Episode 253 - The Skeptic Asks: Was Epicurus A Materialist?
Date: 10/27/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4112-episode-253-how-the-riddle-of-epicurus-fits-into-the-epicurean-view-of-the-gods/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 253 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 discussion thread for this and all of our podcast episodes. We are continuing to go through Cicero’s on the nature of the gods and we’re at approximately section 41 Last week, our podcast title ended up being Why Reverence the epicurean gods and the discussion we had was devoted to the epicurean view versus the academic skeptic view of the gods in terms of the activities of gods and kata. The academic skeptic was criticizing the epicurean for ADA’s words, making the gods out to be inactive and to be concerned only with their own happiness. The presumption of all this of course, is that if you’re going to have a God that created the universe and that set everything in motion, then you really need to have that God involved in the actions of human beings and you get into all these questions about being grateful for the good things Gods do to you and being concerned about the bad things that God might do to you if you don’t follow their rules. One aspect of that question that is more well known to people today than many other aspects of epicurean philosophy is something that is identified on the internet today. There’s YouTube videos about it. It’s discussed lots of different places and it is known as the riddle of Epicurus. What we’re going to do today is to discuss the current version of this riddle, where it came from to what extent it’s associated with the epicurean school from the ancient world, keeping the big picture in mind of how the riddle of epicurus as it’s known, relates to this whole question of the nature of the gods. As we go through this, I think we’re going to be finding that there are parts of this riddle of epicurus that are sort of inconsistent with it being originally and mainly from epicurus. On the other hand, a major part of the argument and a major part of the conclusion that you draw from the argument is totally consistent with the epicurean viewpoint. And one of the things we try to do here on the podcast in all of our studies of Epicurus is to separate out the core aspects of Epicurean philosophy from some of the incorrect connotations that have come to be associated with it. Much like with Epicurus being associated with eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die is not really pure epicurean philosophy unless you go through the details of that and set it in a context that’s understandable. This riddle of epicurus also has to be set in a context because Epicurus is not going to be debating whether God’s actions are good or bad in his own school into his own students because Epicurus sets the foundation with his physics, his epistemology, that Gods are not active in human affairs whatsoever. Nevertheless, the issue of the nature of the gods and their actions is so important to so many people that it makes sense to jump into portions of common arguments and point out inconsistencies so that the person who is off on the wrong track can eventually be brought back in from the epicurean viewpoint to a more accurate perspective. So without further background, let’s start the discussion of what is today considered to be the riddle of epicurus. Where did it come from and what are the key aspects of it that are important to basically everybody today, no matter what your level of knowledge of Epicurus?
Joshua: Well, as you said Cassius, the questions relating to the nature of the gods are very difficult to get ahold of sometimes, but very important as it relates to human happiness. And this is essentially how David Hume begins his dialogue concerning natural religion. This is how he begins the conversation. He says this What truth, so obvious so certain as the being of a God, which the most ignorant ages have acknowledged for which the most refined geniuses have ambitiously strive to produce new proofs and arguments. What truth so important as this, which is the ground of all our hopes, the surest foundation of morality, the firmest support of society, and the only principle which ought never to be a moment absent from our thoughts and meditations, but intriguing of this obvious and important truth, what obscure questions occur concerning the nature of that divine being, his attributes, his decrees, his plan of providence. These have been always subjected to the disputations of men concerning these human reason has not reached any certain determination, but these are topics so interesting that we cannot restrain our restless inquiry with regard to them. Though nothing but doubt, uncertainty and contradiction have as yet been the result of our most accurate researches. So Cassius, you’ve set up the problem here. I think in much the same way that David Hume in his dialogue sets up the problem and it’s from David Hume, that we get the sort of the most recent major transmission of what has come to be known as the riddle of Epicurus. But David Hume is one in a long line of people who are transmitting the ideas and if we trace that line, it takes us back to the third and fourth centuries of the ancient world. It takes us back to a Christian writer named Lucilius Caius Ferus, also known as Lectans, and to give a bit of background about the history of Christian apologetics and where these problems begin to be dealt with, I’m going to point to origin of Caesarea, also known as origin of Alexandria who lived between roughly the years 180 5 and 2 53 AD as a beginning point to get a handle on the timeline here. So Origen is responding to a pagan critic of Christianity named Celsius