Where Is Epicurus In The "School of Athens"?

Quote from Nate

especially when we consider that Epicurean literature was just re-discovered

Nate that takes us to the issue of Cicero's works and also Diogenes Laertius. I think '"on ends" in the torquatus narrative especially gives a pretty full view of Epicurean philosophy, and I am also thinking that diogenes Laertius was never fully lost, and that a lot of the church fathers continued to study and speak Greek (Elli will say that's obvious, and I am sure it is).

So if we are trying to be rigorous i think we would want to verify the situation with DIogenes Laertius, and I am not understanding that there is an allegation that that was ever "lost" like Lucretius allegedly was.

Does anyone have data on the history of Cicero's works and Laertius?

And that doesn't include Lucian, who we probably ought also to correlate.

My view (admittedly without hard evidence) is that what we're taking as "lost" and "rediscovered" needs to be examined closely too, because I would think that even historians acting in good faith (which not all of them I would grant that to) would not have a good way of canvasing all the available sources to determine who knew what and when. I would see that as almost as much guesswork as anything we're discussing ourselves in putting names to faces in the fresco.

Along the same lines, I am thinking that we really ought to be focusing on the history of the transmission of Diogenes Laertius much more than we focus on Lucretius. As much as I love Lucretius and find that story of his influence to be fascinating and fun, the great bulk of epicurean ideas are in Diogenes Laertius, and Lucretius just provides additional detail which really doesn't change much. If you consider that Cicero preserved reference to the swerve to add to what is in the letter to herodotus, you really have virtually all of the important physics, epistemology, and ethics without needing Lucretius.

And although I would expect Latin was more widespread than Greek, it's my impression that the church scholars were almost as much fluent in Greek as in Latin, so the language barrier would have been little obstacle. And Laertius is such an amazing and fun book to read, i would expect (until corrected otherwise) that i would have been distributed about as widely as any other book on ancient philosophy.

I could be wrong about some of those points but transmission through Laertius really seems to me to be the key to getting a better perspective on what was "lost" and whether much of it ever really was in need of "rediscovery."

Is there any reason to think at all that Laertius was ever out of circulation after it's date of writing in the 200's AD?

We have a couple of recent translations, including a Cambridge version and the Mensch version. I am skimming through the preface material in both but I don't see anything in them to indicate that there would be any issue of gaps or rediscoveries in their transmission.

Quote from Don

"The evidence we can observe does not contradict any of these different theories."

Just playing with words here to perhaps be more clear:

These different theories are possible because they each have clear evidence to support them and they are not contradicted by any clear evidence. But because we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that any of them are certainly the only explanation, it is not proper to say that only one is valid."

Or more concisely: Several theories have supporting evidence and, since they are not clearly contradicted by other evidence, it is improper to say that only one theory among them is true.

It would be good for us to really figure out the most accurate way of giving a general statement of this multiple possibility theorem. it needs to be clear that we realize that the theories can contradict each other or be mutually exclusive, so that means that the arguments that support them contradict each other. And that also means that we're separating out and distinguishing "evidence" from "arguments." Further, some evidence can be more clear than other evidence (the tower seen at a distance vs. up close).

So arguments are not the same as evidence. We probably understand what "arguments" mean (maybe not). But what is "evidence?" Is the phrase "evidence we can observe" redundant? How can we define "clear evidence?"

Quote from elli

Finally, I would like to ask you this: if you were the responsible organizers of an epicurean Symposium… what would you do with these of my thoughts in the text?

Sounds like a possible reference to actual events in a certain Mediterranean country!

I think the Rorschach test analogy is a good one. Another example i know of from distant past reading is Ayn Rand's "Night of January 16th," a courtroom drama where she wrote a play with evidence in a murder trial evenly balanced, and a live jury during the play. Her point was that how you judged the evidence said more about your values as a juror/reader than anything else, since there wasn't a clear "right" answer. We could do much the same thing here in terms of "What does your view of Epicurus' location in the School of Athens say about your views of Epicurus?"

So I think this exercise and the presentation of this dispute in a Symposium / lecture / presentation is an outstanding idea. It would let the presenter discuss the many of the basics that are essential to understanding Epicurus:

• How he relates to other philosophers philosophically
• How he relates to them in history / time
• What he looked like
• How he has been treated and dealt with by his opponents
• Etc....

"Where Is Epicurus in the School of Athens?" would be a visual and dramatic and easily-understandable introduction to the whole philosophy!

This is crying out to be done not just as a symposium for the academics but as a video to the world, Elli, and you are the perfect person to spearhead it!

Like a lot of things we all have too little time and too few resources to do what needs to be done, but this issue and a possible project from it strikes me as being one of the best ideas that anyone could pursue. And given that the visual material is already prepared for us, technically it shouldn't be THAT hard to put together. Most of the video would be just panning from location to location on the fresco.

