Episode 337 - Confidence In Knowledge And The Epicurean Attitude Toward Pascal's Wager
Welcome to Episode 337 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote “On The Nature of Things,” the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
This week we are continuing our series reviewing Cicero’s “Academic Questions” from an Epicurean perspective, which gives us an overview of the issues that split Plato’s Academy and helps us understand Epicurus’ position on the same issues. This week will continue in Section 8 of Book Two.
Our text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We’ll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we’ll also refer to the Rackham translation here: Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Cassius and Joshua continue their review of Cicero’s Academic Questions, Book Two, Section Eight, examining the relationship between Stoic epistemology and ethics. The central argument is Lucullus’s claim that virtuous action is impossible without knowledge: the man who submits to torture rather than betray his duty could not do so unless he was certain — through apodeixis, demonstrative proof — that he was doing the right thing. Cicero, in turn, presses the Stoics with their own doctrine: since the truly wise man is as rare as a phoenix, and no Stoic will claim to be wise, then by Stoic standards no Stoic actually knows anything, including whether it is day or night.
Joshua raises Pascal’s Wager as the modern, personal form of this ancient challenge: if you cannot have apodictic certainty about what happens after death, why not take the “safe” bet and convert? Cassius responds from the Epicurean standpoint: those who prioritize avoiding pain above all else may find Pascal’s Wager compelling, but those committed from youth to pursuing truth will not simply conform to the opinions of the majority. Epicurus did not go along to get along; he pursued knowledge, surrounded himself with like-minded friends, and lived accordingly.
The episode draws on Virgil’s famous lines from the Georgics — “Happy was he who was able to know the causes of things, and all fears and inexorable fate he trampled beneath his feet, along with the roar of greedy Acheron” — as a direct tribute to what Epicurean philosophy achieves. Passages from John Stuart Mill and Joseph Conrad reinforce the point that the case against supernatural religion is simultaneously epistemic and moral. The episode closes by previewing the next section’s question: do we require absolute certainty in order to act at all, or does Epicurus’s Canon offer a practical, human-scaled standard of knowledge that is sufficient for living well?
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius:
Welcome to episode 337 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote on the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. For the last several weeks, we’ve been discussing section eight of book two. We’ve been talking in general about them. It’s time to address the specific comments that Lucullus is making. The focus is shifting today into the role and the interaction of virtue and wisdom with this question of knowledge. And the first thing is we get into section eight that Lucullus is going to address is this relationship because Lucullus is going to argue that you really are not going to be able to have virtue. You’re not going to be able to pursue virtue unless you have the ability to understand what virtue is and have a position that allows you to generally understand when you know something, when you don’t. So without further ado, let’s get into the specifics of section eight at this point and I’ll turn it over to Joshua for section eight.
Joshua:
Right, and I want to remind everyone that last week we went way to the end of Tusculan Disputations to catch a bit of Cicero’s argument in response to Lucullus and in that section, section 47 or something, I can’t remember which one, we get this image of the cataleptic grasp, but we also get Cicero making a very interesting point about the relationship between ethics and epistemology. Now, Cicero’s point is directly on the subject of epistemology. What he says is that if according to the stoic view of knowledge, only the truly wise are capable of possessing knowledge, and if further no stoic will go so far as to claim that they are themselves wise, then no stoic has any wisdom or any knowledge. It’s an interesting point that he makes turning a stoic position in epistemology back on the stoics that if you’re going to say as you do in virtue, that virtue is a mountain, and if you are virtuous, you’re on the summit.
And if you’re halfway up the mountain, that’s no different than being on the ground looking at the mountain from below. It’s a binary state. You either have it or you don’t, and if you don’t have virtue, you’re like the man drowning and you could be drowning in an inch of water. You can be drowning a hundred feet below the surface, but in both cases you’re drowning and in epistemology, if you aren’t wise, then you don’t have knowledge and no stoic will admit to being wise then no stoic has knowledge. And furthermore, no stoic is going to claim to be virtuous, right? Because that’s the big thing. I think it was Epictetus who’s got this famous exhortation. He says, for God’s sakes, I long to see a stoic because he’s surrounded by people who call themselves stoics. He calls himself a stoic, but he and they all admit that they are short of the goal and you can be short of the goal in both fields in the field of virtue ethics and in the field of epistemology when it comes to knowledge and wisdom.
