Episode 206 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 14 - More On The Nature of Morality
Date: 12/22/23
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3591-episode-206-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-14-more-on-the-nature-of-morality/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”(Add summary here)
Transcript (Unedited)
Section titled “Transcript (Unedited)”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 Cicero’s own ends which of course contains Cicero’s attacks on Epicurean philosophy. We’re using the read edition and for those following along we’re on page 51 of the read edition and last week we closed the episode talking about how Cicero was emphasizing that this disagreement about the nature of morality between Epicurus and Cicero himself. Which is a fact of itself is so critically important to everything in terms of setting up a supreme good and the entire way you approach life. And this week we’re going to talk a little bit further about how Cicero is criticizing Epicurus’s position as to the view of the crowd about morality. Cicero is attacking Epicurus for seemingly saying that the opinion of the crowd about what is moral should be significant in your assessment of morality. But the bottom line of all of this is this nature of morality question and the part we’re going to begin with today reads like this. Hence Epicurus is compelled by the irresistible force of instinct to say in another passage what you also have said just now that it’s impossible to live pleasantly without also living morally. Now the Rackham edition makes the point in a separate footnote that in Latin the word that’s used is often translated as as honorably. But Rackham says that there’s a dual meaning of this word in Latin and that we should understand it to mean morally as much as honorably. And so whenever you hear Epicurus talking about honorably, Rackham is saying that we should be overlaying that with an understanding that we’re talking about not just honor in the sense of glory or your personal honor and reputation, but in a wider sense of morality in general. Rackham continues on and says, What does he mean by morality? Morally now, the same as pleasantly? If so, does it amount to saying that it’s impossible to live morally unless you live morally or unless you make public opinion your standard? He means then that he cannot live pleasantly without the approval of public opinion? What can be baser than to make the conduct of the wise man depend upon the gossip of the foolish? What, therefore, does he understand by moral in this passage? Clearly nothing but that which can be rightly praised for its own sake. For if it be praised as being a means to pleasure, what is there creditable about that? You can get pleasure at the provision dealers. No, Epicurus who esteems moral worth so highly as to say that it’s impossible to live pleasantly without it is not the man to identify moral with popular and maintain that it’s impossible to live pleasantly without popular esteem and understand moral to mean anything else than that which is right. That which is in. And for itself, independently, intrinsically, and of its own nature, praiseworthy. So this harks back to where Cicero has said previously that he’s going to disprove the entire structure of Epicurean philosophy by pointing out something that is desirable in and of itself but has nothing to do with pleasure. So we’ve churned a lot of words here over the last section to arrive back at that same place. Cicero is asserting that these things that are moral are desirable in and of themselves without planning. Pleasure being associated. Yeah, Cassius, I guess what I would say about this whole section 15 here is that it’s somewhat complicated in part because of the way that Cicero chooses to translate certain words. So what comes into question here, I guess, is principle doctrine five, which depending on the translation you use, I’m looking at the Peter St. Andre version and he translates it. It’s not possible to live joyously without also living wisely and beautifully and rightly. Nor to live wisely, beautifully and rightly without living joyously. Each of those words, there are alternate translations you could use. Instead of wisely, you could say prudently. It’s that phronesis, that practical wisdom. The word for honorably is kalos in Greek, which could mean something like beautifully, which is one of the words that Peter St. Andre uses here, beautifully and rightly. And Cicero talks quite a lot on this book about how morality, you know it because of its. So there’s a sense of moral beauty or the purity and rightness of doing the moral thing. And then the other word is justly or rightly, which has its own set of alternative translations. The point is that that part alone is a little bit difficult. Cicero is constantly making choices about how he translates Epicurus. Some of the choices are questionable. But the broader