Episode 320 - Are The Good of A Sheep And A Man The Same?
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Welcome to Episode 320 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote “On The Nature of Things,” the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
This week we start are continuing our series reviewing Cicero’s “Academic Questions” from an Epicurean perspective. We are focusing first on what is referred to as Book One, which provides an overview of the issues that split Plato’s Academy and gives us an overview of the philosophical issues being dealt with at the time of Epicurus.
This week will will continue in Section 2.
Our text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We’ll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we’ll also refer to the Rackam translation here:
Summary
Section titled “Summary”This episode continues the Academic Questions series, focusing on Varro’s charge in Book 1, Section 2 that Epicureans are “so simple as to think the good of a sheep and of a man the same thing.” Cassius and Joshua argue that Epicurus would embrace this comparison rather than be embarrassed by it — pleasure as the natural good is simply perceived, “just as fire is hot, snow is white, and honey is sweet,” requiring no elaborate logical argument. Joshua reads Torquatus’s argument in On Ends 1.30 that all creatures at birth seek pleasure, and connects it to Letter to Menoeceus 129 where Epicurus calls pleasure “the first good innate in us.”
Cassius explains that the Stoic and Academic insistence on a divine principle distinguishing human good from animal good is what drives the controversy — Epicurus denies any divine spark and accepts that nature guides all living beings through pleasure and pain alike. The discussion covers Varro’s secondary point: that following Zeno of Citium the Stoic, the good cannot be separated from what is honorable, while the Old Academy requires even more intricate arguments against the Stoics — a complexity that simply does not arise under the Epicurean approach. Joshua reads from Letter to Menoeceus 122 (on studying philosophy at any age) and 132 (prudence/phronesis as more precious than philosophy itself), showing Epicurus valued practical wisdom above abstract philosophy. The episode closes with Cassius’s observation that superficially similar language used by Epicureans and other schools — about virtue, pleasure, and philosophy — conceals radically different meanings once you unwind what each tradition actually intends.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to Episode 320 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
This week we’re continuing in our new series reviewing Cicero’s Academic Questions from an Epicurean viewpoint. Our purpose in going through this is to review the history of the major Greek schools that had produced the intellectual consensus that was existing at the time of Epicurus. Cicero lived much later than Epicurus did, but this is Cicero’s effort to bring us up to speed with the background of the major Greek schools and the source of the differences of opinion between them.
Most people who are new to Epicurus have difficulty understanding the different perspectives of the major schools. It becomes easy to confuse them and to think that they’re all basically saying the same thing when they use basically the same words. They will all talk about happiness, they will talk about virtue, they will talk about where the universe came from, and it can be very difficult to separate out the respective positions and not only separate them from each other, but to understand the meaning of the words that they’re using to discuss their positions. Happiness to Epicurus is very different from happiness to the Stoics or to Plato or to Aristotle. They have a much different analysis of what it means to live a happy life, and it’s important to understand how they reason in order to reach the differing conclusions that they reach.
One of the real values of looking at Cicero’s synthesis of all of this in the first book of Academic Questions is that Cicero had access to living experts in these philosophies and to the original texts in many cases that the philosophers were working with. Cicero had been educated by many philosophers of these schools himself, and yet Cicero was not himself a philosopher. One advantage that gives to Cicero is that we who are not professional philosophers ourselves often have difficulty in separating out what’s really important from what’s not really important. Cicero was a man of action. He was a leader of his society, he was involved in the events of his time, and he knew that there were certain things that are important in philosophy for practical life, and he also would’ve known that there were many things that were not so important. So when Cicero decides to talk about something, you’ve got the analysis of a man of action who was involved in the world, and who’s not some ivory tower egghead who’s consumed with chasing rabbits. Cicero is the type person who is looking for practical implications of these philosophical issues, and so when he chooses to tell us about something, he’s telling us about it from the perspective of someone who really wants to understand it and use it and discard those aspects that might not be immediately useful.
