Episode 277 - TD07 - Platonism Says This World Is Darkness But The Next World Is Light - Epicurus Disagrees!
Date: 04/15/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4402-episode-277-td07-platonism-says-this-world-is-darkness-but-the-next-world-is-lig/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 277 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucious who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the epicurean text and we discuss how epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of epicurus@epicureanfriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. This week we’re continuing in our series covering Cicero’s Tusan Disputations from an epicurean viewpoint. We’re still in the first section of this discussing the question of whether death is an evil. We spent most of last week following up on another argument that Cicero was dredging up out of Plato, in which he argued that memory is an indication of our divine nature. That was a follow on from the first of the platonic arguments, which was that motion is something that comes from outside the elements and therefore the fact that motion exists is the result of some supernatural force that brings motion to the elements. As we proceed today, Cicero has wrapped up some of those more abstract philosophical arguments, and in turning to the more practical questions that Cicero is going to address, we’re going to again see the major contrast in perspective between this platonic view of death in which the soul is divine and it really seems like it would be desirable to be dead and is desirable under many aspects of what they’re saying and how that strongly differs from the epicurean viewpoint in which we don’t experience any evils, any pain when we’re dead, but neither do we experience any pleasure, meaning that while death is inevitable, it is not something that we generally welcome because being dead does not lead to pleasure as Cicero and Plato will argue that it does. The key to the platonic analysis being that the soul is essentially something that is divine in nature, it is not part of the earth. It is not something that is ignoble as Cicero stresses that the elements are, and so that’s where Cicero had left off. So we’ll get started at the end of section 26 and into section 27, which Joshua in the place of Cicero will read for us. Now.
Joshua: Therefore, the soul, which is as I say divine is as ide more boldly expresses it a God, and thus if the divinity be air or fire, the soul of man is the same for as that celestial nature has nothing earthly or humid about it in like manner. The soul of man is also free from both these qualities, but if it is of that fifth kind of nature first introduced by Aristotle, then both gods and souls are of the same as this is my opinion. I have explained it in these words in my book on consolation. The origin of the soul of a man is not to be found upon earth for there is nothing in the soul of a mixed or concrete nature or that has any appearance of being formed or made out of the earth, nothing even humid or airy or fiery for what is there in natures of that kind, which has the power of memory, the understanding or thought which can recollect the past, foresee the future, and comprehend the present for these capabilities are confined to divine beings, nor can we discover any source from which men could derive them, but from God. There is therefore a peculiar nature and power in the soul distinct from those natures which are more known and familiar to us. Whatever then that is which thinks and which has understanding and volition and a principle of life is heavenly and divine and on that account must necessarily be eternal nor can God himself who is known to us, be conceived to be anything else except a soul free and em embarrassed, distinct from all mortal concretion acquainted with everything and giving motion to everything and itself endued with perpetual motion.
Cassius: Okay, thanks Joshua. We certainly have here another example of what we often will hear people say in daily life that they are not of this world. They talk in figurative terms as if their home is not here on this earth but is going to be where they go when they die, that their nature is so different from that of the earth around us, that they’re happy at the thought of going back to this environment which they think is their original home, which all derives from this view that the soul is superior to different from and not really a part of the world. All this is very, very different from Epicurus view on each of these points.
Joshua: Yeah, I would agree with what you just said, Cassius. We run into people who not only consider themselves not to be of this world, but who heap scorn and contempt upon this world and the things of this world, and to me, this world is my home and I just find this behavior very difficult. It’s not surprising to me to see it here in Cicero because he’s making a lot of the same arguments that we see in these other thinkers and in these other religions who comment in the same way on the same kind of issue. RA is saying, my soul is made of not anything fiery or humid or earthy. It is made of the fifth essence of ether, the quintessence essentially, and it doesn’t belong here on earth. It came from somewhere else. It’s going somewhere else after I die. And this is just a brief interlude in that eternal journey.
Cassius: Since we’re recording this on Easter, let’s refer to Matthew six 19. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moths and vermin do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. Now, that last line is an important part of this problem because this phrase, my treasure is not of this earth seems to be employed in a thousand different circumstances. Whenever something goes wrong or there’s some adversity that arises in somebody’s financial affairs or many other aspects of their life, they’ll just reconcile, well, my treasure is not of this earth and what they’re really meaning and what they’re really saying is where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. So the effect of this doctrine is to basically steal the heart of these people from this world and place it in some other world which they hope exists before, which there is no evidence and psychologically I think there is a lot to the idea where your treasure is there, your heart will be also where your mind is. That’s where your heart’s going to be, and the idea of taking the focus off of this world is going to essentially take you out of this world. It’s amazing how much parallel there is here between this quotation from Matthew and what Cicero has to say. You can certainly see how the Christians in allowing Cicero’s work to survive would’ve found things in it like this that mirror their own doctrine. No doubt they were of mixed mind in preserving all of this information about Epicurus at the same time that they were preserving Cicero’s work not to place the original fault in Cicero. These are platonic otherworldly doctrines that are hundreds of years old even by the time of Cicero.
