Episode 313 - TD40 - Diagnosing When Words Are Empty Of Meaning

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Welcome to Episode 313 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.

Last week we began to close in on the end of our coverage of Tusculan Disputations, and one of the points made last week was that while a lot of philosophy can be viewed by non-specialists as a word game, there are deep differences in the foundations of the different schools that lead to dramatically different conclusions about how to live. The words can begin to blur together, and the definition-games can become tedious, but it is extremely important to know what is behind the analysis of any viewpoint in order to judge the ultimate result.

This issue of whether virtue is the only good, or whether virtue is sufficient for happiness, has tremendous practical implications. Who or what gets to decide what “good” is? Who or what gets to decide what “virtue” is? Who or what gets to decide what “happiness” is? Behind the Stoic / Platonic / non-Epicurean viewpoint is this idea that there are supernatural gods, or supernatural ideal forms, to which we should look to tell us what to do rather than the sense of pleasure and pain which Nature gives to each of us individually. The choice of school you choose to follow is therefore going to have tremendous implications on your life individually, socially, religiously, politically, and in probably every way imaginable.

Transcript (unedited)

Cassius (00:11):

Welcome to episode 313 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. We’re continuing to close in on the end of those parts of tus and disputations that are most relevant to Epicurean philosophy, and we’re going to pick and choose among the remaining sections and go through some of the highlights as a reminder of where we are. One of the points that we made last week was that a lot of philosophy can appear to look like an impractical word game, and yet there are deep differences in the various schools that can lead to dramatically different applications in terms of how we should live, the terms the schools use can begin to blur together and get very confusing, but it’s important to know what’s behind the terminology so you can predict what the result is going to be when you try to apply that school’s ideas.

(01:32):

The issue that we’ve been looking at over the last several weeks is whether we should consider virtue to be the only good, and whether virtue is sufficient for happiness from the viewpoint of the stoics and the platonists and most other non epicurean philosophers. The answers to those questions is yes, but that’s not the answer that Epicurus gives. Epicurus tells us to look behind the words to get to the heart of the issues who or what gets to decide what virtue really is, who or what gets to decide what good is who or what gets to decide what happiness is behind the stoic and the platonic and these other non epicurean viewpoints. You’ll find that there are supernatural gods or ideal forms or words like essences and those other philosophers tell us to look to those to determine how to live rather than to the feelings of pleasure and pain that nature gives us.

(02:31):

That’s why the choice of what school to follow is so important. Today we’re going to look at two related questions. One question is the role of the mind or reason or logic in answering these questions. Everyone including Epicurus, places great stress on proper use of the mind, both the stoics and Plato and these other schools consider the mind to be so superior to the body that the body really fades into the background and in the end, all that’s really important to those other schools is what we can control in our minds. That’s why the stoics and the religions say that the only thing that matters really is virtue or piety because those are within the mind and we can supposedly have total control over them. To them, nothing outside the mind is of any real importance. Another question is something that is known as the heap or the sororities paradox.

(03:29):

The name sounds confusing, but the issue is not really that hard to understand. Think about what we might call a heap or a pile of sand. It’s easy to understand that what we’re thinking about are grains of sand stacked together in one place, but how many grains of sand must we have to constitute a heap if we start removing grains of sand one by one? Do we ever find something that has the word heap written on it? Some. One thing that makes a heap a heap, the answer epicurus gives us is that a heap of sand is made up of the grains of sand that compose it, but the stoics and the platonists and even Aristotle give a very different answer. They say that there’s such a thing as an ideal form or an essence of a heap, and that what makes something in front of us a heap is that it shares what they call a metaphysical relationship with their ideal or their essential heap.

