If Death Is Nothing To Us, Then Life Is Everything to Us

Don and several of us have been discussing the implications of PD02 and we should open this to everyone. Don has pointed out that we should consider the wording:

Death is nothing to us; for what has disintegrated lacks awareness (ἀναισθητεῖ), and what lacks awareness (ἀναισθητεῖ) is nothing to us.

ἀναισθητεῖ is simply a negated form of αἴσθησις which means:

1. Perception from the senses, feeling, hearing, seeing
2. Perception by the intellect as well as the senses
3. That which is perceived: scent
4. Ability to perceive: discernment

We have discussed many times that hypotheticals can be dangerous, but to go down a rabbit hole, the mirror universe positive version of PD2 may be something like:

"Life is everything to us, for what perceives the senses, feelings, and perceptions of the intellect is everything to us."

Let's consider that "mirror universe positive version" of PD02 and discuss whether we think this would be true statement of Epicurean doctrine.

In this case I will go forward and state my own opinion. As it now appears to me to be justified to hold that it is core Epicurean doctrine that all experiences in life which are not painful are pleasurable, then Epicurus would indeed support this mirror image. Epicurus is identifying the normal state of life as pleasurable unless pain intervenes, and given that Epicurus has explicitly stated that pleasure is the alpha and omega of the blessed life, viewing life itself in its normal state to be a pleasure would justify holding that "life is everything to us."

So to repeat I would say that I think Epicurus embraced this view on these grounds:

If death is nothing to us then life is everything to us because we identify all non-painful experiences as pleasurable. Life is desirable, and the default Epicurean position is that to be alive is understood to be pleasurable unless some specific pain intervenes. "Q]uod dolore caret id in voluptate est." (Torquatus / Cicero - On Ends - Book One XI - 39) [T]hat which is free from pain is in a state of pleasure. (Parker)

I also think this is a clear meaning of On Ends 1:56: "We refuse to believe, however, that when pleasure is removed grief immediately ensues, excepting when perchance pain has taken the place of pleasure...."

i think it is fair to interpret that as meaning that the presumption is that life is a series of pleasures, both stimulating and normal, and that the norm of life is (or can be for a person living prudently) a succession of pleasures unless specifically interrupted by some non-normal pain. "Effort" - such as he effort of breathing - is not painful in and of itself but is instead normal and pleasurable. The hand in its normal state of existence may not be being stimulated at a particular moment, but unless it is for some specific reason experiencing a pain it is experiencing pleasure.

Further from the letter to Menoeceus; "And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality."

That is a statement that because the wise man understands and views life as desirable and pleasurable, the "normal" state is itself desirable and pleasurable.

And given that nothing is desirable in and of itself unless it is pleasurable, this following wording too supports the same conclusion:

"And he who counsels the young man to live well, but the old man to make a good end, is foolish, not merely because of the desirability of life, but also because it is the same training which teaches to live well and to die well."

Let's discuss. I think it is time (for those of us who haven't already) to endorse the view that "life is everything to us" is in fact the corollary that death is nothing to us. Whereas in the past we may have drawn back from doing so because we would have preferred to say "Pleasure is everything to us," the identification of the normal state of life as pleasurable supports the conclusion that "Life is everything to us." This may not be wording that we find normal and familiar, but it is up to an Epicurean to be able to explain the proper relationship of "pleasure" and "life" just as an Epicurean explains a proper view of "gods" and of "virtue."

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Reference Note: A search of the forum here for "life is everything" indicates this issue previously came up in at least two places:

Discussion of Article: "On Pleasure, Pain and Happiness"

• Cassius
• Jul 13th 2019
• The Feelings / Passions / Internal Sensations: Pleasure and Pain

Post

…y I think it is conveying that we have no concerns after we are dead because there is no sensation that would drive a concern. And one of the most important results of "death is nothing to us" properly understand is something very close to "life is everything to us." As I remember DeWitt saying somewhere, pain and pleasure "have meaning only to the living." Does that explanation help bridge our issue, or make my viewpoint more confusing? (Quote from Elayne) On this issue I am attempting to consi…

Doubt is Unpleasant, But It's Not Your Worst Enemy

• Cassius
• Dec 20th 2015
• General Discussion And Navigation

Post

…in, this summary obscures the deeper issues. Of course there's no need to fear anything about the state of being dead, because we feel nothing after we cease to live. But just as it is true that "death is nothing to us" it is also true that life is everything to us because only while we are living are we able to experience pleasure. And it is quite legitimate - in fact the height of wisdom - to be careful about the way you live your life so that your happiness can extend as long as possible. If …

From DeWitt's "Summum Bonum Fallacy" (December 1950). DeWitt is not using precisely the reasoning we are discussing in this thread, but I think his observations are helpful regardless of the "greatest" question, because what woul arguably support "life is greatest" would also support "life is everything."

