Posts by Cassius

In Bailey's "Epicurus, the Extant Remains" there is no reference to any appearance of this formulation anywhere in the ancient world other than the above-referenced Herculaneum scroll:

I frequently repeat my reservations and criticisms of the "Tetrapharmakos," for the reasons I stated in my 2015 post "Why I Think Epicurus Would Have Hated the Tetrapharmakon." Unfortunately from my point of view, this truncated passage is frequently pushed as a comprehensive summary of what is important to know about Epicurus. As a further effort to demonstrate that this text should not be treated as Epicurean gospel, I want to pull together in this thread everything I can find about where the passage comes from, who wrote it, the context in which it was found, etc.

As of 5/14,25, the Wikipedia page has the tetrapharmakon as: As expressed by Philodemos, and preserved in a Herculaneum Papyrus (1005, 5.9–14), the tetrapharmakos reads:^[7]

Wikipedia has the following graphic, which I presume to be in the handwriting of a researcher, rather than being a photo of the surviving scroll. As a start in this examination I would ask these questions: (1) Where is the original scroll? (2) Who transcribed these excerpts? (4) Is this text absolutely clear in the original, or as is frequently the case with the Herculaneum material, is some of the text "reconstructed?" (5) What if anything do we know about the text before and after this excerpt?

it appears that this text can be found labeled as follows at this link, which is page at the University of Oxford Faculty of Classics Papyrological Imaging Project :

The full downloaded hi-res image is here:

This link provides a full list of the plates available for this scroll.

So the place to start in analyzing the material before and after this text appears to be this page.

As of 2/2/19, Wikipedia offers this translation of the text:

According to Wikipedia, citing Pamela Gordon: "The "tetrapharmakos" was originally a compound of four drugs (wax, tallow, pitch and resin); the word has been used metaphorically by Roman-era Epicureans. to refer to the four remedies for healing the soul."

The Wikipedia footnote for this statement is:

The name cannot be traced further back than Cicero and Philodemos. Pamela Gordon, Epicurus in Lycia: The Second-century World of Diogenes of Oenoanda, University of Michigan Press (1996), p. 61, fn 85, citing A. Angeli, "Compendi, eklogai, tetrapharmakos" (1986), p. 65.

Here is a post I made on NewEpicurean.com back in 2012:

Quote

The “tetrapharmakos” is a four-line condensation of the first four key doctrines based on the deciphering of a scroll found at Herculaneum (per Wikipedia). The standard English translation found on the internet is:

Don’t fear god,

Don’t worry about death;

What is good is easy to get, and

What is terrible is easy to endure.

This version is sourced to the Epicurus Reader, page vi. In my copy of that work, the page shows the same text quoted above, with a cite to papyrus 1005, 4.9-14. An image of that papyrus can be found here, and is shown below.

So far I have not found any discussion of the translation process in The Epicurus Reader, so it is not clear to me whether Inwood or Gerson (who are listed as translators) or Hutchinson (who did the intro) are responsible for the English summary. In my last post (on Key Doctrine 6) I noted that the Epicurus Reader has a translation of Key Doctrine 6 that diverges significantly from that of other authorities. Thus I am curious about the context of this translation of the Tetrapharmakos.

We know that the editors state that the Greek original reads:

Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός,

ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος

καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον,

τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον

The page from which this text comes is fragmentary, and part of a longer passage, as can be seen in this image:

Clearly much is missing, but since I do not know Greek I cannot determine to what extent these lines are complete and to what extent they are conjecture. Likewise, I cannot determine the context in which they appear on the page.

The challenge that immediately arises is that we can quickly observe that while “Don’t Fear God” is certainly one meaning that can be derived from the full text of the first Doctrine, it is certainly not the only meaning, and it is arguably not the most important. I would argue that regardless of whether God is to be “feared,” it is at least as important for us to know that God does not concern himself with men’s affairs at all. As a result, regardless of whether we fear god or love him, god does not control or doom us to a particular “fate.”

