Episode 258 - There Is No Necessity To Live Under the Control of Necessity - Part 2 (Conclusion)
Date: 11/18/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4148-episode-258-there-is-no-necessity-to-live-under-the-control-of-necessity-part-2/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 258 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 discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. This week we’re completing our discussion of the issue of fate and necessity and determinism, which we began last week in episode 257, and this is going to be one of those episodes which turns out much differently than I thought would be the case at the end of the last episode because in the time since last week, I’ve discovered that there’s a book by Tim O’Keefe entitled Epicurus on Freedom, which is something that we’re going to want to mention in today’s episode without resolving some of the controversies that arise from it. We’re in a situation much as we were when we were discussing the ideal versus real attitude towards the gods and the assessment that modern commentators have about epicurus his true views on that because just as we found in that discussion that David Sudley had written an excellent article on the idealist view of the Gods, and David Constan had written an article on the realist view of the Gods, we have a similar dual in the discussion of Epicurus on freedom and determinism in that David S’s article is entitled Epicurus Refutation of Determinism, and then Tim O’Keefe released a book entitled Epicurus on Freedom, which substantially disagrees with David S’s assessment of some of the grounds of Epicurus views on the subject. So as we go through this today, we are going to follow up on last week’s discussion because last week we talked about the significance and the importance of the problem and why Epicurus was concerned about it in the first place, why he brought it up and what he was attempting to deal with. One of the sources that we’re also consulting in this discussion is Norman DeWitt’s book Epicurus. In his philosophy, he has a chapter 10 entitled The New Freedom, and one of the comments that Norman Dewitt says is it may be interposed that the concept of determinism is not offensive to the intellectualism. It was consequently the duty of Epicurus as a moralist, a reformer, and hence a pragmatist or an ancient parlance as a truly wise man who will be more powerfully moved by his feelings than other men to declare the significance of determinism for human conduct. His verdict, which means Epicurious verdict, was that it meant paralysis. That’s from page 1 75 of DeWitt’s book, and that’s really the reason we’re spending the time we are on this question because there are people who will take the issue of necessity or fate and determinism and believe that it leads to the conclusion that there’s nothing they can do to improve their lives, that they are the plaing of the Fs, they’re being driven along by the winds and the waves, and there’s nothing that’s within their control and that is a feeling of helplessness that is extremely detrimental to living a successful and happy life. It seems obvious to us today, and it apparently seemed obvious to Epicurus as well, and thus it’s something that he dealt with in his letter to Menoras and is a key aspect of Epicurean philosophy. Now, when we left off last week, we were about to turn to some of the more detailed questions about exactly where Epicurus was coming from in his reasoning against theories of fate, necessity, determinism, and of course the big issue that we touched on last week and we’ll go further into this week is the role of the swerve in dealing with that. That’s where we’re going to find that Dr. Sudley takes one position about the role of the swerve while Tim O’Keefe and others take an opposite position about its significance. One of the things that I think is most interesting to observe at the very beginning is that when we think about what we know for sure through the works of Epicurus himself, we have the letter to Menoras and even a letter on physics to ous that do not mention the swerve as even existing. Now there’s little doubt based on other information we have that the concept of the swerve did originate with Epicurus, but in explaining to a menist how important it is to not give into determinism, he does not mention the swerve as being the reason for that. In talking to ous about the way the universe operates, he does not mention the swerve as being a key that you would think would be there if Epicurus thought that it was central to someone’s knowledge about how to actually live your life. So there’s a very interesting absence of the argument about the swerve in Epic’s discussion about fate, necessity, determinism, what we have instead in the letter to Monarchists and then in the Vatican sayings Vatican saying nine necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity. Now unfortunately we don’t have a lot of context for that, but we have that statement. We have Vatican saying 40, the man who says that all things come to pass by necessity cannot criticize one who denies that all things come to pass by necessity for he admits that this too happens of necessity. Now based on that kind of commentary and also on an extended passage from own nature, which is available through the David settling material, it’s included in the Tim O’Keefe book, there is a relatively long passage that unfortunately has lots of missing words and so there’s doubt about how to reconstruct it exactly, but that passage in own nature talks about issues of fate and necessity, and it too talks in terms of the logical problems with people who advocate necessity and does not focus at all on the swerve. So while we are not going to be able today to resolve any kind of controversies between ly and O’Keefe or anybody else, and of course there’s also other good articles that I don’t mean to overlook here that are cited in the O’Keefe and in the sadly article, anyone who’s interested in this subject has a lot of material that they can go out and dig into, but the general lines seem to be whether the swerve is at the center of the rejection of determinism or whether it is a coequal or maybe even slightly subordinate argument in this mix of issues in which Epicurus was telling his students to reject the fatalistic implications of determinism. Also, last week we mentioned something that is an interesting example of the prominence of this position because Virgil in Georgia X two line four 90 is recorded to have said happy is he who is able to know the causes of things and who has trampled beneath his feet all fear inable fate and the den of the devouring underworld. So whether Virgil’s talking about Lucretius, whether he’s talking about Epicurus or just Epicurean philosophy in general, Virgil who is a very perceptive person from that Roman period is suggesting that among the great accomplishments of the Epicureans was their defeat of the fear of the devouring underworld in particular, meaning hell and also their defeat of inexorable fate. So this is clearly a major issue that deserves the attention that we’re giving to it. So Joshua, before we go further in discussing the role of the swerve, do you have any thoughts on the absence of the swerve from the letter to Menoras or from the Vatican sayings or even from ous, given that the issues of necessity and determinism are obviously of concern to Epicurus, why he would not have mentioned the swerve if it was his primary argument against determinism?
