Humanism - Boethius and the Renaissance

Epicurean Focus

The Renaissance humanists brought Epicurus back into European thought. They recovered Lucretius and Diogenes Laertius, and several of them wrote about Epicurean pleasure with real sympathy. But every one of them kept the immortal soul, the providential God and the idea of man’s special dignity. The passages below show how humanism took in Epicurus and changed him in the process. Each excerpt has its own link target and a link to the printed page.

Boethius: The Model the Humanists Inherited

Boethius was not a humanist, but the humanists honored him, and his Consolation of Philosophy shaped their view of the ancient schools. Philosophy herself calls the Epicureans a “herd” who tore her robe. Boethius treats Epicurus’s choice of pleasure as consistent but mistaken (III.2), and he ends with the claim that the happy man is a god by sharing in the one God who is the highest good (III.10). The problem of evil, which ancient writers attributed to Epicurus, is put into Boethius’s own mouth (I.4), and the rest of the book is an attempt to answer it with providence.

Petrarch: The Inward Turn

Petrarch’s letter on the ascent of Mount Ventoux is often read as the beginning of the modern love of nature. It ends the other way. At the summit Petrarch reads Augustine’s rebuke to those who admire mountains and stars “but themselves they consider not,” and he resolves that “nothing is wonderful but the soul.” In The Secret Augustine teaches him that “frequent meditation on death” is the surest way to scorn the world. Epicurus taught that the study of nature removes fear, and that death is nothing to us.

Pico: The Dignity of Man

Pico’s Oration, as Burckhardt summarizes it, places man in the middle of a created order, free to “sink into a beast, and be born anew to the divine likeness.” This is the original meaning of human dignity: a rank between the beasts and the angels, given by God. Burckhardt’s account of the Renaissance view of the Epicureans (Part VI) shows why they were feared: their belief “that the soul dies with the body” took away the Church’s power over men after death.

Erasmus: The Name Without the Doctrine

Erasmus’s colloquy “The Epicurean” states Epicurus’s ethics fairly and calls it “divine” (here). Then it argues that “none are greater Epicureans than those Christians that live a pious Life,” on the premises that the soul is immortal and that “God himself is the chiefest Good.” It ends by calling Christ the true Epicurean (here). The Epicurean name is kept, and the Epicurean physics, theology and teaching on death are all left out.

More: Pleasure Under Guard

More’s Utopians are the most Epicurean people in Renaissance literature. They place “the chief part, of a man’s happiness in pleasure” and weigh pleasures against pains (here). But they hold that without the immortal soul and rewards after death, pleasure would become lawless. Their founder made a law against those who “degenerate from the dignity of human nature” by holding that the soul dies with the body or that the world is governed by chance. Such men could not hold office in Utopia. The two doctrines More’s law forbids are the two pillars of Epicurean physics.

Lorenzo Valla’s dialogue On Pleasure, which belongs with these works, is on its own page.

Contents

• Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (AD 524)
  • Philosophy’s Torn Robe
  • If God Exists, Whence Comes Evil?
  • Epicurus and the Highest Good
  • Every Man Who Is Happy Is a God
• Petrarch (1304–1374)
  • The Ascent of Mount Ventoux
  • Meditation on Death
• Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)
  • Neither Mortal nor Immortal Only
  • Burckhardt on the Renaissance Epicureans
• Erasmus, “The Epicurean” (1533)
  • The Argument of the Dialogue
  • Pious Christians as the True Epicureans
  • God the Chiefest Good
  • Christ the True Epicurean
• Thomas More, Utopia (1516)
  • Pleasure Built on Immortality
  • The Law Against Denying Providence and the Soul

The Passages

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (AD 524)

Philosophy’s Torn Robe

Lady Philosophy appears to Boethius in prison and explains why the wise have always been persecuted.

Boethius, Consolation I, prose 3 (tr. H. R. James, 1897) · p. 13

Did I not often in days of old, before my servant Plato lived, wage stern warfare with the rashness of folly? In his lifetime, too, Socrates, his master, won with my aid the victory of an unjust death. And when, one after the other, the Epicurean herd, the Stoic, and the rest, each of them as far as in them lay, went about to seize the heritage he left, and were dragging me off protesting and resisting, as their booty, they tore in pieces the garment which I had woven with my own hands, and, clutching the torn pieces, went off, believing that the whole of me had passed into their possession.

