Episode 315 - Preventing Pain From Destroying Happiness

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• Welcome to Episode 315 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.
     
  We are closing in on the end of those portions of Tusculan Disputations that are most relevant to Epicurean philosophy today, so we’ll pick up this week after Section 27 of Part 5.

  Quote

  XXVII.

  But to dismiss the subtleties of the Stoics, which I am sensible I have employed more than was necessary, let us admit of three kinds of goods: and let them really be kinds of goods, provided no regard is had to the body, and to external circumstances, as entitled to the appellation of good in any other sense than because we are obliged to use them: but let those other divine goods spread themselves far in every direction, and reach the very heavens. Why, then, may I not call him happy, nay, the happiest of men, who has attained them? Shall a wise man be afraid of pain? which is, indeed, the greatest enemy to our opinion. For I am persuaded that we are prepared and fortified sufficiently, by the disputations of the foregoing days, against our own death, or that of our friends, against grief and the other perturbations of the mind. But pain seems to be the sharpest adversary of virtue: that it is which menaces us with burning torches; that it is which threatens to crush our fortitude, and greatness of mind, and patience. Shall virtue then yield to this? Shall the happy life of a wise and consistent man succumb to this? Good Gods! how base would this be! Spartan boys will bear to have their bodies torn by rods without uttering a groan. I myself have seen at Lacedæmon, troops of young men, with incredible earnestness contending together with their hands and feet, with their teeth and nails, nay even ready to expire, rather than own themselves conquered. Is any country of barbarians more uncivilized or desolate than India? Yet they have amongst them some that are held for wise men, who never wear any clothes all their life long, and who bear the snow of Caucasus, and the piercing cold of winter, without any pain: and who if they come in contact with fire endure being burned without a groan. The women too, in India, on the death of their husbands have a regular contest, and apply to the judge to have it determined which of them was best beloved by him; for it is customary there for one man to have many wives. She in whose favour it is determined exults greatly, and being attended by her relations is laid on the funeral pile with her husband: the others, who are postponed, walk away very much dejected. Custom can never be superior to nature: for nature is never to be got the better of. But our minds are infected by sloth and idleness, and luxury, and languor, and indolence: we have enervated them by opinions, and bad customs. Who is there who is unacquainted with the customs of the Egyptians? Their minds being tainted by pernicious opinions, they are ready to bear any torture, rather than hurt an ibis, a snake, a cat, a dog, or a crocodile: and should any one inadvertently have hurt any of these animals, he will submit to any punishment. I am speaking of men only. As to the beasts, do they not bear cold and hunger, running about in woods, and on mountains and deserts? will they not fight for their young ones till they are wounded? Are they afraid of any attacks or blows? I mention not what the ambitious will suffer for honour’s sake, or those who are desirous of praise on account of glory, or lovers to gratify their lust. Life is full of such instances.

  In this week’s text Cicero is going to say “For I am persuaded that we are prepared and fortified sufficiently, by the disputations of the foregoing days, against our own death, or that of our friends, against grief and the other perturbations of the mind. But pain seems to be the sharpest adversary of virtue…”

  In that regard I want us to return to Cicero’s statement in the preceding section “for I do not apprehend how past pleasures can allay present evils”

  As I mentioned in the thread to last week’s episode, this is a direct challenge for us to give our best reasoning to support the use of pleasures (of the past, present, or future) to “offset” or “array against” current pains.

  • Quote

    Nor did he take any trouble to provide himself with those remedies which might have enabled him to bear pain; such as firmness of mind, a shame of doing anything base, exercise, and the habit of patience, precepts of courage, and a manly hardiness: but he says that he supports himself on the single recollection of past pleasures, as if any one, when the weather was so hot as that he was scarcely able to bear it, should comfort himself by recollecting that he was once in my country Arpinum, where he was surrounded on every side by cooling streams: for I do not apprehend how past pleasures can allay present evils. But when he says that a wise man is always happy, who would have no right to say so if he were consistent with himself, what may they not do, who allow nothing to be desirable, nothing to be looked on as good but what is honourable? Let, then, the Peripatetics and old Academics follow my example, and at length leave off muttering to themselves; and openly and with a clear voice let them be bold to say, that a happy life may not be inconsistent with the agonies of Phalaris’s bull.

Transcript (unedited)

Cassius (00:10):

Welcome to episode 315 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the epicurean text and we discuss how epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of epicurus@epicureanfriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. We’re continuing to close in on the conclusion of tus and Disputations, but we have a number of episodes left as we are still in section five, which is devoted to the question of whether virtue alone is sufficient to happiness. And as usual, at the beginning of these episodes, I try to put it in context and this question of virtue being sufficient can be a little bit on the dry side if you look at it as sort of a hypothetical.