problem in this section is there are a set of unclear claims that Cicero makes. Claims that it is difficult to find justification for in the surviving texts of Epicurus himself. Cicero is looking for an understanding of morality that is desirable in and of itself. Of course, Epicurus isn’t ever going to say that morality is desirable in and of itself. Morality, like everything else in Epicurean philosophy, is desirable or not based on the pleasure that it brings. Moderated by the criterion, Epicurus always gives when you’re pursuing pleasure. Is it going to bring more pain down the line, for example? So we have to consider Epicurus’ understanding of morality in light of all of that. But part of the issue is that Cicero attributes to Epicurus an understanding of morality that comes from, and it says here in the Reed edition, the babble of the crowd. And the real difficulty there is that I’m not sure where he’s getting that. And we’ve talked a little bit about this just before we were recording, there’s a thread for this episode on the forum, we’ve been talking about it. Epicurus frequently talks about the wrong opinions of the multitude, right? The multitude has wrong opinions about the nature of the gods. The multitude has an unfounded fear of death based on wrong opinions. The multitude is unwise in its pursuit of fame and riches. Pursuit of fame and riches makes you a slave to the multitude. So far from founding his understanding, Of justice or morality, on the speech of the multitude, he actually is very critical of what the multitude is saying. He says himself, when I study nature, I would rather speak in oracles that are understood by none and tell the truth than to confirm popular opinion in the kind of speech that is understood by the multitude. So Epicurus is not looking to the multitude. So I don’t understand where Cicero is going with this, and I don’t understand what his source for saying this is. And this is interesting to me because this section here, section 15, is the farthest wide of the mark I’ve ever seen Cicero go in his translation and interpretation of Epicurus. Usually he says what Epicurus says very in quality. Sometimes we have to make minor adjustments. And then Cicero gives his own opinion, and those are very often widely divergent and founded on false opinions. Like, for example, when he quotes Aristotle as saying that mankind, was put here for two things. Or that morality is the same today and tomorrow and in Athens and in Rome and so forth. But this is, as I said, the widest I’ve seen Cicero go of the mark in interpreting Epicurus himself. And I do not know what to make of it. Brian on the forum last night posted that there are difficulties in the manuscript for this text that we don’t know, for example, if the word rumor, the rumor of the crowd should instead be the Latin word like timor. Fear of the crowd. So it’s genuinely, genuinely confusing, this whole section here. And it’s genuinely difficult to respond to for that reason. Another of the options that Brian puts forth is that word rumor, rumore in Latin, could instead in the manuscript be minore or timore. And if it’s minore, then you would read that as unless perhaps that which is commended by a smaller gathering. Not a vast multitude, but a smaller gathering. Say your friends, for example. And if the meaning of the word is timore rather than rumore, it would actually mean out of fear of the crowd, out of fear of the multitude. Now, Epicurus did have experiences in his own life that put him in fear of the multitude. For example, in Mytilene, when he was trying to teach publicly for the first time and the Platonists basically ran him off the island. But for all of these reasons and more, it’s very difficult to get a handle on this section in Cicero’s texture. Joshua, I think to record us with second. Everything that you said there in Cicero is very wide in the mark in the way he’s describing Epicurus’ opinion here. You’ve cited several references, and there’s probably more we could give that Epicurus clearly distances himself from the opinion of the crowd, not only on the gods, but obviously the way he defines many other words besides gods with the different opinion he takes on pleasure. So there’s absolutely no way to construe Epicurus as being overly slavish to the opinions of the crowd. And. yet that’s what Cicero. Is putting out here as an alternative explanation for what Epicurus may be saying and it’s just patently false. One thing before we go on past this passage would be to make the comment that he’s talking about here where he says that he esteems moral worth so highly as to say it’s impossible to live pleasantly without it. So what we have to explain is why Epicurus is making that statement and that Cicero’s not scoring any points here by saying that Epicurus values these things so highly as to say it’s impossible to live without them. It’s always in the context that it’s impossible to live a happy life, a