Episode 304 - TD32 - Epicurus vs. The Stoics On Strong Emotions
Date: 10/17/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4769-episode-304-td32-epicurus-vs-the-stoics-on-strong-emotions/
Summary
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Transcript (unedited)
Section titled “Transcript (unedited)”Cassius (00:11):
Welcome to episode 304 of Lucretius today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the epicurean texts and we discuss how epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of epicurus@epicureanfriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes this week. As promised last week, we are going to pick up the pace now that we have finished an intense section on Epicurean philosophy, we are now moving out of part three. The global topic of the section that we have been talking about was originally focused on issues regarding grief, but as we’ve gotten into the last five or six sections and focused directly on Epicurus, we’ve had a very important and wide ranging discussion about many aspects of epicurean ethics.
(01:18):
We concluded that last week with Cicero’s statement that he thought that the Epicureans were overreacting to his criticism and that they were getting much more excited in defending Epicurus than they should be. That even when major issues like the Punic war were being debated, the leaders of Rome did not get so excited and so heated in their debates about war as these epicurean were getting in defending Epicurus. But be that as it may, Cicero is going to now move past attacking Epicurus and he takes up next a discussion of the sacs, much of which we’ve discussed previously that the sacs thought that it’s better to focus on bad things happening in the future because that makes the impact of them less when they do occur, and Cicero spends a lot of time on this issue of whether unexpected troubles or worse than expected troubles. And Cicero never strays very far from his position that the ultimate remedy for grief is virtue rather than anything else.
(02:21):
Most of the remainder of this part three is devoted to arguments made by the stoics and others that are not particularly relevant to what we’re doing in reviewing the epicurean sections. So we are going to skip past most of that and we’ll skip Cicero’s argument that reason and true philosophy can prevail over grief and that grief is unbecoming for a real man to feel and that it’s really in fact impossible to love others more than we love ourselves. And so grief over someone else’s misfortunes makes no sense to Cicero from his stoic point of view and that you can take comfort. That grief gets easier to bear over time as you reflect on it daily, you begin to become accustomed to it as Cicero’s position. Now, Cicero does mention Epicurus briefly in section 31 of Heart III where he repeats that others with Epicurus seek to divert your attention from the evil to the good as a means of dealing with grief. And we’ve discussed that previously as well. Cicero disagrees with Epicurus as to what the good really is, but Cicero acknowledges that it is Epicurus position that pain can be replaced with pleasure as a manner of dealing with grief.
Joshua (03:35):
We see a bit of this in Lucious, don’t we? When he talks about smearing the rim of the cup with honey to sort of manipulate the patient into swallowing the wormwood, which is this horribly bitter medicine. And Lucretius is saying that the philosophy of Epicurus can be a bitter medicine, but he’s using the muses honey of poetry to make it go down. I think that’s kind of in line with what we’re seeing from Cicero here.
Cassius (04:01):
Yes, it sure is. And of course he’s not taking advantage of the person who’s taking the medicine or doing something that’s improper because by getting them to take the medicine, it brings them health again and a better way of life, even though taking the medicine for the moment is bitter. So Cicero concludes section three, repeating to himself that a wise man is free from all sorrow and he lists the reasons that he’s gone over because sorrow is vain because it answers no purpose, because it is not found in nature, but on opinion and prejudice and we feel that we have the duty to indulge in it at times. So again, there’s much more detail in section three that we’re going to skip over. We’re going to keep the focus always on Epicurus, and so we’ll move to part four of Tuscan Disputations, which as Cicero moves past reef of mind is a little bit slippery how we should designate what the topic of Book four really is.
(04:56):
Young assigns a subtitle of On Other Perturbations of the Mind, and perturbation is the word we’re going to speak a lot about as we go forward here. But I think what is important for us to realize as we go through section four is that what Cicero is really doing here, he’s already addressed death, he’s addressed pain mostly in a bodily sense, and now he’s addressed in section three pain or grief in a mental sense. Now he’s moving on to what is essentially the question of any kind of passion, any kind of strong emotion and in the word perturbation, I think we can get a glimpse even in our modern understanding of that word, which we don’t use very often today. But what we’ll find as we see what Cicero is actually discussing is that he’s now going to be looking at the issue of strong emotion.