”If God Exists, Whence Comes Evil?”

Boethius complains that the wicked prosper while God looks on. The Loeb editors (Rand and Stewart, 1918) note that the “disciple” is Epicurus, citing Lactantius, On the Anger of God XIII.

Boethius, Consolation I, prose 4 (tr. H. R. James, 1897) · p. 22

For evil purposes are, perchance, due to the imperfection of human nature; that it should be possible for scoundrels to carry out their worst schemes against the innocent, while God beholdeth, is verily monstrous. For this cause, not without reason, one of thy disciples asked, “If God exists, whence comes evil? Yet whence comes good, if He exists not?”

Epicurus and the Highest Good

Boethius, Consolation III, prose 2 (tr. H. R. James, 1897) · pp. 95–96

Thou hast, then, set before thine eyes something like a scheme of human happiness—wealth, rank, power, glory, pleasure. Now Epicurus, from a sole regard to these considerations, with some consistency concluded the highest good to be pleasure, because all the other objects seem to bring some delight to the soul.

”Every Man Who Is Happy Is a God”

Philosophy has just proved that God and the supreme good are the same thing.

Boethius, Consolation III, prose 10 (tr. H. R. James, 1897) · pp. 136–137

For since men become happy by the acquisition of happiness, while happiness is very Godship, it is manifest that they become happy by the acquisition of Godship. But as by the acquisition of justice men become just, and wise by the acquisition of wisdom, so by parity of reasoning by acquiring Godship they must of necessity become gods. So every man who is happy is a god; and though in nature God is One only, yet there is nothing to hinder that very many should be gods by participation in that nature.

Petrarch (1304–1374)

The Ascent of Mount Ventoux

At the summit, Petrarch opens his pocket copy of Augustine’s Confessions.

Petrarch, letter to Dionisio da Borgo San Sepolcro (Familiar Letters IV.1), in Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters (1898) · p. 316

I call him, and God too, to witness that where I first fixed my eyes it was written: “And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.” I was abashed, and, asking my brother (who was anxious to hear more), not to annoy me, I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself.

Meditation on Death

In this imaginary dialogue, Saint Augustine instructs Petrarch.

Petrarch, The Secret, Dialogue I (tr. William H. Draper, 1911) · Gutenberg text

to recollect one’s misery and to practise frequent meditation on death is the surest aid in scorning the seductions of this world, and in ordering the soul amid its storms and tempests, if only such meditation be not superficial, but sink into the bones and marrow of the heart. […] of all tremendous realities Death is the most tremendous. So true is this, that from ever of old its very name is terrible and dreadful to hear. Yet though so it is, it will not do that we hear that name but lightly, or allow the remembrance of it to slip quickly from our mind. No, we must take time to realise it. We must meditate with attention thereon. We must picture to ourselves the effect of death on each several part of our bodily frame, the cold extremities, the breast in the sweat of fever, the side throbbing with pain, the vital spirits running slower and slower as death draws near, the eyes sunken and weeping, every look filled with tears, the forehead pale and drawn, the cheeks hanging and hollow, the teeth staring and discoloured, the nostrils shrunk and sharpened, the lips foaming, the tongue foul and motionless, the palate parched and dry, the languid head and panting breast, the hoarse murmur and sorrowful sigh, the evil smell of the whole body, the horror of seeing the face utterly unlike itself—all these things will come to mind and, so to speak, be ready to one’s hand, if one recalls what one has seen in any close observation of some deathbed where it has fallen to our lot to attend. For things seen cling closer to our remembrance than things heard.

Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)

“Neither Mortal nor Immortal Only”

Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, Part IV (tr. S. G. C. Middlemore), summarizing and translating Pico’s Oration · pp. 353–354

The loftiest conceptions on this subject were uttered by Pico della Mirandola in his speech on the dignity of man, which may justly be called one of the noblest bequests of that great age. God, he tells us, made man at the close of the creation, to know the laws of the universe, to love its beauty, to admire its greatness. He bound him to no fixed place, to no prescribed form of work, and by no iron necessity, but gave him freedom to will and to move. ‘I have set thee,’ says the Creator to Adam, ‘in the midst of the world, that thou mayst the more easily behold and see all that is therein. I created thee a being neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal only, that thou mightest be free to shape and to overcome thyself. Thou mayst sink into a beast, and be born anew to the divine likeness. The brutes bring from their mother’s body what they will carry with them as long as they live; the higher spirits are from the beginning, or soon after, what they will be for ever. To thee alone is given a growth and a development depending on thine own free will. Thou bearest in thee the germs of a universal life.’