(01:13):

But in the course of examining it, what we’re doing is talking about what happiness really is. And that’s a very practical issue that’s of extreme importance to us in epicurean philosophy, and not just as a response or in contrast to stoicism or other philosophies, but just to understand what Epicurus had in mind when he was talking about happiness being so important as the goal of life and that happiness means a life of pleasure as opposed to conformity with the gods or conformity with some kind of ideal abstractions. So as we go through these continuing sections at the end of Tuscan Disputations, Cicero is bringing all of his arguments about this topic together. And also Cicero has done us a great service to sort of synthesize the status of Greco-Roman philosophy in around 50 bc, which was around the last period of time that it was really preeminent before the rise of Judeo Christianity and the destruction of the ancient world and all the ancient attitudes that went with it.

(02:22):

So even though we’ve continuously talk about Cicero, I don’t think we should consider these positions he’s taking to be in any way unrepresentative and unique to Cicero. He is summarizing for us what the stoics, what the academics meaning Plato and Socrates and their crowd, what Aristotle through the Peripatetics and a number of other philosophers. He’s summarizing all that for us and giving his opinion about it, which of course, being as skeptic as Cicero was, Cicero always hedges about what he himself believes and says, I’m not going to tell you what’s right and wrong, I’m just going to tell you what’s probable. But in the course of giving us all these alternatives, he’s telling us what Epicure said, opposing what epicure said, but explaining it at the same time and giving us context and detail that we just don’t have in the original letters of Epicurus himself.

(03:20):

So again, we are in the middle of discussing this issue of virtue being sufficient to happiness. And in 26 where we ended last week, Cicero had given us a rousing stoic call to action for everyone, including his friends in the old academy and the Peripatetics following Aristotle that everyone should follow his example and stop muttering to themselves and say with a clear voice that is in the words of King in the Lobe edition, happy life will step down into the bull of Polaris. This is the illustration we’ve been talking about regularly about is the wise man still happy while on the rack? And he’s saying that the old academy and the Aristotelians should not be hedging about it. They should be absolutely clear. Yes, even under torture, the wise man is still happy if he maintains his virtue. Now, the context for this part of the discussion had been the question of whether there is more than one kind of good thing.

(04:23):

In other words, whether there’s anything but virtue. That is really good because we have the ability to control whether we are virtuous or not, but we don’t have the ability to control whether we are healthy in body or whether we have external goods like luxurious living conditions and eating conditions and other material goods which are not within our control always to keep. So in just a moment, Joshua’s going to read for us section 27, at which point Cicero is going to go back and talk about the three kinds of goods that Aristotle had suggested there were, which again, goods of the body, goods of the mind, and external goods. And while stepping back from some of the rhetoric of stoicism, he’s going to continue this campaign to focus on virtue as the center of happiness. So with that introduction, Joshua, if you could take us towards section 27,

Joshua (05:16):

But to dismiss the subtleties of the stoics, which I’m sensible, I have employed more than was necessary, let us admit of three kinds of goods and let them really be kinds of goods provided no regard is had to the body and to external circumstances as entitled to the appellation of good in any other sense that because we are obliged to use them, but let those other divine goods spread themselves far in every direction and reach the very heavens. Why then may I not call him happy? Nay, the happiest of men who has attained them shall a wise man be afraid of pain, which is indeed the greatest enemy to our opinion. For I am persuaded that we are prepared and fortified sufficiently by the disputations of the foregoing days against our own death or that of our friends against grief and other perturbations of the mind.

(06:16):

But pain seems to be the sharpest adversary of virtue that it is which menas us with burning torches that it is which threatens to crush our fortitude and greatness of mind and patience shall virtue then yield to this. Shall the happy life of a wise and consistent man succumb to this good gods? How base would this be? Spartan boys will bear to have their bodies torn by rods without uttering a groan. I myself have seen at lack of Damon troops of young men with incredible earnest contending together with their hands and feet, with their teeth and nails, nay even ready to expire rather than own themselves conquered is any country of barbarians more uncivilized or desolate than India? Yet they have amongst the some that are held for wise men who never wear any clothing, all their lifelong and who bear the snow of the caucuses and the piercing cold of winter without any pain.

(07:21):

And who if they come in contact with fire, endure being burned without a groan. The women too in India, on the death of their husbands have a regular contest and apply to the judge to have it determined which of them was best beloved by him. For it is customary there for one man to have many wives she in whose favor it is determined exults greatly and being attended by her relations is laid on the funeral pyre with her husband. The others who are postponed walk away very much dejected. Customs can never be superior to nature, for nature is never to be got the better of, but our minds are infected by sloth and idleness and luxury and langer and induce. We have innervated them by opinions and bad customs who is there who is unacquainted with the customs of the Egyptians, their minds being tainted by pernicious opinions.