Cassius:
Joshua, one of the things you called our attention to last week that was most memorable to me was where Cicero said basically, don’t tell me the difference between bad and good. You don’t even know if it’s night or day outside under your own standards of epistemology.
Joshua:
Exactly. And Lucullus doesn’t know that we’re standing in his villa right now because neither of you will confess that you are wise and if you’re not wise, you do not possess knowledge. So it’s a very good argument I think that Cicero makes using the stoic position to undermine the stoic position essentially or to undermine the lives of real stoics who do not claim to be either virtuous or wise. So in the first sentence in section eight, we get this connection between ethics and epistemology. Once again, he says, and most especially does the knowledge of virtues confirm the assertion that many things can be perceived and comprehended. So in section seven we had talked about sense perception and he says, if the Gods had asked us what more we would want in order to get to understand our surroundings, Lucullus says, I don’t even know what we would ask for because sense perception is really good for that.
But now he’s saying that even on top of sense perception, we have the knowledge of virtues and this itself is further confirmation that things can be perceived and comprehended is connecting the two epistemology and ethics and one of the central themes of this section that we’re reading today is that you need epistemology in order to be able to act virtuously, but by the very fact that you need epistemology in order to act virtuously, virtue itself is a confirmation of the claims of epistemology, and I think that’s a very interesting way to put it and we get that right here in the first sentence of section eight. Do you have anything more to say about that, Cassius, or we can move on
Cassius:
Just generally to confirm what you just said. Joshua, while I agree with you that Cicero’s criticism of the stoic position is very persuasive, Lucullus is of course not going to back down on that because virtue and beauty and the love of this divine order is at the very essence of stoicism and they are going to see their attachment to virtue as something that is more important than anything else. It’s pretty simple to understand that if you don’t know anything, then you don’t know what virtue is either, and of course the stoics are not going to be able to live with that. So they’re going to double down on any argument they can find to confirm that in fact, the ethics that they love so much, the morality that they love so much, the virtue that they love so much is something that they do understand and comprehend.
It would be totally ridiculous to say that I’m going to go out and devote my life to climbing the mountain of virtue even though I have no idea what virtue is. Even though I have no capacity ever to understand anything about virtue, they come fairly close to that position in a way in terms of talking about it being all or nothing, that climbing the mountain is a process of approaching virtue but isn’t virtue itself. But they know deep down that they have to ultimately maintain that they can understand what virtue is all about or else it would make no sense to pursue it just as Diogenes of Oenoanda said in his inscription, who will seek what he can never find? If you know from the beginning that you will never understand what virtue is, then you’re not even going to start on the course in the first place. The Stoics try to bridge the difference and say that, well, I don’t know now, but at some point when I get to the top of the mountain I will understand it, but they’re not going to abandon the possibility of ever understanding virtue that would be inconsistent and illogical and the stoic are nothing if not attempting to be consistent and logical
Joshua:
And in their defense we know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of Cicero’s sharp tongue, don’t we? We’ve been going through the works of Cicero for a very long time, and as you often say, Cassius, he’s a lawyer and he’s a very good advocate for his own position and he is a very incisive critic of positions that he disagrees with and finding a way to respond to those incisive criticisms is the whole point of why we’re going through all of this. So as you’re saying there, the stoics would have an argument to make and we may not agree that it’s a good one, but they’re certainly not going to lie down and roll over as soon as Cicero criticizes them.
Cassius:
Absolutely right.
Joshua:
And in the second sentence, Lucullus continues, he says, and in those things alone do we say that science exists, which we consider to be not a mere comprehension of things, but one that is firm and unchangeable and we consider it also to be wisdom, the art of living, which by itself derives consistency from itself. But if that consistency has no perception or knowledge about it, then I ask once it has originated and how I ask also why that good man who is made up his mind to endure every kind of torture, to be torn by intolerable pain rather than to betray his duty or his faith has imposed on himself such bitter conditions when he has nothing comprehended, perceived, known or established to lead him to think that he is bound to do so. It cannot then by any possibility be the case that anyone should estimate equity and good faith so highly as to shrink from no punishment for the sake of preserving them unless he is assented to those facts which cannot be false. So that is a significant chunk of text, but he’s making a very important claim here and it’s a claim that is important to the stoics, but this is also one that is kind of a trap for Cicero because Cicero has great admiration for people who voluntarily undergo torture and hardship in order to protect the things that are important to them in order to protect their inner core of virtue in order to protect their country and so on.
