Episode 225 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 30 - Cicero Argues That Commitment To Virtue Is A Bar To Pleasure
Date: 04/24/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3812-episode-225-cicero-s-on-ends-book-two-part-30-cicero-argues-that-commitment-to-v/
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Section titled “Transcript (Unedited)”Welcome to episode 225 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote On the Nature of Things, the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at epicureanfriends.com, where you’ll find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics. This week we move on to section 35, which is the final section of book two of Own Ends. Last week we were continuing with Cicero’s seemingly endless criticisms of linking pleasure as the basis of happiness. And the last thing Cicero had said was that if the gods exist as even your school supposes, I ask you how can they be happy when they cannot realize pleasure with their bodily faculties? Or if they are happy without that kind of pleasure, why you refuse to allow that the wise man can have similar intellectual enjoyment? Cicero’s gone over and over with this point that intellectual activities are not pleasure at all. Again, an echo of what he said early in book one, where he says that Epicurus never took the position that intellectual activities are poetry and so forth are actually pleasures. He’s just obtusely insisting that those are not pleasure, those are outside of pleasure, and Epicurus makes no sense. But here’s the conclusion that he comes to today, which I’ll go through quickly and then we’ll break it down and discuss the details. Section 35. Read the Panegyric’s Torquatus, not of those heroes praised by Homer, not of Cyrus or Agesilaus, Aristides or Themistocles, Philip or Alexander, but read those delivered upon our own great men. Read those of your own family. You will not find anyone extolled for his skill and cunning in procuring pleasures. This is not what is conveyed by epitaphs like the one near the city gate, which says, Here lieth one whom many lands agree Rome’s first and greatest citizen to be. Do we suppose that many lands agree that Calatinus was Rome’s greatest citizen because of his surpassing eminence in the acquisition of pleasures? Then are we to say that a youth is a young man of great promise and high character when we judge him likely to study his own interests and to do whatever will be for his personal advantage? Do we not see what a universal upheaval and confusion would result from such a principle? It does away with generosity and with gratitude, the bonds of mutual harmony. If you lend a man money for your own advantage, this cannot be considered an act of generosity. It is usury. No gratitude is owing to a man who lends money for gain. In fact, if pleasure usurps the sovereignty, all of the cardinal virtues must inevitably be dethroned. And also, there are a number of base qualities which can with difficulty be proved inconsistent with the character of the wise man, unless it be a law of nature that moral goodness should be supreme. Not to bring forward further arguments, for they are countless in number. Any sound commendation of virtue must needs keep pleasure at arm’s length. Do not expect me further to argue the point. Look within. Study your own consciousness. Then, after full and fair introspection, ask yourself the question, would you prefer to pass your whole life in that state of calm, which you spoke of so often, amidst the enjoyment of unceasing pleasures, free from all pain, and even, in addition, which your school is fond of postulating, but which really is impossible, free from all fear of pain, or to be a benefactor of the entire human race, and to bring succor and safety to the distressed, even at the cost of enduring the dolores of Hercules? Dolores, that was indeed the sad and gloomy name which our ancestors bestowed, even in the case of a god, upon labors which were not to be evaded. I would press my question and drag an answer from you. Were I not afraid, lest you should say that Hercules himself, in the arduous labors that he wrought for the preservation of mankind, was acting for the sake of pleasure? Here I concluded. I’m at no loss for authorities, said Torquatus, to whom to refer your arguments. I might be able to do some execution myself, but I prefer to find better equipped champions. No doubt you allude to our excellent and learned friends, Cicero and Philodemus, Cicero said. You’re right, Torquatus replied. Very well then, said Cicero, but it would be fairer to let Triarius pronounce some verdict on our dispute. I formally object to him as prejudice, Torquatus rejoined with a smile, at all events on this issue. You’ve shown us some mercy, but Triarius lays about him like a true Stoic. Oh, interposed Triarius, I’ll fight more boldly still next time, for I shall have the arguments I have just heard ready to my hand, though I won’t attack you till I see you have been armed by the instructors whom you mentioned. And with these words, we brought our promenade and our discussion to an end together. Okay, so that takes us to the very end of book two. Acute listeners will note that I’ve just been reading the Rackham version rather than the Reed version that we’ve used normally in our podcast. And that’s because there are some differences that Rackham probably has correct in terms of who is saying what over what Reed has said. The meaning is the same. It’s just a matter of clarity. So if we go back to the beginning of Section 35, Cicero is going back to what Joshua has noted over and over as one