Episode 330 - In Contrast With Epicurus, The Stoics Opt For Virtue At Any Cost And Make Controversial claims About The Senses
Welcome to Episode 330 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 focus on Section 9 and10.
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:
Transcript (Unedited)
Section titled “Transcript (Unedited)”Cassius:
Welcome to episode 330 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 still in book one of Cicero’s academic questions from an epicurean perspective, and we’re going through this to bring us up to speed on how Epicurus views of knowledge compared to those of the other schools. Last week we spent most of the time talking about the difference between Plato and his successors in the academy versus Aristotle and how as Joshua identified for us last week, there was a breaking up on two major issues that of the status of ideal forms which Aristotle did not accept, and also whether virtue alone was sufficient for happiness, which Aristotle and Aristotle’s successors increasingly moved away from to Cicero’s considerable unhappiness.
This week we are moving from a discussion of Aristotle back to a discussion of Xeno and the rise of stoicism. As we go through these episodes, we are not going to go into stoicism and the detail with which the stoics themselves might do, but we need to understand some of the basic outlines of the stoic position so we can understand how that reflects on Epic’s position. As we pointed out, Cicero was very unhappy with the direction that Theophrastus and successors to Aristotle took in stripping virtue of its power and beauty. And what we’re going to see in turn this week is the reasoning by which Cicero began to identify himself more with the stoic position than with the Aristotelian position because Xeno who founded Stoicism emphatically supported the idea that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness. We’re not immediately going to be dealing with the question of Zeno’s view of ideal forms, but as we move forward, we’re going to find that Zeno’s views of knowledge bear some at least superficial similarities to that of Epicurus. But as we go deeper into them, we’ll explore the many deep differences between Epicurus and the stoic position. So with that as background, let’s jump into section 10 and Joshua will introduce and read that for us
Joshua:
As we move into section 10. Today we move into a discussion of the stoics and how they compare. Vero says, Zeno then was not at all a man like Theophrastus to cut through the sin use of virtue, but on the other hand, he was one who placed everything which could have any effect in producing a happy life in virtue alone. And who reckoned that there were no goods apart from virtue, and who called that honorable, which was single in its nature and the soul and only good. But as for all other things, although they were neither good nor bad, he divided them calling some according to nature and others contrary to nature, there were others which he looked upon as placed between those two classes and which he called intermediate, those which were according to nature, he taught his disciples deserved to be taken and to be considered worthy of a certain esteem to those which were contrary to nature.
He assigned a contrary character and those of the intermediate class he left as neutrals and attributed to them, no importance, whatever. But of those which he said ought to be taken, he considered some worthy of a higher estimation and others of a less those which were worthy of a higher esteem, he called preferred those which were only worthy of a lower degree. He called rejected. And as he had altered all these things, not so much in fact as in name, so too, he defined some actions as intermediate lying between good deeds and bad between duty and a violation of duty, classing things done rightly as good actions and things done wrongly as bad actions and several duties, whether discharged or neglected be considered of an intermediate character. As I have already said, I want to pause there to mention that both translators, young and Rackham are translating the Latin word heta as sin.
I don’t think the word sin would be appropriate in a text dating from the first century bc, especially given its modern relationship, Abrahamic monotheism, which of course has nothing to do with what Cicero is talking about here. We can also translate that word as simply a fault or a mistake or an error. He continues, he says, and several duties whether discharged or neglected, he considered of an intermediate character, as I’ve already said, and whereas his predecessors had not placed every virtue in reason, but had said that some virtues were perfected by nature or by habit, he placed them all in reason. And while they thought that those kinds of virtues, which I have mentioned above could be separated, he asserted that that could not be done in any manner and affirmed that not only the practice of virtue, which was the doctrine of his predecessors, but the very disposition to it was intrinsically beautiful and that virtue could not possibly be present to anyone without his continually practicing it.