(05:50):
And although the stoics will often deny that they’re against suppression of emotion, one of the things that I get in reviewing this section of Tuscan Disputations is that that really is the direction that Cicero was going. He’s dealt with strong, painful emotions in these prior sections. He’s now going to proceed to say that we should eliminate not only these painful strong emotions, but also any kind of strong emotions, whether they be painful such as anger or what we would consider to be positive, strong emotions including joy, delight, other words we could use such as ecstasy or other words that we would use to describe jubilation or strong positive reactions to events. As we go through this section, that’s what I think we should reflect on is whether in fact these passages do reveal that in contrast to Epicurus who said that the wise man is going to feel his emotions more deeply, but this will not be a hindrance to his wisdom. Cicero, though he’s some kind of combination of academic skeptic and pseudo stoic is siding with those who say that strong emotion period is a bad thing. Now in part four, Cicero starts off as he often does with a sidebar conversation about history of philosophy in the Roman world, and he talks a lot about, Pythagoras does mention in section three Amus who is an epicurean philosopher. He mentions him only long enough to basically disparage him. But since we’re talking about Epicurus, let’s reference that. So Joshua, could you read that for us out of section three?
Joshua (07:34):
In section three of part four, Cicero talks a little bit about how philosophy was transmitted from Greece into Rome. And to that end, he says this, so of that true and elegant philosophy which was derived from Socrates and is still preserved by the Peripatetics and by the stoics, though they express themselves differently in their disputes with the academics, there are few or no Latin records whether this proceeds from the importance of the thing itself or from men’s being otherwise employed or from their concluding that the capacity of the people was not equal to the apprehension of them. But during this silence, si amus arose and took upon himself to speak on the publishing of whose writings the people were moved and enlisted themselves chiefly under this act epicureanism either because the doctrine was more easily understood or because they were invited thereto by the pleasing thoughts of amusement or that because there was nothing better, they laid hold of what was offered them after Amus again, there came a number of imitators of the same system and by their writings took all Italy by storm. And whereas the chief proof that their arguments are stated without precision lies in the fact that their doctrine is so easily grasped and so much to the taste of the unlearned, they imagined this to be its main support.
Cassius (09:00):
Yeah, Josh, where Cicero’s being his usual irritating self when discussing epicurean philosophy and slamming it as being easily understood by the masses, which is kind of funny to think about nowadays when we get so confused about different aspects of epicurean philosophy that Cicero thought it was so easy for the lower classes to understand, so easily grasped that it is to the taste of the unlearned. So after Cicero finishes his criticism of the simplicity of the epicureans and the seductiveness of Amus, he moves in section four to the introduction of the day’s discussion, which he’s done in each of these parts. He allows the discussion to be set by a back and forth dialogue between himself and one of the students at the villa where the tus disputations are taking place. So let’s now turn to that and we’ll have Joshua and Callini give us the back and forth with Joshua standing in for Cicero.
Joshua (09:55):
Yeah, that’s right. Cicero starts off with the quote that you already mentioned from earlier, Cassius. He says, I shall always inquire what has the most probability in every question and this system which I have often practiced on other occasions I have adhered to closely. Therefore, as I have acquainted you with the disputations of the three former days, this book shall conclude the discussion of the fourth day when we had come down into the academy and as we had done the former days the business was carried on. Thus let anyone say says Cicero to the group of gathered students what he would wish to have discussed.
Kalosyni (10:34):
I do not think a wise man can possibly be free from every perturbation of mind.
Joshua (10:40):
Well, the wise man seemed by yesterday’s discourse to be free from grief unless you agreed with us only to avoid taking up time,
Kalosyni (10:48):
Not at all on that account for I was extremely satisfied with your discourse.
Joshua (10:54):
So you do not think then that a wise man is subject to grief?
Kalosyni (10:58):
No, by no means,
Joshua (11:00):
But if even grief cannot disorder the mind of a wise man, nothing else can. For what? Can such a man be disturbed by fear? Fear proceeds from the same things when absent, which occasion, grief when present, take away grief then and you remove fear. The two remaining perturbations are a joy, a late above measure and lust. And if a wise man is not subject to these, his mind will be always at rest.
Kalosyni (11:30):
I am entirely of that opinion,
Joshua (11:32):
Which then shall we do, shall I immediately crowd all my sails or shall I make use of my oars as if I were just endeavoring to get clear of the harbor?