of the most common arguments that he’s raised throughout all of this discussion. The real way to analyze this question is to look at the lives of famous and reputable and renowned and glorious Roman and Greek heroes of the past and look at their lives and see what does the nation and the people over the years, what qualities do they praise? Why do they hold some people out to be great men and not others? And Cicero offers the example of Calatinus, who was a general in the Punic Wars, and the inscription over his tomb to the effect that people agree that this man was a leader of the nation beyond compare. And Cicero says, well, was he held up as a leader beyond compare because he excelled others in the production of pleasures? Or was he held up as a leader beyond compare because of his great abilities and his contributions to the nation? Are we going to say to young people, he’s a great young man when we find a person who’s devoted to their own interest to the exclusion of anything else and that they’re devoted to pleasure? Or are we going to say that a great young man is someone who is devoted to virtue? If we take the position that greatness is tied to the production of pleasure, then generosity is at an end, gratitude is at an end, and those are the bonds of peace, Cicero says. And then he uses the example that you don’t consider someone who lends you money at interest to be doing you a favor. You consider that to be usury, which is not a good thing at all. If a reward for doing something is necessary, that guts it of virtue and propriety that any good action should have as being done for its own sake and not for the sake of a reward. If pleasure is set on the throne, the highest virtues must necessarily take a low place. Why don’t we stop there and go through Cicero’s argument that the right way to make all these decisions is to look at what the great men of Rome and Greece have done before us and what the people applaud as what is truly good. So Cicero issues a challenge here. He says in the part you just read, Cassius, do we not see how great a confusion is likely to ensue in all affairs and what great complications if we base our lives on pleasure? Interestingly enough, Christopher Hitchens has a response to that, and I’m going to read it. He says, you find me a state or a society that threw off theocracy and threw off religion and said, we adopt the teachings of Lucretius and Democritus and Galileo and Spinoza and Darwin and Russell and Jefferson and Thomas Paine. That’s kind of the response to what Cicero is saying here. Let’s give it a go, Cicero. Let’s give it a go. Let’s try this out. Let’s build this society. A society built on the pursuit of pleasure and happiness and friendship and love and not a society built on who has the biggest army necessarily. I realize that some of this is getting into the utopian, but I don’t think that’s a bad response. The response we get from Christopher Hitchens there. Joshua, I think you’re spot on to point out that this challenge is based on that Cicero says, Torquatus, Epicurus, your system is so confusing. Nobody would be able to understand what the right course is and it would lead to the total destruction of all virtue. Quoting again from the read edition, quote, do we not see how great a confusion is likely to ensue in all affairs and what complications? As you were saying that, Joshua, it reminded me that that argument is seized upon by Francis Wright in A Few Days in Athens, chapter seven, the confrontation between Zeno and Epicurus with Epicurus giving his response to Zeno’s accusations. And it highlights the same issue. Francis Wright has Epicurus say this. And this is Epicurus speaking to the crowd with Zeno in front of him. Epicurus says, Zeno in his present speech has rested much of the truth of his system on its expediency. I, therefore, shall do the same by mine. The door to my gardens is ever open and my books are in the hands of the public. To enter, therefore, here into the detail or expounding the principles of my philosophy is equally out of place and out of season. Tell us not that that is right, which admits of evil construction, that that is virtue, which leaves an open gate to vice. That’s Epicurus quoting Zeno. But Epicurus says, this is the thrust which Zeno now makes at Epicurus. And did it hit, I grant it were a mortal one. From the flavor we pronounce of the fruit, from the beauty and the fragrance of the flower, And in a system of morals or philosophy or whatever else, what tends to produce good, we pronounce to be good. And what to produce evil, we pronounce to be evil. And then Epicurus continues on in chapter 7 to discuss that. But I think that’s exactly why Francis Wright has placed this at the center of Epicurus’ statement here. Cicero is charging that if you follow Epicurean philosophy, it leaves an open door to vice. It will produce evil in all affairs. Quote, if pleasure is set on the throne, the highest virtues must necessarily take a low place. And you’re not even going to be able to tell what dishonor is anymore. So Cicero’s conclusion is, quote, if virtue is adequately extolled, the approaches to pleasure are inevitably barred. And so you come down to this conclusion over and over again. If you place pleasure in the center of your philosophy, you’re going to be led directly to corruption. And the way to avoid being led to corruption and disaster and depravity is to extol virtue as sitting on the throne and pleasure being subservient to virtue, rather than virtue being subservient to pleasure. Cicero decided at the end of his longest, broadest condemnation of Epicurean philosophy that this is