The rest of this post is a quote from the article:

Recognition of life as "the greatest good" is on record in Vatican Collection 42: "The same span of time embraces both beginning and end of the greatest good." The meaning of this is not obscure. It marks life as limited by birth and death. It denies both pre-existence and survival of the soul, and is a contradiction of Plato, who sponsored both these doctrines. Editors, however, misled by the summum bonum fallacy, feel bound that "the greatest good" shall be pleasure, and consequently emend the text, producing a sentence genuinely obscure, which need not concern us.

Other confirmatory passages are citable. The "desirability of life" is mentioned as a reason for placing a higher value upon old age as against youth,' contrary to a prevailing opinion. The same feeling motivates the scorn expressed for a dictum of Theognis : "A good thing it is never to have been born or, being born, to have passed with all speed through the gates of Hades." The supreme value placed upon life determines also the attitude toward suicide (Vatican Collection 38) : "Small is the man from every point of view who discovers many plausible reasons for taking leave of life."

This doctrine of Epicurus furnished philosophy with a perennial topic. He thought of life as a voyage14 or a journey'5 in which the wise man should always find a balance of pleasure over pain.'6 Suicide in his opinion was not a dereliction of duty, but the abandonment of an opportunity to enjoy happiness to the fullest degree.

In the second of his books On Lives he is reported as saying: "But even if deprived of his sight, [the wise man] will not turn aside from the journey of life." It is from this point that Cicero discusses the topic, and that too with specific mention of Epicurus, in the Tusculan Disputations,' where he extends it to include loss of hearing.

Once the ball had been started to roll the temptation presented itself to go on through the list of deprivations, as in the sorites syllogism, and this is exactly what happened. Life being the greatest good, the question takes the shape, At what stage of deprivation would it lose all value? The answer came from Maecenas:

debilem facito manu, debilem pede coxo,

tuber adstrue gibberum, lubricos quate dentes,

vita dum superest, bene est; hanc mihi vel acuta

si sedeam cruce, sustine.

The beginning of the poem is lacking; only the lines that horrified Seneca are quoted. It may be assumed that Maecenas ran through the list of deprivations, working his way up to a climax.

Once Don takes a look at Vatican Saying 42 I will probably revise - or at least annotate with DeWitt's opinion - the Bailey version included as the current forum title. I agree with DeWitt that Bailey's rendering (if that is the one DeWitt is referring to) makes no sense:

VS 42 - The greatest blessing is created and enjoyed at the same moment.

We need a translation of that Maeceanas text! Unfortunately only the latin is here:

Two Kinds of Crux, neither of them Christian (Maecenas, Fr. 4.4) | Curculio – Michael Hendry

Here's the Perseus Latin, but i never can easily find how to flip to the English (or whether it exists at Perseus);

Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Seneca Lucilio suo salutem

Finally!

Ad Lucilium epistulae morales : Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, ca. 4 B.C.-65 A.D : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Includes bibliographical references (v. 1, p. xiv-xv) and indexes

archive.org

Given that poem and this history, you have to speculate that Maecenus was in fact Epicurean himself, and that poem is in fact a statement of the Epicurean viewpoint on the value of life. I could see that being true especially since as Epicurus indicates the wise man is going to generally be able to find more reason for pleasure than pain except only in the most extreme of circumstances:

Gaius Maecenas - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I don't see that poem as asking for those pains, as Seneca seems to say, but rather simply saying that he can put up with an awful lot so long as he remains alive to savor the pleasures available to him. Is that not what Epicurus was doing in his final days?

Quote from Joshua

How do we square these considerations with VS47? "47. I have anticipated you, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks. And we will not give ourselves up as captives to you or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it, we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that we have lived well."

Joshua:

I would square it this way:

"When it is time for us to go" means (1) when we have no other choice or possibility, or (2) when our pain is truly so much that we can no longer outweigh it by pleasure, and a life of unremitting intolerable pain is certain.

When we have no other choice or possibility would be that we see that we are caught in some situation that is going to kill us and we have no way to stop it.

When we are facing unremitting overwhelming pain for either bodily reasons or mental reasons (and this is where we would give our life for a friend if failing to do so would cause us such pain afterwards that we could not live with ourselves).