Joshua: Yeah, exactly. So last week we had Cicero trying to convince us that the body and the things appropriate to the body had to be rejected or at minimum you have to not cater to the body and sometimes you have to discipline the body and put the body into submission to the soul. And what he’s saying here is not only do the body and the soul not come together at the same time as Epicurus thinks they do and they don’t fall apart and dissolve into atoms at death as Epicurus thinks they do, they don’t even have the same origin point in nature. The body is assembled out of things that are very earthy, but the soul transcends the earth in origin, in nature and in future expectation.
Cassius: That’s right. It exceeds everything else in the world by nature and not just as a matter of degree, it’s just a totally superior and different kind of thing from this platonic cone viewpoint.
Joshua: Yeah, and I think when we understand this kind of argument that they were having in the ancient world, it’s a lot easier to see why they were so bent out of shape with people indicating that the sun might not be a God for example, because if Cicero is saying, as he’s already said in the past episodes that we’ve done that after the soul dies, it’s going to ascend away from the earth and up into the celestial region while the celestial bodies are themselves made of the same kind of soul energy, particularly the sun. And so for people to say that the earth moves around the sun or that the sun is made exclusively of matter and is not a God, these ideas are hugely bothersome to people who take Cicero’s view in ways that I think would surprise us because we don’t really think about this anymore from that angle.
Cassius: That’s exactly right, Joshua. We don’t think about things in this way. We tend to think that the question of what the sun or the moon of the stars is a strictly material question that we’re going to resolve one day by going there. We’re going to use our telescopes, we’re going to use our instruments, but we all have the same idea that it’s basically something similar to the earth in terms of being made of matter. But what you’re pointing out is that these guys were thinking that everything they saw in the sky was composed of this same kind of light and airy and semi divine or actually divine material. So they weren’t looking at debates about whether the moon is made of green cheese versus dirt as just a matter of idle scientific interest. They saw this as a challenge directly to their whole idea of the important things in the world, the important things being their soul and divinity. It was challenging the nature of divinity to say that the stars were not divine, so it definitely would’ve aroused a lot of emotional debate. And lemme make a transition here to the next topic. We’re going to pick up in section 28, just like there’s an analogy to the Christian view that my soul is not of this earth, my treasure lies in heaven and so forth. We’ll see Cicero go back into another argument that we recognize as a very common Judeo-Christian religious argument. The argument from design and the beauty of everything we see around us means that it has to be divine. So why don’t we go ahead to section 28?
Joshua: Yeah. In section 28, Cicero says this quote of this kind and nature is the intellect of man. Where then is this intellect seated and of what character is it? Where is your own and what is its character? Are you able to tell if I have not faculties for knowing all that I could desire to know, will you not even allow me to make use of those which I have? The soul has not sufficient capacity to comprehend itself, yet the soul like the I, though it has no distinct view of itself, sees other things. It does not see which is of least consequence its own shape. Perhaps not, although it possibly may, but we will pass that by. But it certainly sees that it has vigor, ity, memory, motion, and velocity. These are all great divine eternal properties. What its appearance is or where it dwells, it is not necessary even to inquire is when we behold first of all the beauty and brilliant appearance of the heavens. Secondly, the vast velocity of its revolutions beyond power of our imagination to conceive then the vicissitudes of nights and days, the fourfold division of the seasons so well adapted to the ripening of the fruits of the earth and the temperature of our bodies. And after we look up to the sun, the moderator and governor of all these things, and view the moon by the increase and decrease of its light marking as it were, and appointing our holy days and see the five planets born on in the same circle, divided into 12 parts, preserving the same course with the greatest regularity, but with utterly dissimilar motions amongst themselves and the nightly appearance of the heaven adorned on all sides with stars. Then the globe of the earth raised above the sea and placed in the center of the universe inhabited and cultivated in its two opposite extremes, one of which the place of our habitation is situated towards the North Pole under the seven stars. The other towards the South Pole is unknown to us, but it is called by the Greeks antina. The other parts are uncultivated because they’re either frozen with cold or burnt up with heat, but where we dwell, it never fails in its season. And man himself made as it were on purpose to contemplate the heavens and the gods and to pay adoration to them. And lastly, the whole earth and wide extending seas given to man’s use. When we view these and numberless other things, can we doubt that they have some being who presides over them or has made them if indeed they have been made as is the opinion of Plato or if as Aristotle thinks they are eternal or who at all events is the regulator of so immense a fabric and so great a blessing to men. Thus though you see not the soul of man, as you see not the deity yet as by contemplation of his works, you are led to acknowledge a God. So you must own the divine power of the soul from its remembering things, from its invention, from the quickness of its motion and from all the beauty of virtue. Where then is it seated? You will say, and we’re going to get to that question in section 29.
