Episode 240 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Part 15 - The False Allegation That General Assent Was The Epicurean Basis For Divinity

• • Prolepsis and the Basis of Belief in Gods: Cotta critiques Velleius’s argument by suggesting that the belief in gods arises from the general assent of people. However, Epicurus posits that the belief in gods is rooted in prolepsis, a pre-rational perception equivalent to the senses, allowing humans to recognize gods as a class of entities to be examined. This faculty, unlike constructed opinions, provides the foundation for discussing gods, distinct from the specific gods worshipped by different cultures.
    • Cotta’s Misinterpretation of Epicurean Theology: Cotta argues that Epicurus claims the existence of gods is based on widespread belief, misrepresenting Epicurus’s position. Epicurus asserts that knowledge of gods stems from prolepsis, not from human consensus, and any particular notion of a god is an opinion subject to scrutiny. Epicurus maintains that the notion of gods as blessed and immortal is derived from innate perception rather than popular belief, challenging Cotta’s accusations.
    • Academic Skepticism and Its Limitations: Cotta’s skepticism undermines his arguments against Epicureanism by denying any certain knowledge while asserting the falsity of specific claims. This inconsistency highlights the problematic nature of using skepticism to refute Epicurus, as Cotta fails to substantiate his position while criticizing Epicurean assertions. The discussion reveals the philosophical tension between skepticism and the need for a coherent alternative framework.
    • Epicurean Critique of Supernatural Deities: Epicurus rejects traditional notions of gods as creators and overseers, emphasizing natural explanations consistent with physics. He distinguishes between common misconceptions and the philosophical understanding of gods as non-interventionist, blessed, and imperishable. This perspective challenges the prevailing orthodoxy of divine intervention and underlines the importance of a rational approach to theology.
    • Cicero’s Contradictory Stance on Philosophy and Belief: The text reveals Cicero’s inconsistent treatment of philosophical issues, oscillating between skepticism and an acceptance of comforting beliefs like the afterlife. Cicero’s critiques of Epicureanism reflect a selective approach to philosophy, prioritizing emotional comfort over truth-seeking. This inconsistency contrasts with Epicurus’s commitment to understanding the nature of gods and the universe through evidence and reason.

Transcript

Cassius: Welcome to episode 240 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucious 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@epicureanfriends.com where we have a thread to discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. Today we’re continuing in Cicero’s on the nature of the gods. We have completed Vallejo’s presentation and starting today in section 23, we are getting into the heart of the argument that kata the academic skeptic is going to be using to try to refute what Valle has said. We started off last week with some general observations about academic skepticism and the inconsistency of ADA’s ultimate position. The academic skeptics are devoted to the idea that nothing is knowable, but nevertheless that does not stop them from saying that all sorts of things they themselves know to be false. And so Kata will be expanding on this argument as we go forward for the next several weeks about the falsity of the epicurean position without explaining to us how he’s sure that it’s faults other than he thinks it makes no sense. Today. Right off the bat, we’re going to have something we need to discuss at length, but let me introduce the subject by reviewing what Kata says in section 23. Yong translates it this way. You have said that the general ascent of men of all nations and all degrees is an argument strong enough to induce us to acknowledge the being of the gods. This is not only a weak but a false argument for first of all, how do you know the opinions of all nations? I really believe there are many people so savage that they have no thoughts of a deity. What think you have Dus who was called the atheist and of Theodorus after him, did they not plainly deny the very essence of a deity, protagonists of abrah, whom you just now mentioned? The greatest sofas of his age was banished by order of the Athenians from their city and territories and his books were publicly burnt because these words were in the beginning of his treatise concerning the gods, I am unable to arrive at any knowledge whether there are or are not any gods. This treatment of him I imagine restrained many from professing their disbelief of a deity since the doubt of it only could not escape punishment. What shall we say of the sacrilegious, the impious and the perjured? If Tubus, Lucius, lupus or carbo, the son of Neptune, as Lucilius says, had believed that there were gods, would either of them have carried his perjury and impieties to such excess? Your reasoning, therefore to confirm your assertion is not so conclusive as you think it is, but as this is the manner in which other philosophers have argued on the same subject, I’ll take no further notice