Episode 152 - "Epicurus And His Philosophy" Part 08 - The New Education 01

I cannot recall the recent context when this came up, but here is that quote from Confessions of St. Augustine:

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To Thee be praise, glory to Thee, Fountain of mercies. I was becoming more miserable, and Thou nearer. Thy right hand was continually ready to pluck me out of the mire, and to wash me thoroughly, and I knew it not; nor did anything call me back from a yet deeper gulf of carnal pleasures, but the fear of death, and of Thy judgment to come; which amid all my changes, never departed from my breast. And in my disputes with my friends Alypius and Nebridius of the nature of good and evil, I held that Epicurus had in my mind won the palm, had I not believed that after death there remained a life for the soul, and places of requital according to men's deserts, which Epicurus would not believe. And I asked, “were we immortal, and to live in perpetual bodily pleasure, without fear of losing it, why should we not be happy, or what else should we seek?” not knowing that great misery was involved in this very thing, that, being thus sunk and blinded, I could not discern that light of excellence and beauty, to be embraced for its own sake, which the eye of flesh cannot see, and is seen by the inner man. Nor did I, unhappy, consider from what source it sprung, that even on these things, foul as they were, I with pleasure discoursed with my friends, nor could I, even according to the notions I then had of happiness, be happy without friends, amid what abundance soever of carnal pleasures. And yet these friends I loved for themselves only, and I felt that I was beloved of them again for myself only.

O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing! Turned it hath, and turned again, upon back, sides, and belly, yet all was painful; and Thou alone rest. And behold, Thou art at hand, and deliverest us from our wretched wanderings, and placest us in Thy way, and dost comfort us, and say, “Run; I will carry you; yea I will bring you through; there also will I carry you.”

[The passage from Lucretius, Book 1 (regarding a chorale performance at Notre Dame, 2017)]

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Stefan Girardet
(referring to Epicurus:)

Therefore the vivid power of his mind prevailed,
and forth he marched far beyond the flaming walls
of the world, as he traversed the immeasurable
universe in thought and imagination; whence
victorious he returns, bearing his prize: the
knowledge of what can come into being and what
cannot: how each thing has its powers limited
and its deep-set boundary mark. Therefore
Superstition is now in turn cast down and
trampled underfoot—a victory that exalts us
to heaven.
—Lucretius, De rerum natura I: 172-75 —after Loeb Classical Library

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Quote Therefore the lively power of his mind prevailed,

and forth he marched far beyond the flaming walls

of the world, as he traversed the immeasurable

universe in thought and imagination;

whence victorious he returns bearing his prize, the

knowledge what can come into being,

what can not, in a word, how each thing has its powers limited

and its deep-set boundary mark. Therefore

Superstition is now in her turn cast down and

trampled underfoot, whilst we by the victory are exalted

high as heaven.

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(The un-amended Loeb text, for comparison)

This passage is one that will come up on next week's podcast, so it's actually good to get a chance to address a few points here. There are three key issues that complicate a simple reading of the text. We know from Thoreau's journal that he read the first hundred lines of Lucretius and then moved on--his only comment on the text or the poet is in reference to this passage, which he cites as a good description of Prometheus. This is probably not obtuseness on his part--it's exactly the kind of layered texture and metaphorical posture--allowing for open interpretation--that poetry is known for, which is presumably why Epicurus has so little time for it. But it's worth mentioning because of what comes next.

After Epicurus seizes a boon for mankind, Lucretius says that with this new knowledge "Superstition" (religio) is "cast down" and "trampled underfoot". The word foot is appropriate, because it is primarily in the footnotes that competing scholars have offered their opinions on that word religio. Superstition? Religion? False religion?

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Lucretius seizes the opportunity of stating that men think things are done by divine power because they do not understand how they happen, whereas he will show how all things are done without the hand of the gods — a bold proposition truly, but one which, translated into modern language, means simply that natural phenomena are subject to definite laws, and are not unintelligible miracles. Lucretius fails to perceive that definite physical laws are consistent with the work of God and the difficulty of reconciling the two ideas, unreal as it seems to us, has been felt by able men even now-a- days, when the conception of divine power is very different from any present to the mind of Lucretius. To most of us the very conception of a law suggests a lawgiver, while he, to prove the existence of laws, thought it necessary to deny the action of beings who could set those laws at nought.

-Fleeming Jenkin, The Atomic Theory of Lucretius, 1868

There is an undercurrent in the western approach to Lucretius to view his rejection of the myths and worship of the pagan gods as containing an important doctrinal Christian truth, but only part of it. In much in the same way, certain Muslim apologists have noticed that the claim "there is no god" is simply the first part of the Shahada.

Then we have the final line: "we by the victory are exalted as high as heaven". This is where the largest shift takes place in the text above. The Notre Dame setting has it: "a victory that exalts us to heaven." Instead of 'as high as heaven', this victory exalts us 'to heaven'.

TL;DR

Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but it would seem to be important to know how these passages can be so easily misread. If 1.) you leave out the preceding passage identifying Epicurus, and if 2.) you say that the problem is merely superstition or false religion, and if 3.) you further suggest that a victory over false religion exalts us "to" heaven, we're suddenly looking at a very different reading of a rather important passage.

Of course, I can have no idea what the actual thought process was at Notre Dame, and I have not listened to the piece itself.

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If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

And here's the quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson!

Those are great quotations Cassius & Joshua !

Part of me still wants to believe that the prolepsis of the divine is at least in part the human capacity to feel wonder and awe in response to both natural (the night sky, Yosemite Valley, etc.) and man-made (inside a cathedral, huge statues of the gods, sweeping music, etc.) things.