Episode 286 - TD16 - Confronting Pain With Reason Rather Than With "Virtue"
Date: 06/13/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4498-episode-286-td16-confronting-pain-with-reason-rather-than-with-virtue/
Summary
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Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 286 of Lucretius today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the epicurean text and 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 in part two of Tuscan Disputations where the topic is, is pain and evil, and last week we talked about Cicero’s criticism of Epicurus principle doctrine four, and we basically saw how Cicero said, I’m not going to go along with the stoics and tell you how to live according to definitions like evil, but I’m going to tell you that the way to deal with pain is to take it like a man, and then he goes into his standard method of arguing things by examples of great men in the past who we are supposed to all acknowledge we should follow after and do exactly as they did without any other real explanation. Beyond that, our natures tell us to acknowledge the greatness of these men who’ve approached pain in the way that they did. Now, before we go further this week into section 20, I do want to make a couple of general comments about where we are, where we’re going, and why we’re even discussing tus and disputations in the first place. I know that it can seem to some people like we are just so deep in the weeds of going through some ancient texts that it’s just boring and this is the only podcast we have at the moment for Epicurean philosophy. So people are going to say, well, I want to know how to live today. I don’t care how they live 2000 years ago or 3000 years ago, or how the Romans or the Greeks live. Let’s talk about today and what I’ve got to do later on this afternoon. And of course that’s a very legitimate concern. I wish we had more podcasts where we had more time to discuss things from all sorts of different angles than we have in the limited time we have here, but what we’re doing is going back into these core texts that have shaped the whole history of western civilization, Cicero in his own ends and in Tuscan and Disputations and in other books like academic Questions He systematized, he preserved, he made understandable to generation after generation of leading intellectuals of Western history, how to approach philosophy and what the basic ground rules are. Of course, we have the original works of many of the Greeks, but Cicero here has been the transmitter and processor of a lot of that information for much of the Western world he wrote in Latin as opposed to Greek, and he’s extremely famous and well-regarded in many circles and rightly so for being a very intelligent and very personable and being a great man himself in many ways, being at the leading edge of all sorts of issues that were going on in his time. A person like that is not going off himself into issues that are so abstract as to not be important. Cicero knows that ultimately what motivates people is what has to be dealt with at the most basic levels of human life. Are we concerned about following the gods? Are we concerned about what happens to us after death? Are we so concerned about the role of pain in life that we just are overcome by it and can’t take action to do things that are painful? Are we going to become obsessed by pain? Are we going to become obsessed by pleasure? These questions that Cicero is addressing in giving us examples of are in fact extremely practical and extremely important, and by seeing Cicero argue it through and give us concrete clear examples, we’re going to get a lot deeper understanding of the same issues that we confront today. Just as he was confronting those issues back then, Cicero wanted the Roman Republic to overcome the changes that were going on At the time he was calling the Romans back to a more traditional view of morality and ethics and religion, and he saw Epicurean philosophy as a threat to that as indeed it was as indeed it is. And so Cicero focuses in what we’re going through on very important subjects that he knows are going to register with the people who hear him. He’s talking to other leading people of society. He’s telling them to focus on what’s important and he’s attacking the epicurean view and saying that, no, you should not look to nature and pleasure and pain. You should look to the great men of the past. You should look to virtue. You should look to the leadership of the gods, the leadership of reason, the leadership of these ideal forms that Plato was talking about, and you should suppress your reliance on pleasure and pain because ultimately it is unmanly and unvirtuous to be following those things. Those are the same issues that we all confront today in different words, perhaps in different examples that are given, but in going through this, we’re really cutting to the heart of exactly why Epicurean philosophy arose in the first place, what it’s attacking, what it’s calling out the inadequacies of, and Cicero’s arguing back that No Epicurus, you’re wrong. These things are not inadequate. These things are not illogical or unreasonable. Cicero is defending these things directly against Epicurus, providing us an opportunity to understand how Epicurus was addressing them in a way that’s very difficult to get from the very short and fragmented texts of Epicurus himself. Generations, centuries have been spent by Judeo-Christian religious authorities in suppressing and destroying epicurean texts and there’s very little of it left, but there is enough of it left, especially combined with the arguments against it like we have through Cicero that we can reconstruct where Epicurus is coming from and see how it applies directly to the same arguments that are made today just as they were made 2000 years ago. So with that as sort of a general recap of where we are, we’re going to go into today section 20, where Cicero is going to give us some more examples. We’ll have a lot of good detail to talk about as we read today. Starting ins section 20.
Joshua: Will you when you may observe children at lack of dayon and young men at Olympia and barbarians in the amphitheater receive the severest wounds and to bear them without once opening their mouths, will you? I say if any pain should by chance attack you, cry out like a woman, will you not rather bear it with resolution and constancy and not cry? It is intolerable. Nature cannot bear it. I hear what you say, boys bear this because they are led thereby unto glory. Some bear it through shame, many through fear and yet are we afraid that nature cannot bear what is born by many and in such different circumstances? Nature not only bears it but challenges it for there is nothing with her preferable, nothing would she desires more than credit and reputation and praise and honor and glory. I choose here to describe this one thing under many names and I have used many that you may have the clearer idea of it for What I mean to say is that whatever is desirable of itself proceeding from virtue or placed in virtue and commendable on its own account, which I would rather agree to call the only good than deny it to be the chief good is what men should prefer above all things. And as we declare this to be the case with respect to honesty, so we speak in the contrary manner of infamy. Nothing is so odious, so detestable, nothing so unworthy of a man and if you are thoroughly convinced of this for at the beginning of this discourse, you allowed that there appeared to you more evil and infamy than in pain. It follows that you ought to have the command over yourself, although I scarcely know how this expression may seem an accurate one which appears to represent man as made up of two natures. So that one should be in command and the other be subject to it.