Burckhardt on the Renaissance Epicureans

Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, Part VI (tr. S. G. C. Middlemore) · pp. 495–496

If we take Dante and his contemporaries as evidence, we shall find that ancient philosophy first came into contact with Italian life in the form which offered the most marked contrast to Christianity, that is to say, Epicureanism. The writings of Epicurus were no longer preserved, and even at the close of the classical age a more or less one-sided conception had been formed of his philosophy. Nevertheless, that phase of Epicureanism which can be studied in Lucretius, and especially in Cicero, is quite sufficient to make men familiar with a godless universe.

[…]

Dante speaks still more clearly in the ninth and tenth cantos of the ‘Inferno.’ That terrible fiery field covered with half-opened tombs, from which issued cries of hopeless agony, was peopled by the two great classes of those whom the Church had vanquished or expelled in the thirteenth century. The one were heretics who opposed the Church by deliberately spreading false doctrine; the other were Epicureans, and their sin against the Church lay in their general disposition, which was summed up in the belief that the soul dies with the body. The Church was well aware that this one doctrine, if it gained ground, must be more ruinous to her authority than all the teachings of the Manichaeans and Paterini, since it took away all reason for her interference in the affairs of men after death.

Erasmus, “The Epicurean” (1533)

The Argument of the Dialogue

Erasmus, Colloquies, “The Epicurean,” the Argument (tr. N. Bailey, ed. E. Johnson, 1878) · p. 326

The Epicurean, a divine Colloquy, reasons learnedly and piously concerning the true Good, a pure Conscience, temporary and eternal Life. That there is Felicity where is true Pleasure, and the least Sorrow. That Christians truly pious are true Epicureans, in that they have a clear Conscience, and Peace with God; and that, altho’ they may be thought by the World to mourn, yet they do really live pleasantly. That the chiefest Pleasures proceed from the Mind. He that has God, what can he desire more?

Pious Christians as the True Epicureans

Spudaeus (“the serious one”) has been reading Cicero’s On Ends. Hedonius (“the pleasure-lover”) answers him.

Erasmus, Colloquies, “The Epicurean” (tr. N. Bailey, ed. E. Johnson, 1878) · p. 327

He. No Wonder at all, for Error is very fertile, but Truth simple: and they being ignorant of the Head and Fountain of the whole Affair, they all make absurd and doating Guesses. But which Opinion do you think comes nearest to the Truth?

Sp. When I meet with M. Tully opposing them, I like none of them. Again, when I find him defending them, I have not a Word to say against it. But to me the Stoicks seem to be the least out of the Way, and next to them the Peripateticks.

He. I like no Sect so well as the Epicureans.

Sp. There is no Sect amongst them all that is so much condemn’d by a universal Consent.

He. Let us set Prejudice aside, and let Epicurus be what he will, let us consider the Thing in itself. He places the Happiness of Man in Pleasure, and judges that Life to be most blessed, that has most Pleasure, and least Pain.

Sp. He does so.

He. What can be more divine than this Sentence?

Sp. Every Body cries out, this is the Saying of a Brute, rather than of a Man.

He. I know they do; but they are mistaken in the Names of Things. If we will speak the Truth, none are greater Epicureans than those Christians that live a pious Life.

God the Chiefest Good

Erasmus, Colloquies, “The Epicurean” (tr. N. Bailey, ed. E. Johnson, 1878) · p. 330

He. I’ll presume you’ll grant me this, that God himself is the chiefest Good, than which nothing is more glorious, more lovely, and more pleasant.

Sp. No Body would deny that, but one that is more brutish than a Cyclops: But what then?

He. Well then, now you have granted me, that no Body lives more pleasantly than they that live piously; and no Body more miserably, and afflictedly, than they that live wickedly.

Sp. Then I granted you more than I was aware of.

