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Epicurus Today

Episode 105 - More From Torquatus On The Key Doctrines of Epicurus

Date: 01/19/22
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/2339-episode-one-hundred-five-more-from-torquatus-on-the-key-doctrines-of-epicurus/

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Transcript (Unedited)

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Welcome to episode 105 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius who wrote On the Nature of Things, the only complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. I’m your host Cassius and together with our panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com forum. We’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and we’ll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com where you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics. At this point in our podcast, we’ve completed our review of the poem and we’ve turned to the presentation of Epicurean ethics found in Cicero’s On Ends. Today we return to Torquatus and look more closely at his list of core Epicurean doctrines. Now let’s join Martin reading today’s text. But these doctrines may be stated in a certain manner so as not merely to disarm our criticism, but actually to secure our sanction. For this is the way in which Epicurean represents the wise man as continually happy. He keeps his passions within bounds. Above death he is indifferent. He holds true views concerning the internal gods apart from all dread. He has no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life, if that be the better cause. Furnished with these advantages, he is continually in a state of pleasure and there is in truth no moment at which he does not experience more pleasure than pain. For he remembers the path to thankfulness and the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness. Nor is he in dependence on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present. He is also very far removed from those defects of character, which I quoted a little time ago, and when he compares the fool’s life is his own, he feels great pleasure. And pains, if any, before him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reasons for joy than for vexation. Martin, thank you for reading that for us today. We’ve just been talking before we started recording this episode, and we’re going to attack these passages a little different than we normally would. We would normally read the entire section that we’re aiming to talk about today and then come back and just start at the beginning. But there’s one thing about these passages that I think is worth stressing, and I’m going to go back and retitle the episode so that this is particularly clear. But this section of Torquatus is, in my view, probably one of the best, most authentic, most reliable statements of what’s really important in Epicurean philosophy from the ancient Epicurean’s point of view. And we’re going to be mirroring, and we can talk about this as we go through the episode, but we’ve pointed out in discussions on the forum that there’s a mirror here between what we’re about to discuss and what Diogenes Lortius has preserved in his biography of Epicurus as sort of a list of his doctrines. And we’re going to talk about the wise man, and there’s all sorts of questions about whether these things apply only to the sage or the philosopher or whether it applies to everybody. But the point that I think I would want to emphasize as we start today is that these are the topics that seems like the Epicureans come back to again and again and again as the important things about following the Epicurean worldview or the way of life. And so we can learn a lot if we put off to the side our preconceived notions that Epicureus is just solely about the issue of pleasure and just listen to what they had to say about what they felt was important. Now, as we do that, we’ve just read what is recorded as paragraph 62 or line 62, which is found in section 19, depending on what text you look at as to how the Torquatus material is written. But what we’ve just discussed is the issue of pleasure, and we’re going to talk about this in detail. So this first paragraph of his summary of what’s important does very much, I think, mirror the principle doctrines. It starts out talking about pleasure as the goal of life. And I would suggest what is going on here is it’s almost like he’s planting a flag that in the ancient world and even today, you can divide the philosophies up according to what they really ultimately identify as their symbol or their chosen designation of what life is really about. The Stoics do that with virtue. Plato and Aristotle are pretty much in that same camp of going for virtue. Or you could say Aristotle talks about happiness. But in the end, he’s very close to Plato in how he defines happiness. And then you’ve got the religions that use the flag of God and piety is what they stand for. And the Epicureans, from that perspective, focus on pleasure as the guide of life as opposed to virtue or religion or the gods or reason or logic or something like that. So the first step in this presentation of what’s really important in Epicurean philosophy, just like in the principle doctrines, is to identify how, how it is, how it is, how it is that the intelligent person is going to identify pleasure as the goal or the guide of life. So as we often do, we’re going to talk first about this topic. It’s sort of a summary of what Torquatus has been talking about already. That’s everything we’ve talked about from Torquatus has been aimed at distinguishing pleasure as the goal of life and the guide of life rather than virtue. But as we really settle into this outline, he’s restating the point again with additional detail. So the first substantive sentence of what we’ve just read is that this is the way Epicurus represents the wise man as continually happy. First of all, he keeps his passions within bounds. And let me stop monopolizing the discussion here and throw it to Martin and Joshua on keeping your passions within bounds. Well, I actually want to go back a couple of clauses earlier. I think, Cassius, you’ve given a good introduction to these paragraphs. But I think there’s another thing that could be said here. When you read the ancient Epicureans, you get a sense that there was an anxiety they had about presenting their ideas to other people. And the anxiety stems from an understanding that these doctrines will not be well received by everyone. You know, I’ve been studying this stuff for a number of years now. So for me, this feels like this is putting the best light on things. But not everyone’s going to look at it that way. Not everyone’s going to hear, for example, that there is no afterlife and think that that’s a good thing. And so when I read this first sentence here, I immediately it calls to mind this famous passage from Lucretius, where