Cassius: Yeah, like I said, this strikes me as another attempt to invoke this argument by design from the beauty of the earth and from all the things we see around us, we are just compelled to understand that there is a divine source for all of it.
Joshua: Yeah. So Cicero, he’s talking about the nature of the soul and he says the soul, like the eye cannot turn its vision upon itself as it says in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus says to Cassius, the eye sees not itself, but by reflection. And Cassius says, let me your glass modestly reveal to you things that are part of you that you know not of. So the soul can’t see itself, but it sees other things and it sees as he says, that the soul has vigor and ity and memory and motion and velocity, and we see that these are all great divine eternal properties. And then he says it’s appearance or it’s dwelling. It’s not necessary even to inquire. Cero just doesn’t seem to be interested in that. And then he starts talking about the heavens and he’s going to make this point again about the soul and the divine being made of the same thing. And he ends it that way by saying, thus though you see not the soul of man because again, the soul sees other things but not itself, just as in the same way you see not the deity yet as by contemplation of his works, you are led to acknowledge a God. So the soul, you cannot see it, but you know that it is wise and sagacious as a capacity for memory and so forth. And so even if you can’t see or derive knowledge of the nature of the soul, the works of the soul and those works are memory and wisdom and so on. And by the same analogy, what he’s saying here at the end is just as we do not see a God by the contemplation of his works, you are led to knowledge of his existence. So you must own the divine power of the soul. And again, he cites memory, invention, quickness of motion and the beauty of virtue. And so he’s making an analogy between the soul and between the deity. And he’s saying the same thing essentially, right? He says at the beginning of this section that the soul is a God, which is why he says there at the end of 26, therefore the soul, which is as I say divine is as Uri more boldly expresses it a God. That’s the opening part of what we read today, but that’s also kind of the conclusion of everything we’ve read so far today.
Cassius: Yeah, that’s right. Cicero is mixing in big questions along with some specifics. And the specific that he’s addressed at the end of section 28 was where then is it seated? You will say, and Cicero answers this question for us at the beginning of 29, and then he throws in something that I am particularly interested in myself about Socrates. But let’s go ahead and first read section 29.
Joshua: Yeah, so at the end of 28, as you just said, Cassius, he ends it this way, where then is it meaning the soul? Where then is the soul seated, you will say? And in 29, he answers that question. He says, in my opinion, it is seated in the head and I can bring you reasons for my adopting that opinion at present, let the soul reside where it will. You certainly have one in you should you ask. What its nature is, it has one peculiarly its own, but admitting it to consist of fire or heir, it does not affect the present question. Only observe this, that as you are convinced there is a God, though you are ignorant where he resides and what shape he is of in like manner, you ought to feel assured that you have a soul. Though you cannot satisfy yourself of the place of its residence, nor its form in our knowledge of the soul, unless we are grossly ignorant of natural philosophy, we cannot but be satisfied that it has nothing but what is simple, unmixed, uncompounded and single. And if this is admitted, then it cannot be separated nor divided, nor dispersed, nor parted, and therefore it cannot perish. For to perish implies a parting of sunder, a division, a disunion of those parts, which whilst its subsisted or held together by some band, and it was because he was influenced by these and similar reasons that Socrates neither looked out for anybody to plead for him when he was accused nor begged any favor from his judges, but maintained a manly freedom, which was the effect not of pride, but of the true greatness of his soul. And on the last day of his life, he held a long discourse on this subject. And a few days before when he might have been easily freed from his confinement, he refused to do so. And when he had almost actually hold of that deadly cup, he spoke with the heir of a man, not forced to die, but ascending into heaven.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, this starts off by talking about the soul being in the head, but where it’s really going is with this argument that just as we’re convinced that there is a God, even though we don’t see God, we should be confident that there is a soul, even though we can’t see the soul or see its shape or know exactly where it is, we can be confident according to Cicero that the soul is eternal because it’s single and unmixed. And uncompounded reminds me of the arguments that PE cures use iss about an atom when he’s describing here that a thing that is single and undividable is eternal, Cicero is using that same argument to say that the soul is eternal because you can’t break up the soul into smaller pieces. But where he’s really going is that once you come to a confidence of this conclusion that your soul is divine, you’re going to