Thus "...spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it..." refers to those situations listed above, and when we have exhausted our options we spit contempt on those who fail to be willing to die, because they do not understand that death is nothing to us and that there is nothing to fear in death. And in a way that is one of our last acts of pleasure for ourselves, because we are as in Lucretius Book 2 taking pleasure in not being subject to the fear and anxiety that others suffer from when they fail to understand the nature of things.

So from these perspectives I don't think squaring is too difficult. So long as we have the strength of mind to balance mental pleasure against physical pain we will hold out because the balance is still pleasurable. Once the pain is so great and no remedy is possible it would then be appropriate to "exit the theatre when the play has ceased to please us." But we would certainly not want to be a "small man" and give in to the suffering and exit until we were certain that the balance had irredeemably shifted.

This would be why it is so important to see these issues in terms of constant balancing of discrete pleasurable experiences and discrete painful experiences as we have been doing in recent discussions. Some people (Buddhists?) tend to want to think that "being in pain" is all you need to know, but the real issue is "What is the duration, intensity, and location of your pain, and is it manageable and offsetable by pleasures of greater duration, intensity, and location?"

You train yourself not to be a snowflake and give in to pain at its first emergence, you work as hard as you can to achieve a balance of pleasure over pain. Some people are going to say "That sounds like a Stoic attitude!' and I would say to them in reply that I am a proud Epicurean who takes his life extremely seriously, and that they need not insult me as being a Stoic because:

I have anticipated you, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks. And I will not give myself up as captive to you or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for me to go because I can no longer find enough pleasure to remain in life, I will spit contempt on the idea of staying longer, and on those who vainly cling to life under such circumstances, and because I have no fear or death I will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that I have lived well.

Do we already have Maecaenus in our list of later Epicureans? If we don't I am wondering if we shouldn't, because the more I read the more Epicurean he sounds. And I would bet that some people are denying that he is Epicurean because of his preference for luxury, and the ascetic-version of Epicurean philosophy (which I think is wrong) prevents them from accepting that he was in fact pursuing Epicurean philosophy as he thought appropriate under his circumstances, somewhat like Atticus.

EDIT: Yes i see Nate has him listed - good work Eikadistes!

Introduction

Maecenas, a descendant of Etruscan kings and a friend of Emperor Augustus, was a leading figure in both the late Roman Republic and the early Empire. During the civil wars that followed Julius Caesar’s death, he acted as a diplomat, a close adviser to the future Augustus, and for a time was even in charge (with Agrippa) of the government of Rome and Italy. He is also believed to have played a major role in the emergence of the imperial regime. Although rarely present on the battlefield, he is often seen as Caesar the Younger’s right-hand man. Above all, from the late 40s BCE, he was the patron of some of the most famous Latin poets. He symbolized from very early on the golden age of literary patronage and it is mainly to this activity that he still owes his fame today: for example, Virgil’s Georgics and Aeneid, Horace’s Odes or Propertius’s Elegies were composed under his aegis. He also left behind the image of a bon vivant with an unusual, one might even say eccentric, personality, and of an epicurean who preferred staying in the shadows to the limelight. The very limited and scattered data from ancient sources (even his date of birth is uncertain) derives in part from opponents who did not appreciate the fact that a simple knight, who had refused to be a magistrate and privileged his personal relationship with Caesar the Younger, played a leading role in Rome at a time when the city was in the throes of transformation. The singularity of his behavior, in a very normative society, accentuated certain misunderstandings. Thus, Maecenas left a controversial image which is still widely debated today. In all likelihood, if he became involved in Roman politics, alongside the future Augustus during the civil wars, it was out of duty, as he was probably convinced that troubled times required action. After Caesar the Younger’s victory over Antony and Cleopatra, in 31–30 BCE, he felt the need to regain his freedom and, at the end of what was a political epiphany (Maecenas remained in the political limelight for only a few years), only retain his role as a discrete personal advisor. He also continued to spearhead a movement to turn Rome not only into a political and military power, but also a cultural one. The death of this faithful and loyal companion in 8 BCE was experienced by Augustus, his friend, as an irreparable loss.