(04:32):

They don’t always tell us this, but what they really mean most of the time is that they think an all powerful creator God has established what a heap is that the only way we can be sure that they think in front of us is a heap, is to use their logic or mathematics or their divine revelation to understand what a heap is. They generally disagree among themselves about exactly how to do that, but the one thing they generally do agree on is that we cannot trust our own eyes or our own senses to determine what a heap is, and that’s exactly what Epicurus tells us to do, and in that context, last week Joshua mentioned the analogy of a spectrum of colors and how when you look at one end of the spectrum, you can very clearly see that the color at one end is very different than the color at the other end, but as you move incrementally across the spectrum from one slight change in shade to another, it becomes difficult to distinguish and the shades become very close to each other.

(05:42):

If you try to analogize life to a mathematical formula or a geometric problem and you try to say that A is equal to B and b is equal to C and therefore A is equal to C, the difficulty is always in the details of what A and B and C really are, just as in the spectrum of colors. One color that’s very close to another is very similar, but the further away you get in distance on that spectrum, the more clear the difference between the colors becomes. Last week Cicero briefly mentioned the problem of the heap, but previously in section three of Tuscan Disputations, he had quoted Epicurus and connected the heap problem to the things that Epicurus was saying, and it’s probably worth given that we’re on this topic to go back to that for just a minute and hopefully draw some conclusions about what really is at stake because in 41 and 42 of section three, Cicero has said this and what I’m about to read is going to come from long and Slys Hellenistic philosophers translation of that section and they translate that section as follows.

(06:54):

Starting out with a quote from Epicurus himself where Cicero says that Epicurus had written about the pleasures of taste and sex and so forth. Here’s the quotation itself, quote For my part, I cannot conceive of anything as the good if I remove the pleasures perceived by means of taste and sex and listening to music and the pleasant motions felt by the eyes through beautiful sights or any other pleasures which some sensation generates in a man as a whole. Certainly it’s impossible to say that mental delight is the only good, but a delighted mind as I understand it consists in the expectation of all the things I just mentioned to be of a nature able to acquire them without pain. And then Cicero says a little later, Epicurus ads, I have often asked men who were called wise what they could retain as the content of goods if they removed those things unless they wanted to pour out empty words, I could learn nothing from them, and if they want to babble on about virtues and wisdom, they will be speaking of nothing except the way in which those pleasures I mentioned are produced.

(08:14):

Okay, that’s the end of that quotation. We will often cite Epicurus talking about the pleasures of taste and sex and not knowing good without them. To emphasize that Epicurus clearly consider the stimulations of the body to be part of his concept of pleasure, an important part of it, and not just the mental pleasures, which he also admits his pleasures that Epicurus has a wider view of pleasure that includes both, but it appears that this quotation probably was related to Epicurus discussing this bigger issue. The specific way it’s stated is that he wouldn’t know what the good is if he removed them, and that becomes a method of analysis. It’s just like the color spectrum that Joshua brought up. What would the spectrum consist of if you started removing each of the individual colors within that spectrum, would there be something left if you started removing all of these colors that continues to be there when the colors themselves are removed?

(09:19):

That’s the way Epicurus is approaching this question of the good. He’s saying, I can list many types of goods both of mind and of body, but if I start removing each and every single example of these goods, is there anything left when you’ve removed these examples, the implication of that being that this term, which we’ve called the good or this term which we’ve called the spectrum of colors, does not have a separate existence apart from the individual instances of colors or of pleasures that compose them, and Epicurus is very clearly saying, if you remove all of these examples of things that are good, then you’re left with nothing but empty words and to talk about virtue and wisdom without talking about these particular examples in which they manifest themselves, you’re speaking essentially of nothing and virtue and wisdom in this context becomes nothing except the way in which these pleasures I have mentioned are produced.

