Episode 305 - TD33 - Shall We Stoically Be A Spectator To Life And Content Ourselves With "Virtue?"
Date: 10/25/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4780-episode-305-td33-epicurus-on-dealing-with-grief-and-loss/
Summary
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Transcript (Unedited)
Section titled “Transcript (Unedited)”Cassius (00:12):
Welcome to episode 305 of Lucretius today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the epicurean text and we discuss how epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of epicurus@epicureanfriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. This week we are moving into book five of Cicero’s, tus and Disputations, which we are continuing to examine from an epicurean perspective. This is the final book of Tus and Disputations, and we’re going to take several weeks to go through some of the most important aspects of it. As we did last week. We’re going to have to skip some of the detail, but this is the climactic book of the series in which Cicero is going to bring all of the threads of his prior argument together, and he’s going to deal with this as the most important question in philosophy.
(01:22):
What is truly the good and from the point of view of those who promote virtue as the good? The important question is whether it is virtue alone or whether you have to have something in addition to virtue to live a happy life. Our young translation that we’re going by has a subheading that characterizes this book as whether virtue alone be sufficient for a happy life. And of course, this is an incredibly important argument within the ancient Greek philosophical community. It’s a significant one that split up the academy and led to all sorts of arguments and divisions, even between Aristotle and the adherence of the old academy with Aristotle taking a somewhat more liberal view that more than just virtue was required to live a happy life, and that direction by Aristotle was followed with a counteraction by the stoics who argued as forcefully as they could.
(02:24):
That virtue alone is all that is required and that to ask for any other reward to seek for anything besides virtue was to sully the name of virtue and to drop you off of the heights of virtue that you’re looking to aspire to by looking only to virtue as your goal. So even among the more mainline Greeks such as Aristotle and the followers of Socrates and Plato, there was dissension about whether virtue alone was sufficient for happy life, and of course, Epicurus took an even stronger position that virtue wasn’t the goal of life at all, but pleasure. Now as we know, Epicurus said that in order to live a happy life, you must be virtuous. But he considered virtue to be an instrument for the attainment of pleasure and not the goal in and of itself. So as we go through this argument from Cicero, he’s going to continue to focus most of his main attack on Epicurus position, but we’re also going to read some very interesting attack on anybody including Aristotle, the Peripatetics who might imply that something other than virtue itself was required to live a happy life.
(03:38):
Before we get into the dialogue that will open this book, Cicero addresses Brutus again, the person to whom he had dedicated the book originally. And let me read just a little bit of this opening that will set the stage for what we’re going to do today. Cicero says this fifth day Brutus shall put an end to our Tuscan disputations on which day we discussed your favorite subject for. I perceive that that book which you wrote for me, with the greatest accuracy as well as from your frequent conversation, that you are clearly of this opinion that virtue is of itself sufficient for a happy life. And though it may be difficult to prove this on account of the many various strokes of fortune, yet it is a truth of such a nature that we should endeavor to facilitate the proof of it. For among all the topics of philosophy, there is not one of more dignity or importance For as the first philosophers must have had some inducement to neglect everything for the search of the best state of life.
(04:38):
Surely the inducement must have been the hope of living happily, which impelled them to devote so much care and pains to that study. Now our virtue was discovered and carried to perfection by them, and if virtue is sufficient security for a happy life who can avoid thinking the work of philosophizing excellently recommended by them and undertaken by me. But if virtue is being subject to such various and uncertain accidents were but the slave of fortune and were not of sufficient ability to support herself, I’m afraid that it would seem desirable rather to offer up prayers than to rely on our own confidence and virtue as the foundation for our hope of a happy life. And indeed, when I reflect on those troubles with which I have been so severely exercised by fortune, I begin to distrust this opinion and sometimes even to dread the weakness and frailty of human nature for I’m afraid lest when nature has given us infirm bodies and joined to them incurable diseases and intolerable pains, she perhaps also gave us minds participating in these bodily pains and harassed also with troubles and uneasiness peculiarly their own.