he’s talking about the sick boy who’s made to take the nauseous wormwood. But in order for him to get it down, you’ve got to daub the rim of the cup with honey. And so this paragraph here where he’s talking about the wise man, this is kind of the honey that makes the bitter medicine go down, isn’t it? This is kind of if it’s been hard for you to take in these doctrines, maybe this will help. Maybe if we present what we view the wise men as being, that’s a kind of honey that’s going to make the doctrines easier to take in. Because as you go through with these things here, it doesn’t sound like, you know, the Epicurean life as the antagonists of that school understood that life to be. So there’s an analogy there, I think, to Lucretius and to the wormwood and the honey. That’s a really important point. I will echo what you just said, Joshua, too, and also bring up the point that remember the context in which we’re reading this as well. You don’t only have the factor that some people are going to resist this and need it presented like the wormwood rimmed with honey. Part of the context in which this discussion is taking place is literally Torquatus is in Cicero’s house and they are basically debating philosophy. This is not like Epicureus’ letter to a student or it’s not even like a lecture to a general audience. Torquatus is debating Cicero about the key aspects of Epicurean philosophy. And in a debate with another highly intelligent person, you’re going to present things in a different way than if you’re talking to a random person on the street who doesn’t know what you’re talking about. You’re going to really talk in a kind of a high-level way in which you presume that the person you’re talking to understands the basics of what you’re talking about. I think that’s a really important thing to think about in a lot of contexts, whether it’s the letter to Menesius, which is apparently to a student, or any of the things that we have really from Epicurus is he’s often talking to his own students who will have understood the background of his past teachings. And so he doesn’t need to, and he can’t constantly explain every basic premise every time he makes a statement. So thinking about the context in which this is presented, like you just suggested, Joshua, you’re exactly right. And I should have hit that point harder when I started. Yeah, and when I read through these, I think I see a way in which these are tailored, as you’ve been suggesting, toward a particular audience. So when we read these, it almost seems like he’s sure the Epicurean system philosophy is vastly different to these other systems. But there is a sense here in which he’s saying that I can even present this in a way that even a Stoic might look at this and think, well, it’s not as bad as I maybe originally thought. They’re very different. I don’t want to come across as saying that there’s some connection between Epicureanism and Stoicism, and that ultimately they’ve reached the same point. That’s not true at all. But I can see a way here in which Torquatus is tailoring his message to the audience he’s trying to reach. Yeah, they were all talking in this context of debating philosophy in Athens in this period of time. And so it would be natural that they’re all regularly talking about the same topics and then just explaining their different perspectives on it. But they’re all talking about the same question because everybody’s got the same issues on their mind. Yeah, and everybody wants to be happy. And so this is the way in which Epicurus represents the wise man as continually happy. So he keeps his passions within bounds about death. He is indifferent. He holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread. So what does it mean really for us to say that he keeps his passions within bounds? I guess what this means for me is the way he said it a little bit ago, not merely to disarm our criticism, but actually to secure our sanction. So the people he’s talking to will have heard the sort of slanders about Epicurus of these nightly orgies and these just stuffing his face with food until he has to throw up so he can eat more. But the first thing that he right out of the gate, he says he keeps his passions within bounds. So that’s sort of the first stake he’s putting in the ground. This is the first characteristic I want you to know about the wise men. Do you think it’s important that he put that first or is there no significance to the order of these things? I would say it’s probably important because it’s such a common problem and common issue. And how do you deal with everybody’s concerned about how much pleasure you should pursue and so forth. So it’s got to be important. Martin, what do you think? I agree that he keeps his passions within bounds, mentioning at the beginning that he wants to emphasize it by putting it there early. There’s a limit to how much detail we can go into each one of these topics that he brings up. But I think on that one, I think you could probably suggest maybe there’s an obvious way in which you keep your passions within bounds that he talks about over and over again. So if we had to list one aspect of keeping your passions within bounds, what would you suggest as Epicurus’ major method of keeping your passions within bounds? And I’m not talking about the natural and necessary distinction, although that’s probably part of it. What is the biggest thing that keeps your desire for pleasure within bounds, Joshua? What is the number one and, in fact, only reason to keep your passion for pleasure within bounds? To me, the only reason not to pursue pleasure is if that pleasure will entail more pain. So the key here is, in my view, choice and avoidance. Exactly. I think that’s the ultimate answer is other than for the fact that some types of pursuits of pleasure bring pain, in the Epicurean worldview, there’s really no reason not to pursue that. But the reason you don’t pursue some pleasure is because some pleasures bring more pain than it’s worth. Martin, do you agree with that? Yes, I fully agree. I hate to sound like that’s such an important point, but maybe it just jumps out at you that really, ultimately, Epicurus’ restraint on pleasure is to acknowledge and observe that there’s pain out there that comes if you don’t pursue pleasure prudently. And it’s not an ascetic restraint. You know, it’s not. Right. Because I have a quote down here, and if you look at the thread on the forum, I have a quote from Diogenes the Cynic in which he says, That’s not what Epicurus, or that’s not what Torquatus means here when he says keeping his passions within bounds. He doesn’t mean, you know, shunning pleasure and pursuing poverty, ignorance, hardship, and death. This is not an ascetic claim. I think you’ve hit upon the right thing, the right way to interpret it. Pleasure is good. There’s no mistaking that. But sometimes you have to forbear or delay pleasure if, indeed, it will bring