Cassius:
Yeah, Joshua, maybe at this point we should drop back. We started out by praising Cicero’s argument against the stoics because what he was doing there was pointing out that the stoics own theory of knowledge told them to conclude that almost nobody can actually know anything. They hold out the possibility of the wise man reaching the summit, being able to know and understand something. But if Cicero is right that the wise man is as rare as the Phoenix, then by their own definition of knowledge they don’t know much of anything including whether it’s night or day. So that’s the first position, which I think is a good argument because it points out the inconsistencies in the stoic position and uses their own argument against them. Then however, as we go back into the stoic argument, you’ve just been talking about — Lucullus is correctly pointing out that if in fact you do not have the ability to know anything, then you are not going to pursue virtue.
You’re not going to stand up to torture, you’re not going to do what Marcus Regulus did and honor your word to go back to the enemy. You’re not going to do those things. So the stoics are, in my view anyway, correct. If you don’t know right from wrong, if you don’t know good from bad, if you don’t know pleasure from pain, if you don’t know anything like Cicero is going in the direction of then you’re not going to take any action. You’re certainly not going to pursue virtue. So there’s a balance here going on Cicero’s argument against the stoic theory of knowledge is correct, but I would say the Stoic argument in support of knowledge being necessary in order to live a virtuous or happy life is also correct. It’s just that they’re correct about different things. Cicero is correct that Stoic epistemology makes no sense because they think there are cataleptic impressions that carry within themselves the proof that they are correct and they see that grounded in their theory of the divine nature of the universe and the logic and order of the harmony of the spheres, all those things that go with the idea that there’s a divine creation, Cicero is right, that there’s no way that any single impression is delivering you an opinion that cannot be mistaken.
He’s right about that. Cicero is right about that. Lucullus though is right, that I have to be able to know something or I’m never going to do anything. I’m not going to be virtuous. So both of those things have to be kept in mind as we proceed. I think Epicurus would agree with Cicero’s criticism of the stoic theory of knowledge, but Epicurus would also agree I think with Lucullus’s position here that if you can’t know anything then you’re not going to try to be virtuous or live happily or pursue pleasure and avoid pain in the way that Epicurus talks about. So as Epicureans at this moment in the argument, we are acknowledging Cicero’s persuasiveness that the Stoic theory makes no sense, but I think we’re also acknowledging the Stoic practical point of view that we have to have knowledge or we’re never going to do anything successfully and we’re never going to live happily.
Joshua:
You mentioned just now Cassius, this aspect of the cataleptic grasp that it carries in itself the proof or demonstration of the claim being true or something. I can’t remember how you worded it, but because you mentioned that I do want to go to the very end of section eight here we are going to run into two Greek words and the one I want to talk about is apodeixis. Lucullus says therefore the conclusion of an argument which in Greek is called apodeixis, is thus defined: reason which leads one from facts which are perceived to that which was not perceived. The thing is when I look this word up, what I come up with is a demonstration of an argument like he’s saying there or manifest proof, but it can also mean a piece of evidence that is so clear and undeniable that it produces a necessary certainty leaving no room for doubt.
The word is used in the letters of St. Paul in the New Testament for wisdom that comes by demonstration of the spirit, so it’s not just something that you think is true or you’re pretty sure is true. Apodeixis refers to evidence or a demonstration of a logical argument that cannot be false. It must be true, and I think it’s very important to understand that before we go further in this first paragraph in section eight because after he talks about the good man who is tortured, Lucullus says it cannot then by any possibility be the case that anyone should estimate equity and good faith so highly as to shrink from no punishment for the sake of preserving them unless he has assented to those facts which cannot be false, it wouldn’t be possible for them to be false, right? This is what apodeixis means and the cataleptic grasp seems to carry this in itself.