(05:53):
But here I correct myself for forming my judgment of the power of virtue more from the weakness of others or of myself perhaps than from virtue itself. For she herself provided that there is such a thing as virtue and your uncle Brutus has removed all doubt of it has everything that can be fall mankind and subjection to her. And by disregarding such things, she is far removed from being at all concerned at human accidents and being free from every imperfection. She thinks that nothing which is external to herself can concern her, but we who increase every approaching evil by our fear and every present, one by our grief, choose rather to condemn the nature of things than our own errors. Now that is extremely interesting for several different reasons, especially in the end how Brutus came to perhaps not be at the end of his life completely in agreement with what Cicero has just said here,
Joshua (06:55):
There is an interesting parallel Cassius between what Cicero addresses to Marcus Uni’s Brutus in this text and what we find in another source to be. It said the last words of Brutus himself. There are several accounts of the last moments of Brutus. Of course, he died at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC and probably the most famous one, certainly the source of Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, this is his most important source, is Plu Tars from his parallel lives the life of Brutus. And Plutarch writes the following, he says, but Brutus, after crossing a brook which ran among trees and had precipitous banks would go no further since it was already dark, but sat down in a hollow place with a great rock in front of it, having a few officers and friends about him. First he turned his eyes to the heavens, which were studded with stars and recited two verses, one of which Volumous has recorded Zeus.
(07:54):
He said, do not forget the author of these ills. There is another source, and that source is Cassius Dio, and this is Cassius Dios version of accounts. He says, now Brutus who had made his escape up to a well fortified stronghold, undertook to break through in some way to his camp, but when he was unsuccessful and furthermore learned that some of his soldiers had made terms with the victors, he no longer had any hope but despairing of safety and disdain capture. He also took refuge in death. He first uttered aloud this sentence of herles o wretched virtue thou word, but a name, and yet I worshiped thee as real indeed, but now it seems that word, but fortune slave. Then he called upon one of the bystanders to and his life. In any case, what’s interesting is the content of these lines that he’s quoting here in Cassius D’s account and in Cicero’s text, as you read Cassius, we see this, but if virtue as being subject to such various and uncertain accidents were but the slave of fortune and were not of sufficient ability to support herself, I am afraid that it would seem desirable rather to offer up prayers than to rely on our own confidence in virtue as the foundation for our hope of a happy life.
(09:16):
And indeed, when I reflect on those troubles with which I have been so severely exercised by fortune, I begin to distrust this opinion and sometimes even to dread the weakness and frailty of human nature. But here I correct myself for forming my judgment of the power of virtue more from the weakness of others or of myself perhaps than from virtue itself, for she herself provided there is such a thing as virtue and your uncle Brutus has removed all doubt of it has everything that can befall mankind in subjection to her. And by disregarding such things, she is far removed from being at all concerned at human accidents and being free from every imperfection. She thinks that nothing which is external to herself can concern her. So we have here a very interesting contrast, Cassius, in these two approaches. What do you make of this? On the one hand, we’ve got virtue which is supposed to be self-confident, self-sufficient, not relying on anything external to the self, and then we have fortune, the vicissitudes, the ups and downs, the changes that affect us and that are outside of our control and therefore outside of the control of any virtue that we might attain.
(10:36):
And which of these is the stronger, I think is the question that we’re presented with with these two passages?
Joshua (10:42):
Well, Joshua, at least in partial answer to the way you phrased that question, I think the extreme popularity of stoicism ignores the essence of stoicism, which is what Cicero is expressing here, that it does not matter what happens to you. It does not matter what accidents can occur. It does not matter how much wealth or how much property or how much material things or how many friends, what happens to your country, what happens to your pets. Nothing matters to these people other than being virtuous and their position is, and all of their techniques and their methods and their procedures and their practices are geared towards attaining this result of virtue in and of itself. And when you scratch the surface of what these other guys are saying, that’s the justification for their conclusions, their religious view of the universe is that everything happens for a reason, whether it’s from divine fire or from a prime mover or from some more personal type of supernatural being, but they maintain that the universe is ordered the way it is, is designed the way it is for a purpose, and that it is our role in this purpose to love our fate and to be a part of that purpose and not worry about things we don’t understand or worry about things that are outside of our control.
(12:14):
Because what is in our control is our mind and our ability to focus on virtue and be a good person. And if we do that, then that is the meaning of the happy life and anybody who suggests that there should be any other priorities such as any kind of pleasure, whether it be mental bodily or any kind of pleasure, any goal whatsoever other than virtue is denounced and argued against and is built into their philosophies to deny and reduced to the minimum possible, seeing pleasure and all of these other things as distractions from the true goal. That’s what is at stake here in this argument. That’s why we’re going to see Cicero be critical even of Aristotle because Aristotle even could not handle this conclusion. Aristotle said, you have to have these other things in life in order to be happy, and it’s ridiculous for you to say that you don’t need them, but that’s exactly the direction that the stoics who Cicero is siding with here decided to go that nothing is important other than virtue.
(13:19):
And as we go forward here, we’ll see in the next section that Cicero gets his position. Honestly, the stoics certainly took these positions and as we’ve seen recently, Cicero is very fond of Pythagoras and there’s a story related in the next section three that is worth talking about as well. Let me move us down to that and we’ll talk about that for a moment before we go into the dialogue that opens today’s discussion. Cicero mentions that there was a prince Leon who did not understand the meaning of the word philosopher and that Leon surprised at the novelty of the name inquired what was meant by the name of philosopher and in what philosophers differed from other men on which Pythagoras replied this, that the life of man seemed to him to resemble those games which were celebrated with the greatest possible variety of sports and the general concourse of all Greece.
(14:17):
I presume they’re talking about the Olympic games there for as in those games were some persons whose object was glory and the honor of a crown to be attained by the performance of bodily exercises. So others were there by the gain of buying and selling and mere views of profit. But there was likewise one class of persons and they were by far the best, whose aim was neither applause nor prophet, but who came merely as spectators through curiosity to observe what was done and to see in what manner things were carried on there. And thus said, Pythagoras, we come from another life and nature into this one just as men come out of some other city to some much frequented mart, some being slaves to glory, others to money, but there are some few who taking no account of anything else earnestly look into the nature of things.
(15:14):
And these men call themselves studious of wisdom that is philosophers, and as they’re in the games, it is the most reputable occupation of all to be a looker on without making any acquisition. So in life the contemplating of things and acquainting oneself with them greatly exceeds every other pursuit of life. So the point of all that is to emphasize contemplation is the highest thing in life, not to acquire anything, not to gain anything or participate in anything but to contemplate life and gain wisdom greatly exceeds every other pursuit in life. So there is another illustration of how Cicero is digging into this position that the goal of life is virtue. In this case, wisdom. The goal of life is not to take action of any kind, not to have friends, not to have any kind of material wealth or property or society or anything else in life that you value, wives, children, anything else.
(16:21):
Your goal is only the virtue of wisdom in this case, the virtue of contemplation. Because if you can contemplate and be wise, then that greatly exceeds every other pursuit of life. So again, to respond to your question, I think what is an issue here is what exactly are we doing with our lives? Are we here simply to contemplate and be wise or are we here to use wisdom and contemplation for the purpose of living happily and as part of living happily, we’re going to have to have friends, we’re going to have to have some degree of material sustenance. We’re going to have to take actions of many kinds that preserve our safety for ourselves and our friends. And so we are going to need these other things besides virtue itself in order to be happy. It’s a huge difference of opinion, and when you scratch the surface of stoicism and find that even Aristotle couldn’t handle the ridiculous extremes that the stoics were willing to go to, it’s easier to see what really is at stake in this dispute.
(17:24):
Okay, so that sets this up for the opening dialogue that Cicero uses in each of these books to set up the question, and we’re going to have our usual reading between Joshua and Callini to recreate this. It’s much more detailed and even argumentative than we are used to in the prior books. So it will be interesting to hear this replayed for us. In the end, it’s likely that the student is going to come around to Cicero’s opinion since Cicero is the author of this book, but at least here in the beginning, the student pushes back against Cicero’s position and sets up the question pretty starkly for us. So as we get into the dialogue today, there’s some background right before we get started. So Joshua, go ahead and give us the background and let’s get into the dialogue,
Joshua (18:10):
Right? So we’ve just been talking about Pythagoras and after Pythagoras, Cicero moves on to Socrates as kind of the next exemplar of the life of the philosopher, and this leads into a discussion of the methods of both Socrates and Cicero, and the method is Socratic dialogue. In other words, he’s justifying his use of Socratic dialogue here before launching into the longest sort of continuous back and forth that we’ve seen so far in Tuscan disputations here at the start of paragraph five in section five, on whether virtue alone be sufficient for a happy life. So this is what Cicero says. He says Socrates was the first who brought down philosophy from the heavens, placed it in cities, introduced it into families, and obliged it to examine into life and morals and good and evil and his different methods of discussing questions together with the variety of his topics and the greatness of his abilities being immortalized by the memory and writings of Plato gave rise to many sects of philosophers of different sentiments of all which I have principally adhered to that one witch in my opinion, Socrates himself followed, I argue so is to conceal my own opinion while I deliver others from their errors.
(19:31):
And so discover what has the greatest appearance of probability in every question. And the custom caries adopted with great copious and acuteness and I myself have often given into it on many occasions elsewhere. And in this manner too, I disputed lately in my tus and villa. Indeed, I have sent you a book of the four former days discussions, but the fifth day when we had seeded ourselves as before, what we were to dispute on was proposed thus, and then we get to the dialogue. So he’s explaining here the history of Socratic dialogue as a method and saying that in doing so, in applying this method himself, Cicero is saying that he conceals his own opinion and his goal here is to deliver others from their errors and discover what has the greatest appearance of probability in every question. So that’s the purpose of the entire exercise. Everything we’ve been doing as we go through this book, that’s been the purpose of doing it, even though throughout this book we’ve encountered a few lines of dialogue back and forth and then a long delivery by Cicero answering the main point.
Joshua (20:43):
Okay, so with that, let’s go ahead with the dialogue.
Kalosyni (20:47):
I do not think virtue can possibly be sufficient for a happy life,
Joshua (20:52):
But my friend Brutus thinks so whose judgment with submission I greatly prefer to yours.
Kalosyni (20:59):
I make no doubt of it, but your regard for him is not the business. Now the question is now what is the real character of that quality, which I have declared my opinion? I wish you to dispute on that.
Joshua (21:13):
What do you deny that virtue can possibly be sufficient for a happy life?
Kalosyni (21:18):
It is what I entirely deny
Joshua (21:21):
Is not virtue sufficient to enable us to live as we ought honestly commendably or in fine to live well,
Kalosyni (21:30):
Certainly sufficient.
Joshua (21:32):
Can you then help calling anyone miserable who lives ill or will you deny that anyone who you allow lives well must inevitably live happily?
Kalosyni (21:44):
Why may I not for a man may be upright in his life, honest, praiseworthy, even in the midst of torments and therefore live well provided you understand what I mean by well, for when I say well, I mean with constancy and dignity and wisdom and courage for a man may display all these qualities on the rack, but yet the rack is inconsistent with a happy life.
Joshua (22:11):
What then is your happy life left on the outside of the prison whilst constancy, dignity, wisdom and the other virtues are surrendered up to the executioner and bear punishment and pain without reluctance,
Kalosyni (22:26):
You must look out for something new if you would do any good. These things have very little effect on me, not merely from their being common, but principally because like certain light wines that will not bear water, these arguments of the stoics are pleasanter to taste than to swallow as when that assemblage of virtues is committed to the wreck, it raises so reverend a spectacle before eyes that happiness seems to hasten on towards them and not to suffer them to be deserted by her. But when you take your attention off from this picture and these images of the virtues to the truth and the reality, what remains without disguise is the question whether anyone can be happy in torment. Wherefore, let us now examine that point and not be under any apprehensions, lest the virtue should postulate and complain that they are forsaken by happiness. For if prudence is connected with every virtue, then prudence itself discovers this, that all good men are not therefore happy and she recollects many things of Tio Marcus aqui and prudence herself. If these representations are more agreeable to you than the things themselves restrains happiness when it is endeavoring to throw itself into torments and denies that it has any connection with pain and torture.
Joshua (24:02):
Before we go further, that last paragraph from the student is striking to me in how assertive it is and how Cicero has allowed the student to be relatively insulting to the stoics to say that Cicero’s opinion is like certain wine that will not bear water. These arguments of the stoics are pleasanter to taste than to swallow and then to go on and say that yes, as long as this is before our eyes, that’s one thing, but when you take your attention off this picture and these images of the virtues to the truth and reality, what remains without disguise is a question of whether someone can be happy and torment. So the student here is really calling Cicero to task. Don’t just give me the standard line Cicero, the very first lines, the student says, you must look out for something new. If you would do any good as if I’ve heard your lines before Cicero, I know that this is just a game, tell me the truth and stop painting these pretty pictures. Give me something stronger that I can rely on and not just something that sounds good. So I just wanted to throw that in there. It sounds to me like the student is really challenging Cicero at this point.
