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Epicurus Today

Episode 226 - Cicero's On The Nature of The Gods - Part 01 - Introduction

Date: 04/30/24
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/3819-episode-226-cicero-s-on-the-nature-of-the-gods-epicurean-section-01-introduction/

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Welcome to Episode 226 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. Over the last several months, we have been going through Cicero’s own ends, because in books one and two of that work, Cicero had recorded for us in order to argue against it, the version of Epicurean philosophy that he understood to be accurate and popular in his own time around 40 or 50 BC. And that work preserved a lot of information for us on Epicurean ethics that we would not have access to but for Cicero’s work. Now, one aspect of Epicurean philosophy that Cicero does not touch on in own ends to any great degree is the huge subject of the nature of the gods. And that’s what we’re going to turn to now, because this is a subject that is so important in Epicurean philosophy that it’s the first of the principal doctrines. It’s very near the opening of Epicurus’ letter to Minorius. It plays heavily in Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things and on Dodgenies of Oinoander’s inscription. And the general attitude of Epicurus towards the gods is extremely controversial but central to Epicurean philosophy. We’re going to dive into this and hopefully illuminate for everyone, not just for those who are interested in religion, but for everyone, what Epicurus’ perspective on these issues really was. We don’t have an extended presentation on theology from Epicurus’ own hands. We have a significant amount of information in Dodgenies, Laertius, but not nearly as much as we would like. And so it has fallen upon Cicero again to preserve for us one of the longest presentations by an Epicurean on issues of theology that we have available in the world today. And so in book one of On the Nature of the Gods, we have Valeus presenting first a criticism of the other schools and their opinions about the gods, at which point he turns to presenting Epicurus’ own views in a detailed presentation that preserves ideas such as isonomia that really do not survive in any other work. We’re going to be referring to the Loeb public domain editions of On the Nature of the Gods. The one we’re probably going to rely on the most is translated by Rackham. But going to the beginning of book one, line one, Cicero says, there are a number of branches of philosophy that have not as yet been by any means adequately explored, but the inquiry into the nature of the gods, which is both highly interesting in relation to the theory of the soul and fundamentally important for the regulation of religion, is one of special difficulty and obscurity. The multiplicity and variety of the opinions held upon this subject by eminent scholars are bound to constitute a strong argument for the view that philosophy had its origin and starting point in ignorance, and that the academic school were well advised in withholding assent from beliefs that are uncertain for what is more unbecoming than ill-considered haste, and what is so ill-considered or so unworthy of the dignity and seriousness proper to a philosopher as to hold an opinion that is not true, or to maintain with unhesitating certainty a proposition not based on adequate examination, comprehension, and knowledge. As regards the present subject, for example, most thinkers have affirmed that the gods exist, and this is the most probable view, and the one to which we are all led by nature’s guidance. But Protagoras declared himself uncertain, and Diagoras of Melos and Theodorus of Cyrene held that there are no gods at all. Moreover, the upholders of the divine existence differ and disagree so widely that it would be a troublesome task to recount their opinions. Many views are put forward about the outward form of the gods, their dwelling places and abodes and mode of life, and these topics are debated with the widest variety of opinion among philosophers. But as to the question upon which the whole issue of the dispute principally turns, whether the gods are entirely idle and inactive, taking no part at all in the direction and government of the world, or whether on the contrary, all things were both created and ordered by them in the beginning, and are controlled and kept in motion by them throughout eternity, here there is the greatest disagreement of all. And until this issue is decided, mankind must continue to labor under the profoundest uncertainty, and to be in ignorance about matters of the highest moment. So it’s interesting to observe here that Cicero acknowledges in the very beginning that there is a huge multiplicity and variety of opinions, so much so that you would almost think, and Cicero suggests, that this is the origin of philosophy itself, coming from these disagreements about the nature of God. With the first of the major disagreements being the question of whether there are gods or not. And Cicero lists three philosophers of his past. He mentions Protagoras, Diagoras the Melian, and Theodorus of Cyrene, who probably we should talk about for a few minutes to set the context here that by no means was Epicurus the first philosopher to question the existence of supernatural gods. Cassius, you’ve touched on a kind of overview of what we have surviving from the ancient world on this issue. We have a little bit on the nature of the gods in Lucretius, but not a whole lot. Epicurus was said to have written a book called Peritheion, or On the Gods, as well as another book called Perihosiotetos, which means something like On Holiness or On Righteousness. Unfortunately, of course, both of those are lost. There was another interesting work that does survive, and it appears to be a letter written by an Epicurean and possibly written by Epicurus himself. It was