what he was going to use as the final concluding summary of his position. Regardless of all the philosophy we’ve discussed, if you follow your views, Torquatus, if you follow your views, Epicurus, society is going to devolve into chaos and evil. And the way to prevent that is to forget pleasure and the discussion of pleasure as a reward for your activity. And it’s almost like some religious call to go back to the Bible or back to God, go back to virtue and put virtue on the throne. And that will be the way to your salvation. That’s very excellent. I have one more quote. I mentioned utopianism, and now I’m going to read from Thomas More’s Utopia. He says, as to moral philosophy, the utopians have the same disputes among them as we have here. They examine what are properly good, both for the body and the mind, and whether any outward thing can be called truly good, or if that term belong only to the endowments of the soul. They inquire likewise into the nature of virtues and pleasure, but their chief dispute is concerning the happiness of a man and wherein it consists, whether in some one thing or in a great many. They seem indeed more inclinable to that opinion that places, if not the whole, yet the chief part of a man’s happiness in pleasure. And a little further down, he says this. And from thence, they infer that if a man ought to advance the welfare and comfort of the rest of mankind, there being no virtue more proper and peculiar to our nature than to ease the miseries of others, to free from trouble and anxiety, in furnishing them with the comforts of life in which pleasure consists, nature much more vigorously leads them to do all this for himself. A life of pleasure is either a real evil, and in that case we ought not to assist others in their pursuit of it, but on the contrary, to keep them from it all we can, as from that which is most hurtful and deadly. Or, if it is a good thing, so that we not only may, but ought to help others to it, why then ought not a man to begin with himself? Since no man can be more bound to look after the good of another than after his own. For nature cannot direct us to be good and kind to others, and yet at the same time to be unmerciful and cruel to ourselves. Thus, as they define virtue to be living according to nature, so they imagine that nature prompts all people on to seek after pleasure as the end of all they do. So we have here now three, I think, very good responses to Cicero’s main challenge. Obviously, like Christopher Hitchens is complaining, we don’t have a way to test this in the real world, because we cannot escape the old barbarism. But the test, if we did run it, would almost certainly result, I think, in an increase of friendship and peace and generosity, rather than a decrease, as Cicero is charging. Yes, that’s the direction that an Epicurean would come from. We’re not going to base our claim of victory in this debate in Epicurus being a better logician or us having better syllogisms than the Stoics do, although I would maintain that that is the case. The real test is not whether we can be more eloquent in stringing together words that are impressive to those who like to listen to words. The real test is the practical result of what comes from the philosophy. Let’s take up the next example that Cicero gives here around line 118, where he brings up the labors of Hercules and wants to argue to us that here’s Hercules. My gosh, one of our greatest examples of a man who became a god, he’s a godlike figure, who undertook all these labors, but asked for no pleasure in return. That Hercules is an example of virtuous conduct. And he certainly did not pursue his labors because he was searching pleasure, even though Cicero says here, I would mention those as a great example, but I suspect you’re going to say that Hercules’ own motive was pleasure. So, Joshua, do you know anything about the background of Hercules and how we can analyze that argument by Cicero? Well, I’m not too well acquainted with this story, actually, but I’m looking at the Wikipedia page now, and I can read a few passages from there. Joshua, isn’t there also a classic picture? Is it Hercules who has to choose between pleasure and virtue? Hercules at the crossroads. The judgment of Hercules is an ancient Greek parable attributed to Prodicus. It concerns the young Hercules who is offered a choice between vice and virtue, a life of pleasure or one of hardship and honor. In Xenophon’s text, Socrates tells how the young Hercules, as the hero contemplates his future, is visited by the female personifications of vice and virtue, Kakia and Aratae. They offer him a choice between pleasure and an easy life or a severe but glorious life. Joshua, what can you tell us about how the labors of Hercules relates to this question? Well, part of the backstory here is that Hercules married a woman named Megara, who was the eldest daughter of King Creon of Thebes. But in a fit of madness induced by Hera, the goddess, Hercules killed Megara and their children. And this is related in a play by Euripides called Heracles, in which a slightly different story is told that he completed his labors, and it was only on his return from the underworld that he murdered his wife and children. In any case, he murdered his wife and kids. And after recovering from the insanity and deeply regretting his actions, he was purified by King Thespius and then traveled to Delphi to inquire how he could atone for his actions. And Pythia, the oracle, advised him to go and serve this king, King Eurystheus of Mycenae, for 12 years, performing whatever labors Eurystheus might set him. In return, he would be awarded