Joshua (25:15):
Yeah, this is certainly the most sustained response to Cicero in these little dialogues at the beginning of each section that we’ve gotten so far in this text, usually the student is moved from their stance within a few lines and then it’s just clearing up the details. But this is a sustained rejection of what Cicero is saying here, and the student is not easily swayed and not easily taken in by the words that he’s saying as when he says, for example, is not virtue sufficient to enable us to live as we ought honestly commendably or in fine to live Well. And the student in that last paragraph says, when you take your attention off from this pretty picture you’ve been painting and these images of the virtues to the truth and reality. What remains without disguise is the question whether anyone can be happy and torment.
(26:08):
And that is a real and serious question. I mean that’s a genuine point of criticism. This is something that we all have to work through for ourselves of what would you do if you were on the rack? What would your response be? Is anything you’ve done up to this point in your life going to prepare you for the pain that you’re going to experience? And is it possible, not necessarily for those extreme pains, but what we’ve been talking about all throughout this text is when you are experiencing pain, when you know that you’re going to die, when you are experiencing mental perturbations as we talked about last week or these passions, is it possible to be happy even if we are not morally perfect according to the stoic definition of those words? And I think it’s a really good question that the student is bringing up here.
Joshua (26:54):
It really is a good question and Cicero actually seems to be taken aback a little bit by it. In the next section he’s going to say, have I not accomplished anything in the last several days given your response there, but Joshua, go ahead and take section six and let’s go forward.
Joshua (27:09):
So Cicero replies to the student. He says, I can easily bear with your behaving in this manner, though it is not fair in you to prescribe to me how you would have me carry on this discussion, but I ask you if I have affected anything or nothing at all in the proceeding days.
Kalosyni (27:27):
Yes, something was done, some little matter indeed,
Joshua (27:31):
But if that is the case, this question is settled and almost put an end to
Kalosyni (27:36):
How so
Joshua (27:37):
Because turbulent motions and violent agitations of the mind when it is raised and elated by a rash impulse getting the better of reason, leave no room for a happy life for who that fears either pain or death, the one of which is always present, the other always impending can be otherwise then miserable. Now supposing the same person, which is often the case to be afraid of poverty, ignominy, infamy or weakness or blindness or lastly, slavery, which does not only befall individual men but often even the most powerful nations. Now can anyone under the apprehension of these evils be happy? What should we say of him who not only dreads these evils as impending but actually feels and bears them at present? Let us unite in the same person banishment, mourning the loss of children. Now, how can anyone who is broken down and rendered sickened body and mind by such affliction be otherwise then very miserable indeed.
(28:43):
What reason again, can there be why a man should not rightly enough be called miserable, whom we see inflamed and raging with lust, coveting everything with an insatiable desire and in proportion as he derives more pleasure from anything thirsting, the more violently after them. And as to a man vainly, elated exalting with an empty joy and boasting of himself without reason is not he so much more miserable in proportion as he thinks himself happier. Therefore, as these men are miserable, so on the other hand those are happy, who are alarmed by no fears, wasted by no griefs, provoked by no lusts, melted by no language pleasures that arise from vain and exalting joys. We look on the sea as calm when not the least breath of air disturbs its waves and in like manner the placid and quiet state of the mind is discovered when unmoved by any perturbation. Now if there be anyone who holds the power of fortune and everything human, everything that can possibly befall any man as supportable so as to be out of the reach of fear or anxiety. And if such a man covets nothing and is lifted up by no vain joy of mind, what can prevent his being happy? And if these are the effects of virtue, why cannot virtue itself make men happy?
Joshua (30:11):
Before we go further, just in case it’s not obvious to those who’ve been listening along for the last number of episodes here, Cicero has basically gone through in this last answer all of the topics he’s covered previously in this book about grief of mind, grief of body, fear of death, the most recently this discussion of perturbations which includes joy and delight and any of the good things in life that provoke a strong emotional response. Cicero is arguing here that we’ve covered all these things. Student you should have understood from what we discussed in these prior weeks that given the antidote of virtue to all of these problems that we’ve previously discussed, virtue gets you to the point that you need to be as being happy and so therefore virtue alone is sufficient to be happy. So again, to repeat, Cicero has summarized in this last paragraph the arguments of the prior books, now the student will go forward,
Kalosyni (31:11):
But the other of these two propositions is undeniable that they who are under no apprehensions, who covet nothing, who are lifted up by no vain joy are happy and therefore I grant you that. But as for the other that is not now in a fit state for discussion, for it has been proved by your former arguments that a wise man is free from every perturbation of mind
Joshua (31:39):
Dallas, then the dispute is over for the question appears to have been entirely exhausted.
