Episode 221 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 28 - Cicero Alleges Pleasures Of The Mind Cannot Offset Pain In Epicurean Philosophy
Date: 03/31/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3781-episode-221-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-28-cicero-alleges-pleasures-of-the-mi/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Sections 32–33 of De Finibus. Section 32 continued: Cicero presses the question of whether pleasant memories can genuinely offset bodily pain. Can we truly control what we remember? He cites Themistocles, who famously preferred to forget rather than to remember, as evidence that memory is not reliably under our command — and invokes the modern-sounding paradox that merely thinking about a game can make you think of nothing but the game. Panel: the Themistocles example actually backfires — Epicurus’s claim is not that we force pleasant memories but that a life well lived naturally provides them; control of memory is exercised through how one lives, not through mental gymnastics in the moment of pain.
Cicero then introduces Gaius Marius: when Marius was hiding in a swamp after being driven from Rome, could the memory of his seven consulships and military triumphs really make him happy? And Aristotle mocking Sardanapallus — whose epitaph boasted of nothing but eating, drinking, and sexual pleasure — as an example of a man who confused pleasure with vice. The Africanus example follows: is the pleasure of remembering military glory really equivalent to, or offsetting of, bodily pain? Panel response: DeWitt’s Unity of Pleasure dissolves the supposed gap between mental and bodily pleasures; the panelists are not claiming mental recollection eliminates pain but that a life rich in genuine pleasures creates resources that make pain endurable without ceasing to be what it is.
Section 33: Cicero directly challenges Torquatus — isn’t there anything at all that gives you gratification purely for its own sake, regardless of pleasure and pain? The challenge is aimed at forcing Torquatus to either admit non-pleasure-based values or to look absurd. Closing: the panel announces Joshua’s solar eclipse trip to Arkansas, and that Don will join the following week to discuss the relationship between happiness and pleasure at a higher level before returning to the text.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 221 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 in Section 32 of Book Two of On Ends. To set the stage, Cicero has been complaining about Epicurus’s view of pain and how he factors it in with pleasure and happiness and so forth. Last week we dealt mostly with Cicero’s objections to Epicurus writing a will and providing for things that would happen after he would die, including the regular celebration of a memorial to him every 20th of the month and his own birthday. And Cicero was complaining that it was totally contradictory of Epicurus to be concerned about events that would occur after he was dead, because of course in Epicurean philosophy death is nothing to us and Epicurus had no ability to experience either pain or pleasure after he died.
That was what led up to the beginning of Section 32. I’ll go through that very quickly. Section 32 starts off this way:
To return to our theme — for we were speaking about pain when we drifted into consideration of this letter — we may now sum up the whole matter. He who is subject to the greatest possible evil is not happy so long as he remains subject to it, whereas the wise man is always happy though he is at times subject to pain. Pain therefore is not the greatest possible evil.
Now that’s where we ended last week and we discussed that at length. We’ll come back to that in just a moment. But here’s the rest of the discussion in Section 32:
Now what kind of statement is this? That past blessings do not fade from the wise man’s memory, but still that he ought not to remember his misfortunes. First, we have power over our recollections. I know that Themistocles, when Simonides — or it may be someone else — offered to teach him the art of remembering, said: I would rather learn the art of forgetting, for I remember even the things I do not wish to remember, while I cannot forget what I wish to forget. He had great gifts but the truth is really this: that it is too domineering for a philosopher to interdict us from remembering things. Take care that your commands be not those of a Manlius — or even stronger, I mean when you lay a command on me which I cannot possibly execute.
What if the recollection of past misfortunes is actually agreeable? Some proverbs will thus be truer than your doctrines. It is a common saying: past toils are agreeable. And not badly did Euripides say — I shall put it in Latin if I can, you all know the line in Greek — sweet is the memory of toils that are past.