and for a long time it was thought that the Celsius he’s responding to is the same Celsius to whom Lucian of Samo. Sada addresses his famous letter regarding Alexander the false prophet. More recent research from about the 16th century forward has suggested that actually the Celsius in question was probably a neo platonist or something like that and not an epicurean, but there is argument on this point. So we have here an early example of a Christian writer responding to a pagan work and trying to present a view of Christianity that is favorable and that is hopefully from his point of view, understandable and will convince people to drop their paganism and become Christian. So that’s roughly the years 180 5 to 2 53 ad and then after origin we have Lact Tanus, I’ve already mentioned his dates are approximately two 50 to 3 25 ad and in a work of Lectans called on the Anger of God, we get the earliest surviving expression of what has come to be known as the riddle of Epicurus and let me read that quickly. Latan just says on the anger of God, he says this, you see therefore that we have greater need of wisdom on account of evils and unless these things had been proposed to us, we should not be a rational animal. But if this account is true, which the stoics were in no manner able to see that argument also of epicurus is done away with God. He says either wishes to take away evils and is unable or he is able and is unwilling or he is neither willing nor able or he is both willing and able if he is willing and is able, he is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God if he is able and unwilling he is envious, which is equally at variance with God if he is neither willing nor able, he is both envious and feeble and therefore not God. If he is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God from what source then are evils or why does he not remove them? I mentioned that this is the earliest source of this paradox and it certainly does not appear in any of Epicurus surviving works like Tans does both Epicurus and Lucious on several occasions and some of those quotations are to surviving works that we do have like Lucius’s poem of course, and they’re accurate to what has survived, which if anything just creates more challenges for the question because it’s been thought for a long time that the Ridley is inconsistent with Epicurean philosophy and we’re going to get into some of that question later in the episode for more on the timeline. So again, you have origin of Alexandria circa 180 5 to circa 2 53, TIUs circa two 50 to 3 25 and TIUs was an early contemporary of the Emperor Constantine whose dates are 2 72 to 3 37 and Lac was an advisor to Constantine guiding as it says on Wikipedia his Christian religious policy in its initial stages of emergence and he was also a tutor to Constantine’s son Crispus, so it’s pretty high up there in the hierarchy if you’re tutoring the son of the Roman emperor, certainly someone to take notice of. And then after Constantine there’s this brief period with an emperor who’s come to be known as Julian the Apostate 3 31 to 360 3 who tried to christianize the empire and bring it back to Paganism and specifically a kind of neoplatonic paganism, some of Julian the apostates letters to his advisors survive. And in those letters he specifically says that he does not want any of the writings of Epicurus to be brought back into circulation. And then to finish it off, we have certainly more famous than Lactus or even origin of Caesarea. We have St. Augustine of Hippo who lived roughly from 3 54 to four 30 to put some of this into context, I’m going to go back and talk just about Lact here, whose dates once again are two 50 to 3 25 roughly, and that puts him immediately after DIY layers shift. We know at least from DIYs LAIs and from Ellucian of Ada who lived perhaps a century before and from DGen v Wanda who lived maybe a century and a half or two centuries before, we know that some of the texts of Epicurus do survive to this point in history because DGen nasal ais of course is our source for the surviving letters of Epicurus, the letters to Manus les and Ous. So it’s not inconceivable necessarily that Lactams is responding to an epicurean text either from Epicurus or from a later epicurean, but if that’s the case, we have no record of any such text.
Cassius: Joshua, that’s probably a good place for me to jump back in before we go further into the background. Let’s go back to the question of just because some of this may not have been Epicurus as original words. Let’s get back to the question of given the way it’s come down to us, to what extent Epicurus would first of all agree with it and since you’re talking about the background history, there clearly are aspects of the epicurean texts that do survive that are somewhat similar in terms of the epicureans taking to task those who would say that Gods are active in the affairs of men and are rewarding their friends and punishing enemies. For example, there is in Lucious the argument that the world as we have it could not have been created for men because of the defects in it. A God would not have from this point of view created most of the earth being desert and icy and filled with oceans and so forth if he was looking to produce a perfect place for humans to live as one might expect if one were religious. So at least that passage of lucious, which presumably was based on models that epicure started that exists as a sort of sample of where this argument comes from and there are probably other examples as well. Does anything come to your mind that we would cite for the point that Epicureans would definitely have been involved in arguing against the contradictions of those who say that the world was created by benevolent God?
