QuoteWhen we get to this kind of language, it should be put down, not by some philosopher, but by the censor, for its fault is not a matter of language only but of morality as well.
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
This censor approves! I, the pencil, was silver when I came from the fire, but in your hands I have become golden likewise.
I do find the staying power of this usage to be remarkable. The Scottish adventurer Cunninghame Graham wrote this in a book on his travels;
QuoteAlmost all Europeans in Morocco must of necessity be merchants, if not they must be consuls, for there is hardly any other industry open to them to choose. The [christian] missionaries bought and sold nothing, they were not consuls; still they ate and drank, lived in good houses, and though not rich yet passed their lives in what the Jews called luxury. So they [the Jews] agreed to call them followers of Epicurus, for, as they said, "this Epicurus was a devil who did naught but eat and drink." The nickname stuck, and changed into Bikouros by the Moors, who thought it was a title of respect, became the name throughout Morocco for a missionary. One asks as naturally for the house of Epicurus on coming to a town as one asks for the "Checquers" or the "Bells" in rural England. Are you "Bikouros"? says a Moor, and thinks he does you honour by the inquiry; but the recipients of the name are fit to burst when they reflect on their laborious days spent in the surgery, their sowing seed upon the marble quarries of the people's hearts, and that the Jews in their malignity should charge upon them by this cursed name, that they live in Morocco to escape hard work, and pass their time in eating and In in quaffing healths a thousand fathoms deep.
Which is how Bikouros came to be mentioned as a very minor character in one of Frank Herbert's Dune novels.
Here is Lucy Hutchinson's letter to the Earl of Anglesey, denouncing her own translation of Lucretius. And this article at Smithsonian Magazine is good for dispelling America's 'creation myth'.
QuoteIn the storybook version most of us learned in school, the Pilgrims came to America aboard the Mayflower in search of religious freedom in 1620. The Puritans soon followed, for the same reason. Ever since these religious dissidents arrived at their shining “city upon a hill,” as their governor John Winthrop called it, millions from around the world have done the same, coming to an America where they found a welcome melting pot in which everyone was free to practice his or her own faith.
The problem is that this tidy narrative is an American myth. The real story of religion in America’s past is an often awkward, frequently embarrassing and occasionally bloody tale that most civics books and high-school texts either paper over or shunt to the side. And much of the recent conversation about America’s ideal of religious freedom has paid lip service to this comforting tableau.
The Puritans actually left for the New World because they despised the religious toleration that was taking root there, and wanted a new country in which only Puritanism was tolerated. To that end, they hanged Quakers and women accused of witchcraft, banned the celebration of Christmas, and rejected a non-Puritan colonial governor appointed by the British Crown.
Lucy Hutchinson was in England, and worked on her translation during the Interregnum. Her husband, Colonel John Hutchinson, was a politician and a judge, and in that role he was one of the 59 signatories to the warrant for the execution of King Charles I. After the Stuart Restoration with the coronation of Charles II, John Hutchinson and many other co-conspirators were exempted from the general amnesty and he died in custody.
The overall impulse of the Puritan movement was similar in its aims to the previous work of a 15th century Dominican Friar named Girolamo Savonarola. The religious moral panic he kicked off in Florence led to the burning of books, art, cosmetics, mirrors, elegant clothing, sculptures, and so on. In his frantic sermons, he condemned atomism by name. He was eventually excommunicated by Pope Alexander VI, charged with heresy and sedition, and hanged in the Piazza della Signoria. Anyone who was in possession of any of his writings was required to hand them over to the church for destruction, or face the same fate.
That is an excellent idea! I can refer you to an old thread in which I compared Friar Laurence's Act 2, Scene 3 monologue from Romeo and Juliet to Book 5 of Lucretius;
The truth is I have not read all the works of de Bergerac. Yes, I "would think that he most definitely had something to say about Epicurus at some point." But I'm sorry I cannot help you now. Probably in the future I will, for you are shaming me into a perusal of his writing.