pleasant life without them because those are the tools that bring pleasure. Epicurus is never saying that they are goals in and of themselves and that leads us to where Cicero takes us next in section 16 and let me read how he elaborates on this argument because again Cicero’s trying to hit home this point that, oh, Epicurus himself. Acknowledged the intrinsic desirability of morality. So Cicero says to Turquatus, Turquatus, when you stated how Epicurus cries aloud that an agreeable life is not possible unless it be a moral, a wise, and a just life, you yourself seem to be uttering a vaunt. Now that’s an unusual construction there from Reed, so let me read Rackham. Rackham says, this Turquatus accounts for the glow of pride with which as I noticed, you informed us of how loudly Epicurus proclaims the impossibility of living pleasantly without living morally, wisely, and justly. Your words derive potency from the grandeur of the things that they denoted. You drew yourself up to your full height and kept stopping and fixing us with your gaze and solemnly asserting that Epicurus does occasionally commend morality and justice. Were those names never mentioned by philosophers philosophers, we should have no use for. Philosophy. How well they sounded on your lips. Too seldom does Epicure speak to us of wisdom, courage, justice, temperance. Yet it is the love that those great names inspire which has lured the ablest of mankind to devote themselves to philosophical studies. So again, Cicero’s tour de force argument is the very glory of these words justice, wisdom, courage, temperance, to hear them uttered almost like the name of God. They just are so awe-inspiring in and of themselves that you don’t need any pleasure, you don’t need any reward. All you have to do is contemplate the sheer awesomeness of these words, and you’ll see my point. Wattasin realized that Epicurus is depraved because he doesn’t see these things. It’s somewhat difficult, Cassius, because Epicurus doesn’t actually spend a lot of time talking about morality, it seems. His ethics, is comprised of pleasure. Being the good and pain being a source of evil and something to be avoided. He has this elaborate approach to pleasure and pain about choice and avoidance, and he has an elaborate understanding of desire and some of the pitfalls that creep in in our pursuit of pleasure. Some of the ways that desire leads people astray in this pursuit. But in terms of morality, as Cicero would understand it, Epicurus just doesn’t talk about it. I would say there that Epicurus is putting the focus where the focus needs to be, which is the foundation of morality and the real reason that you’re doing everything. Once you understand the foundation and understand your goal, then you can properly focus on using the tools to get you to that goal. He realizes that the problem in the world is not that there aren’t plenty of people out there who use these grandiose sounding words like wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. It’s that They don’t understand what the. Goal of life is, and their implementation of those tools, of those virtues, leads to nothing, leads to emptiness, because they don’t understand the right goal. We talked recently on the forum about the face Epicurus is portrayed in the bust and so forth, about how serious or even stern, to some extent, you could say that his face is recorded. And I would relate that to this. There’s a real seriousness that’s needed to get to the bottom of what morality is all about. And you have to focus first on the goal and the foundation before you can properly understand how to use the tools. And this is a very serious issue. I would agree with Cicero and Chrysippus on it, that everything comes down to this dispute between pleasure and virtue, and how you relate the two of them together. And you’ve got to be very serious and rigorous and vigorous about identifying pleasure as the ultimate goal, and not letting virtue or the tools get reversed and put the cart before the horse. Right. Now, one of the things that Epicurus is accused of, in part by Cicero at the beginning. Of book one is in gratitude to his teachers, right? He stole from Democritus and then spurned Democritus. He studied under Nusiphanes and then denied having studied under Nusiphanes. And Cicero makes a great to do about this. DeWitt actually develops this question a little bit. I’ll try to read from here if it turns out to be useful. In part because this is one of the paragraphs in DeWitt’s book where he mentions that part of Epicurus’ project was as a moral reformer, putting our understanding of morality on a different ground. And so when he talks about morality, he talks about it in a way that is very different from other people. DeWitt says, this is at the bottom of page 65 in Epicurus and his philosophy. In the domain of physics, the charge of ingratitude to his teachers is aggravated because the sin is against Democritus. What