Joshua: Well, as you rightly say, Cassius Lucretius is our preeminent source for this, both for the passages that you cited and for other passages as well. For example, when he talks about lightning, if lightning comes from Zeus, of course Lucretius again is living prior to the Christian era, so he can’t have been dealing with some of the questions that we’re going to be dealing with today because he preexisted these questions in many ways. But when he talks about lightning, he says If lightning comes from zoos as a weapon or as a punishment, why does he uselessly strike deserts where there are no people? Why does he sometimes strike the temples of Olympian Zeus himself? And so what we get from Lucious in general is the gods cannot have created the world because of its defects, but any argument that tries to put the gods in charge of the operation of the world is also going to fail for that and for other reasons, it’s nature that accomplishes all of these things of herself out of herself.
Cassius: And of course probably what people would cite as the major example of this would be the idea contained in both the letter to men and in principle doctrine number one, lemme quote principle doctrine number one in this context, which is the blessed and incorruptible nature knows no trouble itself nor causes trouble to any other so that it is never constrained by anger or favor for all. Such things exist only in the weak. So that’s certainly Epicurus pointing out the illogic of saying that a God who is creating the universe and presumably has this benevolence wrapped into him, is going to be doing things like punishing enemies or rewarding friends. If a God has all of these infinite characteristics of strength and omniscience and so forth, then he’s perfectly self-sufficient and has nothing to do with all of this pettiness that human beings are familiar with. That’s echoed of course in the letter to menaces where Epicurus says, do not assign to the gods anything alien to their immortality or ill suited to his blessedness, but believe about him everything that can uphold his blessedness and immortality for gods. There are since 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 empires man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods of 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 by the gift of the gods. Epicurus is consistently pointing out that it is very dangerous to assume that Gods are going to be like men in the way they handle their activities. That’s an argument that takes the premises of the opposing schools and points out the inconsistencies within them. And as the riddle has come down to us today, and as that’s all over the internet, it goes through these contradictions and then closes with this question of then why call him God? It’s basically a logic problem pointing out the inconsistencies of position that people are taking and saying that because of those inconsistencies you guys have a problem.
Joshua: Yeah. Now let me point out that Lactus is aware of these other views of epicurus because he quotes Epicurus and lucious, he says this, that which follows is concerning the school of Epicurus that as there is no anger in God. So indeed there is no kindness for when Epicurus thought it was inconsistent with God to injure and to inflict harm, which for the most part arises from the affection of anger he took away from him. Also beneficence since he saw that it followed that if God has anger he must also have kindness. Therefore lest he should concede to him of vice, he deprived him also a virtue from this. He says he is happy and uncorrupted because he cares about nothing and neither takes trouble himself nor occasions it to another. That is a very corrupted reading I think of the first principle doctrine and if anyone wants to read my notes on that, they can go to the thread for this episode where I do discuss that. But he quotes Lucious this way, he actually puts Lucius’s words into the mouth of Epicurus. He says this, but religion is overthrown if we believe Epicurus speaking. Thus for the nature of God’s must ever in itself of necessity enjoy immortality together with supreme repose far removed and withdrawn from our concerns since exempt from every pain exempt, from all dangers, strong in its own resources, not wanting anything of us, it is neither gained by favors nor moved by anger. And that passage occurs in book one of Lucious lines 44 through 49 and it reappears in book two line 6 46 through 6 51. So we know that Lact is interfacing directly with some of these texts because he’s quoting them and some of the ones he quotes survive. So his summary of principle doctrine one leaves a lot to be desired. You could say that he’s not the best reader of Epicurus in that way, but he’s not entirely ignorant of the nature of the arguments that Epicurus and Lucretius were making regarding the God they live removed from human affairs, troubled either by anger or by favor.
Cassius: Right? So let’s continue with what might be our sort of first section of this podcast and hammer home the points of agreement that Epicurus had with what has come down to us in this form as this riddle because certainly at a very high level analysis epicurus holes and it’s just absolutely clear that whatever the nature of gods are, gods are not involved in bringing evil to the world, nor are they involved in bringing good to the world. They’re not involved in bringing anything to the affairs of men as the epicurean position. Again, Epicurus would agree with the conclusion of where this rule is obviously going. And so before we turn to taking apart the nature of the argument and the way the argument is made, which is going to lead us to some interesting questions about where it all comes from and do you see anything else that we ought to point out Joshua, about just this general conclusion standing back from the riddle itself, what do we take away from the riddle is the point of the riddle?