more pain. And then the reverse of that, of course, you have to occasionally endure pain to get at a greater or more long-lasting pleasure. Right. Okay. Let’s try to do the same thing with each of the topics. Try to give a little explanation without going so slow we never get finished. About death, he is indifferent. Joshua, what do you think about death? He is indifferent. What does that mean? Well, as I said, I think this is framed in a way to convince other people. So this actually would be an example of something that a lot of people find distasteful in Epicurean philosophy. They don’t want to hear that death isn’t bad or isn’t good. You know, death isn’t particularly good either because you’re not going to heaven. You’re not going to experience a blissful afterlife. But to a kind of person like I think Cicero imagined himself to be, putting this second on the list is important as well because sort of in the Roman upper echelons of society, stoicism was a huge part of that. And part of the reason it was a huge part of that was because it was synonymous with the military duty of the aristocracy. And so for an Epicurean not to be seen clinging to life in an unseemly way, I think that puts a good light on things. But obviously, this is a hugely, hugely important part of Epicurean philosophy, that death is nothing to us. Yeah, and in this particular translation, the word used is indifferent, which really is a potentially explosive word too. Martin, what is your take on the Epicurean view that is summarized here as about death, he is indifferent? What do you think Epicurean’s ultimate position on that topic is? I mean, what it means is that we should not fear the state of being dead. Yeah, the word indifferent particularly sticks out at me as something we need to be careful with since the Stoics kind of use that. Because I don’t really think that indifferent would be the right term. If you were truly indifferent about death, then you might say, well, I don’t really care whether I die five seconds from now or not. And the truth of the matter is, I do care that I don’t die in five seconds or we’ll never finish this podcast. We’ll never finish the turquatus section and I want us to finish. So I’m not indifferent about when I die. I’m indifferent about, you’re right, the state of being dead has no fear in it because you don’t feel anything. You’re not there to experience it. But about the issue of how long you remain alive, I don’t think you’re indifferent about that. I think you do everything you can to stay alive as long as you have good reason to think that you can experience more pleasure than pain. In fact, in the discussions that are going on right now, somebody raised that point where in the letter to Menesius, Epicurus attacks the idea of it would be better never to have been born. That section of the letter to Menesius, I think, could be used as evidence of the fact that you don’t have to live an eternal life in order to experience a full life of pleasure under Epicurian theory. But on the other hand, you’re not just indifferent to time either. That’s so deep that we can’t really give it the attention it deserves right now. But any other big point about that, Joshua, before we move? Yeah, I mean, I do agree with you that Epicureans are not necessarily indifferent about when they die or how they die. You almost have to read this sentence from the perspective of being dead. Yes. Like, when you die, you’re not going to care because you’re going to be dead. That’s how I read it. The way I don’t read that is sitting here right now, I’m not thinking to myself, like, I don’t care if I die right now or not. That’s not true. But when I do die, I won’t. I don’t think I’ll care. I hope I won’t care. All these discussions have a context to them in which you really kind of have to establish the boundaries of what you’re talking about so that you can even communicate with each other. I think you’ve hit the point there, Joshua, when he says about death, quote, death as a topic. He’s really focusing on, as Martin said, the state of being dead. He’s not talking about when you die, how you die, all these other things that are separate issues. Okay. So, Joshua, now that you’ve solved the hard problem, the easy one is going to be that the wise man holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread. So since that’s so easy, you can quickly summarize that for us, right? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, as I’ve been harping on, I think each of these is tailored to a particular listener. And we’ve got Cicero, who Cicero has this interesting quote. He says, I’m going to have to find it. Let me, I’m going to look for that here in a minute. But he says something to the effect that I believe in an eternal soul and I would rather not have this belief stripped of me while I’m alive. He said, I would rather be wrong about this and not know it. Or if I am wrong about this, I would rather not know it while I’m alive. I want to preserve the belief in eternal life and in the gods being involved in human affairs. That was a terrible explanation of his thought on that. We’ll find it and put it in the episode notes. Do you happen to remember what book it’s in? You know, I think you’ve got a good idea. We’re just going to have to find that and put it in the notes. We know that Cicero was well aware of the Epicurean views of the gods because of his own studies and because his other work on the nature of the gods by Cicero contains the long explanation by Valleus of the Epicurean position on how you prove that gods exist. So Cicero certainly understood there was a very elaborate theory of the gods in Epicurean philosophy. But for right now, as a summary of what this point would be is, again, quote, he holds true views concerning the gods apart from all dread, which probably is focusing on just the issue of that you don’t fear the gods, which is the Tetra-Pharmon formulation. Martin, what would you say is the important aspect of telling somebody that the wise man holds true views concerning the eternal gods apart from all dread? That he does not cling to the traditional superstitions about the gods, that they may do damage to people, that they mix with human efforts. That’s the part about it. Yeah, that they don’t intervene in human affairs. They’re not going to punish their enemies and reward their friends. They’re not going to send you to heaven or hell. They don’t pay attention to us and don’t tell us what to do. All those things would be part of that, I would think. And to expand on what Martin just said, it’s the case that not only do we not agree with people who view the gods that way, Epicurus actually considered it impious to attribute those attributes to the gods. Because there clearly is an aspect here that the gods are being identified as the blessed way of life. And whether you’re supposed to emulate that to the extent that you can or whatever that part of the