of it. I’d rather choose to proceed to what is properly your own. Okay, before we go on to the second part of ADA’s argument, let’s deal with this very first opening salvo, which starts with the sentence you have said that the general ascent of men of all nations is an argument strong enough to induce us to acknowledge the being of the gods. The first thing I would say about that is I think that that is not an accurate representation of what Valle has said. If we think back to our discussions of several weeks ago, Valle has said that Epicurus grounded belief in the Gods in the prolapses, one of the three canonical faculties of human beings, persis being a faculty, the equivalent of the five senses or of the feeling of pain and pleasure, which we take as a given due to our human makeup as a contact with the outside world. When Kata talks about the general ascent of men of all nations and all degrees general, ascent implies a concept that has been formed after reasoning. In other words, if I ascent to something, I agree that it is true. I agree that a particular construct has been well argued and that the rationality behind it is acceptable, but that is exactly the stage at which Valle and Epicurus are not looking to first, they’re looking to paralysis, which is a pre rational stage of perception and pointing out not that all men agree that Yahweh is the Lord of the universe or Allah is the Lord of the universe or any particular God, Zeus, Venus, any particular construct is true. Epic is saying that the belief in the class of beings we call Gods is something that derives from prolapses, but any particular conclusion about the nature of the gods is an opinion. The Prolapses provides the basis for perceiving that the class of entities call Gods or something that we should take cognizance of something to be examined further and about, which we can and should develop theories that we then argue as to whether they are true or false or not. But the Proleptic basis is an assertion that there is in the human makeup, just like there are eyes and ears, just like there’s feelings of pleasure and pain. A faculty that is disposing us to recognize this question as something to be examined that is a far cry from saying that the general ascent of men in Greece, that there is a Zeus, that the general ascent of men in Rome, that there is a Jupiter, that the general ascent of men in Jerusalem, that there’s Yahweh, that the general ascent of men in Saudi Arabia is that there’s Allah. Those are very different level constructs than what Epicurus is talking about, and each of the ones I’ve just mentioned can be examined to determine whether they are true or false from an epicurean point of view, they’re going to be determined to be false because they conflict with basic physics and basic understanding. When you allege that a God has created the universe, you are alleging something that is simply not acceptable in epicurean physics, but the Proleptic origin of humans recognizing that the issue of Gods is something that has to be addressed and that Gods to the extent that they exist, are going to be blessed and imperishable. That is a much stronger argument that is different from what kata is picking out here to attack. When Kata says that this is not only a weak but a false argument and says that, do we even know the opinions of all nations, that again, is not addressing the argument that Valle has presented because Valle is not arguing that Gods are X, y, and Z because 50,000 Frenchmen say that they are. Valle is arguing that the subject of Gods is something that is of significance to men and that any proper conception of the gods would have to include that they are blessed and imperishable. That’s the foundation of what Valle and Epicurus were presenting the remainder of the presentation. When Blay starts talking about quasi blood and quasi bodies and so forth, that clearly extends into the realm of reason, speculation about particular assertions about the gods, which is not at the same level of proleptic clarity as the fact that they are blessed or imperishable or the fact that they are issues for us to consider in the first place. Now, the material that we’re going to be covering both in Section 23 and for the next several weeks contains a lot of very interesting detail about how these arguments were constructed that we don’t even necessarily get from Valle himself because kata is going to point back to Democrat as the originator of the idea of images and the different types of images and their potential relationships to divinity. We’re going to get a lot more detail as we go forward and kata gives us these criticisms, but first and foremost, I would argue that anyone who asserts that epicure said that there are gods because 50,000 Frenchmen or 50 billion Frenchmen say so is not representing Epicurus argument accurately. Epicurus argument is that human beings have a proleptic faculty just like they have a faculty of pleasure and pain, just like they have the faculty of the five senses, and it is on the basis of this faculty, which reveals to us the significance of a discussion of the gods. That is really what Epicurus is asserting. He is not agreeing with any particular contention about a specific God in France or Athens or Jerusalem or anywhere else.