But let us return to the subject of past blessings. If you spoke of such blessings as enabled Gaius Marius, though exiled, starving and immersed in a swamp, to lighten his pain by recalling to mind his triumphs, I would listen to you and give you my entire approval. Indeed, the happiness of the wise man can never be perfected or reach its goal if his good thoughts and deeds are to be successively effaced by his own forgetfulness. But in your view, life is rendered happy by the remembrance of pleasures already enjoyed, and moreover, those enjoyed by the body. For if there are any other pleasures, then it is not true that all mental pleasures are dependent on association with the body.
Now if bodily pleasure, even when past, gives satisfaction, I do not see why Aristotle should so utterly ridicule the inscription of Sardanapallus, in which that king of Syria boasts that he has carried away with him all the lustful pleasures. For, says Aristotle, how could he retain after death a thing which, even when he was alive, he could only feel so long as he actually enjoyed it? Bodily pleasures therefore ebb and fly away, one after another, and more often leave behind them reason for regret than for remembrance. Happier then is Africanus when he thus converses with his country: Cease, Rome, thy enemies to fear — with the noble sequel: For my toils have established for thee thy bulwarks. He takes delight in his past toils. You bid him delight in his past pleasures. He turns his thoughts once more to achievements, not one of which he ever connected with the body. You wholly cling to the body.
Joshua: Right. The way that we answered this question in the past was by saying that you can be happy even if you suffer pain by setting — this is what he says in the letter to Idomeneus that we talked about last week — you can be happy even experiencing the greatest evil because you set your multitude of pleasures, of all different kinds, over and above the pain that you’re experiencing.
Cassius: Right. Joshua, let’s go ahead and use that as the jumping-off point to move on here in Section 32, because that’s what the rest of Section 32 is really talking about. Okay, Epicurus is contending that even though he’s in excruciating pain on his last day, he is truly happy. Now, regardless of whether Cicero thinks that is a contradiction of his philosophy or not, that’s what Epicurus said, and Torquatus has previously said in Book One that the wise man is always going to be able to find more reason for joy than for vexation. And so there’s an interesting relationship between finding more reason for joy than vexation with this word “happiness,” and we need to address whether happiness is something separate or it really just is the condition of having more reason for joy than for vexation.
But for the moment the point is that Epicurus is saying that this excruciating physical pain is outweighed for him by these memories, by these interactions with his friends. Cicero wants to write all of that out because those memories are not tied to the body according to Cicero. But this is where Cicero goes off as well into talking about Themistocles and the issue of it being more important to forget than to remember. What Cicero is really getting at is to say that it’s too domineering for a philosopher to interdict us from remembering things, and Epicurus should be careful about laying a command which cannot possibly be executed. Cicero says, what if the recollection of past misfortunes is agreeable, because there are expressions about how once you’ve finished a task, the memory of it is pleasant, even though it was not pleasant while you were going through it. And he brings up the example of Gaius Marius, who was lightening his pain by recalling his triumphs even when he was in the midst of terrible circumstances. So as we discuss the question of happiness, we clearly have these mental recollections — these thoughts are sources of pleasure for us. And Cicero’s attack is going to be that these mental pleasures should not be considered powerful in Epicurean philosophy.
Joshua: Okay, let me take up this issue of memory first, because I think it’s kind of an interesting one. He says, “Now, what kind of statement is this? That past blessings do not fade from the wise man’s memory, but still that he ought not to remember his misfortunes.” And Cicero brings up the interesting point as to whether we have power over our recollections.
Now, this is a slight tangent, but there’s a game that is sometimes played on the internet — though it predated the internet in some ways — called The Game. I’m going to read the first paragraph from Wikipedia: The Game is a mind game in which the objective is to avoid thinking about the game itself. Thinking about the game constitutes a loss, which must be announced each time it occurs. Depending on the variation, it is held that the whole world — or at the very least, all of those who are aware of the game — are playing it at all times. And what this does is point out kind of what Cicero is saying here, which is that it’s not possible to willfully forget something, because the more you try to forget, the more you remember it.
