Episode 302 - TD30 - Epicurus and Roads Paved With Good Intentions

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    Welcome to Episode 302 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.

    This week we continue covering Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" from an Epicurean perspective. We will wrap up several loose ends from last week, complete Section XX, and move forward into XXI.

    The loose ends we need to cover are:

    1 - Last week we spoke about the difficulty of taking sides in arguments where both sides claim the best of intentions, and even the same intention. This week let's take up the problem of how to proceed with both sides do in fact have good intentions, and let's talk about how to get off the "road to hell" that is paved with good intentions.

    2 - We'll extend our discussion from disputes about pleasure to disputes about pain in looking at Cicero's final comment: "But suppose we are mistaken as to his pleasure, are we so too as to his pain? I maintain therefore the impropriety of language which that man uses when talking of virtue, who would measure every great evil by pain?"


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    Comments on this episode:

    1 - Joshua stresses that Cicero seems to object to Epicurus' labeling of pain as evil even more than he objects to labeling pleasure as good.

    Quote from Cassius

    But suppose we are mistaken as to his pleasure, are we so too as to his pain? I maintain therefore the impropriety of language which that man uses when talking of virtue, who would measure every great evil by pain?"

  • Cassius October 10, 2025 at 9:49 AM

    Closed the thread.

  • Cassius October 10, 2025 at 9:49 AM

    Opened the thread.
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    As Joshua notes, I certainly agree that Cicero believes he had his good intentions and is sincere. But he certainly also throws up strawman arguments against the Garden with no attempts to steelman anything.

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