found in a case of papyrus scrolls discovered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries at what they call an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. And these have come to be known as the Oxyrhynchus papyri. And there are several of them, and they deal with all kinds of different stuff. But the one we’re interested in is Oxyrhynchus papyrus 215. And unfortunately, I have not been able to find any English translation of that. But Grenfell and Hunt have been working on this problem, and it’s gone to several volumes, this collection of papyri. And I can read a little bit from their overview of what it’s about, even though it’s in a very fragmentary state. Three columns from a philosophical work apparently couched in the form of a letter. The principal topic discussed in the fragment is the popular idea of religion, and especially fear of the gods. And they say that the author was probably an Epicurean philosopher and possibly Epicurus himself. There’s evidence that the papyrus was copying the Augustan age, but may have been written by Epicurus himself. So it’ll be good to get our hands on it if we can do that. I haven’t been able to find, as I said, an English translation. And we’ve already gone through another work that deals a little bit with what the gods are not. We went through the letter to Pythocles, which deals with astronomical phenomenon. And it was widely thought in some of these ancient circles that the sun must be divine or the planets must be divine. And Epicurus has no time for that argument in the letter to Pythocles. What’s interesting about that connection is that what Epicurus articulates in his letter to Pythocles is an approach to thinking about some of these problems. And his approach is an epistemological one. He’s saying that if there are two or more competing explanations for a given phenomenon in nature, and there’s nothing to choose between the two explanations, as long as you have explanations that are natural, that in itself is sufficient to rule out a supernatural explanation. In other words, if it’s possible that something could have happened in natural terms, then we don’t have to invoke a supernatural explanation. Now, this gets us into some of these early thinkers that you’re quoting there, Cassius, in Cicero’s book. By the way, Cicero makes a similar point when he talks about probability. One of the major aspects of this whole conversation as we go through this text is going to be epistemology. How do we know what we think we know? And for Protagoras, he offers a very prescient attempt to define what Thomas Henry Huxley will go on to coin as the word agnosticism. And on the Wikipedia page, it says this Protagoras was a proponent of either agnosticism or, as Tim Whitmarsh claims, atheism on the grounds that since he held that if something is not able to be known, it does not exist. Reportedly, in Protagoras’s lost work on the gods, he wrote concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, nor of what sort they may be. Because of the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life. So I mentioned that this word agnosticism was coined in the 19th century by Thomas Henry Huxley. And this is what he has to say. Agnosticism is of the essence of science, whether ancient or modern. It simply means that a man shall not say he knows or believes that which he has no scientific grounds for professing to know or believe. Consequently, agnosticism puts aside not only the greater part of popular theology, but also the greater part of anti-theology. On the whole, the empty nonsense that people talk when they talk about heterodoxy is more offensive to me than that of orthodoxy, because heterodoxy professes to be guided by reason and science, and orthodoxy does not. So what Thomas Henry Huxley is calling for here is a higher standard from the people who are on his side of the argument, a higher standard of people who are critical of the claims of religion. And so in Protagoras here, we get a very early example of someone who Thomas Henry Huxley may well have liked on this subject. Concerning the gods, said Protagoras, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not, nor of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life. Yes, Joshua. So of the first of these three earlier philosophers that Cicero mentions, Protagoras does sound like he is going to be closest to what we would consider today to be agnosticism, that he’s doubtful about the gods. And were we to pursue it, would lead us into all sorts of questions about epistemology and skepticism and the limits of skepticism, the limits of dogmatism, and exactly where Epicurus is going to end up on those issues. We’re going to find as we go forward that Epicurus and his spokesman, Valleus, here, are not going to be siding with Protagoras in terms of just saying that the whole issue is doubtful. It’s probably worth mentioning that when Francis Wright wrote her A Few Days in Athens, the position she has Epicurus take there in that book sounds an awful lot more like Protagoras than it sounds like Epicurus’ own writing. But at any rate, for the moment, the general desirability of pursuing your decisions on the subject based on evidence is, to most of us, a very desirable one. And yet, the further down the road you go in trying to elaborate on that, it’s a very thorny question. Of course, most of us who are listening to this podcast probably share a similar opinion of those who would say that they’re willing to believe something without any evidence at all. But the question of how much evidence and how to gather that evidence and questions of purely logical arguments versus evidence based on the senses and so forth, obviously, many, many complicated issues there. But for the moment, we can just register here with Cicero that Protagoras was well known for having declared that he was uncertain as to whether the gods existed or not. Now, moving past the agnostic view, there were philosophers