Joshua: Yeah, I agree with you Cassius. It’s very important to get very clear what the epicureans were actually saying. So in section 1 23 of the young translation of the letter to Manus, it says this quote, those things which without seizing, I have declared unto those do and exercise thyself therein holding them to be the elements of right life. First, believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed according to the notion of a God indicated by the common sense of mankind. And so believing thou shalt not affirm of him anything that is foreign to his immortality or that agrees not with his blessedness, but believe about him, whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For verily there are gods and the knowledge of them is manifest, but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them, not the man who denies the gods worship by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods. What the multitude believes about them is truly impious, and in section 24, he continues for the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions. Hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like unto themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind. So I think it’s important to get this straight, and I’d take on board Cassius that you mentioned that the primary knowledge of the gods does not come from any argument or from any application of reason, but from a direct proleptic experience, this was the epicurean view of things, but even considering the arguments that he made either in support of the position or to modify the position, it’s important to get straight what Epicurus himself is actually saying, and what he’s not saying is this, we should believe in the gods because everyone else, the whole world over believes in the gods. If that were the case, if this was Epicurus argument, then he would be left in a position where he would also have to accept other ideas about the gods that everyone else, the whole world over believes about the gods even though they are contradictory to other elements of his philosophy. For example, I think that epicurean theology is unique in the sense that the gods he’s describing are not supernatural beings. Dogen’s LAIs records in his book on Piro who we talked about last week under the subject of skepticism, he records that Epicurus often went to hear what Piro had to say in describing what he experienced in Bactria and in India when traveling with the army of Alexander the Great, and one of the things that Piro saw there was you go to this other part of the world and just like the Egyptians and just like the Hebrews and just like the Venetians and all these other places, they have their own ideas about the gods and their ideas about the gods don’t match our ideas about the gods. And for Piro, this was a plank in support of his skepticism. The idea being that, well, if nobody knows what’s going on here and everybody has a different opinion, how are we supposed to find the truth? But for Epicurus, because this is not the main reason that he accepts his understanding of the gods, he’s not left in that position. If this was the only argument that he offered, we have to believe in the gods because everybody believes in the gods, then you would have to believe in the efficacy of animal sacrifice because pretty much everybody in the periphery of the Greek world at the time had gods that were propitiated by animal sacrifice. If this was the case, you would have to believe that the Gods are going to punish you for acting in the wrong way because again, in the periphery of the Greek world at the time, pretty much everybody’s God was like that, and you would have to believe also in the validity of Oracles because pretty much everybody in that world consulted the oracles and thought that their pronouncements were true. Now, Epicurus rejects pretty much all of that, but he keeps this idea of the gods and he interprets it in a way that is consistent with his philosophy but also consistent with itself. The idea of the gods is consistent with the definition of gods. If the gods have a need to create and they have a need to intervene in the affairs of men, then they are not as self-reliant as you would expect someone who had attained to the greatest pleasure of epicurean philosophy to be. And so I think there’s a lot of problems with the way that Cicero interprets this from epicurean philosophy, in part because epicure says, yes, you should believe in the gods, but to believe what the multitude believes about the gods, that is true impiety and of course someone who just said, I’m just going to believe what everyone else believes and that’s it. He could never reach that position. So Cicero is missing what’s actually going on here, I think.

Cassius: Joshua? Yes. Let me agree with you by giving an example comes to my mind in hearing you discuss it that way. The more I read and think about this academic skeptic argument, the more irritated it makes me. We’ve got the equivalent here. Kata taking the position. Look around you Valle. Don’t you see lots of different types of four-legged animals who bark and who chase cats, but some of them are big, some of them are small, some of them are white, some of them are black, some of them are friendly, some of them are unfriendly, some of them look spotted, some of them look pure white, they’re pure black. They’re so many different types of these four-legged animals out there. How can you tell me, Vallejo, that dogs exist because there’s so many different perceptions of dogs in the world. Dogs can’t exist as a thing in themselves because you’ve got so many discrepancies in the way people look at dogs. Now that may not be a perfect illusion, but this is the academic skeptic argument because there are so many different perspectives on something that means that no knowledge is possible. That means that the very thing that you’re talking about, the thing that we all can understand in our minds is a reference point such as the word dogs or such as cats or something like that. It would be the equivalent of saying that dogs and cats don’t exist because there are so many differences between the individual dogs and cats. Valle and Epicurus are talking about the issue that we can communicate with each other about dogs and cats. We understand what this concept is that we’re talking about even though we all understand at the same time that every individual dog and every individual cat is unique in some way because every dog is not exactly alike every other dog. That does not prevent us from talking about dogs. It does not prevent us from talking about cats. It does not prevent us from talking about snowflakes. If indeed every snowflake is individually unique, it is possible for us to focus in on a concept that we’re talking about and discuss it even though there are tremendous numbers of different perspectives about them. And I’m not saying that any of those perspectives are correct in the sense that