Episode 272 - TD02 - Is Death An Evil?
Date: 03/12/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4334-episode-272-td02-is-death-an-evil/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Cassius and Joshua — with Kalosyni reading the student’s role — work through Book One of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Sections 5–11, on the question “Is Death an Evil?” After noting that an educated Roman student would not seriously fear mythological underworld punishments, Cicero leads the student through a logical chain: if death means non-existence, the dead cannot be miserable; the examples of Crassus and Pompey losing wealth and glory in death do not make them miserable because they are no longer there to experience the loss. Cicero then asks whether those never born are also miserable — approaching the Epicurean argument from symmetry. Joshua and Cassius add commentary drawing parallels to Principal Doctrine 2 and Plato’s theory of pre-existence and recollection. Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve is quoted on the unique Roman intellectual moment between gods and Christ when educated people stood alone. Cicero then surveys ancient views of the soul — heart/blood/brain, air, fire, Aristoxenus’s harmony theory, Xenocrates’s number theory, Dicaearchus’s denial of the soul, Aristotle’s fifth element (endelecheia) — before concluding that on any of these views, death cannot be an evil. The episode ends with a note on how Epicurus solved the practical problem of philosophical memory through his summaries (the Letters to Herodotus and Pythocles).
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 272 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 text and 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 at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
This week we continue in our series covering Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations from an Epicurean viewpoint. This series addresses five of the greatest questions in life, with Cicero speaking for the majority and Epicurus the main opponent. The questions are: Is death an evil? Is pain an evil? Does the wise man experience grief and fear? Does the wise man experience joy and desire? And is virtue sufficient for a happy life? Epicurus takes a different position from that which Cicero advocates, and I think we can learn a lot about Epicurean philosophy by contrasting how Cicero explains the conventional viewpoint and then states how Epicurus disagrees with it.
Today we will be focusing on the question of whether death is an evil, and we will be starting in Section Five of Book One, in which a student first suggests that he thinks death is an evil, and Cicero is then going to try to talk the student out of that position. But before we get into the details of Cicero’s discussion, let us take a moment to remind everyone about Epicurus’s position on life and death. I will quickly go through a section of the Letter to Menoeceus, around line 125:
“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. So the man speaks idly who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because it is painful in anticipation; for that which gives no trouble when it comes is but an empty pain in anticipation. So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us, but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.
“But the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, at another yearn for it as a respite from the evils of life. But the wise man neither seeks to escape life nor fears the cessation of life, for neither does life offend him, nor does the absence of life seem to be any evil. And just as with food he 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. And he who counsels the young man to live well, but the old man to make a good end, is foolish — not merely because of the desirability of life, but also because it is the same training which teaches to live well and to die well.
“Yet much worse still is the man who says it is good not to be born, but once born to make haste to pass the gates of death. For if he says this from conviction, why does he not pass away out of life? For it is open to him to do so if he had firmly made up his mind to this. But if he speaks in jest, his words are idle among men who cannot receive them.
“We must then bear in mind that the future is neither ours, nor yet wholly not ours, so that we may not altogether expect it as sure to come, nor abandon hope of it as if it will surely not come.”
So for purposes of today’s discussion, I think the main points that Epicurus is raising here are: he is seeing life as desirable, while at the same time saying that just as the wise man at a banquet is not going to go for the most food but the best food, the wise man is going to seek to enjoy not the longest period of time in life but the most pleasant. And Epicurus specifically is attacking those who say that it would be better not to have been born, or once born to make haste to get past the gates of death as quickly as possible.
Epicurus is clearly valuing life and taking what I would think most people would say is a common-sense position — that life is desirable and life is valuable to have, and we are not going to rush our lives so as to find anything desirable about being dead. It is not going to be evil to be dead because you are not there. But nevertheless, life itself is desirable.
Now in Book One, Cicero starts out his discussion by presenting a scene in which he is talking to an audience of students and he as the teacher is going to answer any question that the students put to him. Cicero introduces this by saying: “I desired anyone to propose a question which he wished to have discussed. We proceeded in this manner when he who had proposed the subject for discussion had said what he thought proper. I spoke against them; for this is the old and Socratic method of arguing against another’s opinion. For Socrates thought that thus the truth would be more easily arrived at. But to give you a better notion of our disputations, I will not barely send you an account of them, but represent them to you as they were carried on.”
So as we go through this — and we are now at Section Five of Book One — Kalosyni has volunteered to read the statements of the student, and Joshua will read the statements of Cicero. Then as we go back and forth listening to this discussion, we will add commentary as appropriate. So let us now turn to Section Five and get started, with Kalosyni standing in for the student.
Kalosyni: To me, death seems to be an evil.
