Episode 275 - TD05 - Does Motion Provide Evidence For The Existence of God And Divinity Of The Soul?
Date: 04/04/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4374-episode-275-td05-does-motion-provide-evidence-for-the-existence-of-god-and-divin/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Episode 275 continues the Tusculan Disputations series (TD05), covering Sections 23–24 of Book One. The episode opens with a recap of the series so far, then centers on Cicero’s quotation of the self-moving soul argument from Plato’s Phaedrus (Section 23): that which is self-moved is eternal, and since the soul is self-moved, it is therefore eternal. Cicero applies this to the question of the soul’s immortality and its participation in the divine nature that sets everything in motion.
Cassius responds at length with the Epicurean answer: the atoms are the first movers, moving eternally through the void under their own inherent force (weight/gravitas), requiring no external prime mover. He draws parallels to Thomas Paine’s use of the same motion-based argument for the existence of God in The Age of Reason (1794), showing how the question has reverberated across two millennia. Joshua reads a supporting passage from Aristotle’s De Anima cataloguing ancient views of the soul and motion — including Democritus (soul as spherical fire atoms), Anaxagoras (mind as first principle), Thales (the magnet has soul because it moves iron), Heraclitus (soul as warm exhalation), and Alcmaeon (soul immortal because ceaselessly in motion). Cassius also discusses Aristotle’s hylomorphism as an alternative to Platonic Forms that still fails the Epicurean test.
The episode closes with a preview of Section 24 (Platonic recollection theory and the Meno) and a passage from Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow-Line, affirming the Epicurean view that nature contains enough marvels without recourse to the supernatural.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 275 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 covering Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations from an Epicurean viewpoint. We are in the first section dealing with the question: is death an evil? And while we have gone through some significant material already, we have some particularly interesting arguments today, because these arguments have reverberated through the centuries all the way up through the present day — including also the period that’s often thought of as the Deist period, where famous English and American philosophers were looking at the questions of materialism and breaking away from established religion.
As we go through this today, one of the examples of how this question is so important can be found by looking at the works of people such as Thomas Paine, who wrote an essay about the existence of God and grounded his argument that there is a God on principles of motion. And the issue of motion is something that goes all the way back to Plato, if not further, and Cicero is going to discuss how motion fits into this orthodox view that some supernatural being is the author of this motion. But to get us to that point, we need a quick review of where we’ve been already.
Cicero of course has introduced the topic by having a student ask a question implying that he thinks death is an evil, and Cicero is trying to talk the student out of that position. Cicero has argued that the great men of the past and the authorities all take the position that the soul continues to exist after death — that’s the reason why the great men of the past have been great, because they wanted to do things that would allow themselves to be profiting from their great actions throughout eternity. Cicero asked his student: well, of course if you agree with all the authorities that the soul does have an eternal existence, then we don’t have to talk about that further. And at that point the student halted him and said, absolutely, I want you to talk about that because that’s a critical question for me. At that point, in Section 12, the student asked this question:
Joshua: “Explain therefore, if it is not troublesome to you, first if you can, that souls do exist after death. Secondly, should you fail in that — and it is a very difficult thing to establish — that death is free from all evil. For I am not without my fears that this itself is an evil, I do not mean the immediate deprivation of sense, but the fact that we shall hereafter suffer deprivation.”
Cassius: Okay. And in response to that, Cicero again went back into the history of the best authority, which takes this position — talking about what the great men of the past have thought. And he’s also argued that nature herself prompts people to look to the future and do things for the sake of the future. And Cicero says, well, why would they do that if nature weren’t telling us that there is some kind of consciousness after death? This ends up being an argument that nature is prompting to this position, almost in an echo of what Velleius had said in On the Nature of the Gods, but not quite the same. Cicero makes a comment that “to withdraw the mind from sensual objects and abstract our thoughts from what we are accustomed to is an attribute of great genius.” All the while, as he goes through here, adding comments that either explicitly or implicitly either insult or disagree with the position of people like Epicurus and those who don’t believe in the soul existing after death.
