Episode 278 - TD08 - Two Opposite Views On When We Might Be Better Off Dead
Date: 04/24/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4425-episode-278-td08-two-opposite-views-on-when-we-might-be-better-off-dead/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 278 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@epicureanfriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. Today we’re continuing into Cicero’s discussion of the nature of death and what our attitude should be towards it. Last week we concluded with one of the problems of the religious perspective in that it actually calls us to look forward to death, calls us to think that death is actually a better place than being alive here on this earth. And at the end of the episode, Joshua read from a Christopher Hitchens book, Callini had some comments about how many of us when we are younger go through being almost traumatized by these ideas of Armageddon and tribulation and things that are going to happen to cause the destruction of the world, which as Christopher Hitchens brought out, is something that the religious viewpoint causes you to think is a good thing in many respects. And of course that is the antithesis of Epicurus approach in which this world and this life for all that we have, and we certainly do not look forward to the destruction of the world, which from a physics point of view, we do expect to happen at some point in the very distant future, but also we do not look forward to our own death, which while it is not painful, after we die, we cease to exist. When we die, we cease to exist and we feel nothing after that point. So there’s nothing good for us in death whatsoever to look forward to unless we’re in a position where we need death to escape from some pain that we find to be unbearable and that we’re unable to escape otherwise. But certainly after we die, we cease to exist and we experience nothing else whatsoever. And that’s the important part of Epicurean philosophy in its teachings as to death. Now in recent weeks as we’ve been going through Cicero’s argument, he has been focusing on these platonic arguments from motion, from memory, all sorts of other arguments that Plato and others had come up with to assert that death is not the end of our consciousness, call it soul or mind or whatever you’d like to call it, but that after death, our individuality, our soul can continue to exist. And in fact, because it is made of a very light substance, it will ascend into the heavens basically where we enter this better place for us where we originally came from in the first place before we were imprisoned in the body from this point of view, Cicero has been going through these arguments that attempted to persuade his student that death was not only not a bad thing, it was affirmatively a good thing. Now, as we go through the argument further today, Cicero is going to be shifting his ground and no longer focusing his argument on the good things that will happen after death. But he’s saying that even if you don’t agree with me that you continue to exist, that you will be in a better place even if you don’t agree with me. And he specifically names the epicureans as examples of those who don’t agree with him. I’m still going to argue to you that you’re not going to suffer any harm in death. And again, this is where he’s to some extent embracing arguments that are very similar to those of Epicurus himself. But as we go through it, I think you’ll see a significant twist and differences of implications as Cicero goes through this same alternative. So last week we finished 31 with this reference to the Epicurean who Cicero says he regards very little as taking the position that death is the end of consciousness. And so today we’re going to resume with section 32, and as before, Joshua will stand in for Cicero and Callini will stand in for the student.
Joshua: So at the end of section 31, Cicero ends it this way. He says, the stoics on the other hand allow us as long a time for enjoyment as the life of a raven. They allowed the soul to exist a great while but are against its eternity. And then we get into section 32 for today and he says this, are you willing to hear then why even allowing this death cannot be an evil
Kalosyni: As you please, but no one shall drive me from my belief in immortality.
Joshua: I commend you indeed for that though we should not be too confident in our belief of anything for we are frequently disturbed by some subtle conclusion we give way and change our opinions even in things that are more evident than this. For in this, there certainly is some obscurity. Therefore, should anything of this kind happen, it is well to be on our guard.
Kalosyni: You are right in that. But I will provide against any accident.
Joshua: Have you any objection to our dismissing our friends, the stoics, those I mean who allowed that the souls exist after they have left the body, but yet deny that they exist forever.
Kalosyni: We certainly may dismiss the consideration of those men who admit that which is the most difficult point in the whole question, namely that a soul can exist independently of the body and yet refuse to grant that which is not only very easy to believe, but what is even the natural consequence of the concession which they have made, that if they can exist for a length of time, they most likely do so forever
Joshua: You take it right? That is the very thing shall we give therefore any credit to EU when he dissents from his master Plato whom he everywhere calls divine, the wisest, the holiest of men, the homer of philosophers and whom he opposes in nothing except this single opinion of the soul’s immortality for he pania maintains what? Nobody denies that everything which has been generated will perish and that even souls are generated, which he thinks appears from the resemblance to those of the men who begot them for that likeness is as apparent in the turn of their minds as in their bodies. But he brings another reason that there is nothing which is sensible of pain, which is not also liable to disease, but whatever is liable to disease must be liable to death. And the soul is sensible of pain, therefore in his view it is liable to perish.
