Episode 254 - The Skeptic Asks: Does Not Epicurus Undermine Religion?
Date: 11/09/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4137-episode-254-the-skeptic-asks-does-not-epicurus-undermine-religion-as-much-as-any/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 254 of Lucretius today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the epicurean texts and 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 discussed this and all of our podcast episodes. Last week, we took an excursion to discuss the riddle of Epicurus as it comes down to us from Lactus through David Hume and different versions that are on the internet today, and we spent the entire episode talking about the meaning of that riddle and the extent to which Epicurus may not have been the real author of it, but might’ve agreed with the large part of it, but not all of it. And I think we had a good discussion on that riddle, which is important because it is so well known in the world of philosophy today. Most people, if they know much of anything about Epicurus at all, they’ve heard about this epicurean riddle. Today we’re going to get back into Cicero’s on the nature of the gods as we begin to come to a conclusion of book one of that work, and we’re going to get back into the general context that helped us go through the riddle and decide what parts of it were consistent with Epicurus and what parts were not. When we were last in on the nature of the gods, we were finishing up the end of Section 41, but what we can do to bridge the gap from where we were to where we are is to note that kata was asking a series of questions that reinforced his viewpoint that if you’re going to have a proper religion, it’s got to be based on some kind of relationship between human beings and the gods. He asked a series of questions which included these. Furthermore, how can you owe piety to a person who has bestowed nothing upon you or how can you owe anything at all to one who has done you no service? Piety is justice towards the gods, but how can any claims of justice exist between us and them if God and man have nothing in common? Holiness is the science of divine worship, but I fail to see why the gods should be worshiped if we neither have received nor hope to receive benefit from them. Now, we discussed that two weeks ago, so we’ll continue now into section 42. Kata goes further and says this, on the other hand, what reason is therefore adoring the gods on the ground of our admiration for the divine nature? If we cannot see that, that nature possesses any special excellence, as for freedom from superstition, which is the favorite boast of your school that is easy to attain when you’re have deprived the gods of all power unless per chance you think that it was possible for Dias or Theodore to be superstitious who denied the existence of the gods altogether. For my part, I don’t see how it was possible even for protagonists who was not certain either that the gods exist or that they do not. For the doctrines of all these thinkers abolish not only superstition, which implies a groundless fear of the gods, but also religion which consists in pious worshiping them. Take again those who have asserted that the entire notion of the immortal gods is a fiction invented by wise men in the interest of the state to the end that those whom reason was powerless to control might be led in the path of duty by religion. Surely this view was absolutely and entirely destructive of religion or PRUs of costs who said that the gods were personifications of things beneficial to the life of man. Pray What religion was left by his theory or those who teach that brave or famous or powerful men have been deified after death and that it is these who are the real object of the worship prayers and adoration which we are accustomed to offer or not. They entirely devoid of all sense of religion. This theory was chiefly developed by humus who was translated and imitated, especially by our poet inus. Yet humus describes the death and burial of certain gods. Are we then to think of him as upholding religion or rather as utterly and entirely destroying it? I say nothing of the holy and awe inspiring sanctuary of AUSAs We’re tribes from earth’s remotest, confines seek initiation, and I pass over samra and those occult mysteries, which throngs of worshipers at dead of night in forests coverts deep do celebrate at limbos since such mysteries when interpreted and rationalized proved to have more to do with natural science than with theology. Okay, I’ll stop there, but I think what we’re going to find as we go into this for the rest of the book is that kata is ending his criticism of epicurean philosophy on the argument that say what you want Epicurus. You’re essentially destroying the foundation of all religion and you might as well just come out and be an atheist. Like several of the people that Kada has mentioned here actually were and actually did say, of course we know that Valle has been at length denying that Epicurus is an atheist, but Kada is saying that your doctrine amounts to the same thing. You’ve given us no reason to think that the Gods are particularly excellent. You’ve given us no reason to be appreciative of anything that the Gods do for us. You’ve given us no reason to think that religion has not just been invented by the politicians to control people. That’s of course a common position that people continue to take today, and Ka is throwing that at Epicurus too. You’ve given us no reason whatsoever to take you seriously, and so you might as well just go ahead and dispense with religion entirely instead of engaging in what Ka is describing as a fictional fantasy of a God that kata cannot even grasp as being real in any sense of the word whatsoever. So let’s first discuss these particular criticisms. Like I said, we ended up last week on why are you caring about the gods if they don’t do anything for us? And now Kata is giving us a series of other reasons that Epicurus views on religion make no sense.