Kalosyni (11:43):
What is it that you mean for I do not exactly comprehend you
Joshua (11:47):
Because said Cicero, cryop and the stoics when they discuss the perturbations of the mind make great part of their debate to consist in definitions and distinctions while they employ but few words on the subject of curing the mind and preventing it from being disordered. Whereas the peripatetics bring a great many things to promote the cure of it but have no regard to their thorny partitions and definitions. My question then was whether I should instantly unfold the sales of my eloquence or be content for a while to make less way with the ORs of logic,
Kalosyni (12:26):
Let it be so for by the employment of both these means the subject of our inquiry will be more thoroughly discussed.
Joshua (12:34):
It is certainly the better way. And should anything be too obscure, you may examine that afterwards.
Kalosyni (12:41):
I will do so. But those very obscure points, you will as usual deliver with more clearness than the Greeks.
Joshua (12:50):
I will indeed endeavor to do so, but it well requires great attention lest by losing one word the whole should escape you what the Greeks call pathe. We choose to name perturbations or disorders rather than diseases in explaining which I shall follow first that very old description of pythagoreous and afterwards that of Plato, where they both divide the mind into two parts and make one of these partake of reason and the other they represent without it. In that which partakes of reason, they place tranquility, that is to say a placid and undisturbed constancy to the other. They assign the turbid motions of anger and desire which are contrary and the opposite to reason. Let this then be our principle, the spring of all our reasonings, but not withstanding, I shall use the partitions and definitions of the stoics in describing these perturbations who seem to me to have shown very great acuteness on this question.
Cassius (13:52):
Okay, thank you Joshua. Now what the student has asked Cicero to do is not to jump straight to the final closing arguments about passion that Cicero says that he could do, but to spend at least some time going through the detailed logical partitions and definitions of the issues. And in order for us to really accurately deal with how this differs from the epicurean approach, we’re going to have to spend some time talking about it because Cicero has already here identified for us that what the Greeks call pape, we choose to name perturbations rather than diseases. So there is a divide here already that pleasure and pain, which fall within pape are going to be dealt with by Cicero as perturbations or disorders, negative things which is separate from the part of the mind which partakes of reason which becomes even more significant when Cicero says that this part of the mind, that partakes of reason is where they place tranquility, which is to say placid and undisturbed constancy and it’s to the other part of the mind that they assign the motions of anger and desire. So already in this introduction there is a strong implication that any type of pleasure is going to be considered to be a perturbation of the mind and something that is negative, whereas Cicero seems to be identifying tranquility, which most of us would consider to be a positive thing as something that goes along with reason, separate from pleasure or pain.
Joshua (15:34):
Yeah, I’m going to suggest that the way forward here is to go to a Wikipedia page called Stoic Passions. The passions it says are transliterated from pathe from the Greek. The Greek word pathos was a wide ranging term indicating an infliction one suffers epicurus. This is me talking is using path pathos to refer to the feelings of pleasure and pain. And this Wikipedia page has sort of an outline or a set of categories with an enumerated list under each one, and that’s why I think it’ll be useful. The stoics, beginning with Xeno arranged the passions under four headings, distress, which is Lupe fear, which is foose, lust, which is epit, theia and delight, which is hedon or pleasure. And it says two of these passions, distress and delight refer to emotions currently present and two of these fear and lust refer to emotions directed at the future.
(16:33):
Thus, there are just two states directed at the prospect of good and evil, but subdivided as to whether they are present and future. So on the Wikipedia page here we have a little chart that says good and evil on the left hand column and then present and future are the headings for each column. So good and present is the feeling of pleasure or delight. Good and future is the lust for future delights. Evil and present is distress. Evil in future is the fear of future distress. But even though delight in this little chart on Wikipedia as the word good next to it, that is not the stoic position here. All of these are kinds of suffering. All of these are perturbations is the word that Cicero is using pathe in Greek and we are not to consider any of these to be worth pursuing. In fact, we should find ways to deal with this mental perturbation.