Then around Section 17, Cicero said he would return to the ancients and made the comment that they really didn’t give a whole lot of explanation beyond talking about numbers or definitions — which Plato apparently picked up from Pythagoras. And at that point the student interjected that while it may not be clear what Plato said, the student says, I want to know what they’re talking about because I want to have confidence that the soul does exist after death. So in Section 17, the student continued with his questions by asking this:
Joshua: “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: And at that point, Cicero agreed that he himself holds Plato in such esteem that he would willingly be mistaken in the company of Plato rather than be right in the company of people like Epicurus, with whom he disagrees. Cicero next proceeded to remind the student of the traditional order of elements, in which the soul was considered to be something light that would, at separation from the body, begin to move upwards because of its lightness — again, including shots at Democritus and Epicurus along the way. Cicero is going to have nothing to do with the idea that atoms could be the explanation of this.
Cicero then begins to focus his attack on Epicurus and the idea that the senses are a good thing that we can rely on, by arguing that the senses actually hold us back — that the body is something that blocks our spirit from pure knowledge and pure understanding of the way things really are — and that the experience of being dead is going to be something so beautiful and happy for us because it’s going to allow us to ascend and see all parts of the world, not just those we’re familiar with, but the frozen and the desert regions. We’re just going to have this wonderful experience of happiness that comes from knowledge, which we cannot even begin to experience here on earth, except a little bit through philosophy of course. But then when you’re dead, you’re going to ascend to this ability to know things that even the philosophers on earth aren’t able to understand.
Again, in Section 21, going back to criticize the Epicurean for holding Epicurus and natural philosophy to be god-like — accusing them of being cowards — Cicero says: why should these people be so happy and proud of not being afraid of something that they’ve concluded doesn’t exist anyway? People like Epicurus are condemning the soul to death as if they were criminals who were convicted of a capital crime, and they don’t have any reason for rejecting the idea of consciousness after death other than that they can’t conceive of consciousness after death. Well, Cicero says, I’ll accept your argument if you can explain to me consciousness while you are alive.
Cicero is saying that it’s harder to understand the soul in the body than it is to understand the soul living outside the body — since of course Cicero is taking the position that the soul is just some kind of a light, airy substance and more naturally fed and flourishes up in the ether than it does within the body, from Cicero’s point of view. And now, to get us to where we’re going to begin this week, the last thing Cicero said was about knowing thyself, and that’s a particularly important question. So before we get into Section 23, Joshua, let’s talk for a second again about this “know thyself” issue.
Joshua: He says: “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 limbs, 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 therefore he says, in an inscription on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, ‘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. And we’re going to go into that quote next.”
Cassius: That’s going to be the highlight of what we’re going to talk about today. So let’s go ahead and go into Section 23.
Joshua: Okay. Quote: “That which is always moved is eternal. But that which gives motion to something else and is moved itself by some external cause, when that motion ceases, must necessarily cease to exist. That therefore alone which is self-moved, because it is never forsaken by itself, can never cease to be moved. Besides, it is the beginning and principle of motion to everything else. But whatever is a principle has no beginning, for all things arise from that principle, and it cannot itself owe its rise to anything else — for then it would not be a principle did it proceed from anything else. But if it has no beginning, it never will have any end. For a principle which is once extinguished cannot itself be restored by anything else, nor can it produce anything else from itself, inasmuch as all things must necessarily arise from some first cause. And thus it comes about that the first principle of motion must arise from that thing which is itself moved by itself, and that can neither have a beginning nor an end of its existence. For otherwise, the whole heaven and earth would be overset and all nature would stand still, not be able to acquire any force by the impulse of which it might be first set in motion.
Seeing then that it is clear that whatever moves itself is eternal, can there be any doubt that the soul is so? For everything is inanimate which is moved by an external force. But everything which is animate is moved by an interior force which also belongs to itself, for this is the peculiar nature and power of the soul. And if the soul be the only thing in the whole world which has the power of self-motion, then certainly it never had a beginning and therefore it is eternal.” End quote from [Plato’s] Phaedrus.
And now we return to Cicero speaking: “Now should all the lower orders of philosophers — for so I think they may be called who disagree with Plato and Socrates in that school — unite their force, they never would be able to explain anything so elegantly as this, nor even to understand how ingeniously this conclusion is drawn. The soul then perceives itself to have motion, and at the same time that it gets that perception, it is sensible that it derives that motion from its own power and not from the agency of another. And it is impossible that it should ever forsake itself. And these premises compel you to allow its eternity, unless you have something to say against them.”
Kalosyni: “I should myself be very well pleased not to have even a thought arise in my mind against them, so much am I inclined to that opinion.”
