1. True Divinity Is Incorruptible And Blessed But Entirely Natura
Epicurus held that the concept of divinity -- of that which is truly blessed and imperishable -- is real and meaningful, but that the characteristics traditionally attributed to the gods by religion are wrong and must be corrected by reason. A being that is truly blessed and truly imperishable cannot simultaneously be subject to anger, favoritism, grief, or the exhausting labor of supervising human affairs. These are characteristics of weakness and of beings subject to disturbance -- the very opposite of blessedness. When we think carefully about what divine blessedness actually requires, we must conclude that the gods neither punish nor reward human beings, neither created the universe nor maintain it, and take no interest in human affairs.
The practical application is direct: if the gods are genuinely blessed and imperishable as their nature requires, then all fear of divine anger and all hope of divine favoritism is mistaken. Religious rituals designed to appease the gods, prayers offered to obtain divine intervention, and the anxiety that gods are watching and judging human behavior -- all of this rests on a false conception of divinity. Epicurus did not counsel atheism or disrespect toward the divine concept; he counseled the opposite -- a genuine admiration for the divine nature as a model of perfect blessedness, free from disturbance, that the human philosopher can aspire to approximate in their own life.
That which is blessed and indestructible has no troubles itself, nor does it give trouble to anyone else, so that it is not affected by feelings of anger or gratitude. For all such things imply weakness. (tr. Long & Sedley)
First, think of god as an imperishable and blessed creature, as the common idea of god is in outline, and attach to him nothing alien to imperishability or inappropriate to blessedness, but believe about him everything that can preserve his combination of blessedness and imperishability. For there are gods - the knowledge of them is self-evident. But they are not such as the many believe them to be. For by their beliefs as to their nature the many do not preserve them. The impious man is not he who denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to gods the beliefs of the many about them. For they are not preconceptions but false suppositions, the assertions of the many about gods. It is through these that the greatest harms, the ones affecting bad men, stem from gods, and the greatest benefits too. For having a total affinity for their own virtues, they are receptive to those who are like them, and consider alien all that is not of that kind. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Practise these things [Epicurus' ethical teachings] and all that belongs with them, in relation to yourself by day, and by night in relation to your likeness, and you will never be disquieted, awake or in your dreams, but will live like a god among men. For quite unlike a mortal animal is a man who lives among immortal goods. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Among celestial phenomena movement, turning, eclipse, rising, setting and the like should not be thought to come about through the ministry and present or future arrangements of some individual who at the same time possesses the combination of total blessedness and imperishability. For trouble, concern, anger and favor are incompatible with blessedness, but have their origin in weakness, fear and dependence on neighbors. Nor should we think that beings which are at the same time conglomerations of fire possess blessedness and voluntarily take on these movements. But we must observe all the majesty associated with all the names which we apply to such conceptions, if they give rise to no belief conflicting with majesty. Otherwise the conflict itself will give rise to the greatest mental disquiet. (tr. Long & Sedley)
(1) Again, we must believe that the nature of the gods necessarily enjoys immortal life in deepest peace, far removed and separated from our affairs. (2) Free from all pain, free from all dangers, powerful in its own resources, needing nothing from us, it is neither won by good services nor touched by anger. ... (3) For if you think that the gods care for human affairs, you will already be involving yourself in all kinds of difficulties. (tr. Long & Sedley)
You cannot, likewise, believe that the holy abodes of the gods are in any region of our world. For the gods' nature is so tenuous and far-removed from our senses that it is scarcely viewed by the mind. Since it escapes the touch and impact of our hands, it cannot have contact with anything which we can touch. For what cannot itself be touched, cannot touch. Hence their abodes too must be unlike ours, in keeping with their tenuous bodies. This I will prove to you at length later on. (tr. Long & Sedley)
