Welcome to Episode 254 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.
Today we are continuing to review Cicero's "On the Nature of The Gods," which began with the Epicurean spokesman Velleius defending the Epicurean point of view. This week will continue into Section 41 as Cotta, the Academic Skeptic, continues to attack the Epicurean view of the nature of divinity.
For the main text we are using primarily the Yonge translation, available here at Archive.org. The text which we include in these posts is available here. We will also refer to the public domain version of the Loeb series, which contains both Latin and English, as translated by H. Rackham.
Additional versions can be found here:
- Frances Brooks 1896 translation at Online Library of Liberty
- Lacus Curtius Edition (Rackham)
- PDF Of Loeb Edition at Archive.org by Rackham
- Gutenberg.org version by CD Yonge
A list of arguments presented will eventually be put together here.
Today's Text
XLII. And why should we worship them from an admiration only of that nature in which we can behold nothing excellent? and as for that freedom from superstition, which you are in the habit of boasting of so much, it is easy to be free from that feeling when you have renounced all belief in the power of the Gods; unless, indeed, you imagine that Diagoras or Theodorus, who absolutely denied the being of the Gods, could possibly be superstitious. I do not suppose that even Protagoras could, who doubted whether there were Gods or not. The opinions of these philosophers are not only destructive of superstition, which arises from a vain fear of the Gods, but of religion also, which consists in a pious adoration of them.
What think you of those who have asserted that the whole doctrine concerning the immortal Gods was the invention of politicians, whose view was to govern that part of the community by religion which reason could not influence? Are not their opinions subversive of all religion? Or what religion did Prodicus the Chian leave to men, who held that everything beneficial to human life should be numbered among the Gods? Were not they likewise void of religion who taught that the Deities, at present the object of our prayers and adoration, were valiant, illustrious, and mighty men who arose to divinity after death? Euhemerus, whom our Ennius translated, and followed more than other authors, has particularly advanced this doctrine, and treated of the deaths and burials of the Gods; can he, then, be said to have confirmed religion, or, rather, to have totally subverted it? I shall say nothing of that sacred and august Eleusina, into whose mysteries the most distant nations were initiated, nor of the solemnities in Samothrace, or in Lemnos, secretly resorted to by night, and surrounded by thick and shady groves; which, if they were properly explained, and reduced to reasonable principles, would rather explain the nature of things than discover the knowledge of the Gods.
XLIII. Even that great man Democritus, from whose fountains Epicurus watered his little garden, seems to me to be very inferior to his usual acuteness when speaking about the nature of the Gods. For at one time he thinks that there are images endowed with divinity, inherent in the universality of things; at another, that the principles and minds contained in the universe are Gods; then he attributes divinity to animated images, employing themselves in doing us good or harm; and, lastly, he speaks of certain images of such vast extent that they encompass the whole outside of the universe; all which opinions are more worthy of the country of Democritus than of Democritus himself; for who can frame in his mind any ideas of such images? who can admire them? who can think they merit a religious adoration?
But Epicurus, when he divests the Gods of the power of doing good, extirpates all religion from the minds of men; for though he says the divine nature is the best and the most excellent of all natures, he will not allow it to be susceptible of any benevolence, by which he destroys the chief and peculiar attribute of the most perfect being. For what is better and more excellent than goodness and beneficence? To refuse your Gods that quality is to say that no man is any object of their favor, and no Gods either; that they neither love nor esteem any one; in short, that they not only give themselves no trouble about us, but even look on each other with the greatest indifference.
XLIV. How much more reasonable is the doctrine of the Stoics, whom you censure? It is one of their maxims that the wise are friends to the wise, though unknown to each other; for as nothing is more amiable than virtue, he who possesses it is worthy our love, to whatever country he belongs. But what evils do your principles bring, when you make good actions and benevolence the marks of imbecility! For, not to mention the power and nature of the Gods, you hold that even men, if they had no need of mutual assistance, would be neither courteous nor beneficent. Is there no natural charity in the dispositions of good men? The very name of love, from which friendship is derived, is dear to men; and if friendship is to centre in our own advantage only, without regard to him whom we esteem a friend, it cannot be called friendship, but a sort of traffic for our own profit. Pastures, lands, and herds of cattle are valued in the same manner on account of the profit we gather from them; but charity and friendship expect no return. How much more reason have we to think that the Gods, who want nothing, should love each other, and employ themselves about us! If it were not so, why should we pray to or adore them? Why do the priests preside over the altars, and the augurs over the auspices? What have we to ask of the Gods, and why do we prefer our vows to them?