We started out in Academic Questions last week setting up the background of the discussion between Cicero and Varro, and we heard Varro say that it’s important to be able to understand and express things deeply and accurately rather than superficially, as he accuses some of the Epicurean leaders such as Amafinius or Rabirius of doing. Already, in that introduction, he introduced us to one of the most basic issues that separated Epicurus from the other philosophers, which is the nature of the universe in terms of cause — how it would have come into being. Varro said that it’s not very difficult at all to talk about natural science when you put an end to all efficient causes and speak in terms of the fortuitous concourse of atoms, as opposed to the system of natural philosophy which the Old Academy had been based on, which depended upon two principles: one, an outside cause; and the other, a subject matter on which the outside cause was acting.
That’s where Varro said that in order to explain all these things, we must have recourse to geometry, since it is in the language of geometry and similar abstract sciences that those who believe that there’s an outside supernatural force have to have recourse to explain their positions to the extent that they can — because, as Varro says, who would be able to comprehend those assertions about life and manners and desires if they don’t understand this type of abstract reasoning tied to geometry, which allegedly gives the academic philosophers an understanding of the true nature of things. And then at the end of our discussion last week, we reached the middle of section two of this first book, where right after saying that you need things like geometry in order to understand the true nature of things, he says — “for those men” referring to Amafinius and the Epicureans — “are so simple as to think that the good of a sheep and of a man are the same thing.” That’s what we’re going to talk about for much of today. And so Joshua, let us know if you have any thoughts at the moment and read for us the second section of section two.
Joshua:
So we are in the second paragraph, section two of the first book, and Varro is still speaking when we get to these lines. He says, “For those men are so simple as to think the good of a sheep and of a man, the same thing — well the character and extent of the accuracy which philosophers of our school profess. Again, if you follow Zeno, it is a hard thing to make anyone understand what that genuine and simple good is, which cannot be separated from honesty, while Epicurus asserts that he is wholly unable to comprehend what the character of that good may be, which is unconnected with pleasures which affect the senses. But if we follow the doctrines of the old academy, which as you know we prefer, then with what accuracy must we apply ourselves to explain it and with what shrewdness and even with what obscurity must we argue against the Stoics. The whole therefore of that eagerness for philosophy I claim for myself both for the purpose of strengthening my firmness of conduct as far as I can and also for the delight of the mind. Nor do I think as Plato says that any more important or valuable gift has been given to men by the gods. But I send all my friends who have any zeal for philosophy into Greece — that is to say I bid them study the Greek writers in order to draw their precepts from the fountain head rather than follow little streams. But those things which no one had previously taught and which could not be learned in any quarter by those who were eager on the subject, I have labored as far as I could, I have no great opinion of anything which I have done in this line, to explain to our fellow countrymen — for this knowledge could not be sought for among the Greeks nor after the death of our friend Lucius Aelius among the Latins either.
And yet in those old works of ours, which we composed in imitation of Manus, not translating him, sprinkling a little mirth and supportiveness over the whole subject, there are many things mingled, which are drawn from the most recondite philosophy and many points argued according to the rules of strict logic. But I added these lighter matters in order to make the whole more easy for people of moderate learning to comprehend if they were invited to read those essays by a pleasing style displayed in pan and in the very prefaces of my books of antiquities. And this was my object in adopting this style regardless of how I may have succeeded in it.”
And in the Letter to Menoeceus, we see that Epicurus in section 129 writes that “pleasure is the first good innate in us,” which suggests that Cicero’s description of — let’s look to the young of all species — was not far out, because Epicurus himself seems to be gesturing in that direction: that the first good innate in us, when we are uncorrupted by culture, by the demands of our city-state, by the education of the Academy or the Lyceum or the gymnasium — when we consider this question in the absence of those influences, and we look only to the influence of nature to determine what is in accord with or opposed to nature, we see that the young of all species pursue pleasure, seek pleasure, reach out for pleasure, and they recoil from pain. So when Varro says in this text, “those men are so simple as to think the good of a sheep and of a man the same thing,” I don’t think it’s necessary for us to hear that word “simple” and get offended by it. It is simple. It’s simply perceived, as Torquatus says, just as the fact that fire is hot, snow is white and honey is sweet — no one of which facts are we bound to support by elaborate arguments. So I guess that’s my response to the question. Would Epicurus agree with this? I suspect he probably would.