Cassius: Okay, couple of interesting comments about that include that Cicero, who is generally identified by most people with being a stoic, even though he does not claim to be and in fact claims he is not. One here calls the stoics his friends in the same context in which he has just referred to the epicureans as people who he has very little regard for. And it’s also interesting to me this detail about the stoics taking the position that the soul does continue to exist after death, but only for a relatively short period of time and that they compare this to the raven. And in looking for something specific, I can’t find a reference to ravens being discussed by the stoics explicitly, but apparently there is this general association of ravens with death. But the bottom line is is that the stoics did not hold that the souls are immortal, but that even the souls of the greatest men will eventually cease to exist again. I think the stoics are generally reputed to have focused on the soul being made of divine fire and that this divine fire within each person’s soul is going to eventually commute back and join the main fire. So that while there is no individuality in that eventual outcome, they reconciled death by saying they’re rejoining their origin. But Cicero I think reasonably points out that the flaw in the stoic argument is that the real question is whether the soul can exist at all outside the body. And he makes I think a reasonable point that if the soul can exist outside the body for some period of time, there’s no reason not to think that it can exist forever outside the body. But then he points to panus who he otherwise likes and panus who otherwise likes Plato who said that he didn’t believe that the souls of even the holiest of men are eternal because pentheus equates souls to the men from whom they come and he knows that men had a birth date. And taking it back to the general observation that a lot of these philosophers are making that anything which has a beginning also has an end. Panus was concluding that the soul also must have an end just like the men who generated the soul in the first place. And then at the end he throws in that anything that can feel pain is also liable to disease and anything that’s liable to disease is liable to death. And since the soul is sensible of pain, it too can perish. And that argument strikes me as being very similar to one that epicurus makes that the soul, just like the body can be diseased. And so whether that’s argument originated with Epicurus or whether it’s an ongoing argument that Epicurus and Lucretius simply commented on, it certainly is part of the epicurean point of view that the soul is not supernatural. The soul as Lucious goes into a great length, is subject to disease and other problems associated with the body. And that is indeed a good indication that the soul is not immortal.
Joshua: We’re going to see in section 33 how these arguments get developed and then subsequently refuted by Cicero. But it is interesting what the students says here in this dialogue. We certainly may dismiss the consideration of those men who admit that which is the most difficult point in the whole question, namely that a soul can exist independently of the body and yet refuse to grant, which is not only very easy to believe, but which is even the natural consequence of the concession which they have already made, that if they can exist for a length of time, they most likely do so forever. Like I said, we’re going to get into the fuller refutation of this argument in the next section. It is interesting that from this perspective of these people sitting around and Cicero’s, Tuscan and villa discussing philosophy, the idea that the soul can exist independently of the body is difficult to believe. I mean they do believe it, but they acknowledge that It’s hard to imagine how that works, but it’s almost like a geometric point that they’re making with the second part, which is if it can exist for a length of time, there’s no reason to think that it can’t exist forever. So I find the difference in those two opinions somewhat interesting.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua? Well, let me comment on that again. I find that to be a very good argument. In fact, it’s one that we talk about sometimes in relation to the epicurean view of divinity. The question about whether the gods are able to survive indefinitely or not and whether we would expect life on other planets outside of our solar system, whether they have a theoretical limit as to how long they can live. And while it seems to be accepted by lucious that something that has a beginning is probably going to have an end, I’ve never accepted the idea that there’s a necessity that it will end because it seems to me that the gods have to be natural. They therefore have to have a way as Valle talks about, of replenishing their atoms. And as long as they are able to continue replenishing their atoms, as long as we as human beings are able to develop our medical care and improve our technology, I’m not sure that there really is a necessary limit to how long something can continue to exist. But in regard to the soul, there’s no reason to think that it can exist outside the body. And so the real question is not how long can it exist outside the body, but can it exist outside the body at all? And part of the analysis about whether it can exist outside the body comes from comparing the soul to actual human beings. It’s definitely hard for almost anybody to think about the soul existing outside the body. All we really are familiar with are living, breathing human beings in which the soul is inside the body. So in 33, Cicero is going to go into that aspect and try to undercut this analogy argument and say that, well, just because men are like each other in many ways, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the soul is like a man. And he develops that in 33.
Joshua: Yeah, in 33 he says this, these arguments may be refuted for they proceed from his eus not knowing that while discussing the subject of the immortality of the soul, he is speaking of the intellect which is free from all turbid motion, but not of those parts of the mind in which those disorders anger and lust have their seat in which he whom he is opposing when he argues, thus imagines to be distinct and separate from the mind. Now this resemblance is more remarkable in beasts whose souls are void of reason, but the likeness in men consists more in the configuration of the bodies and it is of no little consequence in what bodies the soul is lodged for. There are many things which depend on the body that give an edge to the soul, many which blunted Aristotle indeed says that all men of great genius are melancholy so that I should not have been displeased to have been somewhat duller than I am. He instances many and as if it were matter of fact brings his reasons for it. But if the power of those things that proceed from the body be so great as to influence the mind for they are the things, whatever they are, that occasion this likeness still that does not necessarily prove why a similitude of souls should be generated. I say nothing about cases of unlikeness. I wish Penia could be here. He lived with Africanists. I would inquire of him which of his family, the nephew of Africanists brother was like possibly he may in person have resembled his father, but in his manners he was so like every propagate abandoned man that it was impossible to be more so who did the grandson of P Kraus that wise and eloquent and most distinguished man resemble or the relations and sons of many other excellent men whose names there is no occasion to mention. But what are we doing? Have we forgotten that our purpose was when we had sufficiently spoken on the subject of the immortality of the soul to prove that even if the soul did perish, there would be even then no evil in death?
