Episode 288 - TD18 - Tusculan Disputations Part 3 - "Will The Wise Man Feel Grief Or Other Strong Emotions?"
Date: 06/25/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4518-episode-288-td18-tusculan-disputations-part-3-will-the-wise-man-feel-grief-or-ot/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”This episode begins the reading and discussion of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations Book Three, which addresses grief and the perturbations of the mind (sections 1–8). After two books on the fear of death and the endurance of bodily pain, Cicero now turns to mental and emotional pain.
Cassius introduces Cicero’s preliminary remarks: people typically focus far more on bodily illness than on the disorders of the mind, yet mental disorders are frequently more consequential. Cicero notes that the seeds of virtue are natural to us but that we are perverted almost from birth — “we suck in error with our nurse’s milk” — and that poets and cultural commentators are a primary source of this perversion, enlisting the arts to promote false views of the goal of life. Cicero also identifies philosophy as “the medicine of the soul.”
In section 4, the dialogue begins with the student declaring that a wise man is subject to grief, and Cicero broadening the question to all perturbations of the mind — pathe in Greek, which some philosophers (Stoics and Platonists) classified as morbus (diseases). Cicero objects to the disease metaphor and prefers the Latin perturbatio, arguing that it better captures movement away from a norm without necessarily implying a permanent pathological state. Joshua notes that in Epicurus, pathe includes both pleasure and pain — a fundamentally different usage from the other schools.
Sections 5–6 explore the Latin vocabulary for madness. Cicero distinguishes furor (raving, an acute and temporary state) from insania (unsoundness of mind, a permanent condition), citing the Twelve Tables as using furiosus to disqualify someone from managing their own affairs. He quotes Crantor of the Old Academy against the Stoic ideal of total insensibility: “I would choose never to be ill, but should I be so still, I would choose to retain my sensation whether there was to be an amputation or any other separation of anything from my body, for insensibility cannot be but at the expense of some unnatural ferocity of mind or stupor of body.”
Section 7 presents the Stoic syllogism: a man of courage is full of faith; whoever is subject to grief is subject to fear; fear is inconsistent with courage; therefore grief cannot befall the wise man. Cassius critiques this as circular word-gaming — defining the wise man as one who by definition cannot experience grief — rather than any engagement with the realities of human experience. He cites Diogenes Laertius’s report that the Epicurean wise man will feel his emotions more deeply than other men, not less.
Section 8 turns to the etymology of frugalitas (frugality) and the Greek sophrosyne (temperance/moderation), arguing that the Latin term encompasses all four cardinal virtues and that the chain frugal → temperate → quiet → free from perturbation → free from grief demonstrates the wise man’s freedom from sorrow. The Piso family’s cognomen Frugi is used as an illustration of how a word of praise can carry expansive moral content. Cassius responds that this is precisely the kind of word-gaming that Stoicism specializes in — logically self-consistent but defined at every step in ways that exclude large portions of reality.
Joshua adds two asides: the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum (likely owned by Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Caesar’s father-in-law) contained a philosophical library composed primarily of works by Philodemus, which is relevant to why Cicero mentions the Piso family; and Cicero’s lifelong project of cultivating Latin literature, illustrated by his praise of Lucretius in a letter to his brother Quintus even while rejecting the Epicurean philosophy.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 288 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things — the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. This week we’re continuing in our series covering Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations from an Epicurean viewpoint. This series addresses many of the great questions of human life about death, pain, fear, joy, and virtue, with Cicero speaking for the majority of Greek and Roman philosophy while Epicurus is held up as the main opponent. Today we begin part three, which addresses grief or pain of mind.
We’ll first comment on some of the general points that Cicero raises and then we’ll begin reading at section four. But before we get to section four, just a couple of comments about the preliminary statements that Cicero makes as usual in these sections. Before he gets to the question-and-answer period, he makes some general observations, and the ones that we have with us today are fairly non-controversial — probably something that most everyone would agree with. But it is interesting to see a couple of themes treated which are common to Epicurus and other philosophies, such as the fact that people are generally much more concerned about dealing with pain of the body than they are concerned about dealing with pain and disorders of the mind. But of course, as Cicero points out, the pain and disorders of the mind are frequently much more important and significant to us than those of the body. The body itself cannot remain healthy if the mind does not. So of course it’s critical to understand and be able to deal with disorders of the body.
Of course, when Cicero talks about disorders of the mind, he’s going to go straight to a discussion of virtue, and that’s going to be a big problem for reconciling him with what Epicurus has to say. But even when he talks about virtue, he can make a point that is similar to that of Epicurus, because also in paragraph one of this section he makes the point that the seeds of the virtues are natural to our constitution, but as soon as we’re born and received in the world, we are instantly familiarized with all kinds of depravity and perversity of opinion, so that we may be said almost to suck in error with our nurse’s milk. That’s a very similar comment to what Epicurus has to say about how people are perverted after birth and no longer hear the calling of nature as to pleasure and pain like they did before they were perverted, and how this perversion is something that has to be dealt with.
