Episode 291 - TD21 - Epicurus Pushes Back Against "Expect The Worst And You'll Never Be Disappointed"
Date: 07/16/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4619-episode-291-td21-epicurus-pushes-back-against-expect-the-worst-and-you-ll-never/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”This episode covers Tusculan Disputations Part Three sections 14–15, in which Cicero presents and then contrasts the Cyrenaic and Epicurean approaches to grief.
Section 14 lays out the Cyrenaic position: premeditation of future evils makes their arrival more tolerable. Cicero quotes Euripides’ Thyestes — where Thyestes says he treasured what a wise man told him and dwelt on his future misery, thinking of bitter death and exile, so that when those evils came he would care less. Euripides himself (a pupil of Anaxagoras) had heard this approach from a learned man. The section ends with Cicero quoting Terence: every man at his most prosperous should arm himself against the coming storm — imagining his son making mistakes, his wife dead, his daughter sick — so that nothing shall seem new or strange.
Section 15 opens with two examples of preternatural calm: Xanthippe’s observation that her husband Socrates always had exactly the same expression going out and coming home, and the Roman Crassus, who according to Lucilius never smiled but once in his lifetime. Then Cicero presents Epicurus’s contrasting view directly. For Epicurus: evils are not lessened by being foreseen, nor by becoming habitual; it is folly to ruminate on evils to come, since whoever constantly considers that some evil may befall him loads himself with a perpetual evil even if the evil never arrives. Epicurus’s remedy is twofold: (1) cease thinking on evil, and (2) turn the mind to the contemplation of pleasure. The wise man’s life is “packed with the recollection of past and the prospect of future pleasures.”
The discussion challenges Cicero’s characterization of Epicurus as recommending that we ignore the future or “throw a mist over our eyes.” Joshua cites the Letter to Menoeceus sections 124–125 on death being nothing to us, showing that Epicurus’s point is not to avoid looking at future events but to see them clearly — death is not terrible when it comes, so the mental energy expended dreading it is wasted. He also quotes the conclusion of the Letter to Herodotus, where Epicurus traces the greatest disturbance of men’s minds to false beliefs about gods, celestial bodies, and death. The proper response is to pay attention to the canon — sensations, feelings, and prolepseis — so that when we understand the true causes of things, the fears rooted in ignorance dissolve. Cassius adds Vatican Saying 55 (“we must heal our misfortunes by the grateful recollection of what has been”) and argues Epicurus is teaching us to use reason to actively direct our minds toward the good.
Joshua closes by connecting this to the ending of Lucretius’s poem — the plague of Athens (described by Thucydides) at the end of Book Six — as a picture of what happens to people who have not internalized the philosophy: they had not built their lives with mortality in view. He cites W.H. Auden’s “Lullaby” and the phrase “the mortal world enough,” and quotes Epicurus: “I have anticipated fortune and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks” — a forward-looking Epicurus who is not ignoring the future but has used philosophy to arm himself against it.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to episode 291 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 Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations reviewing what Cicero has to say from an Epicurean viewpoint. Today we’re in part three addressing issues of grief and other strong emotions, and we’ll be starting — when we get back into the text — in section 14, where we get to Cicero specifically discussing Epicurus’s views and how they differ from those of the Cyrenaics and the Stoics.
Our context continues to be that Cicero is taking the position that strong emotions are the equivalent of a disease, that the wise man should not allow strong emotions into his life. Obviously they focus more on grief, but they also include within this category of strong emotions joy, delight, other emotions that Epicurus would certainly consider to be positive. And they are excluding all of those on the grounds that if you are upset, if you are disturbed, if you are anything but calm, from their point of view you can no longer be wise. And wisdom being a virtue, you don’t want to have any deviations from wisdom — so therefore you’re going to put away from you anything that might disrupt your calm, wise procession through a life of virtue. Epicurus, of course, as we know from Diogenes Laertius, takes the opposite position: that a wise man will feel his emotions more strongly than other men, and that that feeling of strong emotions will not be a hindrance to his wisdom.