I am informed that by a number of readers who know Greek that the translation is probably accurate, and at least as to these four lines (but not the context) we have the full text. Thus the question to keep in mind in researching this is largely the context in which it was written. There is probably much we could learn from Philodemus’ thought process if we knew the context in which he (or the writer from which he might be quoting) reduced the first four key doctrines to these brief lines.

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My NewEpicurean Post: Why I Think Epicurus Would Have Hated The Tetrapharmakon:

Wikipedia informs us that the tetrapharmakon comes down to us from a parchment found in the papyri of Herculaneum that it is attributed to Philodemus. Wikipedia also informs us of the following translation, which apparently comes from D.S. Hutchinson:

Don’t fear god,

Don’t worry about death;

What is good is easy to get, and

What is terrible is easy to endure.

What is missing from the record is any explanation or context in the papyri itself, so we cannot know what Philodemus intended to convey through or about these lines. What I will argue here, in brief, is that taken as they are today as a summary of key Epicurean doctrine, they are *absysmally* bad.

(1) “Don’t fear god” is a woefully incomplete summary of PD1, which reads in full: “1. A blessed and indestructible being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; so he is free from anger and partiality, for all such things imply weakness.” Far from simply not “fearing” the gods, PD1 tells us that we are equally not to look to them for reward (“partiality”) or any intervention from them whatsoever. To say simply that we should not “fear” gods is to omit the key foundation of Epicurean theology – that perfect beings bring no interference **of any kind** to lesser beings. Gods do not create universes; gods do not destroy universes; and gods ask nothing of us and offer nothing to us whatsoever – certainly not a heaven or any reward whatsoever for our actions. “Fear” is only a small component of this key insight.

(2) “Don’t worry about death.” Don’t *worry* about death? Epicurus stressed the importance of making the most of the present life, because he knew that there was no other. Quite the opposite of not thinking about the issue of death, Epicurus stressed the importance of spending time wisely, enjoying life to the fullest extent possible, and thinking about death explicitly as a way of savoring the present and preparing for the future. Seneca recorded “Wait for me but a moment, and I will pay you from my own account. Meanwhile, Epicurus will oblige me with these words: “Think on death…” And so what Epicurus emphasized was neither a “devil-may-care” attitude nor an attitude of benign neglect, but instead that we regularly remind ourselves that the shortness of life is in large point what makes life worth living: the fact that we only go around once and get no other chances encourages us to savor the time we do have. So thoughtful examination – the very reverse of the point superficially made in the tetrapharmakon, is what we are to derive from the facts clearly stated in PD2: “Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensation is nothing to us.”

(3) “What is good is easy to get” is a superficial cliche that has turned more people off to Epicurean philosophy than any other (except for the next cliche in the tetrapharmakon, which follows immediately). Everyone knows how much effort is required to live happily, and how the slightest slip can lead to disaster. And when “everyone” knows something, that means Epicurus knew it too. And so when we check the text we find this clumsy cliche bears no resemblance whatsoever to the full text of PD3: “3. The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When such pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together.” Legions of stoics jump to the opportunity to argue that Epicurus held that “removal of all pain,” and nothing more, is the complete definition of the good life. The trouble is that this interpretation ignores the philosophical background of why “limits” were held to be important. As Seneca recorded in discussing Epicurus, “Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping point. The false has no limits.” Epicurus knew this was a carryover from Plato (see Philebus), and that those who argued against pleasure held that pleasure could not be the guide of life because it had no limits, and thus could never be satisfied. With this context in mind the meaning of PD3 is clear – Pleasure DOES have a limit, and it is reached when we succeed in filling our lives so full of pleasure that no room is left for pain of any kind. Cicero expressed this Epicurean doctrine concisely, “nothing [is] preferable to a life of tranquility crammed full of pleasures.” PD3 has nothing to do with “good” being “easy to get.” Stripped of its Stoic misinterpretations, PD3 can be seen to be of the same level of profundity as the discussion of gods and death: it is a statement that PLEASURE is the guide of life, and that this guide of life can be achieved by those who follow pleasure intelligently.

