached to the body. But that word “ultimately” is critically important here.
Cassius: So we’ve now gone through two separate sections in Book Two today, and rather than get captured by Cicero’s argument over and over again, let’s also talk today — especially since it’s the time of year we’re recording this. This is being recorded on March the 17th, only two days after the Ides of March, involving the famous assassination of Julius Caesar. And we’re coming up this year, 2024, on the Easter season and the issues that arise from Christianity as to eternal life and life after death, which are so wrapped up in the Easter season. In that context, it makes sense to be sure we continue to have a big-picture perspective on why Epicurus is so concerned about there being a limit to pain, that pain cannot be continuous.
A couple of citations that come up in any discussion of this kind of thing would be from Lucretius, where in Book One, around line 102, he says:
You yourself, sometime vanquished by the fearsome threats of the seers’ sayings, will seek to desert us. Nay indeed how many a dream may they even now conjure up before you, which might avail to overthrow your schemes of life and confound all your fortunes in fear. And justly so. For if men could see that there is a fixed limit to their sorrows, then with some reason they might have the strength to stand against the scruples of religion and the threats of seers. As it is, there is no means, no power to withstand, since everlasting is the punishment they must fear.
Of course, we’re talking about Principal Doctrine 2 — that death is nothing to us — and ultimately why we have an assurance that there is no such thing and no possibility of everlasting punishment. Lucretius mentions this also in Book Three. At the very opening, when he talks about what Epicurus had done, he says:
For as soon as thy philosophy, springing from thy godlike soul, begins to proclaim aloud the nature of things, the terrors of the mind fly away. The walls of the world part asunder. I see things moving on through all the void. The majesty of the gods is revealed, and their peaceful abodes, which neither the winds shake nor clouds soak with showers, nor does the snow congeal with biting frost besmirch them with its white fall, but an ever-cloudless day vaults over them and smiles with light bountifully spread abroad. Moreover, nature supplies all they need, nor does anything gnaw at their peace of mind at any time. But on the other hand, the quarters of Hades are nowhere to be seen.
And this importance of escaping the fear of punishment, he comes back to later around line 74 in Book Three, saying:
In like manner, often through the same fear, they waste with envy that he is powerful, he is regarded, who walks clothed with bright renown, while they complain that they themselves are wrapped in darkness and the mire. Some of them come to ruin to win statues and a name, and often through fear of death — so deeply does the hatred of life and the sight of the light possess men — that with a sorrowing heart they compass their own death, forgetting that this very fear was the source of their woes, which assails their honor, which bursts the bounds of friendship and overturns affection from its lofty throne. For often ere now men have betrayed country and beloved parents, seeking to shun the realms of Acheron — men are so concerned that they not be sent to that punishment that they burst the bonds of friendship and overturn the affections of country and parents in their urgency to escape.
There’s another reference outside of Lucretius that I think is useful as well. Friedrich Nietzsche in The Antichrist, Section 58, talks about how this issue was so important to Epicurus. He says:
The sneakiness of hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica and the drinking of blood — above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of chandala revenge. All that sort of thing became master of Rome. The same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had combated. One has but to read Lucretius to know what Epicurus made war upon. Not paganism, but Christianity — which is to say the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment, and immortality. He combated the subterranean cults, the whole of latent Christianity, to deny immortality was already a form of genuine salvation.
So that’s Nietzsche talking about how Epicurus’s denial of immortality is not a bad thing, but is in fact a form of genuine salvation, because it shows that you can be assured that you’re not going to be sent to hell and punished for eternity, that such a thing is impossible.
Let me also quote from Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam — he was a cleric and theologian of the Catholic Church — in his book The Epicure. He has this to say:
If they are Epicureans that live pleasantly, none are more truly Epicureans than those that live holily and religiously. And if we are taken with names, nobody more deserves the name of an Epicurean than that adorable prince of Christian philosophers, for Epicurus in Greek signifies as much as a helper. Therefore, when the law of nature was almost erased by vice, and the law of Moses rather incited than cured lusts, when the tyrant Satan ruled without control in the world, he alone afforded present help to perishing mankind — so that they are mightily mistaken that foolishly represent Christ as by nature a rigid, melancholic person, and that he invited us to an unpleasant life, when he alone showed the way to the most comfortable life in the world.