It’s also interesting because he mentions here an encounter between Themistocles and Simonides. Simonides had offered to teach Themistocles the art of memory, and Themistocles responded, “I would rather learn the art of forgetting, for I remember even the things I do not wish to remember, while I cannot forget what I wish to forget.” Now Cicero in another book — De Oratore — discusses at some length what’s called the method of loci, which is a strategy for memory enhancement using visualizations of familiar spatial environments in order to enhance the recall of information. This is also known as the memory journey, memory palace, or mind palace technique, and it is discussed frequently in Roman and Greek rhetorical treatises. If you’re Cicero and you’re a lawyer and you’ve got to stand up in front of a court and deliver a long oration, having the ability to remember things correctly and sequentially becomes rather important.
Now, an epigram in the Greek Anthology refers to Themistocles as the man who saved Athens from slavery. He was naval commander for the Athenian fleet. In other words, he served time in combat, and people who do that typically do have things they would really rather forget. So his point here, when you consider that, is actually somewhat poignant. Themistocles wants to forget the horrible things that he has seen and some of the horrible things he has done. And the problem is you can’t forget. You can’t will yourself to forget something.
So does that present a problem for Epicurus? Because I’ve said already that I think the Epicurean system holds up to Cicero’s criticism in part because you can set your manifold experience of pleasure over and above the experience of all the pain that you’re feeling. And part of that does relate to this issue of memory — because Epicurus’s advice, even on his last day, was that he was experiencing the pleasant memory of his past friendships.
Cassius: Yes, Joshua. As you were talking, I was scanning forward into Section 33, and I think I understand now how we break this down in Cicero’s presentation here. Section 32 that we’re discussing now is focused on Cicero’s practical objections — just as you’re talking about the difficulties of summoning up good memories and the difficulties of putting away bad memories. So in Section 32, we have his practical objections: you’re asking something that can’t be done, Epicurus. We don’t have control over our memories. Sometimes even things that were painful when we experienced them become pleasurable to us in retrospect, and the reverse also happens. So what he’s doing in Section 32 is pointing out the inefficacy of Epicurus’s argument that pleasant memories can offset terrible things in the present. And then in Section 33, he’s going to go back to his old pattern of attacking the mental versus bodily aspects of it.
I don’t know if Cicero’s reference to a Manlius is a reference to ordering the execution of his son or something else, but Cicero’s point is that it’s one thing to say that we can offset pain with pleasant memories of the past, but it’s quite another thing to actually do it when you’re in the middle of suffering painful experiences. Do Epicureans have on rose-colored glasses to think that pleasant thoughts can offset and override physical pain?
Joshua: Well, I guess there are ways in which it would be reasonably expected that you would experience this yourself before telling other people that it works, and I just haven’t experienced horrifying pain on the level that would be required to completely discount this view. But most people aren’t in horrifying pain. Most people experience some pain, and for those people certainly it ought to be possible to set above the pain they’re experiencing the pleasure that they can recall or the pleasure that they’re experiencing at the moment as well.
Cassius: Right, and we can make at least two more points on that. First of all, we’re not just talking about Epicurus on his last day setting against his kidney pain the memory of that excellent scoop of ice cream he had yesterday. He wasn’t offsetting the exquisite pleasure of a glass of wine he had a week before. He’s summoning up extremely deep emotional satisfaction — pleasures from the past that are incredibly important to him. The examples he cited give evidence of that. They’re not some trivial, small, passing pleasure of food or drink or some one particular sensual experience. He’s summoning up very strong emotions that come from the most important aspects of life.
And that leads me into the second point, which is what Cicero wants to argue here when he talks about Africanus. Because Cicero says that bodily pleasures ebb and fly away and more often leave behind them reason for regret than remembrance. And he wants to contrast with those bodily pleasures the experience of Africanus, who’s able to say that Rome has been established in safety because of his toils in war — Cicero’s implying that this magnificent feeling of glory and gladness from being a conquering warrior is sufficient to offset pain. But you Epicureans are just talking about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There’s no way your experience of having a great meal on the 20th last can overcome kidney pain. In the end, Cicero’s argument that the glory of having a wonderful military career can offset pain while the pleasures of the banquets of the past cannot is the same old song from Cicero. He’s trying to trivialize Epicurean pleasure and exclude those important pleasures that come from these deeper experiences of life that Epicurus fully embraces. So Cicero’s argument is the one that’s contradictory. If Africanus is happy that he has brought Rome to be safe, then that was a pleasure for Africanus. If one of the two arguments is less effective, it’s clearly Cicero’s, because he’s the one who’s making the false equivalency.