philosophy is, which is the subject of a lot of controversy, the pious person is going to consider the gods to be totally blessed and totally the highest form of life possible. So, if you start thinking that the gods are throwing thunderbolts at their enemies and giving banquets for their friends, then that trivializes the gods and is actually impious. Yeah, so that’s one component. And then the other components of true views concerning the eternal gods are they’re not supernatural. They don’t exist in a realm separate from matter and void because nothing exists in a realm separate from matter and void. They are made of matter. And then they live in not necessarily on a planet like we do, but they live in the universe. They live in a place that is made of matter and where the laws that govern the matter and the void are explicable to us. So, that’s one part. They did not create the universe. They, like we, came out of it. And like you said, they don’t interfere in human affairs. So, this is not the deistic gods. I need to clarify that point because sometimes you do get some confusion on this point. That the gods of the Epicureans were deistic. Deistic gods are always gods that create. And the Epicurean gods do not create. They are removed. That part is true. But they did not create the universe. They are younger than the universe. Although the universe doesn’t really have an age, does it? It’s just infinite in both directions. I mean, it’s infinite in both directions in Epicurean’s view. So, that’s how he put up his cosmology. So, whether this is something that is objectively like the word says is a different story. Yeah, because you rightly bring up, Martin. We have a different understanding of exactly how the universe operates. Still not supernatural in any particular sense. But anyway, I’m going to let that go. But unless you have something more to say about that, Martin. I’d like to echo what Joshua said on the issue of this is not the deist model. What I always think about when I think of deism, such as Thomas Paine and his Age of Reason, or other deists of that 18th century period who a lot of people will read about, is they would use this clockmaker model. That God was the clockmaker who made the clock and then just lets it run on his own and doesn’t interfere. And that is absolutely not Epicurus’ model at all. There is no clockmaker. There is no supernatural maker. Lucretius states specifically that the gods could not have made the world because they would have needed a pattern to go by if they had made the universe, as one of many arguments about why they didn’t make the universe. So, Epicurus is not a deist philosopher at all. And that’s, I think, an important point for a lot of newer students to get a handle on because they’ll immediately think, well, this is very similar to, again, I think of Thomas Paine or others who are identified as deists. And this is not that. Benjamin Franklin has this famous quote where he said he set out to write a book disproving deism, and he ended up agreeing with it. So there was a particular time and place in, like you said, the 18th century where deism really was ascendant. But this is not that. Yeah, we could talk a long time about that because I’ve probably, at one point in my life, I was convinced that was probably the best position to take, or at least it was a harmless position. But that’s something that’s changed in my viewpoint since reading Epicurus. I don’t see that as the best position or a harmless position for the reasons that Epicurus is talking about here. You’re wanting to do your best to dispel all of the anxieties that you could dispel. And if you just leave that issue out there, then you’ve left something unresolved that you could deal better with by following Epicurus’ view on that. And Joshua, you said something earlier that we could talk about which ones of these were important by the order that they came in. And as we move to the next item, I’m frustrated because he sort of goes back to discussing death as the next one we’re going to talk about. But I don’t know that that’s his fault. These Latin writers, if you go back to the Latin, who knows what order these things are listed in? This translator has made sense of it, but it seems like so often that the Latin, the order in a sentence, who knows what the real order was by reading a translation? These translators will just totally rearrange sentences in a way that makes sense to them, it seems like. Right. Because word order in Latin does not change meaning. You can put the words in any order. It might change the mood or the, you know, sort of the voice of the passage, but it doesn’t actually change the meaning of what’s being said. Joshua, what you just said is pretty much my understanding, but I think I’ve seen some Latin scholars argue that that’s a ridiculous position. Of course, the Romans were concerned about which order they put their words in. And I don’t really know what the truth is. Do you know, Martin, about word order in Latin? No. Well, I should clarify, Cassius. There is, when you study Latin, they’ll say, this sentence, you know, they’ll give you an example of a sentence that is written in a different word order. And they say, this sentence makes sense and is readable in Latin, but no Latin writer would have written it like that. The word they use to describe this is Latinity. How it should most gracefully and beautifully be written. But due to the nature of Latin word endings and how they work, the sentence can only be read in one way. Well, the reason that came up is because we’ve already dealt with the topic of about death, he is indifferent. But now, as we read the sentence, we’re back and discussing, quote, he has no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life if that be the better course. Which is, as we were discussing earlier, that’s a different issue than just simply the state of being dead. How would you, what do you think they mean there by no hesitation across the boundary of life if that be the better course? Right. So what we were saying a little bit ago is we are not concerned about the state of death or being dead because we won’t know that we’re dead and we won’t have any opportunity to even suffer by that. But we did say a little bit ago that we do have some concern about when we die. So this passage here sort of ties that up in a little knot. But then there’s the way out. It says, if that be the better course, when is dying the better course? There is one particular example that I can think of from the ancient Epicurean texts. And that is the example of laying down your life to protect a friend. That would be an example in Epicurus’ view of a better course. Martin, would it be going too far to say, because as I’m listening to Joshua, when we read the sentence, it says, if that be the better course. Isn’t it fair to say that in Epicurean philosophy, anytime you discuss what the better course is on anything, you’re