Episode 231 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Part 06 - How would you live if you were certain that there are no supernatural gods and no life after death?
Date: 06/07/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3881-episode-231-cicero-s-otnotg-06-how-would-you-live-if-you-were-certain-that-there/
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 231 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 text 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.
This week we’re continuing to review the Epicurean sections of Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods. And when we get to today’s text, we’ll be starting with Section 12, but before we proceed to that, it’s always good to step back and talk about some of the bigger picture issues that are involved in this discussion. We’re not just simply going through facts of history. We’re talking about issues that continue to be important today and we’re relating today’s issues with the questions and discussions that were brought up over 2,000 years ago.
Before we started today’s episode, Joshua brought to my attention that we just recently had a date pass that is relevant to Thales, one of the philosophers in this line of pre-Epicurean philosophers that Velleius is going through and criticizing as to their ideas of the gods. In Thales’ case, there’s one particular prediction that Thales made that’s relevant to what we’re discussing. So, Joshua, tell us about that.
Joshua: Yes, so Tuesday of last week was May 28th, and May 28th was the anniversary of a battle that occurred in modern-day Turkey — what the Greeks would have known as Asia Minor — in a region called Anatolia on the River Halys in 585 BC. And the significance of the event is that it’s said, in a whole number of sources — there are people who disagree with the account that’s given, partially because it’s thought that Thales could not have had the knowledge at the time to do this — but he predicted a solar eclipse on the day of the battle. And Herodotus in his Histories writes as follows:
“Another combat took place in the sixth year, in the war between the Medes and the Lydians, in the course of which, just as the battle was growing warm, day was on a sudden changed into night. This event had been foretold by Thales the Milesian, who forewarned the Ionians of it, fixing for it the very year in which it actually took place. The Medes and the Lydians, when they observed the change, ceased fighting, and were alike anxious to have terms of peace agreed on.”
And the history surrounding this event is significant for a number of reasons, because the American science fiction writer Isaac Asimov described it as the earliest historical event — this battle — whose date is known with precision to the day, and called the prediction the birth of science. We’ve had many conversations on this podcast and on the forum about whether science is really the right word for what’s going on in these pre-Socratic philosophers in their attempt to understand nature. But in terms of natural philosophy — looking to natural phenomena that occur in the world and seeking a natural explanation for that phenomenon rather than a divine explanation — this process does seem to get started in the Greek world at about this time in the sixth century BC.
And the further significance of it is that because we can fix this date and time using modern astronomy — projecting the eclipse cycle back to figure out exactly when this eclipse happened at the relevant location — we can tie it to the various calendars that were used in Greece at the time. And we can tie that to a whole bunch of other subsequent historical events that otherwise we would never know when they happened. We can figure out when they happened because we can tie them to known events like this one. We do the same thing significantly later in Italy — in the Bay of Naples — by tacking their calendar to our calendar at the time of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, where nature intervenes in a very big way and gives us an opportunity to get a better understanding of the timeline of how a lot of these historical events happened.
But it also represents this very early effort by Thales to bring a little bit of his understanding of nature and of physics to bear on a problem that mankind had attributed to divinity for a very long time, and it kind of sets us on a new course. I don’t want to overstate the significance of this. It’s certainly relevant to what we’re discussing here in Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, because as we go through all these other philosophers, we find that there are several key points that the Epicureans may have agreed with them. For example, when Anaxagoras says the sun is not a god, it’s a body of matter that exists in nature — certainly Epicurus would agree that that’s true.
And yet there are, as it says in the beginning of On the Nature of the Gods as a justification to even do this — that there are a whole number of diverse opinions about the gods. Quote: “There are many things in philosophy, my dear Brutus, which are not as yet fully explained to us, and particularly, as you very well know, that most obscure and difficult question concerning the nature of the gods, so extremely necessary, both towards a knowledge of the human mind and the practice of true religion, concerning which the opinions of men are so various and so different from each other, as to lead strongly to the inference that ignorance is the cause or origin of philosophy.”