Cassius: Okay. Now we’re going to spend most of our time today talking about what Joshua has just read from the Phaedrus. But we’re supposed to be talking about life after death and the soul surviving death, and the Phaedrus argument is really more about the existence of a supernatural God than it is about the soul — so that we can see that the implication is what we’re really talking about. Joshua, can you go ahead and read Section 24 and then we’ll dissect the full argument?
Joshua: Yeah. This is Cicero again in Section 24. He says this: “Well then, I appeal to you — if the arguments which prove that there is something divine in the souls of men are not equally strong. But if I could account for the origin of these divine properties, then I might also be able to explain how they might cease to exist. For I think I can account for the manner in which the blood and bile and phlegm and bones and nerves and veins and all the limbs and the shape of the whole body were put together and made. And even as to the soul itself: where there nothing more in it than a principle of life, then the life of a man might be put upon the same footing as that of a vine or any other tree and accounted for as caused by nature. For these things, as we say, live.
Besides, if desires and aversions were all that belong to the soul, it would have them only in common with the beasts. But it has in the first place memory, and that too so infinite as to recollect an absolute countless number of circumstances — which Plato will have to be a recollection of a former life. For in that dialogue which is called the Meno, Socrates asks a child some questions in geometry with reference to measuring a square. His answers are such as a child would make, and yet the questions are so easy that while answering them one by one he comes to the same point as if he had learned geometry. From which Socrates would infer that learning is nothing more than recollection. And this topic he explains more accurately in the discourse which he held the very day he died, for he there asserts that anyone who, seeming to be entirely illiterate, is yet able to answer a question well that is proposed to him, does in so doing manifestly show that he is not learning it then but recollecting it by his memory. Nor is it to be accounted for in any other way how children come to have notions of so many and such important things as are implanted and as it were sealed up in their minds — which the Greeks call ennoiai — unless the soul before it entered the body had been well stored with knowledge. And as it had no existence at all — for this is the invariable doctrine of Plato, who will not admit anything to have a real existence which has a beginning and an end, and who thinks that that alone does really exist which is of such a character as what he calls idea and we species — therefore, being shut up in the body, it could not while in the body discover what it knows, but it knew it before and brought the knowledge with it.
So that we are no longer surprised at its extensive and multifarious knowledge. Nor does the soul clearly discover its ideas at its first resort to this abode, to which it is so unaccustomed and which is in so disturbed a state. But after having refreshed and recollected itself, it then by its memory recovers them. And therefore to learn implies nothing more than to recollect. But I am in a particular manner surprised at memory. For what is that faculty by which we remember? What is its force, what is its nature? I am not inquiring how great a memory Simonides may be said to have had, or that Cineas who was sent to Rome as ambassador from Pyrrhus, or in more modern times Charmadas, or very lately Metrodorus of Scepsis, or our own contemporary. I am speaking of ordinary memory and especially of those men who were employed in any important study or art, the great capacity of whose minds it is hard to estimate, such number of things do they remember.”
Cassius: Okay, Joshua, thank you for reading that extra part. Cicero is doing a great service to us by combining all of these major issues in philosophy into this dialogue and giving us an opportunity to talk about them. And we’re going to have to come back into that last section and talk at length about this issue of recollection that Socrates and Plato talk about in the Meno. And also one of the most interesting things I found was this assertion that it was the invariable doctrine of Plato that nothing has a real existence which has a beginning and an end. To me, that harks back to the Democritean problem: that nothing is real except the eternal atoms moving through the void. That’s something we’re going to have to come back to as well, because it’s something that Epicurus rejects, as he gives reality to those things which we learn through our senses, anticipations, and feelings — not just the question of whether that thing is eternal or not.
Those are questions we’re going to come back to, but they all rest on this beginning assertion in the Phaedrus about motion and the question of whether the thing that we’re talking about has motion imparted to it by something else, or whether motion is an inherent quality of that thing. The very first statement that Joshua quoted from Section 23 was: “that which is always moved is eternal, but that which gives motion to something else and is moved by an external cause, when that motion ceases, must necessarily cease to exist.” So the direction they’re going in here is that by observing the fact that motion exists, we come to terms with a question that will settle for us the issue of whether there is a divine being that is the source of this motion, or whether the motion is self-caused and therefore there is no need for a divine being.