Joshua: Evil to those who are already dead, or to those who must die?
Kalosyni: To both.
Joshua: It is a misery, then, because an evil?
Kalosyni: Certainly.
Joshua: Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to die, are both miserable.
Kalosyni: So it appears to me.
Joshua: Then all are miserable.
Kalosyni: Everyone.
Joshua: And indeed, if you wish to be consistent, all that are already born or ever shall be are not only miserable but always will be. So if you should maintain those only to be miserable who are about to die, you would not except anyone living, for all must die. But there should be an end of misery at death. But seeing that the dead are miserable, we are born to eternal misery, for they must of consequence be miserable who died a hundred thousand years ago — or rather, all that have ever been born.
Kalosyni: So indeed I think.
Joshua: Tell me, I beseech you — are you afraid of the three-headed Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus wailing, and the passage with Charon over the river of woe, and Tantalus expiring with thirst while the water touches his chin, and Sisyphus who sweats with arduous toil in vain — the steep summit of the mount to gain? Perhaps you dread the inexorable judges Minos and Rhadamanthus, before whom neither Crassus nor Antonius can defend you, and where, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, you will not even be able to employ Demosthenes, but you must plead for yourself before a very great assembly. These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look on death as an eternal evil.
Kalosyni: Do you take me to be so imbecile as to give credit to such things?
Joshua: What, you do not believe them?
Kalosyni: Not in the least.
Joshua: I am sorry to hear that.
Kalosyni: Why, I beg?
Joshua: Because I could have been very eloquent in speaking against them.
Kalosyni: And who could not on such a subject? What trouble is it to refute these monstrous inventions of the poets and painters?
Joshua: And yet you have books of philosophers full of arguments against these myths.
Kalosyni: A great waste of time, truly — for who is so weak as to be concerned about them?
Joshua: If then there is no one miserable in the infernal regions, there can be no one there at all.
Kalosyni: I am altogether of that opinion.
Joshua: Where then are those you call miserable, or what place do they inhabit? For if they exist at all, they must be somewhere.
Kalosyni: I am of the opinion that they are nowhere.
Joshua: Then they have no existence at all?
Kalosyni: Even so — and yet they are miserable for this very reason: that they have no existence.
Joshua: I had rather now have you afraid of Cerberus than speak thus inaccurately.
Kalosyni: In what respect?
Joshua: Because you admit him to exist whose existence you deny with the same breath. Where now is your acuity? When you say anyone is miserable, you say that he who does not exist does exist.
Kalosyni: I am not so absurd as to say that.
Joshua: What is it that you do say, then?
Kalosyni: I say, for instance, that Marcus Crassus is miserable in being deprived of such great riches by death; that Pompey is miserable in being taken from such glory and honor; and in short that all are miserable who are deprived of this light of life.
Joshua: You have returned to the same point. For to be miserable implies an existence; but you just now denied that the dead have any existence. If then they have not, they can be nothing; and if so, they are not even miserable.
Kalosyni: Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very circumstance — not to exist after having existed — to be very miserable.
Joshua: What, more so than not to have existed at all? Therefore those who are not yet born are miserable because they are not. And we ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before we were born. But I do not remember that I was miserable before I was born, and I should be glad to know if your memory is better — what you recollect of yourself before you were born.
Cassius: Okay, at this point let us take stock of what has been said already, because there are a couple of interesting aspects. First of all, we have a student who is taking the position that death is an evil, but what I think some people might be surprised about is that Cicero immediately pulls out of the student that he is not concerned that death is an evil because he is going to be punished in flames like modern conceptions of hell. It is interesting that this representative of a normally educated Roman person seems to be completely dismissive of these myths of torture in the underworld. As we go through Tusculan Disputations, what we are seeing is the state of the educated Roman-Greek civilization — one of the purposes of us going through this being to understand what Epicurus was up against at the time that he developed his philosophy. If this student is representative of the educated Roman position, they were not really taking seriously these myths of torture and torment after death. And in fact, the student resents even the suggestion that he should take those seriously.
Joshua: Let me read you something that Stephen Greenblatt wrote in The Swerve, which is a description partially of one of Cicero’s other dialogues, De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods), and the conversation that Cicero has with Velleius in that text. He ends in an interesting place. He starts out this way:
“The end of the dialogue between Cicero and Velleius — a long work that would have filled several sizable papyrus rolls — is characteristically inconclusive: ‘Here the conversation ended and we parted, Velleius thinking my discourse to be the truer, while I felt that of Balbus approximated more nearly to a semblance of the truth.’ The inconclusiveness is not intellectual modesty — Cicero was not a modest man — but a strategy of civilized openness among friends. The exchange itself, not its final conclusions, carries much of the meaning. The discussion itself is what matters most. The fact that we can reason together easily, with a blend of wit and seriousness, never descending into gossip or slander, and always allowing room for alternative views. ‘The one who engages in conversation,’ Cicero wrote, ‘should not debar others from participating in it, as if he were entering upon a private monopoly; but as in other things, so in a general conversation, he should think it not unfair for each to have his own turn.’
