Episode 266 - The Epicurean Paradigm Shift
Date: 02/02/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4276-episode-266-the-epicurean-paradigm-shift/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 266 of Lucretius today. This is the 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 have one more special episode before we return to our normal programming. This week’s show will be an updated version of a talk I gave on January the 19th of 2025 as part of our first epicurean live stream. Next week we’ll be back with our co-host for a regular Lucretius today episode. Until then, here’s my presentation of the Epicurean paradigm shift in book two of his work on the ends of good and evil, the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero wrote in regard to Epicurus view of pleasure that Epicurus is speaking an idiom of his own and ignoring our accepted terminology as we’ll discuss today. Cicero’s complaint was ultimately unjustified because there is nothing wrong with explaining how accepted understandings of things are in error and need to be changed. However, Cicero was largely correct that Epicurus rejected important terminology that Cicero and many people today take for granted. I’ve entitled this talk the Epicurean Paradigm shift because the word paradigm is used today to refer to a general mental model or framework, a paradigm shift refers to a dramatic change in that mental model. In order for us to understand Epicurean philosophy correctly, we have to understand the mental model from which Epicurus developed his philosophy and that presents certain challenges that we will discuss today for the next few minutes, what I’m going to suggest to you is that epicurean philosophy should not be looked upon as a set of isolated positions such as atoms or hedonism, but as a dramatic change in mental model covering a wide range of issues as to how to approach not only pleasure but also important questions like the existence of gods and the nature of the universe and of the human soul. To start with one quick example before diving deeper, let’s start with the existence of Gods. This is one of the most confusing aspects of Epicurus for new readers because almost everyone has been taught to consider Epicurus to be an atheist. When people first hear that Epicurus held that Gods do in fact exist, they are immediately confused because they jump to the conclusion that they know what Epicurus meant by the word gods. Some people close their mind to Epicurus as soon as they hear that Epicurus was considered an atheist and other people closed their mind as soon as they learned that Epicurus did not consider himself to be an atheist. If these people will stick with Epicurus long enough, however, they’ll find that epicurus views are much deeper than they imagined because they’ll find that epicurus rejected the common understanding of what it means to be a God in the first place. That’s one example of the terminology issues, but there are many more and that explains a lot of the confusion that surrounds the study of Epicurus today. Just as an epicurus time in our own day, there are entrenched conventional positive and negative attitudes about God’s virtue and pleasure, and many of those views are so strong that people think that no other views are possible. So the first place to start in studying Epicurus is to open our minds to the possibility of a new paradigm of thought. Before we can decide whether we agree or disagree with epicurus, we first have to understand him clearly. We don’t have to rely on Cicero’s complaints about Epicurus terminology to see that there is in fact a real issue here. There are good reasons to conclude that the ancient epicurean themselves knew that they were being misunderstood by some and misrepresented by others, and those reasons go right back to Epicurus himself who wrote in his letter to men that quote, when we say then that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice or willful misrepresentation. Vatican saying 29 also records that epicure said this. In investigating nature, I would prefer to speak openly and like an oracle to give answers serviceable to all mankind even though no one should understand me, rather than to conform to popular opinions, and so when the praise freely scattered by the mob, likewise, in his poem on Epicurean philosophy, lucretius warns his readers that it is necessary for them to open their minds to new possibilities. In book two, Lucretius wrote, and here I’m citing the Humphreys version, direct your mind to a true system. Here is something new for ear and eye, nothing is ever so easy, but what at first is difficult to understand. Nothing is great and marvelous, but what all men a little at a time begin to mitigate their sense of awe. Look up, look at the pure bright color of the sky, the wheeling stars, the moon, the shining sun. If all these all of a sudden should arise for the first time before our mortal sight, what could be called more wonderful, more beyond the heights to which aspiring mind might dare nothing I think, and yet a sight like this marvelous as it is now draws no man to lift his gaze to heaven’s bright areas. We are a jaded lot, but even so, don’t be too shocked by something new. Too scared to use your reasoning sense to weigh and balance so that if in the end a thing seems true, you welcome it with open arms. If faults, you do your very best to strike it down. Before we go further and tackle anything else, let’s go back to Cicero and lock in this terminology issue as to pleasure since pleasure is the topic most people associate with Epicurus and they’re most interested in section 23 of book two of own ends. Cicero, who is himself an academic skeptic and very hostile to Epicurus is speaking with Torti, an epicurean. Cicero lets his exasperation and his sarcasm for epic curing philosophy come through here, so this is very revealing. Cicero says this, the name of pleasure certainly has no dignity in it, and perhaps we do not exactly understand what is meant by it. For you are constantly saying that we do not understand what you mean by the word pleasure. No doubt it’s a