(10:25):

So the benefit of approaching these questions through this heap problem is that it focuses your attention on the question of whether there is any kind of ideal form or any kind of divine communication from some God that tells you that there’s a class of things apart from the individual instances that belong to that class. Phrasing things in that way may appear to look like it’s a word game, but it’s a game that you have to understand if you’re going to successfully deal with the problems that these questions cause, rather than giving up on tools of analysis such as reason, the way to deal with the confusion that gamesmanship can sometimes cause is to understand the game so that you can successfully understand the deceptions that can be involved with it. Now in this context of evaluating the good life according to good things, evaluating happiness according to the pleasures of which is composed, we can also evaluate the best life in terms of what the components of the best life would be. We have previously in own ends book one seen how Torti presented the epicurean position of how to understand what the best life might be by itemizing the components of the best life and giving us a picture, giving us an example of the characteristics of what would be making up the best life as we move forward today, we’re going to see Cicero give his own picture and give his own list of components of the best life from an anti epicurean, stoic academic skeptic point of view.

Joshua (12:16):

Yeah, it is surprising Cassius, the number of applications we find of this. So syllogism in discussion Greek philosophy and we could take it down to any number of rabbit holes before I get into the Tor Quois section, let me read just the first paragraph here from the Wikipedia page on Essentialism it says, essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, platonic idealism held that all things have such an essence, an idea or form in his categories. Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a substance that as George Lackof put it, make the thing what it is and without which it would not be that kind of thing. The contrary view non-essentialism denies the need to posit such an essence. Essentialism has been controversial from its beginning. In the Parmenides dialogue, Plato depicts Socrates questioning the notion suggesting that if we accept the idea that every beautiful thing or just action partakes of an essence to be beautiful or just we must also accept the existence of separate essences for hair, mud, and dirt.

(13:29):

And then Wikipedia goes on to explain that in biology and other natural sciences, essentialism provided the rationale for taxonomy at least until the time of Charles Darwin and you get to the origin of species and the development of evolutionary biology by natural selection, and suddenly we do have with this genetic history of the living things on earth, we do have a kind of color spectrum or gradient where if you compare the parent generation and the child generation, they seem quite similar, but if you go a million years either side, you end up with something that looks completely different. And so we have to choose a dividing line because there is no clear or essential definition of what makes a lizard a lizard because over time we know that the successive generations of lizards are going to develop into something new and different with different genetic information. So it’s just very interesting to see how this stuff comes up in all kinds of cases.

Cassius (14:34):

Joshua, those listeners of our podcast who might be familiar with a Rand will know one of her major themes was that she would quote Aristotle saying A equals A as a thing is itself, and it doesn’t really answer a question really to say that a thing is itself unless you have additional information. Is the thing partaking of an ideal form? Is it partaking of an essence or is a thing composed of atoms moving through the void in an individual way at a particular time? I know that we’ve cited numbers of times in the past as well that there is an article by Richard Dawkins that criticizes essentialism very much along the lines that you’ve just mentioned. So you brought up some really interesting material in what you’ve said already and that takes us back to where Totus said, I’m going to show to you that the life of pleasure is the best life by illustrating a set of circumstances that we can identify as being characteristic of the best man. Joshua is going to tell us how Totus did that using Epicurean philosophy, and then we’ll contrast it to what Cicero is going to say is the best life from this platonic Socratic Pythagorean point of view.

Joshua (15:53):

Yeah, that’s right, Cassius. I’m looking here at paragraph 12 from the Rackham translation of a very notable passage from the first book of on end. And in this paragraph, the epicurean Torti makes the following claim. He says The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration, let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures, a like of body and of mind undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain. What possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable? One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or of pain. He will know that death means complete unconsciousness and that pain is generally light if long and short, if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration at its continuance, by diminishing severity.

(16:57):

Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power. Let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement. And then he describes the contrary view of a man crushed beneath the heaviest load of mental and bodily anguish with no hope of relief and no feeling of pleasure. And he says, can one describe or imagine a more pitiable state? He says, if then a life of pain is the thing most be avoided, it follows that to live in pain is the highest evil and this position implies that a life of pleasure is the ultimate good. In fact, the mind possesses nothing in itself upon which it can rest as final. Every fear, every sorrow can be traced back to pain. There is no other thing besides pain, which is of its own nature capable of causing either anxiety or distress, pleasure and pain.