Cassius: Joshua, that’s a complicated paragraph. It seems to me that he’s starting off talking about how animals have much more connection with their visceral emotions, their anger, their lust, their disorders and so forth. And that it’s easy therefore to understand that the soul of an animal is part of its body and it’s not going to be able to exist outside the body after it dies. But with men, and I think it’s probably important to remember what he’s said about the stoics, that the stoics and maybe some others didn’t necessarily believe that everybody survived death for a really long period of time, but especially the souls of the great men and the highest type of people would persist longer than those who would just ordinary people. And so I read his argument going in the direction here that even though a lot of men are just like beasts and are controlled by their emotions and their souls are just constantly tied up in their bodies, there are people who are of great genius and very high type of people who are much different than the type of man who is engaged every moment in his lusts and his emotions and his pleasures and his pains and that therefore we just can’t say that the souls of all men are going to die because the souls of all men are wrapped up in their bodily desires. We also have to realize that all men are not like each other. Some are much higher than others and able to divorce themselves from the body as Cicero has been talking about previously. And even within the same family, Africanus who was one of the greatest Romans who ever lived had nephews who were reprobates. And so even within the same family you can have souls that are greatly different from each other. So his little tangent it seems to me indicates that he is saying that this argument from analogy that men are like animals, all men are like other men, therefore nobody has a soul that survives death is not a good one because of the great varieties of nobility, virtue so forth within men. And I actually think part of this might be intended to be slightly humorous where he says that Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy. So he Cicero would not be displeased if he himself had been duller than he was. Cicero is implying that he’s not melancholy, but since Aristotle says men of great genius are melancholy, he maybe should have been more melancholy. I don’t know if that’s what that means or not, but the general thrust of that section 33 seems to be an intent to carry on this argument that the soul of at least great men can survive after death.
Joshua: Yeah, I think we can make sense of this section by looking at the points that he’s making about Panus and his argument. He says he panus maintains what nobody denies that everything which has been generated will perish. So that’s the overarching argument, right? The soul dies because it was generated and everything that is generated will perish, therefore the soul will perish. And then how does Penia make that argument? Cicero gives a number of reasons. He says that we know that souls are generated, that they have an origin which Penia thinks appears from their resemblance to those of the men who bega them. And in this argument he’s talking about just what you were talking about there, Africanists, Skipio Africanists and how he’s got it’s confusingly worded because he said his brother’s nephew, which would presumably be his own son. But anyway, he’s got some relation in the next generation who is not at all living up to Cicero’s standard of what a true and good Roman should be. And so in this case and in many others we have people who do not bear a resemblance to the men who begot them for Penia says that the likeness is as apparent in the turn of their minds as in their bodies. And Cicero says, sure, he looks like his father. He might have facial features that resemble his father, but the turn of his mind is so radically different that in the most essential point we can say that Pius your argument is not holding up here. And then the second point that Pius makes is there is nothing which is sensible of pain, which is not also liable to disease, but whatever is liable to disease must be liable to death. The soul is sensible of pain, therefore it is liable to perish. Now I think that Cicero is answering the second objection in the first part of this paragraph in section 33 because this is where he draws the distinction between the intellect, which he says is free from turd motion and those parts of the mind in which the disorders of anger and lust have their seat and which whom he panus is opposing when he argues, thus imagines to be distinct and separate from the mind. I’m not entirely sure how to parse that, but you’ve got the intellect and then you’ve got this other part of the mind or the soul, this lower part that is subject to anger and lust. And he says that that part of the mind has a resemblance that is close to the beast because the souls of the lower orders of animals are void of reason. So the intellect is straight out in lower orders of animals. So the only thing that the lower orders of animals have is that part of their mind in which those disorders of anger and lust have their seat. And that is I think what Cicero is saying here. That is why humans, their souls survive after death and that is why the lower urges of animals, their souls do not survive after death. This bit you quoted there Cassius about all men of great genius are melancholy. This is rooted in the view of medicine in the ancient world that there are four humors and that you have to keep these humors in balance and if one of them gets the upper hand over the other three, then it affects not only your physical appearance because you can look up these old pictures. It’s like a profile of the four humors which are melancholy is an excess of black bile. Sanguine is an excess of blood, matic is an excess of phlegm, and choleric is an excess of yellow bile and you can look up pictures sort of profiles of four guys and each of them typifies one of these four excess humors and it shows that if you don’t keep them in balance, this is where things go wrong both in your health and in your mind and in your physical appearance. So the association between intelligence and melancholy sort of soul sadness is one that’s been made many times since. In fact the Byron Hero of Lord Byron’s poetry tends to be melancholy in that sense as well. And I think we still have this idea today that people with let’s say lower intelligence have a higher degree of acceptance. They just accept things and they’re not as bothered. They’re not as flustered by the things that happen to them as people who have a high degree of intelligence and that makes them happier than people who have a high degree of intelligence. I think that’s what he’s tapping into here. I don’t know how that connects, but I think he’s responding specifically to those two points that Panus has made. But he allows here, he says at the end, have we forgotten that our purpose was when we had sufficiently spoken on the subject of the immortality of the soul to prove that even if the soul did perish, there would be even then no evil in death. So he’s acknowledging here that just by bringing up pines and his argument with Plato that in arguing with Penas, he’s making the point that he’s been making this whole time, which is that in Cicero’s view, the soul does not die with the body. The soul exists eternally apart from the body after death.