Cassius: Okay, thank you Joshua. When we get into 21, we’ll see that Cicero is going to turn into arguing about reason next as the way that you have command over yourself. But before we get there, there’s some important material here in this section and this just amplifies what I was talking about when we started the episode today when Cicero says that nature not only bears pain but challenges pain for there’s nothing with her preferable, nothing what she desires more than credit and reputation and praise and honor and glory. Now that’s where Quata is telling Cicero in own ends that the stoics are beguiled by the glamor of a name. These guys are interested in nothing but reputation with the public and in the idea of glory in the eyes of their fellow men, and that is a circular and ridiculous an argument as a way to base your morality as you could possibly have because it is no basis for morality. The morality that you’re going to come to from that kind of a conclusion is going to be totally different whether you’re in India versus China versus Russia versus the United States. It’s all going to mean that you should look to the crowd around you for the compass about what you’re supposed to be able to do because the crowd is going to tell you what they esteem. That takes all of the focus away from your own ability to reason and understand the universe your own feelings and gives it over to other people in a way that goes far beyond. When Epicure says don’t get involved in politics, well, he’s talking about in many cases they’re the practical results of getting involved in politics, but Cicero is going a thousand times further and say, I’m not just talking about politics. I’m telling you that everything in life that is important is glory and honor and esteem in the eyes of the crowd. And so you should look to the crowd, the people around you for everything that you decide to do right or wrong, day or night all the time. And if that’s not the morality of a sheep, I don’t know what could possibly be because epicurean philosophy is not telling you to go take a poll every time you want to make a decision. Epicurean philosophy is telling you that nature gives you pleasure and pain, that those are rock bottom things that you take as nature gives them to you and you can always look to them for guidance. Now you’ve got to use your head and apply them properly and think about what’s going to happen based on the things that you choose to do or the things you choose to avoid. But it is a system that nature has put in place and it’s not a statistical poll that you’re going to take every time you want to make a decision. So Cicero ought to be, from my point of view, embarrassed himself to be making this allegation. He’s claiming that this gives you praise and honor and glory when in the end what it really does is make you a slave of the crowd. Now, Cicero never gets very far from his academic skepticism and he throws in a little parenthetical statement here that’s significant to note as well. He starts talking about whether virtue is commendable on its own account and he throws in that he’d rather call virtue the only good as opposed to those who deny virtue to be the chief good, which I think probably is more an inside baseball reference among the academics and aristotelians versus the stoics, and again, it’s one of these definitional issues. Is virtue the only good or is it the chief? Good, well, you go round and round and round and round on that question without ever coming to any conclusion about what virtue is in the first place, whether it has any kind of solid statement to it, and that’s where there’s an epicurean fragment where epicure says that the escape from some calamity is the meaning of good for those who are capable of reasoning it out and don’t go walking around uselessly all the time. The issue is a clear explanation of what it is you’re talking about and Epicurus gives a clear explanation by pointing to virtue as the tool by which we live happily by which we seek pleasure, avoid pain, and succeed in living a happy life, not as something that we’re going to obsess over whether it’s the only good or the chief. Good.
Joshua: Yeah, Cassius, I think there are many, many things that can be discussed in this passage here and a lot of it settles around this word nature, which he uses several times throughout here. He imagines his interocular saying that pain is intolerable and nature cannot bear it, and then he himself says, nature not only bears pain but challenges pain and this is where he gets into for there is nothing with her preferable, nothing, which she desires more than credit and reputation and so on. It’s interesting to try and understand what he means by the use of the word nature here because he’s clearly not referring to the rocks and the trees and stuff outside. I think he’s referring to human nature here and as you’ve said that his devotion to glory and to credit and to praise and reputation that would seem to make him a slave to the crowd. This is not I think how Cicero himself would see it. In fact, he says in on ends that it is Epicurus who is a slave to the crowd on the question of justice, which I don’t think is true, but Cicero would say that he’s not a slave to the crowd on this question. He is aligned with nature and not only nature but with the moral law that is visible and manifest in nature. And so that’s another thing we have to bring in here when we’re talking about Cicero and his understanding of nature because he says this in his book on the Republic, he says, true law is right reason in agreement with nature. It is of universal application, unchanging everlasting, it summons to duty by its commands and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions and it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, although neither have any effect upon the wicked. It is a sin to try and alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. This is why we’re talking here about not just nature in a mechanical sense, but human nature when it comes to this moral natural law view. He’s saying, we don’t need to look outside of ourselves for an interpreter of that view because we are ourselves. The nature in question he goes on to say, and there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and for all times and there will be one master and one rule that is God over us all for he is the author of this law. Its promulgator and its enforcing judge. Now obviously the reference to God there has nothing to do with Christianity because Cicero predates Christianity. He’s talking about perhaps some version of prime mover or some kind of platonic deity in a sense, and it is his view of nature that allows him, I think to say that there is nothing with nature. There is nothing preferable, nothing which he desires more than credit and reputation and praise and honor and glory, and he can say that and in his own mind, not be a slave to the crowd because in his view, as I said before, he is in obligation two and he is responding to and he is in harmony with natural moral law. Obviously I think it goes without saying. This is incompatible with an epicurean understanding of ethics, with an epicurean understanding of justice, and most importantly of course with an epicurean understanding of physics. There are no transcendental absolute moral rules that exist out there in the cosmos for you to follow. This is a very idealist view of nature and it’s a view of nature that has survived into the 21st century. You still see this today when people say that something is wrong because it’s unnatural. This is an appeal to natural law. This is an appeal to the claim that there are moral truths accessible to us by a study of nature and that those truths are the same in Athens and in Rome yesterday and tomorrow and forever and ever until the end of time. So again, as I think in a previous episode I said, what an incredible shift in perspective we get here. This is another example and there are many others like it of the kind of shift in perspective you get when you change a few basic key things in a system of philosophy. When Epicurus says, for example, as he does in the first principle doctrine, that a blessed and incorruptible being has no trouble itself and brings no trouble on anything else and that nothing can be created out of nothing by the will of the gods, as Lucious says as his first doctrine. When you analyze these two things, it’s clear that nature exists independently of any mind and it exists independently of any morality and that view is fatal to Cicero’s entire argument and many other arguments that have been made by many other people throughout the centuries.