always looking to the question of, is it going to bring more pleasure than pain? So would it be going too far simply to say, your choice of when you die is controlled by if you think that living on is going to bring you more pleasure than pain? And if you think that living on is going to bring you more pain than pleasure, is that the definition of when you would want to die? Yes. Okay. Single word answers on that question will probably need to be expanded. So can you expand on that? Man, you expanded on it already, so I couldn’t add more. No, I’m sure it can be expressed a lot more eloquently and articulately than I did. But Joshua, if you want to go first. The fundamental question here is, like you said, if dying gives a better calculus on the pleasure-pain question, we might choose to die. It’s kind of difficult to imagine what that would look like. I can think of a couple of situations where it might look like that. For example, if you’re really facing a horrible, horrible, fatal disease, that would be one example of a case where you might choose that. But Epicurus also says that pain that is prolonged is not so intense that you can’t find more pleasure in life to counterbalance it. So that’s a difficult question. But I think it is fruitful to ask ourselves why dying for a friend comes out the way it does in the pleasure-pain calculus. And for me, what that means is you would rather die for the friend than go on living knowing that they died and you did nothing about it. And now you’ve got the sort of black cloud of pain hanging over your life, whereas the friend who was a tremendous source of pleasure, if you had laid down your life for them, that would have been the better course. Can you think of any other examples? I’m struggling to come up with an example of when it would be more pleasurable to die or less painful to die. Joshua, I think what you just stated is exactly the way I would analyze it, is that there’s going to be something about the circumstances of that person’s death and all of the different circumstances as a whole that you have some option available to you that if you chose it, you could save that person’s life. And if you decline to save that person’s life, you’re going to live on in circumstances where that decision is going to weigh on you so heavily for some reason that you’re not going to want to live any longer because there’s going to be so much pain in thinking about that choice and what you did or didn’t do in that situation. I guess there probably are a lot of situations where, gosh, you could probably go on and on and on thinking of scenarios where, for example, just pull out a mother and a child and the mother could give the child a kidney or something. And if the mother didn’t give the kidney to the child at the cost of her own life for some reason, then the child would die. And then she would be in a position of thinking about the rest of her life that the child could have been saved. And again, there’s so many contextual issues, but I use the mother-child because there’s that bond in that relationship, which pretty much everybody admits is one of the strongest bonds there can be. So you’d have to set up the scenario that really, it would not be every scenario and every friend at all, I wouldn’t think. I mean, suppose you’ve got a friend who’s 99 years old and you’re 30 and that friend is really the most important person possible to you, but you know that person is going to die anyway because they’re 99 pretty soon. So that’s really a rabbit hole kind of hypothetical maze to go down that would not be efficient to do that, certainly on this podcast. But you can construct those scenarios where it does make sense. If you’re a third who’s laying down your life for a 99-year-old, I think you have to take into account the pain that you’re bringing to the 99-year-old at the end of your life. They would almost certainly prefer that you didn’t do that. The people who have attained to that age who I have known have had a very different outlook on life and death than people who are much younger. I think that there’s maybe a sense in which people become more acclimated to the idea that they’re going to die as they get closer to it. I’m sure that’s not always the case, but my grandfather died last year. Maybe it was the year before. But there’s no circumstance in which he would have wanted me to die for him at that age. By God, he would have been very disappointed in me, I think. Right. And so what we’re saying is that the circumstances are going to control that decision just like they control every other. And I think that in saying that, we can identify what the error would be. The error would be to think that just because person X is your friend, you’re going to give your life for them in every circumstance. And that’s just not the analysis. You can’t generalize it to just because someone has the status of your friend, you’re going to give your life for them. That would be the stoic, platonic, formulaic way of trying to come up with a universal rule that is just clearly not what Epicurus would be talking about. If that be the better course is always a contextual question and not resolved by just a category like Aristotle might try to do. Okay. Okay. Furnished with these advantages, he’s continually in a state of pleasure. And there is, in truth, no moment at which he does not experience more pleasures than pains. And Joshua, you’re going to explain the bull. I always want to say Pharsalia, but that’s not the right term. What’s the name of the bull, Joshua? Yeah, I always confuse the name with that battle. It’s something similar to that. Yeah, it’s the bull of Phalaris, I think. Yes, you’re right. It’s the bull of Phalaris. So is Epicurus being ridiculous and suggesting that the person who is tortured by being boiled alive, has Epicurus just jumped the shark, as they say in the modern world? Has Epicurus jumped the shark in suggesting that there is, in truth, no moment at which the wise man does not experience more pleasures than pains? Well, certainly Cicero would think that he had gone way over the edge on that point. But as we were talking about in that episode, I don’t remember what we were talking about in that episode. But when I think about it now, I think Epicurus placed a lot of stress, not just on the pleasures of the moment, but on the pleasures that we remember from the past and the pleasures that we anticipate in the future. And so the present moment becomes a very small component of things when you consider that broad timeline that you can dip into at any point to relive those pleasures of the past or to sort of imagine the pleasures of the future that you are going to enjoy. I know that doesn’t really answer the question. Well, one part of it is that he’s just got finished saying that the wise man will have no hesitation in crossing the boundary of life if that be the better course. So the person who’s about to be thrown into