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Thus there can be mental pain from untrue infamy, right?
That may well be the point.
There can be pain from infamy, but necessarily so? On the other hand, pain is always painful.
You're right this is good food for thought for the discussion.
It's likely that what we have here is Epicurus making a very legitimate point about something, and Cicero distorting it by taking it out of context, so our job is to unwind the problem.
Welcome to Episode 284 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 our series covering Cicero's "Tusculan Disputations" from an Epicurean viewpoint. This series addresses five of the greatest questions in human life (Death, Pain, Grief/Fear, Joy/Desire, and Virtue) with Cicero speaking for the majority and Epicurus the main opponent:
Today we continue in Part 2 - "Is Pain An Evil?," picking up with Section XIII, where Cicero continues his assertion that infamy is a greater evil than any pain.
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Our general discussion guide for Tusculun Disputations is here: https://epicureanfriends.github.io/tusculundisput…lish/section:12
Lucretius Today Episode 283 is now available. This special episode is devoted entirely to a reading of Norman DeWitt's 1947 article "Philosophy For the Millions," an introduction to the history of Epicurus and his philosophy.
Episode 283 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is devoted entirely to a reading of Norman DeWitt's essay "Philosophy For The Millions." Click above or here for a reading. The full text is as follows:
This article outlines a new interpretation of Epicureanism. Documentation will be offered elsewhere. [Editor’s note: And was offered, in the voluminous notes to DeWitt’s later work: Epicurus and His Philosophy] In the meantime the author will gladly furnish references if requested.
Norman W. DeWitt is Professor Emeritus of Latin in Victoria College, University of Toronto. For a number of years his researches have been devoted to Epicurus. The need for a reinterpretation of the work and influence of this truly unknown philosopher can hardly be over estimated, for he belongs to that other classical tradition which was overshadowed by Platonism and Stoicism. Unobserved by humanists, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was a renaissance of science which took men back to Hippocrates and Democritus – and upon this renaissance the modern world was built.
By Norman W. DeWitt
THE FIRST FUMBLING attempts to reason from manifest effects to hidden causes and to present a picture of the inner nature of things were made on the margin of the Greek world; it is around the rim of a vessel that the blinking beads of ferment are first seen to rise. On that restless Greek frontier was born a succession of pioneers of thought. Of their reasoned guesses the majority now seem absurd, but within two centuries their tentative efforts had arrived at an atomic theory of the constitution of matter. This was far from being absurd; it was the borderland of chemistry.
The greatest name in this succession of first researchers was that of Democritus, who became known as the laughing philosopher. In his ethical teaching great store was set by cheerfulness.
Democritus was still living when the new scientific movement suffered a violent reverse. It was in Athens, a center of conservatism, that the opposition arose and it was brilliantly headed. The leader was no other than Socrates, who despaired of the possibility of scientific knowledge. Even Aristotle, who pioneered in some branches of science, rejected the atomic theory. Between these two great names came that of Plato, who believed the ultimate realities to be not atoms but triangles, cubes, spheres and the like. By a kind of analogy he extended this doctrine to the realm of abstract thought. If, for example, perfect spheres exist, why should not perfect justice exist also? Convinced that such perfect justice did exist, he sought in his own way to find it. The ten books of his Republic record only part of his searchings of the mind. At the core of all this thinking lies the doctrine that the eternal, unchangeable things are forms, shapes, models, patterns, or, what means the same thing in Greek, “ideas.” All visible things are but changing copies of unchanging forms.
After the great triumvirate of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had passed away the scientific tradition was revived with timely amendments by Epicurus. In his time it was the prevalent teaching that the qualities of compound bodies must be explained by the qualities of the ingredients. If the compound body was cold, then it must contain the cold element air, if moist, water, if dry, earth, and if hot, fire. Even Aristotle sanctioned this belief in the four elements. Epicurus, on the contrary, maintained that colorless atoms could produce a compound of any color according to the circumstances of their combination. This was the first definite recognition of what we now know as chemical change.
Epicurus was still a young man when Athenian conservatism bred a second reaction to the new science. This was headed by Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. His followers welcomed a regression more extreme than that of Aristotle in respect to the prime elements. For the source of their physical theories they went back to Heracleitus, who believed that the sole element was fire. This was not a return to the Stone Age but it was a longish way in that direction.
This Heracleitus had been a doleful and eccentric individual and became known, in contrast to the cheerful Democritus, as the weeping philosopher. His gloom was perpetuated in Stoicism, a cheerless creed, of which the founder is described as “the sour and scowling Zeno.” Epicurus, on the contrary, urged his disciples to “wear a smile while they practiced their philosophy.”