Christ the True Epicurean

Erasmus, Colloquies, “The Epicurean” (tr. N. Bailey, ed. E. Johnson, 1878) · p. 342

He. Well then, if they are Epicureans that live pleasantly, none are more truly Epicureans, than those that live holily and religiously. And if we are taken with Names, no Body more deserves the Name of an Epicurean, than that adorable Prince of Christian Philosophers; for ἐπίκουρος in Greek signifies as much as an Helper. Therefore when the Law of Nature was almost erased by Vice; and the Law of Moses rather incited than cured Lusts, when the Tyrant Satan ruled without Controul in the World, he alone afforded present Help to perishing Mankind. So that they are mightily mistaken that foolishly respresent [sic] Christ, as by Nature, to be a rigid melancholick Person, and that he invited us to an unpleasant Life; when he alone show’d the Way to the most comfortable Life in the World, and fullest of Pleasure, and so vastly distant from that Tantalean Stone.

Thomas More, Utopia (1516)

Pleasure Built on Immortality

Thomas More, Utopia, Book II, “Of the Travelling of the Utopians” (tr. Gilbert Burnet, 1684; ed. Henry Morley) · p. 55

They seem, indeed, more inclinable to that opinion that places, if not the whole, yet the chief part, of a man’s happiness in pleasure; and, what may seem more strange, they make use of arguments even from religion, notwithstanding its severity and roughness, for the support of that opinion so indulgent to pleasure; for they never dispute concerning happiness without fetching some arguments from the principles of religion as well as from natural reason, since without the former they reckon that all our inquiries after happiness must be but conjectural and defective.

“These are their religious principles:—That the soul of man is immortal, and that God of His goodness has designed that it should be happy; and that He has, therefore, appointed rewards for good and virtuous actions, and punishments for vice, to be distributed after this life. Though these principles of religion are conveyed down among them by tradition, they think that even reason itself determines a man to believe and acknowledge them; and freely confess that if these were taken away, no man would be so insensible as not to seek after pleasure by all possible means, lawful or unlawful, using only this caution—that a lesser pleasure might not stand in the way of a greater, and that no pleasure ought to be pursued that should draw a great deal of pain after it; for they think it the maddest thing in the world to pursue virtue, that is a sour and difficult thing, and not only to renounce the pleasures of life, but willingly to undergo much pain and trouble, if a man has no prospect of a reward. And what reward can there be for one that has passed his whole life, not only without pleasure, but in pain, if there is nothing to be expected after death?

The Law Against Denying Providence and the Soul

Utopus, the founder of the commonwealth, allowed every religion, with one exception.

Thomas More, Utopia, Book II, “Of the Religions of the Utopians” (tr. Gilbert Burnet, 1684; ed. Henry Morley) · p. 85

only he made a solemn and severe law against such as should so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence: for they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and punishments to the good and bad after this life; and they now look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon it no better than a beast’s: thus they are far from looking on such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a well-ordered commonwealth; since a man of such principles must needs, as oft as he dares do it, despise all their laws and customs: for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after death, will not scruple to break through all the laws of his country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may satisfy his appetites. They never raise any that hold these maxims, either to honours or offices, nor employ them in any public trust, but despise them, as men of base and sordid minds.

About These Translations

• Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, translated by H. R. James (London: Elliot Stock, 1897). Scan. Text from Project Gutenberg.
• Petrarch, Mount Ventoux: James Harvey Robinson and Henry Winchester Rolfe, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters (New York: Putnam, 1898). Scan. Text from Project Gutenberg.
• Petrarch, The Secret: Petrarch’s Secret, or the Soul’s Conflict with Passion, translated by William H. Draper (London: Chatto and Windus, 1911). Text from Project Gutenberg.
• Pico and the Renaissance Epicureans: Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, translated by S. G. C. Middlemore (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1921 printing). Scan. Text from Project Gutenberg.
• Erasmus: The Colloquies of Erasmus, translated by N. Bailey, edited by E. Johnson, vol. II (London: Reeves and Turner, 1878). Scan. Text transcribed from this scan.
• More: Utopia, translated by Gilbert Burnet (1684), in Ideal Commonwealths, edited by Henry Morley (Colonial Press, 1901). Scan. Text from Project Gutenberg.