the bull of Thalaris, if he has the option, will probably decide to maybe commit suicide at that point. I don’t think a wise man would test the issue by let’s hook up a scope to me and decide if I’m really feeling a balance of pleasure while I’m in my last moments of consciousness being boiled alive. I mean, that would make no sense and nobody would do something like that. That’s what Cicero continuously tries to do is to take something out of context, turn it into some kind of a universal rule and make Epicurus look ridiculous by suggesting that Epicurus suggested it was a universal rule. But when you realize that Epicurus is not into universal rules, then a lot of those criticisms can be dealt with. And then he elaborates. And I don’t know if the sentence in Latin really stopped where we stopped, but he elaborates and says, For he remembers the past with thankfulness and the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness. Nor, and this is a funny word, you have to be careful, nor is he in dependence. In other words, nor is he dependent on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present. He’s also very far removed from those defects of character, which I quoted a little time ago. And when he compares the fool’s life with his own, he feels great pleasure. Is that just kind of an elaboration of what we’ve already discussed, Joshua, or do you think there’s something new there? I went on to the next sentence, which starts for he remembers the past with thankfulness and the present is so much his own. And he is removed from the defects of character, which I’ve quoted. And when he compares the fool’s life with his own, he feels great pleasure. That’s kind of just a restatement of what’s already been discussed. Do you think there’s anything there that’s new or that we ought to elaborate on? Well, that first passage sort of explains what we were talking about in the last sentence about there is no moment at which he does not experience more pleasure than pains. The reason he does not ever experience more pain than pleasure is because he remembers the past with thankfulness and the present is so much his own that he is aware of its importance and its agreeableness. But then he says this other thing, he says, nor is he dependent on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present. What do we make out of that? Nor is he, the way it’s phrased in this translation is, nor is he in space dependence on the future, but awaits it while enjoying the present. I guess there’s a criticism here to be made of people who spend their whole lives not focused on pleasure, not pursuing philosophy, but just driven toward things that are out of their control and might forever remain out of their control. What were you going to say just now? I believe that’s a mirror of something that’s said in the letter to Menesius. I think it’s right after the section where he attacks the idea that it’s better never to have been born. He says, Now that’s a little bit different point, but when you start talking about being dependent on the future but awaiting it while enjoying the present, maybe it’s significantly different. But there is an issue of the free will aspect of things that there’s no fate involved in terms of being dependent on the future. And you realize that some things are in your control and some things are not in your control. So you enjoy what you have while at the same time you plan for the future, but you’re not putting all your eggs in the basket of the future. I’ve made a point that’s possibly overawed there, but I do think that’s some relation to it. I think you’re right. And I think we should maybe just let that speak for itself because that does seem to answer the question. Yeah, but then the issue of living in the present and at the same time remembering the good things of the past and at the same time having a knowledge of the good things you can expect to come, all of that is probably the main point, which is that the wise man has both the pleasures of the past, the present, and the future to be aware of in his full mental consciousness. He’s not consumed with the past. He’s not consumed with tomorrow. And he’s not consumed necessarily with just the immediate moment either. No, and that’s a point I would hammer home is you’re going to have a lot of people tell you that you need to live in the moment, enjoy the present. And I don’t think that’s all there is to life. I think that remembering the past and anticipating the future is it’s part of it and that the future doesn’t have to just be anxiety. You know, the uncertainty of the future is unavoidable, but it doesn’t just have to be anxiety. I think probably I’m going to experience pleasure in the future. I don’t know that for sure, but I think that’s true. If you knew for sure that it were not true, you’d be back in the issue of whether you needed to terminate your life. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There’s a comedian named John Mulaney, and he’s got this bit where he’s talking about people telling him to live in the moment. And his response is, don’t bother. The moment is mediocre at best. Well, it’s an obvious truth is that sometimes they’re better than others in significant stretches of our life when our present immediate circumstances are not exactly what we would like them to be. Yeah. And sometimes remembering the past or anticipating the future or or just even imagining other things. You know, I don’t think that being, you know, absent minded or thinking or getting lost in ideas. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I don’t think that, you know, just drinking tea and focusing on the cup of tea is necessarily the way to live your life. Certainly not the way I live my life. And I’ve tried it. I dabbled heavily in in Buddhism and this whole mindfulness meditation, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing to do, but I don’t do it anymore. So I think that sort of says it all as far as it goes for me. But don’t feel bad for not living in the moment, right? Because people are going to want you to feel bad if you don’t live in the moment, if you don’t fully enjoy the present. Sometimes just getting lost in your thoughts is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m sure Martin, who is the efficient type, has probably heard the cliche, if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. If you don’t spend time thinking about the future and preparing for the future, then that’s going to lead in many cases to disaster. And if you don’t think about where you came from and your history and how you got to where you are, then you’re not going to learn the lessons of your mistakes. So the past, the present and the future are all part of the mix, I would think he’s saying. Yeah. Before we move too far past the points about crossing the boundaries of life and being indifferent to death and terminating your life under certain circumstances, if