a particular observation of a particular snowflake or a particular dog or a particular cat is absolutely true. The person who’s talking about a dog or a cat at a particular moment may in fact be hallucinating, may in fact just be speculating about what he’s talking about and the particular one that he’s mentioning may not exist and we should attempt to get behind what this person is saying and either prove what he’s saying to be accurate for all of us or not accurate for all of us. But the implication of where Kata is going here is exactly that. In fact, if you look closely at the way Y is describing this in this first sentence, he says that the general sin of men of all nations is an argument strong enough to induce us to acknowledge the being of the gods is the way Yang translates that first sentence, the being of the gods. And then further on he says, I really believe there are many people so savage that they have no thoughts of a deity. It is not proper to confuse together the issue of talking about the essence or being or thoughts of a deity with particular deities, and that’s the direction kata is going to go the further along we get. But even at this very beginning point, this is the key issue that distinguishes Epicurus from the other philosophers. We will hear it discussed that Epicurus was extremely pious, that he had a great respect for the gods, but there is no example that I’m aware of where Epicurus is making a specific allegation that a specific God exists in a specific way. There’s no allegation in the letter to Menoras that he’s talking about Zeus or Venus or Athena or any particular God. He’s talking about the way we approach the subject in general and the way that we understand that this subject can be discussed. In fact, we haven’t gotten into the details of the second part of section three here, but even when Kata is discussing, for example, Prota of Abrah who says that he was unable to arrive at any knowledge whether there are or not any gods, I would suggest that the devil in the detail there is what really was Prota saying was he referring to God’s in the sense of I don’t have any knowledge whether there are or not any Olympians or there are or not any zeuss or Athenas in the very act of making the statement that he’s not able to arrive at any knowledge about whether there are any gods. He is expecting people to understand in general what he is talking about. He’s not being specific at least in this quotation as to whether talking about Zeus or Athena, but protagonists is saying there’s a subject that I want to communicate with you about. There’s a subject that is generally called Gods, and what I’m telling you is that I don’t have any evidence whether Gods exist or not. The most logical interpretation of that sentence is that I don’t have any evidence of whether a particular God exists or not, but that does not prevent him from talking about the subject. He’s not saying that the subject of our discussion does not exist. He’s saying that I have no knowledge that a particular instance of it exists or not, whether or not protagonists meant it that way. What we do know is that when you combine the evidence from the letter to Menoras with the way that Valle has told us that Epicurus was grounding his reasoning, Epicurus is approaching the subject of Gods as something that we can discuss intelligently and arrive at the conclusion that they’re blessed and imperishable based on a proleptic faculty that all men, at least all normal men, all healthy men have else they would not be able to discuss the subject in the first place. To wrap up that comment, the essential point is we should not accept the premise of an academic skeptic who is telling us that knowledge of this subject is impossible. At the same time that he is asserting that particular positions are false, he cannot know that a particular position is false unless he is taking position on what is true.

Joshua: And of course, Cassius, this wouldn’t be Cicero if he didn’t go into a lengthy DRA about Greek and Roman history. So we have a few names we should deal with. One of them is Dus, who was called an atheist, and then he mentions Theodore, who plainly denied the very essence of a deity, protagonists of Abera, whom you just now mentioned the greatest office of his age was banished by the Athenians from their city, and his books were publicly burned because these words were in the beginning of his treatise concerning of the gods, I am unable to arrive at any knowledge whether there are or are not any gods. And Cicero further mentions a few Roman names. He says, what shall we say of the sacrilegious, the impious and the perjurers? If Tubus Lucas lupus or carbo, the son of Neptune, as Lucilius says, I believed that there were Gods, would either of them have carried his perries and impieties to such excess? So the question as to the extent or existence of atheism or agnosticism as a proposition that was put forward by people in the ancient world is in question. And part of the reason it’s in question is because we have a lot of claims like the ones we find here in Cicero where we have a author who’s living centuries after these philosophers making claims about what they thought. Unfortunately, a lot of ancient fragmentary sources are in this vein just like Cicero making claims about what Epicure said and then getting it slightly but very importantly wrong. So I don’t know whether a Dia and Theodore and Proteus whether they could really be said to have been atheists in the modern sense of the word, but there are signs of people who rejected the prevailing orthodoxy. And in fact, in the Bible we have this interesting quote and everyone’s heard it. The fool has said in his heart there is no God. Well, for someone to write that down, they have to have heard someone else saying either there is no God or something. That sounded quite a lot like that to the author. So there’s clearly some pushback in the ancient world, and I think last week I quoted from Edward Gibbon who said that the various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were considered by the people as equally true by the philosophers as equally false and by the magistrates as equally useful. So we do have this kind of wig history approach of saying that in the ancient world, everything was great and the philosophers were brilliant and none of them believed in this silly idea of supernatural gods that trouble us. And then we had the Middle Ages and they were horrible, and then we had the Renaissance and everything was great. Again, this is a simplistic view of things. So my estimation probably there were people in the ancient world who just rejected outright the existence of the gods. I see no real problem with that approach. I don’t think it’s such a revolutionary and universal idea that no one anywhere in the ancient world couldn’t possibly have had that idea. I think it’s very likely that there were people who were thinking along those lines.