with immortality. And Hercules, it was said, despaired at this, loathing to serve a man whom he knew to be far inferior to himself, yet fearing also to oppose his own father Zeus. And eventually he did what was asked. And the 12 labors are slaying the Nemean lion, slaying the Lernian hydra, capturing the Cyrenian hind, capturing the Arimanthian boar, cleaning the Augian stables, slaying the Stymphalian birds, capturing the Cretan bull, stealing the mares of Diomedes, obtaining the girdle of Hippolyta, obtaining the cattle of the three-bodied giant Geryon, stealing three of the golden apples of the Hesperides. And capturing and bringing back Cerberus. Joshua, let me jump in for a second. How much of that is familiar to us from Lucretius? It’s interesting to consider how Lucretius is bringing in this classic example of someone who has to choose the course of their lives. Well, that’s exactly it. And before we were talking, Cassius, you mentioned this scene in classical literature, which is also a painting or a series of paintings by different painters, when Hercules is presented a choice. And it’s a choice between a life of virtue and a life of vice or a life of pleasure. And of course, it wouldn’t be a good story if he didn’t choose virtue. In many ways, it mirrors the story that was also told about Achilles. The mother of Achilles was a sea nymph named Thetis, and she reported to him a prophecy that if he went to Troy, he would die in battle at a young age. But his name, his reputation would last forever. However, if he stayed home, he would live a long and prosperous life and father many children. But after a few generations, his name would be forgotten. And of course, Achilles wouldn’t be Achilles if he didn’t choose fame and honor and virtue and if he didn’t go to battle. There is another painting we were talking about recently. Do you remember this one? So, yeah, Joshua, you’ve got two hugely important incidents in the Roman Greek history involving the Trojan War, the choices that were made by the heroes there that led eventually to the founding of Rome. And also this Hercules at the Crossroads example of this great figure to both Romans and Greeks who had to choose between virtue and pleasure and made the choice of virtue instead of pleasure. So you’ve got these allegories that everyone would have been taught, everyone would have been familiar with, that the right course in life is to see that there’s this choice you have to make. And you have to choose virtue instead of choosing pleasure because it’s just not reputable, not ultimately the right thing to do to choose pleasure. That there’s a conflict between them, that if you choose pleasure, you will be choosing something inferior that is at war essentially with virtue. And that’s just not the right perspective at all from the point of view of Epicurus and Torquatus and the Epicurean philosophers. There is no inherent conflict between virtue and vice when you properly understand their relationship and properly understand that virtue itself is not its own reward. When you do see that nature gives us only pleasure and pain and you make the commitment to follow the way of nature as opposed to coming up with something in your mind that you think is superior to nature, then you will realize that nature has given us pleasure and pain and those are the foundation of how to make choices so that your proper choices, which are virtue, lead to a predominance of pleasure over pain. And that’s the way you judge whether an action is appropriate or not. I mentioned here that in episode 224 as a special edition of the Lucrezia’s Today podcast, I read from the Cosmo Ramondi letter, and he goes into this same argument. It’s just like everybody. This is really possibly the most central argument in Epicurean philosophy or maybe even philosophy as a whole. This alleged conflict between virtue and pleasure with almost everyone, with the exception of Epicurus, taking the position that virtue has to be in the throne rather than pleasure. It is a longstanding choice. It’s the choice we all face. Horus in his Odes, this is his third book of Odes, he writes a poem which has become famous for one particular line. To suffer hardness with good cheer in sternest school of warfare bred, our youth should learn. Let steed and spear make him one day the Parthians dread. Cold skies, keen perils brace his life. Methinks I see from rampired town, some battling tyrants, matron wife, some maiden look in terror down. Ah, my lord, untrained in war, oh, tempt not the infuriate mood of that fell lion I see. From far he plunges through a tide of blood. What joy for fatherland to die. And that in Latin is dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country. Wilfred Owen, who was a British soldier in World War I, wrote a poem titled after that line, dulce et decorum est. And it’s quite graphic, and I’m not going to read the whole thing, but he says this after describing the death of one of these soldiers. He says, This is, as we’ve discussed many times, part of Cicero’s project is to develop a new generation to carry on the warlike tradition of not just Roman virtue, but Roman valor in the face of battle and in the face of death. And whether that’s the kind of death that people should yearn for and that we should teach our children to yearn for that kind of death is not something I would recommend. So, in place of virtue, the word duty could be thrown in there because there’s this sort of duty to your country. But the problem with that is it comes to the system of governance. And so much of history and so many different countries have had kings down through