The next point Cicero makes is what is one of the great sources of this perversion. It’s the poets — by which term I think we can include basically much of the cultural commentary that we get in our societies, especially those who enlist art in many kinds to stimulate or motivate people. These poets and artists are frequently totally confused, according to Cicero, about the true goal of life and the nature of virtue. And so we have to be on particular lookout against the perversions that come from them. And again, of course, what Cicero always says is that in pursuit of virtue you should be pursuing glory, for glory is a real and expressed substance, not a mere shadow. It consists in the united praise of good men and the free voice of those who form a true judgment of preeminent virtue. So again, Cicero always goes back to appealing to what the great men of the past have to say about greatness — as if you could immediately figure out who the great men of the past are simply by listening to Cicero designate them.
As such, by the time Cicero gets into section three, he returns to the theme that disorders of the mind are worse than those of the body, and that while the mind can minister to the body, the body is not intelligent and doesn’t have the ability to minister to the mind in reverse. So making sure your mind is operating properly is of particular importance. As Cicero says, philosophy is certainly the medicine of the soul. And with that, Cicero comes to the beginning of section four, where — after dealing with death in section one, pain of the body in section two — he is now going to be dealing with perturbations or disturbances of the mind.
Joshua: I see in the very last paragraph here in section three, Cassius, he says this: “We came down into the Academy when the day was already declining towards afternoon, and I asked one of those who were present to propose a subject for us to discourse on, and then the business was carried on in this manner.” And then we’re going to get into the dialogue part of this. The reference to the Academy is interesting — he’s not referring to Plato’s Academy in its grove outside of Athens. He has devoted a portion of his land at his villa in Tusculum and turned that into his own little private academy. So I think that’s interesting, and it just shows once again that his home port in philosophy is the Academy of Plato and his successors. It is not Stoicism. I know we’ve been hammering this home a lot as we’ve gone through Cicero’s works. This is just one more consideration in favor of that point of view.
Cassius: Yes, indeed. It seems like they’re all — except for Epicurus — fighting over the legacy of Plato, and even though some of them follow him more closely than others, everybody seems to accept, as Cicero will mention here as he goes further, that Socrates and Plato are just the leading lights of Greek and Roman philosophy that everybody must look up to. So as we get into section four, we’re going to be coming back to a similar way of asking this question as we dealt with on death and as we dealt with on pain of the body. And that question is: is the wise man subject to grief or not? And it’s going to be very important to understand why they put the question in that format. We’ll discuss that after we read section four.
Kalosyni: My opinion is that a wise man is subject to grief.
Joshua: What? And to the other perturbations of mind — as fears, lusts, and anger — for these are pretty much like what the Greeks call pathe, or feelings. I might call them diseases, and that would be a literal translation, but it is not agreeable to our way of speaking. For envy, delight, and pleasure are all called by the Greeks diseases, being affections of the mind, not insubordination to reason. But we, I think, are right in calling the same motions of a disturbed soul perturbations, and in very seldom using the term diseases, though perhaps it appears otherwise to you.
Kalosyni: I am of your opinion.
Joshua: And do you think a wise man subject to these?
Kalosyni: Entirely, I think.
Joshua: Then that boasted wisdom is but of small account if it differs so little from madness.
Kalosyni: What — does every commotion of the mind seem to you to be a madness?
Joshua: Not to me only, but I apprehend — though I have often been surprised at it — that it appeared so to our ancestors, many ages before Socrates, from whom is derived all that philosophy which relates to life and morals.
Kalosyni: How so?
Joshua: Because the name madness implies a sickness of the mind and a disease — that is to say an unsoundness and unhealthiness of mind — which they call madness. But the philosophers call all perturbations of the soul diseases, and their opinion is that no fool is ever free from these but all that are diseased are unsound, and the minds of all fools are diseased. Therefore all fools are mad — for they held that soundness of the mind depends on a certain tranquility and steadiness, and a mind which was destitute of these qualities they called insane, because soundness was inconsistent with a perturbed mind just as much as with a disordered body.
