Episode 274 - TD04 - Is The Soul Held Down By The Body, And Does Death Allow The Soul To Ascend To A Better Place?
Date: 03/30/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4365-episode-274-td04-is-the-soul-held-down-by-the-body-and-does-death-allow-the-soul/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 274 continues the Tusculan Disputations series (TD04), working through Cicero’s Book One, Sections 17–22. Cassius and Joshua examine Cicero’s sustained argument that death is not merely not an evil, but may actually be preferable to life — because the soul, being composed of fire or air, will ascend through the atmosphere into a pure, eternal realm of contemplation and perfect knowledge.
Joshua reads from C.D. Yonge’s translation. Key passages include: Cicero’s account of Plato learning from the Pythagoreans Archytas and Timaeus in Italy; Cicero’s Pythagorean cosmology of the soul as inflamed air rising through the gross lower atmosphere to a higher region among the stars; and Cicero’s dismissal of Aristoxenus (soul as musical harmony) and Dicaearchus (no soul at all). Cicero mocks the Epicureans as cowards fleeing imaginary underworld terrors, and reinterprets the Delphic “know thyself” as a command to know the soul.
Cassius and Joshua counter throughout: the Pythagorean nested-sphere cosmos is radically different from the Epicurean infinite universe of moving atoms; the soul’s materiality and distribution through the body as fine atoms is the Epicurean — and arguably Democritean — position; and progressive brain damage refutes the idea of an immortal, immaterial soul. The episode closes with passages from John Tyndall’s 1874 Belfast Address, Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, and George Santayana’s Three Philosophical Poets, illustrating the Lucretian atomist tradition of nature as generative substance.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 274 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote On the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
This week we’re continuing our series going through Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations from an Epicurean viewpoint, and we have a lot here to talk about because Cicero either explicitly or implicitly is criticizing Epicurean positions through much of the Tusculan Disputations. The section we’ve started with is about the question of whether death is an evil, and Cicero is responding to questions raised by his students — implying that death is a cause of concern, is an evil — not from the point of view that there are monsters waiting for us in the underworld to punish us after death, but from a much more educated point of view that there is a significant question about whether we should consider death to be something that’s good or bad or indifferent, just in terms of the questions involved and whether there’s any consciousness after death or whether death is the total end of our existence.
He started his explanation by making a very Epicurean-adjacent argument that at the very worst, death is the end of perception, the end of consciousness, and so there’s no reason to be concerned about a problem existing when we are not there to experience that problem. But that’s not Cicero’s core position, as he’s explained. He is very much in the camp with Plato and Pythagoras and others that there is a soul that is above the body, separate from the body, and that can continue to exist after the body has ceased to exist. And Cicero is going to try to convince his student that that is the case — of course, always keeping in mind that Cicero is taking the position that he’s an academic skeptic and he’s not really sure of anything himself, not taking a strong position, but he’s going to give the arguments of other people and talk about whether they sound probable to him or not.
At the very end of our discussion last week, Cicero had introduced the history that Pythagoras was one of the great early philosophers who took this position that the soul existed separate from the body, and how influential Pythagoras was on Plato and others — basically establishing this core viewpoint that the soul is an inhabitant of the body and that it can continue to exist after death. So today we’re going to turn to this argument that not only is death not an evil, but in significant respects it’s actually a better place and an improvement over life here on earth. And we’ll start today by reading Section 17 where we left off last week.
Joshua: “But I returned to the ancients. They scarcely ever gave any reason for their opinion, but what could be explained by numbers or definitions. It is reported of Plato that he came into Italy to make himself acquainted with the Pythagoreans, and that when there, amongst others, he made an acquaintance with Archytas and Timaeus and learned from them all the tenets of the Pythagoreans. And that he not only was of the same opinion with Pythagoras concerning the immortality of the soul, but that he also brought reasons in support of it. Which, if you have nothing to say against it, I will pass over and say no more at present about all this hope of immortality.”
Kalosyni: “What will you leave me when you have raised my expectations so high? I had rather, so help me Hercules, be mistaken with Plato — whom I know how much you esteem, and whom I admire myself from what you say of him — than be in the right with those others.”
Cassius: Before we go further, Cicero has started off here by saying we don’t even need to talk about the immortality of the soul if you’re just going to accept it, and if you have nothing to say against it. At which point the student says Cicero has raised his expectations so high, and in fact he’d rather be mistaken with Plato than be in the right with the others. Which, when we pick up again, Cicero is going to agree with. But it’s interesting that Cicero would say that the ancients never gave any reason for their opinions but through numbers or definitions, and that the student could conceivably just accept those and not have anything to say against them — when that’s really the heart of this whole question. Why are you taking the positions that you’re taking, and what are the reasons you can give me for why I should believe them?
Joshua: In the context of ancient mathematics, this approach kind of does make sense. Just as when I was in high school, I didn’t constantly argue with my math teacher about the fundamental axioms and equations and theorems she was trying to teach me, because mathematics is an exact science and they’ve worked this stuff out. He’s talking here about people like Archytas, for example, who is alleged to be the first person to solve the problem of doubling the cube — a problem in ancient mathematics. But in the context of geometry, where we’re talking about what is the point, what is the line, and so forth, there isn’t a whole lot to argue about when it comes to the axioms and how you build them up. But to transfer that then to this other question — which is the question of the immortality of the soul — hold on. There is a lot to talk about when it comes to the immortality of the soul, and you better have good reasons for staking a position here.