(17:57):

Moreover supply the motives of desire and of avoidance and the springs of conduct generally this being so it clearly follows that actions are right and praiseworthy only as being a means to the attainment of a life of pleasure, but that which is not itself a means to anything else but to which all else is a means is what the Greeks term, the telos, the highest ultimate or final good. It must therefore be admitted that the chief good is to live agreeably and that’s mostly the end of that, but he does go on to say this about virtue which is relevant to the whole fifth book of Tus and disputations. He says, those who place the chief good in virtue alone are beguiled by the glamor of a name and do not understand the true demands of nature. If they will consent to listen to epicurus, they will be delivered from the grossest error.

(18:54):

Your school dilates on the transcendent beauty of the virtues, but were they not productive of pleasure? Who would deem them either praiseworthy or desirable? We esteem the art of medicine not for its interest as a science but for its conduciveness to health. The art of navigation is commended for its practical and not its scientific value because it conveys the rules for sailing a ship with success. So also wisdom which must be considered as the art of living if it affected no result would not be desired, but as it is, it is desired because it is the artificer that procures and produces pleasure. The meaning that I attach to pleasure must by this time be clear to you and you must not be biased against my argument owing to the discreditable associations of the term, and I’ll stop reading there. The reason that this passage in Torti is relevant is because we’re about to get into a passage here in Cicero’s, tus and Disputations when he describes the features of the life of the wise man. And so in the works of Cicero, this presents the clearest parallel to what Cicero holds to be the epicurean view versus what he holds to be his own view of the good and of the life of wisdom, the life of the philosopher,

Cassius (20:14):

Right Joshua? Now to emphasize what you just said at the beginning of section 24, for example, Cicero says, but that what I propose to demonstrate to you may not rest on mere words alone. I must set before you a picture of something as it were living and moving in the world. And so that’s basically what we’re doing here and it relates to the heap problem. The question before us is what is the relationship between the big picture and the details of the picture? What is the relationship between the color spectrum and the individual colors? What is the relationship between good as a concept versus the individual goods that we would say would make up a good life? Is there something beyond that exists? In a world of ideal forms? It becomes to us emanated by God or something that relates the big picture to the individual pieces that relates the forest to the trees, so to speak.

(21:17):

And in the point of view of Cicero, Plato, all these other guys, there is some hidden external other otherworldly ideal essential factor that explains how the individual pieces come together into the big picture. And Epicurus is taking an opposite position that the picture is the sum of its components. The pleasant life is the sum of individual pleasures, but there’s no other dimension in which the sum exists on its own. And that’s why Epicurus says that if you start removing every individual mental and bodily pleasure, there’s nothing left. You’re talking empty words about what good is, just as if you remove from the living human being every sensation as he says in principle doctrine number two, then there’s nothing left because all good and evil comes to us through sensation, which is individual experiences. It’s not some of the worldly factor that we have to use geometry or mathematics or sistic logic to get into contact with our reality comes to us through our sensations, anticipations and feelings, and not through some other propositional logic method. It is not necessary to know geometry in order to live a happy life as Plato might suggest.

Joshua (22:46):

That’s right. You mentioned geometry just now and we are skipping from section 15 to section 23 in the text from last week because he kind of goes on a digression into a bunch of anecdotes and passages from poetry and stuff, and while there’s a whole lot of interest there, he talks about the sort of Damocles, he talks about the life of a tyrant and how that relates to a central question of virtue, and then he talks about Archimedes and Cicero’s own rediscovery of the lost tomb or grave of Archimedes. And so there’s a lot of interest to be found there, but we are moving ahead to section 23 here where Cicero starts this way. But to return to the subject from which I have been digressing, who is there in the least degree acquainted with the muses that is with liberal knowledge or that deals at all in learning, who would not choose to be this mathematician rather than that tyrant who would not choose, in other words, to be Archimedes rather than Dionysus, the tyrant he was talking about.