(17:29):
That’s kind of the upshot. And if we look under the list of each one under distress, for example, we have envy, rivalry, jealousy, compassion, anxiety, mourning, sadness, being troubled, grief, lamentation, depression, vation and despondency. Then under fear we have sluggishness, shame, fright, timidity, consternation, bewilderment and faintheartedness. And then under lust we have anger, rage, hatred, enmity, wrath, greed and longing. And then under delight, which is he is pleasure, we have malice is his pleasure derived from a neighbor’s evil. Rapture is pleasure, soothing the soul by charm of the sense of hearing and ostentation is pleasure shown in outward demeanor and puffing oneself out extravagantly so pleasure or delight or had donate. This is part of their categorization of mental suffering. And it goes on to say that the wise person is someone who is free from the passions and the Greek word for that is athea.
(18:38):
Just like we have apia and axia, we have this other Greek word athe, which means free from the passions, free from lost distress, fear and delight. And instead the sage experiences good feelings you patha, which are clearheaded. These emotional impulses are not excessive, but nor are they diminished emotions. Instead they are the correct rational emotional response. The stoics listed the good feelings under the headings of joy, Carra wish bois and caution ulaa. Thus, if something is present which is a genuine good, then the wise person experiences an uplift in the soul, which we call joy or chara. In Greek, the stoics also subdivided the good feelings as under joy. We have enjoyment, cheerfulness and good spirits under wish. We have good intent, goodwill, welcoming, cherishing and love. And under caution we have moral shame. Moral shame is a good feeling and reverence. There’s quite a lot here to go through.
(19:46):
Cassius. I think it’s useful to have that outlined in our head as we look at some of this stuff. And as with most of these philosophers, even though the stoics talk very poorly about pleasure and in fact include pleasure as one of the mental perturbations that the wise man has eradicated from his life, they are using other words like carra. Joy would certainly fall under what Epicurus describes as pleasure. And this is part of the word game that Cicero plays throughout all of his texts. He is using the word hedon, the way the stoics use it. He’s not using it the way Epicurus uses it and so much of his confusion comes from that. So I read this list of good feelings and I think some of these we would certainly say under epicureanism are pleasurable. Section six says Zeno’s definition then is this a perturbation, which he calls a pathos is a commotion of the mind, repugnant to reason and against nature.
Cassius (20:45):
And as we read through what Cicero has to say about all this, it seems to me that Cicero himself is admitting that parsing these definitions too strongly is a waste of time. So when Cicero is talking about perturbations, he’s talking about something that is repugnant to reason and against nature and it’s pretty safe to say that being repugnant to reason and against nature is a bad thing in this perspective. And while we can go back and forth and back and forth as to whether there are variations of the different terminology that might be consistent with Epicurus, it seems to me that it’s very clear that whether they are talking about lust or joy or parsing their adjectives carefully so as to imply maybe something’s okay to some degree but not okay to another degree in the end, the conclusion that they reach is that strong emotion is inconsistent with the life of a wise man and something to be eliminated from the experience of the wise man. You can carve out all sorts of words that have slightly different meanings, but in the end the direction that they they’re going is that strong emotion as a class is something to be avoided and minimized.
Joshua (22:09):
In the middle of this paragraph, Cicero says that where a strong desire is consistent and founded on prudence, it is called by the stoics Bois and the name which we give it is volition and this they allow to none but their wise men and define it. Thus volition is a reasonable desire, but whatever is incited to violently and opposition to reason, that is a lust or an unbridled desire which is discoverable in all fools. So the stoic sage has this volition, this strong desire, this will or drive to eradicate what you were just describing, which are these unreasonable perturbations that are repugnant to reason and against nature and this is what the stoic sage is going to use to pick his way through all of this. And he says that fools do not have this capacity and are overcome by unbridled desire or lust.
Cassius (23:05):
Right now what I’m about to say is going to come across as heresy to many of our stoic friends who just love these sections of Tuscan disputations. But I’m going to suggest that for our purposes we skip on down through this discussion and move on to around sections 16 and 17 where Cicero is going to turn to discussing the aristotelians as opposed to the stoics and get into the discussion of moderation and how that contrasts with the more rigorous or extreme depending on how you like to look at it, viewpoints that the stoics were taking. Ro says this hints you may understand what sort of person he is whom we call at one time moderate at another modest or temperate at another constant and virtuous. While sometimes we include all these names in the word frugality as the crown of all for if that word did not include all virtues, it would never have been proverbial to say that a frugal man does everything rightly.