So ignorance about nature, about the operations of nature, about the understanding of the human mind, about the nature of the gods — it starts with asking a question. And by asking a question you build up a series of conjectures, and from these conjectures we build up a system, and the system of philosophy is an attempt to answer these questions, to confront the unknown, and to learn more about it. And so this incident with Thales, allegedly predicting a solar eclipse, is a very real moment in history that we can engage with as a very early example of the work of philosophy being brought to bear on the study of nature. And it’s the study of nature that Epicurus frequently exhorts us to. As he says in the Letter to Herodotus: “Wherefore, since the method I have described is valuable to all those who are accustomed to the investigation of nature, I, who urge upon others the constant occupation in the investigation of nature, and find my own peace chiefly in a life so occupied, have composed for you another epitome on these lines, summing up the first principles of the whole doctrine.”
So the anniversary of the eclipse of Thales is kind of a point in time where all of these different issues relating to what we talk about all the time are really brought to the forefront at a very early moment in Greek history.
Cassius: So just like Epicurus has suggested in what you just read, Joshua, the purpose of studying nature is to live a happy life, to get practical results from your study. You have to expect that if someone has the ability to predict an eclipse, the tremendous advantage that would give to you — your side of the battle not being afraid of the eclipse because you knew it was coming — compared to the effect it might have on those who did not know it was coming, and the excessive fear it would strike into them. I think we can identify with that in our own recent experiences with the total eclipse in the United States. The foreknowledge that it was coming, for many people, took a lot of the drama out of the episode. If you can predict it to happen and you know it’s going to happen, then you’re not going to be afraid of it. You’re going to have an understanding that you’re going to come through it, that the world’s not going to be over, and you’re going to be tremendously profited by having this knowledge ahead of time. So that’s an example of the practical benefit that these philosophers were working towards in the ancient world to produce real results in their own lives.
Switching gears rather dramatically, I can mention also that we had a thread on the EpicureanFriends Forum this past week entitled The Axiology of Pain and Pleasure, asking the question about whether pain and pleasure are intrinsically good and bad or not. Certainly one of the ways that many people analyze questions of whether pain and pleasure are desirable is how it fits into this big scheme of the universe in relation to a supernatural being. Is there a life after death in which you’re going to be rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad behavior? In Epicurean terms, ultimately all evil traces back to pain and all good traces back to pleasure. But unless you have an understanding of the universe that says that there is a natural explanation for these things — just like in the eclipse situation — you’re going to be floundering without anything firm to hold onto to make your decisions. We have to apply these same perspectives to issues of good and evil in evaluating whether there is ultimately some reference point that is superior to us and is above this world that we have to ultimately refer to instead of our own judgment about the practical results of our actions.
Joshua: Cassius, I think we can tie all of what we’re talking about together by contrasting the story of Thales with the story of Joshua in the Old Testament, because while it doesn’t really matter to me whether Thales actually did predict an eclipse or not, what is significant about this whole story is that that moment in time was important to later philosophers because of what it represented to their pursuit — to understand nature in natural terms. Whereas you still have people today trying to demonstrate that Joshua asked God to make the sun stand still so he could win a battle so that God would favor their side. It represents two very different approaches to how you look at nature, how you look at human life, how you look at the world you live in. Are we going to rely on these old fables from the Old Testament or are we going to try to figure this stuff out for ourselves?
I mentioned recently on the forum that I’ve been reading Stephen Fry’s Mythos series. And one of the things he’s getting me to understand — we all know about these heroes from Greek mythology — but he makes the point explicit that while the heroes in many of these stories are descended from the gods, their actual function in the stories is to make this world safe for humans. Hercules killing ten different monsters that the gods had put on earth and that were threatening human beings — it’s this idea of humanity taking ownership of its own problems and looking for solutions in nature, not deferring ownership to a higher being and looking for solutions in revelation. I think that’s the main difference there. And you’re right, it does affect how we look at things like pleasure and pain. It makes us reassess how we find happiness in this world.