And while they did not entirely remove all perturbation of mind from man, they admitted that man did by nature, grieve and desire and fear, and become elated by joy. While I say they did not entirely remove all perturbation but only contracted it and reduced it to narrow bounds, he maintained that the wise man was wholly free from all these diseases as they might be called. And as the ancients said that those perturbations were natural and devoid of reason and placed desire in one part of the mind and reason in another. He did not agree with them either. He thought that all perturbations were voluntary and were admitted by the judgment of the opinion and that a certain unrestrained temperance was the mother of them all, and this is nearly what he laid down about morals.
Cassius:
Thanks for reading that, Joshua. This discussion of stoic morals is something that we have had a number of times before, and I think what we probably ought to spend our time today doing is just simply summarizing the major ways in which this disagrees with Epicurus and some other aspects of the big picture and not try to go into all the level of detail that we certainly could if we chose to do so. So I’d like to start off by repeating a comment I think from last week, but it seems to me that what Cicero is doing here is stressing that Xeno is largely a continuation of the heart of the position that Plato had been taking. In fact, as Cicero explains it here, what Zeno is doing in many cases is altering the doctrines that had come before him, not so much in fact, as in name.
And of course what we’re talking about at the moment is the moral focus of stoicism and in the context of what we’ve been discussing, Aristotle and his people had been moving away from considering virtue to be the only good moving away from considering virtue alone, to be sufficient for the happy life. And whether it was in direct reaction to Aristotle or just simply Zeno coming up with this on his own, Zeno is taking a diametrically opposite position of doubling down to focus on virtue as being of supreme importance. He wasn’t cutting through virtue as the Rassis did, but he was placing everything in the heart of virtue alone saying nothing else is any good at all. And the point I think is worth stressing is that Xeno is arguably, as Cicero was saying, just using different words for essentially the same viewpoint. He’s seeing the viewpoint being undermined by Aristotle and he’s just bolstering it not by coming up with new proof of the centrality of virtue, but by rearranging the words that have been used to support virtue in the first place.
So what I think we’re seeing here is the accusation that is often thrown against the stoics that they’re involved in wordplay, they’re playing games with words rather than saying something that is uniquely insightful and different than what other people are saying. Classifying things as some things to be intermediate, considering some things to be preferred, some things not to be preferred, considering some things to be indifferent. Some things as worthy of esteem we’re applying labels to things without really giving any explanation or direction as to how those labels are assigned other than our own assessment of them saying that every virtue is placed in reason, which is predecessors had not said saying that virtue is intrinsically beautiful and cannot be possibly present to anyone unless they are continually practicing it. These are things that at least to me don’t seem like they are differences in essence, but in words. So again, we’ll leave for other people and other times to dive into all of the details of stoic morality, but I think it’s very revealing that Cicero can basically place this in context of the Socratics and the platonists and see them as part of the same family of philosophy, which is something that he does not apply to Epicurus and for good reason. Joshua, any further thoughts on stoic morality before we turn to section 11?
Joshua:
There’s one central claim that all of the rest of this is orbiting around and that central claim is what he says in the first sentence. Zeno was one who placed everything which could have any effect in producing a happy life in virtue alone, and who recognized nothing else a good at all? You could just as easily say that the opposite is true. Zeno was one who placed everything that could have any effect in producing a miserable life in vice alone, and who reckoned nothing else bad at all, so he’s taken good and bad and placed them solely in a spot that is internal to human nature. It’s not something that exists outside of us. Nothing that exists outside of us can be classed fundamentally as either good or bad because all good and bad consists in human behaviors and human choices. This is very contrary to Epicurus who says that all good and evil consists in sense perception that it’s pleasure and pain, that there is good and bad pleasure and pain inside interior to us, but there’s also things outside of us that give rise to pleasure and pain and that can be referred to as instrumentally good in their own ways.