Cassius: Okay, thanks for reading that. This is a fairly interesting point that Cicero is getting at here, and it strikes me that there are a couple of different ways to deal with it. But of course we often associate the word pathe with pathology, and I think we can kind of appreciate where Cicero is coming from — that sounds awfully like we’re talking about a disease. What Cicero is saying here, however, is that it’s better to look at this as — unfortunately a word that we don’t use very much in the English language — a perturbation: a disruption, or something that is an indication of a movement away from a norm without necessarily being a disease. So we haven’t gotten very far into the discussion yet, but Cicero is making the point that at least some of the Greek philosophers were considering emotions — including joy, delight, other aspects of pleasure — to be diseases. And Cicero is objecting to that, to which I personally would object as well. But the subtleties of the Greek language are difficult for us to deal with nowadays. I don’t know whether Cicero is right or wrong, but Cicero was living back in a time when this ancient Greek was still being spoken. He was associating with Greeks, he was being taught by Greek teachers, and I would give Cicero’s interpretation of a word issue like that a fairly good bit of weight. What do you think, Joshua?
Joshua: If you go to the entry for this word in the dictionary under ancient Greek, there are two entries. The first one is pathe and it says, in a neutral sense, “what is done or what happens to a person”; in a negative sense, “suffering or misfortune.” And then the second entry says that pathe is the nominative, accusative, or vocative plural of pathos, and if you click through to pathos, that is: pain, suffering, death, misfortune, calamity, disaster, misery, disease, any strong feeling, passion or emotion, any condition or state, an incident or a modification of words. So there are different meanings for this word and there are shades of meanings even among those. So I think his use is well within bounds — I won’t criticize him for it, obviously.
It does set up an interesting contrast to the way Epicurus uses the word. He uses it to refer to pleasure, which he considers not at all to be a disease. He also uses it for pain. So with Epicurus we have both extremes included under this one word pathe. Cicero here is really only using it, it seems, in the negative — to refer to pain, suffering, and disease.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, we’ll move on and come back to this issue. It’s definitely one that deserves its own thread on our forum and a deep discussion of the implications of all this. But clearly Epicurus does not consider pleasure to be a bad thing, and to the extent that pleasure is sometimes used under this category of pathe, there are definitely implications involved as to whether the category as a whole should have negative connotations or not. And you’d have to think that there’s therefore a major difference of interpretation going on here between Epicurus and the other philosophers.
As we go forward here into the next section, I think we’re going to see why this ends up being so important, because as usual with the Stoics — and to the extent that they are just mirroring Plato and Socrates — it’s deeply embedded in Greek philosophy that if pleasure is a negative concept, then it needs to be eliminated. It’s not something to be valued and experienced, but something that is a disorder — in the sense of a disease of the soul. And maybe the Greeks had a different way of looking at diseases than I do, but diseases are certainly things in my mind that you are looking to suppress or get rid of entirely, to isolate yourself from and destroy if possible. And definitely that is not Epicurus’s view of pleasure.
But let’s go further into section five, and we’ll begin to see Cicero repeat for us once again how important it is to some people — meaning the Stoics and others — to classify pleasure and other emotions as diseases to be eliminated from our lives. This whole question has been phrased in that way. In fact, the student has asked it in terms of whether the wise man is subject to grief or not, whether the wise man will experience grief. And of course what Cicero has simply done — legitimately, I think — is to say that let’s not just consider grief, let’s consider all strong emotions, whether it be pain or delight or pleasure, and consider whether those should be thought of as diseases to be eliminated, or in the case of pleasure, something to be pursued.
Joshua: I am looking here at the Latin text in the Loeb edition that’s on Archive.org, and I see that the word that Cicero uses in Latin is morbus. This is the word that is being translated as disease, and that is certainly what the dictionary definition of morbus is: a disease, illness, malady, sickness, disorder, distemper, or ailment of the body or of the mind. But it can also mean a fault, a vice or a failing, or sorrow, grief or distress — or of course, as with words like “morbid,” it can just relate to death. So it seems very strange to hear this word applied to the feeling of pleasure, but that’s where we are with Cicero. The words that he is using are all expressed in negative terms dealing with disease and sickness. And as I glance ahead, we’re going to keep lingering on this theme going forward throughout the day.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, and of course I don’t think we should limit the concern here to Cicero. I think Cicero is probably accurately portraying what Plato, Socrates, and many of these other non-Epicurean philosophers are saying, which is why to a large degree so much bitterness arose between the schools about the meaning of pleasure and whether it should be considered to be something that’s a good thing and a goal or a terrible thing to be avoided at all costs. And the very last thing that you read, Josh, was Cicero concluded by saying basically that these philosophers whom Cicero is citing held that soundness of mind depends upon tranquility and steadiness, and a mind which is destitute of these qualities they call insane — because soundness was inconsistent with a perturbed mind just as much as with a disordered body. And when he says “perturbed mind,” he’s talking about any kind of strong emotion — good or bad, from our point of view. Joy, delight, happiness — any kind of strong emotion is implicitly being considered here as a perturbation, which is just as much inconsistent with a sound mind as it is with a disordered body.