Take heart! I didn't even know the name three days ago...
Here's my attempt at a somewhat nuanced answer;
The most interesting changes have been in the Physics. The Greek atomists turned out to be substantially correct in a lot of big ways, and charmingly wrong, as everyone was then, in a lot of small ways. They correctly surmised; 1.) that the center of the Earth was not the center of the cosmos, and that in fact the cosmos had no center. 2.) that the laws that govern celestial phenomena are the same as those we experience "down" here. The heavenly orbs actually are bodies, and not gods. They actually are made of common matter, and not a fifth aethereal essence. 3.) matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
Their most glaring omission, common to all of the ancients, was their lack of any understanding of gravity as a force. Without gravity, it is difficult to make a convincing account of the cosmos. Some modern day flat-earthers have hit upon a novel solution to this problem--they propose that the disc and its dome move upwards at a constant rate of acceleration, but even this could not have served in an infinite Epicurean cosmos. Most of the explanations of atmospheric and celestial phenomena found in Lucretius have, of course, been superseded by a better and more accurate understanding of their causes. As for the natural gods of Epicurus living in the intermundia, I find simple atheism an apt substitute. The worst possible thing you can do to a god is render it unnecessary--a god with no explanatory power is in itself one assumption too far. Just my opinion.
In canonics or epistemology, a huge and complex revision is worth mentioning. In 5th and 4th century Greece, philosophers were prone to using mathematical principles to 'prove' moral truths. A successor to Pythagoras argued that ten was the number of the celestial spheres, and his logic in this was that 10 is the sum of a point, a line, a surface, and a volume--1+2+3+4. Owing to the perfection of this number, it must be reflected in the heavens...but of course not. The Platonists made the study of geometry a prerequisite to the study of philosophy, and as geometry is a process of rediscovering invisible mathematical facts, so a philosophy of pure reason is a process of 'recollecting' innate knowledge of absolute moral truths--the truths we forgot when we were interred in our bodily prisons. Geometry leads us out of one cave, and philosophy another. In the film Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis quotes Euclid on the transitive property as evidence for regarding slavery as unnatural and immoral. It makes for excellent cinema, but poor moral philosophy. The point in contention was precisely whether a and c really were both equal to b. Those who argued against the proposition had no trouble finding their justification in what they were assured was a higher law than geometry.
Nowadays engineers use mathematics to build not only bridges, an art the Romans had mastered, but also skyscrapers and jet airplanes, and the last people on Earth to endorse the numerology of the Pythagoreans would be working mathematicians. No longer a hindrance to understanding nature, math has become more helpful than nearly anything else available to us.
This is the first of two cases where it could be plausibly argued that Epicurus threw the baby out with the bathwater. The problem was never geometry itself, but the false analogy made by his contemporaries between geometry and moral epistemology.
The second example is part of his ethics. False belief about the gods was a source of great frustration to Epicurus, and one of the many causes of false belief was epic poetry, which he thought was full of lies. It was full of lies, or as we would say 'fictions', and the Epicurean satirist Lucian of Samosata was merciless in his mockery of the form in A True Story. But the solution when it arrived (very late) was more literacy and not less; we consume fiction in books, film, and television by the truckload, but only the genuinely pathological believe everything they read. We are very fortunate that Lucretius did not share his purported distaste for poetry.
I'll think about the question some more! I do think it's helpful to push past the obvious and often trivial scientific errors and into some of the deeper questions. Prof. David Glidden made a comment in passing during our podcast interview that the resurgence of atomism in the renaissance and the enlightenment probably had a role in postponing research into microbiology. I'm ashamed to say I haven't followed up on that, but that is exactly the kind of critique that would hold my interest.
Yes Godfrey , that is really irritating! Mobile and Desktop.