I don’t know how to wrap this all up with what we’ve read from Lucullus and Cicero and the other Stoics and so on regarding the relationship between wisdom and knowledge, but it’s important to know that this is out there and Lucullus himself is going to use that term. He finishes this paragraph by saying, but as to wisdom itself, if it be ignorant of its own character and if it does not know whether it be wisdom or not in the first place, how is it to obtain its name of wisdom? Secondly, how will it venture to undertake any exploit or to perform it with confidence when it has nothing certain to follow, but when it doubts what is the chief and highest good being ignorant to what everything is referred, how can it be wisdom? I think that too relates to this apodeixis, this certainty beyond any doubt because he says when wisdom doubts what is the chief good? How can you even call it wisdom?
Cassius:
I think you’re right to focus on that Joshua, and I think there’s probably not going to be a better way to try to get more clarity in our minds than just continuing to go through what Cicero says here because as we’ve discussed in some of the past episodes, this description by Cicero is among the best preserved of the discussions about stoic viewpoints. Cicero would’ve been absolutely immersed in talking and reading stoic materials and he should have had as good a grasp of this as anyone can have, which of course doesn’t mean that there’s not ambiguities and holes in the different arguments, but what Lucullus is saying here makes sense on a general level because why are you going to do all these things that are obviously very dangerous and fraught with pain and death? You’re not going to do these things if you’re not sure it’s the right thing to do, and being sure it’s the right thing to do is going to require you to have confidence in your decision making, and that’s the point where I think we’re largely in agreement as Epicureans with the Stoics.
You have to have confidence in your decision making. It’s the process of getting there and it’s the way you characterize your decision. That is the point we’re going to have to drill down further on because when they talk about things that cannot possibly be anything but true or cannot possibly be anything but falses, as I listen to this, I hear an appeal to an idealism or absolutism, which is the dividing line between the Stoics and Epicurus because in Epicurean theory, there is no absolute supernatural ideal standard. The standard that we have as human beings are the senses, anticipations and feelings. Those are things that we have to apply while we are alive. Sometimes we talk on the forum that pleasure and pain mean nothing if you’re not alive. I think you could also say that right and wrong, good and evil, just as Epicurus says in Principal Doctrine number two, those things mean nothing unless you’re alive and what Epicurus is focusing on by his living standard of knowledge, sensations, anticipations and feelings is something that’s connected with the reality that we can validate for ourselves and it’s not an appeal to some kind of supernatural absolutism for which there is no proof and which makes no sense.
Joshua:
I think I’ve come up with a way that we can go a little bit deeper into this without going too much farther into the text at this moment because Lucullus and Cicero had the terrible misfortune or else the great good fortune depending on your perspective to live in a world that was as yet unreached by the missionaries of Christianity. Christianity didn’t exist at this point, but it does for us, right? It exists in our world, and so this challenge that Lucullus has laid out for us here, he’s talking about the man being tortured. This is a challenge that every single person now faces, every single person has to decide for themself whether they think that there is a punishment in hell after they die. I mean, this is something that we all face and this I think is why Pascal’s wager, while it isn’t at all convincing to me, is convincing to some people and sounds to Christians like a very good argument because they’re saying, you can’t know.
You don’t have this apodictic certainty about whether or not there is reward and punishment after death. You don’t know. It’s not manifest to you that eternal punishment, eternal conscious torment doesn’t exist, so why don’t you make the safe bet and just convert to Christianity, and that is the challenge I now present to you, Cassius, why don’t you just fall to your knees? If you can’t be 100% certain about what happens after you die, why don’t you just fall down and worship because this is not academic at this point. This is something we all have to decide for ourselves and there are people in our lives who are knocking on our doors forcing the decision on us. This is probably the most important question we can talk about this morning as relates to this section of the text.
Cassius:
Joshua, a couple of things come to mind in response to what you just said. First of all would be this. If you take the attitude that avoiding pain is the number one thing and priority of your life, then yes, you are going to take the safe way out and you are going to never do anything that could possibly cause you any unnecessary pain, and if you think you can go pay a tribute to the gods or be baptized or fall on your feet and pray to the east or the west or any direction, then it would probably make sense for you to cover all your bases to accept Pascal’s wager and take the safe way out. CYA, as they often say in the business world, you will always do whatever you think is necessary to get by and not experience any pain that you can’t avoid.