be like Socrates. And of course today when we think about Socrates and his death from drinking the hemlock, it seems to me that a lot of people are just focused on this idea of, oh my gosh, this is a terrible thing that the Athenians did. They sacrificed this wonderful philosopher who they had no reason to be accusing. He should have been rewarded for all that he had done for philosophy and for the city of Athens. And that the main thing we need to take away from the story of Socrates’ death is that this is an example of the absurd things that political society can do to fail to appreciate philosophy and to do terrible things to people who don’t deserve it. And while some of that may in fact be true, I don’t think that that’s the most important takeaway from the story of Socrates is death, because just as Cicero is using it here, Socrates had the option of leaving Athens. He did not have to die. Socrates chose to die because he had ultimately convinced himself of the truth of his own doctrine. He had drunk his own Kool-Aid, so to speak, and had apparently come to believe his arguments that being dead was actually a better place for him. And so I think this aspect of Socrates’ death is by far the most interesting question about it, and probably for that reason, Cicero is including it here because if you really believe these things, then you’re going to be not only ready to die at any moment, you’re going to be happy to die because you’re convinced that being dead is a better place and rather than leave the threat, rather than leave the area where people don’t want you anymore, you’d rather just go ahead and essentially commit suicide by drinking this hemlock because you’re convinced that you’re going to a better place. This is believing that your treasure is in heaven on steroids. It is the logical conclusion of this other worldly position that if your soul is in fact not of this world, it’s a good thing for it to be there and as soon as possible. Now we’re going to see Cicero very quickly make another comment that’s going to revoke some of that, but the logical impact of believing that the soul is divine and that when you’re dead, you’ve returned to your divine home, it’s hard to escape and Socrates pursues it to its logical conclusion in a way that I think we need to consider as the take home conclusion of Socrates. If you believe that other worldly doctrine that your soul is divine and this world is not your home, then the sooner you get home the better off you are, and that has tremendous implications for how you live your life.
Joshua: I think those are good points. I’m also looking at something else Cicero says here, which is quote, in our knowledge of the soul, unless we are grossly ignorant of natural philosophy, we cannot but be satisfied that it has nothing but what is simple, unmixed, uncompounded and single. And if this is admitted, then it cannot be separated nor divided, nor dispersed, nor parted, and therefore it cannot perish. For to perish implies a parting us under a division, a disunion of those parts, which whilst it subsisted were held together by some band. And then he gets into, and it was because he was influenced by these and similar reasons that Socrates neither looked out for anybody to plead for him when he was accused nor begged favor from his judges. I think it’s worth taking a look at the argument here that Cicero is making because it’s kind of a chain argument. He says, unless we are grossly ignorant of natural philosophy, we must be satisfied that the soul is simple, unmixed and uncompounded, and if we admit that the soul is simple, unmixed and uncompounded, then it cannot be separated or divided, and if it cannot be separated or divided, then it cannot perish. So we start this argument here with nothing but an assertion really, because he says, unless we are grossly ignorant of natural philosophy, well, it’s very easy for Cicero to say that people who disagree with him on the nature of the solar are grossly ignorant, but he hasn’t done any actual work to put the scaffolding under this argument that he’s making here. When you take out that grossly ignorant of natural philosophy part, I don’t see how this argument stands up because if you take that out, then all he’s really saying is this. He’s saying, we must be satisfied that the soul has nothing but what is simple, unmixed, uncompounded and single. And the question that I would ask if he said that was, why must we be satisfied that the soul is simple, unmixed, uncompounded and single? Why do I have to accept that when you haven’t actually made a case for that being true?
Cassius: Joshua, this sounds to me like a lawyer’s type of an argument where you argue as they say, from the alternative, because this appeal to natural philosophy sounds like, as I indicated before, an appeal to dian or epicurean aspects of aism in saying that if you believe that these things are unmixed and pure and undividable than they are eternal. So it’s almost like Cicero’s trying to have his cake and eat it too, because I completely agree with what you’ve just said, Josh, from the point of view of a platonist, you’ve established that the soul is a totally different nature than every other type of element around you. So why would these rules of the elements apply to the soul if the soul is such a distinct and different type of a substance? It seems out of place, it seems contradictory, and it seems without foundation from that platonic point of view.
