Epicurean Golden Rule?

    There are a number of versions of the so-called “golden rule” across cultures. In the Judeo-Christian tradition there are two:


    The first is by Rabbi Hillel (died circa 10CE) “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.”


    The second is attributed to Jesus of Galilee in the gospels of Matthew and Luke: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”


    The first (Hillel’s version) is negatively formed – and I have often preferred it, sometimes wishing to tell some well-meaning person: “Please stop trying to do unto to me!” But I really view them as complimentary – each from a different perspective, and each sometimes being, perhaps, a salutary check on the other.


    It seems to me that PD 31 can be analogous to Hillel’s version (with further explication in the following PDs):


    “Natural justice is a covenant for mutual benefit, not to harm one another or be harmed.” (St. Andre translation)


    Michel Onfray incorporated a somewhat more positively formed dictum in his Hedonist Manifesto: “Enjoy and have others enjoy, without doing harm to yourself or anyone else; that is all there is to morality” – especially if one takes that “have” in an active, rather than passive, sense.


    I am wondering if the more scholarly on here can identify a similar positively-formed version in the Epicurean corpus? VS13 perhaps? VS15? VS44? Something in Philodemus or Lucretius?


    Thank you. :)

    From the Wikipedia page;

    To neither harm nor be harmed*


    *

    PD31 Natural justice is a covenant for mutual benefit, to not harm one another or be harmed.


    PS: Pacatus ...I apologize. I missed your mention of PD31 in your initial post. But that's exactly what came to mind when I started to read it. I should be more thorough!

    Thoreau on the subject:

    Quote

    Yet the New Testament treats of man and man’s so-called spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested solely in man’s religious or moral nature, or in man even. I have not the most definite designs on the future. Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case. The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

    -A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

    I lean toward an excerpt from the last 10 KDs


    MH BΛAΠTEIN MHΔE BΛAΠTEΣΘAI

    μὴ βλάπτειν μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι

    neither harm nor be harmed.

    Edited once, last by Nate ().

    Thanks 1 Like 1

    We all agree on the prohibitive (negative) formulation – and its importance. (And that is, apparently, the most common type of formulation – not only in ancient Greece but other cultures as well.)


    There remains a twofold question:


    Are there (in the classical Epicurean corpus) any similar affirmative statements on: 1) where reasonably possible, to prevent or stop wrongful harm from being done to another (particularly someone outside our immediate friendship circle); and 2) to foster social conditions that are conducive to maximizing the possibility for enjoyment/pleasure by most people (including those that may be on the socioeconomic margins)?


    Of course, one can strive to do both without drawing on any school’s (or religion’s) ethical philosophy – e.g., as a matter of personal conscience. But I am still curious.


    Note: in case 1) above, the perpetrator of harm would be someone who has not embraced the Epicurean social compact.


    ~ ~ ~


    Note: I have some other things to attend to, but I’ll try to check in tomorrow. Thanks again, all.

    Quote

    There remains a twofold question:


    Are there (in the classical Epicurean corpus) any similar affirmative statements on: 1) where reasonably possible, to prevent or stop wrongful harm from being done to another (particularly someone outside our immediate friendship circle); and 2) to foster social conditions that are conducive to maximizing the possibility for enjoyment/pleasure by most people (including those that may be on the socioeconomic margins)?

    Now these are somewhat more interesting questions at least to me. Per usual with Epicurus we are left with observations rather than commandments, as here;

    Quote

    PD39: He who best knew how to meet fear of external foes made into one family all the creatures he could; and those he could not, he at any rate did not treat as aliens; and where he found even this impossible, he avoided all association, and, so far as was useful, kept them at a distance.


    And here;


    Quote

    Diogenes of Oenoanda: So (to reiterate what I was saying) observing that these people are in this predicament, I bewailed their behaviour and wept over the wasting of their lives, and I considered it the responsibility of a good man to give benevolent assistance, to the utmost of one's ability, to those of them who are well-constituted. This is the first reason for the inscription.


    Dioges of Oenoanda is generally the most explicit when it comes to answering your questions, Pacatus.

    Quote

    I wanted, before being overtaken by death, to compose a fine anthem to celebrate the fullness of pleasure and so to help now those who are well-constituted. Now, if only one person or two or three or four or five or six or any larger number you choose, sir, provided that it is not very large, were in a bad predicament, I should address them individually and do all in my power to give them the best advice. But, as I have said before, the majority of people suffer from a common disease, as in a plague, with their false notions about things, and their number is increasing (for in mutual emulation they catch the disease from one another, like sheep) moreover, it is right to help also generations to come (for they too belong to us, though they are still unborn) and, besides, love of humanity prompts us to aid also the foreigners who come here.

    Quote from Pacatus

    Are there (in the classical Epicurean corpus) any similar affirmative statements on: 1) where reasonably possible, to prevent or stop wrongful harm from being done to another (particularly someone outside our immediate friendship circle); and 2) to foster social conditions that are conducive to maximizing the possibility for enjoyment/pleasure by most people (including those that may be on the socioeconomic margins)?


    Quote from Pacatus

    Note: in case 1) above, the perpetrator of harm would be someone who has not embraced the Epicurean social compact.


    I think Joshua's answer hits the high point of quoting the statement from Diogenes of Oinoanda.


    I also think that Pacatus you are correct here:


    Quote from Pacatus

    Of course, one can strive to do both without drawing on any school’s (or religion’s) ethical philosophy – e.g., as a matter of personal conscience.

    ...because rather than "personal conscience" I think you can substitute "pleasure." It gives a lot of people "pleasure' to want to make life better for "others in general" - even where you don't have direct relationships with those others.


    But as to the general drift of your question as to whether there is anything in Epicurus that would provide some kind of general instruction analogous to a "great commission" to do so, I don't think such a thing would exist because that would come too close to a sort of "idealism" that would be inconsistent with much of the rest of the philosophy. But I think here is plenty of reason for thinking the it enhances your own happiness by making life better for others.


    And like everything else there is probably a warning needed about making such a goal an end in itself. The general rule remains that nothing is "good in itself" other than pleasure, and pleasure isn't just out there floating in the air, so it seems to me that everything ultimately has to be tied to the question of whether the action will result in specific improvements in pleasure for specific people who are in some kind of relationship of degree of friendship (or at least not an enemy).

    And of course Lucretius, who starts his poem by asking Venus for the blessings of peace:


    If Lucretius did die in 50 B.C. or just before that, then he narrowly escaped the seismic and bloody Roman Civil Wars of the 1st and 2nd triumvirates, 49-44 B.C.


    In retrospect his plaintive call for peace on the eve of bitter war begins to assume dramatic and even tragic proportions.