If that’s your orientation, then Pascal’s wager makes a lot of sense, but if your orientation from the time that you are 12 years old is that you want to know the truth of the universe, you want to know the difference between right and wrong, you want to know what really is going on, you want to live your life the best way you possibly can, then you are going to go after the study of nature. You’re going to go after knowledge. You’re going to go after whatever it takes to understand the difference between right and wrong, good and bad pleasure and pain. You are not going to just lie down and be rolled over by everybody who walks by and be constantly concerned with what everybody else thinks and simply conform your thoughts to what the majority says. You don’t care what the majority says, you care what’s right and wrong and what is going to lead to the happier life for yourself.
Epicurus over and over talks about not being concerned about the hoi polloi and the false opinions of the multitude. Now, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to stand up in the middle of Mecca and start talking about the wisdom of Charles Darwin. If you surround yourself by people who hold opinions that you know to be false, you’re going to need to be quiet, but are you simply going to live your life that way surrounded by people who you think are wrong or are you going to do like Epicurus did and move from place to place as necessary until you get to the point where you can live the happiest life possible for you? Are you going to roll over and play dead and just waste away the time that you have or are you going to seize the day? Are you going to proceed to work as hard as you can to make the best of your life and make it the happiest it can possibly be?
So to repeat, if you are of that kind of attitude, you are not going to accept the safe easy way out of every question. You are going to try to do the very dead level best you can to live your life as successfully and happily as possible, and that’s going to occasionally require you to make some people mad. If you are standing in the middle of Mecca, they’re not going to be happy with you if you don’t fall down and worship the stone in the same way that they do. You might have to do that for a moment, but you don’t have to spend your life that way. As Epicurus said, it is not necessary to live under the control of necessity. You can change or leave most situations. You can exit the theater even if the situation is bad enough, but that’s not the general situation.
The general situation is you have lots of choices in life about the type of people and the type of ideas that you surround yourself with, and as Epicurus talks about in the Principal Doctrines, the happiest life living like a God among men comes in surrounding yourself with people of a similar viewpoint and similar orientation towards life. So you’re not going to just blindly take Pascal’s wager. You’re going to pursue the study of nature. You’re going to learn how nature operates to understand a basic physics orientation about who we are and how we are here in the universe. You’re also going to do what Cicero is doing right now. You’re going to pay attention to epistemology, to canons, and you’re going to think about what it really means to know something in the first place. Does it mean that in order to know something, you have to be the equivalent of Jehovah himself and have created the universe?
Does only the stoic wise man who’s as rare as a phoenix or is only the supernatural God who theoretically created the universe and who theoretically knows everything, are they the only people who are entitled to say that they know up from down night, from day left, from right, right from wrong? Obviously they are not, but it is argued to us every day that we can’t really be sure of anything. Only God through the Bible only revealed divine inspiration can really tell us what’s true. We should ignore the senses. We should fight against the senses because our bodies are trapping us into darkness when what we really want to do is get rid of our bodies and let our minds ascend to the heights of heaven like Cicero told us about previously in Tusculan Disputations citing Plato and Socrates on the Timaeus. If that’s your attitude, then you’re going to live your life one way, but you’re not going to simply accept that, oh, the people around you tell you virtue, morality, ethics, that’s all that’s important.
You don’t need to understand why this is important. You don’t need to understand how we arrived at this conclusion. You don’t need to be able to validate any of it yourself. You don’t need to even be able to understand why everything we’re telling you to do is against your interest and causes you pain and makes you hate your life. You don’t need to understand any of those things. All you need to know is that these are the ethics that everyone should follow, and if you’re a nice meek person who accepts Pascal’s wager, you’re going to go along like a sheep, the type that Horace was talking about who were transmitting this illness among themselves as if it was a disease. The blindness that they suffer from in terms of these other issues is what causes their ethics to be upside down, and unless they’re willing to understand the framework from which the ethics comes, they’re not going to be able to sort things out in a way that makes sense to the Epicurean point of view that Epicurus himself was promoted.
Everybody has a right to their own opinion. Everybody can pursue whatever direction they feel like that they should, but when you look at these texts, if you try to take a fair assessment of where Epicurus is going, he is not going in the direction of accepting Pascal’s wager. He’s not going in the direction of going along to get along. He’s not in the business of conforming his own views to those of other people no matter how ridiculous they are. He’s not prioritizing running from pain at all costs, even where accepting some pain will lead to greater pleasure. He’s in the business of pursuing truth from the very beginning at his 12-year-old educational stage, and he continued that through the rest of his life surrounding himself by friends who were oriented in the same direction, not just friends who brought him food and drink and he thought was attractive in terms of bodily shape or singing or dancing or anything like that. He surrounded himself by like-minded people who were moving in the same direction in orientation towards the world. So that’s the first thing I’d say in response to the way you’ve brought up Pascal’s wager, Joshua, but I agree this is a huge issue, so tell me what you’re thinking at the moment.