“The dialogues Cicero and others wrote were not transcriptions of real exchanges — though the characters in them were real — but they were idealized versions of conversations that undoubtedly occurred in places like the Villa in Herculaneum. The conversations in that particular setting — to judge from the topics of the charred books found in the buried library — touched on music, painting, poetry, the art of public speaking, and other subjects of perennial interest to cultivated Greeks and Romans. They are likely to have turned as well to more troubling scientific, ethical, and philosophical questions: What is the cause of thunder or earthquakes or eclipses? Are they signs from the gods as some claim, or do they have an origin in nature? How can we understand the world we inhabit? What goals should we be pursuing in our lives? Does it make sense to devote one’s life to the pursuit of power? Are good and evil to be defined? What happens to us when we die?
“That the villa’s powerful owner and his friends took pleasure in grappling with such questions, and were willing to devote significant periods of their very busy lives to teasing out possible answers, reflects their conception of an existence appropriate for people of their education, class, and status. It reflects as well something extraordinary about the mental or spiritual world they inhabited — something noted in one of his letters by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert: ‘Just when the gods had ceased to be and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.’ No doubt one could quibble with this claim. For many Romans at least the gods had not actually ceased to be — even the Epicureans, sometimes reputed to be atheists, thought that gods existed, though at a far remove from the affairs of mortals. And the unique moment to which Flaubert gestures — from Cicero (106–43 BC) to Marcus Aurelius (121–180 AD) — may have been longer or shorter than the timeframe he suggests. But the core perception is eloquently borne out by Cicero’s dialogues and by the works found in the library of Herculaneum. Many of the early readers of these works evidently lacked a fixed repertory of beliefs and practices reinforced by what was said to be the divine will. They were men and women whose lives were unusually free of the dictates of the gods or their priests. Standing alone, as Flaubert puts it, they found themselves in the peculiar position of choosing among sharply divergent visions of the nature of things and competing strategies for living.”
So that was the long passage, but I think particularly that quote within a quote from Gustave Flaubert — when he says that between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, mankind stood alone, there were no gods looming over people — is partially what we are seeing here in this dialogue. Cicero has taken a question from a random person in the audience and expects this random person, it seems, to talk about the old fairytale version of death and why that is terrifying. And if the man in the audience says, “No, no, of course I do not believe in those things — death is terrifying for these other reasons” — I think that is interesting. And of course that Greenblatt should start the section I just quoted by talking about dialogues like the one we are reading now — these are the people for whom the Christ has not come and the gods have ceased to be. These are the people who stand alone, in a sense, the people we are reading about in this dialogue.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, I think some of us tend to think that this is a period of just absolutely primitive superstition, but the educated people who were involved in discussing philosophy — whether it is Cicero and this student, or Epicurus and his own students — they understood that these myths were largely silly and a waste of time. They were not so concerned with refuting the possibility of being tortured in hell as they were with simply understanding the basic questions of life and death and how we should view death, how we should view life, as practical, intelligent people — just like we face it today. In other words, rather than getting taken in by the idea that Epicurus is just obsessed with fear and that there is fear lurking around every corner about monsters and being tortured forever in hell — yes, that is something that is in the background that Epicurus is going to dismiss, but it is also something that most educated people at this point dismissed and did not take seriously.
So as we go further into all of this, we are going to find that the real question they are struggling with is not how to avoid monsters in the infernal regions, but what is an educated person to think about his own life, how to spend it, and what is going to happen after that person is dead? And so once we are past these ridiculous notions of supernatural torment and hell, Cicero leads the student to the question of: well, are you anywhere when you are dead? And interestingly, the student immediately admits that he does not really think that you are anywhere when you are dead. At which point Cicero is going to point out the inconsistency of being worried about something where you are not. And so the student responds with two famous examples — Crassus, one of the richest people of the Roman world, and Pompey, one of the most powerful people of the Roman world — both deprived of their riches and their power by death. Can you be miserable about anything — deprived of the heights of glory, the heights of riches — if you are not there to experience that deprivation? Interestingly, this is a very Epicurean argument.
Cicero then ups the ante by suggesting that being miserable implies that you exist in order to be miserable. But what about those who have never existed at all? Those who are not yet born — are they miserable? And so he asks the student, “I do not remember that I was miserable before I was born, and I would be glad to know if your memory is better — what you recollect of yourself before you were born.”