Kalosyni: I remembered it very well, but I had no dislike to your digressing a little from your original design whilst you were talking of the soul’s immortality,
Joshua: I perceive you have sublime thoughts and are eager to mount up to heaven. I’m not without hopes myself that such may be our fate, but admit what they assert that the soul does not continue to exist after death
Kalosyni: Should it be so I see that we are then deprived of the hopes of a happier life,
Joshua: But what is there of evil in that opinion or let the soul perish as the body is there any pain or indeed any feeling at all in the body after death? No one indeed asserts that though Epicurus charges Democrat with saying so, but the disciples of Democrat deny it no sense therefore remains in the soul for the soul is nowhere where then is the evil for there is nothing but these two things. Is it because the mere separation of the soul and body cannot be affected without pain but even should that be granted, how small a pain must that be yet? I think that it is false and that death is very often unaccompanied by any sensation at all and sometimes even attended with pleasure, but certainly the whole must be very trifling. Whatever it is for it is instantaneous. What makes us uneasy or rather gives us pain is the leaving all the good things of life. But just consider I might not more properly say leaving the evils of life only. There is no reason for my now occupying myself in wailing the life of man and yet I might with very good reason, but what occasion is there when what I am laboring to prove is that no one is miserable after death to make life more miserable by lamenting over it. I have done that in the book which I wrote in order to comfort myself as well as I could if then our inquiry is after truth, death withdraws us from evil, not from good. This subject is indeed so copiously handled by Hega the sic philosopher that he has said to have been forbid by tmy from delivering his lectures in the schools because some who heard him made away with themselves there is too an epigram of Kali, onus of ambia who without any misfortune having befall him as he says, threw himself from a wall into the sea after he had read a book of Plato’s. The book I mentioned of that Hega is called Aron or a man who starves himself in which a man is represented as killing himself by starvation till he is prevented by his friends in reply to whom he reckons up all the miseries of human life. I might do the same though not so fully as he who thinks it is not worth any man’s while to live, I pass over others. Was it even worth my while to live for had I died before I was deprived of the comforts of my own family and of the honors which I received for my public services would not death have taken me from the evils of life rather than from its blessings?
Cassius: Now this is an interesting paragraph in many ways I don’t want to forget this line about how CLE of Abrasia threw himself off a wall after reading a book of Platos. I know that many of us have had similar desires after reading Plato and other philosophers who seem to be so impractical and so ridiculous in the directions that they go. It’s also worth mentioning of course that even in the letter to Menoras, Epicurus is very strong that men are very little account who have many reasons for committing suicide. So Epicurus is strongly against suicide from the perspective of trying to achieve a better life. It makes no sense whatsoever from the perspective of avoiding pain from which you cannot escape. It may at times make sense, but it certainly never makes sense from the point of view that Cicero is arguing that life can be better after death and even when you analyze it as Cicero really is focusing on here that death is the escape from so much evil. It is not an affirmatively good place to be and the wise man in epicurean philosophy is always going to have more reason for joy than for Vation. As Quata says, the wise man who understands the nature of the universe and of life is going to understand that non-existence is not a bad thing, but existence is the only time when you have the opportunity for pleasure and the goal of life is to experience pleasure not to experience nothingness because that can’t be experienced. It makes no sense. It makes no sense to even entertain such an idea which Cicero says here, he himself has entertained especially in the context of his own loss of his family. He says where he questions whether it was worth his while to continue living on after he was deprived of the comforts of his family and deprived of the honors of his public services, Cicero’s asking himself, would not death have taken me from the evils of life rather than from its blessings.