General Overviews

The political and cultural context explains to a large extent, despite Maecenas’s oddities, the modalities of his political action and cultural work. Rome changed profoundly at the time of Augustus’s Principate and, even though a political culture endured, institutions and society underwent transformations that distinguished it in part from Republican Rome. In this framework, the personality of the prince, Augustus, friend of Maecenas and man of literature, was pivotal (Le Doze 2020). Because of his authority and the accumulation of powers, all eyes were on him. His reformist policies, including their traditionalist dimension that should not be overlooked, shaped a new Rome after the civil wars (Hurlet and Mineo 2009, Rivière 2012). However, others than the prince contributed to the transformation of the empire’s capital (Morrell, et al. 2019) and to the profound developments of this period, which are not limited to institutional changes (Galinsky 1996, Galinsky 2005, and Wallace-Hadrill 2008). The triumviral period (Osgood 2006, Pina Polo 2020), which preceded the establishment of the Principate, generated a lot of anxiety, and created a context that influenced poetic production. Zanker 1988 is an excellent introduction to the debates that surround Maecenas, for the author studies how the values advocated by the Augustan regime permeated Roman society through images: similarly, historians have often suggested that Maecenas exploited poets to serve Augustus’s interests.

Quote from Don

Life isn't the "greatest good", but...

Having stated that...

Live is everything to us because life

I think you and I will have to disagree on that one. When I say something is "everything" to me i pretty much mean to myself that it is the most important thing that I have, and I have no issues with thinking that the most important thing i have is my "greatest good." And when i identify life as pleasurable when I am not in pain, I have no problems seeing 'pleasure' as meaning 'life." It all depends on the context in which you are speaking. My goal is to pleasure can be said as my goal is to live pleasurably. If we are using constructs like 'pleasure is the absence of pain" which requires thought to understand since it is not our normal usage, it's not much different to consider "life" as a placeholder for "pleasure." But we can agree to disagree because I don't think it's particularly important to state it that way - it is more clear to us to say "pleasure is the goal" or "pleasure is the greatest good."

I am also very interested in your comment on whether Vatican Collection 42 is being emended by translators. We may have covered it already but I don't recall.

Since my view on this is evolving I will extend this a little further:

Quote from Don

But more than that, calling living, existing, being alive, "the greatest good" doesn't get us anywhere.

See this is where I think affirmatively identifying life with pleasure does get you somewhere. When you start identifying "living, existing, being alive" tightly with pleasure, and you don't insist that the word pleasure applies only to the "tickling" of the senses, then "living, existing, being alive" does become a legitimate way to state your objective, pretty much as Maecenus is saying in his poem. Give me life because so long as I have life I can offset the pleasure of being alive against the pains he is listing.

That 's not the way we normally speak that our goal is just to remain alive, but seeing past the way we normally speak seems to be exactly a trademark Epicurean approach. The pleasure of simply "living, existing, being alive" (unless perchance we are experiencing some specific pain) is an essential part of the big picture as to why we want to continue to live.

Is calling "life" the "greatest good" the best way to get to the point were people have a proper and full understanding of all that is included in the term "Pleasure." I doubt it is, but the very discussion we're having now helps drive home the point that "pleasure" isn't limited to "tickling."

Quote from Don

But, one can't answer the question "Why do you do what you do?" by saying "Life" or "I do everything because I'm alive."

If you equate in your mind the normal state of "life" or "because I am alive" to "pleasure," then you do get pretty close to answering those questions that way.

I'd have to think further about it but saying (1) "Life is pleasure" is not much less clear or acceptable as saying (2) "pleasure is the absence of pain."

I can understand (2) as correct only because i know the background explanation that there are only two feelings. I could probably understand (1) as correct just as firmly by knowing the background explanation that life is the one pleasure that is essential to all others.

If we wanted we could discuss this parallel even further by discussing the analogies between pleasure and health / saving vs pain and disease / destruction. >> VS37. Nature is weak toward evil, not toward good: because it is saved by pleasures, but destroyed by pains.

Another reason I find this interesting is that Torquatus clearly says exactly what Don is saying -- that Epicurus finds the highest good to be in pleasure. That seems clear and does make sense and Cicero does not object on that point.

But Torquatus does not seem to be as clear and successful in explaining Chrysippus' hand or the equation of pleasure as the absence of pain in a way that Cicero finds persuasive. (And I think most of us agree that for some reason - Cicero with his finger on the scale? - the point is not being made clearly.)

But whatever the reason, the "failure to communicate" seems to revolve around this very issue -- clarity and agreement in identifying simply "living, existing, being alive" as being pleasure.