(08:23):

They are ready to bear any torture rather than to hurt an IBUs, a snake, a cat, a dog, or a crocodile. And should anyone inadvertently have hurt any of these animals, he will submit to any punishment. I’m speaking of men only as to the beasts. Do they not bear cold and hunger running about in woods and on mountains and deserts? Will they not fight for their young ones till they are wounded? Are they afraid of any attacks or blows? I mentioned not the ambitious who will suffer for honor’s sake or those who are desirous of praise on account of glory or lovers to gratify their lost life is full of such instances.

Cassius (09:08):

Okay, thanks for reading that Joshua. The majority of that paragraph has been devoted to these examples that Cicero is bringing up to show that people across the world and indeed animals can stand up to pain and persevere through it when they have an objective ahead of them that makes it worthwhile for them to do so. Talking about the young men of Sparta, women in India and on and on, giving examples of how that does happen regularly. In addition to those examples, Cicero goes at the beginning of the paragraph to say for Grant that there are three kinds of good things to make a final escape from the meshes of stoic subtleties, of which I realize I have made more use than I generally do. Grant, if you will, the existence of these kinds of goods, meaning other than virtue, providing only that goods of the body and external goods lie groveling on the ground and are merely termed good because they are to be preferred while those other divine goods extend their influence far and wide and reach to the heavens.

(10:15):

So that’s a little bit clearer I think, than the yang translation that what he’s really doing in this paragraph is insisting that even if you want to be in a institution, even if you want be a backsliding old academic and say that there’s more good in life than virtue, he is labeling everything other than virtue. He’s labeling any good of the body or any external good as something that lies groveling on the ground and is merely termed good because it’s to be preferred. And he’s contrasting that with the goods of the mind, which he’s calling divine goods, that extend their influence far and wide and reach to the heavens. So again, Cicero is giving us some interesting examples from other civilizations about how people are willing to overcome pain, but all of it is in service of this identification of the goods of the mind as being divine and any other goods, goods of the body or external goods as being merely preferred, which is the stoic terminology.

Joshua (11:18):

We get these moments in Cicero’s texts when he just gives us a string of examples in service of his point. But what we found out last week, and I see another example of it today, is that he’ll use an example in service of one point and then he’ll say the direct opposite thing in service of a different point. So we were talking about in a previous discussion in Tuscan Disputations on the subject of how different people respond to either war or to disease. And I recall Cicero saying that the galls, for example, have an incredible ability to endure the pain of war, but disease or sickness lays them up very easily. And he said the Greeks are the opposite, that they have no stomach for the pain or the distress or the hardship of war, but the diseases, they’re the sickness, these illnesses, they’re very good at enduring.

(12:13):

But then he’s always needing to use Spartan boys to make a point about the limits of what humans are prepared to endure in terms of pain. And certainly historically they did undergo some truly horrifying things. He describes them here as on the wrestling ground, being prepared to just tear each other to pieces rather than any one of them to admit that they lost the match. So I just make that point that when Cicero gets into his little run-on example after example, after example, we should be somewhat cautious with the information we’re dealing with. Another point about the example he’s using is he talks about the situation in India. He says, is any country of barbarians more uncivilized or desolate than India? Yet they have amongst them some that are held for wise men and he goes on to describe how wearing slight clothes or no clothes at all, they bear the snow of the caucuses Pearson Cold of Winter, who if they come in contact with fire, endure being burned without a groan.

(13:14):

So they have high tolerance for enduring pain that the women in this polygamous relationship dispute with one another to see who shall have the honor of being buried with the husband, in other words being killed prematurely so that she could be buried with him. And we do know from DIY LAIs in his life of Pirro, the first two sentences he says, Pirro was the citizen of Ellis and the son of p Plaus as Diese informs us. And as Apollo Doris in his Chronicles asserts, he was originally a painter and he was a pupil of Bryson, the son of Stilo, as we are told by Alexander in his Chronicles. After that he attached himself to Annex Acus and attended him everywhere so that he even went as far as the Jim knows office in India and the Magi. So what this is describing here is after the death of Philip II of Macedon, after the wild success of his son, Alexander in conquering Greece, in rolling up the Persian possessions along the eastern Mediterranean in liberating Egypt from Persian domination, he then went east as far as Bactria, but perhaps as far as India, he was in the region of the Hindu Kush mountain range, eastern Afghanistan, that kind of area, and encountered a group of people that the Greeks called the gno office and we could think of as sort of yogis.