Cassius: Yes, it sure does. Why don’t we go ahead and try to get back to the text? We’ve covered some important issues already. In our last two episodes, these other philosophers had suggested that there was some type of spirit that was using some methodology to join himself to matter. And the general response of Velleius to all that was that it made no sense — if God could be a spirit, presumably for an eternity alone as a spirit, why would he join himself to any kind of matter? Why would he mutilate himself? Why would he split himself up? Then Xenophanes, and to some extent Parmenides, were incorporating ideas of infinity in describing the gods that also made no sense — that if in fact a god has no form, if a god is infinite, then there’s no way we can understand that such a being would have any sensation or the ability to interact with the world as we have it around us.
That takes us to the beginning of Section 12 where Velleius says: “Empedocles, who erred in many things, is most grossly mistaken in his notion of the gods. He lays down the four natures as divine from which he thinks that all things were made. Yet it is evident that they have a beginning, that they decay, and that they are void of all sense.”
And that reminds us of another of the arguments that Velleius was making — that things that come into being necessarily have an end. So in order to have a consistent picture of what a deity would be like, you have to take a position on whether this deity is going to be everlasting or not, or whether it’s subject to death. And Velleius’ position echoes what Epicurus has said in the Letter to Menoikeus — that if there are any two things that you must believe about a divinity, it is that it is incorruptible — which means basically deathless — the other being that it is blessed. If a being is worried about the continuance of its existence, if it’s not deathless, then that Epicurus would submit as totally inconsistent with the idea of being a divinity. So Empedocles largely fits into the categories that we have discussed already.
The next one is Protagoras, and Velleius says: “Protagoras did not seem to have any idea of the real nature of the gods, for he acknowledged that he was altogether ignorant whether there are or not any or what they are.”
Now that seems almost to go as far or maybe even further than the Academic Skeptics. They take positions about what things are probable, and so maybe they have more of an idea of the nature of the gods than Protagoras did. But if we identify Protagoras with what we think of as agnosticism, nobody really at that period of time is defending that as the best way to approach things. When you have a critically important practical question of daily life about whether you go along with these religious viewpoints of everyone else around you, whether you fight wars, whether you associate with certain people or not, it’s not practical to just simply say, I don’t know.
Joshua: You started us on Section 12 here, Cassius, starting with Empedocles and then going on to Protagoras and his what we might call agnosticism. Let me respond to both of those, starting here with Empedocles. I’m going to read from a work by George Santayana called Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe. In the section on Lucretius, he offers an interesting answer to the problem of why, if you’re a materialist, Lucretius starts his poem with an invocation to a Greek goddess. And his answer is that this goes back to Empedocles — that Empedocles is the root of this, and that Lucretius is tapping into a poetic tradition but changing it for his own purposes. Santayana says:
“To a propitious season and atmosphere, a poet owes his inspiration and his success. Conscious that his undertaking hangs upon these chance conjunctions, Lucretius begins by invoking the powers he is about to describe, that they may give him breath and genius enough to describe them. And at once these powers sent him a happy inspiration — perhaps a happy reminiscence of Empedocles. There are two great perspectives which the moralist may distinguish in the universal drift of atoms: a creative movement producing what the moralist values, and a destructive movement abolishing the same. Lucretius knows very well that this distinction is moral only, or as people now say, subjective. No one else has pointed out so often and so clearly as he that nothing arises in this world not helped to life by the death of some other thing, so that the destructive movement creates and the creative movement destroys.”