Joshua: Yeah, exactly. And it’s on the basis of that unfounded argument that he’s going to make the case that Socrates was speaking with the heir of a man not forced to die but ascending into heaven. We just have to believe that this is true, just like we have to believe that there is this supernatural God in order to understand the nature of the soul, which he said in the last section. So what I’m finding here in Cicero, there’s a lot of things that we’re just supposed to accept uncritically, and to me, he’s making it more obvious that that is the case than I was expecting because we spend a long time with Cicero, and when he is criticizing other philosophies, he is very, very good at it in some ways. I mean, he’s quite relentless in his criticism of other philosophies, but I had never read this text, so I didn’t quite know that he stood on such shaky ground even so far as writing in defense of his own system.
Cassius: He’s not going to just stand there either. He’s going to dig himself deeper and deeper into the same argument as we’ll see as you proceed into section 30.
Joshua: Yeah, in section 30 he says this quote For so indeed he thought himself, Socrates thought himself, and thus he spoke that there were two ways and that the souls of men at their departure from the body took different roads for those which were polluted with vices that are common to men, and which had given themselves up entirely to unclean desires and had become so blinded by them as to have habituated themselves to all manner of debauchery and pro or to have laid detestable schemes for the ruin of their country took a road wide of that which led to the assembly of the gods, but they who had preserved themselves upright and chased and free from the slightest contagion of the body and had always kept themselves as far as possible at a safe distance from it, and while on Earth had proposed to themselves as a model, the life of the gods found the return to those beings from whom they had come. An easy one that is the end of the quote from Socrates, and then this is Csro speaking again. Therefore, he argues that all good and wise men should take example from the swans who were considered sacred to Apollo, not without reason, but particularly because they seem to have received the gift of divination from him by which foreseeing how happy it is to die. They leave this world with singing and joy, nor can anyone doubt of this unless it happens to us who think with care and anxiety about the soul, as is often the case with those who look earnestly at the setting sun to lose sight of it entirely. And so the mind’s eye viewing itself sometimes grows dull, and for that reason we become remiss in our contemplation. Thus our reasoning is born about harassed with doubts and anxieties, not knowing how to proceed, but measuring back again those dangerous tracks, which it has passed like a boat tossed about on the boundless ocean. But these reflections are of longstanding and borrowed from the Greeks, but Cato left this world in such a manner as if he were delighted that he had found an opportunity of dying for that God who presides in us, forbids our departure Hess without his leave. But when God himself has given us a just cause as formerly he did to Socrates and lately to Cato and often to many others in such a case, certainly every man of sense would gladly exchange this darkness for that light. Not that he would forcibly break from the chains that held him, but that would be against the law, but like a man released from prison by a magistrate or some lawful authority, so he too would walk away being released and discharged by God the whole life of a philosopher is as the same philosopher says, a meditation on death.
Cassius: Joshua does a lot in this section we need to talk about, but to begin on the reference as to swans, do you understand what Cicero is referring to there?
Joshua: Yeah, I’m on the Wikipedia page for Swan Song and it says this in Greek mythology, the swan was a bird consecrated to Apollo and it was therefore considered a symbol of harmony and beauty and its limited capabilities as a singer were sublimated to those of songbirds. It says at the top of the page that the phrase swan song refers to an ancient belief that swans sing a beautiful song just before their death while they have been silent for most of their lifetime. And so an artist last performance or a playwright’s last play is sometimes referred to as their swan song, their last public attempt, their last foray into their art before the end of their career life, et cetera. But there’s also a quote from a passage referring to Play-Doh in which the character of Socrates says that although swans sing early in life, they do not do so as beautifully as before they die. He adds that there is a popular belief that the swan song is sorrowful, but Socrates prefers to think that they sing for joy, having for knowledge of the blessings in the other world. Aristotle noted in his history of animals that swans are musical and sing chiefly at the approach of death. All right, well unless you want to pull something else out of there, I think the main takeaway point is what Socrates says there, which is that he prefers to think that these swans who were about to die don’t sing sorrowfully, but they sing for joy having foreknowledge of the blessings in the other world, this treasure in the next world and the next life that you were mentioning at the beginning of this episode that at the approach of death, Socrates is looking forward to going there.