Joshua:
It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to phrase it this way except that we’ve just been talking about the relationship between epistemology and ethics in Lucullus’s presentation of Stoic philosophy, Stoic epistemology, and it’s those two together for me that reinforce my own viewpoint on this and worth pointing out that Lucretius himself when he pronounces that famous resounding line Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum — “so potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds” or “to such heights of evil were men driven by religion.” Really, he’s making a moral case against the claims of supernatural religion. It’s not just an epistemic claim, it’s a moral claim also and connected with ethics, and I think two of my favorite passages on this question, one from John Stuart Mill in his autobiography and the other from Joseph Conrad in his author’s introduction to the shadow line, John Stuart Mill referring to his father says, his aversion to religion in the sense usually attached to the term was of the same kind with that of Lucretius.
He regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality. First by setting up fictitious excellencies belief in creeds, devotional feelings and ceremonies not connected with the good of humankind and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtue, but above all by radically vitiating the standard of morals, making it consistent, doing the will of a being on whom it lavish is indeed all the phrases of adulation but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful, and Joseph Conrad is even better in many ways and notice the way in which he’s linking ethics and epistemology in his answer here, all my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature, and however exceptional cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part.
The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which take it any way you like, is put a manufactured article, the Fabrication of Minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living in their countless multitudes, a desecration of our tenders, memories and outrage on our dignity. It’s the link that we can make between ethics and epistemology and physics, indeed, all three of these coming together reinforcing each other as a bulwark to withstand all of this horror that is coming from the claims and the claimants of supernatural religion. And I think that those two passages do a particularly good job of outlining the nature of the problem and giving a answer that should be taken seriously.
But as I said, it’s a question that is presented to every single one of us. We all have to find our own way to answer the question of Pascal’s wager and the stakes are very high, so choose wisely. The question is, are you willing to risk torture by declining the proffered relief of salvation, of the salvation offered by Jesus Christ? That’s the question. Are you willing to risk an eternity in hell if taking the hand that is allegedly being offered to you is too repulsive or too unreliable? I mean, that’s the central nature of the question. We can talk about Marcus Regulus being tortured all day long, but we’re being threatened with it ourselves, and you have to find a way to answer the question.
Cassius:
Joshua, as we begin to move past Pascal’s wager, one very famous line from antiquity comes to mind that refers directly to Lucretius Epicurus and the Epicurean viewpoint, and that is Virgil in book two of the Georgics where he’s quoted as saying quote, happy was he who was able to know the causes of things and all fears and inexorable fate, he trampled beneath his feet along with the roar of greedy Acheron. That’s a direct reference to everything we’re talking about. The knowledge that comes through Epicurean philosophy allows you with confidence to reject the ideas of fate and a threatening hell that burdens you with the idea of eternal punishment after death. That’s what Virgil knew that Epicurus and Lucretius were doing because you know the nature of things, you have the confidence to know that these things cannot be true and are not true. That’s what comes from Epicurean philosophy As we continue, there’s another aspect of this that comes to my mind because of course the general background about where we are is Lucullus has been arguing that no one would take virtuous action. No one would submit to any kind of pain, torture, or death if they could not be sure that they were doing the right thing, and you can’t be sure you’re doing the right thing if you can’t have any knowledge of anything at all. There’s an old saying that goes, when in doubt don’t, that’s a broad rule that many people will apply. If they are in doubt about a course of action, they’re not going to pursue that action, so that’s the broadest viewpoint of what we’re discussing right now.
Joshua:
So far we’ve been talking about you need knowledge in order to act virtuously. The claim is going to go further and say, if motion at all is going to be possible and it has to be driven by the occurrence of what appears to us to be true, that’s a slightly different point, and that’s going to connect with this broader issue of inactivity if we want to get into all that.