And Santayana continues — and this is relevant, I think, to this issue of death and whether we should be concerned about what comes after — “Yet from the point of view of any particular life or interest, the distinction between a creative force and a destructive force is real and all-important. Sentiments here are to make this distinction is not to deny the mechanical structure of nature, but only to show how this mechanical structure is fruitful morally — how the outlying parts of it are friendly or hostile to you or me, its local and living products. This double coloring of things is supremely interesting to the philosopher, so much so that before his physical science has reached the mechanical stage, he will doubtless regard the double aspect which things present to him as a dual principle in these things themselves. So Empedocles had spoken of love and strife as two forces which respectively gathered and disrupted the elements so as to carry on between them the Penelope’s labor of the world — the one perpetually weaving fresh forms of life and the other perpetually undoing them. It needed but a slight concession to traditional rhetoric in order to exchange these names, love and strife, which designated divine powers in Empedocles, into the names of Venus and Mars, which designated the same influences in Roman mythology. However, the Mars and Venus of Lucretius are not moral forces incompatible with the mechanism of atoms. They are this mechanism itself, insofar as it now produces and now destroys life — or any precious enterprise, like this of Lucretius in composing his saving poem. Mars and Venus, linked in each other’s arms, rule the universe together; nothing arises saved by the death of some other thing.”
So what’s important about this is that Lucretius is tapping into a didactic poetic tradition dating back to Empedocles. Empedocles was also a poet who tried to explain physics in his poetry, just like Lucretius is doing. But for Empedocles, these divine forces that control nature are real and they are divine. Whereas for Lucretius, he’s using them as a metaphor for the creative and destructive powers that are inherent in the atoms themselves. Atoms come together to form bodies, and then those bodies degrade and fall apart. This is a universal law of nature. And one of the phrases that we frequently hear in this context is that destruction never fully gets the upper hand over creation — that the falling apart of bodies in the Epicurean and Lucretian universe is never the final say on the matter. There will always be another coming together of atoms to form bodies. And this is why the Epicureans thought that the universe was immortal, that it had no beginning and will have no end.
So there’s a key distinction here between the way that Empedocles is looking at this with a view to divinity, and the way that Lucretius starts his poem with his hymn to Venus, invoking divinity, but really looking to the underlying natural cause of what we have ascribed up to this point to divinity. This is just the atoms in the void. But to understand this conflict between things coming together and things falling apart, it’s poetically useful for him to invoke the gods. He describes Venus as saying, “you alone govern the nature of things” — and what he really means is this endless reproductive process of the atoms coming together to form bodies and falling apart and coming together again, that that governs the nature of things. Mars and Venus working together, not necessarily Mars being absolutely evil or Venus being absolutely good, but taking part in a process in which we as individuals obviously wish to experience pleasure and are sympathetic with our own creation and our own continuance in a state of pleasure. This overall natural process is not good and evil in itself, but in relation to the living things that are at some stage within that process.
Cassius: Exactly. Let me quote that last line again. Santayana writes: “The Mars and Venus of Lucretius are not moral forces incompatible with the mechanism of atoms. They are this mechanism itself.” When Lucretius is invoking Venus, he is essentially invoking nature in all its changing forms and in all of its endless and beginningless productivity. I’m reminded of the title of one of Nietzsche’s books, Beyond Good and Evil. This idea of good and evil is a conceptual analysis that we as humans place on the process, but our own assessment of the process conceptually does not make it nature’s assessment of the process.
Joshua: So next up after Empedocles we have Protagoras, Cassius, as you’ve already quoted. I’ll read it again — this time from the Rackham translation, which is a lot more clear on this particular passage. He writes: “Protagoras also, who declares he has no clear views whatever about the gods, whether they exist or do not exist, or what they are like, seems to have no notion at all of the divine nature.”
So anyone listening to that will connect it at once probably to a word that was coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in the 19th century — the word is agnosticism. Agnosticism is a position taken in epistemology that claims the existence or non-existence of the gods is both unknown and unknowable — that not only do we not know whether the gods exist, but that it’s not even possible to know. I don’t know if Protagoras can be described as the first agnostic if he doesn’t go quite as far as Huxley in saying that it’s impossible to know whether the gods exist or what they are like. But we can see, I think, why Velleius has problems with this approach, because it leaves us in the dark regarding one of the most central and important questions relating to philosophy.