These guys are looking back to the elements — to the earth, to the water, to the air — and saying, well, those obviously don’t move on their own. There is something that gives motion to them, and they think that’s a compelling argument that what gives motion to these elements is the divine being, is a God. And they’re going to then bootstrap that argument to say: well, the soul itself gives motion to itself, and so therefore the soul shares in this divinity of being with this prime mover. And that’s why we are comfortable with the idea that the soul survives death — because it’s divine. It’s not just part of the elements themselves; it’s separate from these elements and above these elements, and it gives the life to these elements that we see around us in the form of motion. But our souls — this divinity that created everything — is superior to these elements, comes before these elements, and is the true source of what is real in the world.
And this is where I wanted to use the example from Thomas Paine’s work on the existence of God, because almost two thousand years after this is written, Thomas Paine with a much more modern perspective on things is using this same argument. Paine says: “Let us examine this subject, for it is worth examining. If we examine it through all its cases, the result will be that the existence of a superior cause, or that which man calls God, will be discoverable by philosophical principles. In the first place, admitting matter to have properties as we see it has, the question still remains: how can matter by these properties [do this]? To this they will answer that matter possessed those properties eternally.” Paine is arguing here against those who say there is no God at all. Paine continues: “This is not a solution but an assertion, and to deny it is equally as impossible of proof as to assert it.”
Paine says: “It is then necessary to go further, and therefore I say: if there exists a circumstance that is not a property of matter, and without which the universe — or, to speak in a limited degree, the solar system composed of planets and a sun — could not exist a moment, all the arguments of atheism drawn from properties of matter and applied to account for the universe will be overthrown, and the existence of a superior cause, or that which man calls God, becomes discoverable, as is said before, by natural philosophy.” Paine says: “I go now to show that such a circumstance exists and what it is.”
And Paine says: “The universe is composed of matter, and as a system is sustained by motion.” And here is a key sentence from Paine’s reasoning: “Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist. Were motion a property of matter, that undiscovered and undiscoverable thing called perpetual motion would establish itself. It is because motion is not a property of matter that perpetual motion is an impossibility in the hand of every being but that of the creator of motion. When the pretenders to atheism can produce perpetual motion, and not till then, they may expect to be credited. The natural state of matter as to place is a state of rest.”
Now, he goes on further in that argument, but I’ll stop at that point — because this is essentially the same argument. People are saying that motion is not a quality of the atoms. Motion has to come from somewhere else and be caused by something else. And this external thing that causes motion is what they identify with God and divinity. In just a moment we’ll come back and explain Epicurus’s position on this, but Joshua, I think you have something to add from Aristotle here.
Joshua: Yeah. Aristotle, in his De Anima — On the Soul — discusses somewhat of the history of this question, and he says this: “Some thinkers, accepting both premises — that is, that the soul is both originative of movement and cognitive — have compounded it of both and declared the soul to be a self-moving number. As to the nature and number of the first principles, opinions differ. The difference is greatest between those who regard them as corporeal and those who regard them as incorporeal, and from both dissent those who make a blend and draw their principles from both sources. The number of principles is also in dispute: some admit only one, others assert several. There is a consequent diversity in their several accounts of the soul. They assume naturally enough that which is in its own nature originative of movement must be among what is primordial.”
This is what Cicero is referring to when he is referring to the soul as a principle — it is primordial, from the first order of things. And Aristotle continues: “That view has led some to regard it as fire, for fire is the subtlest of the elements and nearest to incorporeal reality. Further, in the most primary sense, fire both is moved and originates movement in all others.”
And then Aristotle lists a group of pre-Socratic philosophers and gives their opinion — and that’s why this text is useful. He says this: “Democritus has expressed himself more ingeniously than the rest on the grounds for ascribing each of these two characters to soul.” Again, the two characters of the soul are that they are originative of movement and that they are cognitive. “Soul and mind, Democritus says, are one and the same thing, and this thing must be one of the primary and indivisible bodies, and its power of originating movement must be due to its fineness of grain and the shape of its atoms. He says that of all the shapes the spherical is the most mobile, and that this is the shape of the particles of fire and of mind.”
“And Anaxagoras, as we said above, seems to distinguish between soul and mind, but in practice he treats them as a single substance, except that it is mind that he specifically posits as the principle of all things. At any rate, what he says is that mind alone of all that is, is simple, unmixed, and pure. He assigns both characteristics — cognition and origination of movement — to the same principle when he says that it was mind that set the whole in movement.”