Joshua: That’s an excellent question and to some extent the point of the riddle, the conclusion of the riddle is inconsistent with epicurean philosophy because what the riddle essentially is saying is evil exists in the world, evil is inconsistent with a God no God would allow evil to exist and presumably a God would have the power to stop it if it did exist. Therefore, essentially there is no God. Essentially that’s the conclusion that the paradox is drawing you on towards and to that extent, I think it’s certainly incompatible with an epicurean understanding of the gods. Epicurus would say first of all that evil is pain, the good is pleasure, pain is evil and there’s no expectation in any epicurean work that the Gods should trouble themselves to come down to earth to prevent pain or to deal with pain. Epicurus knows that pain exists and he doesn’t lay that to the charge of the epicurean gods. He says the Gods are removed from that, they don’t experience it themselves, they’re not troubled to deal with it and they are not propitiated by tears or moved to wrath in response to it. So in that sense, I’d say actually the riddle of Epicurus as it’s called, is very incompatible in its ultimate suggestion or conclusion with what we do know about Epicurus and his view of the gods. Do you read the paradox in a different way, Cassius? I’m reading it as evil exists, evil is inconsistent with omnipotent and benevolent God, therefore God does not exist.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s exactly the way I read it and I’ve reached the same conclusion you do that there are premises built into this riddle that are not consistent with epicurean philosophy. On the other hand, and this is where we get into interesting discussions about the role of logic and reason and so forth. On the other hand, I do think that the epicureans were more than willing to engage in debates at the level of logic and they were willing to set aside at times for the purpose of a logical debate, some of the details that they took in other aspects of their philosophy. And so I wouldn’t think that it would rule out this coming from an epicurean source that there’s a premise here that’s inconsistent with Epicurus would not necessarily rule it out as being something that an epicurean originally came up with. However, there is a difference between taking a positive position on something versus attacking someone else’s position. The epicurean took positive positions on things, especially the nature of a God and its existence at root as epicure says in his letter to m believe that a God is a living being immortal and blessed, that is a positive position that all the details aside at a general level is a statement of I know this to be true. This gets very interesting because the prevailing direction of the schools at Epicurus time was apparently that we associate with Socrates. Most people who know anything about Socrates at all know that Socrates’ basic position that he argued to the great irritation of the people around him was that the one thing that he knew was that he knew nothing. Already at the beginning of the Socratic school, the development of the academy through Plato, there was this position that the right way to approach difficult questions was to insist that you really don’t know what the answer is and it’s impossible to know and at the very root of your analysis you need to always remember that it’s impossible to really know with certainty anything from Socrates’ point of view. Other than that we don’t know anything. And so when you look at this riddle in the form that we have at today, it seems to me that the thrust of the way that it is set up is to point out the contradictions in someone else’s position. It’s not taking a direct position itself that God is evil or God is good or doesn’t really answer the question about the nature of what God really is. It really ends up simply pointing at those people who were taking the position that God is love and God is benevolent and ultimately all things work together for those who love the Lord and all things work together for good because God is good. This riddle is pointing at that person and saying, you can’t be right because evil exists in this world and you have no way around the fact that since evil exists, your God cannot be the type of God that you are making him out to be. You are wrong to take your position is where this riddle comes down. Epicurus always goes further than that. He points out where something is wrong and then he gives you one or more possibilities that are reasonable and allow you to live your life in a happy way with a reasonable construction that everything is natural and so forth. So fundamentally, when you take apart this riddle, it seems to be coming from a position that is not the standard way that Epicurus argued something. Since we started this discussion several weeks ago, I’ve had a chance to go through Hume’s dialogue concerning natural religion. When you look at that and then you also compare it to lactus, you really see how this argument is framed in terms of not what is the truth about whether there is a God not did God create the universe, not any of these specific questions about what God does or how he does it, but in terms of this problem of where did evil come from and as we can see in a couple of sources, it’s probably easiest to read in terms of going back to human and looking at how he sets it up. His dialogue concerning natural religion is set up as a debate between someone who is essentially an academic skeptic such as kata, such as Cicero, such as Socrates or Plato or any of the people who came down strictly in this academy position, which most commentators think represents Hume’s position. It’s a debate between that person and a person who is given the name of Cthe in the dialogue, cthe being the name of a very famous stoic. It’s not presented by Hume as an explicitly stoic position, but what Hume, what everybody who looks at this begins to realize is that the thread running through all of this debate is this question that is presumed in the way the riddle is set up. If we take for a moment it has given that the riddle is set up as a logic puzzle, you have this basic question of whether logic puzzles are useful or not, they become useful and they become important when you have someone attempting to reason using logic alone. In