I quoted earlier from the first line of Book One of On the Nature of the Gods — that people have a diverse number of opinions about philosophy, but nowhere is there so diverse a number of opinions as when it comes to the nature of the gods. People are really trying to get an answer to this question because it informs everything about how we live our lives. Cassius, you’ve said many times that if you were convinced that the God of Christianity was real, you would feel that you would have to get in line and follow Christianity because it’s offering you eternal life in pleasure, which is something that you would want if it was available to you. And so the reason that you don’t follow Christianity is because you just don’t think that it’s true. And to be able to cut through some of this stuff is something that Protagoras, with his very skeptical approach, doesn’t really allow us to do.
Cassius: Yeah, the problem is a practical one and has many different aspects to it. Of course, as we’re going to see, once Velleius starts talking about Epicurus’ position, he’s going to be talking about the prolepseis — the fact that humans seem to be born with at the very least this disposition to talk about this subject that seems to be of great interest to them. A subject that is of such tremendous interest to so many different people cries out to be addressed. And you either take a position that this subject is helpful or dangerous, that it can be answered or that it can’t be answered. But whichever direction you come down, you’re not going to be able to get these questions and doubts out of your mind unless you have a firm position about it.
Of course, if you’re an Epicurean, you are convinced that you are not going to live forever, that when you die, your existence is over. And you are convinced, based on your physics, that there’s no reason to believe that there is any kind of a supernatural entity that created the universe or guides the way we live today. So there are many urgent, practical results of taking a position that the gods either do exist or that gods don’t exist. And the idea of living in doubt about something like that ends up acting as a permanent stain on your ability to live a totally happy life. Unless you can resolve those controversies in your mind, you’re simply not going to be able to live as happily as you otherwise would.
One of the things I didn’t mention about Empedocles is that he jumped into an active volcano to prove that he was a god. You can ask yourself whether you think that experiment bore fruit, but these questions do matter. Did Joshua really make the sun stand still? Do you have an answer to that question or not? And your answer to that question is much bigger than what happened on one day a long time ago. It relates to every aspect of human life.
Yeah, that seems to have been one of the big themes of our episode today. And rather than go on, why don’t we save Democritus for next week, and just continue on with this theme for the remainder of the time we have available today? Because it’s so important, I think, to understand and to see that there are practical consequences to taking a position on this question. And many who are attracted to Epicurus are attracted as well to an agnostic type position that deserves some thought as to whether that will, in fact, lead to a happy result for them or not.
Some people might suggest that there’s absolutely no evidence that the gods intervene in human life, and so therefore they are certain that the gods are not providing for them or rewarding them or punishing them. But as to any other questions about the nature of the gods, they take the position it’s impossible to know anything. I wonder how Epicurus would have viewed that, and my first reaction is he would probably have been negative to that as well. Because it seems to me as we read what Epicurus had to say about the gods and what we should believe about them, there’s not only the issue of incorruptibility — which leads to them not taking an interest in either rewarding their friends or punishing their enemies — but there’s also the idea of blessedness that goes along with it. And it seems like Epicurus was suggesting that it’s very important for us to consider the idea of what a truly blessed state would really be like, and that even though we as humans may not be able to achieve it ourselves, it serves a very important function for us to have such a concept.
There’s the related idea that reverence of the wise man is a great benefit for him who does the revering. It seems to be an important part of Epicurus’ viewpoint — not only that you are free from fear of being punished by the gods, but also that you have a correct idea of pleasure and how to pursue it, which is the way you would expect a divine being to be pursuing it. There’s both a positive and a negative aspect of the idea of the nature of the gods. Not only that you want to get rid of the fear of them punishing you or rewarding you, but also that you would use the gods as a projection of the right way to pursue a life of pleasure. And so therefore just simply taking a position that the gods don’t exist, that they’re not going to punish you, would only go so far in addressing what Epicurus saw as the role of discussing divinity. If you just focused on absence of knowledge of them or absence of their existence, you would not then get the benefit that comes from a proper conception of divinity.