Joshua: I agree with you, Cassius, that the main argument — at least from my personal interest and point of view — is between Epicureanism and the Abrahamic monotheisms of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Because one of the interesting characteristics of Greek religion is that while they did have an afterlife, and it wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, it also wasn’t a horrifyingly painful one unless you were so abominable on earth as to have earned the fate of a Sisyphus, or a Tantalus, or an Ixion, or a Prometheus — who was chained to a mountainside and had his liver eaten out by an eagle every day and then it grew back every night. It took this new monotheistic religion to invent a hell that was not a place of forgetting as it was for the Greeks, not a place of forgetful shades wandering around for all eternity, but a place of actual torment, eternal torture, never ending. There’s no purpose to it. There’s no hope of rehabilitation from it. It only exists really for vengeance. That’s the purpose of hell.
I quoted recently on the forum the early church father Tertullian in his book De Spectaculis, Chapter 30. And he says:
How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye. What there excites my admiration, what my derision, which sights give me joy, which rouses me to exultation. As I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those too who bore witness of their exultation. Governors of provinces too, who persecuted the Christian name, and fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ. What wise men besides, the very philosophers, in fact, who taught their followers that God had no concern in ought that is sublunary, and were wont to ensure them that either they had no souls or that they would never return to the bodies which at death they had left, now covered with shame before the poor deluded ones as one fire consumes them all. Poets also trembling, not before the judgment seat of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the unexpected Christ. I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder voiced in their own calamity, of viewing the comic actors, much more dissolute in the dissolving flames, of looking upon the charioteer all glowing in his chariot of fire, of beholding the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows. Unless, even then, I shall not care to attend to such ministers of sin, in my eager wish rather to fix a gaze insatiable on those whose fury vented itself against the Lord.
I don’t know how anyone can read that or hear it read and not find its sentiment to be utterly despicable. But that’s essentially the proposition we’re faced with — that everything we think is good and noble about culture, all the poetry, the art, the drama, the athleticism, it is all attended by sin and deserves the everlasting torment of hell.
Cassius: Joshua, I think what I’m hearing you say is that the Abrahamic religions have leapfrogged over the existing, at the time of Epicurus, viewpoints about the severity of Acheron by making it much worse. But just a couple of quick references. In the time of Cicero and Torquatus, as they’re talking, Julius Caesar himself had something to say about this issue of punishment in the afterlife. Sallust records in The War with Catiline that after a number of conspirators were captured within the city, there was a debate as to whether they were going to be sentenced to death or to prison, and that Caesar argued that prison was actually a more harsh punishment than death. He says:
So far as the penalty is concerned, I can say with truth that amid grief and wretchedness, death is a relief from woes, not a punishment; that it puts an end to all mortal ills and leaves no room either for sorrow or for joy.
Which is to me a clear recollection of the Epicurean viewpoint that there is no pain or pleasure after death. And for that position, Marcus Cato made the comment that in fine and finished phrases did Gaius Caesar a moment ago before this body speak of life and death. Regarding his faults, Cato presumes the tales told of the lower world — where they say that the wicked take a different path from the good and dwell in regions that are gloomy, desolate, and full of fears. And in regard to the same statement by Caesar, Cicero made the comment that Gaius Caesar understands that death was not created by the immortal gods for the sake of punishment.