But Xena was a hardliner on this question going so much farther than the aristotelians were willing to go and going in a direction that connected him back to a number of philosophers like Stilo, the Ian, who we’ve talked about somewhat recently, Stilo, the Ian who was described by Seneca in his letters to Lucilius as the wise man who confines all goods within himself, whose country captured, whose children lost, whose wife gone yet he came out from this general destruction alone and yet happy to Demetrius who was asking whether he had lost anything, still both said, all my goods are with me. This is a man whose children, whose wife, whose home, whose possessions have all been lost, killed, destroyed, and he says, I haven’t lost anything. All my goods are with me because I still have my virtue. He conquered, continued Seneca, the very victory of his enemy.
I have lost nothing Stil said. He made that man Demetrius doubt whether he had truly won himself everything that his mind is with me, justice virtue wisdom and this very thing to consider nothing good that can be taken away. Nothing is good that can be separated from your very self. This is a huge component of Zeno’s thought and it presents a number of problems. There are things that any person it would seem would think are better than others, right? Things outside of us, like it would be better if instead of being murdered in a siege your wife and children had lived and we’re still alive and we’re still with you. And so this is where we get into this broad vocabulary that Xeno gives us about things that are according to nature or contrary to it about things that are indifferent to us, whether preferred or not preferred. It’s all in the context of this one central claim that all good and evil is inside ourselves and that nothing external to us can be regarded as either.
Cassius:
That’s right, Joshua. I’m glad you cited the still poll example. That has got to be one of the most dramatic citations we can give to illustrate the profound differences between stoicism and epicure and philosophy. At this point, I would just insert that we have dealt extensively with the stoic position on morality in both Cicero’s own ends, which we’ve gone through in detail and also in Cicero’s Tuscan disputations. So we’re not going to spend additional time right now going further in dissecting stoic ethics because the reason we’re in academic questions is not just to deal with the splitting up of the academy based on the nature of virtue, but as prelude to moving into some epicurean canons theory and that aspect of philosophy is based more on the physics and the epistemology differences within the academy and with stoicism, and that’s what we are about to get into as we move into section 11.
Joshua:
As we do move into 11, just bear in mind that when he is using words like nature’s or principles in this specific context of stoic physics, what we’re talking about is the five classical elements, air, earth, firewater and quintessence ether. The fifth nature as he’s going to call it in the first sentence here, and this of course is still Vero, who’s delivering this monologue and he says it’s about nature. Zeno held these opinions in the first place. He did not connect this fifth nature out of which his predecessors thought that sense and intellect were produced with those four principles of things. In other words, he did not connect ether with fire, water, earth and air as his predecessors had done. For he laid it down, that fire is the nature which produces everything including intellect and including scents, but he differed from them again in as much as he thought it absolutely impossible for anything to be produced from that nature which was destitute of body, which was the character attributed by achates and his predecessors to the mind.
And he would not allow that that which produced anything or which was produced by anything could possibly be anything except body. But he made a great many alterations in that third part of his philosophy in which first of all, he said some new things of the senses themselves, which he considered to be united by some impulse as it were acting upon them from without which he called Fantasia and which we may turn perception, let us recollect this word for we shall have frequent occasion to employ it in the remainder of our discourse, but to these things which are perceived and as it were accepted by the senses, he adds the ascent of the mind which he considers to be placed in ourselves and voluntary. He did not give credit to everything which is perceived, but only to those which contain some special character of those things which are seen.
But he pronounced what was seen when it was discerned on account of its own power, comprehensible. Will you allow me this word? And Atticus replies certainly for how else are you to express caep, this word catalysis in Greek and Vero says, but after it had been received and approved, then he called it comprehension resembling those things which are taken up apprehension in the hand. So he is relating it to the word prehensile, the ability to grasp things from which verb. Also he derived this noun though no one else had ever used this verb with reference to such matters, and he also used many new words where he was speaking of new things, but that which was comprehended by sense, he called felt or sensation and if it was so comprehended that it could not be eradicated by reason, he called it knowledge otherwise, he called it ignorance from which also was engendered opinion which was weak and compatible with what was false or unknown, but between knowledge and ignorance, he placed that comprehension, which I’ve spoken of and reckoned it neither among what was right or what was wrong, but said that it alone deserved to be trusted.