Joshua: Ada is making three interconnected arguments here, one of which we’ve already kind of dealt with when he says that he fails to see why the gods should be worshiped if we neither have received nor hope to receive benefit from them. We kind of dealt with that transactional understanding of the gods in a previous episode in section 42, he’s offering two problems. The first he says, on the other hand, what reason is there for adoring the gods on the ground of our admiration for the divine nature if we cannot see that, that nature possesses any special excellence? That’s kind of the second argument. And the third argument is that in eradicating superstition, the epicureans are actually eradicating religion itself. They are denying the power of the gods and they might as well go down this path of atheism like Dia and Theodore are alleged to have done or Proteus who wasn’t certain whether the gods existed or not. Now, the second argument that he opens the passage with is one that he doesn’t really expand on. He says, on the other hand, what reason is there for adoring the gods if we cannot see that their divine nature possesses any special excellence? So he seems to be saying, even if we don’t get anything from them, I’m still prepared to allow that they might be worthy of our adoration and our admiration if their nature was found to possess any special excellence as he calls it. So even if our prayers were not efficacious, even if they did not produce results, even if the Gods were not interested in human affairs, if there was anything in them that could be called excellent or virtuous, then that alone would be worthy of our adoration. But as he’s already said in this series, he thinks that the way that epicure is describes the gods deprives them of any virtue and of any excellence, and he does that because he deprives them of any weakness. And the idea was if the gods are incapable of feeling anger, then they also are incapable of feeling partiality. That’s again from the first principle doctrine. And so Kada has gone on to say if the Gods are incapable of developing emotional bonds either with humans or with other gods, then they’re incapable of virtue. And if they’re incapable of virtue, then there’s no reason to worship them even allowing that we don’t get anything from them. If there’s no virtue in the gods, then there’s no ground for worship
Cassius: Because Ada rejects the idea that perfect happiness, perfect blessedness, imp perishability by themselves are things to be considered excellent. As you’re saying that, Joshua comes home to me that valis has been very clear that as Epicure said, believe that a God is a living being blessed and imperishable. Well, those are two very specific attributes that I consider to be very worthy of emulation to the extent that I can. I consider those to be very valuable because I value happiness and pleasure as what life is all about. But kata rejects happiness and pleasure in exchange for this virtue argument that all the other philosophers have come up with. So as you describe that, it helps me to see that that’s where Ka is coming from. When he says, you can’t see that that nature possesses any special excellence. Well, what’s your definition of excellence? Kata, I consider happiness and imp perishability to be pretty darn excellent and worthy of emulation, worthy of respect. To the extent that any living being can embody that, I consider that to be worthy of respect. So again, katas perspective on all this is so different from Epicurus. Joshua, let me also add in there before you go further. I think when I read this first I didn’t place enough emphasis on this issue of freedom from superstition. I kind of read that as if it was just another example that you’re destroying religion. But now that I read it again and listen to you talk, it seems to me that this argument is saying, okay, Epicurus, you do accomplish for your people freedom from irrational fear of the gods. So as you said earlier, Joshua granting sort of a part of what Valle is arguing. He’s accepting that yes, it’s desirable to be free from superstition, free from unreasonable fear and anxiety about the gods, but Kada is saying that’s easy. All you have to do is say there’s no gods at all. All you have to do is do what Dus or Theodore does and just simply dispose of them. Or you can be like protagonists and be a world-class skeptic like kata himself is and say, well, I don’t know anything about the gods and so therefore there’s no reason for me to be concerned about them because I don’t know anything about them. So I wanted to amend the way I presented this part of 42 when I first read it. I think that’s the direction he’s going in as I reread it, freedom from superstition is a good thing, and yes, you deliver that, but you deliver it in a way that anybody else could deliver simply by denying that the gods exist or saying, I don’t know whether the gods exist or not. So you’ve not done anything special sort of the way I read that now.
