Episode 103 - Corollaries to the Doctrines of Epicurus - Part Three
Date: 01/07/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2305-episode-one-hundred-three-corollaries-to-the-doctrines-part-three/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”(Add summary here)
Transcript (Unedited)
Section titled “Transcript (Unedited)”Welcome to episode 103 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius and together with our panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and we’ll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com where you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics. At this point in our podcast we’ve completed our first line-by-line review of Lucretius’ poem and we’ve turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero’s On Ends. Today we’re continuing to examine a number of important corollaries of Epicurean doctrine as presented by Torquatus in this narration. Now let’s join Martin reading today’s text. There’s also death which always hangs over them like the stone over Tantalus and again superstition which prevents those who are tinged by it from ever being able to rest. Moreover, they have no memories for their past good fortune and no enjoyment of their present. They only wait for what is to come and as this cannot but be uncertain. They are wasted with anguish and alarm and they are tortured most of all when they become conscious all too late, that the devotion to wealth or military power or influence or fame has been entirely in vain. For they achieved none of the pleasures which they ardently hoped to obtain, and so underwent numerous and severe exertions. Turn again to another class of men, trivial and pusillanimous, either always in despair about everything or ill-willed, spiteful, morose, mesentropic, slanderous, unnatural. Others again are slaves to the frivolities of the lover. Others are aggressive, others reckless or impudent. While these same men are uncontrolled and inert, never persevering in the opinion, and for these reasons there never is in their life any intermission of annoyance. Therefore, neither can any fool be happy, nor any wise men fail to be happy. And we advocate these views far better and with much greater truth than do the Stoics, since they declare that nothing good exists excepting that black phantom which they call morality, a title imposing rather than real, and that virtue being founded on this morality demands no pleasure and is satisfied with their own resources for the attainment of happiness. But these doctrines may be stated in a certain manner, so as not merely to disarm our criticism, but actually to secure our sanction. For this is the way in which Epicurus represents the wise man as continually happy. He keeps his passions within bounds. About death he is indifferent. He holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread. He has no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life, if that be the better cause. Furnished with these advantages he is continually in a state of pleasure. And there is in truth no moment at which he does not experience more pleasure than pain. For he remembers the past with thankfulness. And the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness. Nor is he independent on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present. He is also very far removed from those defects of character which I quoted a little time ago. And when he compares the fool’s life with his own, he feels great pleasure. And pains, if any, before him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reasons for joy than for relaxation. It was indeed excellently said by the growth of fortune only in a small degree crosses the wise man’s path. And that his greatest and most important undertakings are executed in accordance with his own design and his own principles. And that no greater pleasure can be reaped from a life which is without end in time than is reaped from this which we know to have its allotted end. He judged that the logic of your school possesses no efficacy either for the amelioration of life or for the facilitation of debate. He let the greatest stress on natural science. But that branch of knowledge enables us to realize clearly the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and the theory of consistent and contradictory expressions. And when we have learned the constitution of the universe, we are relieved of superstition. We are emancipated from the dread of death, are not agitated through ignorance of phenomena from which ignorance more than anything else, terrible panics often arise. Finally, our characters will also be improved when we have learned what it is that nature craves. Then again, if we grasp a firm knowledge of phenomena and uphold that canon, which almost fell from heaven into human ken, that test to which we are to bring all our judgments concerning things, we shall never succumb to any man’s eloquence and abandon our opinion. Yeah, just right immediately a remark. So there is that one sentence I really don’t get the way it’s structured. Which one? Yeah, it’s that part. So, and when we have learned the constitution of the universe, we are relieved of superstition. Emancipated from the dread of death, not agitated through ignorance of phenomena from which ignorance more than anything else, terrible panics often arise. These terrible panics often arise. This doesn’t make sense grammatically. How do we link to the rest? He’s saying that ignorance of the way the universe works more than anything else leads to panics arising because people do not understand the constitution of the universe. He’s saying that learning the, this is exactly, go ahead. Well, what I wanted to clarify here, the emphasis should be on which. Yes. So he says, you know, are emancipated from the dread of death are not agitated through ignorance of phenomena from which ignorance more than anything else, terrible panics often arise. So it’s the ignorance of phenomenon, the dread of death and all that. From that ignorance, terrible panics often arise. It’s interesting that that section you’re reading there is the mirror stated again almost in very similar words to what I’ve put now at the top of the homepage of the Epicurean Friends Forum. This linking of understanding of the Constitution of the universe to how everything else works, how it’s necessary to understand that before you can understand epistemology, before you can have confidence in anything else. This is a huge point. I still don’t understand the grammar there. So I understand roughly what it means, but I still don’t see how the grammar is correct there, the construction of the sentence. It’s awkwardly worded with lots of clauses in it. But let me read through it again. So he’s saying that you’ve got to go all the way back to the beginning. That branch of knowledge enables us to realize clearly the force of words and the natural conditions of speech and the theory of consistent and contradictory expressions. There he’s talking about epistemology. And when we have learned the Constitution of the universe, we are relieved of suspicion. We are emancipated from the dread of death. We are not agitated through ignorance of phenomena, from which ignorance more than anything else, terrible panics often arise. And then finally, our characters will also be improved when we have learned what it is that nature craves. He’s just cramming all of Epicurean philosophy almost into that one sentence with a bunch of clauses and sub clauses. Does that help? Keep asking the question, Martin, because this is the kind of thing we’re trying to do is make things clearer. So does a part of it still bother you? Yeah, I mean, it’s more the construction. So