A very specific divergence of opinion: Epicurus is saying that wisdom can be consistent with strong emotions, while Cicero is arguing the Stoic position that strong emotions are not consistent with wisdom. Today, as we extend that discussion, we’re going to see Cicero talking about a very specific way of dealing with strong emotions that he is going to be assigning to the Cyrenaics, and then showing us that this was very different from Epicurus’s own point of view.
Among the last things that we discussed last week was Cicero’s statement that Epicurus is of the opinion that grief arises naturally from the imagination of any evil, so that whosoever is an eyewitness of a great misfortune — if he conceives that the like may possibly befall himself — becomes sad instantly from such an idea. So as we begin today, the focus is on how Epicurus holds that grief arises naturally, whether we see or whether we simply imagine an evil that could occur to us. While the Cyrenaics said that grief is not engendered by every kind of observation of an evil, but only by unexpected or unforeseen evils — which sets up the question about how we should deal with the fact that certainly evils do happen to us in life, and how we deal with that fact. What’s the best approach, given the nature of the universe and the Epicurean philosophy perspective, to deal with the fact that pains do occur, sometimes to a very great degree, and therefore how do we accommodate ourselves to that fact? And Cicero will extend that discussion into section 14, which Joshua will read when he’s ready.
Joshua: Therefore, this ruminating beforehand upon future evils, which you see at a distance, makes their approach more tolerable. And on this account, what Euripides makes Thyestes say is much commended — you will give me leave to translate them as is usual with me: “I treasured up what some learned sage did tell, and on my future misery did dwell; I thought of bitter death, of being drove far from my home by exile, and I strove with every evil to possess my mind, that when they came I the less care might find.” But Euripides says that of himself, which Thyestes said he had heard from some learned man — for the poet had been a pupil of Anaxagoras — who, as they relate, on hearing of the death of his son, said, “I knew that my son was mortal,” which speech seems to intimate that such things afflict those men who have not thought on them before.
Therefore there is no doubt but that all those things which are considered evils are the heavier from not being foreseen. Though notwithstanding, this is not the only circumstance which occasions the greatest grief. Still, as the mind by foreseeing and preparing for it has great power to make all grief the less, a man should at all times consider all the events that may befall him in his life. And certainly the excellence and divine nature of wisdom consists in taking a near view of and gaining a thorough acquaintance with all human affairs — in not being surprised when anything happens, and in thinking before the event that there is nothing but what may come to pass. And then he quotes a section from the poet Terence: “Wherefore every man, when his affairs go on most swimmingly, even then it most behooves to arm himself against the coming storm. Loss, danger, exile, returning, ever let him look to meet his son in fault, wife dead, or daughter sick — all common accidents, and may have happened — that nothing shall seem new or strange. But if anything has fallen out beyond his hopes, let him account all that as clear gain.”
Cassius: Okay, thank you Joshua for reading section 14. One of the benefits of going through these sections is that if there is any doubt in our minds as to whether the Cyrenaics and the Stoics did not think in such extreme terms as they are reputed to have done by their enemies, this section would make a great exhibit. Because if you follow what he’s saying here, it is very clear — even in the poetry sections — that they are taking the position that you should constantly, always be thinking about terrible things happening to you for the purpose of: once they do occur to you, they won’t disturb you so much.
The example in Thyestes is that he treasured up what he had heard from a learned sage — that he would dwell on his future misery, thinking of bitter death, of being driven from home by exile. “I strove with every evil to possess my mind, that when they did come, I might care less that they had happened.” And then Cicero says, though notwithstanding this is not the only circumstance which occasions the greatest grief — referring to the death of a son — still, as the mind by foreseeing and preparing for it has great power to make all grief the less, here’s the important part: a man should at all times consider all the events that may befall him in this life so that he may not be surprised when anything happens. And then Cicero hammers it home with one final poetic flourish.
If there’s any question in your mind that you should be devoting all of your thoughts to these bad things happening to you, he points out that when your affairs are going on most swimmingly, it’s then that it behooves you the most to arm yourself against the coming storm — by thinking about your son making mistakes, your wife being dead, your daughter being sick. Never let yourself get so caught up in the happiness of life that you’re not constantly thinking about these terrible things that may happen to you: not those that are certain to happen to you, not those that are likely to happen to you, but anything that may happen to you, because it can happen. You’re supposed to devote your mind to thinking about bad things.