Joshua: Yeah, and he’s almost saying that if the only way to abolish superstition is to tear up religion by the roots, then we should err on the side of caution and keep the understanding of religion even if it does instill superstition. And I find the contrast between those two words. Interesting. There’s a longstanding argument in the footnotes that exist to lucius’s poem because in the section when he describes Epicurus raising his eyes against the gods, that section goes like this, I’m reading from the Lobe edition When man’s life lay for all to see foully groveling upon the ground, crushed beneath the weight of superstition, which displayed her head from the regions of heaven lowering over mortals with horrible aspect. A man of Greece was the first that dared to uplift mortal eyes against her, the first to make stand against her for neither fables of the gods could quell him, nor thunderbolts nor heaven with menacing roar. But all the more they goaded the eager courage of his soul so that he should desire, first of all, men to shatter the confining bars of nature’s gates. And that word that in the Loeb addition is translated as superstition has a footnote attached to it. And the footnote says this, superstition or false religion and not religion is the meaning of the Latin word religio. The epicureans were opposed not to religion, but to the traditional religion which taught that the gods govern the world. And yet what we see here in Cicero’s text is that he’s using two words in the Latin and one of them is supers and the other one is religio to distinguish between these two positions. So I think there is an added element when you have people coming from two very different perspectives, the way that they use words. Words like religio, for example, need to be understood in the context of their perspectives. But when Kada uses the word religio, this is a high priest of Rome, right? He means it in a positive sense. This is something we need to cultivate in ourselves and in the people. And it’s fine if you want to uproot superstition, but to go so far in uprooting superstition that you also rip up religio by the roots would be a great crime is the argument. And it is essentially the argument that he’s making. You epicureans have gone too far. You have gone too far. You have gone almost as far as early philosophers who denied the very being of the gods themselves.
Cassius: Joshua, what word did lucretius use about trampling underfoot? Was it religio or sio? I’m thinking he trampled underfoot religion instead of sio.
Joshua: That’s exactly right. The word he uses is religio in this passage. Now, there’s a later passage in the book where he uses the word pieta or pies, piety, and Lucius does use that word in a positive sense, but he uses it to mean this is not graveling toward altars. This is to look on all things with a master eye and a mind at peace. That’s his understanding of piety. So we have these three words here, supers, religio and pieta, and we have to deal with the fact I think that these words mean different things to different people, and Lucretius certainly uses them differently than Ada would use them.
Cassius: That’s an interesting observation and might be another one of the words to add to the list of definitions to be very careful about clearly in what we’re reading today. Cicero is being very clear when he says that these thinkers abolish not only superstition, which implies a groundless fear of the gods, but also religion which consists in ply worshiping them. So you really have almost a clear definition there that Cicero is definitely stating that superstition is equated to groundless fear of the gods, while the word religion apparently doesn’t have a groundless fear of the gods, but consists in ply worshiping them. So it’s very interesting that you see with cre is talking about trampling religion underfoot in book one, but then also taking a position that piety can be a good thing. Obviously not liking superstition, groundless fear of the gods, but advocating his own version of a view of the gods. I’ve sometimes seen people say that the word religion comes from ray legeo, things that bind. And if we could trace back the Latin origin of the roots of superstitious versus eo, maybe we could begin to come to a greater understanding of how Cicero and Lucretius and so forth understood the different words. But again, you come back to the conclusion that the epicureans were not atheists. They had a view of gods that they maintained was correct, and whether they used the word religion to describe their own view or not, I’m not sure right now probably they would’ve called it true religion if they used the word religion. But it’d be interesting to look back at some point and see if there’s an epicurean reference to use of the word religion to describe their own viewpoint. I think that when we talk about philas and the work that he did on this, I believe that’s entitled own piety. So perhaps piety would be the word that the epicureans prefer. That’s something to look into.
Joshua: Yeah, I don’t know if the etymology of the word religio in Latin is well understood. Dictionary gives a few possible derivations under the etymology section, and let me quote that attested in classical Latin for century B, CE, perhaps from the untested word rego to observe or to venerate, which could go back via proto italic Lego to proto Indo-European. This word was frequently used by Cicero, who alternatively linked the word with rego. And rego can mean to go over or go through again in reading speech or thought to recite. In other words, it’s something you keep going back to again and again. And the passage continues this way afterwards. The word was linked mainly by Christian authors to that word Ray Ligo again and also to the word abio, but a scholar named Divan tentatively suggests a connection to legal, which of course is where you get those words to tie or to bind. So anyway, there’s a lot of different possibilities and this is not a settled question by any means.