very difficult and obscure matter. When you speak of atoms and spaces between worlds, things which do not exist and which cannot possibly exist, then we understand you cannot. We understand what pleasure is a thing which is known to every sparrow. What will you say if I compel you to confess that I not only do know what pleasure is for it is a pleasant emotion affecting the senses, but also that I know what you mean by the word for at one time. You mean by the word the very same thing which I have just said, which is a pleasant emotion affecting the sense and you give it the description of consisting in motion and of causing some variety at another time. You speak of some other highest pleasure which is susceptible of no addition, whatever, but that it is present when every sort of pain is absent and you call it then a state not emotion. Let that then be pleasure. Say in any assembly, you please that you do everything with a view to avoid suffering pain. If you don’t think that this language is sufficiently dignified or sufficiently honorable, say that you’ll do everything during your year of office and during your whole life for the sake of your own advantage that you will do nothing except what is profitable to yourself, nothing which is not prompted by a view to your own interest. What an uproar such a declaration would excite in the assembly and what hope do you think you would have of the const ship? Can you follow principles which when you’re alone or with your closest friends, you don’t dare to profess and ow openly, but instead you have those maxims constantly in your mouth, which the tics and the stoics profess in the courts of justice and in the Senate, you speak of duty, equity, dignity, good faith, uprightness, honorable actions, conduct worthy of power, worthy of the Roman people you talk of encountering every imaginable danger in the cause of the republic of dying for one’s country. When you speak in this manner, we are all amazed like a pack of blockheads and you are laughing in your sleeve for among all those high sounding and admirable expressions, pleasure has no place not only that pleasure, which you say consistent motion and which all men whether living in cities or in the country, all men in short who speak Latin call pleasure, but even that stationary pleasure, which no one but your sect calls pleasure at all. Here we see Cicero saying that Epicurus as a concept of pleasure, which no one but your sect calls pleasure at all. We need to get to the bottom of that, so let’s follow Cicero a little further to see what this dispute is all about because what we’re going to find is that epicure as hell that all experiences in life, all experiences in life fall within one of two feelings, either pleasure or pain, and Cicero refuses to accept that division. Cicero told his epicurean friend TOAs that Epicurus application of the term pleasure in this way does violence to one’s senses. It is resting out of our minds the understanding of words with which we are imbued for who can avoid seeing that these three states exist in the nature of things. First, the state of being in pleasure, secondly that of being in pain and thirdly, that of being in such a condition as we are at this moment and you too, I imagine that is to say neither in pleasure nor in pain. Here we have the crux of the issue not only between Cicero and Tous, but between Epicurus and the rest of the philosophic world. Cicero is saying that there are states which do not constitute pleasure or pain, and Epicurus is saying that that is not true, that there are only pleasure and pain. Epicurus is saying that if you are alive and feeling anything at all, you are feeling one or the other pleasure or pain and what I’ve just said, there is almost an exact quote from Tous in section 38 of on ends book, one Tous said to Cicero, quote, therefore Epicures, to refuse to allow that there is any middle term between pain and pleasure. What was thought by some to be a middle term, the absence of all pain was not only itself pleasure but the highest pleasure possible. Surely anyone who is conscious of his own condition is necessarily either in a state of pleasure or in a state of pain. We could dedicate the rest of the time we have today to explaining that position further, but what I want to emphasize most of all is this epicurus holes that death is nothing to us, which means that there is no life after death and that means that all the happiness we are ever going to experience must occur in this single life that we have. Most all of the supposed great thinkers of the world like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the stoics were dedicated to some form of supernatural creation of the universe, which implies that humans are special beings with eternal souls which can continue to exist in some form after death. From Epicurus perspective, this life is our most valuable possession and something to be enjoyed, so it makes perfect sense that we should consider every experience of life which is not painful to be pleasurable. You can decide for yourself whether you agree with Epicurus terminology, but from this perspective it makes perfect sense to divide everything in life between that which is desirable and call it pleasure and that which is undesirable and call it pain between those two, there’s no middle ground and those who reject this division are saying more about themselves and their own inferior view of life than they are saying about Epic as a result of this perspective. When we look at Venus as a representation of pleasure and nature, as Lucretius did at the opening of his poem, we’re not only looking at stimulative pleasure, the sex, drugs and rock and roll of life, we’re also looking at Venus as the representation of every desirable aspect of human life, mental and physical, from philosophy to sports, to art, to literature, to music, to history, from passionate love and affection, to simple contemplation and to every mental and physical activity of life in between that is not painful. Cicero and other opponents of Epicurus strongly reject this expansion in the use of the word pleasure. In