“Thales of Miletus too, to judge from what is recorded about him, seems to have held soul to be a motive force, since he said that the magnet has a soul in it because it moves the iron. Diogenes and others held the soul to be air because he believed air to be finest in grain and a first principle. Therein lay the grounds of the soul’s powers of knowing and originating movement: as the primordial principle from which all other things are derived, it is cognitive; as finest in grain, it has the power to originate movement.”
“Heraclitus too says that the first principle — the so-called warm exhalation of which according to him everything else is composed — is soul. Further, that this exhalation is most incorporeal and in ceaseless flux, and that what is in movement requires that what knows it should be in movement, and that all that is has its being essentially in movement. Herein agreeing with the majority.”
“And there are a few other examples here. Alcmaeon also seems to have held a similar view about the soul. He says that it is immortal because it resembles the immortals, and that this immortality belongs to it in virtue of its ceaseless movement. For all the things divine — that is, the moon, the sun, the planets and the whole heavens — are themselves in perpetual motion.”
It would take quite a long time, Cassius, to digest everything that’s being said here. But this link that Cicero is making between the soul and motion and this question of the immortality of the soul — does the soul exist forever? — is tied to the question of motion. And we see that here in Aristotle. How are we going to process all of this information? I guess that’s the question we have going forward.
Cassius: Joshua, we just are not going to have time to process all of that information. But what you have just read is fascinating and we need to pursue it, because I read in that again additional confirmation of the difference between Epicurus and Democritus. Most of what you said was interesting. The part about Democritus in particular — but I believe that everything you’ve said comes down to this point of whether the soul or divinity is a primary element, which is the position that Aristotle and these others, and maybe based on what you just read, Democritus, took as well. Is that correct? Or is Epicurus correct that the primary element is the atom and the soul is the result of combinations of atoms? The soul is not a primary element. It is the atoms that are the primary element, and they do not need an external force to motivate them, to bring life to them — because they have motion within themselves. They’re not relying on something outside themselves for motion.
And there’s much to talk about there. But let me go ahead and go back to where we have this established in the Epicurean texts, just a couple of citations quickly. In the Letter to Herodotus, section 44, Epicurus says: “And these motions have no beginning, since the atoms and the void are the cause.” And in the scholium to section 44, it’s recorded: “This is because each atom is separated from the rest by void, which is incapable of offering any resistance. Of all this there is no beginning, since both atoms and void exist from everlasting.” He says below that: “Atoms have no quality at all except shape, size, and weight.” So Epicurus is clearly stating that the three primary characteristics of atoms are shape, size, and weight. And while we may argue that weight is not the right word to use to describe this force, it is a part of the atom that is giving motion to it in Epicurean philosophy. It’s not coming from the outside.
Epicurus says, Letter to Herodotus §76: “Furthermore, the motions of the heavenly bodies and their turnings and eclipses and risings and settings must not be thought to be due to any being who controls and ordains or has ordained them.” That’s again a statement that there’s no outside force giving motion to the atoms.
And this is all through Lucretius, as we would expect. There’s a lot more detail about the movement of atoms preserved in Lucretius than in the Letter to Herodotus. Just to mention a few quickly: at 9.84, Lucretius says, “As it is, there is no rest granted to the bodies of the first beginnings because there is no bottom at all whither they may, as it were, flow together and make their resting place. All things are forever carried on in ceaseless movement from all sides and bodies of matter are stirred up and supplied from beneath out of limitless space.” They go on. 10.67: “There is no rest for the atoms whatsoever, nor is there any place to which when bodies have come they can lose the force of their weight and stand still in the void.” Book 2, section 80, says much the same thing: “It must be that all the first beginnings of things move on, either by their own weight or sometimes by blows with another. No place in the universe that first bodies can come to rest.” Book 2, 294: “Wherefore the bodies of the first beginnings in the ages past moved with the same motion as now and hereafter will be borne on forever in the same way.” Book 3, line 31: “And since I’ve shown of what kind are the beginnings of things, with what diverse shapes they differ and how of their own accord they fly on.” Extending this to the discussion of the soul in Book 3, in the area of line 262: Lucretius says, “Thus heat and air and the hidden power of wind, mingled, create one nature together with that nimble force which sends among them from itself the beginning of motion — once the motion that brings sensation first arises through the flesh. For deep within this nature lies hid, far below, nor is there anything further beneath than this in our bodies.”