Cassius: And after that sentence which gives that description of those two words, Cicero takes the argument in another direction which we can spend some significant time on because here in 50 BC or thereabouts when this is being written long before the example of Constantine coming into power and employing religion for purposes of the state, Cicero makes reference to how people assert that the entire notion of immortal gods is a fiction invented by wise men in the interest of the state, that those who reason is powerless to control might be led in the path of duty by religion.
Joshua: When I was in college, I went to Italy and Greece on a school trip and we went to Rome and we were in the Roman forum, and the tour guide told us a story about a spring or marsh that was in that spot, and that was known as the blackest courteous or the lake of courteous. And she told us a story about this lake and how it came to be. And the story comes down to us from the Roman historian Livy, and it goes like this. During a period when Rome was endangered by a great chasm that opened up in the forum and Oracle directed the people to throw into the chasm that which constituted the greatest strength of the Roman people and doing so would make the Roman nation last forever after dropping various things into the ravine without result, a young horseman named Marcus courteous saved the city by realizing that it was virtue that the Romans held most dear in full armor on his horse. He jumped into the chasm where upon the earth closed over him and Rome was saved. And it says the story though clearly epic in nature was likely a copy of another very similar Greek story concerning King Midas. And that has lingered on in my mind as an example of the power of myth and religion over the imagination taking what he suggests here in the text, that there are those who have asserted that the entire notion of the immortal gods is a fiction invented by wise men in the interest of the state to the end that those whom reason was powerless to control might be led in the path of duty by religion. Stories like the story of Marcus courteous reinforce precisely those same ideas that you would think Roman magistrates would want to reinforce. You want courage in your soldiers, you want virtue in your people. And so you develop this myth base or it develops naturally over time among the people themselves, and it reinforces precisely the kind of behavior that you want to have reinforced. Now, ADA seems to be highly disturbed by the idea that the primary purpose of religion is to control people who might otherwise be uncontrollable. But in later Christian thinking, I think it’s clear that this is one of the real benefits of religion. And I’ll quote now from John Locke and his letter concerning toleration and from Thomas Moore’s utopia. So John Locke in his letter writes this way, the letter was written in Latin, and I don’t know who translated it, but this is the text. All the life and power of true religion consists in the inward and full persuasion of the mind. And faith is not faith without believing Whatever profession we make to whatever outward worship we conform, if we are not fully satisfied in our own mind, that the one is true and the other well pleasing unto God such profession and such practice far from being any furtherance are indeed great obstacles to our salvation. And a little further down, he says, no way whatsoever that I shall walk in against the dictates of my conscience will ever bring me to the mansions of the blessed. I may grow rich by an art that I take not delight in. I may be cured of some disease by remedies that I have not faith in, but I cannot be saved by a religion that I distrust and by a worship that I abhor. So in this letter, John Locke is arguing in favor of the British state tolerating religious opinions other than perhaps Anglican orthodoxy as an example. We have to learn to all get along. And one of the ways that we have to learn to do that is by accepting that our neighbor may have different views regarding Christian theology than we have. But then he goes on to say this, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God, promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society. And there we have that word bonds, again, really relating to ligatures or ties, promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God though, but even in thought dissolves all besides also those that by their atheism, undermine and destroy all religion, can have no pretense of religion where upon to challenge the privilege of a toleration. As for other practical opinions, though not absolutely free from all error, if they do not tend to establish domination over others or civil impunity to the church in which they are taught, there can be no reason why they should not be tolerated. So he’s arguing here in favor of greater toleration, but you cannot tolerate, you cannot have a functioning society in John Locke’s view and tolerate the spread of atheism, the taking away of God though, but even in thought dissolves all because promises, covenants and oaths can have no hold upon an atheist. Thomas Moore strikes essentially the same point in his utopia. He says this, Utopus made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature as to think that our souls died with our bodies or that the world was governed by chance