Cassius: Joshua, it is amazing. It is breathtaking, the sheer hypocrisy of the position that Cicero is taking here because Cicero is the first person to be an elitist and to look to the crowd and look at the people around him and say that all the times and the morals are so decadent, he is the worst in terms of denouncing the morality of the common man. So who in the world are you supposed to look to for these examples? You’re supposed to look to the particular people that Cicero and people like Cicero point out to you as the examples that they think that you should follow. There’s usually two sides at least to every question, and Cicero is not going to give you both sides. He’s only going to give you his side, and as you’re saying Joshua, it is very incompatible these positions that Epicurus and Cicero are taking and in the end they cannot be reconciled. One of these people is right and the other one is wrong, and there’s a great tendency among people of goodwill, like most epicureans are to look at a difference of opinion and say, well, this is just a matter of words. This is something that can be reconciled. There’s a middle ground between these two and we’re going to take the middle ground and everybody’s going to be happy. Nobody’s going to be mad about anything and we’re all just going to live happily together reading our different books, talking to each other, having discussions with each other about things. Well, that is a great goal to have and where it is achievable, it makes a lot of sense to do because it’s always very difficult to know in a particular situation whether you’ve reached a right or wrong conclusion or not. But as we see from history and people like Cicero and the people who followed him in the platonic religious community, people like Cicero, he’s not just writing this book just for the fun of it. He sees Epicurean philosophy as a threat to the Roman system, to the Greek system, and he wants it eliminated from philosophical discourse. He wants it defeated, he wants it out of the picture and out of the training of people and to give Cicero credit, he doesn’t seem to be doing that by force. He is talking to these people and engaging in the arguments and giving lip service at least to the virtue of having a discussion and letting people to some extent make up their own mind. But from the centuries after Cicero, again, as I said earlier, there’s been countless instances where those who take the position of Cicero and carry it even further in the religious academic establishment community aren’t going to just stop at having a nice disagreement and say, let’s go have cookies and talk about it further. They are going to take action to suppress the ideas of Epicurus, and that’s why we have so few materials of Epicurus left today to work with. These questions are vitally important. Cicero is seeing how vitally important they are, and this is something that I think is a thread that I would suggest people take very seriously as they listen to our podcasts and read through these materials that this is not a discussion of how much food to eat at lunch. This is a subject that hits it the most basic, fundamental, violent disagreements of human life and it turns very ugly very quickly when people begin to see how deep these disagreements are. So we can move on to 21 at this point, but Cicero’s inconsistency and hypocrisy here are breathtaking when again, you look back at what Cicero’s general estimation of the morality of the crowd is, and yet at the same time he says that we should take our morality from the fact that all men agree that this particular morality is the right one. All we can do in a podcast is try to point out a potential epicurean response to such an argument, but in this case, I think it’s clear that it’s epicurus who is saying that you are responsible to go directly to nature, understand what nature has given you through pleasure and pain, and reasonably apply your mind in an intelligent way. In other words, Cicero says, be a man. Well, I think Epicurus would say be a smart man. Epicurus is not telling you ever to run from pain as if it is the most important thing in your life for you to do. Epicurus is telling you there are times when you will embrace pain, so it takes wisdom and as Epicurus says, prudence, to know when to embrace pain, when to do the things that are going to be painful in order that the final ultimate result is more pleasure than pain and is more to your liking. That is a concrete method of analysis that everybody can understand. You don’t have to take a poll to decide what to do when you have that analysis available to you. And Cicero knows that if the Roman Republicans in addition to Caius, in addition to Julius Caesar and others who were beginning to understand epicurean philosophy, if they begin to understand that there is no religious or idealistic or philosophical authority to which people have to conform, then they will be begin to take their lives into their own hands and as Lucretia says, stand up to the oppressions of religion. Now, that’s where we’re going to go next in 21 because Cicero is going to talk about what might happen if men were to take these morality issues into their hands. So let’s read that if you will. Joshua.