(4) “What’s terrible is easy to endure” is even more outrageously false than the third line of the tetrapharmakon, and no amount of dancing around the point is enough to convince an honest student that a man to whom such a doctrine was attributed could be wise. Epicurean texts are full of appreciation for the difficulties and pains of life, and for the tragedy of those “hearts in darkness” who live in fear and doubt. Yet some would have us believe that the same Lucretius, who was compassionate enough toward animals to describe at length described the pain felt by a cow on loss of her calf, would advocate a philosophy where the pains of human life are held to be “easy” to endure. Once again the fault is in the summary, and in its interpretation, and not in the doctrine of Epicurus. Doctrine four reads: “PD4. Continuous bodily pain does not last long; instead, pain, if extreme, is present a very short time, and even that degree of pain which slightly exceeds bodily pleasure does not last for many days at once. Diseases of long duration allow an excess of bodily pleasure over pain.” This statement has little or nothing to do with “what’s terrible is easy to endure,” and for good reason. The numbering of the Principle Doctrines was not introduced by the ancient Epicureans, and there has never been any reason to separate the intent of PD3 from PD4. Taken together, these two doctrines fit hand in glove to establish not only that Pleasure DOES have a limit (the essential structure necessary to defeat the Platonic anti-Pleasure argument), but also that Pain is not to be considered as something to be avoided at all costs. How many times today do we see fans of Epicurus act as if “avoidance of pain” is far more important than pursuing pleasure? If Epicurus had in fact taught such a doctrine, he would have emphasized the severity of pain and the overriding necessity of avoiding it. But Epicurus knew what tricks the ascetic other-worlders were up to – he had the texts of Plato himself from which to learn. Thus Epicurus elevated to nearly the top in importance the observation that pain is NOT to be dreaded, and NOT to be allowed to cause us to shrink back from pursuing pleasure. The meaning of PD4 is not that pain is easy to endure, but that pain is WORTH enduring compared to the reward of Pleasure.

Perhaps one day more context will be readable from the papyri and we will know what Philodemus was thinking when he included these lines in his text. In the meantime, we know far too much about Philodemus to think that intended the Tetrapharmakon to be interpreted as it is today. The current text and interpretation does more harm than good, and creates more confusion than light, and as such would have been an abomination to Epicurus, the man who wrote “In the first place, Herodotus, you must understand what it is that words denote, in order that by reference to this we may be in a position to test opinions, inquiries, or problems, so that our proofs may not run on untested ad infinitum, nor the terms we use be empty of meaning. For the primary signification of every term employed must be clearly seen, and ought to need no proving; this being necessary, if we are to have something to which the point at issue or the problem or the opinion before us can be referred.“

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Other posts I have made on this subject are:

Research Projects: 2 – The Meaning of the “Tetrapharmakos” – NewEpicurean
On The Subject of the Tetrapharmakon

Comparing Translations of the Tetrapharmakon

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Post I made on Facebook:

It's my view that using the "tetrapharmakos" as a summary of Epicurean philosophy is a terrible idea. The phrasing is so truncated that it fails to convey Epicurus' original meaning and distorts the conclusions that many people will draw as to his intent. Further, the text does not come from Epicurus himself, nor does it come to us in an intact and reliable narrative by a recognized Epicurean authority. The flood of words devoted to the "tetrapharmakos"on the internet is all traceable to one source: a reconstructed fragmentary passage found in Herculaneum, written 200+ years after Epicurus, and attributed to Philodemus. It is my understanding that this four-fold summary is found in this form nowhere else in the ancient records left to us. Probably the best source from which to study the origin and condition of the text is at the Oxford University page linked in my post. On that page, images of **transcriptions** of the surviving pages from this scroll may be viewed. I would like to study this further so that I can revise my opinion, if warranted. If anyone who knows Greek has the time to look at these and comment, or anyone knows articles which have done this, please comment below.

I have to confess I have never seen "Children of the Corn." Worth watching??

No, actually that's an old copy of PDF-Exchange.