who came right out and said, we are not going to take an agnostic position. We’re not going to take a position of doubt. We’re going to take a firm and clear position that there are no gods at all. And Diagoras of Melos and Theodorus of Cyrene are the ones he listed for having taken that position. I see that Wikipedia says about Diagoras, calls him Diagoras the Atheist of Melos, was a Greek poet and sophist of the 5th century BC. Throughout antiquity, he was regarded as an atheist, but very little is known for certain about what he actually believed. Anecdotes about his life indicate that he spoke out against ancient Greek religion. He allegedly chopped up a wooden statue of Heracles and used it to roast his lentils. And he revealed the secrets of the illusion mysteries. The Athenians accused him of impiety and banished him from their city. He died in Corinth. So it definitely was not calculated to win friends and influence people in Athens to speak out against the existence of the gods. And Wikipedia tells us that religion may have been only the pretext for the accusation, for being a Melian made him an object of suspicion with the people of Athens. In 416 BC, Melos had been conquered and cruelly treated by the Athenians. And it is not at all impossible that Diagoras, indignant at such treatment, may have taken part in the party strife in Athens, and thus have drawn upon himself suspicion of the democratic party. Diagoras subsequently went to Corinth, where, as the pseudo states, he dies. There is, in the decades and centuries prior to Epicurus’ life, there is sort of a string of philosophers banished from Athens on the charge of impiety or atheism. And one of those is Anaxagoras, who was exiled from Athens, and he went to Lamsicus, a city that Epicurus knew well on the Hellespont. Another one of those, of course, is Socrates, who was condemned to death, but there were ample opportunities, or so it says, for him to escape. But he chose not to escape. He chose to stay and drink the hemlock. So this is an issue that is a danger to one’s health and happiness if they allow these opinions to escape. Now, Epicurus was not touched, and you can talk about many possible reasons for that. One of them is that he stayed out of politics. That’s the other problem with some of these cases, is getting involved with politics. People will look for any subtext, context, whatever that they can find in order to discredit you as a person. And just like in America today, if you’re an atheist trying to run for office, that becomes a problem for you. So there’s a rich contextual history here that we miss out in some of these brief overviews. But there was some danger involved here in expressing opinions contrary to what were accepted on these issues. Absolutely right. And so Cicero concluded that section about the prior philosophers by saying that until this issue is decided, mankind must continue to labor under the profoundest uncertainty and to be in ignorance about matters of the highest moment. And here’s where Cicero describes what those matters are as he gets into section two. For there are and have been philosophers who hold that the gods exercise no control over human affairs, whatever. But if their opinion is the true one, how can piety, reverence, or religion exist? For all these are tributes which it is our duty to render in purity and holiness to the divine powers solely on the assumption that they take notice of them, and that some service has been rendered by the immortal gods to the race of men. But if on the contrary the gods have neither the power nor the will to aid us, and if they pay no heed to us at all and take no notice of our actions, if they can exert no possible influence upon the life of men, what ground have we for rendering any sort of worship, honor, or prayer to the immortal gods? Piety, however, like the rest of the virtues, cannot exist in mere outward show and pretense. And with piety, reverence and religion must likewise disappear. And when these are gone, life soon becomes a welter of disorder and confusion. And in all probability, the disappearance of piety towards the gods will entail the disappearance of loyalty and social union among men as well, and of justice itself, the queen of all the virtues. Now here Cicero brings up an issue that we’ve discussed many times before, and it is very important, this contention, that unless you have the gods for moral guidance, then society is going to collapse, piety is going to collapse, loyalty and social union are going to be gone, and justice itself, the queen of the virtues, is essentially impossible. So we’ll talk about that for a few minutes, but maybe the first thing to do there is to note that there was specifically an Epicurean response to this that we have access to today in the inscription of Diogenes of Oinoander, who goes into this at length. We have fragment 20 as translated by Martin Ferguson Smith, which reads as follows, quote, So it’s obvious that wrongdoers, given that they do not fear the penalties imposed by the laws, are not afraid of the gods. This has to be conceded, for if they were afraid, they would not do wrong. As for all the others, it is my opinion that the wise are not, reasoning indicates, righteous on account of the gods, but on account of thinking correctly, and the opinions they hold regarding certain things, and especially pains and death. For indeed, invariably and without exception, human beings do wrong either on account of fear or on account of pleasures. And that ordinary people, on the other hand, are righteous insofar as they are righteous on account of the laws and the penalties imposed by the laws hanging over them. But even if some are conscientious on account of the laws, they are few. Only just two or three individuals are found to be among great segments of multitudes, and not even these are steadfast in acting righteously, for they are not soundly persuaded about providence. A clear indication of the