Joshua: It is ridiculous. And if you look at the bottom of page 73, Cicero says, “What if the recollection of past misfortunes is actually agreeable?” — well then, Cicero, you should remember them and set them above and over the pain that you’re experiencing. That’s Epicurus’s advice. The memory of past misfortune, particularly past misfortune that you suffered in company with your friends, that you got through together — surely that’s agreeable. So it’s pleasurable to remember it.
Cassius: And you know, Joshua, here’s another point. We’re talking about what the wise man is going to do. You’re not getting to the point of being a wise man and being happy unless you take certain steps to get there. You’re not just randomly going to fall out of bed in the morning and become a wise and happy person. Where I’m going with that, of course, is that Torquatus has talked previously about the characteristics of the best man, the best life — that he is not going to allow these memories to fade from recollection. In other words, it does take effort to do what Epicurus is talking about. You do have to take steps to remember the good things from the past and have them available to summon up when you need them. That would be part of the reasoning for the birthday celebrations. That would be part of the reason for the 20th celebrations. That would be part of the reason to commit Epicurean text to memory, because you’ve got to use your mind properly, prudently, to store up these pleasant recollections and happy experiences of life, so that you’ll have them when you need them. They’re not just going to drop in your lap no matter how imprudently you conduct your life.
Joshua: Yeah. Cicero said that it was absurd for Epicurus not only to celebrate his own birthday but to set up a convention whereby his students would continue to celebrate his birthday even after he had died. But Cicero, all throughout this text, it’s the same motive, the same instinct that causes people like Cicero to put up statues of people like Gaius Marius and Scipio Africanus. Cicero says it’s unbecoming a philosopher to celebrate his birthday or to have his birthday celebrated. But when you want to remember something, sometimes you need a statue or a picture or a day set aside to do that. And clearly this instinct is not foreign to Cicero’s understanding, because he’s doing the same thing here throughout not just this work but every one of his works when he’s talking about the stories of illustrious Romans. It’s the same impulse.
Cassius: Right. He doesn’t want to call it pleasure, but it is the same sensation of satisfaction, reward, gratification — whatever you want to call it — that certainly comes under the Epicurean definition of pleasure. You’re achieving these things, and that’s the reason you do it, not just because you feel it’s the right thing to do.
Before we move to Section 33, it’s probably worth pointing out what’s listed as line 106 here in the Rackham edition, where Cicero says that indeed the happiness of the wise man can never be perfected or reach its goal if his good thoughts and deeds are to be successively effaced by his own forgetfulness. But in your view, life is rendered happy by the remembrance of pleasures already enjoyed, and moreover those enjoyed by the body. Now, that sentence on its own seems interesting because it certainly indicates an emphasis in Epicurean philosophy on how important it is to remember pleasures from the past. I think it’s probably inaccurate for Cicero to say “moreover those enjoyed by the body” — you could say “including those enjoyed by the body” — but I don’t think there is a primary emphasis on those enjoyed by the body except in the broad definition of the body as everything that involves you, because you are a body in the end in Epicurean philosophy.
But certainly this whole section is an emphasis on how much importance the Epicureans were placing on mental pleasures accumulating in the mind and being readily available for savoring — just like you savor a steak and hold it in your mouth as you chew it. You savor these pleasures over time, and this gives you a store or reservoir of pleasure that’s always available to be called on as you proceed through your life.
And then what Cicero says about Aristotle here — that Aristotle ridiculed Sardanapallus, who had said that he had carried away with him to death essentially all the lustful pleasures, because Aristotle’s point was he could not retain after death something that when he was alive he could only feel so long as he actually enjoyed it. That is presumably an allegation that you can’t really remember a physical pleasure. Is it fair to say that you can relive an experience of physical pleasure through your mind?