Joshua: Yeah, I think that that’s a very good question, Cassius, because you’re right, it doesn’t show up in Epic surviving works now. He wrote a lot and we have only a very small part of it, and so if we had Epicurus 37 books on nature, it would almost certainly feature in those books, but as it stands, our main source for this of course is lucious, but you’re right to point out that in the letter to MEUs, if Epicurus is going to broach the subject of determinism in the letter to MEUs as he does in section 1 33 in that text, when he’s describing the life of the happiest person on earth, the person who understands that the limit of good things is easy to fulfill and easy to attain, whereas the course of ills is either short in time or slight in pain, who laughs at destiny whom some have introduced as the mistress of all things? He thinks that with us lies the chief power in determining events, some of which happen by necessity and some by chance and some are within our control for while necessity cannot be called to account, he sees that chance is inconstant, but that which is in our control is subject to no master and to it are naturally attached praise and blame. You’re right to ask the question Cassius, if Epicurus thought that the swerve was his best argument against determinism, it’s fair to ask why he doesn’t include that here in the letter to Menno, what he does do is he goes on in section 1 34 to say this for indeed it were better to follow the myths about the gods than to become a slave to the destiny of the natural philosophers. The former suggests a hope of placating the gods by worship, whereas the latter involves the necessity which knows no plication as to chance. He does not regard it as a God, as most men do for in a God’s acts. There is no disorder nor as an uncertain cause of things where he does not believe that good and evil are given by chance to man for the framing of a blessed life, but that opportunities for great good and great evil are afforded by it.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s a mixture in what you’ve just read of course of Epicurus his own words plus commentary that’s been added in over the generations after Epicurus, but it’s very clear what the direction is that Epicurus is rejecting this viewpoint, even to the extent of implying it’d be better to believe a lie better to believe a lies about the gods and to then at least have hope of being able to affect your future than to think that you are trapped by inexorable necessity and that no matter what you did, you were doomed to unhappiness and a painful life.
Joshua: Exactly, yeah. If you go back to the Virgil quotation from the Georges that you cited, you would almost be better in that passage to choose the risk of the devouring underworld than to accept inexorable faith because epicurus argument here in the letter to EU is at least with undergoing the risk of punishment after death, at least with that, you have the hope of placating the gods and of having something better after death. What’s worse than risking punishment after death is accepting determinism in this life, so that citation is certainly on point.
Cassius: Yeah, there’s a couple of different things that we really need to be sure we cover today, and maybe before we go much further, let me go ahead and point us in the direction of what I’ve mentioned already, but it applies on the general level that we’re talking about right now because again, Epicurus is concerned about the practical effects of his philosophy. He wants to be right, he wants to be correct about the way he’s analyzed the world, but at the same time because he thinks he’s correct, he has concluded that there is no supernatural realm. There is no heaven and hell after death. There’s no existence of any kind after death, so you’ve got to get it right while you are alive. You don’t have the time, you don’t have the ability to go out and read everything. Consider everything that’s ever been written or said about deep issues like causation and necessity and determinism. You’ve got to basically live your life. You’ve got to make hay while the sun shines. You’ve got to live your life while it’s available to you and the conclusion that he comes to is that you must act yourself while you have the time and the ability to obtain whatever pleasure in life that is available to you. You can’t just sit back and hope for the best. Hope is not a strategy. A strategy involves analyzing the world and then taking action to pursue it. There’s a parallel here, I think in the relationship between Epicurus attitude towards the Gods epicurus attitude towards Aism Epicurus attitude towards necessity. At the end of this podcast episode today, you’re not going to be absolutely certain about the mechanism by which you have free will, but at the end of this episode, you’re still going to be alive and you’re going to want to live your life and use your mind productively and make choices to produce the best result available to you. It is not necessary for you to, by the end of this podcast episode, have an explanation in your mind as to how the atomic swerve may or may not be involved in allowing you to make some decisions. It’s not necessary by the end of this episode to have a position on every aspect of the nature of the gods, any gods that might exist. What’s necessary is for you to have a general attitude towards divinity that it’s not a problem for you because you’re not a problem for them and all sorts of different other arguments