the content, I perfectly agree, is that they understand it. But of course, if the grammar is somewhere faulty, I may misunderstand. So that’s why I would like to see this, to understand how this construction is correct. The focus of what you’ve been saying has been on the part about ignorance of phenomena. And, you know, we’re using the Reed translation instead of the, I think it’s the Rackham translation that a lot of other people use. And it would be good to compare the way Rackham did this sentence as well, because he tends to be sometimes a little smoother. But the reason we went to Reed is because sometimes Reed is more literal. And even though it’s more difficult in construction, sometimes you can pull more meaning out of it. But the basic thrust of that section you’re talking about is that he’s saying that we’re emancipated from the dread of death and we’re not agitated through ignorance of phenomena. From which ignorance, more than anything else, terrible panics often arise, which is just, of course, as you know, the basic point that people who are ignorant think that God’s caused these celestial phenomena and storms and so forth to happen. But it’s when we understand that they happen naturally that we are freed from those panics that arise and freed from the ignorance that causes us to think that God’s created those phenomena. So it’s awkwardly worded by Reed here. But to some degree, it’s because Torquatus, Cicero is just jamming together so many important issues all in one place. An issue about Latin and Greek language, those languages I heard are structured that you can do it and it’s still nice. But I think in English it’s terrible. Yeah, yeah. And Cicero in particular has a reputation for, I think, being very difficult, even in Latin, for modern readers to really get a hold of. I imagine it’s difficult to translate Cicero into English. Which is kind of ironic because he’s the person that all these Latin texts are based on often in high school and college in the United States. He’ll always have to translate Cicero almost as much as your Caesar or your Caesar or Virgil, yeah. Well, by contrast, Caesar is thought to be much easier than either of the other two. Right. One thing I do want to clarify, Cassius, is that when you read that sentence, you, I think, said suspicion instead of superstition. Ah. When we have learned the constitution of the universe, we are relieved of superstition. Yes. Okay. Rackham translates that this way, Martin. Secondly, a thorough knowledge of the facts of nature relieves us of the burden of superstition, frees us from fear of death, and shields us against the disturbing effects of ignorance, which is often in itself a cause of terrifying apprehensions. That’s the part that you were stumbling over. Yes. And that one is grammatically correct. Yes. Yes. Yes. So this one I don’t have a problem. So it’s really the weird translation here in the text. Right. I would say this is an example of just how important it is to look at different translations when you’re trying to pull meaning out of these texts. Rackham is very good and very smooth, but there are significant differences between what Rackham does and what Reed does. And the reason we picked Reed, I know we had Don looking at this with us when we picked Reed, and it looks like Reed is more literal to the Latin and Rackham probably took more liberties and thereby made it more understandable. But then at that point, you’re kind of relying on Rackham to make sure he got it right, as opposed to looking at the texts that Reed translates. So it’s a really good thing to do both. Let me say a couple of things. I’m not going to just edit all of this out. I’m going to include most of this in the podcast. I want to say two things. These sections that we’re reading and Torquatus in general, it’s just such a good summary of Epicurean philosophy that I think this Torquatus material ought to be some of the early reading that anybody who studies Epicurus ought to be looking into. It’s really more clear in many ways than the letter to Menesius or the letter to Herodotus in certain instances. It’s more of a sort of a high level summary of everything. And we’ve been talking about earlier on virtue and pleasure and so forth. But as he gets to the end of this letter, which is where we are now, he’s just providing a really condensed outline of a lot of the basics of the philosophy that don’t get talked about very often. And I just think this is an incredibly good reference text, which is why I am so appreciative to our podcaster, Joshua, who has read the entire section of Torquatus. And we’ve got that posted to EpicureanFriends.com. We’ve got it posted to Facebook. We’ve got it posted to YouTube. We’re going to make that available, of course, for free for everybody to download and listen to. And I really can’t recommend that enough because it is an hour or so to listen to it. But to listen to the entire presentation by Torquatus at one time, I think, is extremely helpful to just see how it all fits together. Because we’re breaking it down into segments from week to week. And it’s probably hard to keep context of where we are at a particular time. But this Torquatus material is just some of the most important that you can find anywhere, in my view, on Epicurean philosophy. So with that rant, let’s go back to the beginning. And we’re just going to leave most of that in, Martin, even if we don’t end up talking about each paragraph today, because it all fits together so much. And it’s so dense because looking back to where we started in section 60 or line 60, we have finished talking about how the goal of virtue is pleasure and virtue is not an end in itself. And we talked last week about this issue of mental versus bodily pleasures and how people should avoid the mistake of thinking that bodily pleasures are so much more important than mental pleasures and how the mental pleasures can indeed be at times more important than bodily pleasures are. And so now we’re moving to an even more rapid fire list of other issues that Epicurus brings up and makes important points on. And so we’re going from a couple of paragraphs as a section talking about a particular thing to a couple of sentences and then moving from topic to topic. So the first topic is to talk about that there are people for whom death hangs over them like the stone of Tantalus, which probably would be worth explaining that reference, Joshua, right? What’s that one about? No, I actually did not know this one. I felt compelled to look it up because when I think of Tantalus, I think of this guy. He’s one of sort of three or four classical punishments of the Greek afterlife, which for the most part is not a place of punishment. This is a distinction between Hades and the Christian hell, which is that in hell, you have to assume that you’re being tortured for all eternity. Whereas in Hades, you become sort of a wandering shade, pale and wondrous wise, I think, as Lucretius puts it. But there are a couple of people who, because of their crimes on Earth, are deemed to be deserving of being tortured, really, for all time. So one of them, of course, is Sisyphus. He’s rolling this stone up a hill and then it falls back down and he’s got to push it back up the hill again. Ixion was another one. He was something to do with a wheel. I can’t remember the details very well. Tantalus, in my mind, I had always associated with the things that he wanted were constantly out of reach. For example, he was standing in water and there was a fruit tree hanging over him, but he was hungry and thirsty. But every time he reached for the tree, the branches would pull back. And every time he got to get a drink of the water, the