Joshua: Yes, I think that’s the question here, with Aristotle — according to Cicero — taking the position that you can only enjoy a steak so long as you’re chewing it. As long as you’re actually experiencing it is the only amount of time that you can enjoy it. How could he retain after death a thing which even when he was alive he could only feel so long as he actually enjoyed it? Bodily pleasures therefore ebb and fly away, and since all you care about, Epicurus, is bodily pleasure, you’re just full of assertions you can’t support, because you can’t store these bodily pleasures in your mind. You’re talking about something totally different when you talk about mental pleasures, and so your philosophy as usual is incoherent.
Cassius: Yeah, here’s the thing. I don’t know if it is possible to enjoy a nice steak again 10 years later just thinking about the steak that you enjoyed 10 years ago. I think it’s very possible to experience new or very similar kinds of bodily pleasures 10 years after you ate that steak, because the sources of bodily pleasure are so numerous that we don’t have to linger on thoughts of the steak. But that’s also not really what Epicurus is saying when he talks about the remembrance of past pleasure. Epicurus says that you should cultivate wisdom and friendship — and friendship is an immortal good. So friendship is at the heart of so much of what Epicurus is talking about when he’s talking about the pleasant life, when he’s talking about remembering past pleasures. When you remember past pleasures, I don’t think Epicurus is picturing tallying off every fine meal you’ve ever eaten in your entire life. But some meals are more memorable than others because we spend them with our friends, and so that’s the thing you focus on when you remember past pleasures.
Yes, some meals are more memorable and more pleasurable than others, and I think Joshua too, there — I don’t know that it’s important to Epicurus that what we’re doing is reconstructing the exact bodily sequence of events that took place when we moved the steak from the plate to our mouth. The memory of having a good steak dinner is pleasant. Now, it may not be exactly the same experience as actually sitting at the table and eating that steak, but it is pleasant. Both the eating of the steak was pleasant when it occurred, and the memory of the eating of the steak is pleasant when you remember it, as we’ve discussed many times before. Pleasure is a multifaceted diamond, and you look at it from many different perspectives. You may not be getting the same cellular experience remembering the steak as when you ate it, but both of those experiences are in fact pleasurable.
And in logical philosophical terms, Epicurus is interested in pleasure as a concept, as a feeling that encompasses all sorts of different experiences, and he’s constantly moving between intensity, parts of the body, and duration — as he talks about in Principal Doctrine 9 — as aspects of pleasure. And it is Cicero again trying to be a lawyer, to trap the innocent listener or reader into thinking that Epicurus is saying that eating a steak is exactly the same thing as remembering the eating of the steak. They are not exactly the same thing, but they are both pleasurable, and they are both things that when you’re considering your life being a surplus of pleasure over pain, you can count the memory of the steak dinner — or the memory of your friends, or the memory of anything else you find agreeable — in the balance against all of the pains that are being experienced at the same time.
Epicurus never said that the wise man while being tortured was experiencing a wonderful sensory experience. All Epicurus is saying is that in terms of his global characterization of being a happy man or not, it is reasonable to consider that happiness allows periods of time when pain does intrude into our lives. I think that’s the direction you ultimately have to come down — always evaluating Cicero’s attacks as taking things out of context so that he can make them appear ridiculous when, placed in the full context that Epicurus was talking about, they make perfect sense.
Joshua: Yeah, let me go back up to just below the 106 mark. Cicero says: For if there are any other pleasures, then it is not true that all mental pleasures are dependent on association with the body. I’ve been trying to figure out what’s wrong with this picture, and I think what’s wrong is that Cicero is giving us an example of the fallacy of the excluded middle. Because for Cicero, on the one hand you have the Platonic, the Aristotelian idea that the mind is something pure and noble and beautiful — that you existed before you were born, that you knew everything, but when you were born your mind was imprisoned in your gross, disgusting flesh, that you forgot everything you knew, and that all learning is a process of recollection. So the pleasures of the mind for Cicero, under the Platonic understanding, would be significantly purer because the mind is not tied to the body — it’s imprisoned in the body, but it’s its own separate, beautiful, unique thing. On the other far extreme, you have the caricature of Epicurus that Cicero gives us, which is that Epicurus is only interested in those pleasures which impact the body.