So there’s an awful lot at stake here in all of this discussion. This is a good reason to be going through this. We think that the Stoics — they’re all after happiness, just like we are. All the Greeks were after happiness. But that’s not where these philosophies were going, and Epicurus was revolting against that. And as we go through these next sections, as you said, we’ll see Cicero referring to the Stoics and hammering these points home, setting up the argument against Epicurus. So now section five.
Joshua: Nor were the philosophers less ingenious in calling the state of the soul devoid of the light of the mind a being out of one’s mind, a being beside oneself. From which we may understand that they who gave these names to things were of the same opinion with Socrates — that all silly people were unsound — which the Stoics have carefully preserved as being derived from him. For whatever mind is distempered, and as I just now said, the philosophers call all perturbed motions of the mind, is no more sound than a body is when in a fit of sickness. Hence it is that wisdom is the soundness of the mind; folly, a sort of un-soundness — which is insanity, or a being out of one’s mind. And these are much better expressed by the Latin words than the Greek, which you will find the case also in many other topics, but we will discuss that point elsewhere.
Let us now attend to our present subject. The very meaning of the word describes the whole thing about which we are inquiring, both as to its substance and character — for we must necessarily understand by “sound” those whose minds are under no perturbation from any motion, as if it were a disease. They who are differently affected we must necessarily call unsound. So that nothing is better than what is usual in Latin — to say that they who are run away with by their lust or anger have quitted the command over themselves. Though anger includes lust, for anger is defined to be the lust of revenge. They then who are said not to be masters of themselves are said to be so because they are not under the government of reason, to which is assigned by nature the power over the whole soul.
Why the Greeks should call this mania, I do not easily apprehend, but we define it much better than they — for we distinguish this madness, or insania, which being allied to folly is more extensive, from what we call furor or raving. The Greeks indeed would do so too, but they have no one word that will express what we call furor. They call it melancholia, as if the reason were affected only by a black bile and not disturbed as often by a violent rage or fear or grief. Thus we say that Athamas, Alcmaeon, Ajax, and Orestes were raving — in Latin furere — because the person affected in this manner was not allowed by the Twelve Tables to have the management of his own affairs. Therefore the words are not “if he is mad” (insanus), but “if he begins to be raving” (furiosus) — for they looked upon madness to be an unsettled humor that proceeded from not being of sound mind, yet such a person might perform his ordinary duties and discharge the usual and customary requirements of life. But they considered one that was raving as afflicted with a total blindness of the mind, which notwithstanding it is allowed to be greater than madness, is nevertheless of such a nature that a wise man may be subject to raving but cannot possibly be afflicted by insanity. But this is another question. Let us now return to our original subject.
Cassius: Okay, thanks Joshua. Just as Cicero says, he’s gone off on several tangents here in this paragraph, some of which are of interest. But the part that I think I would emphasize is that Cicero is stressing for us an important aspect of this whole issue of perturbations. And this kind of paragraph is why I think there is so much emphasis in the world of philosophy on tranquility as being the goal of Epicurus, as opposed to pleasure. Because every other philosopher, as Cicero is citing here, is using tranquility in the sense that you have no perturbations of your mind — you have nothing that will deviate you from just an absolutely calm, reasoned approach to everything. And while that may sometimes be appropriate, it is not always going to be appropriate in Epicurus’s mind, because joy, delight, other types of pleasures of motion — these guys are going to consider to be perturbations, when Epicurus is going to consider them to be the key to life, the goal of life, the faculties that tell us what direction to go in life as opposed to what directions to avoid.
So as to this, I would just emphasize that there’s a really important issue here. Do we want to become the equivalent of a Mr. Spock — pure reason without any emotion whatsoever? Are we trying to eliminate emotion from our lives as Cicero and the Stoics are claiming is the best path forward? Or as Diogenes Laertius tells us about Epicurus — is the wise man going to feel his emotions more deeply than other men do, and that feeling of your emotions is not a hindrance to being wise? This is a huge divergence of opinion that’s really important to understand.
Joshua: Okay, let’s review the words we’re using here. So he cited the Greek word pathe, which we usually talk about on this podcast and on the forum to mean feelings, as in the feelings of pleasure and pain. He is using pathe — and to some extent the Greeks use pathe — as synonymous with disease. Cicero says that he prefers the Latin word perturbatio, which we see here translated as “perturbed.” And we’re also dealing with this distinction that he’s trying to draw between furor and insania — or what he calls “raving” and “insanity” or “soundness.” And he says that a wise man at the end here may be subject to furor or raving but cannot possibly be afflicted by insania. And he makes mention of the laws of the Twelve Tables, which was a law code formally promulgated according to Wikipedia in 449 BC, which consolidated earlier traditions into an enduring set of law.
And he says, according to the law of the Twelve Tables, someone who is raving cannot be trusted with the management of their own affairs. And then we get the first sense of where we’re going here, which is he brings up this Greek word melancholia — melancholy or “black bile” — one of the four humors in classical medicine along with blood, phlegm, and yellow bile. And in line with speaking of disease, it is the balance between these four humors that determines whether you are in good health, and if you have an excess of one, that will come out in your behavior or personality. And they also had this idea that some of them were hot, some were dry, some were cold, some were wet. And so if you had a cold and wet disease, the treatment would have to be hot and dry to balance it out. Again, a very elaborate system which Cicero is touching on here.
But to me the most interesting thing he says in this section is something he says throughout his works — which is he’s very irritated with Lucretius for complaining about the poverty of the Latin language. And in the very opening part of the first book of De Finibus, he complains about the fact that his fellow countrymen, these other Romans, when they want to study philosophy, they only ever study it in Greek, and he’s trying to cultivate — through this work and all of his works — a native Roman Latin literature. And he’s finding that there is a serious cultural headwind against him in this, and that even the people who came before him — as to some extent Lucretius did — he’s saying that even though they translated Greek works into Latin or they expressed Greek philosophy in Latin or they retold Greek stories in Latin, even as they were doing it, they were complaining that it was difficult to express these ideas in Latin.
And Cicero thinks this idea is ridiculous. He says not only is Latin not an impoverished language, but actually when it comes to some subjects — or as he says here, many other topics including the one we’re talking about — he says that the ideas we’re talking about are much better expressed by the Latin words than the Greek. So this has very little to do with philosophy, but this is something that is very important to Cicero, very important to his project here — this lifelong project of cultivating a domestic literature. And we have seen this come up again and again in his works.
Cassius: And so Cicero then acknowledges that he’s off on a tangent and tries to get back on track in section six.
Joshua: That’s right. In section six he says this — “I think you said that it was your opinion that a wise man was liable to grief.”
Kalosyni: And so indeed, I think.
Joshua: It is natural enough to think so, for we are not the offspring of flints, but we have by nature something soft and tender in our souls, which may be put into a violent motion by grief as by a storm. Nor did that Crantor, who was one of the most distinguished men that our Academy has ever produced, say this amiss: “I am by no means of their opinion who talk so much in praise of — I know not what — insensibility, which neither can exist nor ought to exist. I would choose,” says he, “never to be ill, but should I be so still, I should choose to retain my sensation whether there was to be an amputation or any other separation of anything from my body, for that insensibility cannot be but at the expense of some unnatural ferocity of mind or stupor of body.” And then Cicero says, “But let us consider whether to talk in this manner be not allowing that we are weak and yielding to our softness. Notwithstanding, let us be hardy enough not only to lop off every arm of our miseries, but even to pluck up every fiber of their roots. Yet still something perhaps may be left behind, so deep does folly strike its roots. But whatever may be left, it will be no more than is necessary. But let us be persuaded of this: that unless the mind be in the sound state, which philosophy alone can affect, there can be no end of our miseries. Wherefore, as we begun, let us submit ourselves to it for a cure — we shall be cured if we choose to be. I shall advance something further. I shall not treat of grief alone, though that indeed is the principal thing, but as I originally proposed, of every perturbation of the mind — as I termed it, disorder as the Greeks call it — and first, with your leave, I shall treat it in the manner of the Stoics, whose method is to reduce their argument into a very small space. Afterwards, I shall enlarge more in my own way.”
Cassius: Okay, Joshua, thanks. Now Cicero says there that he’s going to tell us about the Stoic position and then enlarge it in terms of his own views. But here in this section he’s done the same thing — he has introduced this by citing Crantor, who Wikipedia says was a member of the Old Academy, the first person to start writing commentaries on Plato. So again, this shows that Cicero’s heart is in the Socratic-Platonic school and not with the Stoics. And in fact this quotation from Crantor makes the same point: “I am by no means of the opinion of those who talk so much in praise of — I know not what — insensibility, which neither can exist nor ought to exist. I would choose never to be ill, but should I be so still, I would choose to retain my sensation whether there was an amputation or any other separation of anything from the body, for insensibility cannot be but at the expense of some unnatural ferocity of mind or stupor of body.” And to a large degree I think Epicurus would agree with that Academic criticism of the direction that the Stoics eventually went in — that you’re going to try to totally become Mr. Spock and totally rise above any kind of emotions or perturbations whatsoever. So Cicero’s planting in our minds that he doesn’t go nearly as far as the Stoics do. But in terms of explaining to us the philosophical positions, the first one he’s going to explain — before he gets to Epicurus — is going to be the Stoic position.
