Links to the sections of the Rackham translation:
Thanks Tau Phi! I had heard of the Downloebables website but not that one.
From the Rackham edition intro - this is interesting - I have read the slashing and burning attack on Stoicism in the latter parts of On Ends - so what explains the discrepancy, and what was Cicero's true opinion?
This book consists of six short essays setting out the most striking ethical doctrines of the Stoic school of philosophy : that virtue is the sole good, and the sole requisite for happiness; that all good deeds are equally meritorious and all bad deeds equally heinous; that folly is insanity and slavery, wisdom the only freedom and the only riches. In other writings Cicero criticizes these doctrines as extravagant and pedantic — see especially De Finibus iv. 74-77 and Pro Murena 60-66 ; but in his preface here, § 4, he expresses his warm acceptance of them.
Thank you for posting this Matteng! This is not something I recall running into recently, and I think it will serve as a very good thing for us to review. I haven't yet had a chance to read the full article, but I see that the full work being referenced is available in a Rackham translation here, pages 252-305.
As you indicate, we will definitely wish to go through these and discuss what would be the expected Epicurean response to each one. I think we'll likely want to devote one or more podcast episodes to this as well. This list makes it easy to highlight the Stoic-Epicurean divide.
The wikipedia page is here, giving the following summary of the five major propositions, of which on first glance I would say -- just looking at the tities -- that Epicurus would definitely dispute 1, 3, and 6, on their face. The others are also dependent on the meaning attached to the word "virtue," but on first glance I'd say would require more explanation than do 1, 3, and 6, which I'd say are flatly wrong on their face. I am very tempted to put 2 in the same category as flatly wrong, but a complete discussion of it would require going through PD05.
In this book Cicero presents the Stoic classifications of what elements of life are genuinely good, and what elements are not good. There are three different qualities of something being genuinely good: righteousness (rectum), intrinsic honor or nobility (honestum), and intrinsic virtue (cum virtute). This can be understood as the inner person, and the choices and actions that they engage in.
Pleasure and wealth cannot be genuine goods because they lack the crucial properties that a genuine good should have.[3] Genuine goods should satisfy desire and make their possessor happy.[3] Spurious or apparent goods do not satisfy desires, but rather, arouse yet more desire, as well as fear that one might lose these things that they presently possess.[3] Cicero also argues that something cannot be a good if an evil person can possess it.[3] Thus wealth and pleasure cannot be a genuine good.[3]
Humans alone among all animals possess reason, and this alone allows humans to pursue the good.[5] The good therefore should be defined exclusively in rational terms and thus the moral life should be ordered according to reason.[5]
Virtue is all that is needed for happiness.[8] Happiness depends on a possession which cannot be lost, and this only applies to things within our control.[5]
All good deeds are equally meritorious and all bad deeds equally heinous.[4] All virtues are equal as this corresponds to the same impulse towards the good.[5] Cicero does not attempt to defend the Stoic position of the moral equality of all offenses; instead he offers a weakened version that offenses of the same sort are equal.[3] He notes the Stoic position that all crimes are equal since they all involve the same intent to break the law, but he then argues that crimes do not bear the same penalty since the matter depends on the status of the person injured and that of the criminal.[5] Thus he ends up imposing gradations of vice based on external factors.[5]
There is a substantial lacuna at the beginning of this section.[3] The remaining part argues that every fool is an exile and the wise person cannot be harmed.[3] Cicero attacks an unnamed personal enemy for causing his exile.[5] The essay is thought to be a thinly veiled attack on Cicero's enemy Clodius.[4] Cicero asserts that his own exile was not a hardship since he possessed the correct Stoic wisdom and virtue.[5]
Only the sage is free and every fool is a slave.[8] Cicero attacks an unnamed military leader who is unworthy of command because he cannot control his passions and thus is not free.[5] The target here may be Lucullus.[4] Cicero satirizes costly luxury and affectation of connoisseurship in collecting works of art.[4] Freedom involves the rational control of one's will. Only the sage is free since he freely chooses the good.[5]
If a rich person's wealth is measured by the quantity of their goods, then a wealthy person with no virtue is poor, since virtue is the only good.[3] People confuse reasonable needs with unreasonable desires and this leads people in power to pursue irrational passions.[5]
Alternate Translation by Cyrus Edmonds:
Cyrus Edmonds commentary on Stoicism from this text page 264:
The ethical doctrines of the Stoics have attracted most attention, as exhibited in the lives of distinguished Greeks and Romans. To live according to nature was the basis of their ethical system ; but by this it was not meant that a man should follow his own particular nature ; he must make his life conformable to the nature of the whole of things. This principle is the foundation of all morality; and it follows that morality is connected with philosophy. To know what is our relation to the whole of things, is to know what we ought to be and to do. This fundamental principle of the Stoics is indisputable, but its application is not always easy, nor did they all agree in their exposition of it. Some things were good, some bad, and some indifferent ; the only good things were virtue; wisdom, justice, temperance, and the like. The truly wise man possesses all knowledge ; he is perfect and sufficient in himself ; he despises all that subjects to its power the rest of mankind ; he feels pain, but he is not conquered by it. But the morality of the Stoics, at least in the later periods, though it rested on a basis apparently so sound, permitted the wise man to do nearly everything that he liked. Such a system, it has been well observed, might do for the imaginary wise man of the Stoics ; but it was not a system whose general adoption was compatible with the existence of any actual society.