Joshua: We are going to continue with this question of knowledge or experience or memory of what things were like before you were born. He is on the verge of making the argument from symmetry — which is the argument Lucretius makes, that the infinity of non-existence that lies before me is not terrifying, and if it were terrifying then so would the infinity that lies behind me, before I was born, that I do not remember. So I think that is part of what we are getting into here — this argument from symmetry.
And as a side note, when he is asking “if your memory is better, what do you recollect of yourself before you were born?” — this is very important, particularly the word “recollect,” because this ties in with something Plato believed about the nature of the soul. Epicurus believed that the soul and the body came into existence simultaneously with each other. Plato believed that the soul existed before birth, before the existence of the body — that in fact it may have existed for many lifetimes before birth, or possibly eternally before birth. And at the moment of birth, the soul was shunted into a body, and by trapping the soul in the flesh, the soul — which is something noble and pure and beautiful — becomes weighed down by this gross earthly mass of insatiable desire and need, and the soul forgets itself. That is essentially his view. There is no learning, because before you were born you already knew everything there was to know; what we think of as learning is mere recollection. That is why I say that the word “recollect” is important, because Cicero is kind of mocking Plato here. They are both kind of laughing at the idea not only of the myths about the afterlife, but of the idea of an afterlife at all. So those two points — the argument from symmetry and the mocking of Plato’s pre-existence doctrine — we should keep in mind as we continue.
Cassius: Yeah, the student at this point is cautious with Cicero and is trying to keep the focus on: “Well, what I really said is that those who were alive and lost a lot — like Crassus or Pompey — those people are miserable once they have died because they have lost these things they had before. That is what I am really trying to say, Cicero.” But Cicero challenges him on that. At this point, let us go back into the dialogue answering Cicero’s question: “What do you recollect of yourself before you were born?”
Kalosyni: You are pleasant, as if I had said that those men are miserable who are not born, and not that they are so who are dead.
Joshua: You say then that they are so?
Kalosyni: Yes, I say that because they no longer exist after having existed, they are miserable.
Joshua: You do not perceive that you are asserting contradictions. For what is a greater contradiction than that they should be not only miserable, but should have any existence at all, who have no existence? When you go out of the Capuan Gate at the Via Appia outside the city of Rome and see the tombs of the Caecilii, the Metelli, and others — do you look on them as miserable?
Kalosyni: Because you press me with a word — henceforth I will not say they are miserable absolutely, but miserable on this account, because they have no existence.
Joshua: You do not say then “Crassus is miserable” but only “miserable Crassus”?
Kalosyni: Exactly so.
Joshua: As if it did not follow that whatever you speak of in that manner either is or is not. Are you not acquainted with the first principles of logic? For this is the first thing they lay down: whatever is asserted — for that is the best way that occurs to me at the moment of rendering the Greek term axioma; if I can think of a more accurate expression hereafter, I will use it — what is asserted, I say, is asserted as being either true or false. When therefore you say “miserable Crassus,” you either say “this Crassus is miserable,” so that some judgment may be made whether it is true or false, or you say nothing at all.
Kalosyni: Well then, I now own that the dead are not miserable, since you have drawn from me a concession that they who do not exist at all cannot be miserable. What then? We that are alive — are we not wretched, seeing we must die? For what is there agreeable in life when we must night and day reflect that at some time or other we must die?
Cassius: Okay, before we go further, let us just look at this section, because there are a couple of interesting things going on here. Knowing that he can no longer take the position that “if you are not there you can be miserable,” the student is going to shift his ground and say: “I am going to continue to argue this, because even if I am not miserable when I get there, I am miserable anticipating that I have to die.” This is also something that Epicurus has addressed.
Joshua: Yeah, the distinction they are discussing here between the phrases “Crassus is miserable” and “miserable Crassus” — what Cicero knows is that when you say “Crassus is miserable,” before you can accept “miserable,” your basic assumption is “Crassus is” — Crassus exists — because you have to exist to be miserable. And then the interlocutor tries to get around this by saying, “Well, I do not say ‘Crassus is miserable,’ I just say ‘miserable Crassus’” — as if somehow that solves the problem. But you are just shuffling the words around, because for Crassus to be miserable, Crassus has to have consciousness.
This is going back to the Principal Doctrines, right? Principal Doctrine Two: “Death is nothing to us, for what has disintegrated lacks awareness, and what lacks awareness is nothing to us.” That is the Peter Saint-André translation. You could substitute perception or sensation for awareness, as the word in question is aisthēsis in the Greek. So if Crassus is dead, then Crassus is dissolved into atoms — or will be soon. And so we know first of all that Crassus is without perception, and therefore that his condition is nothing to him, because he is nothing.
