This is to call attention to the material that we'll be covering for the next several weeks in the Lucretius Today Podcast. We're now in Section III of Tusculan Disputations, and the material we are about to cover is some of the most intense and influential anti-Epicurean material remaining from the ancient world. We'll eventually cover Plutarch's attacks on Epicurus as well, but this section of Tusculan Disputations is packed with important arguments that has set the tone for anti-Epicurean consensus ever since it was written two thousand years ago. In going through these arguments we can better see where these issues originated (in most cases with Socrates/Plato) and why Diogenes Laertius records Epicurus taking the positions he took.
Anyone who has time to read through these sections and comment as we go through them would be doing themselves and us a favor. There are many leads to follow and lots of details to address, and much that we won't have time to cover in full on the podcast,
These key sections start around Section XV:
Cicero - Tusculan Disputations - EpicureanFriends Handbook
and they continue through a lengthy argument over the next sections thereafter.
We're also going to find some valuable material in Part IV, which expands the Ciceronian/Stoic objections to the way that Epicurus handles "grief" to other "perturbations" of the mind, and Part V, which summarizes the previous sections and gives the summation as to why allegedly virtue is the essence of and the only thing necessary for a happy life.
In Part IV Cicero takes the Peripatetics to task because they tried to say that strong emotions are not always bad, and they can even be useful (such as anger in wartime) so long as they are kept within bounds. Cicero sides with the Stoics and argues that any amount of disturbance can never be a good thing. This context makes it easier to see why Diogenes Laertius recorded that the wise man will feel his emotions more strongly than others, but this will not be hindrance to his wisdom. Seeing the broader dispute takes the fragment out of isolation and sets it off as part of a much larger dispute.
Tusculan Disputations became one of the most influential works in western literature, so it will be good for us to develop a comprehensive response as we proceed through the podcast.