But Epicurus, you say, has written a book concerning sanctity. A trifling performance by a man whose wit is not so remarkable in it, as the unrestrained license of writing which he has permitted himself; for what sanctity can there be if the Gods take no care of human affairs? Or how can that nature be called animated which neither regards nor performs anything? Therefore our friend Posidonius has well observed, in his fifth book of the Nature of the Gods, that Epicurus believed there were no Gods, and that what he had said about the immortal Gods was only said from a desire to avoid unpopularity. He could not be so weak as to imagine that the Deity has only the outward features of a simple mortal, without any real solidity; that he has all the members of a man, without the least power to use them—a certain unsubstantial pellucid being, neither favorable nor beneficial to any one, neither regarding nor doing anything. There can be no such being in nature; and as Epicurus said this plainly, he allows the Gods in words, and destroys them in fact; and if the Deity is truly such a being that he shows no favor, no benevolence to mankind, away with him! For why should I entreat him to be propitious? He can be propitious to none, since, as you say, all his favor and benevolence are the effects of imbecility.
- End of Book One -
Admin Note: Moved some posts here into a new thread on aspects of Pleasure so we can focus this thread on straightforward short summary answers to the question in the title of the thread. There are definitely many deep directions to go in so as separate tracks develop we can split those off as needed.
Variations, alternatives, etc to Don's suggested response in post #5 above are a main target for this thread.
I know nothing about the site from which this comes, but i have google search which brings certain topics to my attention, and this came up today. I have read through the article and find it thoroughly anti-Epicurean, but I find it to be helpful to regularly remind myself of the directions from which this kind of thinking comes. This one is pretty representative of the spirit-based "meaningfulness" premise, and that's the reason I am posting it - for future reference as needed. It contains many of the standard references that people from this perspective cite, including references to Huxley's "Brave New World, Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning." the argument equating happiness with materialism and that consumerism leads to unhappiness, etc.
Here i see the writer recognizes why so many people want to pursue "peace" and "contentment" rather than pleasure and happiness:
Even deep spiritual interventions have the goal of happiness—if you are one with God, or Jesus, or Mohammed, you will be happy. Shouldn’t the word “happy” be replaced with “content” or even “peace?” It certainly should be, because that is what I believe most of the religious traditions mean by the word “happiness.” “Contentment” and “peace” have very different meanings to “happy.”
If we are fully enlightened, are we even allowed to be happy? Of course, we are. Being happy is one of the most precious gifts of being a living creature. Should we expect to be happy all of the time? No, of course not. That would be a curse. Should we expect to be content or at peace all of the time? Yes, I believe that is indeed possible and should be a goal we all strive to attain.
How about this: death, suffering, and pain are illusions of the material world, and for large portions of our lives we should not expect to be happy! (Contrast that with Torquatus' On Ends 1:62 "And pains, if any befall him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reasons for joy than for vexation." and Epicurus's U116 Plutarch, Against Colotes, 17, p. 1117A: Such is ... the man who, in in the letter to Anaxarchus can pen such words as these: “But I, for my part, summon you to sustained pleasures and not to empty virtues, which fill us with vain expectations that destroy peace of mind)
However, my view is that as long as we are in the material form, living in a material creation, we have to encounter the manifestation of evil, darkness, and suffering—not ignore it. Part of our purpose and meaning in this world is to deal with everything we encounter, not turn away from any of it. Therefore, for a large portion of our lives, we may not be happy.
Dealing with darkness is not typically a happy endeavour, however, it doesn’t mean we cannot be at peace and be content when we are dealing with it. Darkness, suffering, and pain are but an “appearance”—an illusion—in the material realm. Through this illusion, we may even find meaning, and purpose, as we deal with the darker sides of life and existence.
I'm not recommending this article for a run read, but as a reminder of what Epicurean philosophy is up against. i don't consider this something resolvable by simply saying "meaningfulness is pleasure so that means we're all after pleasure so why don't we all agree just to have different definitions of happiness. This is a fundamental difference in world-view that 2000 years ago led to the active suppression of the freedom to hold Epicurean viewpoints.
There is also this fragment to consider incorporating into your wording:
Bailey: LETTERS TO INDIVIDUALS.To Anaxarchus.
23. But I summon you to continuous pleasures and not to vain and empty virtues which have but disturbing hopes of results.
Bryan's Epicurea version has it this way:
[ U116 ] Plutarch, Against Kōlṓtēs, 17, p. 1117A: Such is … the man who, in in the letter to Anaxárkhon can pen such words as these: "But I, for my part, summon you to sustained pleasures and not to empty virtues, which fill us with vain expectations that destroy peace of mind."
In other words, to teach people to feel pleasure when they feel nothing because feeling nothing is missed opportunity due to our misjudgement of reality we find ourselves in.
I generally agree with Tau Phi's post except perhaps for this sentence wording here. "When they feel nothing" probably ought to be made more clear as something like "when they are not feeling sensually stimulated.". The rejection of a neutral state is probably inconsistent with the flatness of "when they feel nothing." The explicit statement is that you are always feeling one of the two, pleasure or pain, so there is never a time when you flatly "feel nothing" except when you are unconscious.