And to give additional confirmation to that, there’s a section in the ancient source Aetius on motion that says that Epicurus says there are two kinds of motion: that which occurs perpendicularly and that which occurs through deviation. Now it all adds up to Epicurus saying that there is motion inherent in the atoms due to this weight that drives them on eternally, and has always been there and always will be there. Now there are collisions, there is the swerve also in Epicurean philosophy, but the atoms are moving on their own and there is no external force that explains the origin of the universe, or the origin of the soul, or anything else, outside of the nature of the atoms themselves.
And to come up for air and bring this back up to the level of what’s really important on a day-to-day level: it’s a problem that has plagued people for thousands of years to wonder whether there is a first mover, whether there is a prime mover. All of the other philosophers — from Plato, including Aristotle and those who think that Aristotle is the greatest thing since sliced bread and that he was so much better than Plato — they all believed that there is a source of motion external to the atoms that is the real source of everything. And that is not an answer to this question that makes any sense. What makes sense is what Epicurus said: that the atoms are moving through the void eternally. That’s all we need to know. It makes sense, and it explodes any need or any rationality behind there being a force outside of the atoms that we need to worry about as a God. Epicurean philosophy explodes that by saying the atoms move themselves. They’re not caused to move by a superior force.
Joshua: I don’t have the Greek word in front of me that Epicurus uses for weight, but the Latin word that Lucretius uses is gravitas. So the word “gravity” comes, of course, from this word. So they’re feeling toward something here. And like you said, Cassius, there are some issues with using the word “weight” in that context. But clearly they’re feeling toward this idea, which Cicero quotes repeatedly and always scorns when he says “a fortuitous concourse of atoms.” “Concourse,” of course, is this flow of atoms through the void, and we look to this — not to any first principle beyond the atoms themselves. This is why recently I’ve been exploring the idea of referring to the atoms as the first cause or the un-cause. The unmoved mover are the atoms themselves. I don’t know if it’s helpful to look at it in that context, but I think it does solve some of the problems we run into, which is that people will constantly say, well, there has to be a first mover. And to some extent the atoms and the void are that first mover.
Cassius: Yes, I think in Epicurean philosophy they are completely the answer to the question. The atoms are the first mover — they move on their own and have been moving on their own for an eternity in the past and will continue in the same way into the future as well. And that is what everything else is built on to make sense of all this.
Now I think we can gain a little more by going a little further into what Aristotle had to say, because among those who have some degree of knowledge of philosophy — and by no means am I an expert on Aristotle — what I’m about to do is quote from the Encyclopædia Britannica. So if someone has problems with my interpretation of it, they can take it up with the Encyclopædia Britannica. But it says, in addition to what it says about Epicurus: “For Aristotle, motion is the entelechy of the movable.” Now that’s another one of those things that’s so frustrating about reading philosophy. You hear a word like “entelechy” and — what does such a word mean? If you go into the Encyclopædia Britannica, there is this section that describes entelechy: “Entelechy, in philosophy, that which realizes or makes actual what is otherwise merely potential. The concept is intimately connected with Aristotle’s distinction between matter and form, or the potential and the actual. Aristotle analyzed each thing into the stuff or elements of which it is composed and the form which makes it what it is.” And here I have to throw in another word: hylomorphism. We’ll discuss hylomorphism for just a moment in a second.
“The mere stuff or matter is not yet the real thing. It needs a certain form or essence or function to complete it. Matter and form, however, are never separated — this is all Aristotle’s point of view — they can only be distinguished. Thus in the case of a living organism, for example, the sheer matter of the organism, viewed only as a synthesis of inorganic substances, can be distinguished from a certain form or function or interactivity without which it would not be a living organism at all. And this soul or vital function is what Aristotle in his De Anima calls the entelechy or ‘first entelechy’ of the living organism. Similarly, rational activity is what makes human beings human and distinguishes them from other animals.”
So to summarize, I think where this is going: Plato’s Forms are derided because they are considered to be in some other dimension — they’re in heaven, they’re somewhere we can’t even come into contact with them. They’re outside the cave, so to speak, and that doesn’t satisfy a lot of people. He just asserts that there is some other realm in which the true forms exist. And Aristotle attempted to deal with that by saying, Plato, you’re wrong. These forms don’t exist in some other dimension. They don’t exist outside the cave. They exist within everything as the essence of what it is. An orange has an essence of an orange — and I’m talking about the fruit. The orange is not only the physical material we see in front of us and hold and eat. The orange is also this essence that exists within it. It’s not in another dimension; it’s just within the orange. And if this orange didn’t have this essence within it, then it wouldn’t be an orange.