Running parallel to these contrasting attitudes toward life and physical theories was an equally unbroken social divergence. Platonism as a creed was always aristocratic and in favor in royal courts. “I prefer to agree with Plato and be wrong than to agree with those Epicureans and be right,” wrote Cicero, and this snobbish attitude was not peculiar to him. Close to Platonism in point of social ranking stood Stoicism, which steadily extolled virtue, logic, and divine providence. This specious front was no less acceptable to hypocrites than to saints. Aptly the poet Horace, describing a pair of high-born hypocrites, mentions “Stoic tracts strewn among the silken cushions.” Epicureanism, on the contrary, offered no bait to the silk-cushion trade. It eschewed all social distinction. The advice of the founder was to have only so much regard for public opinion as to avoid unfriendly criticism for either sordidness or luxury. This was no fit creed for the socially or politically ambitious.
Who, then, was this cheerful and friendly Epicurus, this apostle of the unambitious life? He was the son of an Athenian schoolteacher resident on the island of Samos. These items carry no sting today, but in Athens it was different. That cradle of democracy was democratic only within limits. Its citizens looked down upon both islanders and school teachers: upon islanders as small fry, who needed protection from the stronger; upon schoolteachers because, like their own secluded women, they spent their time with children. A satirist not only twitted Epicurus with being an islander but also coined a comic name for him, Grammadidaskalides, as if we should have a name “Schoolteacherson.” Of a certain rival Epicurus himself had the following to record: “This upset him so completely that he fell to abusing me and called me a schoolteacher.”
Evidence of the little tempest that swirled for a time about this word is furnished by the fact that from the school of Epicurus it was banned. Not only the head himself but all his assistants were styled “guides” or “leaders.”
It is hardly to be expected that a man so discounted by the upper classes in antiquity, to whom ancient writers for the greater part addressed themselves, should enjoy an unspotted record with posterity, and to so express it is a euphemism. Much of what may be read concerning Epicurus even in the most recent handbooks consists of traditional misrepresentation, disparagement or plain falsehood. His life, for example, has been called uneventful. This is certainly untrue of his youth. His boyhood fell in the years when every Greek hamlet must have been ringing with the startling reports of Alexander’s victories. The time for performing his required military service coincided with the news of Alexander’s tragic end. As a cadet or ephebe he must have witnessed, as it were, the last futile war against Macedon, the reception in Athens of a Macedonian garrison and the suicide of Demosthenes. Even the forced retirement of Aristotle during the same crisis and his death at Chalcis must have been meaningful enough to one already interested in philosophy.
During this same two year interval the paternal home in Samos had been broken up and the family expelled from the island. All the Athenian settlers were evicted by the Macedonian general Perdiccas. Some twelve years later Epicurus himself was destined to be forcibly driven from Mytilene. Even after his final settlement in Athens the city endured a painful siege and the beans doled out to the members of the school had to be counted. Such are a few highlights of a life that biographers call “uneventful.”
His stormy cadetship terminated, Epicurus rejoined his father and family in Asia, where a safe refuge had been found in the ancient city of Colophon. There in the course of the ensuing decade a great illumination came to him and the result was a new philosophy inevitably conditioned by the external events and the intellectual currents of the time. In so far as this new philosophy revived the scientific tradition it was Ionian; in so far as it exalted ethics above physics it was virtually Socratic. Yet this similarity is apt to be obscured by more conspicuous differences. The new doctrine divorced ethics from politics, which was heterodoxy in Athens. It allied itself instead with the Ionian tradition of medicine, which was philanthropic and independent of political preferences. Just as all human beings, men, women and children, slave and free, stand in need of health, so all mankind, according to Epicurus, stands in need of guidance toward the happy life. This view of things tinged his philosophy with the color of a gospel and bestowed upon it a pragmatic urgency which is lacking in Socratic thought. With the leisurely meanderings of dialectic he had no patience. Truth, he believed, must possess immediate relevance to living.
The Nature of the new outlook was placed in a bright light by a comparison that suggested itself to Epicurus. In Athens men practiced a weird Corybantic rite of mental healing in which the patient sat solitary upon a throne while the ministrant went dancing around him in riotous music and song. The first reaction to this treatment, should the cure succeed, was bewilderment, the second drowsiness, and the third an ecstatic awakening to joy and health. In this rite Epicurus saw a reversed image of his own program of healing. Instead of a single favored individual surrounded by a ministering multitude, he envisaged the vast multitude of humanity in need of healing while a lone personified Philanthropia offered her ministrations: “Love goes dancing round and round the inhabited earth, crying to all men to awake to the blessedness of the happy life.” About the identity of this Love there can be no doubt; it is the Hippocratic love of mankind, which to true members of that craft was inseparable from the love of healing.