Kalosyni (31:45):
I think indeed that that is almost the case,
Joshua (31:49):
But yet that is more usually the case with the mathematicians than philosophers for when the geometrics teach anything, if what they have before taught relates to their present subject, they take that for granted, which has been already proved and explain only what they had not written on before, but the philosophers, whatever subject they have in hand get together everything that relates to it. Not withstanding they may have dilated on it somewhere else. Were not that the case. Why should the stoic say so much on that question whether virtue was abundantly sufficient to a happy life when it would’ve been answer enough that they had before taught that nothing was good, but what was honorable for as this had been proved, the consequence must be that virtue was sufficient to a happy life and each premise may be made to follow from the admission of the other so that if it be admitted that virtue is sufficient to secure a happy life.
(32:46):
It may also be inferred that nothing is good except what is honorable. They however, do not proceed in this manner for they would separate books about what is honorable and what is the chief good and when they have demonstrated from the one that virtue has power enough to make life happy, yet they treat this point separately for everything and especially a subject of such great consequence should be supported by arguments and exhortations which belong to that alone for you should have a care how you imagined philosophy to have uttered anything more noble or that she has promised anything more fruitful or of greater consequence for good gods. Does she not engage that she will render him who submits to her laws so accomplished as to be always armed against fortune and to have every assurance within himself of living well and happily that he shall in short be forever happy, but let us see what she will perform.
(33:46):
In the meanwhile, I look upon it as a great thing that she has even made such a promise for Xerxes who was loaded with all the rewards and gifts of fortune, not satisfied with his armies of horse and foot, nor the multitude of his ships nor his infinite treasure of gold offered a reward to anyone who could find out a new pleasure. And yet when it was discovered he was not satisfied with it, nor can there ever be an end to lust. I wish we could engage anyone by a reward to produce something the better to establish us in this belief.
Joshua (34:22):
Before you go on, let me give you a break by interjecting that my reading of this one is that Cicero is going a little more with caries than the stoics here and observing that if you’re a mathematician or atrician when you’ve established your premises, you’ve done everything you need to do. But the philosophers go further, especially somebody like caries or the academic skeptics that Cicero fancies himself to be. They’re never sure of anything. They want to continue hammering and hammering and hammering until they can come up with this idea that they have found something that is probable. But the major point I see in that section is that Cicero is saying that it’s not sufficient to stop at our initial observations in the first four books. We’re going to pile on as much additional argument as we possibly can to make you understand and be confident that virtue is sufficient for itself to a happy life. Now the student will continue,
Kalosyni (35:19):
I wish that indeed myself, but I want a little information for I allow that in what you have stated. The one proposition is the consequence of the other that as if what is honorable be the only good it must follow that a happy life is the effect of virtue so that if a happy life consists in virtue, nothing can be good but virtue. But your friend Brutus on the authority of aristo and Antiochus does not see this for he thinks the case would be the same, even if there were anything good besides virtue.
Joshua (35:56):
What then do you imagine that I’m going to argue against Brutus.
Kalosyni (36:01):
You may do what you please for it is not for me to prescribe what you shall do,
Joshua (36:06):
How these things agree together shall be examined somewhere else. For I frequently discuss that point with Antiochus and lately with aristo when during the period of my command as general I was lodging with him at Athens for to me it seemed that no one could possibly be happy under any evil, but a wise man might be afflicted with evil if there are any things arising from body or fortune deserving the name of evils. These things were said which anus has inserted in his books in many places that virtue itself was sufficient to make life happy but yet not perfectly happy. And many things derive their names from the predominant portion of them that they do not include everything as strength, health, riches, honor, and glory, which qualities are determined by their kind, not their number. Thus a happy life is so called from its being so in a great degree even though it should fall short in some point.