Thank you, Matteng ! I think the best text we have left regarding the Epicurean feeling of compassion for mankind is the Inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda;
QuoteFr. 30
... time ... and we contrived this in order that, even while [sitting at] home, [we might be able to exhibit] the goods of philosophy, not to all people here [indeed], but to those of them who are civil-spoken; and not least we did [this] for those who are called «foreigners,» though they are not really so. For, while the various segments of the earth give different people a different country, the whole compass of this world gives all people a single country, the entire earth, and a single home, the world.
Fr. 56
[So we shall not achieve wisdom universally], since not all are capable of it. But if we assume it to be possible, then truly the life of the gods will pass to men. For everything will be full of justice and mutual love, and there will come to be no need of fortifications or laws and all the things which we contrive on account of one another. As for the necessities derived from agriculture, since we shall have no slaves at that time (for indeed [we ourselves shall plough] and dig and tend [the plants] and [divert] rivers and watch over [the crops), we shall] ... such things as ... not ... time ..., and such activities, [in accordance with what is] needful, will interrupt the continuity of the [shared] study of philosophy; for [the] farming operations [will provide what our] nature wants.
But it isn't much, I grant you. The primary ethical mode of the Epicureans seems to be of the "teach a man to fish" variety; Lucretius' whole ethical project was more or less of that nature, whereby he brings good health to mankind through remedies that are philosophical rather than extrinsic.
When Julian the Apostate was trying to revive paganism after an interlude of Christian governance, he actually complained to his high priests that even pagan Romans were going to the Christians for charity rather than to the temples. We might consider this the practical result of 'taking no thought for the morrow', which, take it any way you like, is certainly not advice that Epicurus would condone. Security and self-sufficiency require taking thought for the morrow, and they are both natural goods.
As for the poll, I use cell phone at work or elsewhere, and laptop at home. Probably the cell slightly more frequently.
QuoteI'm seeing the logo. Using an Android (Pixel 6) and a DuckDuckGo browser. See image.
Cassius was fast with the fixes! The favicon is back up as well.
Ongoing fixes;
There appears to be better Unicode support on mobile. I have no idea if this is client-side or server-side, it's possible I only noticed it because of the update.
❦
This is an Aldus Leaf, named after the Venetian Renaissance printer Aldus Manutius, who printed a handsome edition of Lucretius in December of 1500.
Show Notes;
Thomas More, Utopia
I collected the most pertinent passages (including the passages quoted in this episode) relating to Epicureanism in a thread here.
Cosma Raimondi
QuoteThe humanist Cosma Raimondi (1400–1435/1436) was a native of Cremona and the pupil of Gasparino Barzizza (1360–1431). He helped to decipher an important manuscript of Cicero’s rhetorical works and wrote a well-known defense of Epicurus: A Letter to Ambrogio Tignosi in Defence of Epicurus against the Stoics, Academics and Peripatetics (1429). Leaving Italy, he moved to Avignon, where he later committed suicide.
The Inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda
Martin Ferguson Smith's translation of the text of the inscription is here.
John Locke, Letter Concerning Religious Toleration
The full English text of this letter which was originally written in Latin is here.
Horace - Epistle VI Book 1: Ad Numicium
QuoteDisplay MoreIf your lungs or kidneys were attacked by cruel disease,
You’d seek relief from the disease. You wish to live well:
Who does not? If it’s virtue alone achieves it, then
Be resolute, forgo pleasure. But if you consider
Virtue’s only words, a forest wood: then beware
Lest your rival’s first to dock, lest you lose Cibyra’s
Or Bithynia’s trade. Cleared a thousand, and another?
Then add a third pile, round it off with a fourth.
Surely wife and dowry, loyalty and friends, birth
And beauty too are the gifts of Her Highness Cash,
While Venus and Charm grace the moneyed classes.
Don’t be like Cappadocia’s king, rich in slaves
Short of lucre. They say Lucullus was asked
If he could lend the theatre a hundred Greek cloaks.