section seven of book one of own ends, Cicero tried to make an in run around Epicurus by arguing that Epicurus never made the claim that pleasure includes all the mental and physical activities that I just listed. Cicero argued, what actual pleasure do you tota or does tri areas here derive from literature, from history and learning, from turning the pages of the poets and committing vast quantities of verse to memory. Do not tell me that these pursuits are in themselves a pleasure to you and that so were the deeds I mentioned of the ti. That line of defense was never taken by Epicurus or metro Doris Norby, any one of them if he possessed any intelligence or had mastered the doctrines of your school. Of all the arguments made by Cicero against Epicurus, this is one of the most patently absurd are we to believe that there’s no pleasure to be found in literature, history, poetry and other learning. Cicero could hardly believe that Torti would accept this claim and indeed Torti rejects it implicitly over and over again when given the chance. No, this claim by Cicero is absurd and there’s an important lesson to be learned when an experienced trial lawyer like Cicero is willing to risk his own credibility by going over the top with an argument that no one with any knowledge of Epicurus would believe. What Cicero is doing is making an argument that’s patently false and instead of accepting Epicurus view of pleasure and simply disagreeing with him on the merits, Cicero is trying to ridicule Epicurus throughout his book by calling Epicurus position of effeminate and cowardly and disreputable rather than dealing honestly with ideas, Cicero is deflecting our attention and asking us to consider whether any normal, proud, strong and vigorous man or woman would possibly accept absence of pain as the goal of their lives. The answer to that is of course they would not given Cicero’s definition of pleasure as limited to sensual simulation, but that’s not the definition of pleasure that epicure stated or the epicurean we’re working with and that’s something Cicero and people who think like Cicero refuse to acknowledge. This is an important question that demands a response, but Cicero control the terms of the debate in his book on ends and he never gave tous the opportunity to address this in detail. Cicero was counting on the fact that just like today, many people do in fact jump to the conclusion that pleasure means sensual stimulation only because they have not heard the full epicurean explanation of pleasure. Just as Epicurus complained to men, it’s very easy for Epicurus as enemies to deceive and say that when Epicurus speaks of pleasure, all he means is bodily stimulation. Why would Cicero take such a risk in making an argument that can be easily refuted in which the information in Cicero’s own book refutes because Epicurus enemies from the stoics to Cicero to plu tar and onto the Jews and the Christians who came afterward totally reject Epicurus view that there are no supernatural Gods epicurus his enemies promote piety to the gods or virtue or reason as the organizing principles of life and they know that what Epicurus taught meant the total rejection of their own principles in educating people to what pleasure really means and showing them how a life of pleasure can in fact be achieved. Epicurus was leading a philosophical and moral revolution. Cicero rightly saw that the continued spread of Epicurean philosophy would’ve spelled the end of supernatural based ethics in the educated world. Norman Dewitt, the Canadian professor who authored the book Epicurus and his philosophy expressed what Epicurus was doing in this way. The extension of the name of pleasure to the normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form freedom from pain of body and distress of mind that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to this state was unjustified on the ground, that two different things were thereby being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it is really superficial and caps the fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it nor that reason justifies the application nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing. Before we move on, let’s say a little more about the paradigm shift involved in absence of pain today. This term is often misinterpreted as epicurus abandoning the normal active and stimulating mental and bodily pleasures in favor of some Buddhist like or stoic like indifference or aloofness or asceticism. This could not be further from the truth as we’ve already discussed epicure as hell that there are only two feelings, pleasure and pain when there are only two options of anything than the absence of one equals the presence of the other. One way to think of this is as a pie chart divided by a line into two parts with one side representing pleasure and the other representing pain. No matter how you draw the dividing line, everything on one side of the line is pleasure and the other is pain. The part of the chart that is not pain where pain is absent is therefore pleasure and vice versa. In this paradigm, the term absence of pain means nothing more or less than pleasure. In this way we see what Cicero refused to admit that the term absence of pain does not indicate a special or higher type of pleasure but pleasure itself in any of the many active or stable forms in which it can exist. Dividing all of experience into the two categories of pleasure and pain in this way does not tell us what type of pleasure or pain is involved in a particular life at a particular moment, but it does tell us that in general we want as much of our experience to be pleasurable and as little of our experience to be painful as possible. Epicurious as enemies and even many who profess to be his friend but who are more of a stoic or acetic bent have turned this perspective on its head and ended up making it look like the primary goal of epicure and philosophy is to run like a coward from every moment of pain no matter how slight, again nothing could be further from the truth. Epicurus clearly tells us that we will regularly choose activities