water would recede. And so for all time, he’s stuck sort of between hunger and thirst and unable to satisfy either of those necessary desires. What I didn’t know about was this part about the stone hanging over his head. So I went to Wikipedia for that. And I guess it has something to do with this over his head towers of threatening stone. This comes from Pindar, like the one that Sisyphus is punished to roll up a hill. This fate has cursed him with eternal deprivation of nourishment. So I couldn’t really figure out where the stone came into all of this. It has something to do with a myth about a golden dog that was stolen or something. I actually want to read what I think his worst crime was. He was serving a banquet for the gods at one point, which is, I think, a pretty amazing opportunity for a mere mortal. But because he was such an evil person, he offered up his son, Pelops, as a sacrifice. He cut Pelops up, boiled him, and served him up in a banquet for the gods in order to test their omniscience. The gods became aware of the gruesome nature of the menu. So they did not touch the offering. Only Demeter, distraught by the loss of her daughter Persephone, who had been stolen by Hades and was spending part of the year in his domain, absentmindedly ate part of the boy’s shoulder. And then the faiths were conscripted to put the boy back together again. But they had to use a piece of ivory to rebuild his shoulder. So the myth of Tantalus here, for me, it’s mentioned here that his name might be a reference to a couple of Hittite kings. As usual with most of these myths, it seems that it starts out with the kernel of truth. And then over the centuries, you just get built up legends. And in fact, in later time, there was this tomb that was thought to have been the tomb of Tantalus, even in ancient times. And then when the Christians rose to power, they claimed that that same tomb was actually the tomb of a saint, despite the fact that the tomb had been known and written of long before the saint lived. So that’s another interesting example. Well, Joshua, you’ve gotten a lot more detail there than I was expecting. And what you’re talking about in terms of the tree and the water below fits exactly with our normal use of the word Tantalus is to be tantalized by something. So that clearly fits the colloquial English uses of tantalizing. But I was expecting to just immediately go over to Wikipedia and see a reference to the stone balanced and teetering over his head. But you’re right. It’s not there, is it? Well, if you look under the section, under the mythology section, and you go down to the second paragraph, no, third paragraph from the bottom, it mentions the stone, but doesn’t really give a good example of why it’s there. One of the interesting things I’m reading, though, that I didn’t know, is that he was the mythological founder of the House of Atreus. And who’s the House of Atreus? Well, I think Don would have quite a lot more to say about that, because his knowledge of Greek drama is quite impressive. But the House of Atreus was the subject of a series of tragedies. So before I get that wrong, let me… This is an interesting side light that I had no idea we would get into, because this is also referenced in Lucretius. I think I’ve conditioned myself from reading Lucretius over and over and over to think that the main issue with tantalus was the stone that was balanced over his head. But obviously, that’s not the only part of Greek mythology. So somebody would have to sort all this out and put it all into context. But while you’re looking for that, I’m sorry to be droning on there, Joshua. But for our context today, the part of it that he’s referring to is this issue that there is a stone, a big, huge stone balanced over his head that he’s looking at and could possibly fall and kill him at any moment, I think is the issue. Right. That’s what the problem with the stone is, right? That it’s teetering and he’s always thinking that it’s about to fall, but it never does. Yeah, I think that’s the idea. So the point for this analogy would be that people are like tantalus who are transfixed, perhaps, in looking at the stone and can’t take their eyes off of it because they think it’s about to fall, but it never does. That would be an aspect of being tantalized as well, is that your eye is drawn to the subject and you can’t get off of it and can’t put it behind you. And that’s the way people are about death at times is that they just can’t put it in context and move on with their life. They’re just always consumed or obsessed with the idea that they’re about to die. But I’m sorry, you were looking for some other part of tantalus. Well, yeah. OK, so I wanted to confirm this. So as I said, he was the mythological founder of the House of Atreus, which was the house of Agamemnon, his wife Clytemnestra, who ended up murdering him, I think, in the Agamemnon, which is a play by Aeschylus. And then, of course, his daughter, Iphigenia, which, of course, is a Lucretian reference to the horrors of religion, which I think is why Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon, because Agamemnon had sacrificed his daughter to give the Greek fleet wind in their sails, as it were. So there we’ve got two examples of human sacrifice. We’ve got Tantalus sacrificing his son to test the omniscience of the gods. And then we’ve got Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter, Iphigenia, to placate the gods. And in one case, the gods are horrified. And in another case, one god at least is satisfied. So make of that what you will. Wow. Part of reading all this material that there’s references to mythology that you can pull a lot of meaning out of if you know. But unless you know it, you have a problem doing that. I see that the Tantalus reference in Lucretius is something to the effect, wretched Tantalus fearing the great rock that hangs over him in the air, as the tale tells, numbed with idle terror. But the important point of all this is what he goes on to say in this sentence. He says, being able to rest. So the implication here is that if you grant these mythological stories any semblance of truth, then you are in effect yourself being punished by the fear of death and by the fear of the unknown as to what comes after. Because in effect, the fate that Tantalus is suffering in life and in the underworld, if you’re confused about the nature of the universe and you’re confused about death and you’re confused about the gods, you’re already suffering the same fate. You’re suffering the same fate as Tantalus and you are preventing yourself from ever being able to live the happiest life that is possible to you because you are continually going to be plagued by doubt and anxiety and fear and all of those other bad emotions that are not necessary and can be avoided if you will study and pursue a true philosophy. Precisely. This is the theme. This is the reason for the continual discussion of talking about natural philosophy. Unless you understand natural philosophy, you cannot clear your mind of the fear that these superstitions could be true. And that’s an issue that a lot of people have a problem with is they don’t necessarily want to go so deep into the philosophy. They want to just kind of stop at the issues of pleasure that they’re all familiar with. But Epicurus is going very deep into the issues of pleasure and talking about the anxieties that a lot of people have about punishment by the gods and what happens to them after they die. Are they going to be burned in hell and so forth? So this is a huge, huge point for the first sentence of what we’re supposed to be talking about today. And then the second sentence is going to be almost as