Cassius:
Yes, Joshua, I completely agree. Epicurus would say that the good of a man is the same as the good of a sheep, but as always, you place these issues in context. Obviously a sheep has a different makeup than a man does, and a sheep is going to spend his time grazing in fields and doing things that derive from his makeup as a sheep. A man is going to spend his time doing different things than grazing in a field because he is made up of a different constitution than a sheep. But from a general philosophical point of view, both of them are pursuing what nature has set for them to pursue given their makeup. A sheep finds its sustenance and its pleasure in grazing in fields all day. A man is going to find his sustenance and pleasure in doing different things than grazing in a field.
But from a general perspective, the good of the sheep and the good of the man in pursuing their natures is the same thing. The distinction comes — I think, and this is why Cicero hits this frequently, this Academic Questions reference, the reference you’ve mentioned in On Ends — there are other references as well in Cicero making the same argument, because Cicero thinks it’s effective to say that it’s beneath the dignity of a human to pursue pleasure or the same kind of a general natural goal in life that a sheep does. The distinction that Cicero is always pushing, that Varro is pushing here, that the Academy is always pushing — that Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, all of them are pushing — is that they see a divine God, a divine prime mover behind a man that is different from a sheep. They see man as participating in a divine fire or a spark of the divine with the prime mover that takes the good of a man totally out of the categories of the good of a sheep, that makes a sheep basically an inanimate object, something that doesn’t have this divine spark in it, and which it is insulting to equate to a man — because a man is so much closer to God and so different in essential being. A man is of infinite worth, all men of infinite worth in the eyes of God, we’re all children of God.
That kind of approach is what distinguishes these other philosophers from the approach that Epicurus had. In the end, Epicurus is pointing out that we are essentially creatures of nature just like sheep are. And while the details are different, the general context is the same. Nature gives every living being through pleasure and pain the direction and the grounds for choice and avoidance. And in that sense, following pleasure is the good of a sheep and is the good of a man. That may be beneath the dignity of Cicero to admit, but that’s the situation that you’re talking about, Joshua, as being — it is as simple as that. There is no divine distinction between mankind and other animals that takes us out of that natural order and says to us, using geometry, using propositional logic, we can climb out of that cave and see the true reality which is going to tell us what our true good is.
All of that kind of analysis is wrapped up into as simple a statement here as this one line accusing Epicureans of being so simple as to think that the good of a sheep and the good of the man are the same thing. They are ultimately the same thing — because Varro and Cicero and Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, your assertion of a divine realm is bogus. It does not exist. And in fact, the good of a sheep and of all animals is the same. So that’s one of the items I’ve singled out there. Let’s move to the second one: whether the good can be separated from virtue — because of course Epicurus clearly states that without pleasure, without the sensations, it is impossible to know what the good is. And of course, that is totally different from the perspective of Varro and Cicero and Plato and Aristotle, because they believe that the good is comprehended not through the senses — and in fact against the lying, deceitful senses — but using propositional logic, using geometry, they find that the good exists in virtue and in the things with which their divine mover has established to be the good of humanity.
Joshua:
So Varro continues in his discussion here and he says: “If you follow Zeno” — presumably Zeno of Citium the Stoic — “it is a hard thing to make anyone understand what that genuine and simple good is, which cannot be separated from honesty.” And we do have another translation here which I think makes a little bit more sense. He’s referring to the true and simple good that cannot be divorced from what is honorable — not from honesty, but from what is honorable. That’s the Charles Brittain translation. And he goes on to say, “But if we follow the doctrines of the old academy, which as you know we prefer, then with what accuracy must we apply ourselves to explain it and with what shrewdness and even with what obscurity must we argue against the Stoics. The whole therefore of that eagerness for philosophy I claim for myself both for the purpose of strengthening my firmness of conduct as far as I can, and also for the delight of my mind.”