that are painful when those activities increase our total pleasure and that in fact the cowardly and shameful person is he who always chooses pleasure even when he or she should see that that choice will ultimately lead to disaster. Nothing could be more clear than Tate’s explanation of this. We epicurean denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of the pleasure of the moment so blinded by desire that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish in a free hour when our power of choice is untrammeled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best. Every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided, but in certain emergencies and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business, it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection. He rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures or else he endures pain to avoid worse pain. By now in my talk it should be clear that even though Cicero was a strong critic of Epicurus, we have much to thank Cicero for because Cicero preserved for us much detail about epicurean arguments that would otherwise be lost and those who read the letter to menaces over and over again without the illustrations that Torti provides are doing themselves a major disservice. Possibly the most important illustration that Cicero preserved through Torti is a story about an argument made against Epicurus by the famous stoic philosopher Precipus. The argument strikes many of us as strange the first time we hear it, but if you’ll stay with me, I think you’ll see something very important. Here’s the story Quais told in section 11 of book one of own ends and it involves opus holding out his hand and making a short logical argument to an unknown person who apparently does not understand Epicurus. Here’s the story at Athens, so my father used to tell me when he wanted to air his wit at the expense of the stoics. In the ceramicist there is a statue of Crispus seated and holding out one hand the gesture being intended to indicate the delight which Crispus used to take in the following little syllogism, does your hand want anything or lack anything? While it is in its present condition, his listener says, no, nothing. Chris says, but if pleasure were a good it would want pleasure. The listener says yes, I suppose it would. Chris then says, therefore, pleasure is not a good adhere Tor resumes and says, this is an argument my father declared, which not even a statute would employ if a statute could speak because though it is cogent enough as an objection to the cyac, it does not touch Epicurus for if the only kind of pleasure were that which so to speak tickles the senses and influence permeating them with a feeling of delight. Neither the hand nor any other part of the body could be satisfied with the absence of pain unaccompanied by an agreeable and active sensation of pleasure, whereas if as Epicurus holes the highest pleasure be to feel no pain, Chris’s interlocutor though justified in making his first admission that his hand in that condition wanted nothing was not justified in his second admission that if pleasure were a good, his hand would’ve wanted it and the reason why the hand would not have wanted pleasure is that to be without pain is to be in a state of pleasure. Now, what isci syllogism really supposed to mean, again, it can be confusing as the stoics like things to be. We don’t normally think about our hands in their normal condition wanting or lacking pleasure or anything else, but thinking about that is the key to understanding the analogy and why Chris’s point is false. Christus was presuming that we would agree with them and in fact we do that If a thing is the highest good for a living thing, then any living thing that lacks that thing will want it and be dissatisfied or even in pain if it lacks it. Just like Cicero Christus is trying to get us to accept that the only type of pleasure is sensual stimulation and in fact to QAs points out for us that that is exactly what Aus and the Cyac did in fact believe. In other words, if the only kind of pleasure that exists for our hand is that of being massaged or being immersed in a warm bath, then if the goal of life is pleasure, then our hands would never be satisfied unless they were constantly being massaged or warmed. Cicero and the stoics are both saying that if pleasure is the goal of life and pleasure consists only in stimulation, no living being whether a hand or a full person could ever be satisfied and thus it would be in pain unless it had sensual stimulation and of course Crispus and the enemies of Epicurus also wants you to focus on the fact with which Epicurus agrees that sensual stimulation is not something you can expect to be constant and uninterrupted for your whole life, so therefore they want you to conclude that considering pleasure to be the goal of life and the highest good is not only disreputable but a fool’s errand that is doomed to failure. The epicurean response to all this is very clear and torti gives it under epic’s sweeping view of pleasure. The default position of simply being alive in a healthy state is pleasurable whether we’re talking about our hand or any other living thing. If we are not experiencing pain and we are in a normal and healthy state, then what we are experiencing is pleasure and even when we may be experiencing physical pain, Torti makes clear that physical pain can be outweighed by mental pleasure. Torti says this therefore clearly appears that intense mental pleasure or distress contributes more to our happiness or misery than a bodily pleasure or pain of equal duration, but we do not agree that when pleasure is withdrawn, uneasiness at once ensues unless the pleasure happens to have been replaced by a pain. Well, on the other hand, one is glad to lose a pain even though no active sensation of pleasure comes in its place and this fact serves to show how great a pleasure is the mere absence of pain. As we will mention later, the story of Epicurus being happy even while in great physical pain on the last day of his life makes this same point so far is epicurus from valuing