Joshua: Yeah, he sets up 21 in 20 with a rather complicated sentence. What he’s basically saying is this, he says, as nothing is so odious and nothing is so detestable as infamy, anyone who is thoroughly convinced of this ought to have the command over themselves in order to be able to control their actions and behaviors and so on to prevent themselves from falling into infamous and odious and detestable behavioral patterns. And then in 21, he’s going to have this extended meditation on what it means to be in command over yourself. He says, at the end of 20, I scarcely know how this expression of being in command over yourself may seem an accurate one, which appears to represent man as made up of two natures, so that one should be in command and the other be subject to it. And then we get into 21, and this is where he says this, yet this division does not proceed from ignorance for the soul admits of a twofold division, one of which partakes of reason. The other is without it, when therefore we are ordered to give a law to ourselves, the meaning is that reason should restrain our ration. There is in the soul of every man, something naturally soft, low innervated in a manner and language. Were there nothing besides this men would be the greatest of monsters, but there is present to every man reason which presides over and gives laws to all, which by improving itself and making continual advances becomes perfect virtue. It behooves a man then to take care that reason shall have the command over that part which is bound to practice obedience in what manner you will say why as a master has over his slave, a general over his army and a father over his son. If that part of the soul, which I have called soft behaves disgracefully, if it gives itself up to lamentations and woman ish tears, then let it be restrained and committed to the care of friends and relations for we often see those persons brought to order by shame whom no reason can influence. Therefore, we can find those feelings like our servants in safe custody and almost with chains, but those who have more resolution and yet are not utterly immovable. We should encourage with our exhortations as we would good soldiers to recollect themselves and maintain their honor. He says the wise poet understood that custom was no contemptible instructor on how to bear pain, but the same hero in the poem which Cassius and I are going to skip today complains with more decency though in great pain and he ends the section by saying, and so that soft place in his soul obeys his reason just as an unabashed soldier does his stirring commander.
Cassius: Okay, Joshua, thank you. There couple things. Here is an argument in 21 that we see stated perhaps not explicitly, but it is probably one of the biggest arguments ever made against Epicurean philosophy, and you see it in virtually every discussion of it where Cicero says In the soul of man, there was something naturally soft, low innervated in a manner and language. Were there nothing besides this men would be the greatest of monsters, but there is present to every man reason which presides over and gives laws to all. Now, first thing to say there is Epicurus is the first to say that reason is an extremely important aspect of human life. He says the wise man is going to order his affairs by reason so that in the end, luck and chance and these other outside forces are not able to upset his plans for happy living. So 0.1, Epicurus agrees that reason is critically important, but again, here is an issue that is starkly different between Epicurus and Cicero because Cicero is going to look to reason to find these illogical abstractions and ideals that are given by prime movers and gods and saying that those are the things which we’re ultimately looking to through reason to suppress the emotions, the pains and pleasures of living. Now again, to some extent Epicurus agrees with that, but I think when you look closely at where Cicero is going with this, he totally takes it off of the cliff into saying that pain and pleasure are beneath man, that they’re distractions from the best life of reason and wisdom that we should all be aspiring to. And so when Cicero says that behooves a man then to take care of that reason shall have the command over that part which is bound to practice obedience. I would submit to you that there’s a major difference in application and implication there between the way Cicero is presenting that and the way that Epicurus is saying that, and I’m going to call out Cicero again here for hypocrisy and inconsistency because when he explains the point that he makes, the very next thing he says that those people who do give in to emotion and behave disgracefully, they should be committed to the care of friends and relations because we often see those persons brought to order by shame whom no reason can influence well as usual, Cicero is blurring the distinctions. What’s wrong with shame? The thing that’s wrong with shame is the pain that it gives you to feel shame, that pain that comes from your action that is shameful is why you don’t do it. Epicurus says that over and over again, it’s not that there’s some abstraction called shame versus virtue. There’s the fact that when we do something that causes pain to others, that is going to lead to pain to ourselves that puts us in disrepute. We are going to suffer bad consequences from that and that is why we don’t do it. Cicero doesn’t want to call that to be reasoning. He’s saying that no reason can influence the person who is brought to order by shame. But Epicurus would say absolutely that is what brings the person who makes a mistake into conformity with a principled method of living happily, is to look at the consequences of what you’re doing and make your choices to bring the happiest life. So regardless of Cicero’s references to soldiers and poets and so forth here when he says that the soft place in the soul obeys reason just as an Abba soldier does his stern commander, the reason the Abba soldier obeys his stern commander is the pain that comes from disobeying the point he writes this, I doubt it’s happened, but Cicero is going to be very happy that Cassius and Brutus assassinated Julius Caesar who was essentially their commander. So even in Cicero’s own analysis, it is contextual whether you should obey the command that’s given to you or not. And you don’t just inflexibly say that there’s some abstract reason that’s going to say yes or no. There’s a process of analysis based on the circumstances and pleasure and pain that leads to the best answer for you, but it does not lead to an idealistic or piety or virtue answer because those don’t exist. That’s the directional difference here that is so important to understand between Epicurus and the philosophies that Cicero is advocating.