complete inability of the gods to prevent wrongdoing is provided by the nations of the Jews and the Egyptians, who, as well as being the most superstitious of all peoples, are the vilest of peoples. On account of what kind of gods, then, will human beings be righteous? For they are not righteous on account of the real ones, or on account of Plato’s and Socrates as judges in Hades. We are left with this conclusion. Otherwise, why should those who disregard the laws scorn fables much more? So with regard to righteousness, neither does our doctrine do harm, nor does the opposite doctrine help. While with regard to the other condition, the opposite doctrine not only does not help, but on the contrary also does harm, whereas our doctrine not only does not harm, but also helps. For the one removes disturbances, while the other adds them, as has already been made clear to you before. That not only is our doctrine helpful, but also the opposite doctrine harmful, is clearly shown by the Stoics as they go astray. For they say in opposition to us that God both is the maker of the world and takes providential care of it, providing for all things, including human beings. Well, in the first place, we come to this question. Was it, may I ask, for his own sake that the God created the world, or for the sake of human beings? For it’s obvious that it was from a wish to benefit either himself or human beings that he embarked on this undertaking. For how could it have been otherwise? Nothing is produced without a cause, and these things are produced by a God. Let us then examine this view and what the Stoics mean. It was, they say, from a wish to have a city and fellow citizens, just as if God were in exile from a city, that the God created the world and human beings. However, this supposition, a concoction of empty talking, is self-evidently a fable composed to gain the attention of an audience, not a natural philosopher’s argument searching for the truth and inferring from probabilities things not palpable to sense. So early on in this process, as we’ve introduced the subject that Cicero is going to be talking about, we can make clear, even before we get to Valleus, that Diogenes of Oinoander was very familiar with this argument that justice and the virtues will be thrown out the window if Epicurus’ views of the gods are correct. And the Epicureans rejected that, arguing that Epicureanism more firmly than does superstitious belief in the gods establishes the foundation of a true virtue and true social justice among people. And so we see in Cicero where he’s stating this as he goes forward in the argument. Cicero says, There are, however, other philosophers and those of eminence and note who believe that the whole world is ruled and governed by divine intelligence and reason. And not this only, but also that the gods’ providence watches over the life of men. For they think that the corn and the other fruits of the earth, and also the weather and the seasons and the changes of the atmosphere, by which all the products of the soil are ripened and matured, are the gift of the immortal gods to the human race. And they induce a number of other things, which will be recounted in the books that compose the present treatise, that are of such a nature as to almost appear that they have been expressly constructed by the immortal gods for the use of man. Now, that sounds very much like the stoic view that Dogenes of Goinorander was just talking about. But there was controversy about that because Cicero says this view that God providentially ordered everything in the world was controverted at great length by Carniades. Now, Carniades is not an Epicurean at all, but an academic like Cicero was, in such a manner as to arouse in persons of active mind a keen desire to discover the truth. In fact, there’s no subject upon which so much difference of opinion exists, not only among the unlearned, but also among educated men. And that the views entertained are so various and so discrepant that while it is no doubt a possible alternative that none of them are true, it is certainly impossible that more than one should be so. How can we compare what we have now in the modern world as far as types of religious views as compared to what Cicero is saying, how there’s such a numerous variety of views? As I listen to what you’re saying that Cicero said about the variety of beliefs at that time, and then I reflect now about what is actually happening now in our current times with regard to the belief in God. And there actually are people that are like Wiccans, and they actually believe in multiple gods. Now, I don’t know, some probably don’t believe in literal gods, yet they’re trying to bring back some kind of ancient pagan religion and try to bring back rituals because they’re praying in a way to get what they want in life. And so that in itself is one type of religious system that is even going on in our current times. And then, of course, we have Christianity and other monotheist religions. But yet there’s also New Age religion that believes that even if you can’t fully know God, that God is looking out for your good. And with the New Age spirituality, there is a belief in God that is distant but still involved with human beings. For example, like when you were reading that back then that they believed the gods were responsible for bringing forth the harvest and helping have good weather or bad weather. But there still are people that believe that what comes out of the earth is caused by God. So we still see now that there is a variety of beliefs in God. Yeah, Calicini, it’s interesting that Cicero is pointing out the same kind of discrepancies and arguments that we have today. But he’s choosing to focus on what may be a very practical way of looking at it. The real question being, people argue about which God or where they came from and the nature of a God. But in the end, it comes down to a more practical question of whoever that God is, is he