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And I disagree that there is (or can be) some non-contextual definition of “happiness” that can be applied except in the most abstract of cases.
Which leads to the question: Do we stop trying, or do we simply define our terms as we think best, such as "believe that a god is a living being blessed and imperishable" or "by pleasure we mean the absence of pain."
I think Epicurus is with you, and that he therefore - rather than give up or give in to false presumptions - determined that he was going to state his own terms to explain the answer to contentious questions.
I therefore think Dons "subjective wellbeing" helps explain the issue, but in Epicurean terms Epicurus decided the best term for this either is or falls under "pleasure."
Cute comment by Cicero:
The method which I pursued in other volumes, those on the Nature of the Gods, and also in those which I have published on Divination, was that of setting out a continuous discourse both for and against, to enable each student to accept for himself the view that seems to him most probable; but I was prevented by accident from adopting it in the present discussion on the subject of Fate.
I am setting up this thread in preparation for devoting one or more episodes of the Lucretius Today podcast to the sections of this work devoted to attacking Epicurus. I'd like to add here quotes that are relevant either to Epicurus directly or to issues where Cicero is directly contradicting Epicurus. This collection will then be used to develop the outline for the podcasts devoted to this topic.
A transcribed copy of the Yonge edition is here. I would also like to add a link to the most recent public domain version of the Loeb edition.
Episode 259 - Epicurean Ethics Reexamined (Based on Excerpts From Cicero's "Tusculum Disputations")
First of a multipart series to go through the Epicurean Section of this work - excerpts to be posted below:
Episode 258 - The Epicurean View of Divination (Including References to Cicero's Discussion of the Epicurean Position In His "On Divination"
This will be a single episode to go through the Epicurean Section of this work - excerpts to be posted below:
This text comes from Lacus Curtius, which reproduces a Book of the De Divinatione by Cicero published in the Loeb Classical Library, 1923 Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, vol. XX, 1923; Latin texts with facing English translations by W[illiam] A[rmistead] Falconer.
Episode 257 - The Epicurean View of Fate (Including References to Cicero's Discussion of the Epicurean Position In His "On Fate"
This will be a single episode to go through the Epicurean Section of this work - excerpts to be posted below:
[18] If the form of the statement had been 'Scipio will die by violence in his bedroom at night,' the statement in that form would have been a true one, for it would have been a statement that a thing was going to happen that was going to happen, and that it was going to happen is a necessary inference from the fact that it did happen. Neither was 'Scipio will die' any truer than 'Scipio will die in that manner,' nor was it more inevitable for Scipio to die than it was for him to die in that manner, nor was it more impossible for the statement 'Scipio has been murdered' to change from a truth to a falsehood than for the statement Scipio will be murdered'; nor, these things being so, is there any reason for Epicurus's standing in terror of fate and seeking protection against it from the atoms and making them swerve out of the perpendicular? and entertaining simultaneously two utterly inexplicable propositions, one that something takes place without a cause — from which it will follow that something comes out of nothing, which neither Epicurus nor any natural philosopher allows —, the other that when two atoms are travelling through empty space one moves in a straight line and the other swerves.
