Epicureanism Read online

  Unlike natural and necessary desires, vain and empty desires have no natural limit. Indeed, they tend to increase without limit, and are thus very difficult to satisfy. No matter how much money I earn, I can always earn more. And I may think that I will be satisfied once I start making an annual salary of £50,000, but once I get there, it does not seem like so much, especially now that I know so many people who make even more. Similar considerations apply to fame and political power. And because they are unlimited, pursuing such desires tends to bring us into conflict with other people, especially when the form of the desire is not merely that I get lots and lots of X, but that I get more of X than those around me. These desires should be eliminated. Fortunately, because they are based on false opinions, uncovering these false opinions will help me get rid of them, once I realize that I do not need these things as I thought I did and that I would be happier without the desire for them.

  The natural but not necessary desires are a little hazier. A scholion on Principal Doctrine 29 reports that they merely vary pleasure but do not remove pain, such as the desire for expensive foods. A report on the Epicurean attitude towards eating meat expands the idea slightly: meat is not needed to maintain our life, as we can do without it. In fact, eating meat is not conducive to health. Instead, it contributes just a “variation of pleasure”, as do sex and drinking exotic wines.3 The basic idea seems to be that it is natural to desire to eat when hungry, but not necessary (as far as assuaging one’s hunger and restoring one’s body to a healthy state) to eat a particular type of food. So a desire for a particular sort of luxurious food when hungry is natural but not necessary. The pleasure you get from eating filet mignon is different (although no greater) than the pleasure you get from eating rice and beans – hence these desires “vary” pleasure – but having this particular type of food is not needed to get rid of your hunger, so they do not remove pain. These sorts of desires should also be eliminated. They require intense effort to be fulfilled and, like the vain and empty desires, are based on groundless opinions (KD 30). Epicurus claims that people who are used to living simply and do not need extravagances are best equipped to enjoy extravagances when they happen to come along occasionally (Ep. Men. 130–31). The Epicureans do not think that we should always eschew luxury; if luxury happens to come along and can be obtained in a way that does not involve struggle or conflict with others, go ahead and indulge. But we must always be on guard not to develop desires that can be fulfilled only by such luxurious goods.

  So Epicurus advocates eliminating all but the natural and necessary desires and living a fairly simple life as the best strategy for attaining pleasure. The greatest benefit of living like this is that it makes one self-sufficient. With few desires, you will suffer far less often from the pain of not having them satisfied, and one can easily gain the bodily pleasure of aponia. But far more importantly, you will have good grounds for confidence that the future will go well for you, as your desires are easily satisfied. So you will not suffer from the fear and anxiety that afflict those whose fortunes are dependent on the whims of chance. Hence, with this serene confidence, you will attain the mental pleasure of ataraxia.

  It may be objected that the Epicurean life would be extremely boring. As we shall see, it includes a place for interacting with one’s friends, studying philosophy and even worshipping the gods. Nonetheless, it may seem awfully limited: having just the basic desires, living simply and fulfilling them, and facing the future serenely. Would it not get stale? Epicurus would probably reply that such a life would be boring to many people, but that is because they are corrupt. As he puts it, ingratitude is what causes the greedy desire for unlimited variations in lifestyle (SV 69). A person who genuinely has reduced his desires as he should would be getting everything he desires by living simply, and he would be content.

  THIRTEEN

  The virtues and philosophy

  Epicurus holds that only one’s own pleasure has intrinsic value. A consequence of this is that anything else that has value must have value as either (i) a constituent of one’s own pleasure or (ii) a means to one’s own pleasure. Epicurus is rigorous in following out this implication of his basic ethical position.

  Epicurus is happy to challenge many aspects of popular Greek morality on the basis of his moderately ascetic hedonism. For example, a person who endures great hardship and makes substantial sacrifices in his successful pursuit of political office would be regarded by Epicurus not as an admirable patriot but as a fool who is causing himself unnecessary trouble on the basis of a groundless opinion. And the touchy heroes of Homer who are willing to wreak great havoc in order to avenge slights are displaying not a high-minded concern for honour but destructive childishness, and they would do well to heed the adage “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”.

  Still, Epicurus wishes to institute a substantial modification of and reform to traditional Greek ethical ideals, not to repudiate them wholesale. Epicurus is no Callicles, the unbridled sensualist hedonist of Plato’s dialogue the Gorgias, who regards conventional notions of justice and self-control as impediments to attaining pleasure, impediments the strong man rejects. Epicurus wishes to find places within his ethics for virtues such as moderation and courage, for philosophy and wisdom, for justice and friendship, and for reverence of the gods. In each case, he argues they are needed in order to live an untroubled life. In this chapter, we shall look at how he to tries accommodate the virtues and philosophy within his ethics.

  The virtues

  Epicurus says that prudence is the source of all of the other virtues, and that it is impossible to live pleasantly without having the virtues and living virtuously (Ep. Men. 132; KD 5). Virtues are valued solely because of their contribution towards living pleasantly, not for their own sake. Critics of Epicureanism such as Cicero raise the following two sets of hostile questions:

  1.