involved in the day-to-day activities of life or not? You can debate till the end of time whether a particular God exists or not. But if that God is not involved in your life, then it becomes irrelevant. So it is interesting to see Cicero going down this direction. He’s not going down at all the question of which book is correct. He’s starting at the fundamental issue of, is that God involved in human activity and the activity of the universe at all? With one of Cicero’s own school members, Carniades, vigorously contesting the Stoics when the Stoics argued that all things were determined vigorously by God, implying that Cicero himself did not accept the argument that the weather and the seasons and the changes of atmosphere and everything that happens are controlled by the gods. It seems like if you believe in immortality that the soul continues on after death, you have to have some kind of supernatural gods. It’s almost as if that desire for immortality has to bring along gods. And so you can’t let go of one without letting go of the other. And that’s a reflection in addition to what Joshua said earlier about how people are consumed with fear of the gods. They are also consumed with hope and expectations of reward from the gods, specifically including the immortality that you’re talking about, since it seems to be outside of our ability to live forever. The only way we can hope for immortality would be to have it through the gods. So Calicenia, as you’re observing that there is so much dispute and inability to agree on these subjects, Cicero goes further in section three to explain that his goal is going to be, as he goes through the rest of this work, to try to appease both the kindly critics and to silence those malicious fault finders. And to cause them to repent of their censure and everyone to welcome additional knowledge on the subject. Cicero says, quote, friendly remonstrance must be met by explanation, hostile attack by refutation. And then as we look at some of the general aspects of Cicero’s discussion before we go into all of the details, Cicero then goes into an explanation of why he’s writing this book and mentions for us that it’s during this phase of his life, which was within the last several years before he was killed, that he had, in such a short period of time, found that a lot of people were interested and curious as to the cause of his sudden outburst of philosophical interest. People were confused, Cicero says, about why he would choose to align himself with the academic school, since the academics had become a derelict system and was being accused of robbing the world of daylight and flooding it with the darkness as of night. And they wonder at my coming forward so unexpectedly as the champion of a derelict system, one that had long been given up, which is interesting on its own as an indication of the popularity of the Epicurean and the Stoic schools. And then Cicero says, as a matter of fact, he’s not a new convert to the study of philosophy. From his earliest youth, he had devoted a lot of time and attention to pursuing it and that he had been talking to eminent people in philosophy his whole life and had instructors like Diodorus, Philo, Antiochus, and Posidonius. But what really had brought Cicero to this point of writing this book, he says there’s nothing he can explain more easily. He was languishing in idle retirement and the state of public affairs was such that an autocratic form of government had become inevitable. And that under those circumstances, he thought the best thing he could do with his time was to educate his fellow countrymen on philosophy. And that he knew a great many accomplished students of Greek learning had been unable to share their acquisitions on the grounds that they doubted the possibility of conveying in Latin the teachings that they had received from the Greeks. And then he goes on to explain how he has attempted to do that himself because in this period also he had been urged to this occupation by a dejection of spirit, occasioned by the heavy and crushing blow that had been dealt to him by fortune, which apparently includes both the death of his daughter and his general exile from politics by the ascendancy of Julius Caesar. And then he mentions that the best mode of imparting a knowledge of a subject in all its departments and branches is to write an exposition of the various methods in their entirety. Since it’s a striking characteristic of philosophy that its topics all hang together and form a consecutive system, one is seen to be linked to another and all to be mutually connected and attached. Cicero then mentions that those who want to know his own opinion are showing an unreasonable degree of curiosity. In discussion, it is not so much the weight of authority as the force of argument that should be demanded. Indeed, the authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive hindrance to those who desire to learn. They cease to employ their own judgment and take what they perceive to be the verdict of their chosen master as settling the question. In fact, I’m not disposed to approve the practice traditionally ascribed to the Pythagoreans, who, when questioned as to the grounds of any assertion that they advanced in debate, are said to have been accustomed to reply, he himself said so, he himself being Pythagoras. So potent was an opinion already decided, making authority prevail unsupported by reason. So that’s a very important subject to all of us on the Epicurean Friends Forum, because there’s a constant balancing going on between disagreement and dispute about a particular subject, while also keeping within the guardrails or ambit of Epicurean philosophy. How do you deal with people who are violently in disagreement about a core doctrine? What does it mean to be a core doctrine or something? Even Cicero is emphasizing that authority, just because Pythagoras, just because Socrates, just because Plato, just because Epicurus said