(23:50):

If we look into their methods of living and their employments, we shall find the mind of the one strengthened and improved with tracing the deductions of reason, amused with his own ingenuity, which is the one most delicious food of the mind, the thoughts of the other engaged in continual murders and injuries in constant fears by night and day. Now, imagine a democrat, a pythagoreous and an annex Aris, what kingdom, what riches would you prefer to their studies and amusements for? You must necessarily look for that excellence which we are seeking for in that which is the most perfect part of man, but what is their better in man than a sagacious and good mind? The enjoyment therefore of that good, which proceeds from that sagacious mind alone can make us happy, but virtue is the good of the mind. It follows therefore that a happy life depends on virtue, hence proceed all things that are beautiful, honorable, and excellent as I said above, but this point must I think be treated of more at large and they are well stored with joys for as it is clear that a happy life consists in perpetual and unhosted pleasures.

(25:09):

It follows too that a happy life must arise from honesty.

Cassius (25:15):

Joshua, just like last week when you were disagreeing with Cicero’s analysis, the part of this analysis that jumps out at me as questionable is where he says, for you must necessarily look for that excellence which we are seeking for in that which is the most perfect part of man, but what is there better in man than a sagacious and good mind? It’s like he’s chopping men up into body and mind and just discarding the body and saying the mind is all that’s important. I see that criticism raised by Cosmo Ramon. I believe it’s raised by Lorenzo Valla and it’s a common criticism of the stoic approach that you’re going to take one piece of the human and say that this is what’s important and ignore the rest and the truth is that we are both a mind and a body and you cannot legitimately analyze the best life, the goal of life without taking both into account. But what Cicero is doing there is exactly that. He’s saying, let’s look to the most perfect part of a man as our guidance instead of looking to the whole being

Joshua (26:31):

Exactly. And within that context we can make sense of the last line there where he says, for as it is clear that a happy life consists in perpetual and unhosted pleasures. It follows too that a happy life must arise from honesty. The pleasures that he’s talking about are the intellectual pleasures of the liberal arts, right? The study of geometry, the study of language, the study of history as with his discovery of the tomb of Archimedes and the study of philosophy. These are the pleasures with which he’s interested and the rest of them, he’s not even willing to consider the pleasures of the body are right out of the equation. So in section 24, he says this, but that what I propose to demonstrate to you may not rest on mere words only. I must set before you the picture of something as it were living and moving in the world that may dispose us more for the improvement of the understanding and real knowledge.

(27:30):

Let us then pitch upon some man perfectly acquainted with the most excellent arts. Let us present him for a while to our own thoughts and figure him to our own imaginations in the first place he must necessarily be of an extraordinary capacity for virtue is not easily connected with dual minds. Secondly, he must have a great desire of discovering truth from wence will arise that threefold production of the mind, one of which depends on knowing things and explaining nature the other in defining what we ought to desire and what to avoid. The third in judging of consequences and impossibilities in which consists both subtlety and disputing and also clearness of judgment. Now with what pleasures must the mind of a wise man be affected, which continually dwells in the midst of such cares and occupations as these when he views the revolutions and motions of the whole world and sees those innumerable stars in the heavens, which though fixed in their places have yet one motion in common with the whole universe and observes the seven other stars some higher, some lower each maintaining their own course while their motions though wandering have certain defined and appointed spaces to run through the sight of which doubtless, urged and encouraged those ancient philosophers to exercise their investigating spirit on many other things.