I think we all know people who carry that to a fault, and it can be very devastating to someone’s psyche if you just constantly dwell on the bad things in life and don’t have a way of putting them aside. We’re going to go further and Cicero is going to get even more clear in attacking Epicurus. But in this context we can see that from the Stoic point of view — and even from this Cyrenaic point of view — it’s the best thing you can do to constantly keep the bad things in life in your mind. Because the last thing you want to do from this Stoic or Cyrenaic point of view is to be disturbed by something that happens unexpectedly. Again, I think this is an artifact of placing calmness and tranquility as the goal, as opposed to a more well-rounded, full notion of pleasure.
Joshua: We’ve come across passages in this text, Cassius, that have led me to believe that Shakespeare must have had this text — or another text making similar philosophical arguments from Cicero — in his hands when he wrote some of his plays. And particularly the play Julius Caesar, which I’ve noticed contains links between that play and this text. And there’s one today that is unmistakable. This is act four, scene two of Julius Caesar. It’s a conversation between Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus, the leaders of the faction of conspirators that assassinated Julius Caesar, and they’re having this conversation on the eve of the Battle of Philippi. Tensions are running very high across the camp, everyone is on edge, these two have just gotten into a major argument and they’ve just started to make amends. When Cassius says to Brutus: “I did not think you could have been so angry with me.” And Brutus says: “Oh Cassius, I am sick of many griefs.” And then Cassius replies to Brutus: “Of your philosophy you make no use, if you give place to accidental evils.” And then Brutus says: “No man bears sorrow better. Portia is dead.”
So this is the first little section of dialogue I wanted to talk about, because this is going to set up where we’re going in a moment in the play, and it also touches on what we’re talking about today — this conflict that Cicero sees between Epicurus and some of the other schools of philosophy in how you handle grief. Does allotting time throughout your life to foresee and predict and imagine future evils give you strength and fortitude to bear those evils when they come? And Brutus in the play is going to make the case that that is how it works — that if you spend time throughout your life contemplating the death of people you love, when they do come to die you’ve got this built-up store of resilience that you can call upon in the moment of their death.
Cassius: Joshua, before you go on with the rest of the story, one comment I might throw in there — when you were reading that, I picked up the word “accidental” and there might be also some Stoic overlay to the use of that word, because Brutus being a Stoic would theoretically have taken the position that everything that happens happens through providence. So part of what Cassius might’ve been saying there would be: don’t worry about accidental evils from your philosophy, because under the Stoic view, nothing happens by accident.
Joshua: Yeah, the word “accidental” is very interesting in the context of philosophy. We’ve used this word many times as a contrast between the property of a thing and a mere accident of that thing. The property — for example, the properties of the atoms — are aspects of the atoms that are inseparable from the atoms themselves, whereas an accident is something that is an aspect of a thing but is not inseparable from that thing. So the accidents can change; the substance and its properties do not change. So when the Stoics say that the things that befall you in life are mere accidents, what they’re saying is that we are living in a changing world and we’re susceptible to that change. And by understanding that and preparing for that — by cultivating virtue and so on — the changes of accidents around you don’t need to affect you personally.
And Cassius is saying very much that when he says, “Of your philosophy you make no use if you give place to accidental evils.” And then when Brutus says “Portia is dead,” Cassius says: “How escaped I killing when I crossed you so? Oh, insupportable and touching loss.” And Brutus says: “Why, farewell Portia. We must die with meditating that she must die once; I have the patience to endure it now.” And Cassius says: “I have as much of this in art as you; my nature could not bear it so.” And Brutus says: “Well, to our work alive,” and immediately shifts the conversation to the admittedly urgent and pressing military matters that confront them on the eve of the Battle of Philippi.
But what we get here in this play is a glimpse into Shakespeare’s understanding of the philosophical mind and its approach to accidental evils, to grief, to great loss and to death. And with Brutus, the answer is: “with meditating that she must die once, I have the patience to endure it now” — which is directly on point with what we’re talking about in Cicero’s text. We started section 14 with a very similar line when Cicero says, “Therefore, this ruminating beforehand upon future evils, which you see at a distance, makes their approach more tolerable.” It’s almost a direct quote; it’s just paraphrased. So it’s very interesting to find that, and all the more interesting because this text that we’re reading — the Tusculan Disputations — I believe was dedicated to Brutus, and Cicero’s own death is mentioned in Shakespeare’s play. So there is an interesting circle of events going on here in these texts, which is very, very relevant to what we’re talking about today — the impending pain and grief and suffering that is coming, and how should we best deal with that.