Hume’s case, cthe is taking the stoic position that the whole argument boils down to the argument by design that it is appropriate to look at the universe, look at the human body, look at the things around us, observe that they are complicated, and logically conclude that anything that is complicated must have been designed by some intelligence. Hume makes it very clear in the way he sets up and brings in the epicurus riddle that what he is attempting to deal with is this idea that you can, through logic alone through the argument by design alone, conclude that the universe was set in motion and is governed by a God. This is not just Hume’s position, this goes all the way back to the ancient stoics. Many sources talk about this, but Cicero was one of ‘em in his work on the academic questions about the history of the arguments raised by the academy when Socrates launched everything off, taking the position that nothing is knowable for sure except the fact that we know that nothing is knowable. Everybody else had to come up with a response to that and the stoics ended up taking the position that the way to deal with Socrates is argument that nothing is knowable is through logic. And so ultimately they took the argument from design and said that this is a logical and compelling argument and we therefore know that God created the universe and they go through all of these deductions that lead them to the position that is being criticized in this riddle that a benevolent omnipotent God has set into motion things the way they should be and therefore we should accept things the way that they are because God was the origin of them. Of course, in so doing the stoics claimed to be followers of Socrates, they claimed to be implementing Socrates in a way in that of course Socrates is concerned about the dialectical method as the way to determine what is really right and wrong and the stoics argued that that’s what they were doing by extending Socrates and Plato in this direction of the argument by design and therefore they claimed absolute confidence in their view of what a God was. Not everybody in the academic tradition agreed with that approach because of course it’s clear how it conflicts with Socrates, its position that nothing can be known. That’s where we end up with kata as we’ve been discussing for many weeks in on the nature of the Gods by Cicero. It’s why we end up with Hume setting out the position of philo in dialogues concerning natural religion. Both of them taking the position that you stoics are going off in a totally wrong direction. You should have stuck with Socrates, you should have stayed with the idea that nothing is knowable and you should back off from this position that the argument by design is going to lead you to all these specific conclusions about divine fire and the nature of the universe that you’re coming to. And that leads us to this part of the context, which is that people like kata, like Hume, like other of the academic skeptic school who start with the premise that they don’t know anything, they are the type who are going to argue as we see in this riddle, not by taking a position themselves but solely by attacking other positions. This Epicurus riddle is an attack on another position using the arguments of that other position against itself, but it never presents a positive resolution on its own. That is the technique of a skeptic who says, I don’t really know what the right answer is, but the one thing I know is you are wrong. And I think that’s a very important difference in perspective that people who are studying epicurus and trying to get the most out of Epicurus need to always remember the direction of philosophy that Socrates and Platos set in motion leads towards skepticism. And as we’ve read many times in the dewitt book, Epicurus was responding to the idea that knowledge is impossible and Epicurus is constructing an understandable perspective on how knowledge based on the senses is possible without supernatural intervention, without geometry or dialectical logic or other kind of word games that other schools were pursuing. So as we move past the initial conclusion that yes, Epicurus agrees with the idea that there’s inconsistencies in saying that God is omnipotent and at the same time observing that there is evil in the world, Epicurus would agree that that is inconsistent, but Epicurus would not leave his students hanging with the idea that it’s sufficient to say, nah, nah, nah, your position makes no sense and leaving it at that, nah, nah, nah, your position makes no sense is a skeptic argument. And Epicurus, because of his conclusions about the nature of the universe, doesn’t think that skepticism is ultimately justified by the facts of nature. Ogies of Warner Anders said there is a flux, there are difficulties in operation of the senses that we have to take into account, but in the end we have the ability to take the information the census give us and to use that information reasonably to reach decisions about important issues about which we can be confident. We are not Socrates, we do not take the position that there is nothing that we know except that we know nothing. And interestingly enough from that point of view, we end up being somewhat more similar to the stoics in that David Hume has his stoic say, I shall never have sent to so harsh an opinion as that of a celebrated writer who says that the skeptics are not a set of philosophers, they’re only a sec of liars. I may however affirm my hope without offense that they are a sec of gestures or rails, meaning that those who take the position that some knowledge is possible and here we give some credit to the stoics. They may be wrong about their conclusions, but they at least take the position that a certain amount of knowledge is possible from the position of those who think that some knowledge is possible. The skeptics are not even philosophers, they are liars at the very best they are gestures or people who are trying to pull our legs because you cannot even have a discussion without taking a position. So don’t try to tell me Socrates, don’t try to tell me kata that you don’t know anything because everything you’re saying indicates that you’re taking a position whether you’re willing to be honest about it or not. That’s why this position about skepticism is so basic to everything that we’re talking about.