So what I’m reading here is: the Epicureans are simpletons, but if we want to argue against the Stoics, we’re going to have to find a way — with shrewdness, with great accuracy and even with obscurity — to make arguments that will convince them. And if I go over to the Charles Brittain translation, he says: “If you’re going to follow the old academy, the school I approve as you know, think how subtly we’ll have to expound its position and how cleverly — even obscurely — we’ll have to argue against the Stoics.” So subtly, cleverly, obscurely — this is not needed with the Epicureans, because they are so stupid as to think that the good of a man and the good of a sheep is the same thing. It’s when we get to the Stoics, who are very different from the old academy that we belong to and yet come to similar conclusions about the good — not the same necessarily, but very similar conclusions about what is good — that it gets to be very challenging to delineate what the difference is between these two schools. And this is not a problem with the old academy and the Epicureans, or indeed with the Stoics and the Epicureans. I think that’s the thrust of this paragraph.
Cassius:
Yeah, I agree with you, Joshua. There’s a lot of complexity and subtlety to what’s being said here, but for our purposes in understanding the overall picture, it does seem like the distinction is between the Epicurean who says that you do not need an elaborate logical argument to establish what the good is. I mean, that’s clearly the point of Torquatus’s explanation in On Ends to Cicero — that a long logical argument in defense of pleasure is not necessary. All you really have to do is to indicate — basically point people’s attention to the fact that all animals when they are young pursue pleasure and avoid pain. It is as obvious as the fact that snow is white or honey is sweet that pleasure is good. That’s the kind of clear, sensation-based argument that Epicurus says is all that is necessary, whereas these other schools are saying that it requires an elaborate and abstract, intricate propositional logic argument to be sure of what the good is.
In fact, that’s what they say frankly. As for everything, they take the position that the senses are deceptive and you never have any ability to be absolutely confident about anything other than their ideal forms. So this is an aspect of that argument, but it was important to Varro and Cicero to talk about it in more detail because this is where the academics had gotten tripped up among themselves. All of them other than Epicurus claimed to follow in this legacy and heritage of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. But when you go back into what Socrates himself is documented to have said, it’s not really so easy to find the statement that there is nothing good but virtue in the authoritative statements of Socrates. And that’s where the Stoics went off and said, well, it may not be there explicitly, but I can cite to you a couple of statements that seem to say exactly that.
And so the Stoics got into an argument with the academics — who Aristotle was more consistent with — in saying that there are many types of good. And so they got into this intramural argument between themselves about whether there’s any good but virtue or not. That is a problem that you don’t have when you start out with the Epicurean analysis of simply following what nature gives you through the senses. You don’t run into conflicts in your propositional logic such as an Academic like Varro arguing against a Stoic like Zeno. Those problems just don’t exist when you take the Epicurean approach. And the last of the items I singled out when we started with this was the statement by Varro that Plato had held that there is no more important or valuable gift that has been given to men by the gods than philosophy. And so that presents the question: is that something Epicurus would’ve agreed with, or would Epicurus differ? And of course, on the face of it, there are many problems with that analysis from an Epicurean perspective in terms of a gift of the gods to men. Epicurus doesn’t have gods giving gifts or giving punishment to men. So that type of allusion would not be applicable under Epicurus. But Epicurus does agree that philosophy is very important. When Epicurus talks however about those things that are most important for a happy life, what comes to my mind are the examples he gives of prudence or friendship. How would you parse that out, Joshua?
Joshua:
So Plato has said that there has never been any more valuable or important gift given by the gods to men than philosophy. And to get a sense of where Epicurus may have stood on this question, it’s important to go to the Letter to Menoeceus. I think there’s a few paragraphs here that are important to consider. The first is the starting paragraph 122, when he says: “Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when he is old grow weary of his study, for no one can come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul. And the man who says that the age for philosophy has either not yet come or has gone by is like the man who says that the age for happiness is not yet come or has passed away. Wherefore, both when young and old, a man must study philosophy, that as he grows old he may be young in blessings through the grateful recollection of what has been, and that in youth he may be old as well, since he will know no fear of what is to come. We must then meditate on the things that make our happiness, seeing that when that is with us we have all, but when it is absent we do all to win it.”