that’s the better course. We always, I think, need to be aware that there are people out there who are not in the best mental status. And suicide is a significant problem, especially today in the United States, where most of our listeners probably are. And somewhere here at Turquoise, he also talks about life is like a theater where you get up and walk out when the play ceases to please us. But all those references to the potential that you might at some point choose to end your own life are in the context of his statements that you very much in general do not want to do that. You very much in general are appreciative of the benefits that life brings. And there are many passages which you could use to emphasize that you do not lightly terminate your life. I think the letter to Menesias has several references to that about the person who ends his life without a really good reason to do so is a very foolish person. It’s always important to talk, I think, whenever we start talking about the issues of death and so forth, that even though death can be a release from pain, even though death can be the right choice for people in certain situations, that that is not generally at all the right choice. It is not generally at all the only option we have. And Epicurus is all about thinking about the past, the present, and the future and coming up with ways to achieve pleasure, even under adverse circumstances. If you reach the point where you’ve concluded that ending your own life is the only option, you really have, I think, in almost every case, not understood what Epicurus is talking about in terms of his positions on death. Martin or Joshua, on that point, do you guys have something to add on that? Because I do think we have people who we need to be careful in being understanding about and compassionate about. A lot of people come to Epicurean and Stoic philosophy because they are in bad positions in their lives. And so we always need to remember that there’s a lot of people who don’t verbalize these concerns, but they are there. And we need to be clear about what Epicurus’s position was on that. So the entire time you were talking just now, I had a conversation with a stranger who came up to my car. I was just emphasizing, Joshua, that even though we talk about the possibilities of suicide or giving your life for a friend and terminating your life or walking out of a play when it ceases to please us, that Epicurus was clear in emphasizing in the letter to Menaceus and other places that you’re not just lightly going to commit suicide. No, no. I mean, it’s one thing to do it out of, you know, a sense of love and compassion for a friend. And it’s another thing entirely to do it out of a kind of deep depression that you have no control over. And if your arm was broken, you’d go see a doctor. So if your mind is, in a sense, troubled in that way, don’t feel shame. Go see a doctor. Yeah. So I’m totally lost. Where are we? We had basically gotten through the point that the wise man is going to consider both the past, the present and the future and ordering his mental state. And now we are basically at the point where Torquata says that the wise man is very far removed from his defects of character, which I quoted a little time ago. So I think he’s just referring to what’s already been discussed. And then we probably should not ignore that he closes this section by listing the example of the pleasure that we do get when we, quote, compare the fool’s life with his own. That’s the opening of Book Two of Lucretius, where he says it’s sweet when we are safely on land to see the ship struggling at sea. And we always have to deal with the issue of whether he’s being a jerk or whether he is. And in fact, he says it in Book Two. He says it’s not that we take pleasure in the misfortunes of others, but that we ourselves are aware of the benefits that we’ve achieved by having a good, sound philosophy of life and not exposing ourselves to those pains that come when you don’t. Yes, I brought this up on my screen before we started today, because I think that’s such an important passage in Lucretius to bring up. And it’s a controversial one, but the way he caps it off, he says the real problem with most people is not the sort of circumstances of suffering that they find themselves in, but it’s that they make the wrong choices about what to pursue in life. And he says, oh, pitiable minds of men, oh, blind intelligences, in what gloom of life, in how great perils is past all your poor span of time, not to see that all nature barks for is this, that pain be removed away out of the body and that the mind kept away from care and fear enjoy a feeling of delight. Right. And pains, if any, before him have never power enough to prevent the wise man finding more reason for joy than for vexation. We’ve kind of already touched upon that. I think that’s exactly hitting on this point of why a person who’s depressed or in adverse circumstances should not lightly entertain suicide, should just do everything they could to avoid doing that. Because the truth is that there are so many opportunities in life, almost in any circumstance, to find pleasure that makes life worth living. That, as you said earlier, Joshua, if you’ve broken your arm, you go see a doctor, if you’ve got a mental condition that is just forcing you to obsess on something that is, those are often clinical situations that you need to get help. Because what Epicurus is pointing out is that when you think about the pleasures of the past, the possibilities of the future, the good things of the present, including how easy it is to experience pleasure, just by thinking about the fact that you’re not suffering all sorts of pains that you could be suffering, that other people have suffered and will suffer in many other situations. That if you really were at looking at the big picture and having a correct philosophy, you’ll see that life is generally an experience in which pleasures predominate over pain. This is not a situation where it is better never to have been born. This is not Buddhism. This is not some dark nihilistic philosophy that says that the universe has conspired against us to torture us. And what is that? Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Who said that, Joshua? That was Thomas Hobbes. This is not a Hobbesian universe in which we are fated that our lives are nasty, brutish, and short. If we use the correct philosophy, if we pursue life in ways that are possible to just about everybody in just about every circumstance, then life does not have to be nasty, brutish, and short, and so depressing that we wish we had never have been born. I think if you had to summarize the opposite of the Epicurean philosophy’s attitude towards life, that would be the way to look at it. That’s the opposite. And the last sentence of this section, and pains, if any, befall him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reason for joy than for vexation. That’s a good summary of what we’ve been talking about. And with that, we finally made it through a paragraph. That’s exactly right. That’s all we’re going to make it through today, I’m afraid. But I really think that this has been a really important paragraph focused on pleasure. 