that are associated with that. That’s where the atom itself actually comes in is that not by the end of this episode or not by the end of the time you live your life, will you be able to see or touch an atom. You will never have a direct experience of being able to say that in front of your eyes is an atom. The theory of atom is gives you an understandable explanation of the way the world works that is sufficient for the rational person to realize that nature operates without supernatural forces over it and that even though we do not understand everything that happens when the atoms come together, just the fact that we say that well, the universe operates through atoms that doesn’t tell us how to design a rocket ship or how to do brain surgery or anything. It simply tells us that if we had what would essentially be an unlimited amount of time and effort to put into it, we could step by step, learn more and more detail about it and gain a greater understanding, a greater ability to manipulate things ourselves, but we’re never going to come to a complete understanding of the way Adams operate. We’re never going to come to a complete understanding of the way Gods exist and we’re never going to come to a complete understanding of the way the circuits within our mind are firing off between the synapses or doing whatever they’re doing chemically or electrically or any other way to actually provide us what some people want to say is free will or not. In fact, I will say that one of the benefits I think of the Tim O’Keefe book is that he points out that this entire issue of determinism necessity and so forth is a very slippery set of terms in the first place. The whole effort to set it up as a question is extremely deep and ambiguous, and it turns into a rabbit hole of rabbit holes that if you go down it, it’s one of the most twisted mind games that you can get into, and if you go down it too far without coming up, then you certainly can run into the problem of paralysis that Norman Dewitt has mentioned earlier in his commentary about what Epicurus was concerned about, and so to avoid that paralysis you don’t need and you should not look for a complete medical, chemical physical explanation of whether the swerve or any other aspect of the way your body works is the source of what you perceive to be free will. That’s where we get into this issue of reductionism that is discussed by Dr. Sedley and Dr. O’Keefe and on which they take separate positions. My reading of this is that Tim O’Keefe says that Epicurus really is essentially properly thought of as a reductionist, but that epicurus reductionism does not lead to the kind of paralytic thinking that people are concerned about. Dr. S’s article on the other hand, which I’m more familiar with, takes a different position about that, that I want to mention here in greater detail in this podcast because I would suggest it’s a very interesting thread of analysis that can be applied to several aspects of Epicurus philosophy and leads to a lot of productive results. I think as we know, Epicurus was critical of Democrats for taking a position that a mechanistic reading of aism leads to inexorable fate and the inability to change things. Here’s what Dr. Sedley has to say about that. Epic’s response to this, which is democracy and necessity is perhaps the least appreciated aspect of his thought. It was to reject reductionist aism almost uniquely among Greek philosophers. Epicurus arrived at what is nowadays the unreflective assumption of almost anyone with a smattering of science that there are truths at the microscopic level of elementary particles and further very different truths at the phenomenal level that the former must be capable of explaining the latter, but that neither level of description has a monopoly of truth. The truth that sugar is sweet is not straightforwardly reducible to the truth that it has such and such a molecular structure even though the latter truth may be required in order to explain the former by establishing that cognitive skepticism, the direct outcome of reductionist aism is self refuting and untenable in practice, Epicurus justifies his non reductionist alternative according to which sensations are true and there are therefore bonafide truths at the phenomenal level accessible through them. The same will apply to the puff which Epicurus also held to be varial pleasure, for example, is a direct datum of experience. It is commonly assumed that Epicurus must have equated pleasure with such and such a kind of movement of soul Adams, but although he will have taken it to have some explanation at the atomic level, I know of no evidence that he any more than most moral philosophers or psychologist would’ve held that an adequate analysis of it could be found at that level. Physics are strikingly absent from epicures ethical writings and it is curious that interpreters are so much readier to import them there than they are when it comes to the moral philosophy of Plato or Aristotle. Basically, Dr. S is suggesting that in parallel with the fact that we accept pleasure and pain to be essentially axiomatic if we find something to be pleasurable or painful, that’s the starting point of all choice and avoidance. We do not take the time, we do not worry about whether our pleasure and pain translates into a particular atomic configuration. The atomic theory gives us an explanation by which we can come to terms with the idea that whatever is going on is going on through natural means and