Joshua: Yeah, I agree that for Epicurus it is important to come to that conclusion. And he says it in his Letter to Menoikeus:
“We must then meditate on the things that make our happiness, seeing that when that is with us, we have all, but when it is absent, we do all to win it. The things which I used unceasingly to commend to you, these do and practice, considering them to be the first principles of the good life. 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. But 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 he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many. For the statements of the many about the gods are not conceptions derived from sensation, but false suppositions, according to which the greatest misfortunes befall the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good by the gift of the gods.”
So it’s clear that it’s important to Epicurus that you do come to this conclusion. You need to understand what he means by a god — a god is a being immortal and blessed. To interfere in the lives of mankind to punish or reward them would be a contradiction of its blessedness. And then he says: “For gods there are, since the knowledge of them is by clear vision.”
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, I think there’s a strong analogy here between Epicurus’ views about the gods and Epicurus’ views about pain and pleasure. Epicurus talks about pleasure as being absence of pain — but if you focus on absence of something as the only attribute of what pleasure is, then you’re going to totally miss all the positive aspects, the benefits that are involved in all different types of pleasure. In the context of the gods situation, if you simply focus on “there are no supernatural gods,” then that leaves a void. You’ve got nothing there in that section of your mind. But you don’t want nothing. You want that section filled with a positive outlook, a positive experience, a positive attitude about the entire topic. And if you just rip out something that is wrong without replacing it with something that is right, you leave a void there that prevents you from living as happily as you otherwise would.
Joshua: Yeah, and in Usener fragment 152 from Philodemus’ On Frank Criticism, there is a quote that relates to this question. And Philodemus writes: “He will be frank with the one who has erred and even with him who responds with bitterness. Therefore, Epicurus, when Leontius, because of Pythocles, did not admit belief in the gods, reproached Pythocles in moderation.”
It’s a little unclear to me who’s doing the reproaching and whether or not Leontius joined Pythocles in his disbelief or was the one reproaching Pythocles. I don’t really understand that fully, but there’s clear evidence here from Herculaneum, from Philodemus’ On Frank Criticism, relating to exactly this question that we’re talking about.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s a good quote that does support the general context of virtually everything else that Epicurus has ever said in his letters or in the Principal Doctrines or wherever. He’s insisting on the importance of taking a position that there are gods and that they are incorruptible and that they are blessed and that nothing should be thought about the gods that is inconsistent with incorruptibility and blessedness. In fact, it’s hard to think of any theme in Epicurean philosophy that is more consistent throughout all of the texts than the contention that happy living requires you to have the right attitude about the nature of the gods.
The practical aspects of that were apparent in the ancient world. They were apparent to Socrates when he decided it was best for him to drink the hemlock. They’ve been apparent through centuries and centuries of religious wars that have taken place and that continue to this day. It is important for you to take a position in your own mind as to what you think about these contentions that gods are controlling events, that gods are going to reward you or punish you after you die. It’s just critically important for you to take a position on it one way or the other. And to simply say, I don’t know, is going to cut out so many aspects of life and leave you totally floating without a point of reference to make a decision.
You know, Joshua, I can’t end this episode today without going back to the earlier reference you made to Thales predicting the eclipse back in the Battle of the Halys. Over the years, one of my favorite books to read has always been Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. And the premise of that book is a conflict between Mark Twain’s hero in that book and supernatural religion that was ruling the world of the Middle Ages where his protagonist was transported to. But the central event that launches off the book is that Mark Twain’s hero knows that a particular eclipse is going to occur at a particular time on a particular day. And because he has this knowledge of the eclipse, the entire story is turned upside down and he becomes able to manage all of the difficulties that a world of supernatural religion is throwing at him.
And anyone who wants an interesting story to read about those kinds of things, I would highly recommend that book. Because, as is consistent with much of Mark Twain’s work, it is basically a representation of the conflict that we have against those who allege that supernatural forces and even fear of the unknown are uncontrollable and that we have no way of managing. And to me, that’s what Epicurus is suggesting throughout all of his work — that the study of nature is going to give you the understanding and the ability to deal with uncertainties, to deal with unknown events that seem to be awe-inspiring and make you think that there might be something supernatural that’s out to help you or out to hurt you. And it’s through that study of nature that everything else becomes possible, including a proper understanding of the nature of pleasure and how to pursue it.