Interesting that you ask though, because I am constantly fiddling with software to organize and reference my notes. Right now I am pretty much into DokuWiki as used on the wiki page here, but outlining and other similar software is a major interest of mine. Do you have a favorite program for organizing your research?

I'm a little surprised to hear you say that, LD. When I posted it I was really thinking only of the "simplicity" message, but it's true that there probably is an "Omen" feel to it. The whole Amish/Mennonite phenomena is kind of weird to me, but in a way I can't quite put my finger on.

Welcome @Derek ! When you get a chance, please let us know your background and experience with Epicurus.

Hi Godek - that is just the bookmark in my personal PDF copy of DeWitt.

Cassius started a new event:

Event

Memorial: Amrinder Singh's Birthday

I received a message from a relative of Amrinder Singh, a former member of Epicureanfriends.com, who died in an airplane crash two years ago. The relative gave me Amrinder’s dates of birth and death, and it would be good to remember him in the future as someone who did not let fear of pain cower him into failing to pursue pleasure.

“When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters of heaven with hideous…

Mon, Dec 24th 2018, 8:00 am – 8:00 pm

Cassius

January 31, 2019 at 11:17 AM

Quote

I received a message from a relative of Amrinder Singh, a former member of Epicureanfriends.com, who died in an airplane crash two years ago. The relative gave me Amrinder’s dates of birth and death, and it would be good to remember him in the future as someone who did not let fear of pain cower him into failing to pursue pleasure.

“When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth, crushed down under the weight of religion, who showed her head from the quarters of heaven with hideous aspect, lowering upon mortals, a man of Greece ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to withstand her to her face. Him neither story of gods nor thunderbolts nor heaven with threatening roar could quell: they only chafed the more the eager courage of his soul, filling him with desire to be the first to burst the fast bars of nature’s portals. Therefore the living force of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe; whence he returns a conqueror to tell us what can, what cannot come into being; in short on what principle each thing has its powers defined, its deep-set boundary mark. Therefore religion is put underfoot and trampled upon in turn; us his victory brings level with heaven.”

That video does have a little of an "Omen" or "Tubular Bells" quality doesn't it?

Yes, as to Hiram's article, I need to spend more time with those fragments. Hiram tends to give his presentations without as many footnotes as I like to use, especially when texts are fragmentary. When I check to see how fragmentary many of these are, I find it hazardous to put too much stock in what is left. It seems to me that in many cases we don't know if what is left is being characterized as the Epicurean position, or is in fact them citing the opposing view before refuting it. My best example of that is the Delacey work on "On Methods of Inference" which starts out with a long passage from a non-Epicurean source, and seems to flip back and forth. If you don't already have a view on what to expect the Epicurean position to be, then it is very hard to tell who is saying what. But if you start out with your own presumptions, then there's no check on your accuracy. At any rate it's still worth doing, but hazardous I think.

"This is precisely why I argue deep friendships are impossible in Epicurean thought." << If you believe that this is correct, why are you still interested in Epicurean thought? You are willing to give up deep friendships, or you simply think Epicurus was wrong in that?

As far as "quantity" vs magnitude, size, height, stature, all of those seem to be indications of measurement in a single plane to me, and of course (at least to me) a feeling has many more dimensions than one.

"But should we think that pain can be driven out by pleasurable experience?" -- Here I would say absolutely YES, and in fact, since there are only two feelings, there is in fact no way to drive away pain OTHER THAN replacing it with pleasure.

It's interesting to me that after your explanation we still end up here: "True "freedom from pain" IMPLIES the existence of a multitude of pleasures, both simple and complex," which is exactly the position I take, but for different reasons.

Perhaps a summary would be, that when you say "Mental pain must be extinguished before we can experience ultimate pleasure in life, as ataraxia is the highest state of pleasure." To me that formulation implies that ataraxia is a type of pleasure. I do not in fact that that ataraxia is a type of pleasure at all -- I think it is purely an adverbial description of the best way to experience a life of pleasures of the type we all know and understand (typical mental and physical pleasures) without any disturbance in that enjoyment. Disturbance and absence of disturbance do not tell us a thing about the type of pleasures we are experiencing, only that we are experiencing with or without the interruption of pain.