not supernatural intervention, but it doesn’t give us the ability to explain it in the kind of detailed way that those who are advocating determinism are attempting to get us to do. The idea that the atomic swerve should somehow explain how free will operates is not going to happen. It’s not going to happen for an epicurean, it’s not going to happen for an determinist, but it’s not intended to happen is what David Sly is saying. It gives us a framework, but it is not detailed analysis because that level of detailed analysis is not available to us just as it’s not available to us to actually see, observe or touch an atom directly. We have to be satisfied at our own level of experience and sensation not seeking what would essentially be a supernatural level of explanation that is not available to us, and so this is really the take home conclusion that I think we come to when we study Epicurus. We can get a reasonable understanding of the way things work that we can be confident about without twisting ourselves into knots, without staying forever inside the rabbit holes, looking for something that is not available to us in the first place. As we discussed last week, Lucretius makes the point the eyes can’t see whether the atoms are swerving or not. We deduce that they are swerving because it is helpful to us to break the bounds of necessity. It’s also cited in lucretius that the reason for our deducing the swerve is because it assists in the collisions of the atoms that bring events into occurrence in the first place, but as Dr. Sedley points out, it’s not even logical in an infinite universe to look for a first swerve to bring everything else into place. There are other explanations for why atoms collide that have nothing to do with the swerve, so while there’s no reason to deprecate or disparage the idea of the swerve, if Epicurus didn’t think it was important enough to include in the letter to ous or important enough to ethics to include in the letter to Menoras, then it’s not the primary basis for his argument. The modern determinist attempt to trap us into thinking that determinism must be true and that you don’t have a good argument against determinism because you can’t explain to me how the atoms create free will. That is an invalid argument that is not logical from the epicurean point of view, we don’t demand such an explanation as to pleasure. We don’t demand such an explanation as to pain. We should not demand such an explanation as to fate and determinism as well. It is sufficient for us to observe that there are no supernatural forces that would create a force of fate and that observation that there are no supernatural forces that could lead to fate is the kind of level at which you can have confidence that fate in the traditional sense does not exist. Now, all of that is not to undercut the fact that Epicurus also said that some things happen by necessity. Some things happen by accident and some things happen according to our own actions. Clearly some things happen mechanically. We discussed that last week and nobody should forget that Epicurus fully acknowledges that there is a mechanistic operation going on in the universe, but it does not control everything that happens and unfortunately we don’t have any surrounding commentary around Vatican saying number nine, but I would take the position that the implication of Vatican saying number nine is very clear when he says necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity. It has always seemed to me very clear that he’s saying that there is always the choice of ending your life. Now, you’re never going to want to do that. Epicure says only that a small person is going to have many reasons for ending his life, but again, remember that the determinists are all or nothing in their position. They want to say to you that everything is controlled by necessity. We from the epicurean position don’t have to show that everything is not controlled by causes beforehand. All we have to show is that some things are not under the control of necessity to validate Epicurus position and Vatican saying number nine strikes me as a very clear example of this. In the end, no one can force you to continue to live as a practical matter. You have the ability as torta sites in book, one of own ends, the ability to exit the theater when the play ceases to please us. Again, what I’m saying is not something that is intended to highlight suicide as a great way of proceeding in life, but what I think is the point is that all we have to show is that some things are under our control and hard determinism is invalidated. Everybody admits that there are so many aspects of your life that are determined by your genetics, by your background, by your learning, by your political system that you’re involved in, by the condition of your body in terms of disease or other disorders of the body that can take over and make you do things that you don’t really want to do. All of those things are possible and very frequently do happen, but at the same time, there are choices that are open to you in your life at the level that we perceive it just as we perceive pleasure and pain, we perceive that we have the ability to look left or look right or look up or look down or decide what to eat next or when to eat, what to drink, when to drink, all sorts of possibilities that are open to us, but again, Epicurus is taking the position that some things are within your control and that’s the key aspect of the epicurean position.