Cassius: And in section 15, Cicero is going to set up the contrast with Epicurus very explicitly. So whenever you’re ready to read that, let’s go to section 15.
Joshua: Therefore, says Cicero: “As Terence has so well expressed what he borrowed from philosophy, shall not we — from whose fountains he drew it — say the same thing in a better manner and abide by it with more steadiness? Hence came that steady countenance which, according to Xanthippe, her husband Socrates always had, so that she said that she never observed any difference in his looks when he went out and when he came home. Yet the look of that old Roman Crassus, who as Lucilius says never smiled but once in his lifetime, was not of this kind, but placid and serene — for so we are told. He indeed might well have had the same look at all times who never changed his mind, from which the countenance derives its expression. So that I am ready to borrow of the Cyrenaics those arms against the accidents and events of life, by means of which, by long premeditation, they break the force of all approaching evils. And at the same time I think that those very evils themselves arise more from opinion than nature, for if they were real, no forecast could make them lighter. But I shall speak more particularly on these matters, after I have first considered Epicurus’s opinion.
“He thinks that all people must necessarily be uneasy who believe themselves to be in any evils, let them be either foreseen and expected or habitual to them — for with him, evils are not the less by reason of their continuance, nor the lighter for having been foreseen. And it is folly to ruminate on evils to come or such as perhaps never may come. Every evil is disagreeable enough when it does come, but he who is constantly considering that some evil may befall him is loading himself with a perpetual evil. And even should such evil never light on him, he voluntarily takes upon himself unnecessary misery, so that he is under constant uneasiness whether he actually suffers any evil or only thinks of it. But he makes the alleviation of grief depend on two things: a ceasing to think on evil, and a turning to the contemplation of pleasure. First, he thinks that the mind may possibly be under the power of reason and follow her directions. He forbids us therefore to mind trouble and calls us off from sorrowful reflections. He throws a mist over our eyes to hinder us from the contemplation of misery. Having sounded a retreat from this statement, he drives our thoughts on again and encourages them to view and engage the whole mind in the various pleasures with which he thinks the life of a wise man abounds, either from reflections on the past or from the hope of what is to come. I have said these things in my own way; the Epicureans have theirs; however, let us examine what they say. How they say it is of little consequence.”
Cassius: Okay, Joshua, thank you. Now we are getting into some really intense Epicurean material here, and this paragraph is going to deserve some significant time. This sort of starts off by reminding us of the examples of Socrates and Crassus — men who were both renowned for being calm and consistent in expression. And Cicero says that he’s ready to borrow himself from the Cyrenaics, who arm themselves against the events of life through long premeditation and thereby break the force of all approaching evils — with Cicero himself inserting a caveat that from his own Academic Skeptic point of view, most of those evils are matters of opinion rather than nature, because if something really is evil, no forecast could make it lighter. But then he says he’s going to reserve his own explanation for after he discusses what Epicurus had to say.
And he again states that Epicurus held that it doesn’t make any difference whether you have foreseen and expected an evil or not, or that you’ve had habitual experience with it, because for him evils are not the less by reason of their continuance, nor the lighter for having been foreseen. And that he who is constantly considering that some evil may befall him is loading himself with a perpetual evil and voluntarily taking upon himself things that are not necessary. It wouldn’t make any difference to pleasure whether we have experienced that pleasure or whether we have thought about it ahead of time or not. If it’s pleasure, it’s pleasure — and the same would go, it appears here, for pain. Pain is pain, pleasure is good, pain is bad across the board, which is a viewpoint that Cicero is just regularly objecting to.
But one point to particularly stress here is the sentence that reads: “He [Epicurus] makes the alleviation of grief depend on two things: a ceasing to think on evil and a turning to the contemplation of pleasure” — and that Epicurus thinks that the mind can be under the power of reason, and therefore Epicurus calls us off from sorrowful reflections and instead drives our thoughts on and encourages us to engage the whole mind in the various pleasures which he thinks the life of a wise man abounds in, either from reflecting on the past or from the hope of what is to come.