history. And so, what do kings do? How many kings actually ruled continually thinking for the benefit only of the people that they ruled? Or were they not really actually quite greedy and considering their own well-being and considering conquest for the sake of increasing all their creature comforts so they could have gilded plates to eat off of, etc., etc.? And the problem is that the duty is feeding back into the whole system to support corrupt systems and greed. And if it’s not kings that are ruling, it’s some small group of elite people. And so, we have to look underneath the rug, so to speak, and see what kind of dirt’s going on there. This whole thing is like Cicero presents this argument that sounds so virtuous and righteous. But then if you look at the whole bigger picture, it all ends up going toward supporting corruption and greed of some system. So, with conquest, how much conquest is enough? It’s this grasping and greed that is finally at the core of it all. Yeah, I don’t think it would be hard at all to find examples of what we’re describing here. When the Romans conquered the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, a huge part of their goal was to acquire Egyptian grain. It wasn’t to liberate the Egyptian people, certainly. It wasn’t to make anyone happy. It was to set up a system of tribute whereby Egypt would send so many grain ships every year to Rome. To feed the poor of Rome, I mean, it’s not going to waste. But certainly, that’s a factor behind all of these conversations is that Cicero, you mentioned the elite Colossini. Cicero is one of these people. Got to be one of the wealthiest people in Rome. Certainly in the top, probably one or two percent, I would guess. He’s got villas in multiple countryside cities or towns. He’s got houses in Rome itself. There’s a system of patronage in place that protects the nobility and protects the offices of government and keeps them for the nobility. So that’s all part of the conversation, no doubt. And Calissini, when you were referencing the duties issue, that was one of the first books I ever came into contact with from Cicero. I think one of his most famous works is called De Officiis, generally translated as On Duties. And it’s a very eloquent call to live a life of duty as opposed to a life of pleasure. But as you say, there’s an agenda behind it, which he denies as being anything but virtue. But still, there’s an agenda behind it to accomplish certain things which he thinks are desirable to accomplish. To move on to the final section, we see Cicero is not going to give Torquatus an opportunity to respond at length to what Cicero has been arguing. And we could probably learn a few things by looking at exactly how Cicero brings this to a conclusion. And it’s very interesting that he has Torquatus say that I’m no loss for authorities to whom to refer these arguments. And Cicero says, no doubt you allude to our excellent and learned friends, Ciro and Philodemus. An interesting comment there that Cicero himself is referring to Ciro and Philodemus, extremely well-known Epicureans, as excellent and learned friends. Which sort of reinforces the respect that Cicero has for these Epicureans. Even though he disagrees with them, he’s really not treating them with contempt. He’s insisting that he’s only treating the ideas with contempt. In fact, you almost get the impression when Cicero talks about all of the different philosophers of his time that almost the majority of them were Epicurean as opposed to other philosophic schools. But at any rate, Cicero is certainly very well aware of the leading Epicureans. And then they just tail off into almost a joke. But before we go, I should let Triarius pronounce on what we’ve said. And Torquatus says, that’s not a good idea at all, because Triarius is just going to be like a true Stoic and go off into arguments that are not going to lead to anything as they never do. So is there anything we can learn from the ending here, other than that Cicero is not going to let the Epicureans respond at length? Well, you’re right to point out, Cassius. It is interesting that he mentions Philodemus and Ciro, that this school that Epicureus founded sometime around the year 300 BC is still going strong. It’s metastasized, as Cicero would probably like to put it, to Rome. It’s still vibrant in the area of Asia Minor, where it first spread. So every once in a while, you get a little lifting of the corner of the veil of what was kind of going on in this time, underneath all of the philosophical squabbling. And it’s real people, real people having real conversations, which, of course, is Cicero’s goal here, because this may have come out of real people having real conversations. But the book, as it’s survived to us, is no doubt primarily the work of Cicero himself. I don’t know anyone when, in the middle of a conversation, does what Torquatus did in book one and just deliver a 30-minute monologue. This is a stylistic choice that Cicero is making. And it represents something that DeWitt touches on when he talks about the Epicureans, that they preferred an approach to writing philosophy, which is you give an overall summary and you don’t do this Socratic dialectic. And so Cicero is honoring that tradition here, but certainly also benefiting from it. We now have more or less 35 pages or something of Cicero offering unanswered objections to Epicureanism. If it had been written differently, maybe Torquatus would have been given another chance to come in here. Torquatus certainly says that he is at no loss for authorities, and no doubt he would not agree with where it was left. But I guess at some