Because of what he says here — if there are any other pleasures, then it is not true that all mental pleasures are dependent on association with the body — he’s almost saying: therefore we can throw out mental pleasures and only talk about bodily pleasures. That’s the problem. He doesn’t consider this middle position, which is: yes, your mind is rooted in your body, but mental pleasures are still different than bodily pleasures, and they’re worth talking about in their own terms. We don’t have to pretend, as Cicero wants to pretend here, that all pleasures are bodily in the same way. Of course, mental pleasures are associated with the body — they have to be, because the mind is associated with the body. They’re also different than bodily pleasures, just like the mind is different from the body, even though connected to it.
Cassius: Yes, that seems to be the big point of this part of the argument. You know, we’re well past the halfway point of today’s episode. Looking forward, I think we can let Cicero finish this part of his argument by going a little further into Section 33, so we don’t have to slog through it again next week. Let me add this to our discussion today:
But how is this very position of your school to be made good, namely that all intellectual pleasures and pains alike are referable to bodily pleasures and pains? Do you never get any gratification? I know what kind of man I’m addressing. Do you then, Torquatus, never get any gratification from anything whatever for its own sake? I put on one side nobleness, morality, the mere beauty of the virtues of which I’ve already spoken. I’ll put before you these slighter matters. When you either write or read a poem or a speech, when you press your inquiries concerning all events in all countries, when you see a statue, a picture, an attractive spot, games, fights with beasts, the country house of Lucullus — I won’t mention your own because you’d find a loophole, you’d say it had to do with your body. Well then, do you connect all of the things I’ve mentioned with the body? Or is there something which gives you gratification for its own sake? You will either show yourself to be very obstinate if you persist in connecting with the body everything I’ve mentioned, or will prove a traitor to the whole of pleasure as Epicurus conceives it if you give the opposite opinion.
But when you maintain that the mental pleasures and pains are more intense than those of the body because the mind is associated with time of three kinds while the body has only consciousness of what is present, how can you accept the result that one who feels some joy on my account feels more joy than I do myself? But in your anxiety to prove the wise man happy because the pleasures he experiences in his mind are the greatest and incomparably greater than those he experiences in his body, you’re blind to the difficulty that meets you. For the mental pains he experiences will also be incomparably greater than those of the body. So the very man whom you are anxious to represent as constantly happy must needs be sometimes wretched, nor indeed will you ever prove your point while you continue to connect everything with pleasure and pain.
Cassius: That’s a good place to stop, because after that he’s going to get into a very famous argument about leaving pleasure to the beasts. But that takes us to the end, I think, of his argument about this bodily versus mental contradiction that he sees in Epicurean philosophy, and it fits with what we’re discussing today pretty well. Because this hammers home the point: isn’t there something, Torquatus, that gives you gratification for its own sake? Do you have to connect everything with the body? Cicero is saying that if you think nobility, morality, the beauty of the virtues, if you think poetry or fine speeches or statues or pictures or attractive spots and fights with beasts and country houses and so forth — if you think those things are pleasurable but they arise from the body, you don’t know what you’re talking about, Torquatus.
But they do arise from the body. You know, Cicero, we say that the mind is rooted in the body or emerges from the body because we think that’s really true in nature. That’s just the way it is. It’s not like if we wanted it to be differently, it would be different. We just observe the way that these things are and we emerge with the conclusion that the flesh is not a prison, that the mind is not a spark of the divine which has been imprisoned in the flesh, that the mind and the body have developed and in a sense evolved together as a unit. So with that being the case, mental pleasures are connected with the body, but it doesn’t make sense to disregard mental pleasures of the kind that Cicero is talking about here and just focus only on the pleasures of the banquet or the pleasures of sex or music and so forth. Mental and intellectual pleasures do have their own value and in some cases are more pleasurable and more valuable to us than the bodily pleasures, even though the mind is rooted in or connected to the body.