And from this, he attributed credit also to the senses because as I have said above, comprehension made by the senses appeared to him to be true and trustworthy, not because it comprehended all that existed in a thing, but because it left out nothing which could affect it and because nature had given it to us to be as it were, a rule of knowledge and a principle from which subsequently all notions of things might be impressed on our minds from which not only principles but some broader paths to the discovery of reason are found out, but error and rashness and ignorance and opinion and suspicion and in a word, everything which was inconsistent with a firm and consistent ascent, he discarded from virtue and from wisdom and it is in these things that nearly all the disagreement between Zeno and his predecessors and all his alteration of their system consists.
Cassius:
Okay, Joshua, this is going to be very interesting to try to go through and pull out what is significant for us and as we continue in the episode today, I should reinforce that the details of stoic epistemology are things that we are going to only be able to touch the surface of. And we’re probably, as we go through it, are going to find that our understanding of it evolves over time as we be more about this, but it’s something that we’ve not dealt with in detail in the past and something that we do need to deal with in detail because of this relationship where xeno is reacting against skepticism in the same way that Epicurus was. In fact, what we’re going to find as we go further is that there is a huge debate between the followers of Plato in the academy and their skeptical tradition and that they focused most of their fire on the very concepts that we’re discussing now, that the stoics believed that knowledge was possible through this process that we are now discussing, which the academic skeptics ended up rejecting outright and unfortunately in the middle of this discussion, they’re not going back and forth and also discussing the epicurean position, but I think as we pick up the threads of this argument, we’re going to see how Epicurus was addressing the same issues.
Now to parse through this section 11, the very first series of sentences points out to us something that I think not all of us recognize in studying Epicurus, that the stoics, while not being aist were also materialists of a sort. As Joshua described earlier, they viewed the universe to be made out of these four or five elements and not out of atoms, but in the end they were insisting that everything had a bodily nature to it, including the mind which sates and others had disputed and which hints at a difference of opinion between the stoics and those who we might consider to be spiritualists who ended up thinking that the mind and intelligence and perhaps divinity were not of a bodily nature. The stoics in a sense agreed with the epicurean that there’s a material basis to the universe. Now, that’s something we’re going to have to talk about.
Lemme just pick out some other issues that we’re going to need to talk about as we go through this. Another issue is that the stoics do have things to say about the senses which are at least superficially parallel with the epicurean viewpoint, at least on the face of it. They’re not totally throwing the senses out as being liars and deceivers as arguably the academic skeptics might. But here in 11 we’re seeing the stoics, were investing the senses with abilities that we’re probably going to conclude that epicurus would not have agreed with in the sense that of course Epicurus basis, his philosophy on the census and essentially says that all sensations should be considered to be true, but in the sense of being reported without opinion. And I think over the years as we’ve been discussing these issues, one thing that I think virtually all of us have concluded is that Epicurus did not hold the census contained conclusions. The census do not have opinions. The data that we receive from the census is not either right or wrong. It is simply what it is. And right or wrong is what we do with the information from the census in our minds when we form opinions.
Joshua:
Yeah, we often use the word pre rational to refer to these elements of the epicurean canon that they present themselves without any judgment being made upon them. That’s our minds that make judgments based on what is occurring to our senses.