it, does not make it so. And Epicurus himself goes even further in demanding that you ground your opinions on observation of nature through the senses and not just on abstract logic or authority. That’s a hugely important point. Epicurus in his letter to Monoikius says that it’s incumbent on the reader to return to the study of nature directly. It’s not enough to have the spoon fed to you. In other words, you have to go see the stuff for yourself. Yes, I think that’s inherent in everything that we have from Epicurus, from the letter to Pythagoras to the letter to Herodotus. It’s certainly inherent on anyone who is stressing the authority of the senses. The whole of Epicurean canonics is based on reasoning, based on the evidence from the five senses, the prolepsis, and the feelings. Those are the sources of authority in Epicurean philosophy, not the observations of any one man. We can be grateful and appreciative of the work that Epicurus did in systematizing this and recording it and popularizing it and bringing it to us. But it is not Epicurus who invented Epicurean philosophy in the sense of creating something from nothing. Nothing comes from nothing. And Epicurus’ philosophy is built on the work of Democritus and others before him, combined with his own observation and his own reasoning about what parts to agree with and what parts to disagree with from the prior philosophers. Yeah, something I’ve been thinking of recently, because I’ve been listening to a series of audiobooks by Stephen Fry, the great British comedian who wrote and then recorded the audiobook for his Mythos series, which is a very lively retelling of the Greek myths. And one of the words he keeps using is brooding, urinos trapped in the deepest depths of the underworld, brooding on mankind and brooding on his schemes and so forth. And what I think of when I think of that is the sculpture by Auguste Rodin, his thinking man, Rodin’s thinker, a very famous sculpture that certainly everyone has seen a picture of. And it connects to something that Hamlet says in Shakespeare’s play. He says, in apprehension, how like a god is man, that it’s our ability to think that makes us so interesting and in some ways so elementally terrifying because it’s this godlike attribute of brooding on things and thinking them over that is our distinctive feature. It’s an invitation, this book, to think over the gods while they are allegedly sitting there thinking over us. Yes, that’s a good mental picture of what we’re going to be doing in this series of episodes, comparing and contrasting the different views and having the benefit of an Epicurean commenting on the other schools, which we’re not going to get to today, but which we’ll get to soon. Cicero says that it’s a considerable matter to understand any one of the systems of philosophy simply. How much harder is it to master them all? Yet this is the task that confronts those whose principle is to discover the truth by the method of arguing both for and against all the schools. In an undertaking so extensive and so arduous, I do not profess to have obtained success, although I do claim to have attempted it. At the same time, it would be impossible for the adherence of this method to dispense altogether with any standard of guidance. This matter, it is true, I have discussed elsewhere more thoroughly. But some people are so dull and so slow of apprehension that they appear to require repeated explanations. And here’s Cicero giving us this academic probabilistic viewpoint. Cicero says, Our position, the academic position, is not that we hold that nothing is true, but that we assert that all true sensations are associated with false ones, so closely resembling them, that they contain no infallible mark to guide our judgment and assent. From this followed the corollary that many sensations are probable, that is, though not amounting to a full perception, they are yet possessed of a certain distinctness and clearness, and so can serve to direct the conduct of the wise man. So Cicero is reminding us that he’s going to be taking the position that nothing is so totally knowable from sensation that we can say that anything is absolutely true. We can say that certain things are probable, but that’s the best that we can do. Cicero sees that probability analysis as a defense against the argument that he’s totally a skeptic. But that’s going to be a question that gets debated as we go further into discussing the opinions of the different schools. Why don’t we bring today’s episode to a conclusion and see if anybody has any closing thoughts? Calicini, anything today? I just want to say thank you for going through this material. It’s something I probably wouldn’t have gone through on my own, and it looks like it’s bringing forward some interesting ideas to help us understand Epicurean philosophy. So thank you. Yes, I think we’ll be surprised how interesting and enlightening this is all going to be. Because it is material that is not often discussed in modern discussion of Epicurean philosophy, and it’s going to lead us in some interesting directions. So thank you, Calicini. Joshua? Yeah, I’ve been refraining today from getting into any of the arguments that deal specifically with any one claim, because this has been a kind of general overview. But because of what you quoted there, Cassius, Cicero’s skepticism when it comes to the validity of the senses, I do want to go slightly into that. Now, a few weeks ago, I quoted from the author’s introduction to the Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad when he says this, All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature, and however exceptional cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. And on the other side of that argument, you have something, Calicini, that you posted to the forum this week, which is an argument from St. Anselm, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th and 12th century. And it’s the origin of the ontological