63, which comes next, is really going to change the focus away from just pleasure itself to the issue of a confrontation of the Epicurean view of epistemology to some extent. To some extent, physics as well. But we’re going to move away from just the focus on pleasure to the importance of understanding that Epicurean’s approach to knowledge and physics and science are so important in achieving the goals that we’re setting out and pursuing pleasure as we’ve been discussing. This is probably the time for closing thoughts for Section 62. Martin, closing thoughts for today. No, I have nothing for closing. All right, Joshua. There was a professor at Columbia University named Sidney Morgan Besser. And one day he was leaving a subway station in New York City and he lit up his pipe. A policeman tells him that there is no smoking allowed. And Morgan Besser replies that the rules cover smoking in the station but not outside. The officer concedes the point but says, if I let you do it, I’d have to let everyone do it. Morgan Besser replies, who do you think you are, Kant? And finds himself off to the police station. And there, a colleague has to come down and explain the whole issue of the categorical imperative to the officers to secure his release. That’s the anecdote I was looking for when you mentioned Cicero and his tendency to make a universal out of a specific example. And that expresses, oh, he’s got a lot of good anecdotes. Sidney Morgan Besser is his name. I’ll put that in the show notes, too. Those are my closing thoughts. Let me just say and comment on that, that I do think that’s a common issue that people reading Epicurus are going to run into. They are brought up in sort of a humanist modern philosophy position that even though God should not be defining what good is, they’re convinced that there are these absolute goods out there. And the way they often get to the issue of an absolute good is they use this Kantian categorical imperative universalism process. How would you explain what the categorical imperative means? Well, the categorical imperative is a method that Kant suggested we use to determine what is the ethically right thing to do. And so he says, if you have something that you think you should do, he says, if you want to determine if this is the right thing to do, then you have to imagine what would happen if everyone did it. And then the outcome tell you whether it’s the right thing or the wrong thing to do. Can it be universalized, I guess, is the test of whether something is ultimately ethically correct? Yeah. And it can be pursued to absolutely ludicrous extremes, can’t it? Right. Is it morally proper to sit in your car? Well, what if everybody was sitting in your car? Well, not everyone can sit in my car. It’s not big enough. So it’s very easy to derail the categorical imperative just with absurdity. That doesn’t really offer a philosophical objection to it. But it’s just not applicable, really, in most cases. And I don’t think it’s a useful way to determine what is or is not ethical. And certainly Epicurus would not have used it. I think, Joshua, your conclusion was exactly the right point, that it’s certainly not something Epicurus would have looked at. Because the Epicurean universe is not one in which you universalize ethics. Maybe it all comes down to the ultimate point that Tarquata stated earlier. What does nature give us other than pleasure and pain in order to determine what to choose and what to avoid? Nature gives us the feelings of pleasure and pain. It doesn’t give us universal rules. And to look for universal rules or to expect that you can test whether something is good as to whether it can be universalized, I mean, that’s almost absurd in an Epicurean perspective. Because you can’t universalize ethics. When it comes to the issue of justice, of course, Epicurus takes exactly the opposite course. He says that there is no universal sense of justice and that it just means what people come together and decide that it means in particular places and times. Let’s close the episode by letting me attempt to link where we are to where we’re going. We’ve just closed the episode by raising some deep philosophical questions that are very difficult to answer. And we can point back to pleasure and pain as Tarquata has previously done. And that states our conclusion. We’ve planted our flag that pleasure and pain are the motivating factors of life. But as you always do when you’re dealing with other people, like when you’re arguing with Cicero or when you’re arguing with somebody else about philosophy, you have important questions about how to know anything is right or wrong. And how to technically dig into issues like categorical imperatives and universalist values that are really more technical issues of philosophy that you can choose to avoid if you wish and simply say, I’m going to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. But in reality, in the modern world, if you’re in any kind of an educational environment, if you’re just reading into philosophy, if you’re reading different commentators, you’re going to be presented with all sorts of competing positions that are logically consistent within themselves, but which might not make sense to you. You’ve got to have a method for analyzing those things and deciding what is right or wrong. You’re not going to just arbitrarily decide which one feels good to you. You’ve got to have a method, and that’s what we’re going to discuss next week. We’re going to start talking about Torquatus’ summary of the Epicurean method of philosophy, the approach towards knowledge, the role of the senses in ultimately deciding things, the removal of logic, in a sense, as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong that Plato and Aristotle has suggested. And we’re going to do that all in the space of about an hour, using Torquatus’ summary as the way to do that. And so I’m sure that at the end of that episode, everyone will be totally satisfied that we’ve treated it thoroughly and completely. And that’s not true, but we’re going to talk about how you decide what’s true and what’s not true next week. And we’ve just been talking about this on the forum, about Epicurean epistemology. So I think this is good timing on that, and I look forward to it next week. Right. It’s probably going to be both sections 63 and 64 as we have them here. And I don’t know whether we’ll be able to finish both 63 and 64 or not, but there’s tremendously good material here in Torquata. So we’ll get to it as best we can. Thank you, Martin and Josh. Thanks a lot. See you next week. Okay. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.