In this teaching Epicurus displayed his originality. His new design for living was applicable everywhere, irrespective of country or government. He had emancipated himself from the obsessions of his race, political separatism and the exclusive faith in political action. The whole world was a single parish.
It is mere justice that other original features of the new philosophy should receive recognition. Cicero, a crafty trial lawyer, in his last years employed the tricks of the courts to discredit Epicureanism with his contemporaries and with posterity. Among other false charges he upbraided Epicurus for neglecting methodical partitions of subject matter, classifications, and definitions. Yet the pragmatic partition of knowledge that was standard in Cicero’s own day and throughout the greater part of ancient time was the invention of the despised Epicurus. His division was three headed: The Canon, Physics and Ethics. The Stoics, always great borrowers, changed this partition into Physics, Ethics and Logic. Their Logic was taken from Aristotle, nor did it matter that this was substituted for the Canon. Both the Canon and Logic had for their function the test of truth.
The orderliness of Epicurean thought, which Cicero denied, is also exemplified by the Canon. According to this we possess three contacts with the external world: Sensations, Feelings, and Anticipations. In our handbooks two of these three are completely misrepresented. It is usual to declare that Epicurus believed “in the infallibility of sensation.” Not even the ancients ventured to go so far as this in misrepresentation. What Epicurus really did believe was that only immediate sensations are true. For example, if the observer sees an ox at a distance of ten feet, he can be sure it is an ox, but if he sees an animal at the distance of a mile, he may be uncertain whether it is an ox or a horse. Moreover, it does not follow that because a sensation is true it is also trustworthy. An oar in the water appears to be bent; the sensation is true but it is false to the facts. Naturally all sensations must be checked by one another and by those of other observers.
The Feelings alone have been rightly reported. By these were meant pleasure and pain. These are instruments of Nature in teaching both brute beasts and human beings the facts of life: honey is sweet, fire hurts.
The third term, Anticipation (Prolepsis), has suffered the worst from misrepresentation. Unlike the Sensations and Feelings, the reference of which is chiefly to physical contacts, the Anticipations have to do with social relations and with abstract ideas, such as that of justice. Epicurus rightly observed that both animals and human beings from the moment of birth not only reach out for food and avoid pain but also exhibit soon a pre disposition to fall into patterns of behavior agreeable to their respective kinds. In the case of human beings he speaks of this predisposition as an idea faintly sketched on the mind at birth. Since it there exists in advance of experience of life and of conscious reflection it is styled by him an Anticipation or Prolepsis.
Moreover, since a certain pattern of behavior is proper to each race of living things, it follows that in the case of the human race, for example, a definition of justice, to be true, must square itself with the innate idea of justice. It is in this sense that the Anticipations serve as tests of truth and find a place in the Canon. Truth must square with Nature.
The error of the handbooks on this point is fundamental. They have confused general concepts, such as that of a horse, with abstract ideas, such as those of justice, piety or friendship.
These three, then, Sensations, Feelings, and Anticipations, constituted the Epicurean tripod of truth. Through the first we come to know the physical world; through the second we learn the pleasures and pains of living; by the third we are guided aright to the recognition of abstract truth.
The orderliness of Epicurean thought is admirably exemplified also in the Physics. In a textbook entitled the Twelve Abridgements Epicurus furnished his disciples with the only coherent and complete summary of the general principles of physics ever promulgated in the ancient world. A few specimens will suffice for illustration: 1. Matter is indestructible. 2. Matter is uncreatable. 3. The universe consists of atoms and space. 4. The universe is infinite. 5. Bodies are either simple or compound.
The rest of the principles deal with the qualities of atoms, their hardly imaginable speed in space, their vibrations in compounds, their capacity to form compounds possessing qualities not possessed by themselves, such as color or plasticity, and their proneness to form filmy images of things, called idols, which explain the sensation of vision.
Especially important was the doctrine that in the motions of the atoms there existed a sufficient degree of free play to permit the exercise of free will in animals and man. This is known as “the doctrine of the swerve.”
Epicurus was the first Greek philosopher to expressly sponsor a doctrine of free will. His predecessors had recognized three forces as incompatible with the freedom of the individual. First, certain physicists, Democritus among them, had posited the supremacy of the inviolable laws of Nature. This was known as Necessity. Second, the Greeks in general had thought of man as helpless before the will of the gods. This was called either Fate or Necessity. Third, the Greeks generally conceded to Fortune the ability to make or mar the happiness of men.