‘Who could find all those? he answered, ‘but I’ll see,
And send what I’ve got’. Later, a note: ‘It seems at home
I’ve five thousand: take any of them, take the lot’
It’s a poor house where there isn’t much to spare,
Much that evades the master, benefits his slaves.
If wealth alone will make you happy, and keep you so,
Be first to strive for it again, and last to leave off.
I think the main point to take away from the Empedoclean comparison is that his two universal principles of Love and Strife can be loosely analogized to the Epicurean position that the accretion and dissolution of atomic compounds is an endless process, and that dissolution never gets the upper hand; Venus, representing the generative power of nature, is constantly innovating.
So while our world will eventually be destroyed (as alluded to by Ovid), elsewhere in the cosmos other worlds are continually being formed by the linking of atoms. There will be no 'end times' no ultimately ruinous catastrophe that destroys everything.
"The verses of sublime Lucretius will perish only on that day which consigns the world to destruction."
Quite an interesting project here!
I would compare the Twentieth to a Burns Supper, a Scottish festivity held in January to commemorate the life and poetry of Scotland's national Bard every year on his birthday; the poet Robert Burns.
Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair,
Whene'er I forgather wi' Sorrow and Care,
I gie them a skelp as they're creeping alang,
Wi' a cog o' gude swats and an auld Scottish sang.
Chorus-Contented wi' little, &c.
I whiles claw the elbow o' troublesome thought;
But Man is a soger, and Life is a faught;
My mirth and gude humour are coin in my pouch,
And my Freedom's my Lairdship nae monarch dare touch.
Contented wi' little, &c.
A townmond o' trouble, should that be may fa',
A night o' gude fellowship sowthers it a':
When at the blythe end o' our journey at last,
Wha the deil ever thinks o' the road he has past?
Contented wi' little, &c.
Blind Chance, let her snapper and stoyte on her way;
Be't to me, be't frae me, e'en let the jade gae:
Come Ease, or come Travail, come Pleasure or Pain,
My warst word is: "Welcome, and welcome again!"
Contented wi' little, &c.
Everything I know about him is in post #8, and the Wikipedia biography is relatively short.
QuoteThe tales of Fabricius are the standard ones of austerity and incorruptibility, similar to those told of Curius Dentatus, and Cicero often cites them together; it is difficult to make out a true personality behind the virtues.
It occurs to me that if Gaius Fabricius was elected consul in 282 BC around the time he learned of Epicureanism, then Epicurus' name was known in Rome during his own lifetime.
"Cicero seems to be honestly and entirely unaware of the firm basis for justice which Epicureanism provided. He can see nothing beyond the fear of punishment, and therefore the fear of detection, - and yet he has Torquatus say that the necessary things of life can be won without injustice. He omits the social contract as a basis of justice. He does not see the doctrine as a whole."
"Moreover Cicero's failure to explain or attack the Epicurean theory of justice and the social compact is a significant omission in his discussion of Epicurean virtue."
This is Mary Porter Packer's summation of Cicero on Epicurus and Justice. Was Cicero confusing morality with justice, and inferring that Epicurus' morality was based on mutual advantage? Cicero has his god-ordained moral law, but Epicurus looks to the covenants made by the multitude for his morality? Did he utterly fail to comprehend what Epicurus was actually saying!?
Mary Porter Packer does not directly address the "babble of the multitude" question. Her general summation of De Finibus is that Cicero is a baffled, misreading, and unreliable transmitter of Epicureanism, because his signal failure is in refusing to consider each of Epicurus' claims in light of the whole philosophy. So I am at a loss, except in this respect; if Cicero believed that Epicurus looked to the multitude for his understanding of morality, CICERO WAS WRONG.
Do we know what the source is for the "babble of the crowd" bit? He seems to be attributing this to Epicurus, but I don't know of any citation that would support the claim. Epicurus is often mistrustful of the judgment of the crowd. The opinions of the multitude are wrong concerning the nature of the gods, wrong about celestial bodies, wrong about the causes of things, and so on.