Joshua: The only thing I really have to add about this section is his view of the soul that there’s a soft and innervated soul, which if that was the only thing we had, we would be monsters. But he says, luckily we have the rational soul and the rational soul has the power to reign in restrain, govern, command, et cetera. The soft part of the soul, Aristotle had considered the soul to have three major divisions between the vegetative or nutritive, the sensitive and the rational with each level sort of building on another kind of like this idea that persisted for a long time into the 20th century about the sort of reptile brain, which I think our friend Don will be very quick to pounce on and say that that has been discredited as a model for understanding the brain. Aristotle’s view is that plants have a vegetative soul which allows them to grow and reproduce, but of course they’re incapable of mobility and they’re incapable of sensation. And then he would say that animals building on the vegetative soul, which they also have in addition to that a higher sensitive soul and it’s the sensitive soul that allows for mobility and sensation and that some animals have this in a greater degree and some of them have it in a smaller degree, humans having their own large portion of it of course, but in the human, the rational soul, which is unique to the human builds on top of the sensitive and the vegetative or nutritive soul, and it is the rational soul that allows for thought, reflection, ethical considerations, philosophy, all of this stuff is part of us. Aristotle thinks that makes us uniquely human. I don’t know if Cicero is adopting this view of things with any degree of clarity and I don’t fully understand if the system I’ve just described maps very closely on the Plato’s own views or the views of neo platonism, but there were a lot of arguments about how we should understand the soul, whether it exists apart from the body or cannot exist apart from the body, whether it precedes the body, whether it survives the death of the body and so on. And this idea of dividing the soul into a number of phases is another aspect of that change. And Cicero is tapping into that at least metaphoric. I dunno if he’s expressing well thought out physical conclusions here, but he’s making the claim that part of us that is capable of reason and practical wisdom and so forth, that part of us can command the part of us that is lazy and selfish and infamous and disgusting and so on. So all of these arguments in the ancient world about how they understood the soul are very interesting. They’re also very complicated. The simplistic overview of what I’ve just given a Aristotle’s thoughts is probably even too simplistic to be very helpful, but it is worth keeping in mind. I think that that argument is going on in the background while we’re talking in this text about his view of the rational over the innervated soul.
Cassius: Okay, Jasper, with that, let’s go into section 22.
Joshua: Yeah, in section 22 he says this, the man then in whom absolute wisdom exists such a man. Indeed we have never as yet seen, but the philosophers have described in their writings what sort of man he will be if he should exist such a man or at least that perfect and absolute reason, which exists in him will have the same authority over the inferior part. As a good parent has over his dutiful children, he will bring it to obey his nod without any trouble or difficulty. He will rouse himself, prepare and arm himself to oppose pain as he would an enemy. If you inquire what arms he will provide himself with, they will be intention, encouragement, discourse with himself. He will say thus to himself, take care that you are guilty of nothing base guit or unmanly, he will turn over in his mind all the different kinds of honor Zeno of Valle will occur to him who suffered everything. Rather than betray his confederates in the design of putting an end to the tyranny, he will reflect on annex acus, the pupil of Democrats who having fallen into the hands of the akan king of Cyprus without the least ENT treaty for mercy or refusal submitted to every kind of torture colonists, the Indian will occur to him an ignorant man in a barbarian born at the foot of Mount caucuses who committed himself to the flames by his own free voluntary act. But if we have the toothache or a pain in the foot or if the body be any ways affected, we cannot bear it for our sentiments of pain as well as pleasure or so trifling and effeminate. We are so enervated and relaxed by the luxuries that we cannot bear the sting of a bee without crying out. But caius a plain country man but of a manly soul when he had an operation performed on him, as I mentioned above at first refused to be tied down and he’s the first instance of anyone’s having had an operation performed on him without being tied down. Why then did others bear it afterwards? Why? From the force of example, you see then that pain exists more in opinion than in nature, and yet the same maus gave a proof that there is something very sharp in pain where he would not submit to have the other thigh cut so that he bore his pain with resolution as a man, but like a reasonable person, he was not willing to undergo any greater pain without some necessary reason. The whole then consists in this that you should have command over yourself. I have already told you what kind of command this is. And by considering what is most consistent with patience, fortitude, and greatness of soul, a man not only restraints himself but somehow or other mitigates even pain itself.
Cassius: Okay, Josh, just a brief comment on that one because it’s just a normal list of Cicero citing great people, but I do find the example of Marius almost amusing, and you have to wonder if Cicero didn’t even mean it that way in citing that Marius submitted to have an operation on one of his thighs and refused even to be tied down because he was such a manly, courageous person and he bore that pain with resolution. But on the other hand, he wasn’t going to get the other thigh operated on the same way because he didn’t want any unnecessary pain. So even Cicero’s own example here gives us an epicurean analysis of pain. If it makes sense to undergo an operation so as to relieve yourself from greater pain in the future, then yes, you’re going to do it. On the other hand, you’re not going to submit to operations that are not necessary because they are painful and you’re not going to submit to unnecessary pain unless it really is necessary for your calculation of how the rest of your life is going to end up. So even here, cicero’s examples are not entirely incompatible with an epicurean viewpoint, but it’s not because of patient’s fortitude and greatness of soul that you do these things. It’s because you have an intelligent appraisal of pain and pleasure that you make your decisions intelligently to undergo pain when it is necessary for the better result. And so as we go into 23, Cicero is going to extend this military example a little bit further. Then he’s going to come back in a few moments to the way a philosopher should approach these things. But let’s first go ahead and read 23.