Now Cicero is giving us a caution here that he’s saying these things in his own way, as distinct from the way the Epicureans would say them. But it seems to me there’s a core of truth here that if we take it slightly more sympathetically than what Cicero is saying, we can gain a lot of detail that we don’t necessarily have in some of the other Epicurean texts at the 30,000-foot level. The Cyrenaics — and to a lesser extent the Stoics and Academic Skeptics as well, since Cicero is agreeing with this — are saying that the way to deal with the problems of life is to acclimate yourself to thinking constantly about the problems of life and expecting those things to occur to you. With Epicurus saying — as you would expect for someone who doesn’t think there is necessity in life or fate in life, or that there is a God directing these things to happen — you have the choice of deciding what your mind is going to focus on. And the wise man knows that there are many types of pleasures in life, not only stimulating pleasures but also the pleasures of reflection that come from a true philosophy and from understanding the nature of things. And the way to deal with the hardships of life from Epicurus’s point of view is not to acclimate yourself to those hardships, but to use your mind and your actions to focus on the better part of life and move past those hardships which have occurred to you already or may occur to you.
Which is not to take a rose-colored glasses point of view — that it’s not possible that bad things are going to happen to you, or that you should simply ignore totally the bad things that have already happened to you. But that you don’t dwell on them and allow them to monopolize your time, so that the focus of your life becomes the contemplation of misery. Epicurus is saying that you should not focus on the contemplation of misery. You should focus on the contemplation of the good, the pleasurable things of life. And if you’re wise, if you understand the nature of things, you’re going to have an inexhaustible reservoir of such things to call on. And in section 16 we’ll go further with Cicero attacking this position more specifically. But in section 15 here we’ve had it introduced, so there’s a lot of information here to get us started.
Kalosyni: There’s this song that when I was in elementary school, this woman would come in with a guitar and we would sing songs, and one of them sticks in my head. It’s about a father and a kid, and the father’s buying the kid a present. But then the kid says, “Well, now what happens if this toy breaks?” And then the song goes: “Papa will instead buy you something else if that toy breaks” — and then it’s this long series of all these different items. But it has relevance here, with when you worry about what could go wrong, how to set your mind so that you don’t feel a tremendous amount of worry.
Joshua: And it reminds me of what Epicurus himself says, which is: “Do not spoil the things you have by craving what you do not have, and remember that the things you have now were once things that you only hoped for.” In response to Cicero’s claim — I guess — that Epicurus doesn’t ever look at the future, that looking at the future can only bring you misery, that we just dwell on the past or something — I realize I’m being a bit flippant about how I’m summarizing what Cicero is saying there.
But if we go to sections 124 and 125 of the Letter to Menoeceus, we do get a little bit of what I think could be a fuller view of the Epicurean response to this. And it starts when Epicurus says: “Accustom yourself to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation, and therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable — not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living, so that the man speaks but idly who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because it is painful in anticipation. For that which gives no trouble when it comes is but an empty pain in anticipation. So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist death is not with us, but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.”
Now Cicero says that for Epicurus it is folly to ruminate on evils to come or such as perhaps never may come. And Epicurus does say here that “for that which gives no trouble when it comes is but an empty pain in anticipation.” So all the mental energy that you expended worrying about the thing that’s going to happen in the future will be totally wasted when it doesn’t happen. We should not fail to remember that the end of the Letter to Menoeceus goes like this: “Meditate therefore on these things and things akin to them night and day, by yourself and with a companion like to yourself. And never shall you be disturbed, waking or sleeping, but you shall live like a god among men. For a man who lives among immortal blessings is not like unto a mortal being.”
And here we do get a sense that we are not going to Pollyanna past the graveyard and just ignore things that are happening in the future. Epicurus says “meditate on these things and things akin to them night and day.” You’re supposed to spend the bulk of your time meditating on these things, and that has to include — I think — things that are potentially going to happen to you in the future. I don’t think it’s this: “we’re just going to ignore the future completely as if it doesn’t matter.” Epicurus does say elsewhere that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours. So we do have a share in what is to come, and it could be good or bad. And so it doesn’t profit us at all to pretend that it doesn’t exist, that we are immune to anything that’s going to happen.