This difference in the type of "dogmatism" is analogous to that of mathematics versus organised religion/modern ideology.
That's an interesting analogy. Could be.
I agree with the thrust of post 15 but for the sake of breaking part of this down:
because it is the defining nature of an ideology to no longer have free discourse amongst equals; an ideology says of itself: "We found the truth, and it is xyz."
Is that ("finding the truth and saying it is xyz") not exactly what Epicurus does when he says things like:
Pleasure is the absence of pain...
Believe that a god is a living being blessed and imperishable.....
So:
Are we supposed to "leave everything uncertain and go on explaining to infinity or use words devoid of meaning"? (letter to Herodotus)
Are we to "go on studying till old age the subjects that we ought to be ashamed not to have learnt in boyhood?" (Torquatus in On Ends 1)
Or are we to:
"give definite teaching and not profess doubt?" (Diogenes Laertius 121)
"never cease proclaiming the sayings of the true philosophy." (VS41)
This is a good discussion both at the detail and summary level.
As we pursue it I would like to prod, pursue, embrace, welcome, etc others to suggest their own versions of how you'd respond to the question. Don's post 5 is a good example but I am sure everyone has their own preferred way to express the issue simply. It would be helpful to everyone if we come up with as many variations as possible. That will help us see more clearly which versions are most persuasive.
So you're saying that the quoted sentence would be better as:
Nonetheless, it seems like [the structure of] supernatural religion lends itself to misinterpretation.
?
Or do you think that both the structure and ideology of supernatural religion lends itself to misinterpretation?
I crossposted with Julia but have one comment on post 8:
I, by virtue of being human, gravitate towards pleasure and comfort naturally; this happens on its own, I don't need to actively maintain it, as it is its own reward; I don't need to embrace it, I merely need to welcome it
I'm not sure about that last sentence, and taken out of context I suspect it doesn't quite ring right. "I merely need to welcome it" could be read as a kind of muted Stoic-sounding indifference. I think once you put everything in context of how short life is and how you have a limited opportunity to enjoy it, most people are going to see themselves as "pursuing" pleasure, rather than seeing themselves as sort of idly waiting to welcome whatever happens to come along.
In the context of the rest of the post I think there's no problem and it's consistent. The senses tell you the right thing to do by virtue of being human. But I also think some people have a constant temptation to gloss over the point that they need to take action, mental and physical, to live the best life possible to them. The temptation to avoid that realization is an interesting form of corruption.
Again as Torquatus stated it:
Torquatus In On Ends [30]: Every creature, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure and delights therein as in its supreme good, while it recoils from pain as its supreme evil, and banishes that, so far as it can, from its own presence, and this it does while still uncorrupted, and while nature herself prompts unbiased and unaffected decisions.
Yes I think that (post #5) is exactly the right direction! There's a pretty much infinite way to say the same thing in different ways, but the best of them are going to be high-level simple like that.
And it seems to me that it is important to convey that there is a presumption - the "desirability of life" - contained in that first bullet point that ties in to the observation that needs to be second nature and immediately evoke an affirming "Yes" when it is stated. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be clear to most people in the world today.
Menoeceus: 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.
Torquatus In On Ends [30]: Every creature, as soon as it is born, seeks after pleasure and delights therein as in its supreme good, while it recoils from pain as its supreme evil, and banishes that, so far as it can, from its own presence, and this it does while still uncorrupted, and while nature herself prompts unbiased and unaffected decisions.
Remember this from On Ends Book Two, 9, as an example of how clear the equivalence is supposed to be:
Cicero: “…[B]ut unless you are extraordinarily obstinate you are bound to admit that 'freedom from pain' does not mean the same thing as 'pleasure.'"
Torquatus: “Well but on this point you will find me obstinate, for it is as true as any proposition can be.”
It's supposed to be as true as any proposition can be - so it really should not require an elaborate and obscure explanation.
Thanks for the link, but let's practice how we ourselves would answer the question in a couple of sentences in a non-technical-language way. 
In other words, I think the answer to this question has to become so second nature to us that we should be easily able to explain it easily and in regular language at the drop of a hat.
And if we can't, then there's a good chance that we really don't have a confident view of what the answer really is.
Upon committing to pleasure as the guide to life, it becomes apparent that...
The framing of a recent post by Julia, combined with some other thoughts (the title of the book "Living for Pleasure") has revived today in my mind an old question. I think the discussions in this forum have come a long way in the last year, and I'd like to check on how the people who have been following along (primarily our regulars, but even lurkers if they want to set up an account to participate) react to the following question.
We've discussed it many times before, but now, in the context of many recent discussions in which we've pointed out cites that explain how Epicurus had a much more expansive definition of "pleasure" than most people (in his own time and today) generally apply to that word. So when they read a title like "Living For Pleasure," or "I am committed to pleasure as the guide of my life," many people are legitimately confused.
Almost everyone who is new to Epicurus is going to ask, either out loud or in their own minds:
I certainly know what pleasure is, but I've never thought of pleasure as absence of pain. Why does Epicurus consider the absence of pain to be pleasure?
I'd be very interested in whatever formulations of an answer anyone would like to suggest. I'll come back and add my own after some others have commented, but presume you're talking to a normal person in a normal conversation, and they've just read some generic article on the internet and read that Epicurus considered the absence of pain to be pleasure.
They turn to you in normal conversation and they ask "Why did he do that?"
What do you say in reply?
We've linked to this Dawkins debate before -
Join critically-acclaimed author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and world-renowned theoretical physicist and author Lawrence Krauss as they discuss biology, cosmology, religion, and a host of other topics. The authors will also discuss their new books. Dawkins recently published The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True, an exploration of the magic of discovery embodied in the practice of science. Written for all age groups, the book moves forward from historical examples of supernatural explanations of natural phenomena to focus on the actual science behind how the world works. Krauss's latest book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing, explains the scientific advances that provide insight into how the universe formed. Krauss tackles the age-old assumption that something cannot arise from nothing by arguing that not only can something arise from nothing, but something will always arise from nothing. Founded in 2008, the ASU Origins Project is a university-wide transdisciplinary initiative aimed at facilitating cutting edge research and inquiry about origins questions, enhancing public science literacy, and improving science education. Since its inception, the Origins Project has brought the world's leading scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, to Tempe to explore origins questions. The Origins Project has hosted workshops and public events that have focused on questions as fundamental as the origin of the universe, how life began, the origins of human uniqueness, and the origins of morality.
"Nothing comes from nothing" = there are causes for what exists and there are conditions (natural laws) that everything is conditioned and governed by...cows don't pop out of thin air, because they depend on causes and conditions of the material world of matter.
As you say there, the isue is "natural" causes. I know I am being legalistic here in the framing of the words, but in the philosophical context I think that's important. I gather from Frances Wright's chapter 15 that she was concerned about a narrow focus on "causes" as being infinitely regressive unless you have a starting point (which in Epicurus' case was the eternal atoms).
Simply saying "everything has a cause" does not rule out that the cause is "God." To rule out "God" being the cause, you need a theory on what is the point of "origin" of the regression -- or you have a have firm position that there was no "origin" and that the elements are eternal.
I would push back against the idea of "popping in and out of existence"..... Changing from one *form* to another however is certainly plausible, like ice to water. But the word *existence* is probably exactly what "cannot" happen.
I raise that last question because of a part of a discussion we had I think in a recent Zoom:
How tightly is "Nothing comes from Nothing" tied to "Atomism?"
"Atomism" seems to postulate that the way the universe works with regularity is that there are eternal irreducible particles which when moving through empty space come together to form bodies, and that this process explains and underlies the regularity of all that we see.
Would a "plenum" (no empty space anywhere) work just as well?
If not, why not?
One thing I'll suggest for sure: Just as in the issue of life in the rest of the universe and whether humans are the longest living and happiest forms of life, it's not sufficient from Epicurus' point of view to say "I don't know and I'm not going to think about it." It's important to have a working theory that makes sense to support whatever position you want to take, otherwise you're just a Socratic "I don't know anything except that I don't know anything" gadfly.
Same goes in the field of "do gods exist?"
And in my view we have painful proof of why it's important to take a position:
When the claims of Judaism-Christianism intellectually conquered the ancient world, the Academic-Skeptic position of "I don't know whether you're right or wrong because it's impossible to ever be sure of anything" didn't have the intellectual/emotional force to prevail in the battle of ideas. Radical skepticism simply doesn't win minds or hearts.
As Nietzsche said in his "Anti-Christ," Epicurus was working in a direction which, if it had been more widely adopted, would have given the ancient world more fortitude to stand up to the claims of Judeo-Christianism. Just like the Epicureans were the ones who stood up against the claims of Alexander the Oracle-Monger, you need a philosophy that gives you confidence to stand up against claims of the supernatural, and "I think you're wrong but I don't know anything about anything" doesn't cut it.
Epicurus choose atomism and his view of gods as a logical and defensible high-level position about how things really are. This gave him the ability to say to his opponents, "You're wrong on certain important claims, and here's why."
So if you're going to take the position that "nothing comes from nothing" then you need to offer a plausible explanation to explain why. Is atomism required for that? Would a "plenum" work just as well? I think it would be very interesting to try to reconstruct why Epicurus chose atomism.
So what position are you guys taking as to whether "empty space" exists?
Lucretius Today Episode 253 is now available: "How The Riddle of Epicurus Fits Into The Epicurean View Of The Gods"
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