(14:41):

And I mentioned this, it’s obviously relevant for the text today because Cicero is talking about what Piro and Annex Acus and the other attendance of Alexander the greats army, what they saw when they were in India or in Bactria. But Dogen LAIs also makes the following point. He says that now symphonies was charmed by Piot even when he was quite young and he used to say that he should like to be endowed with his disposition without losing his own power of eloquence. And he said too, that Epicurus who admired the conversation and manners of Pirro was frequently asking him about him. So Epicurus has heard about Pirro and perhaps his travels and becomes curious and wants to know more about what he saw there. What did you experience in all these exotic lands that you went to with Alexander The great, okay, the other point I wanted to make is this, Cicero writes in the text here after describing what these Indian women do with the funeral of their husbands.

(15:44):

He says, custom can never be superior to nature, for nature is never to be got the better of, but our minds are infected by sloth and idleness and luxury and Lan and induce. We have innervated them by opinions and bad customs. So he has lifted up here the two competing guides of human behavior. You could say one of them is nature and one of them is custom. And he says that nature has equipped us to deal with all of the stuff he’s talking about, but that what ruins people, what makes us so poorly equipped to deal with pain and to deal with death is custom is bad opinions, wrong opinions, and he makes a point about the customs of the Egyptians and how that causes problems for them. But I find that to be a very interesting way to break down the question and it’s one that Epicurus himself seems to have used, right?

(16:39):

Because for Epicurus we have him on record saying flee from public education and so on, flee the gymnasium, don’t go near this stuff. You have to free yourself from the prison of politics and of these high culture places. And the reason is because of the ideas that circulate in these places. And if you want to follow the course of epicurean philosophy, you have to protect yourself from these poisonous ideas and what they do to your ability to respond to pain and to pursue pleasure. So this distinction here between nature and custom is an interesting one that we could probably say a lot more about. Cassius, do you have any thoughts on that?

Cassius (17:21):

Yeah, Josh, examples that come to my mind immediately are the beginning of re’s book six where he talks about the vessel being corrupted by forces, which I think are pretty clearly related to what you’re talking about, bad ideas. So I think you’re right that certainly Epicurus would endorse that. I’m sure there are some distinctions however, and I guess the first thing that comes to my mind to be concerned about would be just the emphasis that the stoics, for example, will place on the mind’s ability to control everything. And that’s what I think we’re seeing here in terms of Cicero emphasizing virtue is sufficient for happiness. He is emphasizing the mind’s ability to basically disregard the goods of the body and external goods and to say that they’re not important and ultimately in this stoic kind of way, write them out of existence. And I think somewhere along there is where you’re going to find the distinction with Epicurus that he’s not willing to write out of existence and say that they’re not significant, the pains and pleasures of life, in fact, very much not. So he’s emphasizing that pleasure and pain and the realities of life are what’s important to us and not pure mental abstractions as Cicero would imply in some of his reasoning. Again, the argument that has come up several times and is included by Cosmo Ramon, that human beings are both a mind and a body and you don’t get to the right answer by only focusing on the mind. You have to give the body it’s due and realize that the body and the mind are connected and inseparable together.

Joshua (18:56):

Yeah, just to reiterate, the point you’re making there is that while many of these philosophers use this basic model of nature versus custom, whereas we might now say nature versus nurture, certainly the application of this model in their work is going to be wildly different. Someone like Socrates for example, is going to say that sensual pleasure is a corrosion of the soul, basically a weight that hangs on the soul as it’s trying to ascend from the cave up into the world of pure being the world of the ideal forms. So pleasure is the obstacle, pleasure is the thing that gets in the way, same model, but very different applications.

Cassius (19:35):

And also what comes to mind there when you say that would be Aristotle or someone taking the position that the mind is an absolute blank slate at birth and that everything that comes into our minds comes in after birth and is a result of our interactions with the world and the way that we think. And Epicurus I don’t think took that position at all as Lucious would show that nature predisposes us in certain directions and gives us this feeling of pleasure and pain, which is not to be eliminated from life, but which is to be learned from and followed.

Joshua (20:10):

So Cicero has talked about how people will respond, how the boys of Sparta, how the men and women of India, and how the people of Egypt will respond to these problems. And then he says, I haven’t even begun to mention what the ambitious will suffer for honor’s sake or those who are desirous of praise on account of glory, what they are willing to do or what lovers are willing to do to gratify their lust. That brings us to section 28, but let us not dwell too much on these questions, but rather let us return to our subject. I say and say again that happiness will submit even to be tormented and that in pursuit of justice and temperance and still more especially in principally fortitude and greatness of soul and patience, it will not stop short at sight of the executioner and when all other virtues proceed calmly to the torture that one will never halt, as I said on the outside and threshold of the prison for what can be baser, what can carry a worse appearance than to be left alone separated from those beautiful attendance, not however that this is by any means possible for neither can the virtues hold together without happiness nor happiness, without the virtues so that they will not suffer her to desert them but will carry her along with them to whatever torments, to whatever pain they are led for.