So now I have to consider the implications of reaching the same conclusion by a different analysis!

(1) Thanks Godfrey! This is a subject that I'd like to correlate with the surviving material from Philodemus in his "Property Management" material.

(2) "Epicureanism nudges people toward the idea that the greatest happiness is found in pleasures that have a minimal cost associated with them." This is an excellent pithy sentence that I think distills the problem, and I think is not correct to all. First of all, is "happiness" something that has levels? Is one "happiness" greater than another "happiness," or is all "happiness" equal. Comparisons are usually reserved for "pleasures" in that some are more or less intense, or more or less long-lasting. I don't think Epicurus ever talks in terms of "the greatest happiness.

(3) But to go further, when Epicurus talks of greater or lesser pleasures, he rarely if ever gives a description of the feeling itself- he says that we know pleasure and pain by feeling, not by explaining or justifying. And in that sense (which I think DeWitt discusses under the topic of "fullness of pleasure" -- pleasure is pretty much pleasure, differing mainly in intensity or length. And Epicurus rarely if ever gives a list of "pleasures" and says that A is better than B is better than C. Epicurus measures the hedonic calculus in pleasure vs pain, and all types of mental and physical pains are included within them. So the entire picture comes down to the issue of not that some pleasures are better than others, but simply that some pleasures bring with them more or less cost in terms of pain.

(4) If we were rewriting that sentence more accurately according to Epicurus, it would be something like "Epicurus nudges people toward the idea that the best way to fill our experience with pleasure is to choose pleasurable activities in light of the amount of pain that they bring with them." And in some cases it makes sense to sit on your sofa and drink water and eat bread, and in some cases it makes sense to build a house, make a generator, build a computer, and sign onto the internet to discuss philosophy with friends. There's nothing "simplest" or "minimal cost" to the latter choice, but if your anxieties come from fear of death or fear of gods or from a myriad of other problems, then your best result will come from the exertion involved in joining modern civilization, rather than live in a cave on bread and water.

And so there I've made my standard reservation. Having said that I certainly agree with, and try to practice many, of the observations he has made. And surely there are people who need those observations. But still.... why do I have this sense that so much is lost when we reduce Epicurus to "simplicity"

Is this the Epicurean theme song? Appealing, but I don't think so --

Pivot -- I apologize if you have answered this already, but can you tell me how much of Lucretius you have read? Today I was listening to the Partially Examined Life podcast on Lucretius, and I find it interesting to correlate a person's views on Epicurean ethics with their views of Lucretius. Can you let me know how deeply into Lucretius you have read, and your reaction to it? Thanks!

Almost all of our difference of opinion stems from this:

How else ought they be interpreted? The problem I see is that it is written is very explicitly. "Whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless hard to win." And also, as we discussed a while back, PD3: "The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. [...]" It is very difficult for me to interpret this quote in any other way than what is explicitly stated. That is, when all pain is removed, that state of ataraxia and aponia are the LIMIT with respect to pleasure. I can't conceive of this in a way somehow allowing this to NOT be the limit, unless something is to be said about mistranslation, or a hole in the principle doctrines. Or even that certain modification is necessary.

I will not say you are wrong, but I will say that I interpret things very differently because while the sentences you quote taken separately are quite clear, they do not stand alone, and they occur within a definite context which in my view prohibits the conclusions you think are clear.

The context in my view is that long before these positions would have been stated, Epicurus had previously stated that there are only two feelings, pleasure and pain. He had also previously stated, in PD3, that the limit in QUANTITY of pleasure is the absence of pain. Everything must be interpreted in that context, and within that context, whatever is not pain is by definition pleasure, and whatever is not pleasure is by definition pain, and the quantity of absence of one is ALWAYS the quantity of presence of the other, by definition. And that means that when one goes to zero quantity, the other goes to its limit of quantity, by definition. However this is only a definition of QUANTITY, which Epicurus is careful to state in the beginning.