deep. Moreover, they have no memories for their past good fortune and no enjoyment of their present. They only wait for what is to come. And as this cannot but be uncertain, they are wasted with anguish and alarm. They’re tortured, most of all when they become conscious, all too late, that their devotion to wealth or military power or influence or fame has been entirely in vain. We could spend four episodes talking about the points that are raised there. Which would you like to pick out first, Martin or Joshua? So I don’t know if I want to go into this in detail, but interestingly enough, there are two more Greek legends that sort of impede immediately when I think of this subject. And those are the legends of Epimetheus and Prometheus. And what those two names actually mean are hindsight and foresight. And part of what Prometheus was eternally punished for by being bound to a cliffside and having his liver eaten out every day by an owl, not an owl, hawk or something, an eagle, that’s what it was, was precisely foresight and bringing and stealing fire from the gods and bringing it, giving it to man. So here, like in the Bible, in the Garden of Eden, there’s a punishment for having too much knowledge or seeking too much knowledge about things to come. But in Epicurean philosophy, it’s precisely the opposite. We need to remember where we came from and we need to have an idea about the future if we’re going to have any hope of happiness. Because remaining in perfect uncertainty about the future, willful uncertainty about the future, is an invitation to dread about the future. So I think this comes up again and again in Epicurean philosophy where he’s talking about sort of putting stock in future pleasure as a good thing, which I think people of his age would not have very readily agreed to or it would not have been easy for them to conceptualize how to look at the future and all that, all that uncertainty, how to look at death and to see in that a chance for even more pleasure than the pleasure that you’re experiencing right now or the pleasure that you remember experiencing in the past. Yeah, there are several, in my mind, really big issues that you’re hitting on here that Tarquatus is hitting on here, one of which is what you just talked about, how Epicureus is a system by which you consider your past memories of good things and also your enjoyment of the present and also your enjoyment of thoughts about the future. All of those are important mental pleasures that you have at your command in most every instance of life that you can focus on and use to dispel present pains or concerns or things that are bothering you. So you’ve got his emphasis on the past, the present, and the future pleasures as part of the mental issue. But one of the premises of his sentence when he says, this cannot but be uncertain. That’s a reminder of the whole Epicurean position on fate and determinism and so forth, that Epicureus establishes through his philosophy that there is no fate, the gods are not mandating a certain reaction and certain future for everybody, and that you have some control over your future, which this is right in the letter to Menesius as well, that there are certain things that you can control and certain things you cannot. You can certainly decide whether you want to walk out in the middle of the street and get hit by a bus or not walk out in the middle of the street and get hit by a bus. You do have some control over when you’re going to die and how you’re going to live your life, regardless of what the determinants say. But on the other hand, death is going to come at some point and how you suffer your death in most cases is going to be uncertain. It’s going to be a matter of so many different factors that it is impossible to predict in most cases, unless you bring your own death by walking in front of the bus. So when he says here, they only wait for what is to come. So he’s criticizing the people who just simply take a resigned attitude of, well, whatever will be, will be. Peserase arise, the song, I think. Go ahead. I picture an anxious rabbit crouching behind a bush, just waiting to be eaten by something. That’s the image that comes into my mind. That’s right. And what I wanted to bring in here, since we are recording this on the second day of the new year, and I posted this on New Year’s Eve, but this comes from Diogenes, Wawanda, this 80-foot-long inscription on this wall. And he says, But if we assume it to be possible, then truly the life of the gods will pass to men, for everything will be full of justice and mutual love, etc., etc. So here’s an example of an Epicurean exercising, in spite of the uncertainty about the future, a fundamental optimism about the future. And I think that’s the key attitude here is, whatever happens, you’re going to have the opportunity, I think, to experience pleasure in spite of it. Because probably what’s going to happen tomorrow is going to be a lot of the more or less same stuff that’s happening today. Eventually, yes, you will die, which is not an overly optimistic thing in itself. But knowing that until you die, you have a rich, fulfilling life of pleasure ahead of you, and not just a pleasure, but a friendship of studying philosophy, knowing that you have a chance, at least for all of that, ahead of you, when you get to the question of death, and you understand death and what it means, it’s not something to be feared. So I think there’s an optimistic attitude at the core of Epicurean philosophy, if you will make it so. And the key takeaway here for me is what I tried to articulate in the last episode, which is, in spite of the fact that a lot of this is not in your control. Some of it is, there’s a portion of this that you do have a certain element of control over. He’s going to go on in this passage to say, fortune only in a small degree crosses the wise man’s path. So there’s a wide window there for you to operate. And while you’re operating, you should act as Epicurus acted as a master builder for human happiness. Because really, what it’s going to take, if you want to cleave to that optimistic view of the future, you need to be an architect of a future that will bring you pleasure. I’ll jump in and say, I completely agree with what you’re saying in so many different ways. I do observe sometimes, again, this gets back into tranquility, but yes, I think an Epicurean is going to have generally a very positive, upbeat attitude towards life. Just because he’s going to die for an eternity and not going to be here, that’s not a reason to sit around moping and feeling sorry for yourself. It comes through in much of Epicurean philosophy, especially Lucretius and his intensity, that learning the truth that you’re going to die in the end and your soul isn’t going to live forever playing harps in heaven, that’s liberating and freeing and gives you the ability to enjoy the life that you have now. I can’t pass up Vatican saying number 47, and I’m going to read the translation that we have from Christos Iapaiakos in Athens, his translation of Vatican saying 47, I have anticipated thee fortune and entrenched myself against all thy secret attacks. And I will not give myself up as a captive to thee or to any other circumstance. But when it’s time for me to go spitting contempt on life and all those who vainly cling to it, I will leave life crying aloud a glorious triumph song that I have lived well. And to me, that has always encapsulated what you’re talking about, Joshua. When you say optimism, you know, there’s always the issue that people are going to say, well, being an optimist and being a pessimist, neither one of those are right. And there’s probably some legitimacy in attacking optimism because