(21:40):

It is the peculiar quality of a wise man to do nothing that he may repent of nothing against his inclination but always to act nobly with constancy, gravity and honesty to depend on nothing is certain to wonder at nothing when it falls out as if it appeared strange and unexpected to him to be independent of everyone and abide by his own opinion. For my part, I cannot form an idea of anything happier than this. The conclusion of the stoics is indeed easy for they are persuaded that the end of good is to live agreeably to nature and to be consistent with that as a wise man should do so not only because it is his duty, but because it is in his power. It must of course follow that whoever has the chief good in his power has his happiness so too, and thus the life of a wise man is always happy. You have here what I think may be confidently said of a happy life. And as things now stand very truly also unless you can advance something better.

Cassius (22:47):

Okay, thank you Joshua. I really want us to hammer this point home because I think people today have a tendency to believe that there’s no way these ancient philosophers could have taken the position that virtue is its own reward, that virtue is all you need for happiness, that happiness is nothing but virtue. Most of us today are acclimated to understanding the pleasures of the body as being really important, and so we pursue them as second nature. But what we see even today is that the pleasures of the body, the external pleasures are looked down upon by the intellectual world. And even though today we don’t always talk in terms of stoicism or academic skepticism or Aristotle, the same perspective exists today that the mind, the intellect virtue being a good person, which depending on your definition of humanism, is what much humanist philosophy is about.

(23:50):

That there is a good without God, they eject God from the equation. They eject much traditional religion and look down upon traditional religion, but they embrace an idea that there is an abstract good, which is the purpose of life. And that good, which is the purpose of life in 2025 or in 50 BC is held by many of these philosophers to be the pursuit of wisdom and the intellect and this abstract idea of goodness. So this is the argument that advancing here in this cliche, which also sounds very archaic to us. Can the happy man mount the rack? Can the happy man enter into the doorway of the prison? Can he stand up in the face of the executioner? These are all ways of dramatizing the question of whether you can remain happy under very difficult circumstances. It’s the same thing as epicure suffering from kidney disease at the end of his life.

(24:53):

You can pick the poison you wish to talk about, whether you want to talk about painful disease or being tortured on the rack or being burned at the stake or imprisoned in a jail. It’s all the same question. And the philosophical issue is do you remain happy under those circumstances? And if so, how do you do it? And the answer being given by the stoics and by the Greek philosophers in general other than Epicurus, is that you focus your attention on virtue which is within your control, within your mind. And as long as you hold fast of virtue in your mind, you are happy regardless of what the executioner does to you, regardless of what the jailer does to you, regardless of what disease does to you, regardless of what war does to you, you remain happy because you have identified happiness with virtue. You can maintain that in your mind if you’re devoted enough to it, as Cicero is explaining here, and that’s the direction that non epicurean philosophy has taken for 2000 years.

(26:01):

That is an extremely incorrect position in the eyes of Epicurus because it makes no sense whatsoever unless you have a divinity that’s guiding the universe, it makes no sense to do all these things for something that gives you no reward in the end. Because in the epicurean philosophy in the epicurean universe, there is no afterlife, there is no divine reward, there is only pleasure and pain and you calculate pleasure and pain while you are alive here in this life. So when Cicero reaches the end of this paragraph and says, thus the life of the wise man is always happy, that’s the direction he’s coming from. And he’s wrapping in the subtle differences that exist between Plato, between Aristotle, between the stoics, and I think he’s doing so properly because they are all going in that direction and that’s the reason why they reject Epicurus and the Epicureans rejected them.

(26:57):

It is a stark difference of approach that again, it’s difficult for some of us today to appreciate without going back to these texts and realizing what was being said. And again, this is not just some idiosyncratic weird Cicero who has some weird opinion that nobody should care about in 2025 because Cicero’s long gone, who cares about Cicero? Cicero is distilling down in these paragraphs the sum of non epicurean philosophy as it existed prior to the rise of Judeo Christianity and after the rise of Judeo Christianity to the extent that it was incorporated in this consensus view that has reigned for the last 2000 years,

Kalosyni (27:41):

Could it be that Cicero is saying that if you’re focusing on pleasure, then it’s going to get in the way of preparing for hardship and then it would make it difficult for the person when they do encounter hardship because they have been too focused on pleasure and they haven’t trained themselves, so then they will be very unhappy going through the hardship.