(24:08):
But when the stoics apply this saying to their wise man, they seem to exalt him too much and to speak of him with too much admiration. So there’s some kind of criticism coming through here from Cicero directed at the stoics. It’s unfamiliar to most of us to consider frugality a word that expresses such a high form of virtue. We’ve discussed that briefly in the past, but the point here is that Cicero is distancing himself somewhat from the way the stoics are describing the wise man and the reason for that is going to become relevant to us as he begins criticizing the aristotelians, the peripatetics in section 17, Cicero says in a way that sides with the stoics who whoever conducts himself in this manner will be free from grief and from every other perturbation and a mind free from these feelings renders man completely happy, whereas a mind disordered and drawn off from right and unerring reason loses at once.
(25:14):
Not only its resolution but its health. Therefore the thoughts and declarations of the peripatetics are soft and effeminate for they say that the mind must necessarily be agitated, but at the same time they lay down certain bounds beyond which that agitation is not to proceed. Now if misery loves company, I suppose as Epicureans can look to the peripatetics as sharing some of Cicero’s wrath here and being called soft and effeminate, which Cicero usually reserves to describe the epicureans, but I’ve moved us to this location because I think this is an important aspect of seeing where Cicero and the stoics are going, that they will criticize not only the epicurean for being soft and effeminate in valuing pleasure and in saying that the wise man will feel his emotions more strongly than others, they are also critical of the aristotelians as well for admitting any amount of agitation of the mind which Cicero and the stoics are apparently more likely to consider to be herbaceous and therefore totally off limits for the wise man.
(26:28):
There’s something going on here where the peripatetics or allowing a certain amount of agitation which places them closer to the epicurean position and Cicero is denouncing that and we probably ought to do what we can to understand where the dividing line is here in this part of the discussion. And before we get into that, Joshua, I’ll say one more from 18 Cicero further says of the peripatetics, it makes no difference whether you approve of moderate perturbations of the mind or of moderate injustice, moderate cowardice or moderate in temperance for whoever prescribes bounds to vice admits a part of it, which as it is odious of itself becomes the more so as it stands on slippery ground and being once set forward glides on headlong and cannot by any means be stopped. So the slippery slope argument comes into play here as well that Cicero is criticizing the peripatetics for saying that any amount of what Cicero is calling perturbation, any amount of strong emotion is going to set you on a slippery slope. If you admit any injustice, if you’re slightly less than courageous, if you have any amount of in temperance, then you’ve admitted evil into your life and you’re on that proverbial slippery slope to disaster.
Joshua (27:51):
Well, I know there’s something in on ends book two that is almost identical to what he says there.
Cassius (27:57):
Yeah, Joshua, I think the main issue here that we’re going to be able to pull out of this criticism of the Peripatetics is that in some instances the Aristotelians seem to have been moving away from Plato in a positive direction but did not go to the logical conclusions that Epicurus takes many of his conclusions and it’s always I think of interest to us to try to keep a global understanding of how these schools fit together, that the stoics were digging in to what some might say would be the worst aspects of Socratic and platonic idealism, whereas Aristotle was willing to say, Hey, there’s a problem here with this idealism and whether it be anger or other types of emotions, these strong emotions do have a place in human life and we’re going to find some logical way to put a limit to them. We’re going to keep them under control, but we are not going to banish them and say that the best life has nothing to do with these as the stoics might like us to do.
(29:02):
We’re going to, in the case of anger, for example, enlist it for positive purposes when we keep it under control. And that distinction thereby calls into question, well are you going to follow the stoic path of saying that virtue must be complete in itself and there can be no mixture of anything that is remotely evil with virtue or are you going to find a way to deal with the reality of human life as Aristotle was attempting perhaps to do without going to the final conclusions that Epicurus reached, there’s something here that’s of interest in terms of how far off the beam you can go when you ignore reality To the extent that the stoics we’re attempting to do as Cicero says here, further in 19, why should I say more? Why should I add that the peripatetics say that these perturbations which we insist upon should be extirpated are not only natural but given to men by nature for a good purpose.
(30:03):
They usually talk in this manner in the first place. They say much in praise of anger, they call it the wet stone of courage and they say that angry men exert themselves most against an enemy or against a bad citizen. That those reasons are of little weight, which are the motives of men who think thus as it is a just war, it becomes us to fight for our laws, our liberties, our country. They will allow no force to these arguments unless our courage is warmed by anger. So Cicero is pointing out that the peripatetics are totally going in a different direction on strong emotions such as anger, which the peripatetics are saying is necessary and natural for men to act strongly enough to defend their liberties and their countries and their laws. Peripatetics apparently saying that if you don’t have anger then you’re not going to have courage.