we’re not talking about blind optimism here. We’re not just saying, well, we’re going to go live in our cave and everything’s going to turn out right. It’s not going to be that Christian attitude of all things work together for good for those who love the Lord. Well, there’s no equivalent of that in Epicurean philosophy that all things work together for good to those who love Epicurus or follow Epicurus’s philosophy or whatever. You don’t have complete control over the events of life. But if you understand the philosophy and you understand how the world works, you’re prepared to take action to organize your life and to deal with problems in an intelligent way that is most likely to produce a successful result. In fact, that’s in the letter to Menaceus, I think, too, right, Joshua, that it’s better to have a bad result from an action that is well reasoned in doing it than to be just lucky. I’d have to go pull the actual. I don’t know if you remember that particular phrase or not. Martin, do you know it? Oh, it’s the same thing. So I know that it’s something like that. Yeah. As Philodemus said, apparently, according to Don, most Epicureans have an appalling lack of command of the cortex. So I’m probably a little bit guilty of that myself. That’s certainly what I need to reread. But yeah, I think you’re on absolutely the right track there, because he talks about that issue of necessity a lot. In fact, one of his formulations that I rather like is there’s no necessity to living with necessity. Right. And then there’s also in letter to Menaceus, the section about it, it would be better to believe in the fables of false religion than to give in to the determinists, basically, is what he’s saying. In other words, if you don’t believe you have any control at all over your life, then you’re in the worst possible position. You’re totally a leaf blowing in the wind. And Epicurus is saying that when you understand nature, you’ll see that you’re not just a leaf blowing in the wind. Or a ping pong ball bouncing off the bumpers in the machine. Or a ping pong ball. Exactly. You may be derived from atoms that have a lot of resemblance to ping pong balls. But those ping pong balls in our ping pong tables or pool… That’s right. I was thinking of pinballs when I said that. Yeah, pinballs. A pool table. What do you call the balls on a pool table? Oh. Whatever. Billiard balls. The billiard balls on a pool table. The difference between a billiard ball on a pool table and the atoms in theory of Epicurus is that these billiard balls do not have the ability to swerve. And although you get into all those issues about we don’t know the mechanisms and so forth. What Epicurus is observing is that we’re not billiard balls because the atoms that make up our souls, our beings, do have this capacity, apparently, to swerve because we see that we have some degree of free will. The billiard balls do not have free will, but we happily do in Epicurean philosophy. That’s the idea. Yeah. Well, why don’t we at least try to finish the first paragraph before we quit for today? For they achieve none of the pleasures which they… And he’s talking about the people who he’s previously referred to as being subject to all these concerns. For they achieve none of the pleasures which they ardently hoped to obtain, and so underwent numerous and severe exertions. So what is he saying there? Martin? Yeah. Those guys he’s talking about just use the wrong means to achieve pleasure. They were looking for other things than pleasure, which they thought would give them pleasure. But when they achieve those with a lot of effort, they still don’t experience that pleasure. One of the reasons they don’t is because they were off chasing these other goals instead of realizing that you must have a sound, true philosophy in order to decide what the right goal was. And that’s a problem because we were just talking about optimism. And some people seem to have the idea that their version of optimism is, if I can only get this one thing, if I can only pile up wealth, then I can start to live pleasurably. But that’s not Epicurean philosophy. Epicurean philosophy is, start yesterday, but if you didn’t do that, start today. Don’t wait until you have money, or you’re retired, or you occupy a role that you sought for a long time. You can start right now. And that seems to be a core idea. As I think he said elsewhere in this, one of your favorite quotes, Cassius, is, we should be ashamed not to have learned these things when we were children. Exactly. Exactly. Nothing complicated about it. And we’re going to get to that before the end of the Torquata section. That’s in the sections to come as he begins to conclude. But I thought you were about to cite back up in the section we’ve already covered. What I see is line 32. He says, surely no one recoils from or dislikes or avoids pleasure in itself because it’s pleasure, but because great pains come upon those who do not know how to follow pleasure rationally. So he continuously makes this point that a lot of people are just simply mistaken about how to follow pleasure, about what the goal in life is. And the first step in the process of curing these problems and setting things right is to understand a correct philosophy of the universe, a worldview where you understand both the constitution of nature, as the way he calls it, it looks like, and also epistemology about how the constitution of nature feeds into your process of obtaining knowledge and deciding what it is you can have confidence in and what it is you can’t. So we talked about that little section of people who get it wrong, which is their devotion to wealth or military power or influence or fame has been entirely in vain. That’s not the only class of people that he has problems with, is it? He goes, I mean, this whole section really is talking about how people get it all wrong. And so going into 61, if you want to go into that, he says, turn to another class of men, trivial, pusillanimous, which I guess means cowardly, either always in despair about everything, or ill-willed, spiteful, morose, misanthropic, slanderous, unnatural is an interesting addition. Others, again, are slaves to the frivolities of the lover, others are aggressive, others reckless or impudent, while these same men are uncontrolled and inert. And that seems to be a critical phrase there, uncontrolled and inert, never persevering in their opinion. And for these reasons, there never is in their life any intermission of annoyance. So when he says never persevering, uncontrolled and inert, and never persevering in their opinion, he seems to be contrasting that with what he imagines is the ideal Epicurean. Someone who has gained a measure of control over their life, who is not just sitting there like a rock waiting for things to happen to them, but who is willing to do the necessary work to build a life that will yield happiness today and in the future. And who will get their opinions about the important things right, the important things like what happens when you die, for example. Important things like what is the nature of the gods and the fact that they don’t intervene in human life and they don’t cause us distress. So there’s nothing to fear from that quarter. Without having a solid foundation of philosophy, he says there is never any intermission of annoyance in their lives. Not only do they not have continuous pleasure, they end up basically with continuous pain. And Joshua, of course, I’m very glad you decided to take us into 61 because we’ll conclude the episode today with 61 and conclude the episode with how 61 concludes, which we should never fail to pursue whenever we have the possibility, the opportunity to attack the