Joshua: Even as in a battle, the dastardly and timorous soldier throws away his shield on the first appearance of an enemy and runs as fast as he can and on that account loses his life. Sometimes though he has never received even one wound when he who stands, his ground has nothing of the sword happened to him. So they who cannot bear the appearances of pain, throw themselves away and give themselves up to affliction and dismay, but that oppose it often come off more than a match for it, for the body has a certain resemblance to the soul. As burdens are more easily born, the more the body is exerted while they crush us. If we give way sow the soul by exerting itself resists the whole weight that would oppress it. But if it yields, it is so pressed that it cannot support itself. And if we consider things truly, the soul should exert itself in every pursuit for that is the only security for its doing its duty. But this should be principally regarded in pain that we must not do anything timidly or dastardly or basely or slavishly or effeminate and above all things we must dismiss and avoid that filacian sort of outcry. A man is allowed sometimes to groan, but yet seldom. But it is not permissible even in a woman to howl for such a noise as this is forbidden by the 12 tables to be used even at funerals. Nor does a wise or brave man ever groan unless when he exerts himself to give his resolution greater force as they who run in the stadium make as much noise as they can. The wrestlers too do the same when they are training and the boxers, when they aim a blow with the estis at their adversary, give a groan not because they’re in pain or from a sinking of their spirits, but because their whole body is put upon the stretch by the throwing out of these groans and the blow comes the stronger.
Cassius: Joshua, I am woefully ignorant of the way that certain sports are conducted, but it strikes me that what he’s referring to here, I think we see it in the Olympics in certain activities such as throwing the javelin or so forth, people will run and they’ll throw the javelin and they’ll, what is the right word?
Joshua: It is very common in martial arts as well where it’s like something like that.
Cassius: So yes, Joshua, as you’re saying, it’s like martial arts are different gymnastics where you let off a noise or make a sound that is consistent with all the exertion that you’re making. You’re not in any way complaining or it’s not a noise of pain, it’s a noise of intense activity that goes along with what you’re doing. So I don’t think there’s anything much in this 23 that Epicurus would disagree with. That’s just where it says through exercise, through training, through focus, you can be more successful in certain activities even when it does involve pain. And if it does involve pain, there’s no shame, there’s no harm, and in fact, it’s helpful if you will verbalize the intensity of what you’re doing with an appropriate sound. Now, what is not appropriate according to Cicero is giving off these whales such as he references that certain cultures even to this day do in funeral ceremonies and so forth, the wailing and the outcry, Cicero is saying is something that is not permissible and that is almost certainly a cultural thing, but I don’t think there’s anything here that Epic would disagree with. And so we’ll go a little bit further into that with even more interesting examples. In 24,
Joshua: They who would speak louder than ordinary, are they satisfied with working their jaws, sides, or tongues or stretching the common organs of speech and utterance the whole body and every muscle is at full stretch, if I may be allowed the expression, every nerves exerted to assist their voice. I have actually seen the knees of Marcus Antonius touch the ground when he was speaking with vehement for himself with relation to the Varian law. For as the engines you throw stones or darts with throw them out with the greater force, the more they are strained and drawn back. So it is in speaking, running or boxing. The more people strain themselves, the greater their force since therefore, this exertion has so much influence. If in a moment of pain groans help to strengthen the mind, let us use them. But if they be groans of lamentation, if they be the expression of weakness or objectiveness or unmanly weeping, that I should scarcely call him a man who yielded to them. For even supposing that such groaning could give any ease, it still should be considered whether it were consistent with a brave and resolute man. But if it does not ease our pain, why should we debase ourselves to no purpose for what is more unbecoming in a man than to cry like a woman? But this precept, which is laid down with respect to pain is not confined to it. We should apply this exertion of the soul to everything else is anger inflamed is lust, excited. We must have recourse to the same citadel and apply to the same arms. But since it is pain which we are at present discussing, we will let the other subjects alone to bear pain then sedately and calmly. It is of great use to consider with all our soul is the saying is how noble it is to do so. For we are naturally desirous, for we are naturally desirous, as I said before, but it cannot be repeated too often and very much inclined to what is honorable of which if we discover but the least glimpse, there is nothing which we are not prepared to undergo and suffer to attain it from this impulse of our minds, this desire for genuine glory and honorable conduct, it is that such dangers are supported in war and that brave men are not sensible of their wounds in action or if they are sensible of them, preferred death to the departing, but the least step from their honor. The Dei saw the shining swords of their enemies when they were rushing into the battle, but the honorable character and glory of the death which they were seeking made all fear of death of little weight. Do you imagine that Epi das groaned when he perceived that his life was flowing out with his blood? No, for he left his country triumphing over the Las Damians, whereas he had found it in subjection to them. These are the comforts. These are the things that assuage the greatest pain.