Joshua: As I listen to that explication Cassius, one thing becomes clear to me and that is that some of the arguments that are made in favor of determinism rely on us not noticing that the argument itself is essentially unfalsifiable that the claim is unfalsifiable. I’ve seen this on YouTube. I see people make arguments for example, that if you had a computer that could track the motion of every atom, particle, photon, et cetera in nature, you could predict perfectly everything that was going to happen next. Well, it’s not possible to build a computer that can track every atom in nature. This argument is unfalsifiable because it’s not possible to build that computer, right? We cannot test this claim, and so there’s a very real question for me, which is to what extent do I need to take this seriously? We talked last week about why the question is important, but for someone like me who historically has just thought of free will as more or less axiomatic in my life, I just think, yeah, of course I make my own choices, and that’s about as far as I go into it and that’s as far as I think I need to go into it. I guess the question would be is there a compelling argument for why I should climb out of that shell and engage more directly with this problem? Even though as I see it, the people who are arguing in favor of determinism are not resting their argument on anything more solid than what I am resting mine on against determinism.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, you’re exactly right, and what I would bring out in what you just said is when you said, is it necessary for you to take it seriously, what is the it that we’re talking about? We’re not talking about the mechanistic operation of genetics and chemistries of the brain and things like that. We obviously take seriously that many things in our existence are caused by influences that are out of our control. What is necessary to take seriously is the contention of the determinist that nothing you do can change your future, that you are not an agent at all in what happens to you, that you are basically the play thing of the universe depending on how far you want to take the metaphorical analysis of how these things work. It is very important for the advancement of science that we do gain more and more understanding of the way the body and the mind operates because we want to live in a healthy way. We want to live happily and we want to continue to expand the knowledge of how these things operate, but to take the fact that our knowledge can expand to the conclusion that well, in the end, of course, nothing you do or don’t do should be praised or blamed because it was out of your control. That’s the direction that I’ve always thought is the real motivating issue behind this deterministic argument. The ancients and these guys who are talking about the fate established by God and so forth, they are pushing these arguments because they want you to submit to the will of the gods and think that your life is ultimately controlled by these supernatural forces out of your control. There are others who are not necessarily pushing a supernatural agenda, but who for whatever reason, and we won’t go into that kind of speculation here, but there are people who believe it is in their interest to argue that you should not consider yourself and your actions to be praiseworthy or blameworthy in any respect whatsoever. You should just sit back and accept what has come to you and accept your existence as it is and accept whatever future the fates may have for you and sit back and do nothing to try to change what is about to happen in the future, and that is the kind of paralysis. I think that Dewitt is correctly observing that epicurus is totally against whether it comes from supernatural gods or whether it comes from some kind of mechanistic determinism. It’s equally destructive to the individual person’s ability to live happily, to act aggressively and to take charge of his life, and that’s something that does need to be taken seriously because it’s a very common position for a lot of people to take. One of the YouTube videos I watched last night was a physicist who just stood there and takes the position. It’s obviously true that once we get the computers that are strong enough, we will understand everything that happens. It’s obviously true that all it is is a matter of gaining more knowledge about the way the atoms are operating together, and once you get all that knowledge, then you can predict exactly what’s going to happen, which means if you can predict it, then it’s necessitated and that you don’t have a role yourself in what happens there. And again, this is such a rabbit hole of describing the different aspects of things, but again, we don’t live in a rabbit hole. We don’t live in this constant turmoil caused by this infinite regression of causes that people want to talk about. We have to live in the here and now just like we experienced pleasure and pain in the here and now and the way to live happily is not to give up your actions to some force beyond your control, whether it’s God’s or whether it’s some kind of mechanistic determinism. The way to live happily is to take control of your circumstances, not give them up to anyone or anything else.
Joshua: I keep coming back to this quote by Edward Abbey who was a park ranger in the American southwest, and he said in his book, desert Solitaire, he said to refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist, all you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head. If he ducks, he’s a liar. His logic may be airtight, but his argument far from revealing the delusions of living experience only exposes the limitations of logic, and this is precisely the kind of conversation where I find my mind going back to Edward Abbey and this quotation because I see the application of this in so many things. I see it in this position of antinatalism of this guy We’ve talked about sometimes from the ancient world, hega, the death decider, the philosopher who’s trying to convince people that it would be better off if they had never been born, but the only real worthwhile thing to do now is to end your life to which the only possible reply is you first, right? I mean, this is basically what Epicurus says about people who take this view is we shouldn’t take them seriously because they’re not even taking their own advice.