So rather than go on to Democritus today — and Democritus is such an important figure to Epicurus that we probably ought to lead off next week, because so much of Epicurean philosophy originated through some of the insights that Democritus came up with — there are a couple of very interesting references that Velleius makes about Democritus that we’ll discuss next week. But in the meantime, let’s go ahead and bring today’s episode to a conclusion on these themes of how important these questions are to living happily today in the year 2024. Josh, any closing thoughts?
Joshua: I was listening to a different audiobook — I can’t remember which one — but I heard a new quote that was new to me and that I found rather interesting. This one comes from Gustave Flaubert, and he wrote: “The melancholy of the antique world seems to me more profound than that of the moderns, all of whom imply that beyond the dark void lies immortality. But for the ancients, that black hole is infinity itself. Their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony — no crying out, no convulsions, nothing but the fixity of the pensive gaze. With the gods gone and the Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment — from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius — when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur.”
So it deals with this question of not just mankind’s relationship with the gods, but mankind’s relationship with death and with what comes beyond death — or doesn’t. And for the Epicureans, the answer has always been very, very clear. Death, whether we like it or not, whether we want it to be otherwise or not, is the final and unalterable end of our existence in this universe as human beings. We are finished at that point. The soul does not survive beyond the death of the body because it’s inextricably linked to the body. When the body dies, the soul dies.
And so when Flaubert writes that “for the ancients, that black hole is infinity itself. Their dreams bloom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony, no crying out, no convulsions, nothing but the fixity of the pensive gaze” — when you confront death as Epicurus consistently urges us to do, it does bring things into focus. It brings not just your life or your philosophy or your view of the gods — it brings everything into focus in an important and crucial way. And Flaubert says, “Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur.” This view of humans facing mortality without any hope beyond the grave — that far from making us miserable, we should be using philosophy and our study of nature, our understanding of the nature of the gods, to enrich our experience, pursue pleasure, and find a way to come to terms with our own mortality rather than to fear it or to make up stories about something that comes later on.
Cassius: Yes, Joshua, that’s a good way to close this episode today. As we were preparing for it yesterday and as we’re making notes on what Velleius was talking about, it really hit me that that is one of the biggest themes of what we’re dealing with. And I’ve placed it at the top of the front page of the EpicureanFriends website because the question that much of this resolves down to is: how would you live if you were certain that there are no supernatural gods and no life after death?
Regardless of anything else in Epicurean philosophy that we might consider to be debatable, it seems absolutely certain that Epicurus held very strongly that there are no supernatural gods that create the universe or intervene in our lives, and he’s also very firm that there is no life after death. And I sometimes wonder, especially with those who come into the study of Epicurus because they’re interested in happiness and pleasure and those words that are so attractive to us, whether people fully understand the ramifications of this kind of question. Because that’s what brings everything else into focus. You don’t have an unlimited amount of time to answer these questions. You don’t have a guardian angel sitting on your shoulder whispering in your ear what the right thing to do is, so that you can default on these questions yourself and just listen to somebody else.
If you’re fully persuaded by Epicurean philosophy, then you are certain — in every practical meaning that the word certain can have — that there are no supernatural gods, and that you will not survive death. And so with that knowledge as your foundation, how then should you live? And it’s then that Epicurus says: you look to nature, you study the meaning of pleasure and the ways to engage in pleasure and to pursue happiness. But it’s only because you’re absolutely convinced of the correctness of these first decisions about supernatural gods and the absence of life after death that you get into a framework of Epicurean philosophy where, I think, you can understand how these ancients that you were just mentioning were approaching this question. Because once you become convinced of these premises about what happens after death, then you know and can begin to really appreciate the urgency of coming to answers that are for you correct and that will prevent you from having the regret at the end of your life that you’ve misspent your time.
Okay, as always, drop by the EpicureanFriends Forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this episode or any other subject related to Epicurus. Thanks for your time. We’ll be back next week. See you then. Bye.