Cassius: Yeah, that definitely seems to be the drift of it. And he’s applying it not only to swans, but also to human beings acknowledging that we’re uncertain about these things. He says this, our reasoning is born about harassed with doubts and anxieties, not knowing how to proceed, but measuring back again those dangerous tracks, which it has passed like a boat tossed about on the boundless ocean. And then he proceeds to talk about other examples such as Cato who committed suicide. But the point that I definitely wanted to bring out about this section is that he is saying here that God forbids us to commit suicide to leave the world before he gives permission. He says, Cato left this world in such a manner as if he were delighted that he had found an opportunity of dying for that God who presides in us forbids our departure hints without his Lee. Of course, this goes ahead and says that when God himself has given us just cause as he formally did to Socrates and Decat, so apparently we’re supposed to sort of intuit whether God has given us permission to leave or not. But again, Socrates comes back to the point that even though every man of sense would gladly exchange this darkness for that light, not that he would forcibly break from the change that held him as that would be against the law. So he’s analogizing making the decision to end your own life when circumstances seem to you to justify it. He’s analogizing that to forcibly breaking from the change as if you are in a jail or as if the law has required you to stay alive to submit to the punishment that it is being subjected to with the implication being that even though being dead is going to be something that you’re going to be very happy to reach once you get there and that God presumably is to be thanked for providing for such a happy eternity for you in heaven, you need to realize that God expects you to continue to remain in this veil of tears that God expects you to continue to suffer until he has given you permission to leave this suffering for the whole life of a philosopher is as the same philosopher says, preferring to Socrates a meditation on death. And of course, that’s something else that Epicurus has to say is that we should think about death, but I would suggest that Epicurus is not telling us to think about death in the same way that Socrates is suggesting that we meditate on death.
Joshua: There is some ambiguity here because he says in this text that the same God which presides in us has forbid our departure, hence without his leave. And to me the ambiguity is this because he’s already said that the soul is a God. He’s saying that it’s your own soul that forbids your departure, hence from this life to the next without the soul’s leave. But then he says, but when God himself has given us a just cause as formerly he did to Socrates and lately to Cato and often to many others in such a case, certainly every man of sense would gladly exchange this darkness for that light. So we’re dealing with it seems like the God that is outside of us and then our own soul, which is a kind of God, and we need permission from both. It sounds like to me
Cassius: This sort of poetic analogy of comparing this darkness to that light might be as much as anything else, a good way to sort of summarize this entire attitude because Cicero, Socrates, Plato are seeing this life on this world to be a matter of darkness, but that when we die, we will ascend to a world of light. So who in their right mind would not prefer to live in light than in darkness? I don’t know that you could get a more diametrically opposite view of life from Epicurus than to look at life the way Socrates is suggesting here to see it as a matter of darkness as opposed to death which will be in Socrates’s view, a new world of light. That’s just not the way Epic sees things at all. And what does a philosopher start talking about? As soon as a philosopher starts talking about this world being darkness and the next world being light, what is the theme they constantly come back to is what a terrible thing pleasure is, which is another reason why pleasure is the focus of Epicurus. And while there’s all sorts of words, all sorts of other concepts involved in epicurean philosophy, we should never get very far from remembering that in many of these issues. The main question is whether nature leads us through the feeling of pleasure and pain or whether there’s something supernatural that leads us in a different direction. But that’s what we’ll get into now in 31.
Joshua: For what else is it that we do when we call off our minds from pleasure, that is to say from our attention to the body, from the managing of our domestic estate, which is a sort of handmade and servant to the body or from duties of public nature or from all other serious business, whatever. What else is it? I say that we do, but invite the soul to reflect on itself, oblige it to converse with itself and as far as possible, break off its acquaintance with the body. Now to separate the soul from the body is to learn to die and nothing else, whatever. Wherefore take my advice and let us meditate on this and separate ourselves as far as possible from the body that is to say, let us accustom ourselves to die. This will be enjoying a life like that of heaven, even while we remain on earth. And when we are carried thither and released from these bonds, our souls will make their progress with more rapidity for the spirit, which has always been fettered by the bonds of the body, even when it is disengaged, advances more slowly just as those do who have worn actual fetters for many years. But when we have arrived at this emancipation from the bonds of the body, then indeed we shall begin to live For this present life is really death, which I could say a good deal in lamentation for if I chose.
Speaker 3: You have lamented it sufficiently in your book on consolation. And when I read that there is nothing which I desire more than to leave these things, but that desire is increased a great deal by what I have just heard.
Joshua: The time will come and that soon and with equal certainty whether you hang back or press forward for time flies, but death is so far from being an evil as it lately appeared to you that I am inclined to suspect not that there is no other thing which is an evil to man, but rather that there is nothing else which is a real good to him if at least it is true that we become thereby either Gods ourselves or companions of the gods. However, this is not of so much consequence is there are some of us here who will not allow this, but I will not leave off discussing this point until I have convinced you that death can upon no consideration whatever be an evil.