(37:07):
To clear this up is not absolutely necessary at present, though it seems to be said without any great consistency for I cannot imagine what is wanting to one that is happy to make him happier for if anything be wanting to him. He cannot be so much as happy and as to what they say that everything is named and estimated from its predominant portion that may be admitted in some things. But when they allow three kinds of evils, when anyone is oppressed with every imaginable evil of two kinds, being afflicted with adverse fortune and having at the same time his body worn out and harassed with all sorts of pains, shall we say that such a one is but little short of a happy life to say nothing about the happiest possible life.
Joshua (37:55):
Okay, Joshua, thank you. We’ve been reading a lot today and we probably will not add any additional material to what we discussed before the episode concludes, but the conversation has now taken an important new turn because whereas we were previously focusing on whether virtue is the highest good, we’ve now moved into the related question of whether virtue is the only good. It’s not the same thing to say that virtue is the highest good as to say that virtue is the only good because of course virtue can be the highest good, but other things can still be good and below virtue. But that’s not the position that these stoics are taking because they are alleging not only that virtue is the highest good, but that virtue is the only good that nothing else but virtue is good. That relates to the question we’ve been dealing with in recent episodes about the nature of evil because a part of that debate is whether pain is evil or not, and for the same reason that the stoics are fixated on the nature of good, they are also fixated on the nature of evil and they want to be very careful to define those two terms, good and evil.
(39:13):
So that in the case of virtue there is nothing good but virtue because obviously if you are virtuous then you can’t lack something that would make you happy. They want the best life, the highest good to be happiness and therefore virtue has to not only be sufficient for happiness, but they have to dot the I and cross the T and say that there’s nothing else even good in life at all other than virtue that closes the door to the argument that they’re lacking something. There’s a similar argument going on with the nature of evil and pain as well. We’re not addressing that right now, but it is important to keep that in the back of your mind because that’s ultimately where the stoics are going with their argument is through definitions to arrive at a conclusion that they think is inescapable about the nature of virtue and the nature of evil.
(40:04):
And of course, that’s the opposite of what Epicurus is doing. When Epicurus says that sometimes we’ll consider the good to be bad and sometimes we’ll consider the bad to be good. It all depends on ultimately for Epicurus, how it translates into pleasure and pain. For the stoics here and even for the academic skeptics, it doesn’t resolve into pleasure and pain. It resolves into this transcendent type of ideal form that they reach through geometry, mathematics, propositional logic, and not by referring to pleasure and pain. So this has been introduced here and the discussion comes to an end, but we’ll be going much, much further with Cicero elaborating on his answer. So with that as background and sort of prelude to coming to a conclusion in the episode, does anybody have any thoughts before we close out today’s discussion?
Joshua (40:59):
It’s interesting as we go through this that this contrast from the quote at the beginning of the episode from Marcus Brutus at the Battle of Philippi in which he places virtue and fortune to be somewhat antagonistic to each other. This has turned out to be kind of the prevalent theme of the whole discussion here. It all turns on this question of whether virtue, which is something that for Cicero, for the stoic, something we have complete control over, something that is internal to us, something that nothing outside of us can affect or change or cause us to abandon. Whether this is sufficient for happiness, even if we are in great pain, even if we are going through a horrible situation and setting against that fortune, the Vista Institutes of fate, the changes that are external to us but that do cause this great pain and suffering or have the power to do so.
(41:54):
And next week we’re going to continue on the same theme. He’s going to take the argument to Theophrastus who was the successor of Aristotle and continue with the question of whether torments, tortures the ruin of one’s country, banishment, the loss of children, whether these things had great influence on men’s living miserably and unhappily, or whether it was possible for the virtuous man to live happily in spite of these changes. What I’m going to suggest as we close today’s episode, something that I always find useful when we’re talking about the happy life is to go back to the torti narrative from on ends. And in paragraph 40 from Book one, Torti has this to say, he says again, the truth that pleasure is the supreme good can be most easily apprehended from the following consideration. Let us imagine an individual in the enjoyment of pleasure’s, great, numerous and constant, both mental and bodily with no pain to thwart or threaten them.
(42:55):
I ask, what circumstances can we describe as more excellent than these or more desirable a man whose circumstances are such must needs possess as well as other things, a robust mind subject to no fear of death or pain. Because death is apart from sensation and pain when lasting is usually slight when oppressive is of short duration so that its temporariness reconciles us to its intensity and its slightness to its continuance. And then he goes on to ask us to imagine that such a man is in no awe of the influence of the gods and does not allow his past pleasures to slip away, but takes the light in constantly renewing them. And he says, what circumstance is it possible to add to these to make his condition better? And it’s after this, his contrast of the happy life with the unhappy life that forez gives us his view of virtue as opposed to pleasure.