An easier task now is to explain what cause spread the authority of the gods through the wide world, filled the cities with altars, and led to the institution of the holy rituals which now flourish in great states and places. These even now are the source of the awe which sits in mortal men's hearts, which raises new shrines to the gods all over the world, and which compels them to join the rites on holy days. The reason is that already in those days the races of mortal men used to see with waking mind, and even more so in their dreams, figures of gods, of marvelous appearance and prodigious size. They attributed sensation to them, because they seemed to move their limbs, and to give utterance with voices of a dignity to match their splendid appearance and great strength. They endowed them with everlasting life, because their appearance was in perpetual supply and the form remained unchanged, and more generally because they supposed that beings with such strength could not easily be overcome by any force. And hence they supposed them to be supremely blessed, because none of them seemed oppressed by fear of death, and also because in their dreams they saw them perform many marvelous acts with no trouble to themselves. Also, they saw how the patterns of heavenly motion and the various seasons of the year came round in a fixed order, and were unequal to discovering the causes which brought this about. They therefore took refuge in the practice of attributing it all to the gods and making everything be controlled by their authority. And they located the gods' abodes and precincts in the heavens, because it is through the heavens that night and moon are seen to rotate -- moon, day, night and her stern beacons, the sky's night-wandering torches and flying flames, clouds, sun, rain, snow, winds, lightning, hail, sudden noises, and mighty menacing rumbles. Unhappy human race, to attribute such behaviour, and bitter wrath too, to the gods! What lamentations did they lay up for themselves in those days, what wounds for us, what tears for our descendants! It is no piety to be seen with covered head bowing again and again to a stone and visiting every altar, nor to grovel on the ground and raise your hands before the shrines of the gods, nor to drench altars in the blood of animals, nor to utter strings of prayers; but rather, to be able to contemplate all things with a tranquil mind. For when we gaze upwards at the heavenly precincts of the great cosmos and at the aether studded with its shimmering stars, and when we turn our thought to the paths of sun and moon, then in our hearts, already beset with other troubles, a further anxiety is awakened and begins to raise its head, that what confronts us may be some unbounded power, belonging to the gods, which turns the gleaming stars on their various courses. For the lack of an explanation drives the mind to wonder whether the world had any beginning, and likewise whether there is any limit to the period for which its walls can bear the strain of this restless motion, or whether they are divinely endowed with everlasting immunity and can glide down the unending track of measureless time, defying its might. Besides, whose mind does not shrink with fear of the gods, whose limbs do not crawl with terror, whenever the ground is scorched and shaken by the quivering impact of a thunderbolt and rumblings sweep across the great heavens? Do not whole nations tremble, and proud kings shrink, transfixed with fear of the gods, lest the grim hour of reckoning should have arrived for some wicked act or proud word? (tr. Long & Sedley)
Unless you expel these ideas from your mind and drive far away beliefs unworthy of the gods and alien to their tranquility, the holy divinity of the gods, damaged by you, will frequently do you harm: not because of the possibility of violating the gods' supreme power, and of their consequent angry thirst for bitter vengeance, but because you yourself will imagine that those tranquil and peaceful beings are rolling mighty billows of wrath against you. You will be unable to visit the shrines of the gods with a calm heart, and incapable of receiving with tranquility and peace the images from their holy bodies which travel into men's minds to reveal the gods' appearance. The direct effect on your life is obvious. (tr. Long & Sedley)
[Prodicus, Diagoras, and Critias were among the figures of the ancient world most associated with denying or explaining away the gods. Epicurus condemning them as "crazy" is direct evidence that he did not consider himself one of their number.]