Speaker 3: How can it after what I now know?
Joshua: Do you ask how it can? There are crowds of arguers who contradict this and those not only epicureans whom I regard very little, but somehow or other, almost every man of letters and above all my favorite dk Archis is very strenuous in opposing the immortality of the soul. For he has written three books which are entitled Lesbian Acts because the discourse was held at Myline on the island of Lesbos in which he seeks to prove that souls are mortal. The stoics on the other hand, allow us as long a time for enjoyment as the life of a raven. They allow the soul to exist a great while but are against its eternity.
Cassius: Okay, so once again, we emerged not only from the implicit criticism of epicurean philosophy, but from the explicit distancing of Cicero, from the views of epicurus. It’s hard to believe that Cicero can keep digging and digging and digging, but he’s carrying these arguments about the desirability of death to their logical conclusion. And anybody who isn’t clear about what the religious viewpoint leads to can read these lines and read words that can be interpreted in totally different directions depending on where you’re coming from because as Cicero says, how to separate the soul from the body is to learn to die and nothing else, whatever. Wherefore take my advice. Let us meditate on this and separate ourselves as far as possible from the body that is to say, let us accustom ourselves to die. Well, to some extent, Epicurus I think would agree with that. When you body is separated from its soul, you are dead. There is no doubt about that from an epicurean perspective. But so far from that being a good thing in which the soul continues to exist in a better life, it is the end of the soul just as it is the end of the body. You could not get a more divergent position about those things. And the implication is right here in this same section, Cicero says, this is enjoying a life of heaven even while we remain here on earth. And that then when we’re dead, indeed we shall begin to live for this present life is really death. Now that is such a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, it seems to me to consider this life to be death and death to be life. How could you get a more opposite viewpoint of the way things are? Now, as I say that, I can imagine a Smithsonian platonic advocate saying that from an epicurean perspective, you’re aghast at death or you’re in horror of death. You’re just going to do everything possible in every circumstance to avoid death. And of course, that is not true either because the epicurean view of death is so much more subtle than just to say that it’s a bad thing. It’s not a good thing to be dead, but it’s not a painful thing. And there are situations where being dead is preferable to the alternative. And then Cicero goes on to acknowledge that there are some of us here who will not allow this, and then he drops back and says that there are crowds of arguers who contradict this, including the epicureans. Now again, Epicureans aren’t arguing that death is painful, and even this person Dicky Arcus, who Cicero admits that he likes, has argued that the soul is mortal and does not continue to exist. So again, here in this section, Cicero is repeating his refrain that my main goal is to convince you that being dead is not an evil. But as part of that, I want you to believe that the soul is immortal and that the soul will be in a better place when you’re gone. So as we begin today to see the end of this podcast come into view, I think it’s important to remember that there’s a good reason for hitting this point over and over and over again just as Cicero is choosing to do it as well. Again, as Lucrecia says, the question before all of us is not our state for the next hour or today, the real question that faces all of us is our state in eternity. What is going to happen to us in the future for the rest of time? And if you believe that you’re going to a better place, then that’s going to lead to an entirely different set of decisions about how to live your life than if you believe that when you come to the end of your road, it is over and you will not be experiencing anything after that. The one is going to take your mind away from this world, going to lead you to put all your treasure in heaven and to make sure that you spend your time in a way that is going to most guarantee that you get to that paradise that these guys are telling you to look forward to. On the other hand, if you’re an epicurean, you’re going to recognize that you have a limited time to achieve the things in your life, the pleasures you would like to pursue, and you’re going to with vigor, pursue the things of this world and put aside concerns about anything that will happen to you after you die because you know that nothing negative will happen to you at that point, but you know that positive things can only happen to you while you’re alive. So you’re going to make the best use of the time that you do have on this world as you possibly can.