point, in fairness, you do have to stop. And this is the way Cicero chooses to bring this to an end. And so in noting that, the very last argument then that Cicero has brought forth against Epicurus and Torquatus is to cite the example of Hercules. And in doing so, also, interestingly, admit that he knows what the Epicurean response is going to be. That we say that Hercules chose virtue because of virtue. You say that Hercules chose virtue because of pleasure. And that’s the summation of the whole disagreement. And it’s not bridged here in this very last example that Cicero gives. Looking at Hercules, we have to analyze that choice and take a position on whether virtue requires the rejection of pleasure or whether pleasure is indeed the fulfillment of virtue. Going back for just a moment to the way that Francis Wright dealt with that, the bottom line of what Epicurus responds in Chapter 7 and the way that Torquatus would no doubt have responded, if given the opportunity, is to say that when you look to evaluate a moral system, you look to the results that it produces. And it is indeed the results that would be produced by the Epicurean system that are far better than the results that are produced by appealing to virtue. Like Dogenes of Oinoanda complains about, if you put the cart before the horse, the buggy is not going to make any progress. The horse has to be in front. The cart comes behind. The driver is in the cart. They all have to work together properly to achieve the purposes of a cart. And if you put virtue in the driver’s seat, then you’ve taken away the justification for the entire exercise. If you reduce pleasure to something to be denounced and bars placed in front of pleasure, then you’ve removed the incentive for the whole mechanism to proceed as nature has designed it. So it’s also interesting to note here that in this last section, we’ve gone back to arguing mostly about pleasure and pain. And the focus has not been on the word happiness. In fact, Cicero and Torquatus, Epicurus, all of them can be very comfortable in talking about whatever word we want to use in this position for happiness. Philomonia, felicity is a Latin root word we’ve been discussing recently as one of the words that’s translated as happiness. Cicero, Torquatus, Epicurus can all agree that happiness is the goal of life. But what they don’t agree on is what makes up happiness and what role pleasure has in that equation. And that’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s where you separate the wheat from the chafe in all of these questions. You have to decide whether happiness is grounded in virtue or happiness is grounded in pleasure. And that point is not reconciled here because there’s no way to reconcile these two very opposing positions about the nature of happiness. If you stick at the level of saying, well, everybody wants to be happy and that’s what everyone does. They do their best to simply be happy. But you don’t go down into the meaning of this word happiness and discuss how to evaluate what happiness really is. You don’t shout about it like Dajuniz of Oinoanda did. Then you’re ultimately still going round and round and round in circles. In preparation today, I was looking back again to see if there was anything here in the end about happiness in this last section and how Torquatus would have discussed this if he had been allowed to come back to it at the end of the chapter. And I don’t know that I can find a better section in On Ends where Torquatus seems to be dealing with this issue of happiness other than back in book one around section 62, where he says, quote, I wonder if Torquatus would not also have used the word happiness there. He is also very far removed from those defects of character, which I quoted a little while ago. And when he compares the fool’s life with his own, he feels great pleasure. And pains, if any befall him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reason for joy than for vexation. Especially in that last line there, I think that’s the ultimate response to Cicero in terms of the example we’ve been talking about, the man who’s the man who’s the man who’s on the rack or who’s being tortured or who’s suffering any great pain. Is that person still happy? Well, Torquatus doesn’t use the word happy there, but I think that his last statement applies. He says, And pains, if any befall him, have never power enough to prevent the wise man from finding more reasons for joy than for vexation. And so if I were looking for an explanation from Torquatus in the Epicurean perspective about what happiness is, I would certainly want to cite that quotation, that there is a relation between happiness and, quote, finding more reasons for joy than for vexation. Well, Cassius, you certainly picked a better passage from book one that I was going to read. Let me start here by quoting what you mentioned, which is the inscription from Dogenes von Wanda. This is fragment 32 of the inscription. He says, If, gentlemen, the pointed issue between these people and us involved inquiry into what is the means of happiness, and they wanted to say the virtues, which would actually be true, it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not what is the means of happiness, but what is happiness, and what is the ultimate goal of our nature, I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people, being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end, are in no way an end, but the means to the end. The other passage I was going to read, because I was listening to one of our past episodes, Cassius, and I learned something from you that I didn’t know