Joshua: I think you’ve made a number of good points there Cassius, and one of the points is that the paradox of Epicurus as it’s called, doesn’t really match his pedagogical style, does it? It’s not the way he teaches. If you go to the letter to Tus, he says in the first paragraph of that letter, he says this quote, for those who are unable Tus to work in detail through all that I have written about nature or to peruse the larger books which I have composed, I have already prepared sufficient length and epitome of the whole system that they may keep adequately in mind, at least the most general principles in each department in order that as occasion arises they may be able to assist themselves on the most important points insofar as they undertake the study of nature. But those also who have made considerable progress in the survey of the main principles ought to bear in mind the scheme of the whole system set forth in its essentials for we have frequent need of the general view but not so often of the detailed exposition. So Epicurus teaching style was to sketch out in broad strokes the summary or the outline of what he’s trying to explain and then to go back in and to fill in the detail. He doesn’t take this what I think of as a very cone approach of let’s assume that what you’re saying is true. Now I’m going to express all of the problems with it. I’m looking back at the text for episode 2 51 of this series in section 39 of the text when Cicero is talking about Adams and he says this, the whole affair valez is ridiculous. You do not impose images on our eyes only but on our minds such is the privilege which you have assumed of talking nonsense with impunity, but there is you say a transition of images flowing on in great crowds in such a way that out of many someone at least must be perceived. I should be ashamed of my incapacity to understand this. If you who assert it could comprehend it yourselves. And then he goes on to talk about is Sonoma. He says to allude this, you have recourse to equilibration for so with your leave, I will call your is Sonoma and say that as there is a sort of nature mortal, so there must also be a sort which is immortal by the same rule as there are men mortal, there are men immortal and as summarized from the earth some must arise from the water also. And then he says, be it as you say, but let those causes preserve which have existence themselves. I cannot conceive these your gods to have any, but how does all this face of things arise from atomic core puzzles? Were there any such atoms as there are not? They might perhaps impel one another and be jumbled together in their motion, but they could never be able to impart form or figure or color or animation so that you by no means demonstrate the immortality of your deity. So this process of argumentation, of taking on board the positions or the assumptions of the person you’re arguing with and then proceeding from there is, as you say, it’s much more of an academic skeptic approach to teaching this stuff. In a sense, this goes back to the dialectic approach of Socrates and the Socratic method, and that was not Epic’s method, it was not epic’s method to talk in riddles necessarily. Although he does say, I would rather speak in oracles that which is useful to all men, though it would be understood by none than to conform to the popular opinion of the multitude. He’s very clear in his approach, in his explanations and we see that particularly in the letter to Ous where he lays out his approach. And so I think if Epicurus is talking about the problem of evil, I think he approaches it differently. That’s my overarching view of the riddle of Epicurus as it’s come down to us and we do know, we do know from book 10 of DIY Es that Epicurus wrote a treatise on the gods as he says, it doesn’t survive. So we don’t know what it says, but we can assume I think that his pedagogical approach in that text will not be totally different to his approach in his other texts. And so you’ve come to the conclusion, Cassius, I think that this riddled probably comes from a skeptical origin rather than from an epicurean origin. I think I have to agree with you on that if that is your position.