And then Cicero takes that conversation about Crassus and turns it into a discussion of axiomatic principles in logic — he says, whatever is asserted, rendering the Greek term axioma, is asserted as being either true or false. You cannot say something that is both true and false because that is a contradiction. But that is exactly what the interlocutor is trying to do by saying “Crassus is dead and he is miserable” — saying Crassus is dead already leans toward the conclusion that Crassus is not anything. And so he turns this into a discussion of logic using Greek terms. But he is making very good points, Cicero is.
And this relates somewhat to what we discussed last week about Democritus and his view of death — does the soul experience sensation or perception in the moments after death, or do we hold to the Epicurean view? I believe it was in the Letter to Herodotus that Epicurus makes it very explicit: he refers to the moment of death — that is it. Before that you are alive. After that you are dead. That is it.
But I like that Cicero uses as his thought construct: “Go to the Capuan Gate where the Via Appia runs out of the city, and see the tombs.” Well, Titus Pomponius Atticus — Cicero’s friend, who outlived him and was one of the only people in this political environment to survive into old age and die naturally — was later buried along that same road. And there is an interesting parallel here with Epicurus, who chose real estate on the Dromos — the main road going outside the city of Athens through the Ceramicus, which had been a potters’ ground and later became a cemetery and burial place. So Cicero is saying, go outside the city walls and look at the graves, look at the place where the dead are in repose. And in a sense that is exactly what Epicurus did in his own time — set his garden near the Ceramicus where all the dead are buried, and there contemplate philosophy. That is Cicero’s advice here as well.
Cassius: That is right, Joshua. Before long we are going to get into a position where we see how dramatically Cicero is going to disagree with Epicurus’s viewpoint, but so far Cicero is really presenting almost exactly the same position that Epicurus is talking about. He is not going to allow the student to simply wallow in emotion and think about how terrible death is. He is calling the student to take a position: is the person you are talking about in existence or not? You can wallow in emotion about the misery of death if you like, but let us first focus on the person you are talking about and whether they are in fact there or not.
So the student realizes the ground is being cut out from under him in regard to the person feeling his own misery in death. So he shifts his ground and says: “Okay, I am going to admit that the person we are talking about who has been alive and is now dead is no longer there to be miserable. But what about we who are alive and who are having to constantly day and night reflect on the fact that we are going to die? Doesn’t that make life miserable?” Well, Cicero is going to answer that in Section Seven, so let us go ahead and give Cicero’s response to the student saying that we are all miserable because we have to die. Cicero says this:
Joshua: Do you not then perceive how great is the evil from which you have delivered human nature?
Kalosyni: By what means?
Joshua: Because if to die were miserable to the dead, to live would be a kind of infinite and eternal misery. Now however I see a goal, and when I have reached it, there is nothing more to be feared. But you seem to me to follow the opinion of Epicurus, a man of some discernment and sharp enough for a Sicilian.
Kalosyni: What opinion? For I do not recollect it.
Joshua: I will tell you, if I can, in Latin, for I am no more used to bringing in Latin sentences in a Greek discourse than Greek in a Latin one.
Kalosyni: And that is right enough. But what is that opinion of Epicurus?
Joshua: “I would not die, but yet am not concerned that I shall be dead.”
Kalosyni: I now recollect the Greek. But since you have obliged me to grant that the dead are not miserable, proceed to convince me that it is not miserable to be under a necessity of dying.
Joshua: That is easy enough, but I have greater things in hand.
Kalosyni: How comes that to be so easy, and what are those things of more consequence?
Joshua: Thus: because if there is no evil after death, then even death itself can be none. For that which immediately succeeds — that is, a state where you grant that there is no evil — means that even to be obliged to die can be no evil, for that is only the being obliged to arrive at a place where we allow that no evil is.
Kalosyni: I beg you will be more explicit on this point, for these subtle arguments force me sooner to admissions than to conviction. But what are those more important things about which you say that you are occupied?
Joshua: To teach you, if I can, that death is not only no evil but a good.
Kalosyni: I do not insist on that, but should be glad to hear you argue it. For even though you should not prove your point, yet you will prove that death is no evil. But I will not interrupt you — I would rather hear a continued discourse.
Joshua: What if I should ask a question? Would you not answer it?
Kalosyni: That would look like pride, but I would rather you should not ask unless necessity requires.