Joshua: I was listening to the audio book again recently for Christopher Hitchens is God is Not Great, and he’s got some great passages on this view of looking forward to death and wanting to see the things of this world destroyed. And he starts out this way. He says, organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience, but there is one more charge to be added to the bill of indictment with the necessary part of its collective mind. Religion looks forward to the destruction of the world. By this I do not mean it looks forward in the purely eschatological sense of anticipating the end. I mean rather that it openly or covertly wishes that end to occur, perhaps half aware that its unsupported arguments are not entirely persuasive and perhaps uneasy about its own greedy accumulation of temporal power and wealth. Religion has never ceased to proclaim the apocalypse and the day of judgment. This has been a constant trope ever since the first witch doctors and shamans learn to predict eclipses and to use their half-baked celestial knowledge to terrify the ignorance. It stretches from the epistles of St. Paul who clearly thought and hoped the time was running out for humanity through the deranged fantasies of the book of Revelation. One of the very many connections between religious belief and the sinister spoiled selfish childhood of our species is the repressed desire to see everything smashed up and ruined and brought to not this tantrum. Need is coupled with two other sorts of guilty joy, or as the German say, Schaden Freida first one’s own death is canceled or perhaps repaid or compensated by the obliteration of all others. Second, it can always be egotistically hoped that one will be personally spared gathered contentedly to the bosom of the mass exterminator and from a safe place observed the sufferings of those less fortunate Tertullian, one of the many church fathers who found it difficult to give a persuasive account of paradise was perhaps clever in going for the lowest possible common denominator and promising that one of the most intense pleasures of the afterlife would be endless contemplation of the tortures of the damned. He spoke more truly than he knew in invoking the manmade character of faith. I’ll probably end the quotation there from Christopher Hitchen’s book. But we see here in what we’ve been going through in Cicero when he says, who would not exchange this darkness? The darkness of life on earth for that light, the light of the life that is supposed to come. But in this case, as in every other case where we’re dealing with claims about the afterlife and about religion, we’re supposed to just take some guy’s word for it. We’re supposed to take some guy’s word that thinks are going to be positively better for us after we’re dead. And that not only should we look forward to that, we should yearn for that and we should yearn for the day when we can finally rid ourselves of this world and move on to the next one. And I think there’s something deeply, deeply suspect in this view of human life and this view of this world, which from my perspective is our only home. Henry David Row and his journal said, fools stand on their island of opportunity and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this one. And that to me is the lesson to take away from this today. We don’t spend our lives looking forward to the death and destruction of ourselves and of this world and hoping for something better in the next one. Because this world not only is it more than enough, it’s also all we’ll ever know. And for people to turn their backs on this world and look forward to a fiction which they’ve created in their own minds as somehow better is to me a betrayal of everything life has to offer. And I said earlier I was surprised about some of what I’m finding in here today. I’m not at all surprised to find that Cicero wants to go down this same road because when you take the focus off of pleasure and the claims of the body and happiness in this life and you put it onto virtue and service to God or whoever, you’ve started down that path, even if you don’t know that you’ve done so, you’ve started down that path of keeping contempt on your life in this world and the things of this world. And I think Epicurus is in a much better place when he considers death to be not a better place but no place. Death is annihilation of the body and the soul and everything we are and everything we can never hope to be. It has to be here. It has to be here in this world. And so I just as I go through this today, I get very impatient with this idea that we should crave death. And I think that people who don’t see that as a red flag in their own thinking process, you’ve got some work to do on yourself and on your view of things if you are spending your time looking forward to your own demise.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Joshua, for everything you just said because it just really resonates for me, having been brought up in fundamentalist Christianity. It’s almost as if that past experience still kind of lingers for me somehow some of the ideas that were taught to me in church and looking forward to the rapture and Armageddon and the great tribulation. So in some sense I still am recovering from that myself after so many years of leaving that there still is some essence of that in me. It just seems like the answer to all of that is to really advocate strongly for epicurean ideas and help people really see how this very life, this is it. There’s nothing else after death, and this is where we experience pleasure, not sometime later.
Joshua: Yeah. Thank you. I think that’s very well said. We see this view not as a weakness, but as a strength, not as something depraved and something we should be ashamed of. This is something that, like you said, we bear scars of having been essentially propagandized into the other belief. This is something to be proud of, that we have reached this stage in our lives where we can look on that and say, I found a better way. I found a better way than keeping contempt on life and on things of this world. The final conclusion of which is not as Cass as you said at the beginning of this episode, that I am not of this world. I am of this world. I am of this world. I belong here and projecting my existence into some other place or some other world I wouldn’t fit. It wouldn’t fit because I belong here, body and soul.
Cassius: Thank you Joshua, and thank you Callini. Those are excellent closing thoughts for today and I am not going to try to improve upon them. We are approximately two thirds of the way through Cicero’s argument about death, and we’ll come back next week and continue that. As Callini and Joshua have mentioned, these are issues that we’ve been forced to confront our entire lives through teachings of religion and it’s important that we address them and make sure that we understand how they conflict with Epicurean philosophy and how Epicurus provided the remedies to these problems for a better way of life. Alright, with that, we’ll close the episode for today. As always, we invite you to drop by the Epicurean friends form and let us know if you have any questions or comments about this or our other discussions of Epicurean philosophy. Thank you for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.