Like the modern pragmatist, Epicurus stressed the power of man to control his experience. The Necessity of the physicists he eliminated by his doctrine of a certain freedom of play in the atoms. The Necessity of Fate he expunged by denying any form of divine interference in the affairs of men. Fortune he taught his disciples to defy on the ground that the caprices of chance could be all but completely forestalled by rational planning. These teachings nullified the importance of Greek poets as moral teachers. Homer and the tragic drama went overboard. Epicurus styled their moral teachings a hodge-podge.
This new freedom signified the privilege of being continuously happy. This too was new, because Plato and most other teachers had assumed the existence of peaks of pleasure alternating with intervals void of pleasure. Continuous pleasure Epicurus made conceivable and feasible by defining pleasure as a healthy mind in a healthy body, mens sana in corpore sano. The limit of it was freedom from pain of body and distress. Pleasures, he said, was normal, just as health is normal; pain was abnormal, just as sickness is abnormal. By living the right kind of life and by limiting the desires he declared that continuity of happiness could be achieved. The control of experience was to him a categorical imperative.
In spite of this teaching it was not the doctrine of Epicurus that pleasure was the greatest good. To his thinking the greatest good was life itself. This was a logical deduction from the denial of immortality. Without the afterlife this present life becomes the concentration of all values. Pleasure, or happiness, has its place as the end, goal, or fulfillment of living.
It was the Stoics and Cicero who concocted and publicized the false report that Epicurus counted pleasure as the greatest good. This is mistakenly asserted in all our handbooks.
Just as the belief in immortality leads to the exaltation of the soul and the depreciation of the body, so the belief in mortality presumes a certain parity of importance between soul and body. To Epicurus the soul is of similar structure to the body, differing only in the fineness and mobility of the component atoms. Body and soul work as a team. The soul bestows sensitivity upon the body and the body in turn bestows it upon the soul. This results in “co-sensitivity,” as Epicurus calls it. Sensation itself, he claimed, is irrational. Thus the tongue by physical contact receives the stimulus of sweetness, but it is the intelligence, part of the soul, that recognizes this stimulus and issues the pronouncement, “This is honey.” This interdependence of soul and body extends to all activities. Responses to stimuli are total, not separate; they are “psychosomatic,” to use a term of modern psychiatry. Epicurus scorned all philosophy that failed to regard psychiatry as its function.
At the age of thirty Epicurus migrated from Colophon to Mytilene and began to promulgate these heterodoxies as a public teacher. In that city the Platonists were dominant. Within the space of a few months he seems to have had them about his ears. Within a year their enmity had aroused the authorities and so incited the populace that he was forced to take ship in the winter season and in danger of shipwreck or capture by pirates. Never afterward did he venture like other philosophers to teach in public places.
In Lampsacus on the Hellespont he found a refuge, gained the favor of the authorities, assembled a strong school and obtained financial support. After four years he felt strong enough to carry the war into Africa, as is said in Roman history, and removed to Athens, locating himself on the same street as Plato’s Academy and not far from it.
Persecution had not changed his doctrines but it did revolutionize his procedures. Public appearances were avoided; instruction was confined to his own house and the garden he had purchased. Outside of the school he instituted a method of disseminating his new doctrine by personal contacts. Each convert was urged to win over the members of his own household, his friends and neighbors, “never slackening in spreading by every means the doctrines of the true philosophy.” Prospective converts were plied with books and tracts. Epicurus himself, like John Wesley, became a busy compiler of textbooks, and specific instructions were written for the proper use of them. He made outlines of doctrine for those who were unable to live in residence. The allegiance of disciples living in other cities was retained by epistles painstakingly composed. Thus the new school was transformed into a self-propagating sect.
Within two centuries this self-extending gospel of the tranquil life had spread to most parts of the Graeco-Roman world. “It took Italy by storm,” as Cicero reluctantly records. At the same time the forces of opposition were growing in like proportion. The campaigns of the Stoics became so notorious that modern scholars have all but overlooked the original battle with the Platonists, whose acrid criticisms were refurbished by Plutarch under the early Empire. By that time the Christian writers had joined the chorus of opposition and at last, in the stormy fourth century, the friendly sect seems to have been finally silenced. For some centuries afterward all that survived was a trickle of untruth. Men still knew something of epicurism but nothing of Epicureanism.