Cassius: Okay, Joshua? Once again, I would say that the majority of this is consistent with Epicurus with a very important caveat. We know from Epicurus, his own example what’s recorded that in his last days, even though he was under tremendous pain, we don’t have any record that Epicurus was screaming in pain the entire time we have record. Instead that he was dealing with his pain and thinking about how he was in fact living a happy life despite the pain that he was under at that time, which he said could not be greater. While Epicurus did say that the wise man will cry out while on the rack, I don’t think that’s necessarily a general endorsement of screaming. Every time you stub your toe, Epicurus is going to apply the same test, which he applies to everything else. What will happen to me if I do this versus what will happen to me if I don’t? If crying out is useful, as Cicero is talking about here as it is useful when you’re trying to do something with intensity, then he’s going to do it. If it’s not useful, if it just increases his own pain, if it increases his pain and realizing that the people around him are going to be affected by his screaming, then he’s not going to do it. Epicurus is going to apply a practical test about whether to give off sounds when you’re in pain or not. And the key to the difference is the section where Cicero says to bear pain, then sedately and calmly. It is of great use to consider with all our soul as the saying is how noble it is to do so for we are naturally desirous, as I said before, but it cannot be too often repeated that we are very much inclined to do what is honorable of which if we discover but the least glimpse, there’s nothing we’re not prepared to undergo and suffer to attain it. Well, in the epicurean perspective, there’s nothing that we’re not prepared to undergo and suffer to attain a happy life, but we are not willing to undergo and suffer all sorts of torments and stupid results. That would be like the example Cicero gave previously of having an operation in one thigh and saying, give me another one, doctor. I enjoyed it so much. That would be ridiculous to do. Epicurus is saying, we are going to endure pain, we are going to vocalize it when appropriate, when it makes sense to do so for the greater goal of living a happy life. It always comes back to this, what is the ultimate goal? Epicurus is saying the ultimate goal is living a happy life. Cicero is hiding the ball, playing a shell game with you and saying that what you should do is be noble and be honorable. And that if we can even glimpse this honor and virtue that Cicero was talking about, we should be prepared to undergo anything, not in exchange for a happy living, but in exchange for nobility and honor and virtue. That’s what Cicero was saying, and people might think that this c Cicero 2000 years ago, we don’t think like that anymore, but we do think like that when we talk about being a good person as opposed to using a more practical analysis for how to live our lives. When we start talking about being a good person for the greater good of something else, for the greater good of society. When we disassemble about what our goal really is, we go down the same path that Cicero goes down. The path of Epicurus is totally distinct and that path is to live a happy life, which we judge by the pleasure and pain that we experience when we’re doing it. We’re not pursuing some fictitious abstract goal of virtue and honor as the way we judge our actions. Joshua, one more thing about section 24 at the end. Cicero gives the example of Menon and says that, do you suppose that epi Menon groan when he perceived that he was dying? He did not. Cicero says because he left his country in triumph over the lack of damians, whereas before he started his campaigns, they were in subjection to the lack of Damians. Cicero says, these are the comforts, these are the things that assuages the greatest pain. I would say that applies directly to Epicurus. Epicurus saw and knew at the end of his life that he was leaving his friends and the people who followed his philosophy in a position to triumph over the false philosophies and religions of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and all the rest. And so he was happy at the recollection of his dealings with his school. Those things gave him comfort even though he was in the sharpest of pain from kidney disease and that analogy, I don’t think there’s any significant difference between kidney disease versus being wounded in battle. You’re in tremendous pain, but you take comfort in the accomplishments of your life and the value that they’ve given to you in terms of pleasure and the happiness that it therefore brings to you despite the pain that you’re in. So even Cicero’s example here I think is totally reconciliable with an epicurean point of view, but Es was not happy or satisfied because he was noble. Ez was happy or satisfied because he had won a war over the lack of Damians and left his friends in his society in a much better position than they were when he came to power. So again, that’s the way it appears to me that Epicurus is suggesting we analyze things. Okay, we’ve just about come to the end of the episode for today. Any final thoughts on this episode, Joshua?