What we shouldn’t do is dwell on evils like death, when Epicurus has equipped us with a philosophy to see that these things are not the evils that we have made them out to be — that death in fact is nothing at all to us because when death comes, we will not be. And there is one more place to look here. We can look at the end of the Letter to Herodotus, where Epicurus says this: “And besides all these matters in general, we must grasp this point — that the principle disturbance in the minds of men arises because they think that these celestial bodies are blessed and immortal and yet have wills and actions and motives inconsistent with these attributes, and because they are always expecting or imagining some everlasting misery such as depicted in legends, or even fear the loss of feeling in death as though it would concern them themselves, and again because they are brought to this pass not by reasoned opinion but rather by some irrational presentment. And therefore, as they do not know the limits of pain, they suffer a disturbance equally great or even more extensive than if they had reached this belief by opinion. But peace of mind is being delivered from all this, and having a constant memory of the general and most essential principles.”
“Wherefore, we must pay attention to internal feelings and to external sensations in general and in particular, according as the subject is general or particular, and to every immediate intuition in accordance with each of the standards of judgment.” So where he comes to at the end is the canon — the canon of epistemology — the feelings, the sensations, and the prolepseis. This is what we need to pay attention to in response to this problem of fearing things when the fear itself is based in ignorance. He says: “For if we pay attention to these, we shall rightly trace the causes whence arose our mental disturbance and fear. And by learning the true causes of celestial phenomena and all other occurrences that come to pass from time to time, we shall free ourselves from all which produces the utmost fear in other men.”
So that would be my main objection to what Cicero has summarized Epicurus as saying. He doesn’t really say it, but you get the sense from Cicero that what he’s saying is that we shouldn’t even really bother looking to the future because it’s just going to give us misery. The idea that we should throw out all concern for the future I think is manifestly false.
Cassius: Yes, I completely agree, Joshua. This is a point that we really need to hit hard — that Cicero is trying to make us believe, in words that Yonge uses here, that Epicurus wants to “throw a mist over our eyes to hinder us in the contemplation of misery.” Nothing is further from the truth than to think that Epicurus is calling us away from looking at reality and understanding the way the world really works. That’s what a philosophy is all about. That’s what Epicurus is spending all his time doing — he’s studying nature so that he can understand the way things are and separate out the reality from the fears that are not real. You certainly are going to conclude that in the end, when you die, you cease to exist. That’s not a particularly pleasant thought for most people. It’s not particularly a pleasant thought for most people to think that there’s no supernatural God, because it’s very comforting to many people to think that they’re being looked after by a supernatural force. But Epicurus is saying: look at the reality of these things and then think and act in accordance with that reality. He’s not saying throw a mist over your eyes or a veil over your eyes or just look away from the truth. He’s telling you to look directly at the truth so that you can then live the best way possible, incorporating truth rather than lies in the way you make your decisions.
There’s a lot here that can be pulled out of almost every sentence where Cicero is talking about what Epicurus is saying. And to repeat something we discussed earlier, I think it’s very significant where Cicero is saying that Epicurus thinks that the mind is under the power of reason and will follow the direction of reason — and therefore that is why we direct our attention away from misery in life and direct our attention where its proper focus is: on the good things, the pleasant things of life. We are not deterministic automatons. We are not under the direction of fate or a supernatural God, which requires us to focus on all these terrible aspects of life. We have the power through reason to look at all of the circumstances of life, decide what is possible to deal with and what is not possible to deal with, and deal with each one of them accordingly — not just give up control of our lives to the supernatural or give up control of our lives to chaos and uncertainty, but to take action to actually live a happy life in the way that nature gave us the ability to do.
I think this last section here is important enough that we can gain from looking at the way Hicks translates it as well, because he does use different wording that might bring out some of the subtlety. So let me quote from the Hicks translation, the latter part of the paragraph, which Hicks translates as follows: “Reason, therefore, in Epicurus’s view, forbids attention to vexations, withdraws the soul from morose reflections, blunts its keenness in dwelling upon wretchedness, and sounding a retreat from such thoughts, equally urges it on again to discern a variety of pleasures and engage in them with all the powers of the mind. And according to this philosopher, the wise man’s life is packed with the recollection of past and the prospect of future pleasures.”