And so again, Cicero is nitpicking around the edges of Epicurus’s prescriptions about pain being short if strong and manageable if longer. That is true to a significant extent, but Cicero thinks he can point out exceptions. And one of the best responses to Cicero’s exceptions is to realize that these statements from Epicurus come in the context of the wider and more important issue of whether we as human beings face the possibility of unrelenting, unescapable, interminable, everlasting pain. Epicurean philosophy relieves us from that fear by pointing out that there’s nothing terrible in life for him who understands that there’s nothing terrible in death, that we can always exit the theater when the play ceases to please us if things get to that extreme condition. And that’s why from my point of view this issue features so prominently in Epicurean philosophy — right up there as Principal Doctrines 3 and 4 — as among the most critically important aspects that Epicurus is stressing. Just like the priest has said: unless we can escape this threat of eternal punishment, unless we escape from that, we cannot live happily. We cannot live as fully happily as we could if we understand that those threats are false. That’s why this is so important. Cicero may attempt to trivialize it, but it’s an extremely important aspect of Epicurean philosophy.
Joshua: It is important. And I should quote this. This comes from the autobiography of John Stuart Mill. He says:
My father’s rejection of all that is called religious belief was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence. The grounds of it were moral still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness. His intellect spurned the subtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this open contradiction. His aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to the term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius. He regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality, first by setting up factitious excellencies — belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies not connected with the good of humankind — and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtue. But above all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals, making it consist in doing the will of a being on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful.
Cassius: Joshua, that is a great quote and it just reminds me of the attitude that I think Epicurus would express when we discuss his views on religion. It is blasphemous to take the position that a god would do the things that you’ve just cited that John Stuart Mill was talking about. It is offensive, as Lucretius talks about. You can’t approach the altars of the gods with a clear heart and clear mind if you’re concerned that they’re doing things that are unworthy of divinity. And I think Epicurus would agree with what you just read from John Stuart Mill — that one of the real bases of rejection of the view that there is such a thing as eternal hell is that it is so offensive to the divine nature to think that they would be involved in such a thing. So there are all sorts of ways to come at this from different aspects of Epicurean philosophy.
But let’s go ahead and begin to close today’s episode. Martin, do you have any thoughts today?
Martin: No comment for me.
Cassius: Okay. Thank you, Martin. Callistheni, any comment today?
Callistheni: Well, it really helps you get clear about what Epicurean philosophy is as you go against someone. The ability to refute these attacks really helps solidify and clarify everything that is actually happening within Epicurean philosophy. So thank you.
Cassius: Joshua?
Joshua: So with Easter coming up at the end of the month, we do have an interesting confluence there, because the anniversary of the death of Titus Pomponius Atticus is also on the 31st of March. And his death is representative of the Epicurean view on what happens when you die. The Wikipedia page says: Atticus lived out the remainder of his life in Rome. Just after his 77th birthday he fell ill, and at first his ailment appeared minor, but after three months his health suddenly deteriorated. Deciding to accelerate the inevitable, he abstained from ingesting any nourishment, starving himself to death, and dying on the fifth day of such fasting, which was the 31st of March in the consulship of Gnaeus Domitius and C. Socius, that is, in the year 32 BC. He was buried at the family tomb located at the fifth mile of the Appian Way.
It’s an important reminder that death is not something to be feared or horrified about. It’s a reminder that life is not a test. We’re not trying to make the grade here so that we can get into the better option when we die. That’s the end of all options when we die. And if you’re in great pain, as Atticus was at the end of his life, death is relief. It’s not a continuance and amplification of the pain you experience in this life. It’s the end of all pain you’ll ever experience. And I think that actually makes this life better and richer and more precious because that is the case.
Cassius: Yes, Joshua, to me that’s exactly the point. If you’re only alive for a short period of time and you’re going to have an eternity of nothingness after you die — just like before you were born — then if there’s anything you’re going to conclude from that, it seems to me it’s just how important and precious your life is and how much effort you should put into expending your time appropriately while you are alive.
If anybody wants to talk about contradictions in positions, the one I would question would be: if you’re going to be going to eternal reward after you die, then why in the world do you stay around in this vale of tears here on earth? Why not just go on to heaven and experience all those joys immediately? That leads to far more contradictions and questions than does the Epicurean position about the relationship between life and death.
So with that, let’s bring today’s episode to a close. We’ll come back next week and continue in Book Two. We invite you to drop by the forum in the meantime and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or anything else related to Epicurus. Thanks again for your time today and see you next week.