Stoics. We should always name names and attack the Stoics. So let me read that. Therefore, neither can any fool be happy nor any wise man fail to be happy. And we advocate these views far better and with much greater truth than do the Stoics, since they declare that nothing good exists excepting that vague phantom which they call morality, a title imposing rather than real. And that virtue being founded on this morality demands no pleasure and is satisfied with our own resources for the attainment of happiness. And of course, this could only be said by Torquatus. It wouldn’t be said by Epicurus because at that point, the Stoics were not as well developed as the enemy of Epicurean philosophy as they were at the time with Torquatus. But this is a direct application of the things that we’ve been talking about today is that the views that we’re advocating about living justly and happily are advocated with much greater truth by us than by the Stoics, since they have made this mistake of saying that there’s nothing good except virtue or morality. As he says here, that’s a title that’s imposing rather than real. And the ultimate stupidity is to say that virtue or morality demands no pleasure at all and that it’s satisfied with our own resources for the attainment of happiness. That would be the statement that virtue is its own reward. That probably is as much the opposite of Epicurean philosophy as any statement could be to say that virtue is its own reward. Because in Epicurean philosophy, it’s only pleasure that’s intrinsically desirable itself. So any comment on the last section there? I’m looking for the phrase that virtue being founded on this morality demands no pleasure and is satisfied with our own resources for the attainment of happiness. Something you just said that I was thinking about. But basically, yeah, it’s the idea that, you know, once you’ve attained to this vague and illusory sort of absolute morality or virtue, not only will you not look for pleasure, because pleasure is a kind of distress from that point of view, but it’s the promise that you can endure anything is, I think, also problematic there. I see in Stoicism, I see a tendency to sort of idealize a position that I’m not really sure is possible for any human to actually achieve. But it is the logical result of their physics and their understanding of the universe that there is a divine fire and intelligence behind the universe moving towards a particular telos or goal that has set this virtue out as its goal. This is something we go back and forth on a lot. And you’re right, it’s totally impractical. And for many of us today who are very practically oriented, we think it’s ridiculous to suggest what they’re suggesting. But I suppose if you’re an ancient Athenian philosophy student or maybe you’re an American or Cambridge philosophy student today and you’re taking tests and you’re asked to pursue the logical conclusion of something, you can understand where the Stoics were coming from. And if their view of the universe were correct, I would say they’re correct in what they conclude. But their view of the universe is not correct in an Epicurean position, and that’s why they’re wrong. But you’re not going to know that they’re wrong unless you understand what the difference is about the view of the universe. That continual issue of the connection between the ethics and the underlying physics of the way the world works. I agree with you. And one way I put this sometimes is by reference to the American television show, The X-Files. Go ahead, explain. Which might seem out of left field. But in the universe of The X-Files, you have paranormal things happening all the time, right? And you’ve got these two agents, Mulder and Scully. And one of them is deeply and profoundly skeptical about paranormal activity. And I always think, I think, okay, we’re in the whatever season we are now. You’ve seen this again and again and again, right? In the universe you’re living in, this stuff really does just happen. So skepticism sort of becomes sort of a wrong position from that point of view. Whereas in our universe, these things don’t happen. And which is why I think skepticism of supernatural phenomenon is for me sort of the default position. But it isn’t in that universe. So I think you’re absolutely right. If the universe that we were in was the universe of Platonism and Stoicism, then the conclusions of Stoicism would certainly be correct. Yeah. So it’s important to understand what the nature of the universe actually is so that you understand that it’s not that universe and that your response needs to not be their conclusion. You need to come up with a conclusion that is consistent with the universe we actually live in. And of course, somebody is going to respond to you, Joshua, Christian, Jew, Muslim, whatever religious person. They’re going to hear what you just said. And they’re going to say, well, that’s your opinion, Joshua. You don’t know what the true nature of the universe really is. You’re not God. You’re not omnipotent. You’re not omniscient. You haven’t even been outside of planet Earth, much less to the far reaches of the solar system or the universe. You don’t know what’s out there. You cannot be confident in your position. And rather than put you on the spot of asking you, well, therefore, how are you confident in your position? I think the answer that’s the other link of the Epicurean chain is the epistemology. You have to understand the Epicurean positions on what truth is, what reality is, and what tools and what methodology makes sense to use in deciding what is true and what is false. And the standard of omniscience, the standard of saying, well, nothing can be determined to be true unless God tells me or nothing can be determined to be true unless I am standing in the middle of the universe looking at everything at one time. That is not a valid criteria of determining truth. But unless you think about those issues, then people who don’t think about them can very easily get backed into a corner and led to believe that word games are sufficient to prove something when word games are not or should not be accepted to be. I said a lot there, Joshua. What do you think about that? Or Martin, whatever. What I’m thinking of right now is a quote by David Hume where he’s talking about miracles and how we can be satisfied in rejecting them using the alchemist position of taking the argument that either explains the most or assumes the least. But I don’t want to get into all that. Basically, he says in a passage, I’m going to paraphrase. He says, which is more likely in the case of the conception of Jesus? He says, which is more likely that an eternal God inseminated a human woman or that an unfaithful woman should tell a lie? And in one of those cases, we know something that happens all the time. And in another case, we know something that has apparently never happened. So that would be an example of how we can examine the claims of the supernatural or the paranormal. But ultimately, yeah, I think your conclusion is right. I mean, you’ve got the example in the New Testament of Thomas, the doubting Thomas example. Thomas has been a disciple and seen all these miracles, supposedly. But when Jesus in the book comes back from the dead, Thomas doesn’t believe it and insists on physical proof by touching it. If I remember my Thomas, I don’t remember the details. And then Jesus says something about blessed is those who believe without touching it or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Blessed are those who believe without seeing it because he wanted to actually put his fingers into the wound, be sure that it was actually him. Really, he becomes a vehicle in the story that makes a virtue out of credulity. That’s certainly a huge theme of all of this. The virtue of credulity, believing things that you don’t have evidence for, is preached in all revealed religions. But Epicurus teaches the opposite, that you need evidence for everything that you believe. And even though he’s going to explain that you’re not going to have all the evidence you want in some instances, you’re going to reach your conclusions based on evidence that you do have and that you are comfortable with. That’s the illustration of what you said a minute ago about which is more likely for a woman who’s pregnant to tell a story about how she got that way or for a supernatural being to have been the father. You learn from the experiences of life that certain things are likely to occur and you get comfortable with that method of reasoning. Precisely. Okay, let’s begin to wrap up for today. Martin. That’s nice thing to add. Joshua, any closing thoughts for today? So what I tried to articulate in the last episode and what I’ve again tried to articulate in this episode is that because we don’t have to be slaves to necessity, we have a responsibility to sort of be the architect of our future happiness. And the way at the end of the last episode, as I was thinking about it, the way I conceptualize this is you want to build your life into something that I call the pleasure engine. Something that just by the way it operates, a natural output is pleasure. Just something I’ve been thinking about. I’m going to continue to workshop the idea. I don’t know if it’s if it sounds helpful, but it gives the idea that you need to build something in your life. You need to build a foundation that naturally yields pleasure as a result, because just bouncing from one moment to the next, expecting to find pleasure, while that often will work, it too often puts you in control of fate or chance or necessity. Whereas Epicurus says that for an ideal Epicurean, you wouldn’t be controlled by those things. You would have built a life that just yields pleasure as a natural output. I think that’s a great theme, and I think that’s exactly what Epicurus is saying about his whole philosophy. That is, his philosophy is that engine that you’re talking about of this is the operating system for your computer. And yet, once you’ve got the operating system programmed, you’re only at the beginning of what you’re going to do with the computer. You actually have to put it to use. But once you have the operating system in place, you apply it and use it, and it becomes your engine for making sure that as many of the experiences of life as are possible to you are pleasurable. And as few experiences in life as possible to you are painful. Always remembering that you have to look past the bad connotations of the word pleasures and pain. We’re not just talking about looking for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And we’re not just talking about running away from every little pain that comes towards us. We’re talking about pleasure, meaning, all of the things of life, mental and physical, which we find agreeable to us. And if you need the emphasis that we’re talking about art and literature and science and all of the many things and knowledge, all the things that give us pleasure, those things give us pleasure. And we pursue them because they give us pleasure. That’s the analysis of pleasure that we’re talking about. It is a pleasure engine, but it is an engine of a particular type that understands that the pleasures we’re talking about are not limited to just immediate bodily pleasures. But they’re everything in human life that we find to be desirable. Yes. At least that would be my slant on it. And like most engines throughout history, its introduction to your life can be revolutionary. It can be revolutionary to your life. And it’s not going to be an engine that produces exactly, it’s not going to operate in exactly the same way for every individual. Maybe it operates in similar ways, but the result of its operation, the pleasures of an Eskimo in Alaska are going to be in many cases different than the pleasures of a tribal person on the equator. Depending on your age, your race, your ethnicity, your religion, your religion, your, your, I say religion, but I probably shouldn’t include that one. But, you know, all the different individual aspects of your own existence that go into what you find to be pleasurable. This engine is not going to create cookie cutter people who are all the same. It’s going to produce individuals who become the best that they can be. We’ve been talking about that on the farm a little bit as well. The issue of Joshua, we’ve talked about that specifically on some of your posts about the role of the Epicurean gods in terms of them being an example. Do you want to talk about that for just a minute as we close here? This issue of being the best you can be as part of the psychological motivation, or would you rather not? Well, I’m struggling to get a handle on the question because you specifically tied it to the question of the gods. And that’s a huge, huge subject. Right. And one that most people, I think, find very challenging. Depending on which end you’re coming from, you’re either an atheist who looks at this and thinks, oh, the Epicureans believed in the gods. I’m going to throw that out immediately. Or you’re a person who comes into it expecting more from the gods than Epicurus believed they could ever give you because they existed in a state of blissful happiness. And they had no reason or no desire to either trouble you or bring benefit to you. Right. Martin, I bet you can resolve this question for us. What is it that in your mind leads you to want to be a better person? Do you think in terms of it being a good goal to be the best that you can be? Depends in what. I mean, it certainly gave me a lot of pleasure attempting to do the best in the job I do and to have all that knowledge I need for that one. So that gave me a lot of pleasure. Well, now, let me stop you for a second. And you’re exactly right. You don’t want to be the best lawnmower that you can possibly be. You don’t want to be the best fingernail cutter that you can possibly be. There’s things in life that are not that important. But what we’re talking about in general, is it fair for you to say in general in regard to your life as a whole that you wish to live the best life that you can possibly live? I mean, if you measure it by pleasure, yes, that would be the life I want, but not best in some other meaning. Right. So, in other words, another way I was trying to talk about it on the forum was if someone comes to you, a child or just someone who’s not a philosophy student comes to you and says they’re confused about what to do with their life. They see all these different philosophies out there and see all these different arguments about how you should spend your life. And they come to you and they say, you know, Martin, I don’t know which is the best course for my life. All I know is I want to use my life and spend my life in the best way possible. Tell me what the best way to spend my life is. Do you immediately slap him down and say that’s a bad way of looking at it? Or do you embrace that way of looking at it and then explain how to be the best? I don’t know how I would answer to that one to a child. That would definitely take my time and preparation. Josh, for having heard that question that way, what would you say to that? You know, I struggle with this idea of the best life. I think partially because it introduces, although falsely, I know you don’t mean it this way, but it introduces a question of competition. The way I would put it is I don’t need to be