Joshua: Now we have run into this hega, the death decider as he’s called before. It’s always a touchy subject when we talk about suicide and end of life issues, but he wrote this book called A Man who starves himself in which he’s represented as killing himself by starvation and when he is prevented by his friends, he replies to them by reckoning up all the miseries of human life. And then Cicero says, I might do the same though not so fully as he who thinks it not worth any man’s while to live. It’s not worth my time to live. And then he says, was it even worth my while to live for had I died before I was deprived of the comforts of my family and of the honors which I received for my public services would not death have taken me from the evils of life rather than from its blessings? If I’m answering that question, my answer is this, certainly it is worth your while to live. You’re very lucky to even be able to do it. In fact, there’s a Richard Dawkins quote that we really need to bring in here. This is Richard Dawkins in his book, unweaving the Rainbow Science Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder, and this is what he says about the question that Cicero has proposed, is it worth our while to live? He says this, we are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia, certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people in the teeth of these stupefying odds. It is you and I in our ness that are here. We privileged few who won the lottery of birth against all odds. How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred. I think that is a damning indictment of Cicero and his view here, that leaving life takes us away from what is predominantly evil. And again, I’ll return to Epicurus on his last day in his life when he said, I’m writing to you on a very happy day, which is also the last day of my life. The pains from Strangley and dysentery are so strong that they cannot be increased by any means, but I set over and above them all the pleasure of the remembrance of our past friendship that I think is the kind of attitude we should have toward life. We can agree with Cicero that if the soul does not exist after the death of the body, if the soul dies with the body, we can agree with Cicero that that is not an evil NE’s view is that death is nothing to us because we don’t exist to experience it. But this is a serious divergence here with Cicero saying death delivers us primarily from evil and not from good. And Epicurus I think would certainly say that death does take us away from good. There’s pain also certainly, and he’s given advice on that point. We leave the theater when the play sees us to please us, but for the most part, this life is a life of pleasure which we can set over and above the pain we experience and that makes life worth living.
Cassius: Yes, Joshua? I completely agree with the way you’ve just phrased that now Cicero is not going to let us off easy on this point though. And as we go into the next sections, I’m going to suggest that we read 35 and 36 together because what Cicero is going to say to try to leverage his argument here is he’s going to go to the extreme of pointing out examples of people who were basically at the top of life surrounded by riches, surrounded by friends, enjoying the very best pleasures of life, who shortly thereafter fall from that precipice to the worst of pains. And he’s going to try to contrast those two situations and say that this is an example of why I’m right. This is an example of why it is better to go ahead and die in certain cases. And of course if it’s true in certain cases, then that supports his argument that maybe it’s true in all cases. But for those of us who are not familiar with the stories of King Priam of Troy or Pompeii, the great of Rome, Cicero’s going to tell us about their fall from prosperity and then he’s going to get back into the argument in 36. So if you don’t mind reading 35 and 36 together, we’ll then have Cicero’s full argument on this point
Joshua: Mentioned therefore someone who never knew distress, who never received any blow from fortune. The great Mattis had four distinguished sons, but Priam had 50 17 of which were born to him by his lawful wife. Fortune had the same power over both though she exercised it, but on one for Mattis was laid on his funeral pile by a great company of sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. But Priam fell by the hand of the enemy after having fled to the altar and having seen himself deprived of his numerous progeny. Had he died before the death of his sons and the ruin of his kingdom with all his mighty wealth elate under rich canopies of state, would he then have been taken from good or from evil? It would indeed at that time have appeared that he was being taken away from good, yet surely it would’ve turned out advantageous for him, nor should we have had these mournful verses low. These all perished in one flaming pile. The foe old priam did of life beguile and with his blood thy alter, JoVE defile as if anything better could have happened to him at that time than to lose his life in that manner. But yet if it had befallen him sooner, it would’ve prevented all those consequences. But even as it was, it released him from any further sense or experience of them. The case of our friend Pompe was something better Once when he had been very ill at Naples, the Neapolitans on his recovery put crowns on their heads as did those of poli the people flocked from the country to congratulate him. It is a Grecian custom and a foolish one still it is a sign of good fortune. But the question is, had he died, would he have been taken from good or from evil? Certainly from evil, he would not have been engaged in the war with his father-in-law. He would not have taken up arms before he was prepared. He would not have left his own house nor fled from Italy. He would not after the loss of his army have fallen unarmed into the hands of slaves and been put to death by them. His children would not have been destroyed, nor would his whole fortune have come into the possession of the clunkers, did not. He then who if he had died at that time, would have died in all his glory, owe all the great and terrible misfortunes into which he subsequently