Yet when the study of natural science was at last reborn, it was the once rejected atomic theory that furnished the starting point for modern chemistry, and when modern thinkers began to see evolutionary processes in human institutions, it was observed that long ago Epicurus had blazed that path of enquiry. Erring with Plato had its pleasure and its profit but also its price, the postponement of scientific progress. Platonic thought had some close affinities with the Stone Age.
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All of us who are here have arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies, and we do not demand of others what we were not able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is very different from other viewpoints, and it takes time to understand how deep those differences really are. That's why we have membership levels here at the forum which allow for new participants to discuss and develop their own learning, but it's also why we have standards that will lead in some cases to arguments being limited, and even participants being removed, when the purposes of the community require it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, or committed to unlimited free speech, or devoted to any other form of organization other than the pursuit by our community of happy living through the principles of Epicurean philosophy.
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We have found over the years that there are a number of key texts and references which most all serious students of Epicurus will want to read and evaluate for themselves. Those include the following.
"Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt
The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.
"On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"
"Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky
The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."
Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section
Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section
The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation
A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright
Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus
Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)
"The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.
It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.
And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.
(If you have any questions regarding the usage of the forum or finding info, please post any questions in this thread).
Welcome to the forum!
For Sunday Zoom on June 2nd, our special discussion topic will be "Is Pain Properly Considered To Be An Evil?" This question will track our current discussion taken from Tusculan Disputations in the Lucretius Today Podcast, where we started this discussion last week in Episode 281 and continued it in our just-released Episode 282. Given where we are in the podcast sequence, if anyone has questions or comments they wish to post before the Sunday session, please post them in the thread for Episode 282. There are a number of citations in the Epicurean texts which address this issue, so feel free to add them to that thread so we can refer to them Sunday.
Episode 282 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. Today we continue Part Two of Cicero's treatment of the nature of evil in Tusculan Disputations, and our episode is entitled: "Is A Trifling Pain A Greater Evil Than The Worst Infamy?"
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Thanks to Lowri834 for this find! She posted it first on the reading list, but due to the way the forum software works I'm not sure it will come to everyone's attention there - so reposting it here:
Ok so I see this post is perhaps closest but we don't really have one.
Some of them clearly belong together (on canonics, on justice, for example) but others are more flexible or the topics are shorter. If anyone has re-divided them already and wants to suggest an arrangement I can put up a page, but I'll label it clearly that we're just doing our best and there doesn't seem to be anything in the Greek to which we can point as definitive way to divide them
I found that studying the Key Doctrines in short groups of 3 or 4 related doctrines was more beneficial to focus on a key topic.
Don do we or you have a page or listing somewhere that breaks the PDs down not by number but by related paragraph and/or topic? I know we've discussed this many times but i am not sure I have seen a polished and formatted version. I am sure that there are many possible divisions but we might as well be helpful to people and suggest one or two.
Robert I am working on this week's podcast and included within the section we read is this from Cicero attacking the Stoics in Part2 Section XII of Tusculan Disputations:
Here's the intro:
Therefore, you allowed enough when you admitted that infamy appeared to you to be a greater evil than pain. And if you abide by this admission, you will see how far pain should be resisted: and that our inquiry should be not so much whether pain be an evil; as how the mind may be fortified for resisting it.
And here's Cicero's attack that I wanted to cite. This quote is useful in many contexts to show the difference between the Stoics and Epicurus, or between the Stoics and anyone who uses common sense rather than word games.
The Stoics infer from some petty quibbling arguments, that it is no evil, as if the dispute was about a word, and not about the thing itself. Why do you impose upon me, Zeno? for when you deny what appears very dreadful to me to be an evil; I am deceived, and am at a loss to know why that which appears to me to be a most miserable thing, should be no evil. The answer is, that nothing is an evil but what is base and vicious. You return to your trifling, for you do not remove what made me uneasy. I know that pain is not vice,—you need not inform me of that: but show me, that it makes no difference to me whether I am in pain or not. It has never anything to do, say you, with a happy life, for that depends upon virtue alone; but yet pain is to be avoided. If I ask, why? it is disagreeable, against nature, hard to bear, woful and afflicting.Here are many words to express that by so many different forms, which we call by the single word, evil. You are defining pain, instead of removing it, when you say, it is disagreeable, unnatural, scarcely possible to be endured or borne: nor are you wrong in saying so; but the man who vaunts himself in such a manner should not give way in his conduct, if it be true that nothing is good but what is honest, and nothing evil but what is disgraceful. This would be wishing, not proving.