Cassius: That’s exactly the direction Joshua, I think is so important. You just talked about the limitations of logic and that is a major aspect of the analysis that’s discussed by Dr. Sedley and Tim O’Keefe as well, and it goes all the way back to csro. It’s discussed in own fate, but there’s a quote in particular from Academica 2 97 by Cicero that I’d like to include here now, and that quote is this Epicurus who despises and ridicules the whole of dialectic cannot be got to admit a proposition of the form. Either her Marcus will be alive tomorrow or he will not be alive is true despite the dialect’s rule that all disjunctions of the form either P or not P are not only true but also necessary. Notice how circumspect is this man whom your stoics considered dull witted for If he says, I admit that one or the other is necessary, it will be necessary either for her Marcus to be alive tomorrow or for him not to be alive, but there is no such necessity in the nature of things. Now, that’s the end of the quote, but that’s the relatively well-known position that Epicurus took about logical propositions about the future that you should not agree to even accept that there is a necessity involved in that question. Don’t you admit that her Marcus will either be alive tomorrow or he won’t be alive? Epicurus was so concerned about the way logic can be used to imply that there is a force of necessity that he rejected such a question as being a reasonable thing to ask, and he refused to answer the question on the grounds that there is no necessity. Again, this is something we’re not going to be able to go into to the level of detail that would be desirable, but there is this intersection between the rules of logic and the propositions of hard determinism and necessity that have lots of implications. Simply because you can construct a proposition in the form of a syllogism. You can assemble an array of words that make perfect logical sense. That does not mean that that syllogism has properly accounted for all of the facts of reality and your attempt to say that the future must be the way that your syllogism implies that it will be is not a reliable way of analyzing something. You always have to be looking at the specific circumstances, the specific details of what you’re talking about in order to get a correct conclusion. This is a discussion that we have regularly on the forum about the use of hypothetical questions. People want to use hypothetical questions to suggest that there is a necessary answer to a problem. The question of the experienced machine, would Epicurus wish to be hooked up to an experienced machine that guaranteed him to experience nothing but pleasure for the rest of his life or for an eternity? Would he accept that kind of a thing or not? It can be interesting to use hypotheticals to discuss a problem, but you cannot include within a hypothetical all of the circumstances that have to be analyzed. You can get useful information by discussing a hypothetical when you discuss the limitations of the hypothetical, but if you take the hypothetical as some kind of an absolute conclusion that is necessary and has been necessary from the beginning of time, then you go completely off the rails and allow this necessity of logic to overcome your rational common sense and your census. This is where all sensations are in fact true. We take them as givens and we don’t allow a logical analysis of what the sensation should be to override the fact that the sensation is what it is. So again, I just can’t say enough about Dr. S’s article on epic’s re reputation of determinism because I think it does reveal a lot of the common threads that explain so many different aspects of epic curing philosophy, his relationship to ISTs, his relationship to logic, his relationship to determinism necessity and free will. This self refutation argument, this method of saying as Lucious does that the man who says that nothing can be known, knows essentially nothing, that he’s standing on his head, that he’s being ridiculous, that’s a similar self refutation argument and understanding how that works is a key I think, to getting confidence in where Epicurus is coming from in his entire philosophy.
Joshua: We are starting to run out of time for today, but I do see Cassius in your outline. One of the things that is left to discuss is this distinction between fortune and fate, and Norman Dewitt takes us up in his book Epicurus and his philosophy on pages 1 76 through 1 78, and he says this, for the sake of clearness, there is need however of separating the sphere of fortune from that of fate or necessity. For instance, let it be assumed that fate had decreed the death of a man by shipwreck. It still remained for fortune or chance to determine the time and place again. It is the work of fortune if a man should be captured by pirates and sold into slavery, but the compulsions under which a slave must live are a form of necessity. Similarly, so far as individuals are concerned, it is the play of fortune if their city is sacked by an enemy, but the compulsions to which beleaguered citizens are subject is a form of necessity. And then on page 1 78, he goes on to say this nature teaches us to appraise as a minor value the gifts of fortune and to recognize that when fortunate, we are unfortunate and when faring ill, not to set great store by faring well and to accept without emotion the blessings of fortune and to remain on guard against the seeming evils from her hand for everything that to the multitude seems good or bad is but ephemeral and under no circumstances does wisdom enter into partnership with fortune. So he’s drawing a distinction here between fate, necessity, fortune, all of the key terms here, and there’s a lot of overlap with some of these, but the position that he gives to fortune in this passage I think is an interesting one. I’m looking here at a passage in which he says this, if fate decrease the death of a man by shipwreck, it still remained for fortune or chance to determine the time and place. What is your take on fortune versus fate?