Yes I agree there, but I think what Torquatus does say is textbook Epicurean viewpoints. At the moment my preferred interpretation of the situation is that where Torquatus speaks the words are textbook Epicurean, but that Cicero is leaving out the extended development of how life is pleasure that we are discussing now. The problem that most of us have with understanding the Chrysippus hand analogy is evidence that more explanation is needed than Cicero provides. I think the roots of it are there, as we are pulling out now in identifying normal life as pleasure, but it's so contrary to standard ways of thinking that much more development is needed, and I think that's where Cicero deliberately chose to leave it out.

And by leaving it out the full explanation of how it is legitimate to see normal life as pleasure we'll see how Cicero is able to harp over and over on this point as we continue in Book Two.

For better or worse i am afraid we have only started this discussion. On the podcast and in future discussion we will want to find a way to express this linkage without boring everyone to tears of frustration.

It occurs to me to say this about the alternatives:

FIRST:

42. At the very same time, the greatest good is created and the greatest evil is removed.

That could be correct if stated in the context of Usener 423, that the realization of the escape from death, which is from most perspectives the worst thing that can happen to someone, brings the greatest joy in exhilaration that you have avoided death:

U423 Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible, 7, p. 1091A: Not only is the basis that they assume for the pleasurable life untrustworthy and insecure, it is quite trivial and paltry as well, inasmuch as their “thing delighted” – their good – is an escape from ills, and they say that they can conceive of no other, and indeed that our nature has no place at all in which to put its good except the place left when its evil is expelled. … Epicurus too makes a similar statement to the effect that the good is a thing that arises out of your very escape from evil and from your memory and reflection and gratitude that this has happened to you. His words are these: “That which produces a jubilation unsurpassed is the nature of good, if you apply your mind rightly and then stand firm and do not stroll about {a jibe at the Peripatetics}, prating meaninglessly about the good.”

SECOND:

Epicurus.net “The same time produces both the beginning of the greatest good and the dissolution of the evil.”

Understandable in pretty much the same as as the first alternative.

THIRD:

Bailey: “The greatest blessing is created and enjoyed at the same moment.”

I agree with DeWitt that this statement is counterintuitive, not true, and therefore in DeWitt's word nonsensical.

FOURTH (DeWitt)

The same span of time embraces both the beginning and the end of the greatest good.

Presuming Don is correct as I do, this is an interpretation of a difficult sentence. I would say that regardless of whether it is what the original text said, this (along with the first two above alternatives) are correct statements of Epicurean theory. And I would further say that while the first two alternatives are limited to the situation of "escape from death," DeWitt's interpretation has the advantage of being both true to Epicurus and being more broadly applicable and therefore useful along the lines of the airliner analogy from the last podcast. I am not going to frequently need to understand that "escape from death" is one way to get a rush of enjoyment. On the other hand, I am frequently going to need to remind myself that there is no pleasure, no good of any kind, except for the span of time between birth and death while I am alive.

This may be an instance where DeWitt's interpretations outrun the text, but nevertheless I think where he ends up is both correct and highly valuable.

And that would be another example where, if the Epicurean commentator world had accepted this sentence from DeWitt in the 1950's when he wrote it, we would be a lot further along in rebuilding an Epicurean "movement" true to the origins of the school:

Quote from Quote from “Epicurus And His Philosophy” page 240 - Norman DeWitt (emphasis added)

“The extension of the name of pleasure to this normal state of being was the major innovation of the new hedonism. It was in the negative form, freedom from pain of body and distress of mind, that it drew the most persistent and vigorous condemnation from adversaries. The contention was that the application of the name of pleasure to this state was unjustified on the ground that two different things were thereby being denominated by one name. Cicero made a great to-do over this argument, but it is really superficial and captious. The fact that the name of pleasure was not customarily applied to the normal or static state did not alter the fact that the name ought to be applied to it; nor that reason justified the application; nor that human beings would be the happier for so reasoning and believing.”

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I am conscious that many people probably read my exchanges with Don on this and think we are arguing with each other for no reason other than stubbornness. On the contrary, I think it is not really an "argument" but an exploration of the details, and the discussion is highly useful because it is going to lead to a lot of beneficial results. If we weren't having this back and forth it would be highly tempting just to drop the subject before the implications are fully brought out. We'd just be adding to the long list of people who read about Chrysippus' hand with glazed eyes and move on. Instead of making progress those people would just keep looking for the new form of pleasure that is better than sex, drugs, and rocknroll that they have been told by the commentators is hiding somewhere and will be found if they will just live a more ascetic life. The normal course is that they eventually stop looking and drop Epicurus altogether, and that needs to change.