And frankly, from an Epicurean point of view, that’s just hogwash. The Britannica has a link on hylomorphism — which is the word given to this idea — and says this: “Opposed to hylomorphism are atomism, mechanism, and dynamism, all of which deny the intrinsic composition of metaphysical principles in bodies and recognize only physical principles such as pure mathematical extension or forces and energies. In the cases of these other ideas — not in the case of Epicurus — these theories also agree in denying the hylomorphic claim that intrinsic change can occur in the ultimate realities of which the physical world is composed. And further, they disagree in reducing the phenomena of becoming to a simple local movement or to purely accidental changes of a single self-same reality.”
Now again, this is way too deep and we need to come up for air. The point though comes down to this: Epicurean atomism says that there are no metaphysical properties that are bound up in the orange that make it an orange. The orange is an orange because of the atomic composition of the orange. There’s nothing outside the orange that it depends on to be an orange. And that is a huge, huge, huge issue of critical importance, I think, in understanding Epicurean philosophy. This atomism is not just some kind of ancient physics that we should think about and dismiss as stepping stones along the way to where we are in 2025. The essence of atomism is to take the position that the elemental particles have within themselves all that they need to create the world around us, to create us ourselves — that there’s not some force of supernatural guidance or intelligence or design outside of these atoms that brings the atoms together and creates the things that we see. This is where you get the entire rejection of a supernatural realm — going all the way back to the atoms and realizing that motion is inherent within them and not dependent upon some outside force.
Joshua: And of course, Cicero is discussing this whole thing in the context of the soul, because the initial question that was asked — for everything that we’re talking about right now — is: should we fear death? And Epicurus’s response to that is: because we have recourse to the atoms and nothing beyond them as any first principle or prime mover, we discard the idea that the universe is a created thing. The universe contains within itself the potential to produce all things that we see on the macroscopic level. We don’t have to have recourse to any God or creator beyond the universe in order to do these things.
And one consequence of that is we don’t have to follow the course that Cicero follows in using the soul to explain existence, or using the soul to explain motion, and so forth. And the ultimate consequence of that is: Cicero, because of his position, thinks that the soul is going to exist forever — it has always existed and it will always exist. For Epicurus, the atoms have always existed and will always exist. The soul is temporary. The soul lives and dies with the body; it does not exist beyond the body and cannot exist outside the body. So that’s the conclusion of everything that we’re talking about here. Cicero says there’s no need to fear death because the soul is going to survive the death of the body and it’s going to ascend to an even better existence. Epicurus comes to the same conclusion: there’s no need to fear death. But the reason he comes to that conclusion is very, very different. For Epicurus, there’s no need to fear death because death is the dissolution of that aspect of yourself which is capable of perception and sensation, and without perception or sensation there is nothing that can cause any pain or harm.
Cassius: That’s right, Joshua. That’s why this is all so important and why it leads back to this ultimate question about death — whether we should fear it or not. And it’s in this context that I think I would emphasize the problem with this phrase that you always hear from the Stoics about “divine fire.” Whenever I hear that, I want to run the other direction. Because “divine fire” is the way they combine these notions — that the soul is a part of the eternal supernatural being that controls the universe. The term plants in your mind the idea that the soul itself is something that is an elemental, primordial force that after death can just float up into the stars and recombine with other sparks of divine fire. And the Stoics will talk about this sometimes. They’ll even say that you may not continue your own consciousness after death, but your soul is a divine fire and it will recombine with the divine fire that exists in God and outside of us — and so therefore, don’t worry about the fact that you don’t remember your life. You’ll still exist as part of this divine conflagration of fire that is the ultimate source and is the ultimate meaning of everything.
And that’s just ridiculous. And it’s ridiculous because it plants in people’s minds this idea that there is something above their current lives, something above their current existence, to which they can look forward after death — which gives meaning to their own life. So much of what we’re talking about is related to this question of meaning. People are always looking for meaning outside of themselves to some God above them, to something else that tells them what to do, as if they need something that tells them what to do. In Epicurean philosophy, we look at nature and say that nature has given us the existence that we have, and that itself is its own meaning. It’s not coming from a supernatural external force that we need to spend all of our time reading books and bibles about so that we can commune with the divine. Even the Stoics talk about things like that and submit themselves to what they see as the fate of the universe.
The Epicurean view is totally different. Nature creates us through the atoms. Nature gives us pleasure and pain through the atoms, and we have all the meaning and all the motivation that we will ever have or ever need within ourselves and not from some external source.