So here at the very beginning, the very opening of the Letter to Menoeceus, he’s adamant that everybody needs to study philosophy. Let no one delay to study it when they’re young. Let no one grow weary of the study of it when they’re old. Saying that the age for philosophy has passed or has not yet come is like saying that the age for happiness has passed or has not yet come. So it’s very clear — we want to be clear about this — that philosophy is important. However, if we go down to section 132, when he says: “For it is not continuous drinkings and revelings, nor the satisfaction of lust, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions, to which are due the greatest disturbance of the spirit.”
And then he says this: “Of all this, the beginning and the greatest good is prudence, wherefore prudence is a more precious thing even than philosophy.” From prudence are sprung all the other virtues, and prudence teaches us that it is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently and honorably and justly, nor again to live a life of prudence, honor and justice without living pleasantly, for the virtues are by nature bound up with the pleasant life and the pleasant life is inseparable from them. So this to me seems like an extremely relevant response to what Varro has just said about Plato and about the gift of the gods and so on. Epicurus here is saying that of all this, of the virtues — I think he’s not saying that prudence or phronesis (practical wisdom) is the greatest good full stop. He’s saying that of the virtues, prudence is the most relevant to an Epicurean, and more precious even than philosophy.
Cassius:
And Joshua, this would be a great example of how words are used making all the difference in the world — because what is philosophy? Love of wisdom. Well, what is wisdom and how does it differ from practical wisdom? It’s very easy to get confused and mix all this together and end up concluding that well, they’re all saying the same thing, there’s no need to worry about any difference between the two. But I don’t think they are saying the same thing, and it comes out in the material that we’re discussing. Because when Varro and Cicero talk about pursuing philosophy, they talk about geometry, propositional logic, all these abstractions of getting out of the cave to get away from the senses. Whereas when Epicurus talks about philosophy, he talks about pursuing it through the senses and in accepting what the senses tell us and processing it practically in a way that, for example, tells us that snow is white, honey is sweet, and that pleasure is the guide of life.
That pain is something to be avoided — those are practical conclusions that yes, you need to use your mind to understand the full implications of, but you don’t have to use geometry to determine that pleasure is the goal and the guide of life. That’s a huge difference in result that is covered over by them both suggesting that philosophy is a great thing. Just like virtue — they both suggest that virtue is an important thing — but by the time you unwind what they mean, what the Stoics and the academics believe that virtue is is very, very different from what Epicurus says. Same goes with pleasure, in the sense that Cicero and presumably Varro would agree that pleasure just means the stimulation of the senses, whereas Epicurus is using pleasure to be something that includes everything in life that is not painful, because Epicurus takes the position that life itself when you’re not in pain is a pleasure.
So the way these words are used is of critical importance — just don’t accept superficially what sounds good, that all of them are basically saying the same thing, because the actual application of what they’re saying is dramatically different even though the words are similar. Cicero spends the remainder of section two and then all of section three talking about what appears to be one of his favorite subjects, which is whether philosophy can be understood in Latin or whether you have to go back to the original Greek. Of course, as we know, Epicurus held that philosophy is of no benefit whatsoever if you don’t understand it and apply it to live happily. And in order to understand it, you have to be able to apply it in your own mind and in your own life. So we’re not going to go back into that argument at this point, but it’s a good thing that Cicero did decide it was helpful to express philosophy in Latin, because in so doing he preserved much important detail that we would not otherwise have today. Okay, with that we’ll bring today’s episode to a conclusion. Thanks for your time today. As always, we invite you to drop by the EpicureanFriends.com forum and let us know if you have any thoughts or comments about the study of Epicurus. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.