(29:02):

Hence arose an inquiry after the beginnings and as it were seeds from which all things were produced and composed, what was the origin of every kind of thing, whether animate or inanimate, articulately speaking or mute what occasion did their beginning and end and by what alteration and change one thing was converted into another once the earth originated and by what weights? It was balanced by what caverns. The seas were supplied by what gravity. All things being carried down tend always to the middle of the world, which in any round body is the lowest point. Okay, continuing directly into 25, csro says A mind employed on such subjects and which night and day contemplates them contains in itself that precept of the Delphi God so as to quote know itself and to perceive its connection with the divine reason from once it is filled with an insatiable joy for reflections on the power and nature of the gods raise in us a desire of imitating their eternity, nor does the mind that sees the necessary dependencies and connections that one cause has with another think it possible that it should be itself confined to the shortness of this life.

(30:24):

Those causes though they proceed from eternity to eternity are governed by reason and understanding and he who beholds them and examines them or rather he whose view takes in all the parts and boundaries of things with what tranquility of mind does he look on all human affairs and on all that is nearer him, hence precedes the knowledge of virtue. Hence arise. The kinds and species of virtues hence are discovered those things which nature regards as the bounds and extremities of good and evil. By this it is discovered to what all duties ought to be referred and which is the most eligible manner of life. And when these and similar points have been investigated, the principle consequence which is deduced from them and that which is our main object in this discussion, is the establishment of the point that virtue is of itself sufficient to a happy life.

(31:22):

The third qualification of our wise man is the next to be considered, which goes through and spreads itself over every part of wisdom. It is these whereby we define each particular thing, distinguish the genus from its species, connect consequences, draw just conclusions, and distinguish truth from falsehood, which is the very art and science of disputing, which is not only of the greatest use in the examination of what passes in the world but is likewise the most rational entertainment and that which is most becoming to true wisdom. Such are its effects in retirement. Now let our wise man be considered as protecting the republic. What can be more excellent than such a character By his prudence, he will discover the true interests of his fellow citizens by his justice. He will be prevented from applying what belongs to the public to his own use. And in short, he will be ever governed by all the virtues which are many and various.

(32:24):

To these let us add the advantages of his friendships in which the learned reckon not only a natural harmony and agreement of sentiments throughout the conduct of life, but the utmost pleasure and satisfaction in conversing and passing our time constantly with one another. What can be wanting to such a life as this to make it more happy than it is fortune herself must yield to a life stored with such joys. Now if it be a happiness to rejoice in such goods of the mind that is to say in such virtues and if all wise men enjoy thoroughly these pleasures, it must necessarily be granted that all wise men are happy.

Cassius (33:09):

Joshua. It really is striking how parallel that is to the way it had been framed by Tatu in book one of own ends that here Cicero is setting up the picture of what he is contending is the best way of life, the best human being and the factors on which he’s basing that best life. The components that he’s citing are just so different in many ways than what Tortas had cited. Epicurus as saying oriented towards in Cicero’s point of view, a divine will that this best person is going to be concerned about a state in the sense of a government, a people, a republic that the wise man is concerned about as opposed to the way Quata states it in terms of individual happiness.

Joshua (33:58):

Yeah, so let’s review the three conditions he says of what make the wise and happy mind. He says, A man with this mind must necessarily be of an extraordinary capacity. So he says that there’s a certain amount of intelligence required to begin this project because virtue is not easily connected with dual minds. And then he says secondly, he must have a great desire for discovering truth and explaining nature in defining what we ought to desire and what to avoid and in judging consequences and impossibilities. And then he says the third qualification of the wise man appears to be that part of the mind which sifts through information and deals with definition and distinguishing genus from species, connecting consequences, causes and effects, drawing just conclusions and distinguishing truth from falsehood. So it’s really the intellect that is under consideration here as the third qualification of the wise man

Cassius (35:01):

And that’s one way of contrasting all of this it would seem to me is that each of these major components that Cicero is citing are mental very much focused on the activities of the mind, whereas what Qua was explaining Epicurus point of view to me seems much wider, that the best life is one in which you’re surrounded by all sorts of pleasures of body and of mind and that you have an understanding of divinity in which you understand that it’s not a threat, that it does serve as an example of the best life, but it’s certainly not something that’s going to cause you harm, that you have an understanding of death that death is not going to cause you a problem either, that you have an understanding of pain, that pain is also something that is manageable and can be overcome and cannot hold you in its grip forever. All of the tatu epicurean analysis seems to me to consider all aspects of life mental and bodily while Cicero’s model through Plato Aristotle and the rest is focused exclusively on the mine.