only bodily pleasures that he emphasized using his own example that mental pleasures are frequently of much greater importance to us than our bodily ones. This view of pleasure does in fact reject the terminology that Cicero and the rest of the philosophers insist on using. However, as Norman Dewitt said, this change in paradigm is fully justified and humanity would be far better off by recognizing and reasoning that Epicurus approach to pleasure is correct and what could be more true than to observe that when the total experience of the hand or of a person as a whole is without any pain, then that total experience is the highest amount of pleasure possible. Such an experience is pure pleasure with no mixture of pain and fully justifies the label of the highest pleasure even if we are not specifying whether the person is sitting calmly at rest or rocketing himself to Mars to experience the exhilaration of exploration. Both of these examples or any example in which it is stated that no pain is present or rightly considered to be the highest pleasure Cicero in fact provides later in the same book, just such an example which left Cicero astounded that the epicurean could consider both the host at a banquet who is without pain but pouring wine for his guest to be experiencing the same amount of pleasure as the thirsty guest who is relieving his thirst and also without pain. The point of that story as well is that if it is stated that you are without pain, then you are without pain and at the theoretical peak of pleasure we frequently hear the objection. How can absence of pain be the peak of pleasure? Here we can look back to both the words and to the life of Epicurus for guidance on how much pleasure a person should seek in his letter to men, Epicurus tells us repeatedly that the goal of life is pleasure and that we should seek the most pleasant life, but Epicurus does not seek to substitute his judgment for ours as to what each person will find to be the most pleasant life for them. In his letter Epicurus writes, just as with food, the wise man does not seek simply the larger share and nothing else, but rather the most pleasant, so he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time but the most pleasant independence of desire we think are great good, not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things but that if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest pleasure and luxury who least need it. Epicurus tells me to see us that quote every pleasure because of its natural kinship to us is good but that some pleasures are not to be chosen because in the end they do bring more pain than pleasure. Epicurus tells everyone in principle doctrine number 10, that if the things that produce the pleasures of propagates could dispel the fears of the mind about the phenomena of the sky and death and its pains and also teach the limits of desires and of pains we should never have cause to blame them for they would be filling themselves full with pleasures from every source and never have pain of the body or mind which is the evil of life. All of those point in the same direction that Epicurus is not going to tell us what is the most pleasurable life for us. He’s going to let nature tell us that directly given the circumstances of our own lives. Epicurus is a philosopher, not a life coach and as you would expect from a philosopher who rejects the idea of a central supernatural plan for the universe as a whole. Epicurus generally writes in broad philosophic terms that are appropriate for someone who realizes that our specific personal circumstances will generally control what we find to be the most pleasant and the most painful for us. Epicurus always tracks his underlying premises about the nature of the universe and therefore when each of us reaches the end of our lives, whenever that may be, it is only we ourselves and no supernatural God or anyone else whose opinion counts as to whether we’ve made the best use of our lives. In Epicurus his own case, we have the biography of Dogen lius as evidence that Epicurus was far from choosing a life of minimalism or asceticism for himself. Few men who choose a life of asceticism have any need to write a will disposing of extensive personal property, but Epicurus will shows us that at the time of his death, Epicurus held not only the garden that is associated with his name, Epicurus held also a house in Maleta which appears to have generated income sufficient for a number of purposes including caring for the son of Metro Dous for the son of Polyus and the daughter of metro Dous. Epicurus also appears to have held at least four slaves whom he freed at his death and possibly a larger number that he did not to the example of Epicurus. We can also point to Dogen of Voer who was well off enough at the end of his life to endow a large public monument dedicated to Epicurus. We can also look to other epicurean such as Cicero’s friend, Atticus or Edemas, patron piso, all of whom were very wealthy. These are not the markings of men who believed that epicurean philosophy pointed them towards any form of asceticism or minimalism. Epicurus regularly challenges us to think outside the box by using phrases such as death is nothing to us or the size of the sun is as it appears to be. The use of terminology that equates pleasure with absence of pain is not only challenging but it’s also maddening to those people like Cicero who refuse to accept any other way of thinking other than their own, but in the end stating proudly that the goal of life is absence of pain is just as aggressive, just as confrontational and just as correct as stating that the goal of life is pleasure. Cicero tried to argue to aqua us down from this position, but Tous stood his ground without hesitation at section nine of book two of own ends, Cicero said, but unless you’re extraordinarily obstinate tous, you’re bound to admit that freedom from pain does not mean the same thing as pleasure. In response to QAs replied well, but on this point you will find me obstinate for the fact that freedom from pain means pleasure is as true as any proposition can