without a wise overruling providence, for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life. And they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted. Men since they degrade so noble a being is the soul and reckon it no better than a beast. Thus, they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth. Since a man of such principles must need as often as he daress do it, despise all their laws and customs, for there is no doubt to be made that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law and apprehends nothing after death will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites. So Wada presents the idea that religion can be used as a form of social control. Kada presents that as a horrifying idea, and indeed that view itself destroys religion. This is not the opinion of all later thinkers. We have two British thinkers here who on other matters are quite diametrically opposed. Talus Moore is a dedicated Catholic and John Locke is a philosopher of the liberal enlightenment. So in other areas they’re quite far apart, but on this, they come together on this issue. They agree that one of the functions of religion in a healthy society is that it underwrites all promises and covenants and owes and that it prevents crime and immorality and a lack of virtue. And so I think that contrast is interesting. Kata finds this idea abhorrent, but clearly there are people in later centuries who are on board with it. I have to suspect there were people in the ancient world who thought very similarly to how John Locke and Thomas Moore think on this issue.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, and let me bring this back into the context of where Kata is going after this as well, because this issue of religion being something that manipulators used for the benefit of the state is something that we’re all familiar with. And it’s interesting to think about why Kata is bringing it up here. Kata obviously is aware of that contingent as well. What he draws from it is an interesting implication that I think probably Vallejo would agree with that advocating the use of religion for purposes of maintaining the state is one of the worst things you could do to undermine confidence in religion. If you have a position that there is a true religion, then these people like Constantina, whatever, who go out and overtly use religion in the service of the state are doing a disservice to religion. And that’s the context I think, in which Kata is listing these different positions of these other people starting out with the absolute atheists, then talking about protagonists, the radical skeptics who say they don’t know anything. Now he’s listed those people who just take a very practical, pragmatic view of religion and essentially say, I don’t care whether it’s right or wrong, it’s useful for maintaining the state, and so therefore we’re going to use it. Ka is saying are not their opinions subversive of all religion. And so then he goes on and lest we get too far into this issue of using religion to support the state, he goes on and lists a series of other examples of people whose views of religion undermine religion itself. He lists PRUs, the keyan saying that everything beneficial to human life should be numbered among the gods that apparently strikes God as something that’s so ridiculously broad as to drain any meaning out of religion. What about those people who talk that the deities are valiant, illustrious, and mighty men who arose to divinity after death? And he’d list this ous as an example of that, basically talking about politicians, kings, Caesars and so forth who claim to become a God by dying, which is a ridiculous notion and undermines a rational view of religion. And Kada also says, what about the Lucina who along with the Samath race have mysteries and solemnities in secret at night surrounded by thick groves and who Kada seems to be saying here are ignoring the nature of the things that they’re worshiping instead of going after true knowledge of the gods. And the last in this series that he mentions as we begin to get into section 43, he even mentions Democrat Kada says in 43, even that great man Democrat from whose fountains Epicurus watered his little garden, seems to me to be very inferior to his usual acuteness when speaking about the nature of the gods for at one time, he Democrat thinks that there are images endowed with divinity inherent in the universality of things at another, that the principles and minds contained in the universe are gods. Then he attributes divinity to animated images employing themselves in doing us good or harm. And lastly, he speaks of certain images of such vast extent that they encompass the whole outside of the universe, all of which opinions are more worthy of the country of Democrats than of Democrats himself for who can frame in his mind any ideas of such images, who can admire them, who can think they merit a religious adoration? Okay, I’ll stop reading there because we probably could devote an entire episode to what we’ve just read about Democrats given how important he is to epicurus. But in going through this list of alternative positions and in coming back to Democrat, kata is saying that all of these positions are destructive of religion. Why should epicurus not just go ahead and throw the baby out with the bathwater and end religion?