is there in the physics of Epicurus that is not from Democritus demands Cicero. And elsewhere he says what Epicurus changes in what taken from democracy. Seems to spoil. Incidentally, every offense that was charged to Epicurus seemed more heinous than those of others. The defection of Epicurus from the teachings of Democritus, however, is almost wholly in the domain of ethics. To him, as a moral reformer, two things ranked foremost as abominations, skepticism and physical determinism. To such moral indignation, now symphonies seems to have been immune. Even if he rejected Pyrrhonian skepticism, this seems to have been immune to Pyrrhonian skepticism. This need not mean that he became alert to the evil of skepticism in general. To Epicurus, he seemed insensate. The pupil was advancing beyond the teacher. So what you won’t find in Epicurus is what you do find in writers like Marcus Aurelius or Seneca, for example, where they do talk quite a lot about morality and virtue. Obviously, morality and virtue, that’s like the summum bonum, the telos of the Stoics, morality in accordance with nature. So what you see in Epicurus is taking the field here, but he’s taking a very, very different approach to morality. And part of that approach is to understand that in order to have a discussion on morality, you have to know that moral action is possible in the first place, right? This is where the issue of determinism comes in. If all of your actions are predetermined, how can you possibly act morally? There’s no choice. There’s no decision. And so there’s no moral quality to the behavior in either way. So what you see in Epicurus is that morality is possible in the other case. And the other abomination that DeWitt cites is skepticism. If you deny the existence of knowledge, how can you know whether something is moral or not? That would be part of it. But how can you know whether your behavior is just or not? Is it wise or not? Is it honorable or not? It makes nonsense of any discussion of morality. This is the kind, I mentioned this has about morality. He hasn’t given you a list of 10 commandments on moral laws that you shall not break. That’s not the way that Epicurus approached this question. Now, Cicero makes an interesting test for philosophy here. He says that if the philosophers did not discourse on morality, we should have no need of philosophers. But that’s not the test that Epicurus applied to philosophy. Epicurus said that philosophy is only useful insofar as it ameliorates the health of the soul. That philosophy… Philosophy has the purpose of improving our lives. It does not necessarily have the purpose of improving our behavior. That’s part of the picture, but it’s not the main test of philosophy, as Cicero wants it to be. If I recall correctly, it may go on like this for much of the rest of the chapter. Go through each of these examples, as you’ve just done, Joshua, and unwind them so that we can see what Cicero is doing. But I believe it’s probably time to, again, make this comment that Cicero is presenting a sales. Feel. He is attempting to carry away the argument with an emotional appeal to these emotions that these words are supposed to evoke. And yet he is suggesting that you should consider the emotions that are evoked as something different from the feelings of pleasure and pain, as if the emotional responses you get to his arguments have nothing to do with pleasure and pain, when they have everything to do with pleasure and pain. What you’ve just said about how well it became you to take these words on your lips, for if they were never uttered by philosophers, we should not care to have any philosophy at all. He’s saying that the reason we like philosophy is for this sense of awe-inspired grandeur that this discussion brings to us of these words that are so intrinsically good in themselves. And even the next sentence, it’s from a passion for those phrases, which are very seldom employed by Epicurus, I mean courage, wisdom, justice, and temperance, that men of preeminent ability have devoted themselves to the pursuit. Of the philosophy. Well, I thought passion, Cicero, was something you don’t like. I thought emotion were things that was a problem for your reason and for your disembodied abstractions that are deriving from Plato and Aristotle and the Stoics. The passion for these phrases, Cicero, is no different than the passion that Epicurus is talking about for everything that he finds agreeable, or the reverse of it, the things that he finds disagreeable. It is this feeling that ultimately is where everything comes from. And you’re saying it yourself, Cicero. Why are you not reversing your opinion and going with Epicurus? You’re holding these words of virtue, prudence, honor, justice, wisdom, all these things out there and clearly dangling the reward of the pleasure that comes from talking about them and from being associated with them, yet you’re denying that you’re getting this pleasure. You’re denying the basis of the feeling that everyone gets when they do consider these issues that are being discussed. In my view, that is taking the totally obstinately stubborn and reverse position from reality here in going through these things like that. Let me add a couple more on as we go forward here. He says, Our eyesight, says Plato, is the keenest sense we have, yet it does not enable us to see wisdom. What passionate affection for herself would she inspire in us? Why so? Because she is so crafty that she can build the fabric of this pleasure in the most excellent, magnificent manner. Why is justice praised? For whence comes the saying so hackneyed from of old, a man you play with in the dark? Meaning somebody you can trust not to cheat you even in the dark. This proverb, though pointed at one thing only, has this very wide application, that in all transactions we should be influenced by the character of our actions and not by the presence of witnesses. Indeed, the arguments you alleged were insignificant and very weak. I mean that unprincipled. men are tortured by their. Own consciousness within them, and also by fear of punishment, which they either suffer or live in dread of suffering from some time. It’s not proper to imagine your bad man as a coward, or a weakling, torturing himself about anything he has done, and frightened at everything, but rather as one who craftily judges of everything by his interests, being keen, shrewd, and hardened, so that he readily devises means for cheating without detection, without witnesses, without any accomplice. Again, Cicero is appealing to this emotional attachment to how we instinctively emotionally recognize that there are certain things that we do wish to be identified with, and that we do wish to profit from in terms of the type people that we wish to be associated with, the just, and those people that we can trust with our interests, even in the dark, not to cheat us. Those are things that obviously Epicurus wants as well. Obviously anybody wants, because of the. Consequences that come from them, not just because there’s some logical abstraction attached to, oh, that’s good, and I acknowledge its goodness, but no, I don’t take any personal pleasure from it. No, I don’t take any personal reward. You know, maybe this is even related to this issue of platonic love and so forth. If you can somehow appreciate the object of your affection without taking any personal interest in it, there’s this detachment from reality here, it seems to me, that Cicero’s promoting. It’s not Epicurus that refutes it, it’s just the reality of the situation that refutes it. These high-minded abstractions that Cicero is pointing to are not worthy of our respect just because they’re there. They’re worthy of our respect because of the benefits it brings us from associating. Yeah, it’s a very strange way to proceed there by saying that the beauty of the word is what draws us to the content of virtue and morality, and that that’s what makes it good in of itself, that’s a very. Strange way to proceed, and it borders on something called the moralistic fallacy. Moralistic fallacy occurs when one concludes that something is a particular way because it should or ought to be that way. Alternatively, this fallacy occurs when one concludes that something cannot be a particular way because it should not or ought not be that way. This is so Cicero, it’s frustrating almost, because Cicero says that we cannot have been put here for the pursuit of pleasure as our end. He’s falling prey to this. He’s falling prey to the moralistic fallacy. He’s saying that my understanding of morality does not allow pleasure to be the goal. Therefore, pleasure is not the goal. That is the moralistic fallacy, and Cicero trips over it every step of the way in his discussion of morality. And it relates to something I said a few episodes back. Just because you want something to be true does not mean that it is true. Just because you want the operation. Of nature to proceed with morality or justice does not mean that they actually do proceed with morality or justice. Just because you want morality to be absolute and unchanging, same today and tomorrow and in Athens and in Rome, does not mean that it actually is absolute and unchanging. And so what we end up with, what we’re left with, is just a lot of bare assertions from Cicero, just a lot of claims that, well, this is how it is. And that’s not good enough. From Lucretius, I think it was the last episode or the one before that, how justice develops as a convention by mutual agreement. Interestingly enough, Mary Porter Packer, in her overview, she wrote her dissertation on Cicero’s presentation of Epicurean ethics. And one of the things that she says has to do with exactly this question. She says this, Cicero seems to be honestly and entirely unaware of the firm basis for justice which Epicurean. Rule set. He can see nothing beyond the fear of punishment and therefore the fear of detection. And yet he has Torquatus say that the necessary things of life can be won without injustice. He omits the social contract as a basis of justice, the idea that people make agreements with each other, neither to harm nor to be harmed. Cicero just ignores that as if he is unacquainted with it. She says, moreover, Cicero’s failure to explain her attack the Epicurean theory of justice and the social compact. It’s a big thing. What he’s trying to do here, though, is to say, look, you know, we’re right, you know, we’re right here. But we’re wrong. It’s not right. We’re wrong. We’re wrong. We’re right here. We’re not in this together. It’s not right. We’re right here. It’s not right. We’re wrong. This is not right. And so, Cicero says that this social compact is a significant omission in his discussion of Epicurean virtue. I thought that was a very interesting thing, something I might not have otherwise noticed. But it’s true. He’s talking here about the fear of punishment as if that were the only foundation of justice. But Epicurus has like a whole series of principal doctrines. There’s probably like six or seven of them, something like that, Cassius, in which he’s outlining and limiting and building up his understanding of what justice is. And it’s not just about unprincipled justice. principled men. It’s just. Tortured by their own consciousness within them, and also by the fear of punishment. So when Cicero says as he does here, it’s not proper to imagine your bad man as a coward or a weakling torturing himself about anything he has done and frightened at everything, but rather as one who craftily judges of everything by his interests, being keen, shrewd, and hardens, so that he readily devises means for cheating without detection, without witnesses, without any accomplice. Well, what? People are going to violate your advices, and they’re going to violate your advices, and they’re going to violate your understanding of morality, Cicero, and they’re going to do it either in the cold light of day. This example, he says that this guy was taking bribes in open sunlight and in plain view. People are going to violate your standard of morality in exactly the same way, with crafty judgment, being keen, shrewd, and hardened, and so forth. So if you’re saying that this is a fatal flaw in Epicurus’s understanding of justice, which you have not properly understood, it’s exactly the same problem. Your understanding of justice and morality. That’s where you’ve said several things there I have to comment on. First of all, referring back to what Mary Porter Packer had said about how Cicero omitted discussion of Epicurus’s views of justice. That is a point that’s drilled home very well also by one of our guests that we’ve interviewed recently, Dr. Marcello Boeri and his co-author Javier Ayaz, in their book, Theory and Practice in Epicurean Political Philosophy. And in fact, there’s an article that goes on about this. It’s called, What is Epicurean Political Philosophy? And it’s along with the book that’s out there that’s entitled, Cicero’s Clamorous Silences. And that’s the theme of that article, that Cicero has omitted reference to the extensive discussion in Epicurean philosophy, how justice works. He’s just skipped over it, even though it’s a central part of Epicurean philosophy. And so he’s chosen to end up manipulating or deceiving the reader by leaving out something as critically important as the explanation of justice. Yeah, Cicero wants us to, Epicurus’s understanding of justice is, if you can get away with it, it’s just, right? Anything that you can get away with and not get caught doing, that falls under Epicurus’s understanding of justice. And it’s so far from being true. Yes. And people interested in pursuing that, I think we have a copy of Mary Porter Packer’s essay, which was, I think, in the 20s even or 30s. Yeah, she was born in 1886, and that was published around the time of DeWitt’s early career. So yeah, it would have been in about the 20s or 30s. Okay. So yes, we have a copy of that on the forum, or else we’ll get one. And then Dr. Berreri’s book out there pursues that as well. So that’s a really important point for seeing through Cicero’s manner of argument here. And you know that he had this material in front of him because he’s quoting extensively from core Epicurean material. Even what we’ve been discussing today, it seems like he’s talking about the principal doctrines, including number five there. Well, what about those from 30 to 40, Cicero, that you don’t seem to be spending any time on? You just cherry pick, you know, you’re not going to be spending any time on them. You’re going to be spending a lot of time on them. You’re just cherry pick, you know, you’re going to be. Reading things to make it look as bad as possible for Epicurus. So yeah, Joshua, as we begin to conclude for today and think about next week and so forth, I do think we’re going to find there’s a