Cassius: Joshua, lemme jump in there. I think you’re right. People thinking along the lines of what is today considered modern atheism, maybe protagonists was the equivalent of a modern atheist, but Epicurus did not consider himself to be an atheist. And I think we can make the same distinction today as with the modern atheist who simply say, well, Jehovah doesn’t exist or Allah doesn’t exist. Those are specific factual allegations that a particular God does not exist, but the modern atheist, when they properly reject the claims of a particular God, do not generally try to go further and say, well, Yahweh, Allah and Zeus may not exist. But I’m not telling you that there are not other beings in the universe who are actually blessed and imperishable and who did not create the universe, but who are essentially godlike in the way they’re able to live. The modern atheists don’t go so far as to say that, and it seems likely to me that these ancient atheists like protagonists were also mainly concerned with denying the existence of particular gods who they found objectionable such as Zeus, but they never got around to even addressing the direction that Epicurus is going in, getting behind the question of the error of a particular God’s existence and starting to deal with the more important issue of why are we even talking about all of this in the first place? What is it that in our nature has disposed us to feel like this issue needed to be addressed and to then come up with a way as Epicurus was apparently doing to address the fact that nature has disposed us to conceptualize blessedness and imp perishability as an attribute that real living beings can in reality possess. So again, I didn’t mean to interrupt you there, but bouncing off what you just said, I think that that’s one way of approaching this analysis that gets us behind what Kata is attempting to do. Those who simply want to say Jehovah doesn’t exist are making a point that has some limited value, but it is a point that doesn’t address the deeper human relationship to the topic in the first place just because certain people get it wrong when they categorize a particular God as creating the universe and controlling our destiny, that doesn’t end the discussion. The discussion of blessedness and imp perishability and the potentiality of that in the real universe is a subject that demands further analysis beyond simply saying that Zeus doesn’t exist. To say that Zeus doesn’t exist. To say that a particular religion is absurd is not the end of the story we hold. That centaurs don’t exist because the physics that would allow centaurs to exist would not be consistent with the rest of our physics. We hold that supernatural Gods creating universes cannot exist because such a construct would be contradictory to our knowledge of physics and the nature of the universe. But to say that a particular thing does not exist does not end a discussion that starts because of a natural faculty that brings something to our attention in the first place. As you’ve said, Joshua Kata is asserting that looking to the opinions of men is the manner in which other philosophers have argued on the same subject. And so he take no further notice of it at present and he’s going to proceed to discussing what is purely epicurean as opposed to looking at the arguments of other philosophers. But as Valle has reminded us, Epicurus has not looked to the opinions of other philosophers as the basis for his own opinion either in ethics or physics or in any other assertion that Epicurus makes. Epicurus always goes back to what he can validate for himself through his natural faculties. He’s not accepting conclusions of other people that he cannot validate for himself.