Joshua: Yeah, we’ll get to Democrats. Let me say something first about this other paragraph that you read because I think this shows a fairly major difference between a polytheist understanding of the gods and a monotheist, particularly an Abrahamic, let’s call it understanding of the Gods, where knowledge of God comes from revelation. And so you have essentially, you have established orthodoxy. The following things were found in the Bible, they’re true. All you have to do is believe them. That’s a very different view of religion to what you find in the ancient world. And this passage gives a number of examples of the different kinds of belief systems that you find all around the Mediterranean. So you have first apotheosis that brave or famous or powerful men have been deified after death. You also have, of course, the pharaohs of Egypt who are considered gods in their own right while they’re still alive. And you can see here by the mention of emus that some of the Egyptian myths surrounding their native gods are spreading into the Greek and Roman worlds because Kada says that emus describes the death and burial of certain gods. And that is a key feature of the myth of Osiris in the Egyptian pantheon. And then he talks about the Ellucian mysteries. And so essentially we have a wide expression of religious feeling and religious sentiment. And because Rome was a polytheistic society, it has much more than the world of John Locke and Thomas Moore. It has the power to absorb all of these ideas in a hodgepodge of essentially different beliefs and folk ways and religious systems. And Kada isn’t necessarily happy with this situation. He’s very critical of these views, but we don’t get the sense that there’s about to be an inquisition to drive the worship of Isis, for example, out of Rome or the worship of Mirus. They were just much better at absorbing different views, partially because their religions were not revealed in the same way that the Abrahamic religions are revealed. So I think that difference between the two societies is interesting and bears on the question, but then we get to Democrat, and I love the way he describes this. He says, for my own part, I believe that even that very eminent man Democrat, the fountain head from which Epicurus derived the streams that watered his little garden, has no fixed opinion about the nature of the gods. The way he depicts as a colossus and Epicurus as a figure peeping out from behind one of his toes or something on the ground is very interesting. Now, we don’t have any writings directly from Democrats, we have fragments. He was quoted in several works, so I don’t know how much we’re going to get to the heart of what he really thought about the gods because we’ve seen all through this series the problem with relying on Cicero for an interpretation of Epicurus view of the gods. He’s fine when he quotes Epicurus, but when he summarizes and when he expresses a list of things like he does here, I think he’s probably less reliable. But nevertheless, there are features of interest in this, and we can go through those. So the first thing he says is, at one moment, Democrats holds the view that the universe includes images endowed with divinity, and those images come up twice more. He says again at another that they are animate images which are want to exercise a beneficent or harmful influence over us. And again, that they are certain vast images of such a size as to envelop and enfold the entire world. Now, we did get from Valle in his section of this text arguing with all of these other philosophers, including arguing against Democrats and his views on the gods. But it’s very clear, I think from the text here because of all these mentions of images that that was a really important component of Democrat views of the God. I don’t know how well Cicero has preserved his views, but the frequent mention of this means that this was clearly very important. And it comes into Epicureanism as these iah, these films that are shed off by objects and that are the foundation of sensation and also of to some extent prolapses. So that’s the main thing about democracy’s view of the gods is a lot of discussion of images. And then we have a few other things like he thinks all the minds compounded in nature are gods, but most of the discussion here is about images,
Cassius: Which Kata seems to characterize in the same way he does when Vallejo talks about it as something that makes no sense and things like who can frame in his mind any idea of such images, who could admire them, who can think they merited a religious adoration? Kata just rejects the idea that images have anything to do with God’s at all.
Joshua: There’s one more thing I have to point out in this passage because I think you were reading from the Young Translation in the Rack Edition. There’s a footnote under the section where Kada says, all of these fancies are more worthy of Democrat’s, native city, the city of Abera than of himself for who could form a mental picture of such images who could adore them and deem them worthy of worship or reverence. And the footnote simply says, ABD in Thrace had a reputation for stupidity. So he’s saying that Democrat is a really smart guy. Democrat has got a lot of stuff figured out, even though I caught, I think he’s wrong about Adams, even though I think he’s wrong about the gods, I still have a high opinion of as a philosopher, but when he talks about the gods as images, he sounds like the village idiot from Abera. I think this is what we should get from what Ada is saying here. And as you rightly said, Cassius Epicurus takes up this understanding of images and how it relates to the gods and ADA’s opinion of the Epicureans is even worse than his opinion of tus on disposition.
Cassius: Joshua, thanks for picking up that footnote and glancing it. The footnote you’ve just quoted, I see that Rackham has a footnote right before that that might be interesting for us to read because he seems to be summarizing Democrat position, and I dunno how much confidence we can place in Rackham’s summary, but do you mind reading the footnote before that
Joshua: I can? Yeah. This is on page one 16 of the Rack Edition. In the actual teaching of Democrat, these scattered doctrines formed a consistent hole. The basis of the world is particles of divine fire floating in space. Groups of them form deities, vast beings of long life, but not everlasting. Some of the particles floating off from these enter the mind, it’s self composed of similar particles and give us knowledge of the gods.