So yes, zero pain is the "limit" of pleasure, but only in quantity, and not in any other respect. If it were not necessary for us to take other aspects of pleasure into account, we could by definition live the best life possible by killing ourselves, or drugging ourselves comatose, because in both cases that results in zero pain. That would be a perverse result, but that is exactly the result that is produced by reading these texts in isolation and not seeing them as part of the whole. A whole in which "Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing" and "I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, of sex, of sound, and the pleasures of beautiful form.”

The same thing goes for the sentence that when we have no pain, we have no need of pleasure. Taken alone that seems clear, but it does not mean that suicide or being comatose is the best life. Viewed from the perspective of quantity, any Epicurean who sees that pain has been reduced to zero also knows that it has been reduced to zero by filling the human experience completely with pleasure, so as to drive out all pain. In Cicero's phrase, "Nothing is preferable to a life of tranquility crammed full of pleasures."

Or, in the words of Torquatus: "Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain: what possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable?"

And in this context, natural and necessary also is seen not to be a call to the "zero life" but simply the observation that some things in life require a lot of effort, and some things don't, and that in general those things that require a lot of effort entail at least the possibility of a lot of pain. But if you keep in mind that the goal is pleasure, and not the zero state of absence of pain, then this observation is nothing more than a part of the analysis that before you choose to do something that entails a lot of effort, you better be sure that you will in fact get a lot of pleasure, and you better be sure that you do it in such a way as to minimize pain. Flying to the moon requires a lot of effort but can be done safely with a huge investment in modern technology, and therefore can be viewed as a tradeoff that is very worthwhile. But flying to the moon without proper preparation is going to lead to great physical pain and perhaps death, and so is not to be undertaken lightly.

So in sum each of the quotations that appear in isolation to call for a minimal life can be seen to not call for a minimal life at all. Did Epicurus live a minimal life by surrounding himself with a philosophical school of people, churning out books, running a household with many slaves and, and leading a philosophical revolution? Did Lucretius pursue minimal living with the Herculean effort of his poem? Of course not - they saw their lives as short and precious, and needing to be filled with the activities that would bring them the most pleasure while at the same time pursuing that pleasure in a way that would cause as little pain as possible. But they certainly knew and welcomed the pain that would be required in their effort, because they knew that the pleasure that would be produced was well worth it.

I will have to come back later to respond to the main material but no worries as to the "intent" - deep discussion like this is how we make progress in reconstructing.

Jasper, further on the club comment -- there are key differences in how some people interpret Epicurean Philosophy from others. One way that I think helps flesh out those issues is the "Outlining" strategy discussed in the home page. If you get a chance to take a look at that I would be interested to see your choices.

Thanks for that introduction!

"I mention this because I wonder whether the Friends of Epicurus might evolve into something like a Rotary Club or Lions Club in future."

Certainly that is one goal to which we ought to aspire if we can gather the numbers. We've discussed such things in the past but there are a lot of considerations as to exactly how to state the core beliefs, etc. If you'll scan through posts here as you have time, and reply with your thoughts, that would be a great help in assisting the thought process to come together.

If you use Facebook, please check out the Epicurean Philosophy group if you have not already, as that may be the best place to make contacts in Germany. Of course our friend Martin is from Germany, but currently living in the far east.

While the Facebook group may be good for contacts, you're probably aware of its limitations for accomplishing anything serious. That's why this group is here, and I hope you'll have the time to participate here as much as you can. There's a great need for concentrated effort to make the things we want to see come into being, and this forum allows us to work together and build in a way that Facebook does not.

So thanks for joining!

Welcome Jasper Sky ! When you get a chance please tell us a little about yourself and your background and interest in Epicurus.

I think the direction at which you are looking at this is probably unproductive. The goal is to live pleasurably under your particular circumstances, so you must analyze those circumstances to see what is of most immediate relevance to you. If there were a set list that applied to everyone in the same way at all times, then that would imply a fate or guiding hand that does not exist. Check DeWitt's chapter on "The New Virtues" chapter 14 where he discusses them this way: