Episode 202 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 10 - The Animality Argument
Date: 11/22/23
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3505-episode-202-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-10-the-animality-argument/
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Transcript (Unedited)
Section titled “Transcript (Unedited)”Welcome to episode 202 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. 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 you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics. This week we’re continuing in book two of On Ends. We’re going to be continuing along with that today, and there are many more pages of this left, so we’ll have a lot of opportunity to continue to get into the mind of Cicero and the ancient Epicureans as well, who Cicero knew personally. So we’ll have a lot of opportunity to get into the mind of Cicero and the ancient Epicureans trying to persuade to.
Epicurean movement of his time. Last week we had a particularly complicated opening sentence in section 10 in which Cicero is again setting forth his complaints about the way Epicurus is defining pleasure. He’s saying that Epicurus’ statements about the different types of pleasure, the normal life which Epicurus considers to be pleasure in addition to the active stimulations, and Cicero is saying that, quote, what no one ever called pleasure he calls so. He rolls two things into one, unquote. And then the active form of pleasure, for thus he describes these sweet and sugared pleasures, so to call them, he sometimes so refines the way that you think manius curious is the speaker, while he sometimes so extols them that he declares himself to be without even an idea of what the good is over and above this. When we get to this kind of language we should put it down, not by philosophy but by the censor, for its fault is not a matter of language only but a matter of morality.
So that’s where we were last week, again with this general condemnation of Epicurus giving his blessing to all forms of pleasure. Cicero is next going to turn his attention to Epicurus’ argument that this is justified by looking at the young of all species, the earliest life of all living creatures. So before we go into new text for this week, let’s see if anyone has anything else to say from last week about Cicero’s allegation that Epicurus’ combining of these types of pleasure into the single name of pleasure is justified. Whether it is acceptable to talk about pleasure at one time in a way that makes you sound like a Stoic yourself, that’s the reference to Manius Curius, a Stoic figure who’s got virtue as his number one goal, while at other times in a way that makes you sound like talking about what is the equivalent to us of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Can you combine both perspectives under the single?
Is it really an allegation of pleasure or an allegation of pleasure? So Cassius, I looked up this Manius Curius. Cicero, as you said, is going to mention a lot of names. I think in the very first introductory section to book one, one of Cicero’s complaints about the Epicureans before the whole Torquatus monologue takes off, one of his complaints was that he never hears on the lips of the Epicureans the stories of illustrious men. This is one of his key complaints about the Epicureans is that they seem to have no interest in history or in extolling virtuous deeds. And one of those virtuous deeds comes from this Manius Curius, who was described as having been incorruptible and frugal, and allegedly when the Samnites sent ambassadors with expensive gifts in an attempt to influence him in their favor, they found him sitting by the hearth roasting turnips. He refused the gifts, saying that he preferred ruling the possessors of gold over possessing it himself. so the image that says.
Is of someone incorruptible. And what he’s saying is when Epicurus refines pleasure into merely absence of pain and frugality and so forth, that he’s sort of putting on airs, putting on the airs of someone talking about virtue without actually mentioning her name. Cicero wants it to be stated clearly that pleasure is not to be pursued, that the passions need to be ripped out by the roots, and that reason and virtue alone are the standard of what you want to be. What is good? And he’s just going to mention name after name after name on that point. But again, as we’ve said many, many times in this series, many times last episode, the assertion of Epicurus that the absence of pain, the normal condition of human life without pain is itself a kind of pleasure. And DeWitt has a very good quote on that when he says that just because this normal condition is not described as pleasure, it does not follow that it should not be described as pleasure. And Cicero is far from.
Done with that topic. Joshua, let me comment on something you just said about looking back at the beginning of book one and the way Cicero is structuring some of his argument by constantly referring to these great men, in this case, Manius Curius. He’s got a whole litany of examples from great men of Roman history that he constantly is bringing up. And we’ll try to do the best we can with the details of each of them as he brings them up, but it’s probably worth looking at the general method of argument here. My understanding of Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics and the way he and other philosophers of that variety approach morality is that ultimately they’re very wishy-washy about what virtue really is. And they end up talking about, well, you determine what’s virtuous by looking at the examples of other great men from our society. It’s sort of a circular argument because it never establishes where they got their ideas of virtue from. But it is a strong,
Voluptuous argument. of their approach that you should just simply follow the leader, basically, in determining how to live and not examine it yourself, but look at people who you somehow recognize automatically as being great people whom you should emulate without ever again examining the foundation of what it is you’re emulating. So it’s interesting to consider how effective that technique is. It’s certainly common and something that can be persuasive when you flood the zone with example after example after example of people that you have this impression should be emulated. It’s certainly something that needs to be met by the argument that you should examine the basis by which they reach their decisions before you conclude that you should emulate them. It’s interesting to think about whether the Epicureans of that time would have responded with their own examples of the best life, like referring back to the life of Epicurus himself, or whether they just considered that technique is not a.
And just simply disparaged the use of it in the Stoics and others. I mean, that’s what Torquatus said in his opening narrative, is that you guys are so fond of the glory of the names of these people, and you guys love citing all of these illustrious figures, but you have to look beyond that. That’s not the right standard to be looking to. So, without resolving that question, I thought I would bring it up, because Cicero is constantly using it. Yeah, it is very important, and it’s very typical of the work of his school. In fact, Plutarch in the early 2nd century would go on to write one of the most important books of its kind on this, called Parallel Lives, or Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, in which there’s 23 pairs of biographies, so 48 biographies in total, and he takes one notable Greek and one notable Roman, so he’s comparing Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Demosthenes and Cicero, and so forth. And the purpose of this was to instruct people in in virtue, essentially.
By looking at the way that these famous figures, names that everyone knows, although some of the names in these biographies have probably lost their currency, by pointing to these figures that people could discover how to live themselves. Yeah, that’s something to think about for the future, that it’s not a good idea just to play follow the leader and do exactly what other people are doing without examining the reasons why they did what they did themselves. In fact, continuing that for a moment more, that’s what Torquatus did in regard to his own ancestors. When Cicero brought them up and said, you should be following your ancestors, Torquatus responded by explaining that he could reconcile his philosophy and hoped that his ancestors had a similar reasoning, because if they had not had some similar reasoning for the actions that they did, then he would have been horrified that they would be executing his own son or doing different things without a reason. They have to have a reason. Everybody has a reason, and the reason is not to follow the leader and become a lemming and do what other people are.
Doing. If you want to talk about poor arguments, I think that is a poor argument. Being a lemming is not a good example. But we could probably use the example of Lucretius here, who did cite the story of one illustrious man in particular, Agamemnon, as being a reason why we should be critical of the claims that are made of supernatural religion. He says that religion is so potent in persuading to evil deeds that Agamemnon was driven to sacrifice his own child. That’s exactly the kind of thing that we’re talking about here, but the difference I guess is that Lucretius is using this story to absolutely cut to the root of a problematic idea to begin with. Merely to say that, well, this is what you should do, or this is what you should avoid. It’s the idea that he’s attacking, and he’s attacking it at the roots. Alright, let’s move on in section 10, and as I’m reading it now, it looks to me like there’s a sort of choppy transition here, because Cicero moves from a.
Cut against Epicurus saying that he’s just anxious to get pupils so that those who want to be profligates can become philosophers. But then after that sentence, he turns without transition to apparently quoting Epicurus here, or at least paraphrasing what Turquatus has already said, because the topic he brings up is, the beginning of the supreme good, I believe, is looked for in the earliest life of living creatures. And when he says, I believe, I have to think that’s a reference to Turquatus and Epicurus, because Cicero I don’t believe takes that position. He continues on, as soon as the creature is born, it rejoices in pleasure and yearns for it as being good and rejects pain as evil. He says, however, that creatures which are as yet uncorrupted give the best judgment about things evil and things good. You yourself have placed the matter in this light. And the phrase belongs to your school. How many faults there are here! By what kind of pleasure shall a cooling babe, which apparently he’s whining but what kind.
Of pleasure shall a whining babe determine the supreme good and evil by the steady pleasure or the active since it pleases heaven that we should learn from Epicurus how to talk if by the steady kind of course the aim of nature is that her safety should be secured and this we grant we meaning presumably Cicero, the Stoics, the academics by the active which after all is what you say then no form of pleasure will be disreputable so that it should be neglected while at the same time the creature you imagine as newly born does not start from the supreme form of pleasure which has been defined by you as consisting in absence of pain yet Epicurus did not look to babes or even to animals though he thinks them the mirrors of nature for any proof to show that they under the guidance of nature do desire this kind of pleasure which consists in absence of pain so Cicero has turned to criticizing Epicurus as primary proof that pleasure is desirable.
And pleasure is the goal in which Torquatus has told us. Epicurus looks to the young of all beings before they are corrupted as the example. And Cicero is arguing that that’s not true. We, the academics and Platonists, believe that, yes, the aim of nature is to preserve herself, and we agree with you on that. But nature doesn’t tell the young of all beings to go running around chasing sex, drugs, and rock and roll. You know, I was very confused when I read this because I think… I think Cicero is fundamentally confused about something. He’s going to go on here in a little bit to say that, no, what newborn babes and what animals actually pursue is their own security. They don’t pursue pleasure, and they certainly don’t pursue absence of pain. But I think this is just confusion because just to pursue security is to anticipate pain and avoid it where possible. Is that not true? Sure it is. I think the issue in contention is the both.
Aspect of everything here. Yes, we do pursue security. Yes, we do pursue having fun. And what Epicurus is doing is combining both of those under the single term of pleasure. And Cicero can disagree with that combination if he wants to. It is true that we do both things, and it’s not inconsistent that we are pursuing both. Boy, that may take us back into that continuing question about whether somehow security in itself. Stability in itself is the ultimate goal, and we do all these other things just to pursue security, or whether we include every activity of life, not only the stimulations, but also the normal condition, both under the umbrella term of pleasure. Probably that’s still what we’re arguing about here, and Cicero has just found another way of striking at Epicurus’ definition and saying these are different. Yeah, but what I would say to Cicero here is that the animal or the newborn child,
It does pursue the stimulation of pleasure as well as absence of pain, because by pursuing its own security, it is by definition trying to avoid pain. So it is both kinds of pleasure. That’s what I would say in response to Cicero. Yes, this argument goes on for a while here, and it’s almost like we should read the whole argument and then come back. But unless we sort of break it down, it’s just going to be too much at one time, I think. So having said what we just said there, let’s let Cicero continue here. He says, Yet Epicurus did not look to babes or even to animals, though he thinks them the mirrors of nature, for any proof to show that they, under the guidance of nature, desire this kind of pleasure which consists in absence of pain. Indeed, this pleasure, absence of pain, cannot stimulate our impulses, nor has this condition of freedom from pain any force whereby it may strike upon the mind. So Hieronymus sins in the same manner, but that condition which charms the sense by the presence of pleasure, does.
Strike upon the mind. So it is this condition which Epicurus always employs to prove that pleasure is naturally an object of desire because it is the pleasure which consists in the activity that attracts to itself babes and animals alike, and not the other pleasure of the steady kind, which comprises only the absence of pain. How then is it consistent to say that nature starts from one kind of pleasure, and then to lay down another kind as constituting the supreme good? Okay, we’re still in the heart of this arc. Well, the first thing to say is that both kinds of pleasure are pleasure and are the supreme good, right? The absence of pain, as Epicurus says in the Third Principle Doctrine, is the limit of the quantity of pleasure, but pleasure, full stop, is the supreme good. If you want a full description of the life of pleasure, you have to go back to what Torquatus says in Book One, where he says, imagine a person living in the numerous and constant enjoyment of pleasure.
Both body and of mind, the anticipation of future pleasures, the remembrance of past pleasures, no fear of death, no fear of the gods. That would be a much more complete understanding of the word pleasure. But of course, animals don’t approach it that way. What they are endowed with by nature and by their evolutionary heritage is instinct and also various biological processes that I’m not sure Cicero would have fully understood, and I don’t think anyone at that time could have fully understood them. But when I think of things like the adrenaline response, for example, which is probably what he’s talking about when he’s talking about security, an animal running for its life from another animal, how inept would we have been endowed by evolution to engage in a hostile environment if we were incapable of anticipating pain, if we were incapable of anticipating predation? And so I keep going back to this because I think Cicero is just fundamentally confused on this point. Avoiding pain is very,
Very clear in animals. Yeah, animals do not spend their time obsessing about the definition of the word pleasure and whether it’s right for them to both run from predators and sleep and have sex and do the different things that animals do. They don’t obsess about trying to decide whether one of those activities is the justification for the other. They don’t obsess about whether there’s a word definition that they need to try to fit everything within. They just do what comes naturally to them through nature. They don’t question the desirability of what comes naturally to them through nature. They don’t apply to it some standard outside themselves. They don’t look to some god. They don’t look to some set of tablets handed down from a mountain that supposedly is telling them externally what it is they’re supposed to do. They’re just doing what comes naturally to them and they don’t question that. I think it’s important that Cicero has again referenced Hieronymus. He says,
About the way he’s defining absence of pain. And Cicero has previously praised Hieronymus because apparently Hieronymus’ position was to say that absence of pain is the ultimate goal of life. But he divorced totally absence of pain from pleasure. And he therefore deprecated pleasure and disparaged pleasure in the active sense. And he took sort of the opposite position, it sounds like, of what the Cyreniacs had been doing, who had accepted only these stimulating pleasures as the goal. So if you go either direction of splitting them apart, you’re going to run into these criticisms of inconsistency from Cicero. And to some extent, the criticisms are probably valid if you do split them apart. You’re going to run into this criticism that it doesn’t make sense for you to be talking about active pleasure if, in fact, these pleasures of the normal state are your ultimate goal. You’ve got to consider both of them pleasure in order.
To make sense and avoid this internal contradiction of the house divided against itself will be destroyed. You’ve got to have both of them supporting and coexisting and working with the other to form the complete life. Because otherwise, the final sentence we just quoted from Cicero was, How then is it consistent to say that nature starts with one kind of pleasure and then lay down another kind of pleasure as constituting the supreme good? If you separate the two and say that one of them is not pleasure, then you’re going to run into that problem. And that’s why you can’t do it. That’s why you can’t go that direction. If you start elevating rest and simple, normal life as the ultimate goal to which everything else points, you’re going to end up with this inconsistency. You’re going to end up with the criticism of people who say that the goal of Epicurean philosophy is sleeping and sitting in a cave, which is not what any Epicurean ever did.
So our next section, Cassius, is section 11 here. And there’s a very good sentence on page 45, sort of in the middle of the section, where Cicero gives us sort of the overview of the nature of his problem. He says, There are thus three theories of ultimate good, which have nothing to do with morality. One, that of Aristippus, who was interested in the stimulation kind of pleasure rather than the absence of pain kind of pleasure. The second, that of Hieronymus, who was interested. in absence of pain, but not in the stimulation of pleasure. And the third is that of Carneades. And I have a different page up here that says, Carneades defended the simple view that the goal is actually to obtain the natural advantages or the combined view that it is virtue together with pleasure. His aim seems to have been to challenge the Stoics by showing that the considerations captured by the framework do not all point to the Stoic view. by defending the view.
That the goal is the actual enjoyment of natural advantages, Carniades probably intended to suggest that the considerations which support taking the natural advantages as the object of our first natural impulse, as the Stoics did, also count in favor of taking them to be goods and therefore components of the end. So virtue and pleasure, both components of the telos, the goal of life for Carniades. I was on to mention several other figures here. The third view of the ultimate good, absent Cicero’s idea of morality, is that of Palermo, Calipho, and Diodorus, and then he adds in Zeno at the end. One view in which morality stands alone, of which Zeno is the author. So that’s kind of the broad overview. And his problem, I think partially with Epicurus, is that he’s trying to have his feet one foot in both worlds. One foot in the world of the stimulation type pleasure of Aristippus, and another foot in the world of the people who advocate for.
Absence of pain, but did not care about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yeah, Joshua, the name dropping gets to be very confusing and hard for people who are not really into the reading of philosophy to follow. Let’s try to summarize these three. Is it a matter of virtue and pleasure and absence of pain being the three terms that people are combining in different ways? So one is active pleasure without any regard for absence of pain. Another one is absence. Of pain without any regard for active pleasure. And another one is virtue and pleasure combined as the goal. And then he had Zeno, which is virtue alone. So what’s the possible options? Virtue, pleasure, and absence of pain. I know you called it active pleasure because Cicero’s got his own definition of pleasure in which pleasure is active pleasure. So in Cicero’s perspective, the three options are pleasure, virtue, and freedom from pain. Right, so the first dive.
Option is pleasure, in Cicero’s words, as all of mankind, the whole world over, understands the term pleasure. The second option is absence of pain, and the third option is pleasure and virtue together as components of the telos, and the fourth option really is virtue alone as the telos. You could theoretically break them down. The three pure alternatives, purely stated or very basically stated, would be… Pleasure, virtue, and absence of pain. And it’s possible to combine the three, at least in certain ways, because given the examples we’re talking about in this section, Calipho, for example, is joining virtue and pleasure. Diodorus, apparently, is joining virtue and freedom from pain. Aristippus, the Cyreniacs, proposed pleasure by itself. The Stoics say virtue by itself. Thoreau is apparent.
To consider some combinations of virtue with other things. But he’s saying that Epicurus is advocating purely for the term pleasure. Under pleasure, there would be another breakdown between active and at rest. If you’re Epicurus, yes. But if you’re Cicero, you will not allow that. The Cyreniac says it’s only active and not at rest. And there was some other guide that said it was only. What was at rest? Hieronymus was saying only absence of pain. Whether you equate absence of pain with rest or not is maybe a different question. But Hieronymus was taking the view that absence of pain is the ultimate good. Right. But what’s the upshot here? The upshot is he’s not talking in book two. He’s not writing against Hieronymus. He’s not writing against these or Aristippus or Zeno. This is a book against the Epicurean itself. He’s taking Epicurus’ position and comparing it with a group of,
And basically the assertion which he’s made elsewhere is actually in section 10, he said that this is not a matter for the philosophers. This is a matter for the censors, that Epicurus has no business parading in Athens on the turf of Plato and Aristotle and Socrates if he’s teaching sybaritism and adultery and the grossest violations of morality in the pursuit of pleasure. This is what Cicero has been on and on about this whole time. Right. And why don’t we take what I think is the concluding argument of this, section as explanation of what we’ve been talking about, because what Cicero says next is that while the other philosophers have been consistent with themselves, they’re absolute good agreeing with their first principles. Yet Epicurus, Cicero says, after speaking of pleasure as the primary attraction, was bound to hold the same form of ultimate good with Aristippus if he meant the same kind of pleasure. While if he meant by pleasure what Hieronymus held, he would have followed the same course as Hieronymus, that of laying down that form of pleasure to be the primary attraction.
And so he’s criticizing Epicurus for saying that if you want to be pursuing pleasure as the ultimate good, then you stay with Aristepus because that’s being consistent. If you want to be saying freedom from pain is the ultimate good, then you stay with Hieronymus because you’re being consistent. What you don’t do is take two separate terms that mean different things and jam them both into a single term and say that that’s your ultimate good. You’re not being consistent. Yeah. Epicurus here is trying to. You have his cake and eat it, too. That’s Cicero’s main objection here to the whole pleasure ethics of Epicurus. Right. You know, before we go further into 12, I think we skipped over at the beginning of 11 a little more continuation of Cicero’s argument against looking to young of all species. And rather than omit that, let’s go back to it for just a moment, because Cicero says that I believe animals have no power of judging, since though they be uncorrupted, yet they may be corrupt. Just as one stick is bent.
And twisted intentionally, while another grows in that way, so the nature of beasts is not indeed corrupted by bad training, but it’s corrupt in its own constitution. Nor does nature impel the babe to desire pleasure, but merely to love itself and desire himself to remain sound and secure. Whether pleasure is one of the primary natural endowments or not is a great problem, Cicero says. But to suppose that the primary natural endowments comprise nothing but pleasure, putting aside our limbs, our senses, our intellectual activity, soundness of body, health, is in my opinion the extreme of ignorance. Okay, that’s why I didn’t want to skip that. Because it sounds like what we’re submitting here is that the extreme of ignorance here is Cicero alleging that Epicurus does not include the limbs, the senses, intellectual activity, soundness of body, health, and so forth in the definition of pleasure. Because that’s exactly what he’s doing and combining both into the WordPress.
He’s including intellectual activity. He’s including soundness of body and health in his ultimate good of pleasure. What I think Cicero is saying here is that Epicurus is claiming that pleasure, the choice for pleasure and the avoidance of pain is how I would put it, is the primary natural endowment of animals, of newborn children and so forth. And then Cicero is saying, you Epicurus, you’re saying that pleasure is the primary natural endowment. But what about… What about everything else that goes into the makeup of a living thing? He mentions our limbs, our senses, our intellectual activity, soundness of body, health. Do these not factor at all into your consideration of the life of lower forms of animals or of newborn children? Yes, of course, they factor into the life of animals as well. And that’s why Epicurus incorporates them into his definition of pleasure. Intellectual activity, soundness of body and health are things that we observe. observe that the young.
Of all creatures are in fact interested in as part of their natural endowments and that’s why Epicurus includes it within his definition of pleasure what Cicero is saying here is that he’s not even sure as he says in the bottom whether pleasure is one of these primary natural endowments Cicero is saying here at the bottom of page 44 he doesn’t know whether pleasure should even be considered as a primary natural endowment of animals he’s saying that this is a problem for the philosophers essentially but it’s not obviously obvious to him it was obvious to Lucretius it was very obvious to Lucretius that pleasure and pain were primary natural endowments of animals because when he pointed to the mother cow searching for its lost calf there was the remembrance of pleasure and there was also the feeling of grief and great pain health soundness of mind soundness of body all of that is the primary endowment of nature according to Aristotle according to Palermo according to all of these people but Epicurus wants to include pleasure.
And Cicero is not having it right relate that back to the opening of 11 where he says that animals may be corrupt is Cicero not saying that the nature of the beast is corrupt by their own nature the thing that I thought when I first saw that is what an excellent Calvinist Cicero would have made does corrupt mean shamelessly pursuing pleasure as he thinks corrupt means as it pertains to humans he’s saying that we should not be looking to the young of all animals for our standard I’m looking at this whole section as Cicero saying that you should not be looking to animals in the first place because animals are corrupt and so I’m carrying that into the rest of the paragraph and saying that in the end Cicero was saying that whether pleasure is a primary attribute of nature is a problem but certainly it’s not the only attribute of nature because these other things are included as well what he said elsewhere is yet Epicurus did not look to babes or even to animals though he thinks them demeaned,
Mirrors of nature. When Cicero says that animals are corrupted, I think what he’s saying is animals are not the mirror of nature. If you want to understand nature in its own terms, don’t look to the animals. You need to look to nature itself and you need to probe nature with the power of reason, moderated by virtue. What is Cicero doing with the reference to the young beasts? Is he saying we should not look to them at all for our standards? Or is he saying that we should look closer to them for our standard? Because if we do, we’ll see that they really just want soundness of body and health. It’s a complicated structure here. And I think we know from other sources that it became a debate between the Epicureans and the Stoics as to whether self-preservation was something that was really the ultimate goal or whether it was pleasure. With the Stoics taking the position that they were comfortable with the idea that nature.
Tells each individual animal to preserve itself. But as far as the rest of what Cicero is saying here, let’s just at least mention the possibilities so perhaps we can continue the discussion on the forum about what this first part is meaning here. Because I think, Joshua, you’re interpreting what Cicero has said about the primary natural endowments in a particular way. Yeah, Cassius, the way I’m reading this paragraph here is that Cicero is saying every creature from the moment of its birth loves itself and all the divisions of itself and is especially devoted to the two of these which are most important, its mind and body, and after them the subdivisions of each. And then he goes on to say, for there are certain characteristics conspicuous both in mind and body, and when the creature has even slightly recognized these, it begins to draw distinctions and to feel drawn towards the endowments which are primarily assigned to it by nature and to reject their opposites And then he says,
Pleasure is one of these primary natural endowments or not, is a great problem. But to suppose that they comprise nothing but pleasure, putting aside our limbs and our senses, our intellectual activity, soundness of body, our health, is, in my opinion, extreme of ignorance. He says, What I take this to mean is that Cicero, following Aristotle here, says you have to look to animals. You have to look to people. For your understanding of the nature of good and evil, that’s the whole point of looking to illustrious men as well. But he says at the bottom of page 44, he doesn’t even know whether pleasure is a primary natural endowment. And so for his criticism, this is the most important thing, I think, his criticism of Epicurus in my reading of this is not that he’s looking to the animals for his definition or for his guide to what is good. It’s that he’s imputing to the animals something. something that Cicero thinks.
Might even be foreign to their nature? Meaning he’s imputing to the animals pleasure, which he thinks is foreign to their nature? Right, yeah, the desire for pleasure. Cicero says, nor moreover does nature impel the babe or the animal to desire pleasure. And that’s what Epicurus’ pleasure ethics rests on. Torquatus in book one says that we look to the animals for our standard of what is good and what is evil, that animals pursue pleasure, that they avoid pain, that this is something that we don’t even need to support by elaborate argument. It’s enough merely to draw attention to the fact. Cicero is coming back now to Torquatus and saying, I don’t even know that that is a fact. In fact, he’s explicitly denying that it is a fact that newborn babes desire pleasure. Yeah, I agree with you there, Joshua, that Cicero is making an argument here that strikes at the foundation of Epicurus’ whole argument that we’re supposed to look to animals. I’m not clear as I read the re-translation, and unfortunately I don’t have Rackham or anybody else in.
Parrot too, but there’s a lot of prepositions here that I’m not clear as to what they’re referring back to. This whole issue of primary natural endowments, which Cicero says is a great problem. I’m questioning whether Cicero is saying, Epicurus, you’re wrong to look at young animals as the basis of your virtue. Or whether Cicero is saying, Epicurus, you’re looking at the young of all animals wrong. I agree with you. We should look at the young of all animals, but when you look at them, you see them doing something other than pursuing pleasure. He could be saying, Epicurus, you’re looking at young animals wrong, or he could be saying, Epicurus, you’re wrong to be looking at young animals. I’m not entirely clear which of the two of those he’s doing. Let me say something here. It occurs to me that when he says, yet this is the source from which we must needs flow the whole theory of good and evil, I think that’s a crucial sentence. Is he sarcastic in that sentence, or is he saying factually that he believes it.
That’s a good point. That’s a very good point. He might be saying that ironically. And then the problematic part is that Palermo and Aristotle before him believed the primary endowments to be, as I stated them, just now. Okay, what did he state just now? Is he saying that the primary endowments include those things or not? Because he’s just said three sentences above that, that whether pleasure is a primary endowment is a great problem. Yeah. Maybe his attack on Epicurus here is multi-layered. He’s saying you shouldn’t. Look to the animals for your understanding of good and evil. If we take that sentence that starts with yet to be said sarcastically, we shouldn’t take them as the standard. But even if we did take those, the lives of animals and newborn children as the standard, it wouldn’t even say what you Epicurus are trying to make it say. Yeah, that’s where I think we’re together, because my understanding of the Stoics ends up that they tried to say that we are following nature. And so if the Stoics were arguing that we are.
Well, then the Stoics are going to say, well, we’re following the nature, including the young of all species. And what we’re saying about the young of all species is right. And what you’re saying about the young of all species, Epicurus, is wrong. So there’s several things going on here, potentially. And it’s all depending on whether that yet sentence is ironically, sarcastically stated or whether it is a flat statement of fact. And read here when he thinks Cicero is talking about Epicurus, he’ll put him in italics. And it’s not in italics. So it’s not like he’s quoting Epicurus, but it’s just a question of whether that is intended to be ironic or not. And in fact, again, you’ve got this preposition issue when he says, yet this is the source from which must needs flow the whole theory of good and evil. What is this he’s talking about? And of course, we’re talking about translation to English from Latin, which is notoriously difficult to unwind sometimes. And whether Reed has done it properly here or not, I don’t know. I think we were totally going.
Fine discussing the three breakdowns, even though we’re not going to go into tremendous detail about all these names that Cicero dropped. I think we properly see that you can have virtue, or you can have pleasure, or you can have absence of pain as your definition of the ultimate goal, and that Cicero is criticizing Epicurus for singling out the word pleasure as the only description of his ultimate goal. It’s clear that’s going on. But as far as what Cicero is saying about looking to the animals, we’re going to have to sort of assign that as extracurricular, out-of-class reading material and come back and discuss whether we think Cicero is saying in the beginning of section 11, this is page 44 of the read edition, it’s section 11 designated 33 here all the way to the bottom of 44 and the top of 45, this discussion of looking to the young of all animals. Is Cicero saying yes, it’s okay to look to the young of all animals, but get it right and see the thereafter success.
Self-preservation instead of pleasure? Or is he saying, don’t look at the young of all animals because they’re corrupted? We would never look to a baby who doesn’t have good judgment about what’s right and wrong as our goal. We should look to implicitly here in this case, judgment, philosophy, reasoning, and logic that will give us the answers to those questions. And I have even a third view now, which is don’t look to the young of all animals, but even if you did, you would be wrong. Yes. I have a feeling that one is probably the most accurate. Okay. So we’re going to come to an end for today’s episode. Cicero is going to continue on in this section. This time, he’s going to go cite an example from Roman jurisprudence and the way that Roman judges and courts talked about jurisdiction. And he’s going to wrap that into the discussion of whether we should be looking to the young of all species for an answer to these questions or not. Is it within the jurisdiction of the young of all species? give us this answer, or is it not? But we will defer the extension.
Of that into next week. And in the meantime, we’ll see if anybody has closing thoughts for today. Martin, anything for today? Nothing for me today. Okay. Calasini? I think the most interesting part that came up for me today was creating these different categories and kind of pointing out that there were various philosophers at the time that held various opinions regarding virtue, pleasure, absence of pain, all the names that Joshua was kind of bringing up, which reminded me how all of this is embedded in the ancient philosophy of the time. And so, as we’re studying Cicero, this is kind of making it more evident about how the different philosophies were interacting with each other. Yeah, this is a lot of depth and detail here that you can’t get by just reading the letter to Menasius and stopping. Joshua? Yeah, the arguments are very intricate and very difficult.
To parse, and we’re trying to do it in real time. But I am quite excited, actually, because what we’ve got coming up in section 13 is some very, very good stuff. I have a whole, probably nine tabs open, so I’m very ready to argue when we get back to it next week, to argue against Cicero again. But this section was quite difficult, but it’s such an important, central claim of Epicurus that he’s criticizing, that it will bear further discussion on the podcast and on the forum as to whether we should look to the young, of all beasts, for our understanding of the nature of the good. Yeah, Joshua, that’s exactly the point, I think, and a good place to end the episode today. We constantly refer to Epicurus’ argument that the foundation of the view that pleasure is the good comes from observing nature and observing the young, of all species, before they have been corrupted. Cicero is not accepting that argument. In fact, he’s fairly emphatically, or as we saw today, in a very complicated way, challenging that. He’s saying it’s a.
Great problem. I think it’s clear that at the very least what Cicero is saying, that it’s a great problem how to evaluate the role of pleasure as a primary endowment of nature, and whether we should follow that as an example. And yet, that is what Epicurus is laying out as the foundation of his philosophy. He’s saying that it’s not appropriate, not necessary to construct a long, logical argument that pleasure is the good, that pleasure is desirable. And so where you end up coming down on that argument might well be the number one question about whether you accept Epicurus’ philosophy as valid, or whether you think he’s bogus, whether you think he’s crazy. Why would you look at the young of all animals who have no judgment? Why don’t you want to look to people who are mature or who have judgment, like the great men of Athens and Rome who have come before us? You should look to them as your example, not to the puppies and the kittens and the babies who are crying and whining in the cradle. You’re crazy Epicurus - is Cicero’s position. So we’ll come back and those questions further.
Next week. In the meantime, please visit us on the forum and let us know what you think in particular. Again, this section on page 44 of the read edition section 11 in book two of Cicero’s own ends. So we look forward to your comments on that and to talking further about these things next week. Until then.
Bye