I started to post this in Rolf's "Confusion - The Feelings Are Only Two" thread, because it gets at how Epicurus can at times be speaking in broad philosophical terms. But it comes from this week's podcast, so I will put it here. This is a passage we cover in the upcoming Lucretius Today Podcast from Book 1 of Tusculan Disputations:
XII.¶
But why are we angry with the poets? we may find some philosophers, those masters of virtue, who have taught that pain was the greatest of evils. But you, young man, when you said but just now that it appeared so to you, upon being asked by me what appeared greater than infamy, gave up that opinion at a word. Suppose I ask Epicurus the same question. He will answer, that a trifling degree of pain is a greater evil than the greatest infamy; for that there is no evil in infamy itself, unless attended with pain. What pain then attends Epicurus, when he says this very thing, that pain is the greatest evil; and yet nothing can be a greater disgrace to a philosopher than to talk thus.
I would suggest that this is another example of Epicurus speaking philosophically in ways that contradict our current modern presumptions. We today think of "evil" as supernaturally black-hearted or the like.
But while there is no "evil" in Epicurean philosophy in the sense of supernatural personified devils or sin, Epicurus does use a word that we translate as "evil" to describe pain. How do we reconcile that?
I'd say we reconcile it by saying that Epicurus is telling us to disregard the concept of sinning against gods or supernatural "evil," but instead we can make legitimate use of the word "evil" to describe something that we very much don't want to experience and which we avoid when it makes sense to avoid it.
In unwinding Cicero's statement, to me what Cicero is doing is switching the context to distort Epicurus' intent.
Epicurus could easily be saying, and apparently did say, that:
1. Pain is always "evil," because it is undesirable in itself.
2. But "infamy" is not always "evil." - An Epicurean could say that he doesn't care at all what the crowd thinks, if he thinks what he is doing is the correct thing to do, but he would care if the crowd takes action to inflict pain on him because of it.
Therefore speaking philosophically, even a trifling amount of pain, if experienced for no reason, is always "evil," while the worst "infamy" cannot be with certainty judged to be evil unless it results in actual harm to the person involved.
I'll leave the rest for the podcast discussion, but I illustrated this by referring to Cicero himself, and to Cassius Longinus.
in certain circles Cicero was held up to "infamy" for his execution of the Cataline conspirators. Likewise, Cassius was held up to "infamy" for the assassination of Julius Caesar.
But at the time they took those actions, there was no necessity that those actions would result in infamy or bad results to them at all. Cicero believed that his actions regarding Cataline were among his most heroic, and would send him down in history as the savior of the Roman Republic. If Cassius and Brutus had won the battle of Philippi, then they too would likely have been judged to have saved Rome from julius Caesar's dictatorship.
So you can support the idea that even trifling amounts of "pain" are worse than any amount of "infamy" by speaking strictly: "Pain of and for itself" is always undesirable, but no amount of "infamy" can reliably be judged as always undesirable without referring to consequences.
I don't know whether Epicurus said something like this explicitly, or whether Cicero invented the argument like he misrepresented Epicurus as saying that being in the bull of Phalaris is "sweet." But either way, we can read between the lines and unwind the points being made by Epicurus, and see that Epicurus was regularly making philosophical points ("the feelings are two, pleasure and pain, so that absence of pain is the same as pleasure.") that are easy to misrepresent if you take them out of context.
I've read the complaints about the Epicurean school having to do with their being dogmatic or not disagreeing with the teacher.
I'd have to look back too to really be sure, but I am thinking that some of this criticism is included in Nussbaum's pro-Stoic "Therapy of Desire." I'm not a fan of that book but if someone were looking for that criticism, which I think is totally unfounded, that's one place I would look.
As to Stoicism, other issues in addition to divine order, plus a belief in life after death (so you start off violating Epicurus' first two doctrines right there) are their emphasis on logic over feeling/sensation and their dismissal of pleasure.
In my case I got interested in Stoicism due to high school and college courses in Latin, and my general impression (which I now see to be false) that Cicero was a Stoic. Aside from Cicero's willingness to enlist the Stoics in his defense of Virtue, Cicero delivers a strong take-down of Stoicism in one of the latter chapters of his "On Ends."
For sure. When it comes to pains that are chosen to avoid greater pain or achieve greater pleasure, I completely understand. However, I am more concerned about the pains that we do not choose - the unnecessary pains that serve no purpose. How do we reconcile them under Epicureanism, particularly if they are frequent? If one is truly unable to get rid of such pains, is it best to adjust one's mindset and accept them? Does Epicurus write about this sort of thing? From what I've read so far, pain is mainly mentioned in the contexts of a) pain should be avoided and b) some pains should be chosen in the name of prudence. But what of the pains that can neither be avoided nor are chosen?