Joshua: So as we move into section seven, it looks like Cicero is going to start using a more Stoic argument here than he is accustomed to using. This is what he says: “A man of courage is also full of faith — I do not use the word confident because, owing to an erroneous custom of speaking, that word has come to be used in a bad sense, though it is derived from ‘confiding,’ which is commendable. But he who is full of faith is certainly under no fear, for there is an inconsistency between faith and fear. Now, whoever is subject to grief is subject to fear, for whatever things we grieve at when present, we dread when hanging over us and approaching. Thus it comes about that grief is inconsistent with courage. It is very probable therefore that whoever is subject to grief is also liable to fear and to a broken kind of spirit and sinking. Now, whenever these befall a man, he is in a servile state and must own that he is overpowered. For whoever admits these feelings must admit timidity and cowardice. But these cannot enter into the mind of a man of courage. Neither therefore can grief. But the man of courage is the only wise man. Therefore grief cannot befall the wise man.
It is besides necessary that whoever is brave should be a man of great soul, that whoever is a man of a great soul should be invincible, that whoever is invincible looks down with contempt on all things here and considers them beneath him. But no one can despise those things on account of which he may be affected with grief. From hence it follows that a wise man is never affected with grief. Or: all wise men are brave. Therefore a wise man is not subject to grief.
And as the eye when disordered is not in a good condition for performing its office properly, and as the other parts and the whole body itself when unsettled cannot perform their office and business, so the mind when disordered is but ill fitted to perform its duty. The office of the mind is to use its reason well. But the mind of a wise man is always in condition to make the best use of his reason, and therefore is never out of order. But grief is a disorder of the mind. Therefore a wise man will be always free from it.”
Cassius: Joshua, I think that Cicero has done a very good job here of presenting not only the method of the Stoics in terms of presenting things in a very syllogistic type of manner, but I would interpret most of all of this — maybe all of it — as Stoicism: as the heart of Stoicism, as what Cicero has been criticizing previously. They’re trying to say that you can be isolated and insulated from grief by simply being a wise man, because by definition the wise man is never affected with grief. And if you like to flatter yourself that you’re a wise man, if you like to study philosophy and you do in fact devote all sorts of time and effort to learning the nature of things and so forth and you become wise — then you can know by the very fact that you are wise that you will never, ever thereafter be subject to grief.
And I think that’s just an absolutely ridiculous argument that falls on its face as obviously untrue. Using Cicero himself as an example of someone who suffered great grief from the loss of his daughter, from his exile from politics — just as all of us suffer great grief and emotional upset. Just as Epicurus himself was no doubt in great pain because of his condition as he was about to die — you can be the wisest man who’s ever lived and you are still going to have times when your mind is affected by grief, if not from anything else, just from the death of your loved ones, the death of your friends — all sorts of things in life that cannot help but cause tremendous upset in someone’s mind.
This is the point that Diogenes Laertius records as being so different with Epicurus, because Epicurus says that the wise man will feel these emotions more deeply than other men will — not going to feel them just at the same level as other men do, but more deeply than other men do. And yet this is no hindrance to his wisdom. I would equate this with happiness as well in the sense that Epicurus acknowledges that in his own case he was happy on his last day even though he was in great physical pain. So happiness does not exclude pain of body or of mind in the same way. Wisdom does not mean that you’re not going to suffer occasional periods of grief. You can minimize the grief, you can deal with the grief by understanding philosophically the reasons for the way things are. But just because you’re wise does not mean you’re not going to feel grief.
But that’s exactly the direction that the Stoics want to teach people to go — want to try to persuade people to accept — again the Spock mentality: no matter what happens, never bend your lip, never admit any emotion whatsoever. And as Crantor was saying in the last section, that kind of insensibility must be at the expense of an unnatural ferocity of mind or stupor of the body. And if we’re taking nature as our standard as Epicurus is doing, we’re not going to assert or strive for any kind of a standard or any kind of a way of conduct which is unnatural in that way. So again, in this section, Cicero hasn’t stated his own position, but I interpret this as pure Stoicism — and I interpret this as pure B.S.
Joshua: Well, let’s move forward into section eight and see where he’s going with all of this. He continues on with the argument he was making. He says: “And from these considerations we may get at a very probable definition of the temperate man, whom the Greeks called sophron, and they called that virtue sophrosyne, which I at one time called temperance, at another time moderation, and sometimes even modesty. But I do not know whether that virtue may be properly called frugality, which has a more confined meaning with the Greeks — for they call frugal men chrēsimon, which implies only that they are useful. But our name has a more extensive meaning — for all abstinence, all continence, which the Greeks have no ordinary name for, though they might use the words apochē or enkrateia, is that disposition of mind which would offend no one.”
“And several other virtues are comprehended under frugality. But if this quality were of less importance and confined in as small a compass as some imagine, the surname of Piso would not have been in so great esteem. But as we allow him not the name of a frugal man — frugi — who either quits his post through fear, which is cowardice, or who reserves to his own use what was privately committed to his keeping, which is injustice, or who fails in his military undertakings through rashness, which is folly — for that reason, the word frugality takes in these three virtues of fortitude, justice, and prudence, though it is indeed common to all virtues, for they are all connected and knit together. Let us allow then frugality itself to be another and fourth virtue, for its peculiar property seems to be to govern and appease all tendencies to too eager a desire after anything, to restrain lust, and to preserve a decent steadiness in everything.”
“The vice in contrast to this is called prodigality. Frugality, I imagine, is derived from the word fruge, the best thing which the earth produces. Nequam is derived — though this is perhaps more strained, still let us try it; we shall only be thought to have been trifling if there is nothing in what we say — from the fact of everything being nequicquam (to no purpose) in such a man, from which circumstance he has been called nequam (‘good-for-nothing’). Nihil (nothing). However, he is not frugal then — or, if it is more agreeable to you, whoever is moderate and temperate, such a one must of course be consistent; whoever is consistent must be quiet; the quiet man must be free from all perturbation, therefore from grief likewise. And these are all the properties of a wise man. Therefore a wise man must be free from grief.”
Cassius: Thank you, Joshua. Yes, indeed. Cicero has extended his presentation of how we can define the wise man as free from grief, and therefore know that once we are wise we will never have any grief anymore. Well, in all of this etymology and background of the words that Cicero is giving us, he summarizes this section in a way that shows us what he’s doing, by going back to frugality — a word that we use mainly to refer to not spending large amounts of money, but which apparently had a much wider definition at that time — and saying that whoever is frugal is moderate and temperate, and whoever is moderate and temperate must be quiet, and whoever is quiet is free from perturbation, therefore he’s free from grief, and these are the properties of a wise man, therefore a wise man must be free from grief. So you can just basically take a dictionary approach to living and decide that if you are wise, then you know that the wise man will never experience any grief.
And of course that kind of approach is just ridiculous — a word-play that has logical consistency within itself. This is the kind of things that Stoicism specializes in. You can define your terms in such a way that your philosophy seems to make perfect sense, but you have defined it every step along the way in a way that leaves out certain parts of reality. And by the end of your syllogism, you’ve got a conclusion that has no relationship to real life whatsoever. And yet that’s where they are placing their confidence and faith — in this kind of defining things and understanding things through the meaning of words rather than going back to pleasure, pain, and the other natural faculties that nature gives to us. It’s all wrapped up in this idea that reality can be controlled by your mind, and your mind can control reality by the use of words and understanding and definitions and logic — that not everyone may be able to understand unless they can understand geometry, but is the one true path out of the cave and into the light of eternal wisdom, or their realm of ideal forms as they might look at it.
So this is what I see in this section, and our next section is going to be some references to some Latin poetry, and we’re going to go forward and probably get to the point next week where we’re talking about Epicurus again. But as I see it, these sections have reminded us of an extremely important point: that there’s a major difference between Epicurus’s approach and that of the other schools. Epicurus’s approach is not based on logical definitions and word-gaming. It’s based on understanding and appreciating what Epicurus says are the facts of reality, which we gather from the faculties that nature gave to us — and not through the use of word games.
Joshua: Cicero in the text makes mention of a member of the Piso gens — Piso Frugi — that is, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi, who was consul in 133 BC. And I’m reading the Wikipedia page here. It says: “The next generation of the Calpurnii Pisones had an impressive number of consulships — for in 16 years, in addition to Piso’s own consulship in 133, his cousins Lucius [Piso] and Quintus [Piso] were consuls,” et cetera. And then it says this: “Piso had a son who was later consul in 112 BC. The son’s line eventually produced Gaius Calpurnius Piso, who was the husband of Cicero’s daughter Tullia, not to be confused with Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, who was consul in 58 BC, who was the father-in-law of Julius Caesar through his daughter Calpurnia.” So the Pisos are a very important family in Roman politics at this time, and both Cicero and Julius Caesar have married — or have relatives who have married — into this family.
And he uses this to make the point: “If the quality of frugality were of less importance and confined in a small compass as some imagine, the surname of Piso would not have been in so great esteem. But as we allow him not the name of a frugal man — frugi — who either quits his post through fear, which is cowardice, or who reserves to his own use what was privately committed to his keeping, which is injustice, or who fails in his military undertakings through rashness, which is folly — for that reason, the word frugality takes in these three virtues of fortitude, justice, and prudence.” Which is certainly far more expansive, as you said, Cassius, a definition of frugality than the one that we use today.