Cassius:
Joshua, we’ve talked about a lot of very profound subjects today, rather than go into some of the additional arguments that will allow us to complete section eight, let’s defer that till next week. What other thoughts do you have about what we’ve said today?
Joshua:
So that conversation brings us to the end of the first large paragraph here in section eight. We still have two more paragraphs to go, and we are going to have a slight shift in emphasis as we go into the rest of this. So far, he has been talking about how knowledge is an essential ingredient in virtuous behavior. You have to have knowledge of virtue in order to act virtuously and so on, and what we’re going to be talking about is we go into the rest of section eight is how can you act at all if you don’t have knowledge? It’s not just a question of acting virtuously, but if you’re going to make decisions in your real life, if you’re going to make choices, if you are going to get up and go to work in the morning, you are basing that on something. So the question we’re going to be faced with next week is this, do we require absolute certainty in order to make choices, in order to motivate our action in order to move through the world that we’re living in? Right? You probably connect this back to what we quote from Thomas Jefferson, right? I feel therefore I exist. Is it necessary to be a stoic wise man in order to get through your life?
Cassius:
Yes, Joshua. That’s really a good way to think about how we’re going to proceed. Of course, we can anticipate that Cicero is going to say that it is possible to act strongly to make decisions that are of profound significance even if you don’t have absolute certainty. Cicero says that certain things are more probable than others, and Cicero has absolutely embraced Stoic ethics as the right way to live, so you can count on Cicero having a way to reconcile these things because he’s not going to set a trap for himself that he can’t get out of here. He’s going to find a way to reconcile both his skeptical outlook with the ability to pursue virtue and live wisely and so forth. The key is going to be, I think, in the way you’ve just stated it there, do you have to have absolute certainty, and that is why.
That is why it is important to understand epistemology and study the Epicurean view of canons because these terms like absolute certainty and confidence and knowledge and so forth are loaded terms that have to be understood, and you can’t just throw them around loosely. Epicurus does not say that you should require absolute certainty, but he on the other hand, does say that you need and can obtain knowledge, so there’s a difference in Epicurus’s understanding of knowledge versus the Stoic or a religious position on absolute certainty. If you can’t think about these things and discuss them fluently, then you don’t understand the real issue that’s being debated here because neither Epicurus nor the stoics, nor Cicero, nor anyone else, really insists that you should have to be the creator of the universe in order to act strongly. Cicero is acting strongly in all sorts of things in his life.
Lucullus’s whole career was about acting strongly based on his decision-making. Epicurus spent his whole life promoting a particular view of philosophy that was grounded on the importance of knowledge. You don’t have to be the creator of the universe in order to have knowledge from just about anybody’s perspective, but if you start loosely throwing around concepts like certainty, something so true that it cannot be anything, but otherwise, then you’re getting into murky territory that causes the real problem. Here, Epicurus’s Canon sets out an efficient and workable theory of what knowledge really is and how it can really be obtained. It’s not supernatural, it’s not idealistic, it’s not absolute, but it is a firm workable understanding of what’s right versus wrong in a particular situation. The context is always critical to Epicurus. The contemporaneous reports of your senses. Anticipations and feelings are always what you’re going to be looking to because of your physics, that there is no supernatural guidance or forces of fate that require certain results always to be the same.
From the Epicurean perspective, that knowledge is contextual. Knowledge is a human standard. It’s not some fictional idealism or absolute truth. That is the only way to look at things. They will tell you that if you don’t know with absolute certainty, then you don’t know and you better trust in God. If you don’t know with absolute certainty, then you don’t know anything and you might as well sit in your cave and waste away because it makes no sense to even talk to anybody or write anything down because nothing can be known in this context. You certainly better accept Pascal’s wager and convert to Christianity because there’s no way for you to be sure that you won’t be punished in hell forever if you don’t. A practical understanding of what knowledge is and how to get it is the subject matter of canons and epistemology that people often want to ignore and say, just give me the ethics.
That’s all I need to know. Tell me what to do. That’s all I need to be told. That’s a prescription for disaster from the Epicurean point of view. Okay, we’ve covered a lot of interesting material today. We’ll come back next week and take up the rest of Section eight and then move forward here in book two and academic questions. As always, we invite everyone to drop by the Epicurean Friends Forum and let us know if you have any questions or comments about this or other discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back again soon. See you then. Bye.