fell to the prolongation of his life at the time. These calamities are avoided by death for even though they should never happen. There is a possibility that they may, but it never occurs to a man that such a disaster may befall him himself. Everyone hopes to be as happy as Mattis as if the number of the happy exceeded that of the miserable or as if there were any certainty in human affairs or again, as if there were more rational foundation for hope than fear. But should we grant them even this, that men are by death deprived of good things, would it follow that the dead are therefore in need of the good things of life and are miserable on that account? Certainly they must necessarily say so can he who does not exist, be in need of anything to be in need of, has a melancholy sound because it in effect amounts to this he had, but he has not. He regrets. He looks back upon. He wants such are I suppose the distresses of one who is in need of, is he deprived of eyes to be blind? Is misery, is he destitute of children? Not to have them is misery. These considerations apply to the living, but the dead are neither in need of the blessings of life nor of life itself. But when I am speaking of the dead, I am speaking of those who have no existence. But would anyone say of us who do exist that we want horns or wings, certainly not. Should it be asked why not? The answer would be that not to have what neither custom nor nature has fitted you for would not imply a want of them even though you were sensible that you had them not. This argument should be pressed over and over again after that point has once been established, which if souls are mortal, there can be no dispute about, I mean that the destruction of them by death is so entire as to remove even the least suspicion of any sense remaining when therefore this point is once well-grounded and established, we must correctly define what the term to want means that there may be no mistake in the word to want then signifies this to be without. That which you would be glad to have for inclination for a thing is implied in the word want accepting when we use the word in an entirely different sense as we do when we say that a fever is wanting to anyone for it admits of a different interpretation when you are without a certain thing and are sensible that you are without it, but yet can easily dispense with having it to want then is an expression which you cannot apply to the dead, nor is the mere fact of wanting something necessarily lamentable. The proper expression ought to be that they want a good and that is an evil. But a living man does not want a good unless he is distressed without it. And yet we can easily understand how any man alive can be without a kingdom, but this cannot be predicated of view with any accuracy. It might have been asserted of Tarin when he was driven from his kingdom, but when such an expression is used respecting the dead, it is absolutely unintelligible. But to want implies to be sensible, but the dead are insensible, therefore the dead can be in no want.
Cassius: Okay, Joshua, that was a long section and indeed in the second part of that he does turn to another important issue which we’re going to cover. But the majority of the first of it was revolving around this question that while fortune controls everyone as Cicero says, and Mattis can live his life to the full without any bad results at the end, there are many examples of people who at the end of their lives or nearing the end of their lives who fall into great tragedies and devastation such as Priam losing his kingdom and his family such as Pompeii falling from the heights of Roman glory and being eventually destroyed in the civil wars by Caesar. These are examples where it is possible to argue that it would’ve been better for them had they not lived as long as they did and had they died at the height of their glory and pleasures as opposed to living on and experiencing these terrible things. I think we all have heard examples and probably said ourselves such things as it’s a good thing that George Washington is not alive today to see what a mess the world is in or it’s a good thing our parents are not alive today to see the way the world is now as if they are in fact better off for being dead because they’ve not had to live to experience these things that were suggesting they would’ve not wanted to experience. I think we can analyze that already, but the basic point is that Epicurus is not going to agree with an argument that it’s simply better off to hasten your death just because it’s possible that bad things will befall you during that extra period of time that you are alive for one reason if no other that epicurus doesn’t believe that there is necessity in human affairs and as epicure says in the letter to nor the future is not wholly ours, nor is it not wholly ours. We have the ability to influence our futures and while we’re alive, we have the ability to work for the avoidance of disasters such as these things that he’s citing. And it’s improper to look back and say that it was inevitable that Pompeii or inevitable that Priam would meet the ends that they did meet. But again, even in those instances where you can predict that bad things are coming in your direction, that storms are on the horizon, Epicurus is saying that the wise man is always going to have more reason for joy than for vaccination. So it’s just not going to make sense to think that death is a good for you except into the most extreme of conditions. And you’re certainly never going to get to the point where you can read a book by Plato or listen to hideous talk about the great benefit of losing the problems of life. You’re not going to let that convince you to commit suicide. And then Cicero turns back to almost the purely epicurean argument that once you’re dead, you’re not there to experience bad things. And he goes into some fairly interesting argument about how words like wanting or lacking or missing need to be very carefully parsed because the dead are not there to lack something. They’re not there to have an unfulfilled desire. They’re not there to want something that they don’t have. And Cicero, I think probably does a pretty good job of explaining that here at the end of section 36.