[19] For it is not necessary for Epicurus to fear lest, when he admits that every proposition is either true or false, all events must necessarily be caused by fate; for the truth of a proposition of the form 'Carneades will go down to the Academy' is not due to an eternal stream of natural and necessary causation, and yet nevertheless it is not uncaused, but there is a difference between causes accidentally precedent [by chance] and causes intrinsically containing a natural efficiency. Thus it is the case both that the statement 'Epicurus will die in the archonship of Pytharatus, at the age of seventy-two,' was always true, and also that nevertheless there were no fore-ordained causes why it should so happen, but, because it did so fall out, it was certainly going to befall by a definite series of causes.
[20] Moreover those who say that things that are going to be are immutable and that a true future event cannot be changed into a false one, are not asserting the necessity of fate but explaining the meaning of terms; whereas those who bring in an everlasting series of causes rob the human mind of freewill and fetter it in the chains of a fated necessity.
X. "But enough of these subjects; let us examine others. For Chrysippus argues thus: If uncaused motion exists, it will not be the case that every proposition (termed by the logicians an axioma) is either true or false, for a thing not possessing efficient causes will be neither true nor false; but every proposition is either true or false; therefore uncaused motion does not exist.
[21] If this is so, all things that take place take place by precedent causes; if this is so, all take place by fate; it therefore follows that all things that take place take place by fate.' At this point, in the first place if I chose to agree with Epicurus and to say that not every proposition is either true or false, I would rather suffer that nasty knock than agree that all events are caused by fate; for the former opinion has something to be said for it, but the latter is intolerable. Accordingly Chrysippus exerts every effort to prove the view that every axioma is either true or false. For just as Epicurus is afraid that if he admits this he will also have to admit that all events whatever are caused by fate (on the ground that if either of two alternatives is true from all eternity, that alternative is also certain, and if it is certain it is also necessary. This, he thinks, would prove both necessity and fate), similarly Chrysippus fears that if he fails to maintain that every proposition is either true or false he will not carry his point that all things happen by fate and spring from eternal causes governing future events.
[22] But Epicurus thinks that the necessity of fate is avoided by the swerve of an atom; and so in addition to gravity and impact there arises a third form of motion, when the atom swerves sideways a minimal space (termed by Epicurus elachiston). Also he is compelled to profess in reality, if not quite explicitly, that this swerve takes place without cause; for the atom does not swerve in consequence of being struck by another atom, since how can impact between them take place if they are indivisible bodies travelling perpendicularly in straight lines by the force of gravity, as Epicurus holds? but it follows that if one is never driven aside by another, one will never even meet another; the consequence is that, even granting that the atom exists and that it swerves, the swerve is uncaused.
[23] "The reason why Epicurus brought in this theory was his fear lest, if the atom were always carried along by the natural and necessary force of gravity, we should have no freedom whatever, since the movement of the mind was controlled by the movement of the atom. The author of the atomic theory, Democritus, preferred to accept the view that all events are caused by necessity, rather than to deprive the atoms of their natural motions.
XI. Carneades showed greater insight: his doctrine was that the school of Epicurus could have maintained its cause without this fictitious swerve. For it would have been better for the dogma of the possibility of some voluntary movement of the mind to be maintained than for them to introduce the swerve, especially as they were unable to invent a cause for it; and by maintaining that dogma they could easily have withstood Chrysippus, for in admitting that no motion is uncaused they would not have been admitting that all events are due to antecedent causes, as they would have said that there are no external and antecedent causes of our volition.
Welcome to Episode 256 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, now that we have completed Book 1 of Cicero's "On the Nature of The Gods," we are going to complete our series on the Epicurean gods by addressing a common question: Did Epicurus think that his gods had real physical existence?
We are bridging over from the following contained at the very end of Book One of On The Nature of The Gods:
XLIV. ...
But Epicurus, you say, has written a book concerning sanctity. A trifling performance by a man whose wit is not so remarkable in it, as the unrestrained license of writing which he has permitted himself; for what sanctity can there be if the Gods take no care of human affairs? Or how can that nature be called animated which neither regards nor performs anything? Therefore our friend Posidonius has well observed, in his fifth book of the Nature of the Gods, that Epicurus believed there were no Gods, and that what he had said about the immortal Gods was only said from a desire to avoid unpopularity. He could not be so weak as to imagine that the Deity has only the outward features of a simple mortal, without any real solidity; that he has all the members of a man, without the least power to use them—a certain unsubstantial pellucid being, neither favorable nor beneficial to any one, neither regarding nor doing anything. There can be no such being in nature; and as Epicurus said this plainly, he allows the Gods in words, and destroys them in fact; and if the Deity is truly such a being that he shows no favor, no benevolence to mankind, away with him! For why should I entreat him to be propitious? He can be propitious to none, since, as you say, all his favor and benevolence are the effects of imbecility.