And to say that we don’t need good reasons because we just have our definitions — or “I don’t need good reasons, I’d rather be mistaken with Plato, whom I know how much you esteem and whom I admire myself from what you say of him, than be in the right with those others” — it’s funny: the student here hasn’t even read Plato, from the looks of it. You see what they say? “I had rather, so help me Hercules, be mistaken with Plato, whom I know how much you esteem and who I admire myself from what you say of him.” It’s not even that this person has studied Plato themselves and arrived at the conclusion that they’d rather be mistaken with Plato than correct with any other philosopher. They’ve never even picked up his dialogues, and they’re putting their foot down and saying, Nope, I don’t need to read them, I just agree with that guy. If this is what Epicurus and the Epicureans were up against in the ancient world, I see where some of the problems come from.
Cassius: Yeah. One more part of the context there, Joshua. I recall now from last week that Cicero started off all this by saying that the main reason he has to tell us we should believe in the life after death of the soul continuing is that that’s what everybody has thought in the past. He started out with this argument that the great men of the past have all thought that that’s really what the situation is — that’s why they gave their lives in war, why they worked for their societies, because they expected to have some kind of existence after death. So Cicero has gone down this road of argument by consensus: everybody believes it, so therefore we should too. And he’s setting this up almost as if all of that is good enough to accept on that basis — you don’t even have to know what their reasons were, beyond the fact that they did. But of course he is going to give us some of their reasoning as we proceed further. So why don’t you go ahead and continue on in Section 17.
Joshua: “I commend you, for indeed I could myself willingly be mistaken in Plato’s company. Do we then doubt, as we do in other cases — though I think here is very little room for doubt in this case — for the mathematicians prove the facts to us that the earth is placed in the midst of the world, being, as it were, a sort of point, which they call a kentron — kentron in Greek means a point, but it can also mean the center of a circle or something like that — surrounded by the whole heavens. And that such is the nature of the four principles, which are the generating causes of all things — these four basic elements of earth, water, fire, and air — that they have equally divided amongst themselves the constituents of all bodies. Moreover, that earthy and humid bodies are carried at equal angles by their own weight and porosity into the earth and sea. That the other two parts consist, one of fire and the other of air. As the two former are carried by their gravity and weight into the middle region of the world, so those on the other hand ascended by right lines into the celestial regions — either because, owing to their intrinsic nature, they’re always endeavoring to reach the highest place, or else because lighter bodies are naturally repelled by heavier.
And as this is notoriously the case, it must evidently follow that souls, when once they have departed from the body — whether they are aerial, by which term I mean capable of breathing, or of the nature of fire — must mount upwards. But if the soul is some number, as some people assert speaking with more subtlety than clearness, or if it is that fifth nature — the quintessence — for which it would be more correct to say that we have not given a name to than that we do not correctly understand it — still, it is too pure and perfect not to go to a great distance from the earth. Something of this sort, then, we must believe the soul to be, that we may not commit the folly of thinking that so active a principle lies immersed in the heart or brain, or as Empedocles would have it, in the blood.”
Cassius: Just to comment briefly on what we just read: this is an indication of where the minds of these educated people were back in the ancient world — that they were wanting to associate the soul with either air or fire, because that gave them, from their point of view, a rational argument that when the body comes apart at death, the soul components are going to be the lighter ones and that they’re going to ascend upwards, as opposed to going downwards into the earth. Basically you’ve got either people taking the position that the soul is fire, or air, or a harmony, or some kind of numerical existence — whatever that means — but whatever the case may be, all of those are going to be very light, and at death they will mount upwards and go physically away from the earth into the higher regions.
Joshua: Yeah, that’s exactly right. We’re supposed to imagine here the classic Pythagorean spheres. So you have the earth, which is a sphere at the center of creation, unmoved and unmovable, and the tendency of things in this cosmos is to fall towards the center — and of course earth is the center. He says here it might be the case with fire and air that it is in their nature to rise away from the center, or it might be that the heavy elements pushing themselves down essentially push the lighter elements up, as we see with buoyancy. So then as you leave earth, you rise up through a series of concentric spheres around the earth, and then when you get to the last one, you have the stars.
And so we’re talking about a radically different view of physics from the Epicurean view. Of course, the Epicurean view is that there’s no reason the earth shouldn’t be moving, because it’s made of atoms and atoms are always moving either linearly or vibrationally. And we’re not limited to just one world. There are an infinite number of worlds, all of which might harbor life, all of which have different conditions and different things that are appropriate to them. And in Epicurus’s cosmos, there is no “up” really in that sense, because when you go up from the perspective of your local position on earth, eventually you’re going to come to someone else’s down. That’s just the nature of the universe. Every direction you could possibly go off of earth, eventually you’re going to run into another world with another living being on it, experiencing their own local views of ups and downs.
They didn’t have a view of gravity, so whether it’s a fully cohesive system or not is an interesting question. But it’s a very different view of nature from the view of this Russian nesting doll universe of the Pythagoreans and of Plato. And so Cicero’s views should be understood in the context of that cosmology. When we understand his views in that context, we can start to see why they pushed back so hard against Epicureanism — and against atheism even in Democritus. We see Cicero do that before he even gets into the argument in the introduction of De Natura Deorum, where he’s already complaining about atheism and why it doesn’t make sense.