VS29. To speak frankly as I study nature I would prefer to speak in oracles that which is of advantage to all men even though it be understood by none, rather than to conform to popular opinion and thus gain the constant praise that comes from the many.
VS45. The study of nature does not create men who are fond of boasting and chattering or who show off the culture that impresses the many, but rather men who are strong and self-sufficient, and who take pride in their own personal qualities not in those that depend on external circumstances.
VS67. Since the attainment of great wealth can scarcely be accomplished without slavery to crowds or to politicians, a free life cannot obtain much wealth; but such a life already possesses everything in unfailing supply. Should such a life happen to achieve great wealth, this too it can share so as to gain the good will of one's neighbors.
VS81. The soul neither rids itself of disturbance nor gains a worthwhile joy through the possession of greatest wealth, nor by the honor and admiration bestowed by the crowd, or through any of the other things sought by unlimited desire.
In the Letter to Menoikeus, he makes it seem as though the Hoi Polloi are wrong about everything!
Very strange. Here is an alternative translation;
Quote
There, Torquatus, is a full, detailed and complete scheme of Moral Worth, a whole of which these four virtues, which you also mentioned, constitute the parts. Yet your Epicurus tells us that he is utterly at a loss to know what nature or qualities are assigned to this Morality by those who make it the measure of the Chief Good. For if Morality be the standard to which all things are referred, while yet they will not allow that pleasure forms any part of it, he declares that they are uttering sounds devoid of sense (those are his actual words), and that he has no notion or perception whatever of any meaning that this term Morality can have attached to it. In common parlance 'moral' (honourable) means merely that which ranks high in popular esteem. And popular esteem, says Epicurus, though often in itself more agreeable than certain forms of pleasure, yet is desired simply as a means to pleasure.Do you realize how vast a difference of opinion this is? Here is a famous philosopher, whose influence has spread not only over Greece and Italy but throughout all barbarian lands as well, protesting that he cannot understand what Moral Worth is, if it does not consist in pleasure; unless indeed it be that which wins the approval and applause of the multitude. For my part I hold that what is popular is often positively base, and that, if ever it is not base, this is only when the multitude happens to applaud something that is right and praiseworthy in and for itself; which even so is not called 'moral' (honourable) because it is widely applauded, but because it is of such a nature that even if men were unaware of its existence, or never spoke of it, it would still be worthy of praise for its own beauty and loveliness. Hence Epicurus is compelled by the irresistible force of instinct to say in another passage what you also said just now, that it is impossible to live pleasantly without also living morally (honourably). What does he mean by 'morally' now? The same as 'pleasantly'? If so, does it amount to saying that it is impossible to live morally unless you — live morally? Or, unless you make public opinion your standard? He means then that he cannot live pleasantly without the approval of public opinion? But what can be baser than to make the conduct of the Wise Man depend upon the gossip of the foolish? What therefore does he understand by 'moral' in this passage? Clearly, nothing but that which can be rightly praised for its own sake. For if it be praised as being a means to pleasure, what is there creditable about this? You can get pleasure at the provision-dealer's. No, — Epicurus, who esteems Moral Worth so highly as to say that it is impossible to live pleasantly without it, is not the man to identify 'moral' (honourable) with 'popular' and maintain that it is impossible to live pleasantly without popular esteem; he cannot understand 'moral" to mean anything else than that which is right, — that which is in and for itself, independently, intrinsically, and of its own nature praiseworthy.
Anybody got an idea where this stuff comes from? Perhaps Cicero didn't read Greek as well as he thought he did...but I have to assume that he is misinterpreting what Epicurus actually said here. If the reference to the crowd is actually derived from what Epicurus said about justice existing only by convention based on mutual advantage, then Cicero has grossly misunderstood that idea.
That is a great story! Thank you, and welcome!