Joshua: And I would again say we’d really just need to look at the letter to Manus in order to understand this, where it says, first believe that a God is a living being immortal and blessed according to the notion of a God indicated by the common sense of mankind. When you look at that sentence, CIZ R appears to have interpreted to say that according to the notion indicated by the common sense of mankind, God’s exist. But that’s really not what Epicurus says here. He says later that Gods are manifest through this proleptic perception. What he’s saying now is that the nature of the Gods as blessed and incorruptible is the notion indicated by the common sense of mankind. But again, this is not his only reason for thinking that God’s exist, which Kata is sort of implying that it is. And again, this is not even really an argument in favor of their existence because Epicurus doesn’t need an argument in favor of their existence. He’s using this direct perception. This is partially an argument for the nature of how they exist, which is a blessed B incorruptible. That’s not to say that Epicurus agrees with the common notion of mankind in other aspects of the nature of the gods because he thinks they don’t intervene and so forth. So for kada to present this as Epicurus argument for the existence of the gods, as Kada says in section 23, you have said that the general ascent of men of all nations and all degrees is an argument strong enough to induce us to acknowledge the being of the gods. And the simple fact is that’s not really what Epicurus is saying. Epicurus is saying that the faculty of paralysis is what induces us to acknowledge the being of the gods. What we get not from the general ascent of men of all nations, but what we get from the notion of a God indicated by the common sense of mankind from loiter to menno is not knowledge that they exist but understanding of how they exist. And that’s not true because people believe it. What Epicurus is saying really is this the definition of a God? He’s establishing his terms more than anything else. This is not an argument in favor of the gods being blessed and incorruptible. This is not an argument in favor of the existence of the gods. He’s just saying this is what a God is according to the definition that people use when they’re talking about a God. A God is a thing that is blessed and incorruptible. And when you accept this definition, you will not affirm of him anything that is foreign to his immortality or that agrees not with his blessedness. And then later he says, for verily there are gods, and this is really where he makes this claim. And then he says, and the knowledge of them is manifest. He doesn’t say For verily there are gods, and the knowledge of them comes from looking at everywhere on earth where they believe in the existence of Gods. That’s not the argument that he’s making. And Kata is interpreting this to be the argument that he’s making.

Cassius: Yeah, I think that’s the essential point here. Just because everybody in the world is making specific assertions about Gods doesn’t mean that any of those specific assertions are accurate, but it tells you something. The fact that everybody is making assertions about Gods is itself something that is significant. There is some reason that these people are making assertions about gods, and that’s what Epicurus is. I think, wanting to get to the bottom of that, the subject that we’re talking about has a natural basis to it. We just have to cut through all of the ridiculous overgrowth of weeds and get back to the discussion of why we’re talking about the subject in the first place. And it’s not because a God had to have created the universe. There’s something else that’s deeper within the human makeup that is telling us that this subject is important to address so that we can begin to bring today’s episode to a conclusion. Let me make a quick reference to the ending of section 23 here that we haven’t gotten to so far, because after Ada says that he’s going to proceed to discuss what’s uniquely Epicurean, ADA says this, I’ll accept for purposes of this discussion that there are, gods instruct me then concerning their origin, inform me where they are, what sort of body, what mind they have, and what is their course of life. For these I am desirous of knowing, you attribute the most absolute power and efficacy to atoms out of them. You pretend that everything is made, but there are no atoms for, there is nothing without body. Every place is occupied by body. Therefore, there can be no such thing as a vacuum or an atom. The first sentence of 34 says, I advance these principles of the naturalists without knowing whether they are true or false. Yet they are more like the truth in those statements of yours, for they are the absurdities in which are before him. Luc used to indulge. This is the irony and the irritating aspect of kata. He’s saying, I don’t really know anything, and I’m not trying to tell you that anything is true, but your description of Adams, those do not exist. He’s absolutely confident that Adams don’t exist when he’s criticizing Epicurus, which is just a total contradiction of his ultimate philosophical position that we can’t be sure of anything. But that’s just the direction that Kata is attempting to take these arguments. He’s going to be attacking specific allegations without asserting his own counter allegations as being true. And he’s going to attempt to convince people to infer from his criticisms that a position of epicurus, which in fact Epicurus has not taken is false. He’s going to go in the direction of arguing that Val’s speculations about quasi blood and quasi bodies and so forth are so ridiculous that they tell us that we should reject everything that Epicurus has said about Gods. Even though the arguments about quasi bodies, quasi blood and so forth are opinions that are reasonably possible but are beyond what is required to understand divinity, which is nothing more than the idea that divinities are imperishable and blessed. So we won’t go further in the details of this today, but we’ll begin to bring today to a resolution again focused on this point that what Kata is criticizing is not what Epicurus has said or Valle has advocated. And as we end this discussion today, we find ourselves back at the realization that Kata is ultimately grounding his own positions, not solely in radical skepticism, but in rejecting an atomic basis, a natural basis to the universe which is alone the basis for coming to a rational, natural explanation of the way things are and the subject of Gods in the first place. If Kada is going to reject atomic theory as the basis for discussing the way the world works, it’s going to be essential for us to look carefully at what Kada is going to substitute in its place, which is going to end up being the kind of supernatural arbitrariness and capriciousness that allows somebody to be a priest like Kata was, while at the same time not believing in his own heart what he says to other people about the gods. So as we bring the episode to a close, Joshua, do you have any final thoughts today?