(30:59):
You can’t be the courageous persons that the stoics will praise but not allow anger as part of following on. One more quotation from 20, Cicero says, and the peripatetics say that the other divisions of sorrow have their use that pity incites us to hasten to the assistance of others and to alleviate the calamities of men who have undeservedly fallen into them that even envy and detraction are not without their use as when a man sees that another person has attained what he cannot or observes another to be equally successful with himself that he should take away fear would take away all industry in life which those men exert in the greatest degree, who are afraid of the laws and of the magistrates who dread poverty ign many death and pain. So this is the last of the quotations there for a while, but Cicero is pointing out that the peripatetics were not going to go down this road of exter strong emotion. They were going to enlist strong emotion or harness strong emotion as motivation and energy for what they held to be proper ways of life. And I think in that sense the peripatetics are probably significantly closer to Epicurus than they are to the stoics who any amount of strong emotion is anathema to.
Joshua (32:22):
It is interesting because in book two of VN Cicero has a criticism of Epicurus on this point and it’s very similar to what we’ve just heard in book two. He says this, Epicurus is indifferent to logical neatness. His talk is disorderly. We must humor him if only he thinks a right. To my mind, this is exactly what is not very satisfactory though I just do put up with it that a philosopher should talk of limiting the passions, compassion be limited. It is rather a thing to abolish and drag out by the roots who is there that cannot if passion be in him, be rightly called passionate so we shall have a miser but within limits and an adulterer, but he will keep within bounds and asite in the same way. What sort of philosophy is this, which does not lead to the extinction of depravity, but is satisfied with moderation in sin.
(33:16):
Yet in the case of this subdivision, I entirely approve of its purpose, though I feel the absence of its neatness. Let him call these feelings the cravings of nature. Let him keep the term passion for another use so that when he comes to speak of miserliness self-indulgence and the greatest sins, he may arraign the term so to speak on a capital charge. Very similar here to what Cicero is now saying in Tus and Disputations in response to the peripatetics, because Aristotle had talked about the pathe under a number of different contexts, one of them being oratory for example, that when you’re speaking and you’re trying to persuade a group of people just like Cicero is doing himself here, just like demos Denise, right? This great Athenian orator who’s trying to rally the people of Greece to rise up against the threat represented by Philip II of Macedon and his son, of course Alexander the Great that using emotions is a useful tool in order to get other people to engage on the level that we need them to engage to help us out to do what we’re trying to get done here.
(34:23):
And another interesting area where Aristotle talks about emotion is in art and particularly in drama where the viewer of this drama with the climax and Dan Ma of the story or of the play experiences catharsis, which is this emotional release, right? It builds up inside of us, but then you get this sort of safety valve that lets it off. And this I think is kind of what Cicero is complaining about, that you don’t need a pressure valve to release this emotional pressure. What you need is just to rip the emotions out entirely and never allow them to reestablish themselves. And so it is very interesting to see the way in which Epicurus and Aristotle are both in Cicero sites on this point.
Cassius (35:07):
Yeah, it’s extremely revealing to point out the very bright distinction here that Cicero as an academic skeptic is also willing to go in praising stoicism and criticizing anybody who would take anything less than an extreme position against strong emotions. Cicero continues to deal with a number of these as he proceeds. He says that there’s no need to have passion in order to have courage by saying our people then were in the right who as all vices depend on our manners and nothing is worse than a passionate disposition called angry men, the only morose men, and says basically that anger is not needed for courage. It’s not needed in oration or pleading. And likewise, we don’t need pity or envy or any other emotions to motivate us to be virtuous. I’m always fascinated by the references to pity as something that is identified as a negative concept by the stoics and Cicero in these contexts.
(36:11):
Cicero says in 28 that certainly the most effectual cure is to be achieved by showing that all perturbations are of themselves vicious and have nothing natural or necessary in them. In section 31, Cicero says, thus a mind enlarged by joy is as a contraction of it by grief and eager longing is a sign of as much levity in desiring as I moderate joy is in possessing and as those who are too dejected are said to be effeminate. So they who are too elated with joy are properly called volatile. And his feeling envy is a part of grief and the being pleased with another’s misfortune is a kind of joy. Both these feelings are usually corrected by showing the wildness and insensibility of them. And as it becomes a man to be cautious, it is unbecoming in him to be fearful. So to be pleased is proper, but to be joyful, improper.