We certainly sometimes are subjected to pain beyond our control. As Epicurus said to Menoeceus,
We must then bear in mind that the future is neither ours, nor yet wholly not ours, so that we may not altogether expect it as sure to come, nor abandon hope of it, as if it will certainly not come.
...
(He thinks that with us lies the chief power in determining events, some of which happen by necessity) and some by chance, and some are within our control; for while necessity cannot be called to account, he sees that chance is inconstant, but that which is in our control is subject to no master, and to it are naturally attached praise and blame.
I think we've gone through this example before but the best is probably Epicurus own kidney disease. I don't know that he "accepted" it, but he found ways to enjoy life even in the presence of the pain. I think that's the answer to your question - what you can't get rid of you work on diluting with pleasure to the extent possible. That's not a satisfying answer to some, probably, but the fake gods and fake ideals of the Stoics and others are not going to be able to eliminate pain either, despite what they may say, and if they persuade you to give up studying nature and trying to apply your mind to solving your problem and/or diluting your pain, then they are taking away from you any real hope of bettering the situation. Because the hopes offered by supernatural religion and false philosophies aren't real.
This here almost feels like an endorsement for the "ascetic absence of pain" argument. "To be in no pain" seems to be used here literally, rather than to mean "100% pleasure 0% pain". And, if I understand correctly, this state is put above "joyous activity of pleasure". How do you interpret this? Though perhaps it's meant to be read as "since there are only two feelings, if the hand is not in pain, then it is in pleasure, and therefore feels no need for pleasure".
Yes I think your last sentence is the explanation. There's a lot to process in the whole passage, among which is the fact that we don't think of a hand or any other part of the body as having its own separate will or thought process to think that it "lacks" anything. So there's some underlying premise here that's not being stated as to why the whole question should be interpreted as making sense. I presume that Chrysippus is reasoning something along the lines of "You Epicurus say that pleasure is the guide of ALL living things, so it ought not make any difference whether the living thing has a brain or not, so let's pick a "hand."
When you put it together with much else that Cicero says, the general point seems to be that Chrysippus is taking the orthodox position that pleasure means "stimulation." If pleasure means stimulation, and Epicurus is going to assert that all things are guided toward pleasure, then a hand should feel the lack of pleasure when it is not stimulated, and the hand should want stimulation. The fact that the hand doesn't seem to want stimulation is to Chrysippus proof that the hand does not identify pleasure as the good. And if the hand doesn't, Epicurus, then why should we presume that pleasure is nature's goal for living things -- your theory is blown to bits.
And that's why Torquatus' father told him that the argument was laughable, as it is effective against people like the Cyreniacs who identify pleasure with stimulation, but it doesn't touch Epicurus, since Epicurus' definition of pleasure is more than just stimulation, and includes healthy normal functioning. And since there is no reason to believe that Chrysippus' hand was not functioning normally at the time of the questioning, in the Epicurean view Chrysippus' hand is experiencing pleasure (because normal healthy condition is considered to be pleasure, even though that condition isn't stimulation).
For me the trickier part is where Torquatus goes further, as he does several times, and state that the absence of pain (which I think is fairly interpreted as in PD03) means not only pleasure, but the height of pleasure. To me, the various examples can reasonably be interpreted only one way (especially when Torquatus says "nothing could be more true"). What is being referred to is the logical / mathematical point (which you cited already) that when there are only two possibilities, the absence of one IS the presence of the other - which is compelled by definition to the extent words have any necessity in them at all.
This is where I think Cicero intentionally leaves the the Epicurean argument incomplete, because he should have allowed Torquatus to spell that out explicitly. Instead, he leaves the implication clear but dangling. And in the case of the question regarding the comparison of the pleasure of the host who is pouring wine to the guest who is drinking wine, Cicero doesn't allow explanation by Torquatus at all -- we are just left to draw the logical conclusion that anyone who is "without pain" is at the height of pleasure - in pure pleasure - by definition.
Remember that the "height of pleasure" or "the limit of pleasure" need not be interpreted to mean "most intense" or "longest duration" or "all parts of the body." All "the limit of pleasure" really requires is that what is being measured is 100% pleasure and 0% pain. And if you say that your hand, or yourself, or anything else is "without pain" -- then if we are saying what we mean and mean what we say - then we are saying that we are at the "height of pleasure." People can balk and bark back that "that's not what I mean when I say height of pleasure!" But if they've been paying attention, Epicurus has shown them over and over that they need to think about how they are using words like "gods" and "virtue" and "pleasure" --- and "height of pleasure" is just another example of the same kind of re-statement of what a word really means.