Joshua: In this, just like everything we’ve talked about, I think Cicero is very uncharitable in his understanding or interpretation of what Epicurus is actually saying, and it does get very frustrating.
Cassius: Yes, it does. Let me highlight two of the sentences from Section 33 as particularly important. Right around line 106 it looks like: You will either show yourself to be very obstinate if you persist in connecting with the body everything I have mentioned — which includes all those issues of nobility and virtue and so forth — or you will prove a traitor to the whole of pleasure as Epicurus conceives it if you give the opposite opinion. So Cicero is hammering this issue: if you try to bring mental pleasures into the picture, you are abandoning Epicurean philosophy because Epicurus was only concerned about bodily pleasures. That is what Cicero perceives as a real strength of his argument, which we reject, but Cicero thinks it’s important.
And then above line 108 in the Rackham edition: So the very man whom you are anxious to represent as constantly happy must needs be sometimes wretched, nor indeed will you ever prove your point while you continue to connect everything with pleasure and pain. Meaning that Cicero is saying that the problem with Epicurean philosophy is to put emphasis on pleasure and pain and explain everything in those terms rather than explaining them in terms of virtue — because Cicero’s position is that if you focus on pleasure and pain, you will never get away from the conclusion that you will sometimes be wretched, you will sometimes have to deal with pain, you will sometimes have to deal with something you’re calling the chief evil. And if you are inevitably forced to live with the chief evil, then you cannot be constantly happy from Cicero’s point of view. The only way to be constantly happy from Cicero’s point of view is to pursue virtue, which considers pleasure and pain to be irrelevant to happiness.
Most of what we’ve been talking about today and for the last several weeks comes down to this type of argument. I suppose if we had any inclination to be charitable to Cicero we could at least say that he’s persistent, because he takes an argument and does not let it go. He thinks he’s got a crack in Epicurean philosophy in his description of mental versus bodily pains and pleasures, and he’s going to ride that argument for all it’s worth. But once you understand that Cicero is flat wrong in his characterization of Epicurus, and that he’s not negligently misinterpreting it but intentionally misinterpreting it, then it becomes easy to see through his argument.
So we quoted a few weeks ago from this passage by Norman DeWitt in his book Epicurus and His Philosophy. I’m going to quote it again and we’ll see if it gives us any new insights here. He says in the chapter “The New Hedonism” under the section “The Unity of Pleasure”:
If at this point the attention be recalled to the synoptic view, it may be observed that the telos has been presented under three aspects. First, as a unitary good, it is pleasure. Second, as a dualistic good, it is health of mind and health of body. Third, in a seemingly negative aspect, it is freedom from fear in the mind and pain in the body. This seeming negativism was spotted by the antagonists of Epicurus as a chink in his armor and the arrows of their dialectic were concentrated upon it. The weakness alleged was that of calling two disparate things by the name of pleasure.
Something we’ve been dealing with from Cicero since the beginning of Book Two. So what DeWitt does here, in a sense, is resolve this issue of mental versus bodily pleasures by describing it under this rubric where you can talk about it in three different ways: first, that the telos, the proper goal or end of human life, is pleasure; second, that the good is health of mind and health of body; or third, in the seeming negative aspect, freedom from fear in the mind and pain in the body. Does that get us any closer to resolving what Cicero sees as the major problem?
Joshua, I think it does move the ball forward. It does assist us in this, and it does it by pointing out the absolute hypocrisy in Cicero’s position. This is not rocket science — the word “pleasure” has multiple meanings in multiple contexts. There’s nothing unique about that. The word “virtue” has multiple meanings in different contexts. Virtue includes all sorts of different things: justice, wisdom, courage, temperance. Well, Cicero, which of those is the most important virtue? Why is it so clear to you that virtue can have many different aspects to it, but you refuse to allow pleasure to have different aspects and be used in different contexts? You don’t seem to have any problem in gathering together all of the things you consider to be good under the single term of virtue. Why can’t Epicurus gather all the things he considers to be good under the name of pleasure? There’s no reason he can’t.
And Joshua, of course, that recalls to mind DeWitt’s comment: The extension of the name of pleasure to this normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form — freedom from pain of body and distress of mind — that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to the state was unjustified, on the ground that two different things were being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it is really superficial and captious. The fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it, nor that reason justified the application, nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.
So again, what’s going on here is that Epicurus has brought to the word “pleasure” a wider definition perspective that always should have had with it. Pleasure should never have been considered just sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Pleasure has always been the reward that we get from military exploits, from art, statuary — all the things that Cicero is talking about regularly when he discusses the accomplishments of the illustrious people he and the Stoics love to talk about. The reward that they got for their actions was the pleasure and satisfaction that came from those actions — not because they checked some mark in heaven on a book of life where they got credit for doing good just because it’s good. Epicurus is a very practical person who looks at the results of your actions and measures the merit of your action by their results.
So when Cicero concludes that section and says that the very man you’re anxious to represent as constantly happy must needs be sometimes wretched — well, there’s nothing mysterious about the word “happy” that there’s some god-given definition where happiness requires virtue to be its own reward. From the Epicurean perspective, happiness is a life in which pleasures predominate over pains. The wise man is going to constantly have more reason for joy than for vexation. Epicurus is going to have more reason for joy on the last day of his life than to wallow in self-pity because of his kidney disease. And those who do figure the problem out can understand that this is the proper approach to life and live happily, while those pursuing this ghost of virtue are going to find that virtue has no existence of its own and gives nothing of its own and is not worth having except for the pleasure that we achieve from it while we’re alive.
Cassius: Okay, we’ve had a good discussion today on Sections 32 and 33. Let’s bring the episode to a close and see if anyone has closing comments. Martin, anything today?
Martin: Sorry, I have nothing to add today. Thanks.
Cassius: All right. Thank you, Martin. Now, Callistheni’s not with us today, but Joshua is. So, Joshua.
Joshua: Well, it may be as foolish as you like to celebrate birthdays or to recognize the anniversary of the day someone died, but I should notice that Cicero’s close friend Titus Pomponius Atticus — an Epicurean — died on this day in 32 BC and was buried at the fifth mile of the Appian Way outside Rome.
Cassius: Very good. That’s a good thing to remember. And that brings to mind that part of what we’ve been discussing today is that we need to spend our lives experiencing good things so that we have happy memories to deepen the enjoyment of our lives. And I think, Joshua, you’re going to be away from us next week doing such a thing.
Joshua: Yes, that’s right. There is a solar eclipse coming across the continental United States and parts of Mexico, and I will be in Arkansas for that. So fortunately, our friend Don has agreed to step in and fill the vacancy. Our listeners can look forward to hearing from Don again, who hasn’t been on in a little while.
Cassius: Yes, we’ll have Don with us next week. And we’ll go back and use Joshua’s absence and Don’s presence with us to do a little bit of a recap of some of the key issues that Cicero has been throwing at Epicurus and at Torquatus over the last number of pages — this issue of the relationship between pleasure and pain and happiness, and this constant argument by Cicero that Epicurean philosophy is worthless because the wise man will never be able to escape pain, that pain in Epicurean philosophy is the greatest evil, and so Epicurean philosophy just makes no sense at all. We’ll step back next week with Don’s help and dive back into some of the Latin words that we see Cicero using to describe this, and we’ll do our best to make good use of the week before we go further when Joshua returns. And Don can scold us for our incorrect use of the word “happiness” in lieu of eudaimonia, so look forward to that conversation next week.
Joshua: Exactly. That’s a deep subject and Don is one of our best participants on Epicurean Friends for helping us deal with issues like that, so we really appreciate all of his contributions and look forward to going back over these issues with him next week.
Cassius: But with that, let’s close the episode for today. As always, we invite you to drop by the forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this episode or anything else you’d like to discuss about Epicurus. We’ll be back next week. See you then.