Cassius: Yeah, that is my view, but let me say it this way too, in terms of always trying to keep the big picture in focus, the big picture that Epicurus was willing to criticize the inconsistencies of those who took the position that the world is governed by gods, that’s clearly something that Epicurus was definitely willing to do. So in the way that this riddle is understood today, there are so many examples of this where Epicurus is position is sort of understood correctly in a way, but his complete position is not understood. There are things that are taken out of context. The people who are attacking all sorts of supernatural religion, the modern atheists of today, they reach back to epicurean lore and find something that they agree with and they pull a piece of it out and they use that piece and that piece becomes identified with Epicurus without putting it into the full context pleasure of course being the best example. If you let yourself get narrowly focused on a piece of it without understanding the context in which the argument was made, then you can miss the majority of the importance of the philosophy. The tetra pharmacon for example, if you go into it and explain it and put it into context, it’s a very useful formulation of points of epicure and philosophy. But if you narrowly focus on what it means to us superficially today without understanding the context from which it comes, then you miss the big picture of what Epicurus is talking about. You end up employing Epicurus for a modern purpose, which was not Epicurus purpose. It may be our purpose to attack a particular opponent, but it was not Epicurus purpose to just attack somebody. It was Epicurus approach to look at the big picture and try to bring everything into a consistent big picture. Let me hammer that point home another way and with one more selection from Cicero’s academic questions. What I’m about to read is the position that people like Cicero Kata the academics agreed with Cicero, said this quote, are CLIs as we understand, directed all his attacks against Zeno and I have to explain that are CLU being an academic skeptic? Zeno being the stoic, Cicero is saying that these academic skeptics were directing all their attacks against the stoics, not out of Obstinacy or any desire of gaining the victory as it appears to me, but by reason of the obscurity of those things which had brought Socrates to the confession of ignorance and even before Socrates, Democrats and Acts Ris impedes and nearly all the agents who asserted that nothing could be ascertained or perceived or known, that the senses of man were narrow, his mind feeble the course of his life short and that truth, as Democrats said, was sunk in the deep that everything depends on opinions and established customs that nothing was left to truth. They said in short that everything was enveloped in darkness, therefore our cess asserted that there was nothing which could be known, not even that very piece of knowledge which Socrates had left himself. Thus he thought that everything lay hid in secret and that there was nothing which could be discerned or understood for which reasons, it’s not right for anyone to profess or affirm anything or sanction anything by his assent, but men ought always to restrain their rashness and keep it in check so as to guard against its every fall, and he used to act consistently with these principles so as to pass most of his days in arguing against everyone’s opinion. I think that’s a really good summary of what we’re dealing with in recognizing the skeptic position as being a big problem for Epicurus. Cicero is going on and on here about all of these former philosophers, including Democrats which explains Epicurus deviations from Democrats, all of them going down this line as saying nothing can really be known, don’t take a position and ultimately let’s just talk about it and talk and talk and talk and go sip some wine and just keep talking about it forever without taking a position. And there’s so much of this riddle that seems to be coming from that position that I think it would be a mistake to focus on any simple explanation of Epicurus viewpoint without diving into the details of what Epicurus is really saying. So as we started today’s episode in relating the riddle to where we’ve been in own the nature of the gods, I think the riddle does give us important information that it is logical to question the idea of the stoics and others, that the universe was designed by an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent designer and that we should accept our fate, accept things as they are because they were made that way by God. That argument is shot through with illogical aspects of it, and it is reasonable for us to point out the illogic of that and to reject that argument for that reason. But rejecting arguments doesn’t get us to a happy life. You end up having to take positions about certain things and if you go down this road that everything is sunk in the deep, everything is enveloped in darkness, nothing can be known then in Hume’s dialogue. The example that Hume gives, you can’t even decide properly when you finish the discussion. You’re going to walk out of a door or you’re going to try to walk out the window. It may not be appropriate to call skeptics liars, but the effect of the skeptical position makes life unlivable. You have to make decisions. Epicurus saw that and Epicurus constructed a approach to processing the information from the census to thinking properly about what the census are telling us and coming to conclusions about which we can be confident and thereby live our lives happily. Okay, so we’ve covered some really important material today and we will continue on this in similar topics in coming weeks, but as we begin to close today, any closing thoughts, Joshua?