be. Some who resist Epicurus as view of pleasure will say that he’s playing a word game and that on most occasions of life our immediate experience is a combination of pleasures and pains, but Epicurus himself provides the example that proves the rule as Lucius records when he was on the point of death, Epicurus wrote the following letter to MIUs on this truly happy day of my life. As I’m at the point of death I write this to you, the disease in my bladder and stomach are pursuing their course lacking nothing of their natural severity, but against all this is the joy in my heart. At the recollection of my conversations with you, do as I might expect from your devotion from boyhood to me and to philosophy take good care of the children of metro Dous. So on the last day of his life, Epicurus was experiencing both severe bodily pain and mental pleasure at the thought of his philosophical achievements and the company of his friends. Nevertheless, Epicurus wrote that that last day was also among his happiest. Epicurus knew that because we’re humans we have to expect a combination of pleasures and pains as Atu explains. For us, epic curing philosophy gives us the key to understanding that it is within our power to live a life in which pleasure predominates Tatu explained this in section 62 of own ends for this is the way in which Epicurus represents the wise man as continually happy. He keeps his passions within bounds about death. He is indifferent, he holds true views concerning the eternal gods. Apart from all dread, he has no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life if that be the better course furnished. With these advantages he is continually in a state of pleasure for there is in truth no moment at which he does not experience more pleasures than pains for he remembers the past with thankfulness and the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness nor is he independence on the future but awaits it while enjoying the present. He is also very far removed from those defects of character which I quoted a little while ago and when he compares the fool’s life to his own, he feels great pleasure and pains if any befall him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reason for joy than for vation. At this point I’ve used up most of my time, but let me quickly mention several more paradigm shifts turning next to the second most important of them all. As we’ve already mentioned, people today are conditioned to think that you either believe in a supernatural God or you, you’re an atheist. Almost everyone today thinks of gods as omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent, all sorts of omni supernatural characteristics and they think if you reject those characteristics you’re rejecting the very possibility of there being a God of any kind. The truth is that Epicurus held neither of those positions epicurus held that divine beings do exist but that divine beings are an absolutely natural part of our universe just like everything else and certainly not supernatural. Epicurus wrote this to men for Gods there are since the knowledge of them is by clear vision but they’re not such as the many believe them to be. For indeed, they do not consistently represent them as they believe them to be and the impious man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many epic as hell. That to be a God means to be totally happy and totally without worry of anything including death. Epicurean gods may be at the top of the successful living pyramid, but epicurean gods are in no way supernatural epicurean Gods do not create universes or in any way meddle in the affairs of human beings any more than we generally take it upon ourselves to go looking to cause trouble for ants because Gods are totally natural and take notice of us, we as humans have absolutely no reason to fear them and to the extent that the subject of God’s should cross our minds at all, it should be as part of our understanding that the universe contains infinite amounts of life and that it is helpful to us to consider how a totally happy being who is totally unconcerned about death might live. Epicurus famously stated that it is possible through the study of philosophy to live like a God among men and lucretius repeated the analogy in comparing the blessedness of epicurus life to that of a God. This view of divinity is not atheism as we use that word today, but it totally eliminates the need to be concerned about controlling or angry or loving gods as suggested by many religions and philosophies and more than that, it helps us focus on the fact that just as with any gods that exist, we too are a part of nature and not the focus of attention of some arbitrary supernatural God turning quickly to virtue. In contrast to the stoics, Epicurus denied that virtue is an end in itself or the same for all people at all times and all places Epicurus held that the general term for the true goal of life is pleasure and that virtue is a tool inseparable and necessary that we need for living ably. Most people in Epicurus age and even today angrily reject this viewpoint, but it is the logical conclusion of identifying that there can be only one greatest good in life. Remember Epicurus is a philosopher and what he’s trying to do is give you a framework through which you can think your way out of the box that other philosophers and religions want to keep you inside. This issue became such an important question with the rise of stoicism that the epicurean of olander had to resort to shouting about it on the wall that he erected to celebrate the benefits of Epicurean philosophy wrote about those who have views similar to stoicism on his wall in something we now have as fragment 32. If gentlemen, the pointed issue between these people and us involved inquiry into what is the means of happiness and they want to say the virtues which would actually be true, it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this without more ado, but since as I say, the issue is not what is the means of happiness, but what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature? I say both now and always shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greek alike that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life. While the virtues which are inopportune messed about by these people being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end are in no way an end but the means to the end. Turning next to Epicurus famous statement, death is nothing to us. This is a statement that derives from Epicurus conclusion in the field of physics that human consciousness ceases to exist when the body dies because we no longer exist, it is impossible for us to receive after death any reward or punishment for anything that we do in this life or to have any consciousness whatsoever. Epicurus wrote this to men become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us for all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation and therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality for there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living. This doesn’t mean of course that we should not be concerned about the welfare of our friends after we die or the time and manner of our own death. Epicure is taught that life is desirable and a painful death is certainly undesirable When we realize that our time is limited, that helps us to relish the time that we do have and it even motivates us to provide for the future of our friends who will live after us. Just as Epicurus himself left a will and provided for his school and for the daughters of Metro. Doris after his own death. Epicurus did not cavalierly refuse to think about death and neither should we. Epicurus taught that what is important is to realize that after we die, we no longer exist forever and that’s a state of nothingness in which we’ll have no pain or pleasure of any kind For that reason, the old expression applies about making use of your time, make hay while the sun shines. Another poorly understood phrase often associated with epicurean philosophy is that nothing exists except atoms and void. This is a view that originated with ous rather than with epicurus, and Epicurus was emphatic in separating himself from the conclusions that some draw from it. To say that all things are composed of Adams and void does not mean that the things we see around us are not real and it does not lead to skepticism or nihilism as it seems to have done to some extent for a Democrats himself. Epicurus was emphatic in pointing out the mistakes of Democrat’s. Conclusions. Professor David Sedley who’s one of the great experts on Epicurus today explains the point this way in his article entitled Epic’s Refutation of Determinism, Dr. Sedley says because phenomenal objects and properties the things that we see around us seemed to reduce to mere configurations of atoms and void. Democrats was inclined to suppose that the atoms and void were real, while the phenomenal objects and properties were no more than arbitrary constructions placed upon them by human cognitive organs. In his more extreme moods, Democrats was even inclined to doubt the power of human judgment since judgment itself was no more than a realignment of Adams. In the mind, Epic’s response to this 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, epicurious justifies his non reductionist alternative according to which sensations are true and there are therefore bonafide truths at the phenomenal level accessible through them. Again, that’s David Sudley from Epicurus reputation of determinism. In other words, while nothing has an eternal and unchanging nature except the atoms and the void and the universe as a whole, we ourselves and the things we see around us, everything we love from our dogs to our cats, to our houses, to everything around us that we see and touch every day, these things are real too. It’s very damaging to think that these things are somehow less real than the atoms and the void because what that often leads to is the idea that only the atoms and the void are real and that everything else is a figment of our imagination and that leads to nihilism and helplessness, which is the furthest thing from epicurean philosophy possible. Now we’re accelerating towards our close with just a few more comments. For Epicurus. The term world refers not just to the earth but to all that we see in the sky as well, including the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets, and in an infinite universe there are an infinite number of such worlds. Recia says it this way in book two of his poem, if there is so great a store of seeds as the whole life of living things could not number and if the same force and nature abides, which could throw together the seeds of things each into their place in like manner as they are thrown together here, you must confess that there are other worlds in other regions and diverse races of men and tribes of wild beast in the universe. There is nothing single, nothing born unique and growing unique and alone, but it is always of some tribe and there are many things in the same race. First of all, turn your mind to living creatures. You’ll find that in this direction has begotten the race of wild beasts that haunt the mountains in this direction, the stock of men in this direction, again, the dumb herds of scaly fishes and all the bodies of flying vows. Wherefore you must confess in the same way that sky and earth, sun, moon, sea and all else that exists are not unique but rather numberless in as much as the deep fixed boundary stone of life awaits these as surely and they are just as much of a body that has birth as every race which is here on earth abounding in things after its kind. So when you read the word world, Epicurus tells us that there’s an infinite number of worlds, other collections of planets and stars and galaxies and living beings epicurus health that because nature never creates only a single thing of a kind, we expect there to be innumerable worlds in the universe where life both similar and different from ours exists so that here on earth as humans we’re not by any means the only or the most intelligent life that exists in the universe, nor are we the center of the universe or