before. I learned from you that the placeholder text, or filler text, that’s often used when you’re comparing fonts or typefaces, called lorem ipsum, I learned from you that that actually comes from this book, from On Ends by Cicero, and it comes from book one. And in the PDF we’re using, that’s on page 13 at section 32, And it deals again with this issue of the choices that we make. That could be the theme for this whole episode here today. What are the choices that we make? And Torquatus says, But that I may make plain to you the source of all the mistakes made by those who inveigh against pleasure and eulogize pain, I will unfold the whole system, and will set before you the very language held by that great discoverer of truth, and that master builder, if I may style him so, of the life of happiness. Surely, no one recoils from, or dislikes, or avoids pleasure in itself because it is pleasure, but because great pains come upon those who do not know how to follow pleasure rationally. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or wishes to win pain on its own account, merely because it is pain, but rather because circumstances sometimes occur which compel him to seek some great pleasure at the cost of exertion and pain. Who among us ever undertakes any toilsome bodily exercise except in the hope of gaining some advantage from it? Who again would have any right to reproach either a man who desires to be surrounded by pleasure unaccompanied by any annoyance, or another man who shrinks from any pain which is not productive of pleasure? And he says, But in truth we do blame, and deem most deserving of righteous hatred, the men who, enervated and depraved by the fascination of momentary pleasures, do not foresee the pain and troubles which are sure to befall them, because they are blinded by desire, and in the same error are involved those who prove traitors to their duties through effeminacy of spirit. I mean because they shun exertions and troubles. Now it is easy and simple to mark the difference between these two cases. In a free hour when our power of choice is untrammeled, and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business, it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man, therefore, always holds in these matters to this principle of selection. He rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains. So I mention that partially because it deals with the ongoing question that we’re dealing with with Cicero, which is you have a couple of choices you have to make here when you study philosophy. Do you pursue pleasure or do you pursue virtue? And when you pursue pleasure, do you pursue it intelligently? Which means sometimes you will have to endure pain in order to get more pleasure. And this argument, this conversation has not stopped. It’s ongoing. You could substitute the word virtue for duty or obligation, and the word pleasure for advantage or so forth, and the argument goes on and on and on. And no doubt, even though we’ve reached the end of this text, we will continue to discuss this issue for as long as we keep talking about these things. Oh, yes. Going back to what you’ve just been reading from book one and attaching that to this question of confusion that Cicero is alleging occurs, if you follow the Epicurean perspective, as we begin to close today’s episode, and as we begin to close our review of own ends, this issue of confusion really does stand out as something that’s really important. And decoding or unwinding that confusion may be best approached by looking for where the disagreement really starts. And the disagreement doesn’t start with this word happiness. It starts with the role of pleasure and its connection to happiness. Cicero is attempting to force us, as you just said, Joshua, to make a choice between virtue and pleasure in a way that reads pleasure out of philosophy and considers it to be evil, whereas Epicure says that pleasure is the goal of virtue. And if we stay at the superficial level of just presuming that everybody wants to be happy and not dive into the meaning of happiness, then we miss the whole issue that’s being debated here. And the two citations that at this moment stand out to me as most revealing on this question are, first of all, the one you quoted, Joshua, from Diogenes of Ornawanda, where he said the issue is not what is the means of happiness, but what is happiness and what is the goal of our nature. And that he says now and always that pleasure is the end and that pleasure is this ultimate goal. That stands out in my mind as cutting through so much of the confusion here, as well as what Torquatus says in Book 1 around Section 54, where Torquatus is concluding on justice. And he says, And let me emphasize this, When you think back to what DeWitt said about how the great contribution and insight of Epicurus was to extend the definition of pleasure to not only stimulation, but all these other activities of life that are pleasurable when we recognize them as pleasure, so long as they’re not pain. When you think about the significance of that extension of the word pleasure and its relationship to the word happiness, with the Epicureans insisting that a life of happiness is nothing else than a life of pleasure, you begin to see an equation between these words happiness and pleasure, that happiness has no meaning as a word unless it be defined and understood in terms of pleasure. So rather than push aside the relationship between happiness and pleasure and think that this is just a subordinate, insignificant issue, it really seems to be the central question when Torquatus says near the beginning of Book 1 