repetitive argument over and over. The well that Cicero is going to keep coming back to is to appeal to what Torquatus has already warned us against, that these guys are beguiled by the glamour of the name of virtue. And he’s going to attempt to beguile us with the glamour of all these wonderful things that he’s talking about. That Cicero is a scum, and he’s going to attempt to assert it should be disassociated from the name of pleasure, as if the feeling that we get from glamour has nothing to do with pleasure or pain, that it’s just some kind of an abstraction. And one of the things I think we’ll be challenged to do, and I have confidence, Joshua, you’re going to be a whole lot better than I am, is coming up with other analogies and stories to deal with Cicero’s arguments here, which is what he does not allow Torquatus to be doing here. He’s going on and on and on, page after page, without allowing Torquatus any significant response to. The point being that Cicero’s got these stories and these methods of impressing you with how glorious his version of the supreme good really is, but I can’t think of an example of whether it’s related to platonic love and so forth. In Richard Wagner’s Tannhauser, there is a song contest between the hero of the story, who has been spending time with Venus and who is taking the side of pleasure in the play, and who is singing against these conventional exponents of virtue and honor and justice, who are the established members of the nobility in the song contest. That’s a point that’s raised within the song contest. The context of the contest is that the prince has stated that the winner of the song contest will be allowed to marry what appears to be some princess, and these stoic platonic philosopher singers get up and talk about her beauty as an abstraction. distraction as something that you can’t touch and. Can’t come close to, but you just honor from afar in ways that I personally associate with platonic love. And the character that Wagner has speaking in the name of pleasure takes the exact opposite approach, that it’s ridiculous to look at beauty as something that you can’t touch or can’t participate in or feel yourself, that it’s worthless to you unless you touch it and feel it and experience it yourself. So I’ll link to that section of the Wagner opera as an example, at least concerning in dealing with Cicero’s arguments, because a lot of it does seem to come back to this question. Cicero’s holding up these virtues as glamorous, but expecting you to understand that taking pleasure in them is base. And that’s a very important aspect of deciding where you stand on this question. Okay, so with that, rather than go into the first of several stories of illustrious Romans, let’s go ahead and close the episode for today and ask if anyone has comments on what we’ve discussed so far. Martin? anything today. No, again, no comment today. Sorry. No problem. Thank you, Martin, as always. Kallasini, anything today? Yes, Cassius. Today’s podcast, it’s coming to me that it’s really homing in on understanding the difference between putting virtue first versus pleasure and utility and what leads to the best life. I certainly agree, Kallasini. Now, when you use the word utility there, utility can sometimes be a word that people get turned around. And maybe it becomes even a euphemism for some people to avoid saying that. But that’s what we were talking about earlier in the episode. Epicurus is very focused on going right to the heart of the matter. And use, utility, words like that that refer to the process of getting to an end point are definitely important. Epicurus is always going to focus on the end point itself as pleasure rather than anything else. Okay, thank you, Kallasini. Joshua? Well, it occurs to me, Cassius. We do have one more recording. But that episode won’t go out in time. So we should say it now. Merry Christmas to our listeners and to each other. Exactly right, Joshua. As we begin to come to the close of a recording year, this is the time we want to thank our podcasters for all of the effort that you’ve put into it and also thank our listeners for their participation and giving us feedback and asking questions at the forum. Speaking for myself, I get a lot of pleasure and enjoyment out of working with the podcast. I think it’s a very productive thing. for us to be doing to get the message out in an oral form as opposed to just in writing on the forum. And I want to be sure to join in with Joshua in expressing our hope that all of our listeners will have an enjoyable and happy holiday season with their friends. It’s the time of year to think about what we did last year, what we’d like to do next year. And so we’ll be discussing that in our upcoming episodes. Let me remind everyone to please drop by the forum whenever you can. Let us know if you have any questions or comments on this episode or anything else. Again, have a happy holiday season. See you soon. Bye.