Cassius:
Right, Joshua? Now as I comment further here, I’m going to couch all this in caution that we need to be careful how we describe what we’re about to talk about. But in these paragraphs that discuss the stoic view of catalysis and comprehension, it appears to me that the direction they are going in is that the senses themselves under certain conditions are providing knowledge. For example, I’ll read this sentence, but that which was comprehended by sense, he called felt and if it was so comprehended that it could not be eradicated by reason, he called it knowledge otherwise, he called it ignorance from which also was engendered opinion, but between knowledge and ignorance, he placed that comprehension, which I’ve spoken of and reckoned it neither among what was right or was wrong, but said that it alone deserved to be trusted. And from this, he attributed credit also to the census because as I have said above, comprehension made by the sense appeared to him to be true and trustworthy. Again, we are early in our discussion, but what immediately comes to my mind as something to look very carefully at is when he talks about comprehension is made by the senses and appears to be true and trustworthy. Certainly Epicurus says that the senses are true and trustworthy, but Epicurus does not say that the senses themselves comprehend something or constitute knowledge. Joshua, do you have an opinion yet as to where Zeno is going about the census?
Joshua:
It is very tricky, isn’t it? He says that which was grasped I sense he called felt and if it was so grasped that it could not be eradicated by reason, he called it knowledge otherwise, he called it ignorance from which also was engendered opinion between knowledge and ignorance. He placed that comprehension, which I’ve spoken of and it neither among what was right or what was wrong, but said that it alone deserved to be trusted. So comprehension or grasping in this sense appears to be the first initial taking hold of what was presented to us by our senses. And he says that this taking hold of the product of sense, perception exists between knowledge and ignorance and if what was grasped could not be eradicated by reason, he called it knowledge. So this is where the filtering, the sorting process comes in. So you grasp a phenomenon with sense perception, right? And then it gets filtered If it withstands the test of reason, it becomes knowledge. If it does not, it is ignorance
Cassius:
And see right there, Joshua, I have a problem with that formulation because it sounds to me like he’s saying that the senses are grasping what I would call an opinion because when you’re testing it with reason, it seems to me what you’re testing is an opinion opinions of what you test with reason. And it looks to me like he’s saying that the senses are delivering an opinion. For example, Joshua, where he says that from this he attributed credit to the census because comprehension made by the census appeared to him to be true and trustworthy, not because it comprehended all that existed in a thing, but because it left out nothing which could affect it. I don’t see how comprehension through the senses can decide what is essential and what leaves out nothing, which could affect it without making all sorts of judgements about what it is dealing with. And again, I don’t think that the senses and a procuring philosophy are making judgements about what they’re doing.
Joshua:
Yeah, you know what it puts me in mind of, it’s something we’re probably going to be getting into before too many more weeks, and that is questions relating to Thomas Jefferson and his use of words and phrases. He wrote a letter in 1787 to his nephew Peter Carr, in which he gives him advice on how to navigate is continuing education and so on, the kind of advice you’d give to a young person as they were coming into their own. And what he says in that letter, a very famous quotation, he says, fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion question with boldness, even the existence of a God because if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. And this is the kind of image that I’m getting as we go through Zenos canons or epistemology.
By the way, Vero does make reference to a rule of knowledge, and if you look at the Rackham version of that text, there’s a footnote that says that the Latin word that is used is translated by Rakim, is measuring rod is itself a translation of the Greek words cannon or gman. A gman was the triangular bit on a sundial that stuck up and cast a shadow of the sun. It was also a kind of stick that was used by STOs to first measure the circumference of the earth. That’s all by the point is reason is fixed firmly in her seat. The sense is grasp data presented to reason, and then if it passes the test of reason, it is called knowledge. If it fails that test, he thinks it is ignorance and from ignorance is engendered opinion, which Vero says Zeno thought was weak and compatible with what was false or unknown.
Now, I think I certainly agree with you Cassius, that this is not quite the vision of sensation that is presented by Epicurus and you pointed out the sentence in the last paragraph of Section 11, comprehension made by the senses appeared to him to be true and trustworthy, not because it comprehended all that existed in a thing, but because it left out nothing which could affect it and because nature had given it to us to be as it were, a rule of knowledge and a principle from which all subsequent notions of things might be impressed on our minds from which not only principles but some broader paths of the discovery of reason are found out. Anyway, we’re working here off a very short summary. There’s probably much deeper we could go in the study of this question and it’s probably a question of finding the right sources and probably our best thing to do would be to go to perhaps on ends and look at the stoic passages and on ends.