Joshua: I think it’s very interesting to see the way in which Cicero almost completely reverses Epicurus his own view of pleasure and pain because Cicero is saying that death spares you from evil because it either spares you from the memory of past evils or from the experience of present evils or from the fall into future evils. And for that reason that we can say doesn’t matter who you look at Priam or Mattis or Pompei or any of these people because they’ve all experienced evil, they’ve all experienced pain, they’ve all experienced loss death of people they love. And so no matter which way you look at it, Cicero is saying death spares you from the memory experience or anticipation of evil. Epicurus puts this almost exactly the other way around. It’s not pain that we dwell on and remember or anticipate for the future or even indeed experience an unbearable amount of in the present. As he said in the letter to a domus that he wrote on the last day of life, he’s experiencing pain in the present from strangley and dysentery, but he is able to set over and above all of that pain, the memory of his past friendship with ieu. And so for Epicurus pain kind of exists only in the present but pleasure. We can experience pleasure now in part by just remembering our past pleasures, pains that we experienced in the past tend not to bother us as much now as they did when they happened. This is the classic thing people always say, right? One day we’re going to look back and laugh about all of this. So the pain that you experienced a long time ago kind of gets dulled over time. And even though you think of it sometimes, and maybe it makes you wince or cringe to think about it, it doesn’t hurt as much now as it did back then, but the memory of past pleasures particularly, he says the memory of our past friendship that can be as folly pleasurable today as it was at the time, and this is why time is kind of a force multiplier for pleasure and it diminishes the effect on the whole of life of pain because it’s kind of the same with the future. Once you acknowledge that death is nothing to us because when death is we are not and when we are, death is not come. Anticipating future pains is likewise diminished, but it doesn’t stop you at all from anticipating future pleasures and so on. The whole on balance, pleasure comes out far ahead of pain in this calculation. And for Cicero, it’s the exact opposite. The evils of life that we remember, that we anticipate and that we experience right now predominate over the good things in life. And so death in his view is sparing us from predominantly evil things. I think that’s really interesting the way that he presents an almost opposite view of Epicurus, his own position on
Cassius: This. Yeah. Joshua, before we go forward, I really want to strongly agree that this is a reversal of perspective between Cicero, Plato, these other guys versus Epicurus because as you said, Epicurus focuses on the desirability of pleasure and the unavailability of pleasure when you’re dead means that you’re going to want to stay alive so that you can experience pleasure and wherever this difference of opinion comes from. It is a deep and wide divide that I think we see around us today. We see it today just as it’s always apparently existed. There are certain people in life who are so focused on avoiding pain that it makes sense to them to consider death because they are so obsessed with avoiding pain. They think that is their overriding goal in life. That’s a debate and a discussion that we have regularly in discussing Epicurus because when people start talking about, well, the goal of life according to Epicurus is absence of pain. Some people will interpret that as meaning that the most important thing you can do, the prime directive of life is to avoid pain at any cost. And I think what you’ve just said is a good synopsis of how that is not the case. For Epicurus, the calculation and offsetting of pleasure against pain is going to be an individual thing. Everyone is going to have to make their own decision about how to score that balance because there’s no God and there’s no absolute rule that tells you how to do it. But for an epicurean who knows that life is short, you are focused on the importance of pleasure and you are willing at times to undergo pain in order to experience a greater pleasure, you’re not so dear in the headlights focused and obsessed on avoiding pain at all costs. That is simply not Epic’s perspective. And there’s a line in a letter by Thomas Jefferson that came to mind when you’re talking about that, that I think expresses the same question when Jefferson writes, friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life. And here’s the phrase that I think is appropriate, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. Now, that’s not to say that you can measure the length of time. That time alone is the way to decide whether pleasure is greater than pain. Just as in Epicurus own letter about how you choose not the most food but the most pleasant. There is a decision that we have to make as to how to understand most, how to understand a word like greater here that Thomas Jefferson has raised. It’s not necessarily the longest length of time, it’s not necessarily the intensity, it’s not necessarily the part of the body that’s affected, but all of these factors come together and you have to decide what is most significant to you. I think Cicero is saying here that he himself has not looked at avoiding pain as the number one thing that has driven his life, but certainly Epicurus would say that avoiding pain is not the number one thing that drives life. It’s pleasure, but it takes understanding of the question to be able to articulate this in a way that makes the most sense. Of course, in Epicurean philosophy, the absence of pain is pleasure. So when you start talking about absence of pain, for someone who understands Epicurious manner of speaking, you’re referring to pleasure. But Cicero is really dealing with the way most people think about all this. And in fact, he’s going to devote one of the sections of this book to the proper perspective on pain and how to deal with it. Obviously, epicure spends a lot of time on that subject, but I think the point that you’ve raised here is the best one we could make at this moment. That what you’re trying to do in an epicure perspective is maximize your pleasure and you know that you cannot ever experience a moment of pleasure ever again after you die. You never want to choose a permanent solution to a temporary problem unless the circumstances absolutely justify to you the correctness of that decision