So to bring us back down to earth as we begin to move towards the closing of our episode, I’d remind everybody of what Joshua read from the end of Section 23, because Cicero says: “Now should all the lower order of philosophers — for so I think they may be called who dissent from Plato and Socrates in that school — unite their force, they would never be able to explain anything so elegantly as this, nor even to understand how ingeniously this conclusion is drawn.” Cicero is always worked up about the beauty and the elegance of the Platonic method of explaining everything. Again, like I said last week, it’s like virtue — the elegance of virtue beguiles people into believing that it’s true, and the elegance and beauty of the way that Plato has formulated this is supposed to do the same thing and persuade people that not only is there a supernatural God, but there is an existence for the soul after death.
And that’s why this question of motion is also important. You have to have something to counterpose against the beauty argument. You have to have an understanding of these things. This is why Epicurus and Lucretius say over and over that without an understanding of natural philosophy — of nature — you can’t summon the confidence to understand why these beguiling arguments are not true. You can’t stand up against them unless you have good reasoning within your own mind and you have confidence in the senses to give you the evidence to reason with.
Now, as we said, Cicero said many interesting things in Section 24 that we’re going to come back to next week. Maybe one of the most important things that we need to spend a little more time with is this issue from the Meno about whether the soul existed before birth and that knowledge amounts to recollection — and also the comment that Plato said that nothing is real unless it has an eternal existence. But we’ll have to come back next week and get into all of that, just in the interest of time. So today, let’s go ahead and begin to wind up the discussion. Any closing thoughts?
Joshua: Yeah. Whenever we get too deep in the weeds on this idea of prime movers and the supernatural and life after death, I like to return to Joseph Conrad in his author’s note to the second edition of The Shadow-Line, and he says this: “All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is — marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which — take it any way you like — is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living in their countless multitudes, a desecration of our tender memories and an outrage on our dignity.”
So you were saying, Cassius, we need to be able to answer this very calm and self-admiring view of the soul and of life after death — that this is a very beautiful view of things and that it’s going to sway a lot of people. I look to Joseph Conrad and what he says here, or to John Stuart Mill in what he says in the Autobiography — which I won’t read at the moment — that actually the better view, the view that lends us more dignity as humans, the view that is more beautiful and that renders life more precious, is the view of Epicurus. It’s the view that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature, and that the mere supernatural, as he says here, is but a manufactured article. And that to take the Platonic or Aristotelian or Stoic position is an outrage on human dignity — to see this world and this life as merely a test or a game or a sideshow on the real journey of the soul. This is the main event. This is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town. And I think being reminded of that is helpful, especially when we come into contact with some of these other ideas. So Epicurus sets us on a course that gives us a better appreciation of life and of humanity than these other ones really do, and I think we should never stop pointing that out.
Cassius: Yes, you’re exactly right, Joshua. This life is the main event. It’s not a warm-up for something that happens after we’re dead. And among the main events of the main event is this issue of motion — and whether the atoms and the things that compose us are moved by something outside themselves, or whether they have the capacities within themselves to account for everything that we do and see, without the need for a supernatural motivator.
We’re going to come back to this next week in Section 24. But at the beginning of Section 24, this is what Cicero realizes — Cicero’s doing such a good job for us in forcing us to confront these issues. Because at the beginning of Section 24, Cicero says that I think I can account for the manner in which the blood and the bile and the phlegm and so forth are put together, but if there were nothing more in life, then man would be on the same footing as that of a vine or a tree and accounted for as caused by nature. “For these things, as we say, live.” And Cicero says, “besides, if desires and aversions — meaning pleasure and pain — were all that belonged to the soul, it would have them only in common with the beasts.” And that really is so important to all this. Cicero wants us to look down on the rest of the animals and the rest of living beings and say that we are some kind of divine being above everything else — we are part of this divine fire that the Stoics like to talk about so much. And we are what’s important in the universe and nothing else is. Every living being besides ourselves is just something that we should have no concern about whatsoever, because they’re just the equivalent of dirt. We alone are the divine beings who share with God the privileged place in the universe.
And that is absolutely contradictory to the Epicurean viewpoint, and Epicurus fights against it in every aspect of his philosophy. We’ll come back and pursue that further next week in Section 24. In the meantime, we invite you as always to drop by the EpicureanFriends.com forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or our other discussions about Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.