Cassius: That is a very interesting footnote, and if we were confident that that’s what Democrats said, that strikes me as very similar in important ways to some of the things that we’ve been picking up, especially vast beings of long life but not everlasting. Wow. That strikes me as something that if there is good evidence of that in democratis would support DeWitt’s observation that the gods are actually not immortal, but imperishable and in order to maintain their existence and having to act in order to maintain their existence rather than being sort of naturally or supernaturally immortal. I think a lot of people have that problem with saying Gods are immortal and trying to fit that into epicurean theology. When they say that something is immortal, that implies to them that this is a supernatural aspect of the gods and they rightly point out that the Gods cannot be supernatural. So they don’t think that Gods can be immortal and they say, Hey, this doesn’t make sense. Well, maybe there’s more grounds that we’ve really picked up so far in our discussions for saying that Epicurus didn’t call the Gods immortal, that he followed Democrats in saying that they have a long life, but they’re not everlasting. That’s way too strong. A conclusion to place on such a slender set of evidences is included in this footnote here, but nevertheless, that’s an interesting aspect of what Rackham is saying about democra. And then when he concludes that particles float off from these beings and enter the mind, which is itself composed of similar particles, and that’s how we gain knowledge of the gods. That sure sounds a lot like what Epicurus has said and what Valle has previously explained in this work about the nature of the Gods coming from Prolapses, coming from images directly received by the mind rather than from direct observation through the five senses. So interesting connections here with Democrats.
Joshua: Yeah, I have to wonder how much of that footnote is constructed from the fragments and the later commentary and how much of it is reverse engineered from Epicurus own view of the gods, but there are very interesting parallels there.
Cassius: Yes. So this material about Democrat is definitely something we’re going to want to consider when we have our episode, which it looks to be in two weeks from today, where we discuss the realist versus idealist division about Epicurus views of the gods themselves. Why don’t we begin to bring today’s episode to a conclusion and think about whether we have anything to say in closing today, and then we’ll come back next week with the second paragraph of section 43 and go to the remainder of book one. So any closing thoughts today? Joshua?
Joshua: You know what occurs to me, Cassius? There’s a book we don’t often cite and we should cite more often, and that book is Living for Pleasure by Dr. Emily Austin, who we had the pleasure of interviewing. And in the chapter titled Pandemics and Other Comforting Horrors, she talks about the plague in Athens and the effect it had on the religious views of the people who were witnessing this unimaginable horror around them. And she writes this way, the plague impacted the survivor’s religious beliefs chiefly because they recognized that death did not discriminate between the pious and imp empires. They saw all alike perishing and concluded religious sacrifices and prayers made no difference. Lucidity reports that in the early stages of the plague, the Athenians tried desperately to please the gods with supplications in the temples, divinations and so forth, all such efforts proving fruitless once it became clear that the gods were not in the business of preserving or ending life or of otherwise intervening in the natural world. Thucydides says they lost their fear of Gods ide, most likely considers these lapses into impropriety, regrettable, a breakdown of social norms to be righted once the plague retreats Lucious, had he finished his recounting of ides might very well have turned the assessment on its head. After all the plague transformed the Athenians into something more closely resembling Epicureans and Lucretius might recommend they make the change permanent. In fact, if Lucious had access to Thucydides full text, I suspect he intended to add something about the Epicurean lessons. Athens learned from the plague. I think since we’ve been talking in this episode particularly about the utility of religion in cultivating virtue and fear and piety in a population. What Emily describes here in the end of Book six of Lucius’s poem, this horror beyond imagining of the plague in Athens, people dying in the streets, is that all of the illusions, all of the stories, all of the legends and the myths about the gods just fall apart in the face of bare reality of trauma, unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed personally. And the direction she goes is in saying that when the people realized that the Gods took no care in preserving or even in destroying human life, that they were totally absent from this equation, they started to live for pleasure. And I think that Emily’s position on that is very unique and very, very interesting. I think it’s an excellent reading of Lucious and it’s exactly the kind of thing that would be totally abhorrent to Kada and to Cicero. I told the story about Marcus courteous riding, fully cladded armor, riding his horse into the chasm in the Roman Forum in a human sacrifice to seal this chasm and to ensure that Rome would last forever. But this very human response in th acidities of suddenly realizing we don’t have forever, we don’t have forever to entertain some of these ideas. As you say, Cassius, we have to come down to some kind of firm conclusion. And the firm conclusion that the people suffering from that plague came down to was that Gods are not lifting a finger to do anything for us. And so the only thing left to us is to live a life of pleasure in a world of pain. And I think that even people like us sitting today rather comfortably, not witnessing horror on the level of a plague decimating a city, I think that those same conclusions have value for us as well. But you have to come down to some kind of firm conclusion. And the conclusion is that the Gods do not intervene, they do not sustain, they do not preserve, they do not destroy. These things happen naturally and that the lot of humankind in response to that is you can choose whether you’re going to fall into despair and tear your clothes and nash your teeth, or you can reframe the question in light of this new information and start living your life in the way that the ancient epicureans lived their lives. And I think that’s a very refreshing approach to some of these questions.