Joshua (28:04):

Yeah, I certainly think that that’s right. I remember when we were going through on end, Cicero presented an alternative to Torti. He said, look, you may not want to admit this, but your ideal man is Lucy as Thia Baus dining sumptuously at a rich table and then going to his repose on a bed of roses. You may not want to admit it, I knew you’re going to try to weasel your way out of it, but this is your version of an ideal man. And then sister says, I don’t even need to say who I would prefer because virtue herself will speak for me. Virtue holds that Marcus Reus who is willing to submit to the carthaginians for capture and imprisonment and torture because he had made them that promise that his willingness to do that was an exercise of virtue in the face of pain and probably death.

(28:57):

And that doing that puts him at the top of Cicero’s own list. He says, it’s not even me, it’s virtue herself is going to make this decision. So certainly I think Cicero sees pleasure, particularly what he’s always complaining about, which is the pleasures of the body, that these are a hindrance to the development of virtue. And that without virtue you lose the ability to withstand the pain and the heartache and the pathos and the fear and that you end up giving yourself over to anything that will save you from these horrible experiences. And Cicero says you have everything you need inside of you. You shouldn’t have to rely on things that are external to you to relieve your pain or your fear or your suffering. You have the fortitude that you need, the virtue that you need is in your mind and that’s all that you require.

Cassius (29:50):

Yeah, I think the answer you’ve given so far there, Joshua does correctly address the fact that there is a practical difference between devoting your life to pleasure and devoting your life to virtue. Cicero was saying that if you devote your life to pleasure, you will not be prepared for hardship. It will be a distraction and you will have difficulty then when you do confront these problems. However, I would go further than that and say that you also have to closely examine what happiness is from Cicero’s point of view because our tendency today is to think that happiness means we feel good, and by focusing on the torture and the wreck and the sickness and the disease, it’s easy to think that what those mean are feeling bad. Well, that’s not the way Cicero is ultimately looking at these things because he’s focusing on virtue is an end in itself.

(30:47):

He’s not saying be virtuous and get ready for hardship because then you will feel good. He’s saying be virtuous because no matter what comes your way, you will still be virtuous. He doesn’t care if you feel bad. In fact, feeling bad is something that makes a glorious leader in military terms. If you undergo physical hardships, I think it’s really critical to look carefully at what the goal is in these different perspectives because Cicero is not saying that pleasure distracts you from preparing for hardship in order that you can continue to feel okay when you’re in hardship. He’s not interested in your feeling, okay when you’re in hardship, he’s interested in your being virtuous when you are in hardship. It doesn’t matter to him how you feel. And I think that’s a distinction that has to be drawn as well, that it’s very benevolent of us to look at Cicero and think that he sees happiness in a way similar to the way we do.

(31:49):

And I think Cicero admits that there’s a problem here. That’s why he keeps saying that the stoic subtleties he’s going to retreat back from. And in the end he’s not really saying what he thinks is true. He’s saying what he thinks is probable. He keeps hedging his statements after he gives us these sweeping exhortations to virtue. But the reason he hedges, the reason he backtracks is he knows what he’s saying and what he’s saying is that virtue is its own reward. You are not virtuous in order to be happy. You are happy only because you are virtuous. He’s equated the two terms, happiness and virtue as being exactly the same thing. You cannot be happy without being virtuous. There is nothing to happiness other than virtue. That’s the purpose of this whole section. All you need is virtue to be happy. That’s why he’s going in this direction.

(32:44):

He’s excluding any kind of feeling of pleasure from his calculation because doesn’t matter to him how bad you feel. Doesn’t matter to him, how good you feel. All he wants you to do is be virtuous. So that’s the way I would answer that question. And in pursuing that as we go further into 29, we’re going to see that’s exactly the question that he turns to next. So I think in further answer to what you’ve asked Callini, when we turn to 29, which you’re going to read for us next, I think we’ll see how this conversation develops in the same direction. Cicero has just said that this is what I can confidently say of a happy life unless you can advance something better. So he’s invited the student to ask a question and the student replies in 29,

Kalosyni (33:33):

Indeed I cannot, but I should be glad to prevail on you unless it is troublesome as you are under no confinement from obligations to any particular sect, but gather from all of them, whatever strikes you most as having the appearance of probability as you just now seem to advise the paras and the old academy boldly to speak out without reserve that wise men are always the happiest. I should be glad to hear how you think it consistent for them to say. So when you have said so much against that opinion and the conclusions of the stoics,

Joshua (34:16):

I will make use then of that liberty, which no one has the privilege of using in philosophy. But those of our school whose discourses determine nothing but take in everything, leaving them unsupported by the authority of any particular person to be judged of by others according to their weight. And as you seem desirous of knowing how it is that notwithstanding the different opinions of philosophers with regard to the ends of goods, virtue has still sufficient security for the affecting of a happy life, which security as we are informed car used indeed to dispute against, but he disputed as against the stoics whose opinions he combated with great zeal and vehement I however shall handle the question with more temper for if the stoics have rightly settled the ends of goods. The affair is at an end for a wise man must necessarily be always happy. But let us examine if we can the particular opinions of the others that So this excellent decision, if I may so call it in favor of a happy life, may be agreeable to the opinions and discipline of all.