Quote from Nate

Does anyone have a single source which mentions any historical figure who would have been familiar with Epicurean philosophy in the Late Middle Ages?

I cannot name one. However, IF we presume that there were educated monks throughout Europe who had access to Latin and Greek texts that included Cicero's works and Diogenes Laertius, then we would deduce that MANY people, even if not "historical figures," were familiar with Epicurean principles in an unbroken stream throughout history. As for their being historical record of them, that analysis would have to include the oppressive intellectual atmosphere which would have given strong motivation for most fans of Epicurus to keep quiet.

Quote from Nate

In the 13th century, Danté mentions contemporary "Epicureans" by reputation, but fails to name any Epicurean teachers or writers. Our next recorded mention of Epicurean philosophy is several hundred years later, at the beginning of the Renaissance.

Again I would expect that from 500 AD for at least a thousand years, people who were fans of Epicurus through Cicero or DL would be highly motivated to keep their opinions to themselves. I can't quickly find a good reference to Pelagius being an overt Epicurean, but I do see this, so it would not be surprising if throughout church history anyone who failed to toe the line would be labeled an Epicurean, with the intelligent class fully understanding what that meant:

Quote

I have often wondered how Luther would assess our own age and the state of the church today. I suspect if he wrote for our time his book would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Church. I suspect this would be the case because Luther considered the most important book he ever wrote to be his classic magnum opus, The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio). This work focused on the issue of the enslaved will of man as a result of original sin. It was a response to the Diatribe of Desiderius Erasmus, of Rotterdam. In the translator’s introduction to this work it is said that Luther “saw Erasmus as an enemy of God and the Christian religion, an Epicurean and a serpent, and he was not afraid to say so.”

I think Luther would see the great threat to the church today in terms of Pelagianism because of what transpired after the Reformation. Historians have said that though Luther won the battle with Erasmus in the sixteenth century he lost it in the seventeenth century and was demolished in the eighteenth century by the conquest achieved by the Pelagianism of the Enlightenment. He would see the church today as being in the grasp of Pelagianism with this adversary of the faith having a stranglehold on us.

Quote from Nate

All publicly-identifiable busts of Epicurus in the 21st-century were buried in the 16th.

If you're referring to the standard view of those busts we trace today, yes. I have no evidence I can point to to dispute that, but I do continue to think that this modern consensus is highly unlikely to be accurate.

Quote from Nate

, rather than as a unique exception to the prevailing trend, that Epicurean philosophy was functionally neglected for 300 years.

And the key word there is "neglected." As referenced above I would think otherwise - I would think that it was continuously held up as a heresy for the entire time, and in order for that label to work people had to know what it meant, and the likely availability of a tremendous amount of material through Diogenes Laertius and through Cicero would have been a lot of information with which they would work.

The more I think about it, the less I really think that Lucretius adds much more than extra detail to what would already have been known through DL and Cicero.

This would be another good symposium topic like the fresco itself, but I think a strong argument can be made for the proposition (great for one of those formal public debates!):

"A basic and accurate outline of the major points of Epicurean philosophy was never 'lost' to the west, and the contention that it was only the "rediscovery" of Lucretius that gave Epicurean philosophy a new lease on life is Academic (establishment) propaganda aimed at marginalizing the significance of Epicurus in history."

Collecting the church father references would be a great thing to do in itself. I don't know how much (if any) of the physics and epistemology they preserved, or whether they just stuck with discussing his alleged atheism and no life after death and preference for "pleasure." Even those three would give a pretty decent picture, but it would be interesting to know how much of the rest they also discussed.

Nate's points are certainly well taken and I suspect we see more and more of that today.

However (again with no particular evidence to point to) my impression is that the level of scholarship at the point Raphael was painting, and of the people for whom Raphael was painting, was far higher than it is today on these subjects. I have the impression that if you had any position of stature at all within the church you had to be extremely fluent in Latin and Greek, and so you would have been reading the church fathers, Cicero, and indeed probably Diogenes Laertius (if you were advanced enough) in the originals with a fluency we could hardly reproduce today. So my bet (again, just speculation) is that the level of scholarship invested in this painting was the highest that the church could produce, and I suspect it could produce some very high scholarship indeed.

Elli: As for the next step, I think we are hoping / waiting to be inspired by a video of your voice narrating us through the School of Athens!

Mainly using the Ken Burns effect - just focusing on one character after another but always sweeping out to the big picture!

Oh yes Elli, Nate could probably do great with the video, but would he have your golden Greek voice straight from Aphrodite?

I am afraid not!

Never underestimate the motivating power of Epicureans listening for wisdom and instruction from Aphrodite!