Likewise in book XII [of Epicurus' On nature] he criticizes Prodicus, Diagoras, Critias and others, calling them crazy, and compares them to people in a Bacchic frenzy. (tr. Long & Sedley)
[Velleius] Anyone who reflects how ungrounded and rash these [non-Epicurean theological] doctrines are ought to revere Epicurus and place him among the very beings whom this investigation concerns. For he alone saw, first, that the gods existed, because nature herself had imprinted the conception of them in all men's minds. For what human nation or race does not have, without instruction, some preconception of the gods? Epicurus' word for this is prolepsis, that is what we may call a delineation of a thing, preconceived by the mind, without which understanding, inquiry and discussion are impossible. The power and value of this reasoning we have learned from Epicurus' heaven-sent book on the yardstick and criterion. Thus you see the foundation of this inquiry admirably laid. For since the belief has not been established by any convention, custom or law, and retains unanimous consent, it must necessarily be understood that there are gods, given that we have ingrained, or rather innate, knowledge of them. But that on which all men's nature agrees must necessarily be true. Therefore it must be conceded that there are gods. Since this is agreed among virtually all - the uneducated, as well as philosophers - let us also allow the following to be agreed: that what I called our preconception, or prenotion, of the gods (for new things require new names, just as Epicurus himself gave prolepsis its name, a name which no one had previously applied to it) is such that we think the gods blessed and immortal. For as well as giving us a delineation of the gods themselves, nature has also engraved on our minds the view of them as everlasting and blessed. Therefore Epicurus' well-known maxim puts it rightly: 'That which is blessed and imperishable neither suffers nor inflicts trouble, and therefore is affected neither by anger nor by favor. For all such things are marks of weakness.' If our sole purpose were to worship the gods in piety and to be freed from superstition, what I have said would suffice. For the sublime nature of the gods would earn men's pious worship, since what ever ranks supreme deserves reverence. And all fear of the gods' power and anger would have been expelled. For it is understood that anger and favor are not part of a blessed and immortal nature, and that once these are removed no fears of those above menace us. But in order to confirm this belief the mind requires to know god's shape, way of life and mode of thought. As regards their shape, we have the advice of nature, plus the proof of reasoning. For nature supplies us all, whatever our race, with no other view of the gods than as human in form: what other form does anyone ever think of, whether awake or in sleep? But lest we appeal exclusively to primary conceptions, we have the same conclusion on the authority of reason itself. For given that it seems fitting for that nature which is most sublime, whether because blessed or because everlasting, to be also the most beautiful, what configuration of limbs or features, what shape, what appearance can be more beautiful than the human kind? At any rate, your people [the Stoics], Lucilius, make it their habit (unlike my friend Cotta [the Academic], whose stance varies) when illustrating god's artistic creativity, to describe how all the features of the human figure are well-fashioned not only for utility but also for beauty. But if the human figure is superior to all other shapes of animate beings, and god is animate, he certainly possesses that figure which is most beautiful of all. And since the gods are agreed to be supremely blessed, and since no one can be blessed without virtue, and virtue is impossible without reason, and reason can exist only in the human form, it must be admitted that the gods are of human appearance. However, that appearance is not body but quasi-body, and it does not have blood but quasi-blood. (Although these discoveries of Epicurus' are too acute, and his words too subtle, to be appreciated by just anyone, I am relying on your powers of understanding and expounding them more briefly than my case requires.) Epicurus, who not only sees hidden and profoundly obscure things with his mind but even handles them as if they were at his fingertips, teaches that the force and nature of the gods is of such a kind that it is, primarily, viewed not by sensation but by the m in d, possessing neither the kind of solidity n or the numerical distinctness of those things which because of their concreteness he calls steremnia; but that we apprehend images by their similarity and by a process of transition, since an endless series of extremely similar images arises from the countless atom s and flows to the gods, and that our mind, by focusing intently on those images with the greatest feelings of pleasure, gains an understanding of what a blessed and everlasting nature is. (tr. Long & Sedley)