Lucretius Today Episode 255 is now available: "CIcero's Cotta Argues That Epicurean Gods Are As Despicable As Are Epicureans Themselves"
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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.
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The quest and desire for "meaning" is brought about by feeling vexation and dissatisfaction with one's life.
I would say that the decision to seek "meaning" rather than happiness is directly related to buying in, or being browbeaten, into thinking that pleasure and happiness are disreputable goals. The ancients didn't talk about "meaning" because they still had the intellectual integrity to see that the issue is between virtue, a type of Idealism, and happiness caused by pleasure, which is what Nature gives us.
That's why I like the teachings of Epicureanism on how to cultivate a good life: they are tangible and "real", not based on some abstraction or transcendence. Sensations are here and now, being way more reliable than abstract concepts.
I definitely agree with that as to transcendence, and as to "abstractions" I have used that formulation myself.
i write to talk about the meaning of "abstractions" probably not being clear enough would explanation. Mental pleasure is certainly recognized by Epicurus as being as much, or more, significant to us than "bodily" pleasures (the quotes are because all pleasures are ultimately of the body, and yet it is useful to distinguish the five senses from what we are talking about as "mental").
I think what we are concerned mostly about in attacking the writer's concept of meaningfulness is that he and many others are postulating that there is some 'higher' (transcendent) set of values that override the values of real living people. That's simply untrue - false - wishful thinking, and needs to be refuted as such.
On the other hand, there are mental pleasures - friendship would be one - that are extremely important to us, and are not to be dismissed because they are "abstract." I've probably been "guilty" in earlier years here on the forum of calling the problem "abstractions" when I probably should have called the problem "idealism" or "transcendentalism" or similar wording. Maybe there are even better words to describe what we are talking about, but the issue i think is, as you say, the "here and now" which is important to us, and not fictionalized idealism. The term "abstractions" probably includes feelings that are indeed real to us in the here and now, so we have to sort out whether they arise from things that are true and real (the reality of nature, including human nature) vs those things that are purely invented in our minds (the idealism of the supernatural and the idea that some things transcend nature).
....more science details:
While I certainly am interested in the latest science, I wouldn't want us to go in that direction primarily. We need to understand where Epicurus was going because his view of death is going to relate to his view of life and how to spend it, as well as his views on reductionism/skepticism. The issue is not how long it takes our bodies to irreversibly decompose, the issue is whether after that period of time (no matter how long it is) we have "souls" which continue to live on in perpetuity.
Again, congratulations on some very good work.
As to the comments I made on PD02 in general, I moved them over here:
It would be more prudent to express the idea that "Those who have died are definitely not experiencing an afterlife."
Yes I definitely think that's the primary take-home point of the whole thing, as per what is said in the letter to Menoeceus:
Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality.
The tricky part to me is that PD02 seems to be focusing on deprivation of sensation in a somewhat different way than the letter - making a deeper point about the relationship between sensation and being alive.
I don't think we've addressed the question, sort of like the sorites question, of "How many faculties can you subtract from a human and still have something that is alive? I tend to think that "sensation" is sometimes being used not only to refer to the five senses but also to pain and pleasure and prolepsis.
Can you still have pain or pleasure or prolepsis without having any of the five bodily senses? I think it makes a considerable difference whether the answer is (A) once the five senses are gone you are dead or (B once the five senses AND pain and pleasure AND prolepsis is gone you are dead.
The implication of the standard translation of that last clause as "and that which lacks perception in no way exists for us" may tend to make some people think that any absence of all of the five senses equals death, but I am not sure at all that that is correct unless we also specify that feeling (pain and pleasure) and prolepsis are also gone. Being "unconscious" might suspend the five senses, but would not equal a state that is "nothingness" in the same way that death would. Or would it?
Opinions on any of that?
Following up on my comment in post 16 above, I see that there are a couple of translations in the list that Kalosyni cited that seem to me to make more sentence (especially in the last portion) than the dominant version that we usually see. These two (especially Anderson) strike me as better conveying what would appear to be the intended meaning:
“Death is nothing to us, because dissolution means unconsciousness and unconsciousness is nothing to us.” De Witt, St. Paul and Epicurus 187 (1954)
““Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.” Anderson (2004)