Cassius (35:30):

Okay, thank you Joshua and Callini for reading section 29 there in which again, Cicero always loves to emphasize that he is an academic skeptic and he has the freedom to just tell us exactly what he thinks because he’s not chained to the views of any one particular school. And in this case, he is not even going to follow the example of caries who is a name that continues to come up as being an important figure in academic circles, pursuing a skeptical approach against the stoic. We see reference after reference in Cicero that Cardies attack the stoics from a skeptical point of view, but still within the academy. And Carni Des was definitely not an epicurean. He was not holding pleasure to be the end and he was generally, it appears within the academic tradition, but he seems to have had a strong inclination to attack certainty wherever he found it.

(36:31):

Not only in epicurean positions in favor of pleasure, but also in the stoic attitude of confidence that logic was going to get them where they wanted to be. And that logic could produce truth that we could be confident in Carnegie’s pursuing a skeptical argument against the stoics, as Cicero says, with great zeal and vehement. But as Cicero says here, despite cornea being a skeptic like himself, Cicero is himself going to take the position that if the stoics are right, which he thinks they are, then the affair is in an end for the wise man must necessarily be always happy. And of course, again, that’s theistic logic. Wisdom is virtue. If you are a wise man, you are by definition happy. It doesn’t matter what happens to you from this point of view. And he says he’s going to then examine the opinions of the other schools and he’s going to of course take us right back to Epicurus in 30.

Joshua (37:30):

Let me read this from the Wikipedia page for carne Ds because it is interesting and it touches on what you were just talking about with logic. Wikipedia says all this however was nothing but the special application of his general theory that people did not possess and never could possess any criterion of truth car. These argued that if there were a criterion, it must exist either in reason that is logos or sensation, ice thesis or conception, Fantasia. But then reason itself depends on conception. In other words, logos depends on Fantasia and Fantasia again depends on essis or sensation. And we have no means of judging whether our sensations are true or false, whether they correspond to the objects that produce them or carry wrong impressions to the mind producing false conceptions and ideas and leading reason into error. Therefore, sensation, conception and reason are alike disqualified for being the criterion of truth. So some of the schools of philosophy that are so well known for their use of logic and of dialectic end up rejecting even reason itself, even logos itself as a criterion of truth because reason and conception are tainted by the requirement of sensation because they depend on sensation and sensation is unreliable. So the unreliability of sensation in fact goes on to poison the whole enterprise of looking for truth or any method of acquiring truth.

Cassius (39:11):

Yeah, I think you’re making a very important point there, Joshua, that caries and this issue of skepticism that has invaded the academy is one of the really important issues of philosophy that students of epicurus need to understand because it pervades all of these arguments back and forth. If you can’t be sure of anything, then you’re going to attack the stoics. You’re going to attack the epicureans, you’re going to attack anybody who says that they have any conception of truth whatsoever, which is why Epicurus puts so much emphasis on his canons and the role that the sensations anticipations and feelings play, and how that is the way that we make contact with reality and that that contact is entitled to be considered reality. You can debate the fine points as caries and the skeptics do all day long until the cows come home. But you have to rely on the sensations, anticipations and feelings to even stay alive.

(40:07):

And at that point, the practicality of staying alive, which all of us are trained by nature to want to do, becomes the ultimate judge of how to live day to day. You have to live day to day according to Epicurus. That’s the whole argument with cootes. It’s the impossible to be happy. It’s impossible even to live by the dictates of the other philosophers. You lose the confidence that you can even walk across the room or that you can walk into the same stream twice if you let your mind get carried away on these skeptical rabbit trails. Now we’re going to run out of time today to do justice to section 30, but Joshua, I think that because section 30 has an extremely important Senator two at the very beginning, I think we can go ahead and read the full section 30 and then we’ll come back and discuss it more at length next week.

(41:01):

But this section 30 is where Cicero is going to tell us what the major categories of opinions are about what good is, and it’s worth hitting it both this week and next week so that we can give it the focus that it deserves. So again, in section 30, he’s going to list for us the major categories of opinions among the schools about what good really means, and he’s going to include epicurus among those schools. And he’s going to say it in a way that has tremendous implications for the term freedom from pain and how it relates to pleasure, because we’re going to see those two categories attributed to different philosophers in this list as if they’re not the same position. So Joshua, if you could read 30,

Joshua (41:52):

That’s right. He ended 29 by saying, let us examine if we can the particular opinion of the others. That is the other philosophers that we’re about to talk to that sow this excellent decision, if I may so call it in favor of a happy life, may be agreeable to the opinions and discipline of all these then are the opinions that are held and defended. The first four are simple ones that nothing is good, but what is honest according to the stoics that nothing is good but pleasure as Epicurus maintains that nothing is good, but freedom from pain as MOUs asserts that nothing is good, but an enjoyment of the principle or all or the greatest goods of nature as carne. These maintained against the stoics. These are simple, the others are mixed propositions. Then there are three kinds of goods, the greatest being those of the mind, the next those of the body.