Joshua: In line with this view that Cicero is kind of reversing Epicurus his own position in coming to the opposite conclusion. I see some evidence of that also in the first part of section 37 when Cicero writes. But what occasion is there to philosophize here in a matter with which we see that philosophy is but little concerned how often have not only our generals, but whole armies rushed on certain death and then he gives a whole list of battles and generals and so forth. And Cicero is saying here that if soldiers in generals don’t fear death when they go to war, there’s hardly any need to bring philosophy into this question at all, because we can see this for ourselves in our own lives. We don’t have to have recourse to philosophy for this. What I would compare it to is the ProAm to book two of Lucious when Lucious writes this way, how sweet it is when Whirlwinds royal, the great ocean to watch from land the danger of another, not that to see some other person suffer brings great enjoyment, but the sweetness lies in watching evils. You yourself are free from how sweet again to see the clash of battle across the plains, your self immune to danger. And then he says, but nothing is more sweet than full possession of those calm heights. Well-built, well fortified by wise men’s teachings to look down from here at others wandering below, men lost, confused, and hectic search for the right road, the strife of wits, the wars for precedents, the everlasting struggle night and day to win towards heights of wealth and power. So Cice R was saying, if you go and watch, see what happens in war. Soldiers marching into certain death in battle and they’re unafraid, which should be all the evidence we need, that death is nothing to be afraid of. And Lucious says the opposite thing he says, to watch soldiers marching in war into battle, into certain death makes the person who sees that happen from afar feel a flood of relief that they are not themselves marching into certain death, that to be immune to danger as he put it, as the clash of battle crosses the plains, that this is sweet and pleasurable to be free from it, not because it’s pleasurable or sweet to enjoy the suffering of another, but because the bare escape of some calamity is one of the keenest and most intense pleasures, this flood of adrenaline that happens when you escape some severe danger to your person. So I think it’s interesting that Cicero continues to just reverse what the Epicureans have already set on these points. And maybe he’s not even doing this intentionally, right? It’s just that in coming to the opposite conclusion, he’s using the opposite arguments and so to continue through 37 here. But if it had been a thing to be feared at his death, El Brutus would never have fallen in fight to prevent the return of that tyrant whom he had expelled. Nor would Ds the father have been slain in fighting with the Latins, nor would his son when engaged with the Etruscan nor his grandson with purists having exposed themselves to the enemy’s darts. Spain would never have seen in one campaign theios fall fighting for their country. Nor would the plains of, can I have witnessed the death of Pless and Geminis or in Nuia that of Marcellus, nor would the Latins have beheld the death of albinus nor the lecan that of g Grca. But are any of these miserable now? Nay, they were not. So even at the first moment after they had breathed their last, nor can anyone be miserable after he has lost all sensation? Oh, but the mere circumstance of being without sensation is miserable. It might be so if being without sensation where the same thing as wanting it, but as is evident there can be nothing of any kind in that which has no existence. What can there be afflicting to that which can neither feel want nor be sensible of anything we might be said to have repeated this over too often. Only that here lies all that the soul shutters at from the fear of death for whoever can clearly apprehend that which is as manifest as the light, that when soul and body are consumed and there is a total destruction, then that which was an animal becomes nothing, will clearly see that there is no difference between a hippo centar which never had existence and King Nan and that em Camillas who lived several hundred years ago, is no more concerned about this presence civil war than I was at the sacking of Rome several hundred years ago when he was living.
Cassius: Okay, Joshua, perhaps in contrast to what we’ve been criticizing Cicero four in taking a diametrically opposite position from Epicurus, it’s interesting that Cicero seems to be tracking Epicurus, I think very well here in these final arguments because of course, in principle doctrine number two, Epicurus had said Death is nothing to us for that which is dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us. And here Cicero is stating the same thing fairly eloquently, that when there is no sensation, then you cannot lack or feel the want or be sensible of anything. And as Cicero says here, it is as clear as day manifest as light, that when both the soul and body are gone, there’s total destruction and that which was becomes nothing. And Ro gives some analogies that I don’t know that we’ve ever cited before, that there’s no difference between a HIPAA centar, which never had an existence, and a king who dies, who did have an existence, and who experienced all the pleasures of the world. Neither the king who was real or the centar who was a fiction have existence in death. And so neither of them can feel a lack or a desire or a want of anything. And Cicero applies Lucretius argument to his own situation. When Lucretius says that we are not concerned about the pun wars and the ravages to Italy that occurred before they were born, Cicero says that Marcus Camillus, who had lived long before Cicero, was no more concerned about the present civil war in which Cicero was living. Then Cicero himself was at the sack of Rome at the time of Camillus, which was many years before Cicero was born. So here Cicero is almost exactly following the Lucian argument. So with us being at the moment somewhat consistent with Cicero, that’s probably a good time to bring today’s episode to a conclusion. Any final thoughts for today?
Joshua: Yeah, Cassius, I’m glad you brought up the striking resemblance to the argument that Cicero is making here with Lucius and his argument from symmetry. I am no more concerned about the things that happen after I die than I am about the things that happened before I was born because I didn’t exist before I was born, and I won’t exist after I die. And those two conditions are identical. So it’s very interesting to see Cicero making the same point. We know that Cicero Red Lucious, I don’t know how much of that has bled over into his own work, but it is very interesting to see that argument made here.
Cassius: Yes, Joshua, the parallels here are striking, and as we continue to work through this, we continue to find these references that help us understand Epicurus better. We’ll wrap up this discussion of death over the coming week or two. Then we’ll move on to discussions of pain and pleasure and other important issues of life. Whether we see death as non-existence or whether we see death as a promise of better times ahead is hugely important to us. We’ll continue to go through Cicero’s discussions of this next week. In the meantime, we invite everyone to drop by our forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about this or any of our other discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.