Joshua (36:12):

Exactly, and we’re not going to get into this today, but the very next thing the student says after what I just read is, will such a man still be happy even when he’s in torments and on the rack? In other words, when his body is being subjected to torture, and of course we already know the answer to the question, the answer is yes for Cicero, he will still be happy and in fact no less happy than he would be in any other circumstance because all of the good in life centers on what exists for us in the mind, something that’s in our control and these accidents that happen to the body. When you consider things rightly and when you cultivate and develop virtue and devote your life to it, these things are something that you can just shake off and return to the mind where things are in your control.

Cassius (37:04):

Yeah, Joshua, as you just said, let’s defer 26 until next week because he’s going to immediately pick up his criticisms again of Epicurus. He’s going to pick up not the SOEs heat question, but the question of what about when we’re under torture? What about when we’re on the rack? It’s fascinating how they go back time and time again. The heap analogy, the question of the wise man on the rack, the question of whether you’re still happy even when you’re under torture. These are useful hypotheticals that focus the mind on deciding is there an essence to something? What is the difference between the one and the many? Are there universals? What is it that makes a heap a heap? What is it that makes good good? Using these examples to dramatize the question, and so we’ll come back to that next week, but lining up Epicurus picture of the best life versus Cicero’s picture of the best life is I think a very good way to dramatize the differences.

(38:09):

Epicurus is based on the whole person body and mind, whereas this Cicero platonic standard Greek model attempts to elevate the mind and uses as its justification for doing that. This idea of a divine origin, a divine purpose. If you did not have that divine purpose, it would make no sense. If you could not argue that there’s a life after death, that there’s a God behind everything, it would make no sense to go in this direction of postulating these ideals and these divine goals. And yet today when people will talk about stoicism or about platonism, they put those issues aside and say, well, this is very intricate and the techniques that people are using, we can just pick and choose however we wish to put things together. But the target, the goal, the ultimate big picture always has to be kept in mind because what you’re doing at a particular moment could end up being disastrous if you don’t have the big picture as your goal.

(39:17):

That’s why you sometimes choose pain. It can be disastrous not to choose something that’s painful in the short run. If you don’t understand that the big picture is pleasure and that you’re going to do what is appropriate and necessary, including sometimes choosing pain in order to achieve pleasure, you’re not doing everything you’re doing in order to achieve a life in heaven after death because there is no such thing. You’re not doing what you’re doing in order to appease a supernatural God who is telling you what to do because that does not exist. You are not doing what you choose to do in life because you have an ideal form by which you are modeling your life after because that does not exist. What Epicurus tells you exists is pleasure and pain as revealed to you through nature and the sensations and the anticipations, and that is the basis for your choosing what to do every moment of your life. So let’s begin to come to conclusion. Any final thoughts as we close for today?

Joshua (40:19):

At the end of section 24 here, Cicero is talking about his second qualification of what makes this sort of imagined virtuous ideal man. And the second qualification is to have a great desire of discovering truth. And partially this means looking at the revolutions and motions of the whole world and the innumerable stars in the heavens, which though fixed in their place have yet one motion in common with the whole universe and the seven other stars, some higher, some lower, which each maintain their own course. While their motions though wandering have certain defined and appointed spaces to run through the sight of which doubtless, urged and encouraged those ancient philosophers to exercise their investigating spirit on many other things. So it’s interesting to me that just as in the letter to ese, part of the study of nature means looking to celestial and atmospheric phenomenon and trying to determine what’s going on up there.