Joshua: The more I look at that passage from letter to Manus, I think he’s not even relying on the common notion of mankind to give him an understanding of the guide. He’s using that as a working definition in order to discuss the subject more than anything else. He’s not really getting anything from men of all nations in what they believe. Cassius, what I’m thinking about as we go through this with kata constantly on the alert to decline any certainty in any matter whatsoever, I think of a quote from Cone, another book, and I see this comes from a work called De Sinek Dete or on Old Age, and the speaker is supposed to be Kate to the Elder, but I see Cicero himself in this. And what he says is this, for these reasons, Skipio my old age sits light upon me for you said that this has been a cause of wonder to you and Lis. And not only is it not burdensome but is even happy. And if I err in my belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err. Nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be rested from me while I live, but if when dead, I am going to be without sensation as some petty philosophers think. And I have no fear that these Sears, when they are dead will have the laugh on me again if we are not going to be immortal. Nevertheless, it is desirable for a man to be blotted out at his proper time for his nature has marked the bounds of everything else. So she has marked the bounds of life. So what I’m getting here, and again, Cicero has Cato the elder who I’m pretty sure was dead at the time this was produced. Cicero has Cato the Elder give this little speech, but I see this as being part of Cicero’s own perspective, and it’s the perspective I think of quite a few people. If I air in my belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err. Nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be rested from me while I live. In other words, I don’t know if I’m right in my desire for an eternal afterlife and I may turn out to be wrong, but if I am wrong, I don’t want to know that I’m wrong while I’m still living in this veil of tears. And it’s such a markedly different perspective to the one that we find in kata here in on the nature of the gods. In our earlier exploration of Cicero’s Debus on ends, we had Cicero himself giving the counter attack. And perhaps there’s something stylistic in this that when we have a full-fledged academic skeptic who’s not willing to say anything for certain except that Epicurus is wrong about everything, that’s the only thing he’s willing to grant as certain in this world that Epicurus is wrong, to then go on to another work and say, I don’t care if I’m wrong, as long as it makes me happy. I think one of the rewarding features of going through all of these books is we get insight into Cicero himself and how he approaches the subject of philosophy. And let me tell you, it is not with any kind of consistency for the epicurean. We acknowledge that death is the end of our lives, but that doesn’t mean that we are not happy while we’re living.

Cassius: So yes, Joshua Cicero’s admitting there that he would rather clinging to his belief in an afterlife rather than to accept it to be true that no afterlife exists. People accuse epicurus of selective philosophizing based on wanting to be happy as opposed to determining what is true. I think that’s false. In Epicurus case, I think Epicurus considers that he wants to be happy because he has considered it to be true, that there are no supernatural gods and that there is no life after death, but Epicurus is going after the truth. And when we hear Cicero say things like what you just quoted, we have to understand that Cicero is not going to let truth get in his way in opposing what he thinks is the error of Epicurean philosophy. He is going to marshal whatever arguments he can to attempt to make epicurean arguments look bad. And I think that’s what we’ve seen today in the presentation of Kata. Kata has not come to grips with Epicurus true position. He has proceeded as if Epicurus is making arguments, which Epicurus himself did not really make. And there’s none more damaging and more faults than arguing that Epicurus took his views that God’s exist from the fact that large number of people assert that God’s exist. Epicurus took his positions and checked them all based on the operation of the canonical faculties, the feelings of pleasure and pain, the five senses and prolapses. Those are the starting points to which he went back, and those are the foundation from which he concluded that Gods are blessed and imperishable. And that is a totally different argument than what Kada is attempting to demolish. When Kada says that such an argument from the common ascent of men is not only a weak but a false argument, he would be exactly right to say that any number of people taking a particular position means that that particular position is correct, is a ridiculous argument. But that was not what Epicurus was arguing. So with that, let’s close for the day. Thanks for your time. We’ll be back next week. See you then. Bye.