(42:53):

The third are external goods as the peripatetics call them. And the old academics differ very little from them. Dino Maus and Kali fo have coupled pleasure with honesty. But Dia Doris the para has joined Inance to honesty. These are the opinions that have some footing for those of aristo, PIRO, hairless and of some others are quite out of date. Now let us see what weight these men have in them accepting the stoics, whose opinion I think I have sufficiently defended. And indeed I have explained what the peripatetics have to say. Accepting that the Arati and those who followed him dread and abhor pain in two weak a manner. The others may go on to exaggerate the gravity and dignity of virtue as usual. And then after they have extolled it to disguise with the usual extravagance of good orators, it is easy to reduce the other topics to nothing by comparison and to hold them up to contempt. They who think that praise deserves to be sought after, even at the expense of pain, are not at liberty to deny those men to be happy who have obtained it. Though they may be under some evils, yet this name of happy has a very wide application. And the word by the way that Cicero is translating to happy or happy life, that’s Vita Beata, as in the beatitudes would be one example. So it’s sort of like the blessed life.

Cassius (44:29):

We debate regularly what’s the best way to translate the different words that are being used as the goal and whether eudemonia or other words are the best. We were recently talking about Felicity as another example and so forth, but whatever the word you choose is, it’s really evoking the sense of the best possible life we would presume today that includes feeling good. And that’s really the question we’re talking about. What does the best life really mean? And Cicero has done a very good service for us by listing out the different opinions. And we’ll come back next week and go through these in more detail, but it is very interesting to see. Now these in my opinion, are the views about limits still maintained and supported

Joshua (45:17):

In the Latin word. There is de Finns, which we see in the title of his other book, de Finniss Bonno at malorum on the ends of good and evil. But you could just as easily translate that on the limits of good and evil. These are another way of translating the Greek word talos, which we’ve talked about many times. Having a whole range of possible translations, everything from the goal to the guide to the end or limit, and bu, which is here being translated as limits is the word that Cicero typically uses when he is trying to suggest the telos. We do see though in this text, he also uses in reference to the chief good, which we’ve talked about today in passing, he uses sum bonum the highest good, which we see also in Lucious in the last book of that poem,

Cassius (46:08):

The Lobe Edition through King has nothing is good unless it is morally right as the stoics say. And he contrasts that with Epicurus by saying no good except pleasure as Epicurus. And then no good except absence of pain according to MOUs. So he’s shifted the terminology from happiness here to focusing on the word good and saying that Epicurus held that there is no good except pleasure. And of course we’ve said that many times, but it’s always good to remember that from the epicurean view, happiness is a life of pleasure and that those words are tightly intertwined. And from the stoic view, that same equation resolves down not to pleasure, but to what is morally right.

Joshua (46:58):

I quite like that little phrase in Latin there, HIL bonum, no good, but pleasure in the words of Epicurus. So anyway, we’re going to have a lot to talk about when we get into a section 30 properly next week because he is giving us a survey of the whole field here.

Cassius (47:14):

Yes, that’s exactly right. And I very much agree with your singling out that Latin. I’m looking at the Loeb edition as well. It’s on page five 10 under section 30, HIL Bonum. So those four words are about as clear as you can get. Nothing good, except pleasure. Alright, well with that, we’ll bring today’s episode to a close. Joshua, anything else?

Joshua (47:40):

I’m looking at the same PDF that you are Cassius. I noticed that in one of the footnotes Cicero had written for if the stoics have rightly fixed the limits of the good, the question is settled and the footnote is fix the limits, as in a boundary stone on which was inscribed, yet it gives some Latin words, but to mark the limits of field and the word there is thinness, in other words related again to bu. But it’s this idea of that you come to the end of something and now we’re marking the limit or boundary. And it’s interesting because Lucretius uses this image of the deep, that boundary stone repeatedly, I mean several times in his own work. So I just point that out as another connection here worth considering and perhaps pursuing. I don’t really have much more to say today than that. We’ll have this whole section to talk about next week.

Cassius (48:29):

Yes, I’m glad we introduced it today, but we’ll come back next week and give it much more attention as it deserves. With that, we’ll bring today’s episode to a close. As always, we invite everyone to drop by the epicure in French Forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about this or any of our other discussions about Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.