(41:21):

And one of the people to do this in the second century ad presumably in Egypt, was a man named Claudius Tmy and he wrote a book called Al Maje and it means the greatest or the highest. In other words, perhaps because he’s dealing with celestial phenomenon, which is the highest subject to be studied in nature. In other words, it’s literally above our heads. But there’s a very famous passage in this book and he’s talking kind of about what Cicero is talking here. He’s talking about the difference between the fixed and wandering stars. In other words, between what we now know to be other stars like our son is a star and the wandering planets, in fact, the Greek word planos means wanderer. Claudia Tami in his book says, I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace it, my pleasure, the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, my feet no longer touch the earth, but I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.

(42:25):

In other words, Cassius, what you were just talking about a moment ago with this cian project of elevating the mind using virtue and the mind of the virtuous man to ascend kind of to the level of the gods. This is precisely what Claudia is telling me is talking about that he comes across this question in astronomy of these moving stars, the wandering stars or the planets. It’s a question that he can’t really answer given the math that he has available to him at the time. And so instead of answering the question of what the difference is between the fixed and moving stars, he says, I just trace their windings to and fro in the sky, and when I do so, my feet no longer touch the earth, but I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia. In other words, he’s coming face to face with the transcendent, with something that is beyond his comprehension and something that is evidence of the mind of the gods at work in nature, and that it’s this aspect of the mind of the philosopher that I think Cicero is really citing here as one component of the best life and the happiest life.

(43:34):

It’s not just that we stick to discover truth in nature and to discern the differences and definitions between words and concepts. The further point is, as Cicero says in Section 25, A mind employed on such subjects in which night and day contemplates them contains within itself that precept of the Delphi oracle know thy self gthe in Greek of a very famous and notable passage and one of the Delphi maxims, but to perceive its connection with the divine reason from once it is filled with an insatiable joy, and that’s the insatiable joy that Claudia Tmy feels when he’s dining on the ambrosia of the gods in company with Zeus himself. And Cicero is saying, this is what the mind of philosophy, this is what the wise mind, the virtuous mind allows us to do by contemplating and studying these questions in nature and to perceive its own connection, the connection of the mind itself with divine reason. This is the project of philosophy for Cicero.

Cassius (44:43):

Yeah, Joshua, that is a very good way of emphasizing what I think is our theme for today. Cicero. Plato, all the guys that he is advocating against Epicurus are divorcing the mind from the body, trying to argue that the mind is divine and the mind is all that is important. Tous, Epicurus emphasize that humans are both mind and body and you have to take both into account. And in closing, there’s a section in the letter of Cosmo Rami that is directly on point. I’ll close with this quotation. He said, if we were indeed composed solely of a mind, I should be inclined to call Reus happy and entertain the stoic view that we should find happiness in virtue alone. But since we are composed of a mind and a body, why do they leave out of this account of human happiness, something that is part of mankind and properly pertains to it?

(45:44):

Why do they consider only the mind and neglect the body when the body houses the mind and is the other half of what man is? If you are seeking the totality of something made up of various parts and yet some part is missing, I cannot think it perfect and complete. We use the term human. I take it to refer to a being with both a mind and a body, and the same way that the body is not to be thought healthy when some part of it is sick. So man himself cannot be thought happy if he’s suffering in some part of himself. That’s where I’ll leave it today. Again, it evokes the authorities, it evokes the heap question, how do we relate the individual components to the whole? And you have to consider the whole and not just each of the individual components separately. You consider both of them. You don’t just segregate out the mind and say that that’s all that matters as the plaintiffs are trying to do. Okay, well, with that, we’ll come back next week and take up section 26 and other issues as we conclude tus and disputations. In the meantime, we invite everyone to drop by the Epiq Friends form and let us know if you have any questions or comments about this or any of our other discussions. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.