Joshua: Yeah, Cassius, your description of this feeling of epicure is dying and leaving because he knows he’s not unhappy to be dying at that moment. In part because he knows that he is leaving behind his friends who will have each other and who will mourn him and who will carry on the legacy that he spent his whole life building, building this school of philosophy. And it did continue for centuries after. It reminded me of this horrible tragedy that happened in the 12th century in the English Channel. It was the 25th of November in the year 1120, and in this tragedy, the Anglo Norman aristocracy had traveled to France to engage in some diplomacy. And now on the return journey back across the channel to England, there were several ships and most of the court traveled with the King Henry the first, but a number of the younger people including the Crown Prince boarded a smaller, newer, faster vessel called the white ship. And as the fleet departed, they stayed in the harbor and inaugurated a party boat essentially, and they spent most of the night drinking. And then they thought, because it’s such a fast ship, wouldn’t it be funny if we could beat the rest of them home? And so he gave orders to the prince, gave orders to fly out of the harbor and shoot across the channel, and they shot straight into a rock right off the coast and sunk. And I think the only person to survive was a French butcher or something. And in this book I read recently by David Mitchell called Unruly, the ridiculous history of England’s kings and queens. He talks about the effect that the death of the young prince had on the king and the effect that the loss of this whole generation of young aristocracy had on European government and so on. And there’s a very excellent passage in his book on this and it goes this way. He writes, William Adeline was obviously Henry the first favorite son, but he also personified his father’s strategy for the future. A prince named after the conqueror, but given the old Anglo-Saxon heirs que to signify his descent through his mother Queen Matilda of Scotland from the House of Wessex, he was to unite Normandy in England in one royal house under one rightful king. He gave all of Henry’s prudent brutality, his administrative reforms, his building of an aristocracy he could trust and who trusted him in award his struggle, a reason and point the Prince’s death was more than the tragic death of his son. It was also Henry’s death. And it said that King Henry the first never smiled again after he heard the news of the white ship. Well, that was a bit of a tangent, but I do think it’s relevant to what we’re talking about, particularly when we’re presented with apparently these two competing options, which is either things go well for you up until you die, and then you can die happily and die without tremendous suffering from your pain or things go horribly in which case you are exposed to greater fear when you die. I think that the story of this disaster bears fruitful comparison with the way that Lucretius chooses to end his poem with this horrible account of the plague in Athens. As we’ve mentioned about this episode in Lucius’s poem recently, there are also several different interpretations as to how we should read this part of his poem and what we should look for in it and what we should take away from it. And I think as we’ve said many times recently, even and as you and I Cassius both agree, Emily Austin has hit upon an interesting solution to this problem by going back to Ities and his account of the plague and by seeing where Lucious mind was going, even if he didn’t finish the poem explicitly that way, and that is that when you have tragedy on this level, you can look at it and say that this is symbolic of the futility of all human endeavor or whatever. Or you can look at it and say, look, this tragedy is affecting the pious and the imp, pious, the rich and the poor, powerful in the weak. It’s affecting everybody equally. And in that sense it is kind of an equalizer and that what we should do now is we should say, how can we build for ourselves a life where we are focused not as Cicero would have this focus on things like glory and credit and praise and reputation and so on. How can we focus on a life that is most deeply satisfying for us, for the people who are on the ground, for the people who are living it, while so many around them are losing it and the direction they go in is clearly all this praying to the gods isn’t working. So how about we rethink our view of this idea of divine intercession and of the supernatural in general and of the idea of life after death and instead of focusing on those things, instead of waiting around for the gods to save us, why don’t we employ our philosophy here and why don’t we stop focusing on the next life which isn’t promised to us, and instead focus on this life. Why don’t we stop restricting ourselves on the basis of what some people want us to do or some people want us to say and instead live a life that brings us pleasure and satisfaction. I think that’s the answer to the question here, and I think that Cicero is getting close to it, but he’s not ever going to state it as clearly as I’ve just stated it, because he doesn’t want to see a society that isn’t in fear of the gods, that isn’t hoping for life after death or that isn’t focused on virtue and duty and obedience over leisure and choice and human satisfaction.
Cassius: Yeah. Joshua, we are faced in life with deciding before we are on our deathbed, what is it that really makes us happy in life? Is it going to be a matter of being noble and virtuous in the abstract or is there going to be something concrete that we can look back on, we can be satisfied with and be confident in our own analysis of our lives, which is the only analysis that really makes any difference in the end. There are many different ways to do that. There is the epi way of being a general and thinking that his happiness is tied up with the happiness of his city state and realizing that even though he was dying from a battle that he had brought his country victory over the lack of demons and left them in a much better place than they were. That is one way of deriving happiness from your life. It is not altogether different from what Epicurus did in starting a school of philosophy, interacting with his students and his friends and writing all these books and going on a philosophical campaign against the errors that were causing so much pain and trouble for the people around him, and to look back at the end of his life and realize that despite the fact that he’s in tremendous pain at that moment from kidney disease, he is truly happy because of what he’s accomplished. The examples of Imanis and Epicurus are consistent in the people involved getting tremendous emotional satisfaction, which means pleasure from their activities of their life. You can contrast that with what is preserved about the final days of Brutus after the Battle of Philippi when he says something to the effect that virtue. Now I see you were put a name, this claim of Cicero and the others that virtue honor glory are in themselves. A goal worth living for is ridiculous. That’s what the Athenians realized who survived the plague, is that they needed to live their lives realizing that life is short and that they need to be happy in the time that they have. Sometimes you have to be happy by being a general on the battlefield. Sometimes you have to be happy by running a philosophical school, but the achievement of looking back on your life and seeing the pleasures that you’ve experienced and the accomplishments that you have made is tremendously pleasurable. In contrast to the King of England, who, because of the imprudent decisions of his chosen heir, sees all of his plans basically dashed on the rocks and drowned in the English channel. We’re not just talking about cake, cookies, and wine and the immediate pleasures of the moment. We’re talking about the long-term and mental pleasures that you can get from your life when you realize that what you’re doing is successfully opposing pain, promoting pleasure, and leading to a better result For those people, like Ric just talks about the hearts and darkness of all the people who are wandering around doing stupid things, living wasted lives because they don’t understand the way things really are. If a curing philosophy brings a description and an explanation of the way things really are and gives us an anchor and a guide by which we can live more successfully, which means happier, and that happiness is based on nature through pleasure and pain, and not through idealistic abstractions that do not exist. Okay. With that, we have probably one more episode next week on the remainder of part two, after which we’ll turn to part three of Tuscan. That’s all the time we have for this week. As always, we invite you to drop by the epicurean friends.com forum and discuss this and any of our other episodes or issues regarding Epicurus with us. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back next week. See you then. Bye.