Cassius: Yeah, I think you’ve got it right, Joshua. As det goes into it seems like the ancient Greeks and Romans considered that at the same time that there is fate, there is also fortune, which they distinguished from fate. I believe there was a temple of fortune in Rome and so forth, and there was this coexistence between the two that doesn’t entirely make sense, but again, this is one of those issues with the different attitudes we have today regarding the gods than they had back then because they saw the gods in sort of a much more human aspect than we think about them today. We tend to think, of course, omnipotence, omniscience and all these monotheistic things and the idea of the gods interacting with humans directly. I guess they saw that there might be a force of fortune that could intervene in the way that fate is applied. The really important aspect of it here for the epicurean perspective is that Epicurus is very clear that we should not look to luck in the way we organize our affairs, that we need to use reason to take control of our circumstances and organize the things around us and reduce any kind of input from chance to the minimum that’s possible. You can say that it’s always going to be possible to be hit by a meteor or be struck by lightning or something that’s really virtually impossible to take precautions against, but nevertheless, in most things in life, you can arrange your affairs so that chance is going to be only a minimal part of what happens to you, and that’s the essential thing that I think Epicurus is suggesting. You take what actions you can to go out and minimize the effects of fate. This is the way that Lucretia says it at the beginning of book six, and I’ve always thought that this was an excellent way of describing the situation. Around line nine, he starts talking about how mortals had attained all sorts of happiness and so forth, but they were still within their hearts unhappy because they didn’t have basically a correct philosophy, and he says this quote, and so with his discourse of truthful words, he purged the heart and set a limit to its desire and fear and set forth what is the highest good towards which we all strive and pointed out the path whereby along a narrow track we may strain on towards it in a straight course, he showed what there is of ill in the affairs of mortals everywhere coming to being and flying abroad in diverse forms, be it by chance or the force of nature because nature had so brought it to pass. He showed from what gates, it is meat to Sally out against each ill, and he proved his vein for the most part that the race of men set tossing in their hearts the gloomy billows of care. The analogy that I’ve always thought was very good there was that of showing from what gates it’s appropriate to forge out and attack the ills that sometimes nature brings in your direction. Sometimes other men bring in your direction, sometimes you cause for yourself, but that’s what Epicurus is showing is how to fight these things, not how to simply accept them and think that they’re part of life and that life is suffering and there’s nothing that you can do about it. I think that’s really the core lesson of this entire discussion of determinism and necessity. One more thing I want to add though before we begin to close is another section that Dewitt brings up very close to what you were reading before. Joshua is entitled The Double Choice on page 1 73, and I think that’s a very important part as well because we all know the standard objection and the standard argument that there are so many things in life that are beyond our control, that there really is an oppressively huge number of problems that everyone is confronted with and that very few people have the ability to really fight back against. We all know that there are hard cases that would tend to lead you to a bad conclusion that everything is out of your control, but here’s something that dewitt points out. The first and foremost refinement of the topic in the hands of Epicurus was to draw a clear distinction between choosing an attitude diathesis towards action in a given sphere and choosing to do or not to do a given thing within the field. For example, a man must first choose what attitude he shall assume towards death and the God’s pleasure and pain, necessity, fortune, political life, monarchy, fame, friendship, diet, and other things. To exemplify from this list, the right attitude towards necessity is to deny it towards fortune, is to defy her toward political life, to avoid it toward fame, to ignore it and towards friendship, to look upon it as the most precious of all the acquisitions of the wise man. The famous collection known as the authorized doctrines is rightly understood as a guide for the choice of attitudes towards the essential things in the art of living happily. The first, for instance, advises the disciple that the gods are not to be feared. This is an attitude which is first to be chosen and then cultivated the point there being that even people who are confronted with extremely adverse circumstances do have a choice of attitude. Now, I don’t want to go in a stoic direction and think that you’re ascent to things and your attitude towards things can override the realities and the pains that we confront, but you do have a choice over the attitude that you can take when you confront these problems and I think Dewitt does a very good job. In this section of summarizing that epicure and philosophy is largely a matter of attitude in how to deal with life. Is life suffering as some would say or is life a pleasure and something to be treasured for the benefits that it brings as Epicurus argues, is pleasure limited to sex, drugs and rock and roll, or is life itself something to be valued as pleasure? You can look at that as a philosophical position or you can look at that as an attitude and that attitude of seeing in life the guidance of pleasure and pain as opposed to the guidance of supernatural forces is a huge part of the effectiveness of the philosophy. If you don’t understand the attitude toward the world and nature that Epicurus was conveying, then it’s easy to get confused about what he’s really talking about and what his advice really leads to. Epic is fighting necessity because he wants everyone to achieve a life of pleasure and a life of happiness. You’re fighting necessity, you’re fighting these adverse circumstances because your life is all that you have. The time that you live is all you’re going to have, and you’re going to have essentially this attitude that today we often think of in terms of you only live once or live like you were dying and so forth. When you get the proper understanding of your place in the universe and that at the time of your death you will cease to exist forever, I think you get a sense of urgency and valuation of the time that you do have that makes you want to make the best of that time and doesn’t make you want to just sit back, give in and take whatever comes to you. As some people argue is the course of determinism. I think we reconcile all this, the difference between Dr. S’s interpretation and Tim O’Keefe’s interpretation in the same way that in the end everyone agrees that Epicurus is talking about pursuing a pleasurable life, and the detail of how you get to that conclusion can be debated. Whether you want to go down the adamistic swerve road, whether you want to go down the road of logical analysis or some other road, in the end, the destination of the road is very clear.
Speaker 3: Okay,
Cassius: We have come to the end of today’s episode. If anyone has any final thoughts.