Cassius:
That’s a good point, and I’ll see what I can do on that before next week. I’m afraid we’re going to find on ends that as we’ve been discussing, it’s mostly focused on the morality aspect of everything and that what Cicero was doing here with academic questions was bringing us the focus on epistemology that he did not include in some of his other works. Of course, there are other stoic materials that survive from the ancient world, although it is my understanding that this material from Cicero, especially what we’re going to get into in the second book of academic questions is probably some of the most precise data that we have surviving from the ancient world. So as we’ve been saying today, this is material that we’re going to have to process and think about and come back and discuss over and over as we proceed further through both it and in discussion of the epicurean view of canons as well.
But like I said, at least for today, what I want to evaluate in particular is whether Xeno is somehow saying that the senses are endowed with the capacity to have opinions of their own, whether it’s through action of the divine, whether it’s through some combination of the senses with reason, but I think that’s what we need to be at least alert to is that while epicure says that the senses are trustworthy, it is because they are without opinion of anything and it is in fact because the senses do not have their own opinion, that we can trust them to be honest and unbiased and neutral, and thereby provide us the best measuring tool for us to decide what is right and wrong in a particular situation. Again, that’s such a huge issue in the way you look at nature Epicurean. Aism is not intelligently designed.
It is not intelligently put together, and we cannot look within a thing to find some metaphysical intelligent goal or end wrapped up within itself. As Joshua often quotes, swim Dewitt nature has produced in human beings intelligent animals who do have ends, but nature itself does not have such an end. And if we think that our senses are able to grasp information or knowledge directly because it has been placed there by some divine or ideal force, then we’re going to be mistaken about our conclusions as to how the census can be used. So that’s something to keep in mind as we proceed. But today we’ve introduced the topic here in Section 11. We’ll proceed further into that next week in section 12, and that’s where we’re going to begin to see the battle lines being drawn between Zeno and those in the academy like our CLIs who emphatically rejected the direction that Zeno was going. That’s probably where we should leave things for today. Joshua, any thoughts as we conclude today’s episode?
Joshua:
As I think back to what I quoted earlier from Seneca on still PO the maga, and we know that Epicurus wrote a book against Still po, and I think about the kind of fundamentalist approach to virtue represented by Zeno and by the early academy, and how both Aristotle and his successors and Epicures kind of rejected this approach. This is way too extreme, this idea that you walk out of the city empty handed and it’s burning down behind you with your wife and children still in it and say, I’ve lost nothing of value because everything important is interior. To me, it’s kind of amazing, I think, to see that these are the ideas that are resurfacing today and becoming so widespread and so popular. Stoicism is still experiencing an unusual boom in modern internet culture, and it’s disheartening to notice the way in which it’s these extreme high demand positions that are the ones that resurface because they’re the ones that help people who are suffering to feel like as long as I just block out the world and retreat into my own shell, I don’t have to suffer anymore. It’s incredibly, I think, sad to notice the way in which this system of thought has become so popular in the modern world.
Cassius:
Yeah, Joshua, what you’ve just described is why what we are doing is so important. It’s detailed and it’s difficult, and we’re going to have to ask our listeners to bear with us as we go through this. But again, that is exactly why we are doing this and why it is important. We have to get back to the base and have a fundamental understanding of where these schools were going, why the stoics ended up where they did, and why the epicurean ended up where they did. And by revealing the foundations will see why the Epicurean path has so many advantages over the others. We have a lot more to cover on this. We’ll be completing book one next week when we go through section 12, and then we’ll go further into the second book beginning probably around section seven, and we’ll take up these stoic ideas about the nature of truth even further. So that’s where we’ll stop for today. As always, we invite everyone to drop by the epicurean friends.com forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about our discussions on Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.