Cassius: Yeah, Joshua, I think your example there is interesting too, because I think we can turn it around and use it ourselves. What Cicero’s talking about is that the family name of Piso was highly respected. That doesn’t mean that every single member of the Piso family had the same degree of ability in everything that they did. We all know in real life a family can include all sorts of different types of people. That’s the kind of thing you have to keep in mind when you’re dealing with a word. The word Piso is not the guarantee of anything — it is an indication, but not a guarantee. Just as in terms of wisdom and all of the other words that Cicero is talking about here today, there’s no guarantee. I would say that the wise man is never going to experience any grief of mind whatsoever — there are ups and downs in life.
There are the pains that Epicurus had to suffer. There are all of the examples that Cicero has given to us of great men of the past that he cites, who took comfort in their accomplishments even while they were potentially being tortured or potentially being killed in war and so forth. The idea that you can go as the Stoics would do and say that, well, if you’re wise, you can be sure that you will never have any grief because the wise man is always free from grief — that’s a ridiculous approach to the realities of life. And while the Stoics had not developed this in extreme form while Epicurus was alive, the Stoics were picking up on germs of this kind of thing that existed in Plato and Socrates. The Stoics amplified it. There were Academics who did not amplify it — apparently like Crantor here, as Cicero is referencing. But the schools went in different directions, and that has major implications for the way we should study them and appreciate the guidance and suggestions that they’re giving. Okay, we’ve probably come to the end of our normal length episode today. Any final thoughts from anyone before we begin to close? Kalosyni?
Kalosyni: Yes. As the topic of grief and emotions came up, it then occurred to me that the way that Epicureans relate to their emotions would correlate with a modern idea of emotional intelligence, where all emotions are felt — nothing is considered wrong — because the emotions are like indicators on a control panel. When they light up, they’re indicating something: some important information that needs to become aware. So with emotional intelligence, we observe the emotions and then from there we decide how to move forward. So it is incorporating an essence of reason into the equation, but it’s not trying to prove something the way Cicero sounds like he is with this idea of the ideal wise man. Emotional intelligence is a natural way of being.
Cassius: Good comments. Thank you very much, Joshua.
Joshua: Well, we have had a very terminology-heavy discussion today. I hope we’re going to get out of the weeds of Greek versus Latin terminology and get into something that we can talk about at length. I should mention the reason I brought up that bit about the Piso family. For anyone who doesn’t know, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, who was the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, is considered by modern classicists and historians and archaeologists to have been the best candidate for the owner of the Villa of the Papyri, which has the Herculaneum Scrolls. This philosophical library was composed primarily of the works of Philodemus. It was in the house owned by a member of the Piso family. That’s why I brought that up.
And something else I mentioned was Cicero’s broader cultural desire to have more works written in Latin and to develop a native Latin literature. In the first book of De Finibus, which we went through a few years back in a podcast series — the first two books we went through — Cicero has this to say: “A more difficult task, therefore, is to deal with the objection of those who profess a contempt for Latin writings. As such, what astonishes me, first of all about them is this: why should they dislike their native language for serious and important subjects when they’re quite willing to read Latin plays translated word for word from the Greek? Who has such a hatred — one might almost say — for the very name of Roman as to despise and reject the Medea of Ennius or the Antiope of Pacuvius, and give as his reason that though he enjoys the corresponding plays of Euripides, he cannot endure books written in Latin?” And Cicero concludes this section by saying: “To my mind, no one can be styled a well-read man who does not know our native literature.”
So this is certainly a hobby horse of Cicero’s — to cultivate a Latin literature and to convince people that it’s worth reading, to convince his fellow countrymen that you don’t have to go to the Greeks to find something worth your time. You can find that right here in Rome and you can find it in some cases better than what you can find in Greece. That is — many people would consider that to be an eccentric opinion nowadays, since Greek literature is so highly prized. But Cicero was intent on developing a native Latin literature that could compete with the Greeks in every way. And it’s interesting to see it come up here — it’s come up, I think, in just about every text we’ve gone through so far, his desire to cultivate Latin literature. And for that reason he can praise Lucretius very highly, as he does in the letter to his brother, even though of course he disavows every element in the poem — he can admire it because of its beautiful Latin verse but still despise the philosophy.
Cassius: You’re right, Joshua. As important as it is for us to understand the details of these words, the topic is dealing with grief. And are we going to deal with grief in our lives by going to the dictionary and examining the etymology of words and thinking about how they logically fit together? That seems to be the direction that the Stoics would like us to go, but it’s not the direction that Epicurus advocates. We’re going to come back next week and take this argument further, and I believe we’ll get next week into a specific discussion of the Epicurean alternative after Cicero drills into our minds even further the Stoic way of dealing with grief. You can deal with grief and evaluate the choices of your life using syllogisms, or you can use the faculties that nature has given to you — as Epicurus points out. That’s the theme we’ll pursue further next week. Until then, we invite you to drop by EpicureanFriends.com and let us know if you have any questions about anything we’ve discussed in this or our other podcasts. Thank you for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.