the center of attention of a supernatural God that chooses certain people over others, some to be his friends and others to be his enemies. Views such as that are totally irreconcilable with epicurean philosophy. Also, when you read Epicurus, you’ll often see references to a cannon of truth and you need to understand that this does not refer to a book of propositions like a rule book or a Bible, but to a test of truth similar to a ruler or a yardstick by which we measure distance. A ruler can be applied to any object to measure its size, but it tells us nothing more about that object than how it compares in size to a known quantity. For example, a ruler tells us that both a human foot and a football are approximately a foot long, but the ruler does not tell us the nature of a human foot or a football and that they are very different things. Epicurious, biographer, dogen, lyricist explains epicurious canon of truth in this way. Logic they reject as misleading for they say it is sufficient for physicists to be guided by what things say of themselves. Thus in the canon, epicure says that the tests of truth are the sensations and the preconceptions and the feelings for he says all sensation is irrational and does not admit of memory for it is not set in motion by itself, nor when it is set in motion by something else can it add to or take from it. For Epicurus, the ultimate test of reality is not syllogisms or abstract logic, but whether a thing can be felt or measured when tested against the faculties given us by nature, including those five senses, the intuitive faculty known as preconceptions and the feeling of pleasure and pain because those faculties are given to us by nature, it is they to which we look to validate our reasoning and so from that perspective, in fact, all sensations are true. These natural faculties have no memory or reasoning of their own and they never lie to us, so everything that they report to us has to be accounted for. If we want to fill in the picture of what they’re reporting, error can certainly take place of course, but that is in our reasoning about what the senses report to us not in the senses themselves. The senses don’t lie. They simply report what they receive without any added opinion of their own and it is up to us in our minds to process that result. I only have time for one more paradigm shift before we close, but I’d like to suggest that perhaps this could be the most important in the end, the most life-changing paradigm shift that can come from the study of epicurus is to see that Epicurus is not the philosopher of shy retiring acetic wallflowers who avoid engagement with the world and who seek only quiet, simplicity, minimalism, or even austerity as some people would have you to believe. Once you understand the epicurean view of life, you’ll see that Epicurus is the philosopher of people who are healthy, active, and vigorously alive, and who understand that life is short and that we should work as hard as we can to make the best of the time that we have while we are alive. As stated in Vatican saying 47 and Epicurean will seize the day and approach life aggressively. Vatican saying 47 says, I have anticipated the fortune and entrenched myself against all thy secret attacks and I will not give myself up as captive to the or to any other circumstance, but when it is time for me to go spitting contempt on life and on those who vainly clinging to it, I will leave life crying aloud a glorious triumph song that I have lived well in the ancient world. Epicurus appeal to large numbers of people, but the followers of Epicurus who you are almost never told about include Roman generals such as Cassius Long Genus Panza and other leaders of Julius Caesar’s camp quite possibly including Julius Caesar himself, who at the very least held a number of very epicurean ideas. These men led full and active lives vigorously engaged with the world around them. Once again, we can thank Cicero for the preservation of an important epicurean text. In 45 BC in the middle of the Roman civil war, Cassius law genus tried to explain epicurean philosophy to Cicero. We have Cassius letter in which he wrote to Cicero the following. It is hard to convince men that the good is to be chosen for its own sake, but that pleasure and tranquility of mind is acquired by virtue justice and the good is both true and demonstrable. Why Epicurus himself from whom all the CAEs and amuses in the world incompetent translators of terms as they are derive their origin, lays it down that to live a life of pleasure is impossible without living a life of virtue and justice. Consequently, Panza who follows pleasure keeps his hold on virtue and those also whom you call pleasure lovers are lovers of what is good and lovers of justice and cultivate and keep all the virtues. We’ll never know whether Cicero truly had a change of heart about Epicurean philosophy at the very end of his life, but we do know that Cicero admitted to Cassius that Cassius actions had made him reevaluate his attitude towards Epicurus near the end of his life. Cicero wrote this to Cassius, to whom am I talking to you? The most gallant gentleman in the world who ever since you set foot in the forum have done nothing but what bears every mark of the most impressive distinction why in that very school you have selected of course referring to Epicurus. I apprehend that there is more vitality than I should have supposed if only because it has your approval. For those of us who are alive today, we have the chance that Cicero missed to look further into Epicurean philosophy and see how it can shift our own understanding of the universe and our place in it. The next step in the study of Epicurus is up to you, as Lucretius said in book one of his poem to the student of Epicurean philosophy. For as dogs often discover by smell the layer of a mountain ranging wild beast though covered over with leaves when once they have got on this your track. Thus you in cases like this will be able by yourself alone to see one thing after another and find your way into all dark corners and draw forth the truth. Thank you for your time.