that all philosophers agree that there’s a supreme good and this Epicurus places in pleasure. Does supreme good really mean anything different than this word happiness, which everyone seems to agree is the goal? There seems to be an extremely close relationship between these concepts of the supreme good, of happiness, and the word pleasure when properly seen from the Epicurean perspective. Okay, well why don’t we bring today’s episode to a conclusion and see if there’s any final thoughts. Now let’s go around the table. Calicini, any additional thoughts? Yeah, in this last part you were talking about pleasure and happiness, and it’s just so obvious that if you’re feeling happy, it is pleasure. So it’s like things are right before you in front of your eyes, but if you don’t really think about them in a certain way, then that’s the purpose of philosophy, especially with Epicurean philosophy. I think it really is to live a happy and pleasurable life and the best life. So it’s been a good episode. Thank you. Yes, we shrink from the word pleasure because of the odium that’s been attached to it, and we resist thinking that the man on the rack can still be considered to be happy because we insist on thinking that pleasure requires agreeable stimulation. And the person on the rack or who has kidney disease is certainly not receiving agreeable stimulation at that moment. He’s receiving very disagreeable stimulation. But when you realize that the word pleasure means not just stimulation, but all sorts of other activities, including mental ones that are not painful, you can see that the wise man on the rack still falls under this word happy because he’s able to lay against, to line up against the physical pain of the moment, the mental pleasure, the mental processes that he’s able to experience that are not painful. His assessment of his life and the things that have gone before him in the past that have made his life worthwhile are more valuable to him than the immediate moment of pain that he may be suffering. So extending the definition and understanding of pleasure goes hand in hand, I think, with extending the definition and understanding of happiness. Joshua? Yeah, I’m just going to quote from Book Two of Lucretius here in the line that is famous, but the context in some ways is not. This is going to foreshadow where we might go next after we finish this book. Lucretius writes, But some, in opposition to this, knowing nothing of matter, that’s ignori materii in Latin, knowing nothing of matter, of atoms and void, believe that without the God’s power, nature cannot, with so exact conformity to the plans of mankind, change the seasons of the year and produce crops, and in a word all else which divine pleasure, the guide of life, persuades men to approach, herself leading them and coaxing them through the ways of Venus to beget their generations, and that the human race may not come to an end. But when they imagine the gods to have arranged all for the sake of men, they are seen to have departed widely from true reasoning in every way. For although I might not know what first beginnings of things are, this nevertheless I would make bold to maintain from the ways of heaven itself, and to demonstrate from many another source that the nature of the universe has by no means been made for us through divine power. So it’s pleasure here. And Cassius, part of how I found this is, I noticed you have a graphic on the forum that deals with this issue, and it starts off with that quote, but then you also quote from the letter to Menoichius, and from Athenaeus, and from Cicero’s on-ends, and from Tusculent Disputations, and from Dogenesville and Wanda. So we’ll have to put this graphic in the thread as well. Very good. And Joshua, that is a good reminder, and sort of a foreshadowing of where we’re going to go from here. As you read that and talk about divine pleasure, the guide of life, and the different ways that Lucretius is making allusions to the life of the gods, when we drill down on these words about happiness, whether we call it eudaimonia in terms of a good demon, a good spirit, whether you use the Latin felicitas or beatis, they all have connotations of divinity, which leads in a very difficult but super important direction. And our plans are to go in that direction and look for the proper understanding of those words from an Epicurean perspective, the proper understanding of calling something blessed, or calling it divine, or even to some extent calling it fortunate or lucky. The Epicureans develop very strong opinions about the proper way of looking at these issues of divinity. And one of the longest remaining expansions on that topic is the presentation by Valeus in Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods. So while we’re familiar with Cicero and hitting him on all cylinders, we’ll go next week and take up the Epicurean positive and proper perspective that Epicurus is constantly referring to in terms of thinking about blessedness, and we’ll go into that and see how that can inform our understanding. If we’re calling happiness something that is a good demon that is related to the blessed life, we need to know what blessedness and divinity are from the Epicurean perspective. And we’ll begin to dive into that next week. So thanks everyone for your time today. Thanks everyone for going with us through all of the sections of books one and two of On the Ends. There’s been a lot to discuss, and we hope that you’ll join us on the forum to discuss those topics and anything else you’d like to discuss about Epicurus. Thanks for your time today. We’ll be back next week. See you then.