Cassius: Okay, before we go further into Section Nine, Cicero stays with the Epicurean point that death is not an evil — therefore anticipating a state which is not an evil should hardly be seen to be evil itself. So he is diffusing this argument that you should have to spend your life worrying about being dead, on pretty good logical grounds that seem to be consistent with Epicurus. Now here is where the conversation is going to begin to turn, because Cicero is now going to say that he can prove to the student not only that death is not evil but good. Now that is an amazing statement, and while Epicurus admits that death can be a relief from pain — a relief from situations that you cannot get out of, where you are facing torture or the death of a friend or situations that you cannot bring yourself to want to continue in — in those situations death is a relief. But Epicurus is not going to say in general that death is good. And so as we go forward, we are going to see the dramatic difference in premises that Cicero is operating under. And of course the student is implicitly amazed by the assertion and says, “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me about this” — and do not interrupt me because I have to hear this. So after the student invites him to proceed, Cicero continues:
Joshua: I will comply with your wishes and explain as well as I can what you require, but not with any idea that like the Pythian Apollo, what I say must needs be certain and indisputable. But as a mere man endeavoring to arrive at probabilities by conjecture, for I have no ground on which to proceed further than on probability. Those men may call their statements indisputable who assert that what they say can be perceived by the senses and who proclaim themselves philosophers by profession.
Cassius: Before we go further, let us go ahead and comment on this. Cicero is constantly bringing in that he is an Academic Skeptic and that he is only going to talk about probabilities, and that anybody who wants to say that their positions are indisputable is basing their views on something as ridiculously inadequate as the senses. This is again bringing out where the direction is going to diverge dramatically, because Cicero is going to deprecate anybody who argues based on something as simple as the senses and say that there is something higher than that which ought to be the ultimate source of truth.
Joshua: Yeah, that is right. In a previous section we saw him using the word “axiom” as he was setting up an exploration that was essentially logical of these questions, and I think you are right to say that he is skeptical of sensation. He sees partially logic — but partially this program of Socratic dialogue — as a way to explore what is probable and what he thinks is not probable. But he is not going to talk about anything in terms of what is merely most likely to be true, I think is where he is going with that.
Cassius: Okay, the next statement is going to be coming from the student asking him to proceed. But before we get into it, what we are about to hear from Cicero is an extended discussion of the viewpoint on life that Epicurus absolutely objects to. But first, the student:
Kalosyni: Do as you please; we are ready to hear you.
Joshua: The first thing then is to inquire what death — which seems to be so well understood — really is. For some imagine death to be the departure of the soul from the body. Others think that there is no such departure but that soul and body perish together, and that the soul is extinguished with the body. Of those who think that the soul departs from the body, some believe in its immediate dissolution, others fancy that it continues to exist for a time, and others believe that it lasts forever.
There is great dispute even about what the soul is, where it is, and whence it is derived. With some, the heart itself — cor in Latin — seems to be the soul; hence the expressions ex corde (from the heart), concordia (with the heart), and that prudent man who was twice consul was called cordus, that is, “wise heart.” And a certain great man is described as grandis cor homo — a man of great heart, sage. So in each of these cases Cicero imagines the blood which is suffused over the heart to be the soul. To others, a certain part of the brain seems to be the throne of the soul. Others neither allow the heart itself nor any portion of the brain to be the soul, but think either that the heart is the seat and abode of the soul, or else that the brain is so. Some have the soul or spirit to be the anima, as our schools generally agree — and indeed the name signifies as much, for we use the expressions animam agere (to live), animam efflare (to expire), bono animo esse (to be of good spirit), and the very word animus is derived from anima. Again, the soul seems to Zeno the Stoic to be fire.
Cassius: Okay, before we proceed into Section Ten, this is a reminder of why in Epicurean philosophy we focus on physics. We do not just immediately jump to the Letter to Menoeceus and start talking about ethics, because Cicero is correct here. If you are going to talk about death and the desirability of death, then what you have to first understand is the soul, the mind, the spirit. What are we talking about in the state when it is alive, and what are we talking about in the state when it is dead? You just do not start talking about “oh me, oh my, miserable me, I have to die” — let us talk about the facts of the matter before you get into the emoting about it. And from that point of view, Cicero is correct to stress that this is what you have to start out with first. So Cicero then continues in Section Ten:
Joshua: But what I have said as to the heart, the blood, the brain, air, or fire being the soul — these are common opinions. The others are only entertained by individuals, and indeed there were many amongst the ancients who held singular opinions on this subject. Of whom the latest was Aristoxenus — a man who was both a musician and a philosopher — and he maintained a certain straining of the body, like what is called harmony in music, to be the soul, and believed that from the figure and nature of the whole body, various motions are excited as sounds are from an instrument. He adhered steadily to his system, and yet he said something the nature of which, whatever it was, had been detailed and explained a great while before by Plato.
Xenocrates denied that the soul had any figure or anything like a body, but said it was a number — the power of which, as Pythagoras had said some ages before, was the greatest in nature. His master Plato imagined a threefold soul, a dominant portion of which — that is to say, reason — he had lodged in the head as in a tower. And the other two parts, namely anger and desire, he made subservient to this one and allotted them distinct abodes, placing anger in the breast and desire below the diaphragm.