The same reply can be made to Epicurus' belief that the idea of gods arose from dream impressions of human-shaped images. For why should these have given rise to the idea of gods, rather than of outsized men? And in general it will be possible to reply to all the doctrines we have listed that men's idea of god is not based on mere largeness in a human-shaped animal, but includes his being blessed and imperishable and wielding the greatest power in the world. But from what origin, or how, these thoughts occurred among the first men to draw a conception of god, is not explained by those who attribute the cause to dream impressions and to the orderly motion of the heavenly bodies. To this they reply that the idea of god's existence originated from appearances in dreams, or from the world's phenomena, but that the idea of god's being everlasting and imperishable and perfect in happiness arose through a process of transition from men. For just as we acquired the idea of a Cyclops by enlarging the common man in our impression of him, so too we have started with the idea of a happy man, blessed with his full complement of goods, then intensified these features into the idea of god, their supreme fulfillment. And again, having formed an impression of a long-lived man, the men of old increased the time-span to infinity by combining the past and future with the present; and then, having thus arrived at the conception of the everlasting, they said that god was everlasting too. Those who say this are championing a plausible doctrine. But they easily slip into that most puzzling trap, circularity. For in order first to get the idea of a happy man, and then that of god by transition, we must have an idea of what happiness is, since the idea of the happy man is of one who shares in happiness. But according to them happiness (eudaimonia) was a divine (daimonia) and godly nature, and the word 'happy' (eudaimon) was applied to someone who had his deity (daimon) disposed well (eu). Hence in order to grasp human happiness we must first have the idea of god and deity, but in order to have the idea of god we must first have a conception of a happy man. Therefore each, by presupposing the idea of the other, is unthinkable for us. (tr. Long & Sedley)
In other works he [Epicurus] says that the gods are seen by reason, some numerically distinct, others with formal unity, resulting from a continuous influx of similar images to the same place, and human in form. (tr. Long & Sedley)
... nor, by Zeus, when someone or other speaks instead like this: 'I fear all the gods whom I revere, and wish to make all the burnt offerings and dedications to them.' For although such a person may sometimes be more sophisticated than other individuals, there is not yet, along these lines either, a firm basis for piety. My friend, consider it a matter of supreme blessedness to have discriminated properly the most excellent thing that we can think of among existing things. Marvel at your discrimination of it, and revere it without fear. (tr. Long & Sedley)
What great pleasure these men [the Epicureans] have, what blessedness they enjoy, when they delight in suffering no evil, grief or pain! Does this not warrant their thinking and saying what they do say, in labelling themselves 'imperishable' and 'equal to gods', and in frenziedly bellowing under the influence of pleasure, because of their superabundance and maximization of goods, that they scorn all else, having alone discovered that great and divine good, the absence of evil! (tr. Long & Sedley)
[Above: tr. Goodwin (1874), Against Epicurean Happiness ("Pleasure Not Attainable"), full surrounding context. Below: the same passage as excerpted by Long & Sedley.]
- Page scan: Plutarch, Against Epicurean Happiness 1091B-C (tr. Goodwin, 1874)
- Page scan: Plutarch, Against Epicurean Happiness 1091B-C (tr. Long & Sedley)
- Online text: Plutarch, That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible (tr. Goodwin, 1874) -- Perseus Digital Library (same translation used for this project's citation clips; search page for exact passage)
[Diogenes of Oinoanda's polemical argument here is that intense religious devotion does not correlate with virtue -- an argument against divine reward and punishment, not an ethnographic claim; the harsh characterization of the two peoples named is the inscription's own rhetorical excess, preserved here as primary evidence rather than endorsed.] A clear indication of the complete inability of the gods to prevent wrongdoings is provided by the nations of the Jews and Egyptians, who, as well as being the most superstitious of all peoples, are the most abominable of all peoples. (Smith)
But Epicurus thinks that men derived the conception of God from the presentations received in sleep; "for," says he, "when great images of human shape impressed them during sleep, they supposed that some such Gods of human shape really existed." (Bury)
[Compare Outlines of Pyrrhonism I.155: "whereas it is our habit to pray to the gods for good things, Epicurus declares that the Divinity pays no heed to us."]
Some, too, hold that he cares for human affairs, others that he does not so care; for Epicurus declares that "what is blessed and incorruptible neither feels trouble itself nor causes it to others." (Bury)
For just as a clap of thunder -- as the Epicurean fraternity declare -- does not betoken the epiphany of a god, though supposed to do so by ignorant and superstitious folk, since a similar clap is produced by other bodies clashing together in the same way, as by a mill-stone revolving or the clapping of hands, so likewise in the case of musical tunes it is not by nature that some are of this kind and others of that kind, but it is we ourselves who suppose them to be such. (Bury)