argument, which he describes this way. He says, Even a fool, when he hears of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding. And assuredly, that than which nothing greater can be conceived cannot exist in the understanding alone. For suppose it exists in the understanding alone, then it can be conceived to exist in reality, which is greater. Therefore, if that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in the understanding alone, the very being than which nothing greater can be conceived is one than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously, this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality. So what Joseph Conrad said in his introduction to the Shadow Line, he said, Whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature. So he’s saying, what exists to our senses, what we see and taste and touch and smell and hear, what we experience as tangible, has to exist in reality. And Thomas Jefferson says in the letter to John Adams, he says, I am obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne. I feel, therefore I exist. I feel bodies which are not myself. There are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void or nothing or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need. So this is a position that’s fairly stark here. What they’re saying is the same thing Epicurus is saying fundamentally, which is that the senses don’t lie to us. They are as honest to their experience as they can be. That what exists to our senses exists in nature, as Joseph Conrad said there. And it’s a very different position to the position taken by St. Anselt. Because what he’s essentially saying here in his ontological argument is what exists to my mind exists in nature. That the senses are unreliable. And it’s my mind that I have to use to discover what exists in nature. This is going to go on to be one of the central problems as we go through all of this conversation here in book one. Do we rely on, as Descartes said, I think, therefore I am? Or do we take Thomas Jefferson’s view when he says, I am obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne. I feel, therefore I exist. It’s this tension between what we rely on in gathering information about the world we live in. And it colors every aspect of the conversation about the gods going forward. Joshua, that was a great closing comment. Jefferson was right and Anselm was wrong. We can be confident that what the senses reveal to us does exist. But we cannot be confident that what the mind says does exist. The mind can imagine all sorts of things that do not and cannot exist. And we can’t let the imagination take us beyond the reality of the senses, the anticipations, and the feelings as Epicurus described them. Just because you can imagine an all-powerful god does not mean that an all-powerful god does exist any more than just because you can imagine that a unicorn or a centaur exists means that unicorns or centaurs are real. If you ground your confidence in what nature gives you through the senses, anticipations, and feelings, as Epicurus is saying, then you don’t fall victim to using word games like St. Anselm was doing to justify substituting your imagination for things that really exist. Of course, some people are going to say, as they always do, well, what about illusions? The answer to that question is just like Epicurus taught. Error lies in the mind and not in the senses. And when we think we see something that proves to be an illusion, the way we know in the end that it is an illusion is not because the mind discovers the truth on its own, but because we obtain additional observations through the senses. We look, we touch, we feel, we smell, we taste additional times, and we look for that which is repeated and therefore reliable through these additional sensations. It’s the senses that we use to disprove illusions. And if we go down the road of saying the senses can’t be trusted, then we throw out the only criteria of truth that we have from nature to determine that which really exists. There’s a lot of texts in Epicurean philosophy that say that, and I’ll give a couple of them here. Doctrines 23 and 24 is where I’ll start. If you fight against all sensations, you’ll have no standard by which to judge even those of them which you say are false. If you reject any single sensation and fail to distinguish between the conclusions of opinion as to the appearance, waiting confirmation, and that which is actually given by the sensation or feelings, or each intuitive apprehension of the mind, you’ll confound all other sensations as to the same groundless opinion. With the same groundless opinion. And you’ll reject every standard of judgment. And if among the mental images created by your opinion, you affirm both that which awaits confirmation and that which does not, you will not escape error, since you will have preserved the whole cause of doubt in every judgment between what’s right and what’s wrong. Lucretius took the point in even more detail. He said this in book one, for that bodies exist is declared by the feeling which all share the like. And unless faith in this feeling be firmly grounded at once and prevail, there will be nothing to which we can make appeal about hidden things so as to prove anything by the reasoning of the mind. Meaning that those things which the senses do reveal, such as that bodies exist right in front of you, you have to ultimately trust that your senses are telling you the truth, that the bodies right in front of you exist. Or you’re never going to be able to make any progress thinking about things that are not obvious to the senses, like the atoms. In other words, reasoning about things that the senses do provide information about is the starting point, is the only way to get reliable information about things which the senses cannot directly observe. Lucretius in book four, starting around line 400 or so, goes through a lengthy list of illusions, such as ores being