Cassius: That’s exactly right, and that’s what he’s going to get into in the next section, Section 18, that we’re about to read. But the very last sentence of Section 17 emphasizes the point you’ve just made, because Cicero is saying we must believe the soul to be of a certain nature so that we may not commit the folly of thinking that the soul lies immersed in the heart or the brain — or even in the blood. So Cicero was aware that the challenge of people who believe the soul has some kind of physical basis is something that has to be dealt with, because if it’s physical, if it’s part of the body, then it’s much harder to understand how it survives death and flies up into the sky basically intact, as he’s suggesting.
And while he doesn’t mention Epicurus directly in Section 18 that we’re about to read, he does mention Democritus. So I think this really is going to apply to Cicero’s objection to Epicurus as well. So let’s go ahead with Section 18.
Joshua: “Right. He says in Section 18: ‘We will pass over Dicaearchus with his contemporary and fellow disciple Aristoxenus, both indeed men of learning. One of them seems never even to have been affected with grief, as he could not perceive that he had a soul. While the other is pleased with his musical compositions that he endeavors to show an analogy between them and souls. Now we may understand harmony to arise from the intervals of sounds whose various compositions occasion many harmonies; but I do not see how a disposition of members and the figure of a body without a soul can occasion harmony. He had better learn it — as he is — leave these speculations to his master Aristotle and follow his own trade as a musician. Good advice is given him in that Greek proverb: apply your talents where you best are skilled.
I will have nothing at all to do with that fortuitous concourse of individual light and round bodies. Notwithstanding, Democritus insists on their being warm and having breath — that is to say, life. But the soul, which is compounded of either of the four principles from which we assert that all things are derived, is of inflamed air, as seems particularly to have been the opinion of Panaetius, and must necessarily mount upwards, for air and fire have no tendency downwards but always ascend. So should they be dissipated, that must be at some distance from the earth. But should they remain and preserve their original state, it is clearer still that they must be carried heavenward. And this gross and concrete air which is nearest the earth must be divided and broken by them, for the soul is warmer, or rather hotter, than that air which I just now called gross and concrete. And this may be made evident from this consideration: that our bodies, being compounded of the earthly class of principles, grow warm by the heat of the soul.’”
Cassius: Joshua, let’s talk about a couple of aspects of what you’ve just read before we go forward. Because in talking about Democritus, Cicero is pretty clearly referring to an argument that Epicurus would have made as well. But there are certainly distinctions, and I don’t know whether Cicero is getting Democritus correct or not. Cicero is alleging here that Democritus said that the atoms are warm and have breath or life in themselves. Now, I don’t know whether that’s an accurate representation of Democritus or not, but I don’t think it’s an accurate representation of Epicurus. Do you recall anything, Joshua, as to Democritus’s position on that point?
Joshua: I don’t know enough to know whether Cicero is speaking literally. I do know that there is a poetic tradition regarding atomism in that respect, and we see it here in John Tyndall in his address at Belfast, which was delivered in 1874. He ends this way. He says: “Is there not a temptation to close to some extent with Lucretius when he affirms that nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself without the meddling of the gods, or with Bruno when he declares that matter is not that mere empty capacity which philosophers have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb? Believing as I do in the continuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of the eye. And not withstanding our professed reverence for its alleged creator, by an intellectual necessity, I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence and discern in that matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers — and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its alleged creator — have hitherto covered with opprobrium: the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.”
So what John Tyndall is saying here is he chooses to look at the atoms as potent with potential — potential to give life, potential to give increase in nature, in the cosmos — and nature is seen to do all things of herself. That’s from Lucretius. So this view of atoms, which we see here in Cicero — again, most of what Democritus wrote is lost, so Cicero is working with far more than we are — but it’s possible that he’s tapping into this other tradition in atomism, this very Lucretian tradition in atomism which sees the atoms themselves not as mere inert grits, but as the life-motes, as Lucretius called them, the seeds of things.
Cassius: It’s probably also worth commenting that Cicero started Section 18 by talking about Dicaearchus, whose position apparently was that there was no soul at all. Now, if we had to put Epicurus and Democritus in the same type of categories — saying that there is a soul or there is not a soul — I don’t know that Epicurus is in the camp of those who would say that there is no soul. He would simply say, I think, that the soul exists as any other part of the body exists. He wouldn’t say that he doesn’t have one.
Joshua: The internet says that Democritus believed that the soul was composed of spherical, mobile fire atoms and was distributed throughout the body. So if you throw out the fire atoms idea, this is very similar to the Epicurean view. The soul is made of matter, it’s made of the finest atoms that exist, and those atoms — because of their fineness — are able to quickly move throughout the body. So the soul is not located in one particular place in the body; it is distributed throughout all of the body. And it has to be in Epicureanism, because sensation is first and foremost contact with the soul. And so every time you touch a table, the table is making contact with your soul. In Epicureanism, it all comes down to touch — divine touch, as Lucretius says. And it seems Democritus was somewhat close to that same view.
Cicero quotes this Greek proverb: “apply your talents where you best are skilled.” Shut up, musician. Don’t give me your opinion on philosophy. How often do we see that kind of view today? “I don’t want to hear so-and-so’s opinion on politics because they’re just a musician.” We are amateurs doing this. So if that’s your view, you can end the podcast. But everybody can offer their opinion on these things, provided of course you’re willing to think through the problems — which are interesting and which have engaged all of these minds. Cicero here is listing all the people who have been thinking about this stuff throughout time. There’s no reason that you can’t be one more of them. But you’d have to put in the work.
Anyway, in Section 19 he goes on to say this: “We may add that the soul can the more easily escape from this air which I have often named, and break through it, because nothing is swifter than the soul. No swiftness is comparable to the swiftness of the soul, which — should it remain uncorrupt and without alteration — must necessarily be carried on with such velocity as to penetrate and divide all this atmosphere where clouds and rain and winds are formed, which in consequence of the exhalations from the earth is moist and dark.
But when the soul has once got above this region and falls in with and recognizes a nature like its own, it then rests upon fires composed of a combination of thin air and a moderate solar heat, and does not aim at any higher flight. For then, after it has attained a lightness and heat resembling its own, it moves no more but remains steady, being balanced as it were between two equal weights. That then is its natural seat, where it has penetrated to something like itself, and where, wanting nothing further, it may be supported and maintained by the same element or food which nourishes and maintains the stars.
Now as we are usually incited to all sorts of desires by the stimulus of the body — and the more so as we endeavor to rival those who are in possession of what we long for — we shall certainly be happy when, being emancipated from that body, we at the same time get rid of these desires and this rivalry. And that which we do at present, when dismissing all other cares we curiously examine and look into anything, we shall then do with greater freedom, and we shall employ ourselves entirely in the contemplation and examination of things, because there is naturally in our minds a certain insatiable desire to know the truth. And the very region itself where we shall arrive, as it gives us a more intuitive and easy knowledge of celestial things, will raise our desires after knowledge. For it was this beauty of the heavens, as seen even here upon earth, which gave birth to that national and hereditary philosophy, as Theophrastus calls it, which was thus excited to a desire of knowledge. But those persons will in a most special degree enjoy this philosophy who, while they were only inhabitants of this world and enveloped in darkness, were still desirous of looking into these things with the eye of their mind.”
Cassius: Okay. Well, this is where we see totally upfront from Cicero that being dead, having your soul rise up into the elements from which it is most naturally sustained, is going to be in a better position to enjoy knowledge, to see the beauty of the universe and these things which we can only begin to appreciate through philosophy here on earth. But this is a very explicit statement that if this is true, who would not want to be in this kind of position, enjoying ourselves entirely in the contemplation and examination of things? This beauty of the heavens gave birth to philosophy in the first place, according to Cicero. So this is the furthest thing from ceasing to exist — this is existing on a higher plane than here on the earth.
Joshua: Exactly. And we reach that plane by shedding the flesh that burdens the soul. This is one of the ideas I hate the most when I read this stuff. If we go back a little bit to see what he says in Section 18, he’s talking about the four elements and he says the soul as it ascends starts by passing through this gross and concrete air which is nearest the earth. And even before that he’s talking about the earth as something base — that all the heavy things fall to. And then we have this gross and concrete air, the air that we’re breathing right now, which in comparison to the air proper to the soul is gross and concrete. The soul is going to get through that and then ascend into lighter and purer air.
So when you leave the body and the earth and the things of the earth behind — all the desire, all the pleasures you’ve experienced in this world — when you leave those behind, you’re going to ascend to an even higher plane where your sole existence for all coming time is contemplation. And I think this is a very common view in the philosophies and religions of the world: that the body is something debased and disgusting, something that traps the soul, imprisons the soul, and that when we finally escape from it, it won’t be a hardship to us because we’ll be, quote-unquote, dead — it will be a benefit to us because we will finally be freed from this prison.
I think that’s such a dangerous view of human life and the body. And I think as Epicureans we have to honor the claims of the body, where the body and the soul are both present. We can’t shunt one of them to the side and say, no, I just want to be soul. You’re going to be disappointed because we are both of those things, and when we stop being both of those things, we stop existing. And that’s death. So I don’t have a whole lot of patience for Cicero’s view of things here.
Cassius: Well said, Joshua. I think this is really the heart of why we’re even having this discussion and going through all this, because it’s so important to emphasize how divergent a viewpoint you have in the standard position from what Epicurus is telling us. You’re either going with this world and making the most of your life on this world, or you’re putting all of your eggs in this basket of some better place after death about which you have no assurance whatsoever. It’s a very religious type of a dilemma: this world versus some hypothetical other world.
I’m reminded right now of what Torquatus says in regard to virtue — that people are beguiled by the glamor of a name. And part of what is so attractive about virtue, part of what is so attractive about this religious view of a life after death, is that it is glamorous. It’s something that you really wish were true. And you can see that the ideas being spun here are beguiling in their beauty, I guess is one way to say it. And if you think that Cicero has finished in what he’s already had to say about the beauties of this next existence, we have another section here, Section 20, where Cicero is going to wax even more eloquently about how wonderful this existence after death is. So why don’t we go ahead and read Section 20 and take that in connection with what you’ve just read.
Joshua: That’s right. In Section 20 he says this: “For if those men now think that they have attained something who have seen the mouth of the Pontus, the Black Sea, and those straits which were passed by the ship called Argo, ‘because from Argo she did chosen men convey, bound to fetch back the golden fleece their prey,’ or those who have seen the straits of the ocean where the swift waves divide the neighboring shores of Europe and Africa — what kind of sight do you imagine that will be when the whole earth is laid open to our view? And that too, not only in its position, form and boundaries, nor those parts of it only which are habitable, but those also that lie uncultivated through the extremities of heat and cold to which they’re exposed?
For not even now is it with our eyes that we view what we see, for the body itself has no senses. But, as the naturalists — and even the physicians who have opened our bodies and examined them — assure us, there are certain perforated channels from the seat of the soul to the eyes, ears, and nose. So that frequently, when either prevented by meditation or the force of some bodily disorder we neither hear nor see, though our eyes and ears are open and in good condition. So that we may easily apprehend that it is the soul itself which sees and hears, and not those parts which are, as it were, but windows to the soul, by means of which however she can perceive nothing unless she is on the spot and exerts herself.
How shall we account for the fact that by the same power of thinking we comprehend the most different things — as color, taste, heat, smell, and sound — which the soul could never know by her five messengers unless everything was referred to her and she were the sole judge of all? And we shall certainly discover these things in a more clear and perfect degree when the soul is disengaged from the body and has arrived at that goal to which nature leads her. For at present, not withstanding nature has contrived with the greatest skill those channels which lead from the body to the soul, yet are they in some way or other stopped up with earthly and concrete bodies. But when we shall be nothing but soul, then nothing will interfere to prevent our seeing everything in its real substance and in its true character.”
Cassius: Yes, indeed. We’re waiting for death so we can experience this perfect existence and ability to observe those things which we can’t observe now because our bodies are stopped up, so to speak, preventing our soul from having direct contact with true reality. It’s all very poetic, but it’s all totally speculative and without foundation on evidence that we can see and hear and observe here on the earth. It’s a display of intellectual possibilities that create in our minds something desirable that we wish were true, but for which we have no evidence that actually exists.
Joshua: Yeah, it seems like it’s weirdly similar to some of what you find in Hinduism, with this idea that the energy that flows through the body is being stopped up in some places and that this inhibits the freedom of the soul. It’s very interesting to find that here in Cicero as well. But yeah, you’re right. I mean, in some sense he’s saying not only should we not fear death, we’re anticipating death hopefully, because we get to see the hot parts of the earth and the cold parts of the earth and the uncharted parts of the earth without anything interfering in the operations of our senses. And we get to see that forever. So death is not something evil — it’s something that we’re supposed to look forward to as a better time than now.
Cassius: Yes, if you take this to its logical conclusion, why would you want to live any longer than you absolutely have to here on this earth, when you have this wonderful existence waiting for you after death? I think that’s one of the major problems with this whole point of view — if indeed it’s true, then why are you here? As Epicurus says in the Letter to Menoeceus, if it’s really better to just hasten to the gates of death, why don’t you go ahead and do it, if you really believe that?
But these people in most cases don’t really believe that. They’re just spinning a tale that is convenient for them and that has many useful purposes — useful for convincing people to do things for them, such as giving their lives in an army for causes that those people don’t believe in themselves. All sorts of reasons you can use this type of argument to manipulate people into doing things they would not otherwise do.
But now Cicero will come back off his pedestal, so to speak, and talk about criticisms of other schools. So let’s now take a look at Section 21.
Joshua: “It is true I might expatiate, did the subject require it, on the many and various subjects with which the soul will be entertained in those heavenly regions. When I reflect on which I am apt to wonder at the boldness of some philosophers who are so struck with admiration at the knowledge of nature as to thank in an exulting manner the first inventor and teacher of natural philosophy, and to reverence him as a God. For they declare that they have been delivered by his means from the greatest tyrants — a perpetual terror and a fear that molested them by night and day.
What is this dread, this fear? What old woman is there so weak as to fear these things which you forsooth, had you not been acquainted with natural philosophy, would stand in awe of: the hallowed roofs of Acheron, the dread of Orcus, the pale regions of the dead? And does it become a philosopher to boast that he is not afraid of these things, and that he has discovered them to be false?
And from this we may perceive how acute these men were by nature, who, if they had been left without any instruction, would have believed in these things. But now they have certainly made a very fine acquisition in learning that, when the day of their death arrives, they will perish entirely. And if that really is the case — for I say nothing either way — what is there agreeable or glorious in it? Not that I see any reason why the opinion of Pythagoras and Plato may not be true. But even although Plato were to have assigned no reason for his opinion — observe how much I esteem the man — the weight of his authority would have borne me down. But he has brought so many reasons that he appears to me to have endeavored to convince others, and certainly to have convinced himself.”
Cassius: Joshua, this seems to me like an awful lot of it is aimed directly at Epicurus. I don’t know whether his people called him the first inventor and teacher of natural philosophy or not, but a lot of the rest of this sarcasm applies directly to the Epicureans from Cicero’s point of view.
Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. He says, “I am apt to wonder at the boldness of some philosophers who are so struck with admiration of the knowledge of nature as to thank in an exulting manner the first inventor and teacher of natural philosophy, and to reverence him as a God.” Well, they certainly called Epicurus a savior in the ancient world, these Epicureans, because he saved them from not only false opinions concerning the gods and nature and human life, but he saved them from the terror of what allegedly waited after death. And so yeah, I absolutely think this is aimed directly at the Epicureans.
Cassius: Just calling him a natural philosopher. I mean, obviously Epicurus talks a lot about studying nature and so forth. I’ve never really considered whether there was somebody before Epicurus who focused on it from that point of view. But I think we remember from Torquatus talking about Epicurus as the master builder of human happiness, that some of this language seems to echo what Cicero has already used in that other work to describe Epicurus.
Joshua: Absolutely. And then later down in the passage he says, “but now they have certainly made a very fine acquisition in learning that when the day of their death arrives, they will perish entirely. If that really is the case — for I say nothing either way — what is there agreeable or glorious in it?” We’re appalled that Cicero can’t wait to die because he’s going to finally shed his loathsome body and ascend to the stars, in his own view. He’s appalled that the Epicureans are happy knowing that death is the end for them, and that when they die there is no life after death. He says there’s nothing agreeable or glorious in that view. This is horrifying to him — that you might not only believe there’s nothing after death, but accept and embrace that there is nothing after death. It’s like he sees the Epicureans as in some way insane on this question, which I think is very interesting, because his own views are eccentric, to say the least.
Cassius: Insane — or in another perspective, actually stupid. Because I’m recalling that we started off here by having this student of Cicero’s taking the position that he’s not concerned about the fires or the monsters that await in Acheron. And so when Cicero says — and I think this is very sarcastic — “and from this we may perceive how acute these men were by nature, who, if they had been left without any instruction, would have believed in these things” — in other words, he’s saying that these Epicureans sound like they’re acting so smart, but what they’re really saying is that well, unless Epicurus had told us that these things don’t exist in Acheron, we’d have believed them. Well, here are our educated Romans of 50 BC. They don’t believe in these things, and yet they’re not Epicurean. Epicurus didn’t convince them these things didn’t take place. But apparently the Epicureans are proud of the fact, and so relieved and happy of the fact, that Epicurus has come along and told them that these things aren’t true — because if he hadn’t come along, we’d have still been believing in these things.
So I see that as sarcasm. And one other thing I want to comment on before we move further: Cicero loves to hit on this argument that the Epicureans are basically scaredy cats, that they’re a bunch of weak-minded cowards running from fear all the time. When Cicero says, “what is this dread, this fear? What old woman is there so weak as to fear these things which you, for so much, had you not been acquainted with natural philosophy, would stand in awe of” — in other words, he is continuously trying to plant this idea that what Epicurus is all about is running from fear. That there’s no concern about what’s true or false in Epicurus, no concern about living the best life possible to you, no acknowledgment that Epicurus does all the time that you’re going to undergo pain in order to achieve the pleasures that you want.
He’s just trying to plant this idea that Epicureans are nothing but a bunch of cowards running as fast as they can in terror from things that nobody should be concerned about. And that in itself is a discrediting aspect of Epicurean philosophy, which of course I would simply reject as a total attempt to intimidate or mischaracterize what’s going on here. If there’s anybody engaging in wishful thinking to evade reality, it’s not the Epicurean — it’s Cicero and Plato and Pythagoras. Because as Lucretius says, from a very early age, even as children, we’re going to take the medicine. We may rim the cup with honey while we are delivering the medicine, but we’re going to deliver the medicine, because the medicine may taste bitter while you’re taking it, but will lead to a better, happier, more fulfilling, all-around higher life when you follow this path, as opposed to engaging in wishful thinking.
Joshua: I could not agree more with Cassius. The people who are hiding in terror behind their mother’s skirts are Cicero and Plato and those like them, who are not willing to face the truth about death and about what that means for us and what non-existence means, as opposed to what your most optimal, ideal, optimistic version of the afterlife looks like. It’s the Epicureans really who stared death in the face, and they deserve credit for that. But Cicero is looking at the Epicureans — “you old women, who are so terrified, a perpetual terror and a fear that molested them by night and day.” He can say that all he wants. But it’s Cicero and those like him who are not willing to face up to it in the end. I agree so hard with what you just said. That was great.
Cassius: Let’s do one more section today, because I think it fits in with what Cicero has said so far in Sections 19, 20, and 21 in terms of the Epicurean position. So let’s go ahead and take a look at Section 22.
Joshua: “But there are many who labor on the other side of the question, and condemn souls to death as if they were criminals capitally convicted. Nor have they any other reason to allege why the immortality of the soul appears to them to be incredible, except that they are not able to conceive what sort of thing the soul can be when disentangled from the body — just as if they could really form a correct idea as to what sort of thing it is even when it is in the body. What its form and size and abode are. So that were they able to have a full view of all that is now hidden from them in a living body, they have no idea whether the soul would be discernible by them or whether it is of so fine a texture that it would escape their sight.
Let those consider this who say that they’re unable to form any idea of the soul without the body, and then they will see whether they can form any adequate idea of what it is when it is in the body. For my own part, when I reflect on the nature of the soul, it appears to me a far more perplexing and obscure question to determine what is its character while it is in the body — a place which, as it were, does not belong to it — than to imagine what it is when it leaves it and has arrived at the free ether, which is, if I may say so, its proper, its own habitation.
For unless we are to say that we cannot apprehend the character or nature of anything which we have never seen, we certainly may be able to form some notion of God and of the divine soul when released from the body. Dicaearchus indeed, and Aristoxenus — because it was hard to understand the existence and substance and nature of the soul — asserted that there was no such thing as a soul at all.
It is indeed the most difficult thing imaginable to discern the soul by the soul. And this doubtless is the meaning of the precept of Apollo, which advises everyone to know himself. For I do not apprehend the meaning of the God to have been that we should understand our members, our stature and form, for we are not merely bodies. Nor, when I say these things to you, am I addressing myself to your body. When he says therefore, ‘know yourself,’ he says this: ‘inform yourself of the nature of your soul.’ For the body is but a kind of vessel or receptacle of the soul. And whatever your soul does is your own act. To know the soul, then, unless it had been divine, would not have been a precept of such excellent wisdom as to be attributed to a God.
But even though the soul should not know of what nature itself is, will you say that it does not even perceive that it exists at all or that it has motion? On this is founded that reason of Plato’s which is explained by Socrates in the Phaedrus, and inserted by me in my sixth book of the Republic.”
Cassius: Now we don’t want to leave it hanging there to talk about what his argument was in the sixth book of the Republic and what Plato’s argument was — but we’re going to postpone that into next week in Section 23, because Cicero is going to very graciously tell us what his argument was in Section 23.
But in what we’ve just read, there’s a lot of interesting material. There’s this “know thyself” slogan that people talk about all the time, and Cicero has a spin on that which is very interesting for us to talk about. But what I’d really like to emphasize about this section is that I do think Cicero has a point that we need to be able to address. One of the statements Cicero makes here is: “For, unless we are to say that we cannot apprehend the character or nature of anything which we have never seen, we certainly may be able to form some notion of God or the divine soul when released from the body.”
Now, this is a reference in my mind to why epistemology and canonics is such an important part of Epicurean philosophy, and why we make a mistake in not focusing on it. Because just like Philodemus’s book on methods of inference, you have to deal with this question: are you only going to believe those things to be true which you yourself have seen or touched? And some people will take the position that if I’ve never seen it, I’ve never touched it, it doesn’t exist. And that question of course would apply to the soul and to God as well, as Cicero is bringing up here.
So every philosophy — every person who’s thought through these deeper questions — has to wrestle with this question of when do we have enough evidence to say that we believe something? What is the criterion for believing anything? Unless you’re from Missouri, the Show Me State, you’re not going to believe it unless you’ve seen it. You’ve got to have a way of approaching these things, because even in Epicurean philosophy we do believe that there are things we’ve never seen or touched ourselves. The primary example being the atoms moving through the void — that is a deduction from things that we do see, but we’ve never touched or seen atoms directly, and we never will. Yet we believe that those are the foundations of the universe. So we have confidence that they exist, and we’re not constantly doubting whether atoms are moving through the void.
So in this question of whether a soul exists or not, we have to apply that same kind of reasoning. Yes, I’ve never seen or touched my soul, but nevertheless, do I believe that I have a soul? And saying that you believe that you have a soul is not the same thing as saying that the soul is immortal or that it’s going to a better place after death. It’s that you have something that can be understood separately from your tongue or your ear or your foot — as existing just like they do. And how you approach that entire question — Cicero is saying it’s just as hard to understand what the soul is when it’s inside the body, when you’re alive, as it is to understand it once you’re dead.
Joshua: I think he’s saying it’s harder to understand it when you’re alive.
Cassius: Yes. Just sort of saying that it’s actually harder to understand the soul when you’re alive.
Joshua: Exactly. He’s pointing to this: I’m going to push my mind out to the future and imagine myself after death and imagine my soul swirling around in the ether far over my head, up in the sky. And that is the natural abode of the soul. So it’s easier to imagine the soul there than it is to look in the mirror in the morning and see my own body and imagine my soul in my body. So this is an interesting problem: we understand the nature of the soul by imagining it after death, but we can only believe that the soul survives death by understanding the nature of the soul. So there is an element of circularity here, which I find interesting.
Cassius: Yeah. And Cicero’s raising this criticism of the Epicurean: that they’re treating the soul like criminals who’ve been capitally convicted of a crime. But then Cicero says, “nor have they any other reason to allege why the immortality of the soul appears to them to be incredible, except that they are not able to conceive what sort of thing the soul can be when disentangled from the body.” That’s worth focusing on, because the Epicurean phrasing in a lot of cases does appear to be that something is inconceivable. Well, why is it inconceivable? That has got to be the next question. And it’s not simply that it’s inconceivable because we’ve never seen it before. It’s inconceivable because there’s no evidence that would support it being a reasonable possibility.
We’ve never seen atoms before, and yet we certainly conceive that atoms exist — in fact, we have a firm position that they do. The same position can be taken as to the soul. Yes, we have reason to believe that we have consciousness, that we have something going on inside our bodies that is consciousness, and we’re very confident that that exists. But to extend further and to say that that consciousness is immortal or that it’s going to a better place after it’s dead — that is something not supported by the evidence we have in front of us, supportable only by the kind of wishful thinking that Cicero is engaged in.
So this section has a very important aspect to it. Maybe the theme of our episode today has been: what are your reasons for believing that the soul exists, and whether or not it can exist after death? Epicurus is not saying that the soul does not exist, like Dicaearchus or Aristoxenus. I would say that Epicurus is not in the same ballpark with those two philosophers. He’s not saying that the soul does not exist, just as Epicurus does not say that gods don’t exist. Epicurus says that gods exist, but of a specific type, and they don’t have the attributes that people normally assign to them. I think Epicurus would likely say as well that the soul does exist. But likewise, as with gods, it does not have these qualities of immortality or superior nature that Cicero, Plato, and Pythagoras are trying to give to it.
Joshua: Yeah. Now let me mention two more things here. Because you brought up Cicero’s objection to the Epicurean point of view, which is: you have no evidence for saying that the soul dies with the body. The only reason you hold that position is because you can’t imagine or conceive a soul disentangled from the body. And my answer to that would be: you used the word “confidence” earlier in the episode, Cassius. It’s true that we cannot prove with a hundred percent mathematical certainty that the soul does not survive the body. But we can be confident, I think, in that opinion, because we look at the evidence.
And the evidence for me is this: when a new human is born, if we’re going to take the argument that the soul has always existed — which is the argument that Plato takes — or that the soul cycles through the rounds of metempsychosis, or transmigration of the soul from body to body to body — why is it the case that the body has to spend fifteen years developing on earth before the person whose soul it is reaches maturity, not just physical maturity, but emotional and intellectual and linguistic maturity? Why is this growth and development necessary for the soul as well as for the body, if the soul existed before the body?
And likewise, you can look at death and say: if the soul, when freed from the body, is actually more efficacious and more wise and more free, then why is it that when the body is breaking down, you don’t see the soul taking over and becoming better? What you actually see, for example, with progressive brain damage — as in the case with horrible diseases like dementia, Alzheimer’s, and so forth — is that progressive damage to the brain correlates with progressive damage to the mind. And if the soul is eternal and unscathed, why should that be the case? Why should brain damage lead to decayed cognition? It doesn’t make sense in his view of things. And so again, it’s not something you can prove mathematically, but we can look at that evidence and say: I can’t prove this, but I can be confident in the conclusion.
And the other thing I wanted to mention — as you brought up, Cassius — was this bit about “know thyself.” And he says this presents a riddle, and he says the answer to it is: inform thyself of the nature of your soul. In other words, you — your soul — need to inform thyself — your soul — of the nature of thyself — your soul. The body doesn’t come into it. He says, “I apprehend the meaning of Apollo in making that expression” — “for I do not apprehend the meaning of the god Apollo who made that statement to have been that we should understand our members or our stature and form, for we are not merely our bodies, nor when I say these things to you am I addressing myself to your body. When therefore he says, ‘know thyself,’ what he’s actually saying is you need to inform yourself of the nature of your own soul, for the body is only a vessel or receptacle for the soul, and whatever your soul does is your own act.”
Well, again, I would ask: if the body is only a vessel for the soul, why is it that a decaying body correlates with a decaying mind and a decaying soul? And that would be my answer to both questions.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, I like the way you concluded that in saying it’s the answer to both questions. Because when we talk about proving things to a mathematical certainty or being absolutely certain about anything, those phrasings raise all sorts of questions about practicality and reality and whether it even makes sense to attempt to prove things to mathematical certainties. We frequently talk about mathematics and how it’s not the same as reality itself. So the whole way you approach proof and evidence and being confident or certain of anything is something that is important to think through, so that you’re not holding yourself to a false standard that no one could ever meet — that could only be met by some kind of hypothetical omnipotent, omniscient God, which practical reasoning tells us is not something that’s possible in the first place.
There’s a lot more that we need to discuss, but that’s about all we have time for this week. Next week, Cicero turns to a very complicated argument about the nature of motion, and he’s going to evoke issues of the prime mover as Aristotle might refer to it — but we’ll wait to start that until next week. In the meantime, does anyone have closing thoughts for today?
Joshua: Given our discussion in this episode about atoms and Democritus and so forth, I quoted earlier from John Tyndall in his Belfast Address. There are two other excellent passages that I should quote — not from John Tyndall. One of them is from Stephen Greenblatt in his book The Swerve, and one of them is from George Santayana in his book Three Philosophical Poets, in his essay on Lucretius.
Stephen Greenblatt says this: “There is an order in the universe, but it is one built into the nature of things, into the matter that composes everything from stars to men to bedbugs. Nature is not an abstract capacity, but a generative mother bringing forth everything that exists. We have, in other words, entered the Lucretian universe.” We spoke earlier about Democritus and atoms being alive, and I think that’s the context of this kind of approach.
George Santayana, in his essay on Lucretius in Three Philosophical Poets, has this to say: “Universal instability is not incompatible with a great monotony in things. So that while Heraclitus lamented that everything was in flux, Ecclesiastes, who was also entirely convinced of that truth, could lament that there was nothing new under the sun. This double experience of mutation and recurrence — an experience at once sentimental and scientific — soon brought with it a very great thought: perhaps the greatest thought that mankind has ever hit upon, and which was the chief inspiration of Lucretius. It is that all we observe about us, and ourselves also, may be so many passing forms of a permanent substance. This substance, while remaining the same in quantity and in inward quality, is constantly redistributed. In its redistribution it forms those aggregates which we call things, and which we find constantly disappearing and reappearing. All things are dust, and to dust they return — a dust, however, eternally fertile, and destined to fall perpetually into new and doubtless beautiful forms. This notion of substance lends a much greater unity to the outspread world. It persuades us that all things pass into one another and have a common ground from which they spring successively and to which they return.”
And again, this is me speaking: I think if you have this view of nature — this Epicurean view of nature — some of the pitfalls that Cicero is laying out for us to fall into, we can avoid. We can see them coming. And the more you study, the better you are at seeing them coming.
Cassius: Very well stated, Joshua. That’s what we’re doing — attempting to study these things and profit from the experience. That’s what we do each and every week at the EpicureanFriends.com forum. And we do invite you to drop by there and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or any of our discussions about Epicurus. Thank you for your time this week. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.