Dicaearchus in one of his books introduces a certain Phorcys, an old man of Phthia, who as he said was descended from Deucalion. Deucalion in these stories was a sort of Noah-like figure who survived a great flood and then threw rocks over his head to produce more humans. So in the books of Dicaearchus, we have this Phorcys — an old man of Phthia, descended from Deucalion — asserting that there is in fact no such thing at all as a soul, but that it is a name without a meaning; and that it is idle to use the expression “animals” or “animated beings”; that neither men nor beasts have minds or souls; but that all power by which we act or perceive is equally infused into every living creature and is inseparable from the body — for if it were not, it would be nothing. Nor is there anything whatever really existing except body, which is a single and simple thing, so fashioned as to live and have its sensations in consequence of the regulations of nature.
Aristotle — a man superior to all others, both in genius and industry, always excepting Plato — after having embraced these four known sorts of principles from which all things deduce their origin, imagines that there is a certain fifth nature, a quinta essentia (literally “fifth essence”), from whence comes the soul. For to think, to foresee, to learn, to teach, to invent anything, and many other attributes of the same kind — such as to remember, to love, to hate, to desire, to fear, to be pleased or displeased — these, he thinks, exist in none of those first four kinds of elements. On such account he adds a fifth kind which has no name, and so by a new name he calls the soul endelecheia — as if it were a certain continued and perpetual motion.
And then Cicero continues into Section Eleven: “If I have not forgotten anything unintentionally, these are the principal opinions concerning the soul. I have omitted Democritus — a very great man indeed, but one who deduces the soul from the fortuitous concourse of small, light, and round substances; for if you believe men of his school, there is nothing which a crowd of atoms cannot affect. Which of these opinions is true? Some god must determine. It is an important question for us which has the most appearance of truth. Shall we then prefer determining between them, or shall we return to our subject?”
Cassius: Okay, before we go forward, Cicero has stated the different opinions that people have — and this applies to Epicurus’s time as well — about whether the soul is a distinct nature, whether it arises as a harmony from disparate parts of the body (which is something that Lucretius talks about and rejects in his poem), and of course he mentions Plato and Aristotle’s position, with Aristotle talking about some special fifth kind of element of which the soul is composed. He then concludes that list by talking about Democritus, disparaging the Atomists like Epicurus because “if you believe men of that school, there is nothing which a crowd of atoms cannot do.” Then Cicero returns to his Academic Skeptic role and says: “Which of these opinions is true? Some god must determine. What is most important for us is to see which has the most appearance of truth” — that which is most probably true. And he asks the student whether he wants to continue and make a decision among those different positions, or return to the original subject without deciding it — which was the question of whether death is an evil or not. And the student then gives Cicero the answer:
Kalosyni: I could wish both, if possible; but it is difficult to mix them. Therefore, if without a discussion of them we can get rid of the fears of death, let us proceed to do so. But if this is not to be done without explaining the question about souls, let us have that now and the other at another time.
Joshua: I take that plan to be the best, which I perceive you are inclined to. For reason will demonstrate that, whichever of the opinions which I have stated is true, it must follow that death cannot be an evil — or that it must rather be something desirable. For if either the heart or the blood or the brain is the soul, then certainly the soul, being corporeal, must perish with the rest of the body. If it is air, it will perhaps be dissolved. If it is fire, it will be extinguished. If it is Aristoxenus’s harmony, it will be put out of tune. What shall I say of Dicaearchus, who denies that there is any soul at all?
In all these opinions, there is nothing to affect anyone after death, for all feeling is lost with life, and where there is no sensation, nothing can interfere to affect us. The opinions of others do indeed bring us hope, if it is any pleasure to you to think that souls after they leave the body may go to heaven as to a permanent home.
Kalosyni: I have great pleasure in that thought, and it is what I most desire; and even if it should not be so, I should still be very willing to believe it.
Joshua: What occasion have you then for my assistance? Am I superior to Plato in eloquence? Turn over carefully his book that treats of the soul — you will have there all that you can want.
Kalosyni: I have indeed done that, and often. But I know not how it comes to pass — I agree with it whilst I am reading it, but when I have laid down the book and begin to reflect with myself on the immortality of the soul, all that agreement vanishes.
Joshua: How comes that? Do you admit this: that souls either exist after death, or else that they also perish at the moment of death?
Kalosyni: I agree to that. And if they do exist, I admit that they are happy. But if they perish, I cannot suppose them to be unhappy, because in fact they have no existence at all. You drove me to that concession just now.
