As soon as we wrap up the series on DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy," the next project the podcast will tackle will be the full sections of Cicero's "On Ends" devoted to discussing (attacking) Epicurean philosophy - Books One and Two. In this work Cicero has summarized and preserved what are probably the most important objections to Epicurus collected from across the ancient world in the prior two hundred years, so this work gives us both a wealth of knowledge about Epicurus combined with extremely intelligent criticisms. Cicero skimps on the time he gives the Epicurean Torquatus to respond, so we can formulate for ourselves what we think are the best full responses.
We have previously discussed the Torquatus Narrative in Episodes 93-111 (Torquatus narrative of Epicurean Philosophy). As a result we will review that section only briefly, and in only enough detail to keep the flow of the full discussion of Book One.
The text we are covering can be found in three editions at Archive.org:
- Cicero - On Ends - Reid - 1883 Link At Archive.org
- Cicero - On Ends - Rackham - Link At Archive.org
- Cicero - On Ends - Parker - Link At Archive.org
As before when we went through Torquatus in detail, we will use the Reid version as our main text, but compare frequently with Rackham. We favor Reid because he seems to be both more readable and more literal than Rackham. However many of us are more familiar with the more recent wording of Rackham, so we will often use both on important passages.
We will therefore suggest that those who are following along grab a copy of the Reid version at the link above, and then you will be able to follow any references we make to page or line numbers.
We expect to start this series as soon as September 3, 2023, so if you have comments, suggestions, or questions, please let us know!