Joshua: Yes. I think regarding the problem of skepticism, which is you’ve said repeatedly, Cassius ranks very highly in Epicurus list of chief abominations right up there with Platonism. I think that we have to kind of get into the mindset of a lucious or a Vitor Q who almost talk about the canon of Epicurus, the capacity of sensation to gain information about the world we live in. They almost talk about it in enchanted terms and Joseph Conrad in his author’s introduction to the shadow line goes in kind of the same direction. He says this, all my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and however exceptional cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, he continues. I’m too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural witch. Take it any way you like, is put a manufactured article, the Fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living in their countless multitudes, a desecration of our tenders memories, an outrage on our dignity and lucretius may have been in Joseph Conrad’s mind when he wrote those words because Lucious talks about the sensations in a very similar way. He says this, our body’s sense, the touch of each gives proof for touch by sacred majesties of God’s touch is indeed the body’s only sense, be it that something in from outward works be it that something in the body born wounds or delighted as it passes out along the propent paths of Aphrodite and of course where this is leading us is back to a book that was written by Epicurus himself regarding the proper understanding of epistemology as derived from the canon. And I think torti in Cicero’s on ends gives us a very good description of that book. He says this Epicurus laid the greatest stress on natural science. That branch of knowledge enables us to realize clearly the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and the theory of consistent and contradictory expressions. And when we have learned the constitution of the universe, we are relieved of superstition, are emancipated from the dread of death, are not agitated through ignorance of phenomena from which ignorance more than anything else terrible panics often arise. Finally, our characters will also be improved when we have learned what it is that nature craves. Then again, if we grasp a firm knowledge of phenomena and uphold that canon which almost fell from heaven into human can, that test to which we are to bring all our judgments concerning things, we shall never succumb to any man’s eloquence and abandon our opinions. There was a wooden statue in the ancient city of Troy, a wooden statue that was said to have fallen from heaven called the palladium and it was prophesied that the city of Troy would never fall so long as they still held onto the palladium. This is the view that we are to take. I think of Epicurus canon of epistemology that he provides. It is a celestial volume which fell from heaven into human can and the importance of this volume is that it answers the questions that skepticism cannot answer and as Towada says, our characters will be improved when we have studied nature and learn what nature craves. It’s this issue of virtue being subservient to pleasure and not the other way around, and we pursue pleasure and no pleasure to be the good because of sensation and because of the canon, because of this book that fell from heaven.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, I think your explanation of the attitude towards this is exactly correct. I think that same attitude is mirrored and lucious, not only in the way he talks about epicurus, but it’s always struck me how he closes book one talking about we are essentially the same as hunting dogs who are using our senses to sniff out the prey even though the prey is hidden. Another analogy, the participants in a race who are passing the baton to each other using the light of your torch to illuminate one step after another. Yes, it’s important to understand what epic’s conclusions are, but what they’re saying I think is that you can reach the same conclusions and see the justifications for yourself once you understand the canon as Epicurus was describing it, and I don’t think there’s anything more essential to the canon as Epicurus was describing it, than to take the position that certain things are knowable, that Socrates was wrong to take the position that he knew nothing, that doubling down and taking the position that will Socrates shouldn’t have even claimed that he knew nothing because he should have claimed he didn’t even know that doubling down on skepticism, which rules the world today in many senses, you’ve got the world divided between skeptics who largely are taking the position I don’t know anything, and they’re focusing all their attention on religion saying you guys who are claiming that you know God and have divine revelation are wrong. The world’s divided between two positions that don’t represent at all where Epicurus was coming from. Even David Hues, dialogues concerning natural religion don’t have an epicurean speaker to present epic’s view of how you can come to reliable knowledge using the census. The whole argument has so fallen out of use that it’s hard to recognize where Epicurus was coming from and again, I give credit to Dewitt for pointing all this out, that it is Platonism and really Platonism is skepticism. That’s what Epicurus saw as the problem in the direction Plato was going. That had to be fixed and you don’t fix it by simply asserting a set of conclusions and not explaining where those conclusions come from. You fix the problem by throwing out this idea that knowledge is impossible and building up a foundation of how knowledge is possible and where the limits are and where the limits are not as Lucrecia said, where those deep set boundary remarks are in the universe between things that are possible and things that are not possible. There are many things that are not possible, but there are many things that are possible. There are many things that are not knowable, but there are many things that are knowable and where is the line between the knowable and the unknowable is the quest that Epicurus was on to come up with a reasonable answer to. That’s why this is also important and I think why we wanted to take a tangent off today into the riddle, even though it’s not a part and probably for good reason of the argument that Cicero has recorded for us and on the nature of the gods. We’ve seen Vallejo point out the inconsistencies of other schools and that’s consistent with the riddle and an important part of Epicurean philosophy, but it’s not. The whole rest of the story is more important even than pointing out inconsistencies of your opponents. We’ll come back next week and explore further as we begin to close in. On the conclusion of Book one, we’ll have an episode discussing the idealism versus realism view of the epicurean gods, but all of it is going to be in this context that Epicurus is not simply a destroyer of knowledge like people arguably accused Socrates of being. He’s not a destroyer of knowledge, but a explorer who was seen by the ancient epicureans as presenting the best path forward towards understanding the nature of the universe and using our lives as best as we possibly can. Okay, with that, let’s close. As always, drop by the form and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or our other episodes. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back next week. See you then. Bye.