Now, this is going to be hammered home to us further in section 16, but in the interest of time and giving this the attention it deserves, let’s postpone the reading of section 16 into next week. But we’ve already seen the issue laid out very starkly here by Cicero, and we know that Epicurus is saying that our minds are not predetermined, we’re not under the influence of a supernatural God. We have the power — using reason — as Lucretius says, to live a life worthy of the gods. We can direct our minds and turn them productively to the aspects of life that are rewarding. And as Torquatus has said in De Finibus, the wise man always has more reason for joy than for vexation. If we look at life as a whole, look at the good things that have happened to us in the past, the good things that we have a prospect of happening to us in the future, and place everything in its correct priority, we can see that as Thomas Jefferson said in one of his letters, the greater part of life is sunshine. Pleasure is the important thing in life in the short time that’s available to us, and the worthiness of pleasure outweighs the hardship of pain. We exist, we live, in order to experience pleasure — not to focus on the bad things in life, the pains of life that do occur, but which are not sufficient to call us to conclude that we should never have wanted to live in the first place.
All these things are addressed in the Letter to Menoeceus in ways that don’t always come out when you first read it, but when you see the issues that Cicero discusses them in detail, you can see all of these topics and why Epicurus is including them in that letter. These are standard issues that are debated over and over and over again by these ancient philosophers, and Epicurus is giving us an excellent summary in that letter of where he comes down on them. But we have to understand that there is more detail and much more context than Epicurus is able to include in a few short paragraphs in one letter — it’s important to go out and find and understand the context in which these things came up to see how Epicurus is addressing them. Alright, with that, let’s move to our closing thoughts for today. Joshua?
Joshua: One of the lessons of Lucretius’s poem — which is at the very end of it — is that we get this horrifying account of the plague in Athens as described by Thucydides. And one of the interpretations of that episode at the end of Book Six and at the end of the poem is that if the people of this town had spent more time contemplating their future — which was a mortal future, a future that was going to result in death — they might’ve gotten to the conclusion much sooner that they should build their lives with that in view. If you know you’re going to die, that’s going to change how you’re going to live. And while everyone kind of knows that on a superficial level — that we’re going to die — kind of internalizing that knowledge on a more visceral level, I think, is what unlocks for the people of Athens, at the end of the poem, some of the choices they start to make. And they start, in the words of W.H. Auden who wrote a poem also called “Lullaby,” the choice to find the mortal world enough.
I think that’s one of the lessons of looking forward and anticipating death and anticipating fortune. Epicurus says: “I have anticipated fortune and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks.” This is a version of Epicurus, and it’s a version of Epicurus that is forward-looking and that is able to predict and understand some of what’s going to happen. And I think this version of Epicurus stands in stark contrast with the version presented by Cicero — of an Epicurus who thinks that looking to the future is only ever going to be a source of fear and misery, and that we should dwell on the past and live in the present, but that the future is too scary even to think about. I think that is not at all the advice that Epicurus himself gives us in his own words.
Cassius: Right. Joshua, Epicurus’s advice is much more perceptive and much more complete than that, and by going through Cicero here we can gain detail about his advice that we don’t necessarily have in other places. I’m reminded of Vatican Saying 55 in this context, which reads: “We must heal our misfortunes by the grateful recollection of what has been and by the recognition that it is impossible to undo that which has been done.” A large part of what we’re doing in our study of Epicurus is fitting together these fragments from different sources to bring them together into a bigger picture. Vatican Saying 55 doesn’t mention the anticipation of pleasures to come, and Cicero doesn’t mention the fact that Epicurus said that it’s impossible to undo that which has been done. But when you put all these fragments together, you get a much more comprehensive view of a philosophy of life in which you use reason to focus your mind on the good things in life, to deal with the bad things in life in the context in which they come, and to overall assemble a happy life based on the predominance of pleasure over pain.
That’s all we have time for this week. We invite everyone to drop by the EpicureanFriends.com forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or our other discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.