Joshua: I just have one word of caution for people who are drawn to determinism because of its effect on culpability, retribution versus rehabilitation in punishing wrongdoers, so to speak, and I think there can be a motive of compassion here that you look to someone who has committed a crime and you say, hold on, rather than immediately condemning them, let’s stand back and let’s look at all the factors that have led to this person behaving in the way that they have behaved. And for someone who believed in determinism, you would say, actually, there’s no point at which we could tear layers off the onion and finally come down to a kernel of a choice that they’ve made, that this is entirely out of their hands, and that therefore punishing them with a view to retribution, with a view to revenge that this would be an utterly pointless practice because they didn’t choose to do what they did in the first place. Like I say, I think that this is motivated by compassion, but what people need to realize is that it’s not like determinism is a new idea that developed in the 1960s, and we’re still working out how society will react to this problem. The fact is fate, determinism, necessity, the idea that everything is in the lap of the gods, these are the most ancient ideas that humanity has ever had, and if we want to look to where ideas motivated by determinism can lead in societies based on them, we look at these ancient societies and what we find is that you have people marked out for death, people who are scapegoated, and it’s not the case that society at large, even though they might believe in fate, even though they might believe that this is a choice not made by the individual, but made by the gods, even though they might believe that fortune has a role in this, what they don’t do in these cases is rally around this unlucky person. Someone in the words of Friar Lawrence from Romeo and Juliet, he says, of Romeo affliction is enamored of their parts, and thou art wedded to calamity. When you look at people in these old stories who are wedded to calamity, who are seen as unlucky or marked for death or marked for a bad fate by the gods or by necessity, what you don’t see in those stories is greater compassion from the people around them for the person who has been marked out. What you see instead is people piling all the evils of the village onto this person and driving them out into the wilderness to get rid of the bad luck and to get rid of the evil. And so this position that exists in the modern age motivated by compassion actually I think has the opposite effect. It makes people ultimately in a society that really accepts the conclusions of this determinism argument. It makes people less compassionate, I find, but that’s my reading of history, so that’s a word of caution as we come to an end today on this question of determinism, determinism. It’s very alluring, and I think that’s why it’s become so popular in philosophical circles in the 21st century, but determinism does have this other dark side to it.
Cassius: Joshua, those observations are a great way to end the podcast today because they take us back to some of the things that we discussed at the very beginning, and I’m particularly reminded of what Norman Dewitt said that the concept of determinism is not offensive to the intellectualism. It was consequently the duty of epicurus as a moralist, a reformer, and hence a pragmatist or an ancient parlance as a truly wise man who will be more powerfully moved by his feelings than other men to declare the significance of determinism for human conduct. And his verdict was that it meant paralysis. And I think that’s the point that you’re raising there is that even though people for the best of motivations, for compassion, for other people have a motivation to think that determinism is a way out of the problems that we have, and that determinism gives an excuse for people acting in the terrible ways that they sometimes act, that is a false option, and it leads to worse than the evils that they’re trying to correct through their compassion. As Dewitt says, as Epicurus was pointing to, determinism leads to paralysis, and the only way to move forward in having a happier life in helping the people that you want to help is to take control of your actions and to take action to improve the situation. These intellectuals, as Dewitt is referring to think that they can exempt themselves from the operation of determinism, and they think that somehow they are able to step outside the rules that they impose on other people, and that’s absolutely a false alternative. And to some extent, that’s why some people seem to embrace the swerve and ask it to do more than Epicurus himself. They think that in determinism is something that plays into their views of skepticism and to necessity, and that it removes the personal responsibility to act to make your life better, and it doesn’t. In addition to the article that we’ve been talking about from David Sedley, there’s a companion article from about the same time period from AA long, which is entitled Chance and Natural Law in Epicureanism, and it makes the excellent point that the swerve was the minimal necessary to accomplish the goal of in determinism, but as a long points out, all things constantly happening absolutely randomly would totally undercut the entire philosophy and theory of atoms in the first place because what atom shows is how the regularity of the universe operates without supernatural forces behind it. If the swerve were just causing chaotic and random events to constantly be happening, then the whole rest of the adamistic theory would fall apart, and it obviously was not meant an epicurus that way. As long points out, if that had been Epic’s intent, if the swerve was so pervasive of force in the world, then surely his critics like Cicero and Plu Tar and others would’ve pointed out how the swerve makes everything in the world absolutely unpredictable. But that’s not an argument that they raised about the swerve, and given of course, that they would’ve raised any argument that they could if it had actually been present in Epicurus work. That absence of that argument is an indication that the swerve was never interpreted by Epicurus in the expansive way that people are interpreting it today. So I think Dr. Sedley and Dr. Long are clearly on the right track. Epicurus was attacking necessity and determinism because of the logical implications to which it leads, and that’s the primary problem that we’re all addressing and looking at the issue of determinism and coming to a rational understanding of why we are not absolutely bound by necessity and why we can using Epicurean Philosophy Act to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. And one of the ways we’d suggest that you act to improve your life is to come visit us at the Epicurean Friends Forum. We’re happy to have you pursue with us the reconstruction of the work of, as Cicero says, the master builder of human happiness. Thanks for your time today. We’d be back soon. See you then. Bye.