(37:17):
In regard to love, Cicero says in 32, anyone who attends the least to the subject will be convinced how unbecoming this joy is. And as they are very shameful who are immoderately delighted with the enjoyment of venereal pleasures, so are they very scandalous who lust vehemently after them and all that which is commonly called love. And believe me, I can find no other name to call it by is of such a trivial nature that nothing I think is to be compared to it. So with all these criticisms of strong emotion, Cicero comes to an end of part three by saying this quote, but as the cause of perturbations is now discovered, for all of them arise from the judgment or opinion or volition, I shall put an end to this discourse. But we ought to be assured since the boundaries of good and evil are now discovered as far as they are discoverable by man, that nothing can be desirable of philosophy, greater or more useful than the discussion we’ve just had these last four days For besides instilling a contempt of death and relieving pain so as to enable men to bear it, we have added the appeasing of grief than which there is no greater evil to man for though every perturbation of mind is grievous and differs but little from madness.
(38:39):
Yet we are used to say of others when they’re under any perturbation as of fear, joy or desire, that they’re agitated and disturbed, but of those who give themselves up to grief that they are miserable, afflicted, wretched, unhappy, so that it does not seem to be by accident but with reason proposed by you that I should discuss grief and the other perturbation separately for their lives to spring in the head of all our miseries. But the cure of grief and of the other disorders is one in the same, and that they are all voluntary and founded on opinion. We take them on ourselves because it seems right to do so. Philosophy undertakes to eradicate this error as the root of all our evils, let us therefore surrender ourselves to be instructed by it and suffer ourselves to be cured for whilst these evils have possession of us, we not only cannot be happy but cannot be right in our minds.
(39:37):
The point of all that seeming to be that Cicero is considering all strong emotions to be error, something that is voluntary, something that is founded on opinion, something that is basically the root of all evil and that needs to be eradicated in favor of reason as opposed to emotion. That’s a position that is very far from the epicurean view, that emotion, pleasure, pain, feeling or given to us by nature for guidance and positive reasons. And that the thing to do is not to attempt to suppress them in favor of some views of other worldliness or ideals that we can generate in our minds, but to incorporate them as the guidance that nature intended them to be and to live our lives according to them. Okay, we’re about out of time for this week and there’s a tremendous amount additional in section three that we’re going to skip over for purposes of staying with our overriding goal of understanding Epicurus better. But before we leave off today, any additional thoughts, Joshua?
Joshua (40:44):
We’re at the end here in the test Disputations of the sections in which Cicero is telling us what we need to eradicate from our lives, which is fear of death, fear of pain, grief, mental perturbation, and where we go next in next week’s episode will be the question whether virtue alone be sufficient for a happy life. In other words, once you’ve taken all the evils out, we need to talk about building a ground or a framework for a life that is happy. That’s still his goal here as you can see it from the way he phrases the question in section five. So that’s where we’re going next week. We have skipped a lot of material, but Tuscan Disputations has been such a great resource for us to go through. We’ve learned a lot, but even in the sections we haven’t really talked about, there’s so much more that you could talk about.
Cassius (41:32):
That’s right, Josh, where there are plenty of resources out there for people who want to understand more about stoicism. And I do think it’s really helpful to explore that, to contrast it to what Epicurus has to say so that you begin to understand how Epicurus arrived at the conclusions that he reached. As we’ve said many times, Epicurus is not a reaction to Stoicism because Epicurus actually started his teaching before the stoics did. But these issues that the stoics ended up developing in a negative way were present in Plato and Aristotle was already beginning to react against them, which is why Ciceros criticizing him here and that we read today. But the true antidote to these errors from Platonism comes through Epicurean philosophy and goes much further than Aristotle was willing to go. But it does all end up being summarized in this question of whether virtue should be the goal of life or something else, and that’s what we’re going to come back and address in much more detail next week. Until then, as always, we invite you to drop by the Epicurean Friends forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments or suggestions about any of our podcast episodes. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back soon. See you then. Bye.