I'm also unsure about how this passage relates to the topic at hand (no pun intended), in terms of attitude and mindset. Or was it meant as a more general callback to the initial topic of the thread?
I was mainly referring back to the general topic of the thread, but now that you mention it there is definitely a "mindset" issue here too -- seeing "height of pleasure" and "pleasure" in more accurate terms is a matter of adjusting your mind. That's the reason I entitled one of my recent articles a "Paradigm Shift"
Speaking of which - a vaguely related thought I want to bring up. There are times when I find myself doubting whether Epicurean philosophy can truly work for me — not because I disagree with its core ideas, but because I live with a persistent undercurrent of physical discomfort. I start to wonder if Epicureanism assumes a baseline of health that I just don’t have.
I would say that whether something "works" is defined by whether it is consistent with reality. The unreal and madeup can never "work" for any length of time. The Epicurean viewpoint is the one that is consistent with reality, so I'd say that it's the only one that could every "work" for anyone, no matter how much baseline of pain you start with. Epicurean philosophy is going to call you to do everything you can to change the situation, and even when it can't be changed, it isn't going to try to lull you into complacency with a noble lie
In those moments, other perspectives become tempting. The “surrender to the flow” of Taoism, or the radical acceptance of Stoicism, can seem like a way to bypass the whole problem of pain — to dissolve it in detachment. And yet, they ultimately drift from reality by denying that pleasure and pain matter.
Yes that is the problem. And sure someone can go ahead and commit suicide, counting on their religion to take them to a better place. I don't see counting on fables as a workable solution - I see that as the ultimate in terrible trades and guaranteed to lead to unfortunate results. At least when you are dealing with the truth, even though the odds may be stacked against you, you aren't placing your hope in fictional rescues that will never come.
For example Rolf:
The first and foremost refinement of the topic in the hands of Epicurus was to draw a clear distinction between choosing an attitude, diathesis, toward action in a given sphere and choosing to do or not to do a given thing within that field. For example, a man must first choose what attitude he shall assume toward death and the gods, pleasure and pain, Necessity, Fortune, political life, monarchy, fame, friendship, diet, and several others. To exemplify from this list, the right attitude toward Necessity is to deny it, toward Fortune to defy her, toward political life to avoid it, toward fame to ignore it, and toward friendship to look upon it as the most precious of all the acquisitions of the wise man. The famous collection known as the Authorized Doctrines is rightly understood as a guide for the choice of attitudes toward the essential things in the art of living happily. The first, for instance, advises the disciple that the gods are not to be feared. This is an attitude, which is first to be chosen and then cultivated.
The choice of attitude, however, by no means abolished the necessity of making individual choices. The proper attitude toward pain, for instance, is to regard it as inherently evil and to be avoided; nevertheless, in the individual case the lesser pain, such as that of the surgeon's knife, is endured for the sake of the greater good. Again, the proper attitude toward food is to prefer a simple diet, but this does not preclude and even approves the occasional indulgence. Neither is political life to be avoided under all circumstances; the evil is not in such a life itself but in surrendering freedom by making a career of it. Thus in spite of the choices of attitude the necessity of making the individual choice is perpetual.
Dewitt stresses that attitude is a large part of what Epicurus teaches by pointing out that many of his teachings are just that -setting attitude - by such things as "believe that a god is a living being blessed and imperishable...." And others.
Yes I agree that that is true.
Also Rolf, have you read the Chrisypus' hand challenge, and if so what do you make of it?
It's in Book One of On Ends:
[39] But actually at Athens, as my father used to tell me, when he wittily and humorously ridiculed the Stoics, there is in the Ceramicus a statue of Chrysippus, sitting with his hand extended, which hand indicates that he was fond of the following little argument: Does your hand, being in its present condition, feel the lack of anything at all? Certainly of nothing. But if pleasure were the supreme good, it would feel a lack. I agree. Pleasure then is not the supreme good. My father used to say that even a statue would not talk in that way, if it had power of speech. The inference is shrewd enough as against the Cyrenaics, but does not touch Epicurus. For if the only pleasure were that which, as it were, tickles the senses, if I may say so, and attended by sweetness overflows them and insinuates itself into them, neither the hand nor any other member would be able to rest satisfied with the absence of pain apart from a joyous activity of pleasure. But if it is the highest pleasure, as Epicurus believes, to be in no pain, then the first admission, that the hand in its then existing condition felt no lack, was properly made to you, Chrysippus, but the second improperly, I mean that it would have felt a lack had pleasure been the supreme good. It would certainly feel no lack, and on this ground, that anything which is cut off from the state of pain is in the state of pleasure.