(43:50):
He says, those who place the chief good in virtue alone are beguiled by the glamor of the name and do not understand the true demands of nature. If they will consent to listen to epicurus, they will be delivered from the grossest error. Your school dilates on the transcendent beauty of the virtues. But were they not productive of pleasure? Who would deem them either praiseworthy or desirable? We esteem the art of medicine not for its interest as a science, but for its conduciveness to health. And likewise, the art of navigation is commended for its practical and not its theoretical value because it conveys the rules for sailing a ship with success. So also wisdom which must be considered as the art of living if it affected no result would not be desired. But as it is, it is desired because it is the artificer that procures and produces pleasure.
(44:42):
We have been asked by Cicero to imagine Pythagoras at the Olympic Games, right? That this is the role of the philosopher is you’ve come to the games not to compete for glory or renno or fame not to engage in commerce, that the games stimulate in the area you come to observe. You are a looker on in the world of human life. You are DIY the cynic, walking the streets of Athens holding a lamp out in front of him in bra daylight. And when asked what he’s doing, he says, I’m looking for an honest man. This is the image that comes down to us from those who are beguiled by the glamor of the name of virtue. But it was the opinion of Epicurus. That philosophy does not demand us to be merely onlookers when it comes to life. It does not demand us to withdraw into a shell of our own making and treat it like a fortress to keep all of the evil and the pain outside. Epicurus is making an invitation to every single one of us to engage with life because he thinks that the pains and evils that do befall us are not so great as we imagine them to be. And we set against them the pleasures of past, present, and future, the pleasures of friendship, which he calls an immortal good and the pleasure of studying philosophy itself. And that doesn’t just happen in the stands of the stadium, right? It happens everywhere we go. It’s not something that we are mere observers of. We are actors in this as well.
Joshua (46:17):
Joshua, that is a great windup conclusion for this episode. And it brings to my mind what Cicero had to say last week when he complained that the Epicureans got too excited and were defending Epicures too strongly in response to his criticisms. And the reason that that comes to my mind is you are exactly right, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, the stoics are calling us to be onlookers to life. Bystanders back benchers, cynical, jaded redditers. Basically the type of person who just harps with criticism and has all sorts of opinions about things, but who never takes any action themselves. The kind of person who goes to the Olympic games and just carps with criticism about everything he sees. And maybe he’s got an innocent motive of saying, I’d like to learn, but he never participates in life at all. That’s the conclusion that Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the cynics, the stoics and Cicero are leaning towards that is why the Epicureans of Cicero’s Day, who heard these kind of arguments and who were themselves, the leading personages of the Roman and Greek world from Cassius ANDAs and Junior Caesar, and all these people who were influenced by epicurean philosophy, the idea of being a bystander to life would’ve been one of the most offensive things to them that you could possibly have.
(47:53):
And I find it offensive too as I listen to Cicero make this argument to claim that what Pythagoras had to say is admirable. And to move on from that and to say that virtue is its own reward. That’s the kind of argument that has been predominant over the last 2000 years with the suppression of Epicurean philosophy. But it is absolutely a ridiculous position to take. And Epicurus is the philosopher who showed the way out from that error, as Quata said, will deliver you from the grossest of errors if you will just listen to epicure position. So that’s where we’ve been today, setting up this argument. We’ll have a lot more to go before we finish it and before we then move on to lucretius again after that. But Cicero is right that this is pretty much the whole ball of wax on this argument. Where does virtue fit into the big picture?
(48:47):
Is it an instrument for happy life and for living ably as Epicurus would say? Or is it some kind of magic word abracadabra say virtue put virtue in your mind and magically you’ve lived the best life possible. That view is not correct. Epicurus view is the practical common sense view that anybody who like a small animal has not yet been perverted by false ideas will understand. So epic curing philosophy here as we’re discussing it is extremely helpful in unwinding all the confusion that these other philosophers have created. With that, we’ll leave off for today. As always, we invite you to drop by the epicure in French form and let us know if you have any questions or comments about this or any of our other discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then.
Speaker 4 (49:41):
Bye.