the best plant in the garden of pleasure. I just want to be in the garden. Well, no, you’re exactly right. I don’t think that competition is necessarily involved. It’s not a matter of being, I want to be better than everybody else. I think pretty much most of these people, these Greeks would agree that that’s not where you’re coming from. The question where you’re coming from is that of all the different options that are out there, how do you know which is the best option to pursue? All the different paths that you could choose from, how do you know which is the best path to choose from? Because a lot of people, I think, do think of it in that way. They haven’t analyzed the question of what is the best. They haven’t analyzed the question of what is the good. This is really no different than the question of what is good. What is the good? At least from their perspective in terms of trying to logically reduce this to a sentence and to words. And I think that’s your concern or part of your concern and it ought to be part of our concern is that you really can’t reduce these things to words and solve them logically. That’s what Plato is trying to do is to try to say there’s a logical answer to the best way of life. And I think Epicurus is saying that that’s not a valid analysis. I guess my answer to your question would be if I’m pursuing the best life or the best philosophy or trying to figure out which is the best end of all the possible options, you start with an analysis of nature. And once you’ve got sort of the ground rules of that down, then you start to build up your conclusions on the basis of that, which, of course, is precisely the operation of Epicurean philosophy. And the conclusion is that the best life is the life filled with maximal pleasure and minimal pain. And what’s the definition of the word best, Joshua? Oh, really drilling down here into linguistics. The, I guess, highest, maximum, superlative. See, I don’t mean to be cute or nitpicky or smart-alecky in this discussion, but I do think that’s where a lot of this confusion is coming from, is that, I mean, that’s the way this book started out. That’s the way Torquata starts out, is that all the philosophers have agreed on this point. Let me get the exact statement. Yeah, he says that whatever the end of life it is, we are bound to test all things else by that end, but the end itself by nothing. Right. And it’s that for which you do everything, but that you don’t do this for the sake of anything else. You do everything for the sake of this one thing. I ought to be able to find exactly his wording, but it’s where he starts out in this section that we started the reading of Torquatus. Yeah, here it is. It’s 29. First, then, I shall plead my case on the lines laid down by the founder of the school himself. I shall define the essence and features of the problem before us. The problem before us, then, is what is the climax and standard of things good? And this, in the opinion of all philosophers, must be such that we are bound to test all things by it, but the standard itself by nothing. And Epicurus places this standard in pleasure, which he lays down to be the supreme good, while pain is the supreme evil. So those kind of considerations go into the issue of what is best, which I think is the starting place, or ought to be the starting place for most people when they’re trying to decide which philosophy to pursue and what to do with their lives. Yeah, so the word I might use is optimal. Optimal. That’s right. That’s right. Optimum is the best, I think. Yeah, yeah. In place of, I was talking about here, it introduces the idea of competition. It’s not that kind of best. It’s what’s the optimal life for you? What’s the best you can make of your life? Not in comparison to other people, but just for you. And you’re making that analysis based on your understanding of the nature of the universe. Because if you think that there is a single standard that applies to everybody, if you think that there is a single goal established by God or by platonic forms, and you’ve convinced yourself that those do exist, then you’re going to want to pursue those. If indeed there is a best that somebody else has determined for you to follow, then by all means, pursue that as the best. But you’ve got to be sure whether that’s really reality or not. And that’s where Epicurus is telling you to start. And that may be where we should finish for today. But Joshua, you may have something else to add. So what do you think? Oh, not particularly. No, I don’t. No, I don’t. I don’t think I do at the moment. Okay. Well, the last word I would say is just that I think a lot of people that we come into contact with in discussing Epicurean philosophy, they don’t really wish to start at this level. They simply have a generalized belief and knowledge of their life that they’re unhappy, that they’re in pain, and they want pleasure. They want happiness. They have this generalized understanding that things need to change in a happier direction for them. But what Epicurus is warning them about is that unless they understand the nature of happiness and what it means to be happy and the way the world works, it’s almost inevitable that the decisions you make in pursuing happiness are going to be less than optimal, in Joshua’s words. Yes. Okay. That’s a good place to stop for today. Well, thank you both. And thanks to everybody who listens. And again, we encourage – I thought I put this in the last episode, and when I edited it, I couldn’t find it. And again, we encourage everyone who listens to the episodes, who has any questions about anything we say, just wants to make comment or give us suggestions on things to cover and to include, please come to EpicureanFriends.com, where we have a thread for this particular episode and every episode. And we invite you to participate, at the very least, by coming to the forum and letting us know your thoughts there. There you will find not only my recent recording of this text – thank you for mentioning that, and thank you for the work you did to bring that into the public view. You will also find, of course, Don’s work on the letter to Menaceus or letter to Mennoichius, his wonderful translation that he’s worked on there and commentary on that text. And, of course, Nate did some work on the – was it the principal doctrines? Yes. And the various translation of those. So those three things you can also find by going to EpicureanFriends.com. And thank you for saying that, Josh. This effectively – it’s the first episode that we’re recording in the new year, but we’re still under the influence of the old year. And that’s the place to include the thank you to Joshua, to Nate, to Don, to everyone who’s participated in EpicureanFriends this year and who’s – you know, the works that they’ve done are to their own credit and not to the EpicureanFriends.com forum. But we’ll make sure that you can always find them there. And, Martin, and everyone who’s participated in the podcast over the last two years, a tremendous amount of credit goes to you because we wouldn’t have the enthusiasm and energy to keep up with this work if we didn’t have people participating like you guys have done. Absolutely. Yeah, because the next episode will be 104, which on a weekly schedule, that’ll be two years almost exactly. Yes. Yes, indeed. So thanks to you guys, to Joshua and Martin, for your participation here in this podcast. And we’re not at the end yet. We’re still only at the beginning, as Joshua would say. That’s right. We’ll come back next week and continue with the beginning. So thanks, everybody. Thanks a lot. Yep. Thank you. Thanks, company. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. The End