Cassius: Joshua, I completely agree with that. Emily. Austin’s living for pleasure contains a lot of great perspectives on Epicurean philosophy, but the one that has struck me from the first time I read the book as one of the most insightful aspects is this suggestion she makes about the way that Book six of Lucretius would’ve ended had he revised it. Pointing out that the plague led to a change in the attitudes of the Athenians is the important thing that really appears to us to be missing at the end of Book six. It leaves it on such a horrible note that we wonder what could possibly have been in Rees’s mind. To end on that note, and I think Dr. Austin’s suggestion is brilliant, and I’d like to go back and cite Acidities the history of the Peloponnesian War. There is a section two point 53 that gets into this specifically and it’s worth reading in its entirety. I have this from the Perseus website in front of me. Now, section 53 says this quote, and the great licentiousness, which also in other kinds was used in the city, began at first from this disease for that which a man before would disassemble and not acknowledge to be done for pleasure. He durst now do freely seeing before his eyes such quick revolution of the rich dying and men worth nothing inheriting their estates in so much. They justified a speedy fruition of their goods, even for their pleasure as men that thought they held their lives. But by the day as for pains, no man was forward in any action of honor to take any because they thought it was uncertain whether they should die or not before they achieved it. But what any man knew to be delightful and to be profitable to pleasure that was made both profitable and honorable, neither the fear of the gods nor laws of men awed any man, not the former, because they concluded it was a like to worship or not worship from seeing that alike. They all perished nor the latter because no man expected that their lies would last until he received punishment of his crimes by judgment. But they thought that there was now over their heads some far greater judgment decreed against them before which fell they thought to enjoy some little part of their lies. Now, that may be a little bit awkwardly worded and probably could be rewritten into something that is even more clearly epicurean than it is. But it clearly shows that what Thucydides recorded happening was that people woke up from this superstitious fear of religion. They realized that God’s were not going to come save them or going to come punish them either, and that there was over their heads, some far greater judgment decree against them. And I would suggest that what he’s referring to there is what Lucrecia says, that the problem is not how we’re going to spend our time right now. The problem is how we’re going to spend our time in eternity, and the fact that after we die there is nothing. So that what we need to do now is to enjoy some little part of our lives, at the very least as Lucidity says it here. So you can easily imagine the possibility that maybe Lucre just did finish Book six, and that this kind of a strong conversion to Epicureanism through seeing the era of false religion was something that somebody might’ve edited out along the way. We don’t know any of that. It’s all speculation what was in Lucius’s mind about how he would’ve ended it. But I think it’s just an absolutely brilliant suggestion by Emily Austin to go back into lucidity, look at what happened after the plague of Athens, and realize that this is just the ultimate endorsement and persuasive argument in favor of Epicurean philosophy. That once you realize the true nature of the gods, once you realize what happens to you after death, which is nothing, it makes no sense to do anything, but to go out and pursue pleasure, avoid pain, and implement Epicurean philosophy to make the most of whatever part of your life is available to you. So I think that’s a great way to close this episode. It was a great way to close Lucretius, and it’s really the heart of where Epicurean philosophy is coming from, and it’s why Kata started out the material that we had today saying that he fails to see any excellence in the epicurean gods. It’s because these guys who are devoted to virtue above all, who think that the mind and their idealism is worth everything, they totally reject the idea that the real heart of life, whether it be for a human being or for a God, is the experience of pleasure and the pursuit of it in an intelligent way. So kata cannot appreciate why this makes the epicurean Gods excellent, but from an epicurean point of view, I think it makes total perfect sense. Okay, let’s close there for today. As always, please drop by the form. Let us know if you have any comments or questions about today’s episode. Thanks for your time again today. We’ll be back with you next week. See you then. Bye.