bent in the water and things like that. So he certainly knew that illusions were an issue. And this is what he said about him, starting around line 462. This is the whole basis for the argument against skepticism that Lucretius and Epicurus make. But Lucretius says it this way at 469. Again, if anyone thinks that nothing is known, he knows not whether that can be known either, since he admits that he knows nothing. Against him, then, I’ll refrain from joining issue. He who plants himself with his head in the place of his feet. And yet, were I to grant that he knows this too, yet I would ask this one question, since he’s never before seen any truth in things. Whence does he know what is knowing, and not knowing each in turn? What thing has begotten the concept of the true and the false? What thing has proved that the doubtful differs from the certain? You’ll find that the concept of truth is begotten first from the senses, and that the senses cannot be gainsaid. For something must be found with a greater surety, which can of its own authority refute the false by the true. What must be held to have greater surety than sense? Will reason sprung from false sensation avail to speak against the senses when it is wholly sprung from the senses? For unless the senses are true, all reason, too, becomes false. Will the ears be able to pass judgment on the eyes? Or again, will the taste of the mouth refute the touch? Will nostrils disprove it, or will the eyes show it to be false? It’s not so. For each sense has its faculty set apart, each its own power. And so it must needs be that we preserve in one way what is soft or cold or hot, and in another way the diverse colors of things, and see all the things that go with color. Likewise, the taste of the mouth has its power apart. In one way smells arise, in another sounds. And so it must be that one sense cannot prove another false, nor will they be able to pass judgment on themselves, since equal trust must at all times be placed in them. Therefore, whatever they have perceived on each occasion is true. And if reason is unable to count why those things which close at hand appear square, but are seen round from a distance, still it is better through lack of reasoning to be at fault in accounting for the causes of either shape, rather than to let things that are clear slip abroad from your grasp, and to assail the grounds of belief itself, and to pluck up the whole foundation on which life and existence rest. For not only would all reasoning fall away, life too would collapse straightway, unless you choose to trust the senses, and avoid those headlong spots and all other things of this kind which must be shunned. Know then that all is but an empty store of words which has been drawn up and arrayed against the senses. And for good measure we have the same point in Dogenes of Oinoander, fragment five. Now Aristotle and those who hold the same peripatetic views as Aristotle say that nothing is scientifically knowable, because things are continuously in flux, and on account of the rapidity of the flux, evade our apprehension. I’ll interject here. That’s very similar to what Cicero has said earlier in our discussion today, that any true senses are so closely associated with those that are false that we can’t tell the difference. But to get back to Dogenes of Oinoander, he says, indeed, in no way would the upholders of the view under discussion have been able to say, but this is just what they do maintain, that at one time something is white and something is black, while at another time that this is neither white nor black, if they had not had previous knowledge of the nature of both white and black. So it’s through the senses that you determine what is white and black, rather than through abstract reason, which does not have a direct connection to reality except through the senses. All these are very, very important questions, and there’s no place where they’re more important than in debates about the nature of the gods, because that’s all a question of evidence and how you evaluate whatever evidence you have available to you. And that leads us to the ending of the sections we set out to cover today, because Cicero himself says, this is a topic, this whole subject of the gods is a topic on which it seems proper to summon all the world to sit in judgment and pronounce which of these doctrines is the true one. And he goes on and says, surely such wide diversity of opinion among men of the greatest learning on a matter of the highest moment must affect even those who think they possess certain knowledge with a feeling of doubt. In other words, Cicero concludes this opening with this accusation that we should accept from the wide diversity of human opinion about the nature of the gods, we should conclude from that diversity and lack of agreement that nothing of any certainty can ever be decided on any subject. Because it’s such an important subject, yet the men of the greatest learning have a huge variety of opinions on it, that we should conclude from that observation that basically nothing in life is certain. And that leads us into where we’re going to go next week, because next week, immediately after making this observation, he introduces the Epicurean Valleus to go into a discussion of the Epicurean criticism of the other schools and then the Epicurean presentation of their own views. But it’s really interesting. If the most important questions to them have no answers at all, then what kind of questions do have answers, if the most important things in life are so dark? Well, that is a subject that Epicurus attempted to tackle and bring some light to, as opposed to what the academics were doing. And we’ll begin the discussion of that next week. In the meantime, please drop by the forum and let us know if you have any comments or questions about this or any of our other episodes or discussions of Epicurus. Thanks for your time. We’ll be back next week. We’ll be back next week.