Joshua: How then can you — or why do you — assert that you think that death is an evil, when it either makes us happy in the case of the soul continuing to exist, or at all events not unhappy in the case of our becoming destitute of all sensation?
Cassius: Okay, we are going to run out of time to go further in the book today, but let us take stock. It seems that Cicero is saying that you can either believe the views of the Atomists and those who believe that there is a harmony or that the soul is fire — and believe that when you die, the fire is extinguished or the harmony is put out of tune or the atoms simply disperse. And if that is the case, then you are no longer there after death and death is not an evil. But rather than stop at that point, Cicero is laying out this possibility that Plato talks about — that there is another alternative, that the soul is going to continue to exist after death. And if you would like, we can talk about that. “If it gives you pleasure to think that” — and in fact the student says, “Even if it should not be so, I should still be very willing to believe it.”
We have a number of references like that where Cicero keeps talking about how he would prefer to be wrong with Plato than right with those who disagree with Plato. But it deserves to be emphasized that here we have even an educated student talking to a philosopher, and there is this great desire to believe that the soul is going to continue on after death — even though it may not be true to believe that. And Cicero responds: “Well, why do you want to ask me to tell you about this? Just go to Plato, go to his Phaedo, go to other books where Plato can explain all of this in detail. Is that not good enough for you?” And the student says: “Well, I can agree with it while I am reading it, but after I put it down, it just does not seem to have the same impact as the moment in which I am reading it.” So Cicero says in response to that, that they will continue to talk about this to persuade the student that Plato might be correct.
Joshua: Yeah, that is such a good quote there — that “I can agree with it while it is being explained to me.” Because Epicurus deals with basically the same problem in his letters and summaries. Let me read that. If you go to the introduction to the Letter to Pythocles, he says something very similar: “Cleon brought me a letter from you, Pythocles, in which you continue to express a kindly feeling towards me, which is a just return for my interest in you. And you attempt with some success to recall the arguments which lead to a life of blessedness. You ask me to send to you a brief argument about the phenomena of the sky in a short sketch, that you may easily recall it to mind, for you say that what I have written in my other works is hard to remember, even though, as you state, you constantly have them in your hands.”
So this is a real problem for these philosophers: How do I condense this stuff in a way that people can digest it, remember it, and more importantly call upon it in their moment of need, even when they do not have the book itself in front of them? And Epicurus solves that problem. Let us write a summary. Let us write another summary so that we can understand this stuff. And if you need more than that, I will write summaries within summaries. That is why we have a big epitome and a little epitome. We are going to get this stuff as small as we can so people can have it to hand and in their minds and memories when they need it.
Cassius: But of course, even the best summary is not much use if it just stays printed on the page and nobody reads and discusses it. So that is what we are trying to do as we go through these materials — to bring to life the issues that Epicurus was discussing and talk about and understand the answers that he was suggesting. We are about out of time today though. Any closing thoughts, Joshua?
Joshua: We are having a tough time figuring out some of what is being said here. Part of that is word choice, part of that is grammar, and most of it is probably the translation. But I think we are going to find some worthwhile and interesting stuff to talk about as we go through this. Flowing through the dialogue as we have been trying to do today is the best way we can think of to do that. So I am looking forward to seeing what we get into next week.
Cassius: Yes, Joshua. It is one thing to simply repeat slogans like “Death is nothing to us” and have a little bit of an understanding that — well, that means that where we do not exist, there can be nothing bad. Okay, that makes sense and that is a very important point. But Epicurus has a context and a reason and a background for why he is talking about this and what he expects you to understand. And that is why Atomism is not just some interesting theory about the way the world works. It is the core of an understanding that the soul has a certain nature to it, and from that nature you can then reach conclusions that you can be confident of about the meaning of death. Epicurus is trying to give you an answer. He is not just trying to talk in terms of probabilities like Cicero is.
As we go forward and we see where Cicero ends up with his reasoning, Cicero is just going to give you a bunch of authorities. He is going to give you a bunch of people who have said certain things and try to get you to add them all together and conclude: “Well, if everybody else thinks that, I am going to go along with it.” But Epicurus gives you an understanding of the theory of nature that you can go out and test for yourself — look through your senses at the world of atoms and see if that makes sense or not — in a way that will then give you confidence about a conclusion that you are just not going to be able to get by stacking up numbers of authorities and adding up piles of books to see who has devoted the most words to their particular opinion. Epicurus is going to say: trust the senses, go out and investigate for yourself, and come to conclusions that you can have confidence in.
Okay, that is all we have time for today. We will come back next week and go further in Book One of Tusculan Disputations. As always, we thank you for being with us. We invite you to drop by the forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or any of our other podcast episodes. Again, thanks for your time today. We will be back soon.