  Is Epicurus right that you need to be virtuous in order to live pleasantly? Wouldn’t clear-eyed pursuit of pleasure occasionally give one good reason to act viciously?

  2.

  Is it acceptable to view the virtues as merely instrumental goods? Doesn’t making the virtues handmaidens of pleasure debase the virtues? Is the person who regards the virtues in this way truly virtuous?

  Let us turn to the case of moderation. Here, Epicurus seems to be on secure ground. The limit of pleasure is freedom from bodily pain and mental turmoil, and we should reduce our desires to the natural and necessary ones in order to live pleasantly. If you indulge yourself in gratifying natural but unnecessary desires for expensive wines, luxury foods or huge feasts by drinking heavily and gorging yourself, you hurt your bodily health, whereas living simply improves your bodily health. More importantly, such desires cause needless mental turmoil, as they are difficult to satisfy, whereas moderate people avoid these troubles.

  Still, Epicurus makes it clear that he disdains such extravagant pleasures, not because they are bad per se, but because of the troubles they cause (Stob. Anthology 3.17.33, IG I-59). And this seems reasonable enough. As Epicurus puts it, we criticize profligate people because their way of life leads to distress. If drinking barrels of beer and eating large quantities of steak dissolved your fears about the gods and taught you to limit your desires, then the profligate would be filled with pleasure admixed with no pain, and that would be all right (KD 10). But, as a matter of fact, that is not what happens to them.

  Courage would initially seem a harder case for the Epicureans. After all, the two constituents of the highest good are freedom from bodily pain and freedom from mental distress, which is supposed to be primarily based on the confidence that you will not be in bodily pain. And, it might be argued, this should justify many behaviours that would conventionally be considered cowardly, in order to avoid bodily pain and the anticipation of it.

  Although the Epicureans would reject some acts conventionally deemed courageous as actually foolhardy, they basically stick to their guns and insist
that the wise person will be courageous. First of all, they note that the main motivator of cowardly behaviour is the fear of death, and the wise person realizes that there is nothing to fear in death (Cic. Fin. I 49). They also maintain – optimistically and mistakenly – that truly severe pains do not last long, as severe enough pains are followed shortly by death. (Sufferers from congestive heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis combined with advanced osteoporosis, severe but non-lethal burns over much of one’s body, and many other conditions could rightly call out the Epicureans on this point.)

  The Epicurean defence of courage follows the same general pattern as their defences of justice and friendship (which we examine in the next two chapters). Fools focus too much on short-term consequences, and they are willing to break the social compact and betray others for the sake of short-term advantage, without realizing the terrible impact behaving in this way has on one’s peace of mind. In Cicero’s On Ends, the spokesman for the Epicurean position, Torquatos, tries to show how the illustrious deeds of his ancestor in battle could be justified on hedonistic grounds. His deeds were painful and dangerous in the short term, but they helped to provide for the safety of his fellow citizens and hence for himself. Also, he did his deeds in view of others and thus gained their esteem. This sort of reputation leads others to trust you and help you in turn (Cic. Fin. I 35).

  Most Greek philosophers – Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, at a minimum – would find this account of the value of courage and the motives of the courageous man repugnant. Aristotle, for instance, believes that the virtues are perfections of our nature as human beings – as rational and social animals – and that when we live virtuously we are living well as human beings. Virtuous actions are intrinsically valuable, not valuable merely for their consequences, and such actions are the main constituent of a happy and flourishing human life. Moreover, the truly virtuous person recognizes that such actions are admirable expressions of human perfection, and he does them for this very reason. As Aristotle puts it, he does them for the sake of to kalon, the noble or the fine (Eth. Nic. III 1116a11, and elsewhere).1 A person who behaves courageously, but does so only for the sake of the good consequences and not because the action itself is noble and fine, is not truly courageous, but pseudo-courageous (Eth. Nic. III viii). Epicurus yields no ground before such high-minded criticisms, however, saying that he spits on the noble and on those who vainly admire it, whenever it does not produce pleasure (Ath. Deipnosophists 12, 547a [IG I-151]).

  Still, while Epicurus considers the virtues to be merely handmaidens of pleasure, he thinks that being virtuous is both necessary and sufficient for living a pleasant life: that is, not only must you be virtuous to live pleasantly, but being virtuous guarantees that you will live pleasantly (Ep. Men. 132; KD 5). So, Epicurus maintains that the wise person will be happy even on the rack (DL X 188), a thesis Aristotle regards as absurd (Eth. Nie. I 1095b32–1096a2). And it is difficult to see any justification within Epicureanism for it; on a view like the Stoics’, in which happiness and virtue are identified, there is at least a rationale for viewing the tortured wise man as happy, although Aristotle would regard it as a reductio and not merely a consequence of the view. Within Epicureanism, it looks like a piece of bluster. Still, in putting forward this view, Epicurus joins ranks with many who think that a person’s happiness cannot be lost by merely contingent events, and he himself writes in his final day that he is exceedingly happy despite his physical agony caused by urinary blockages (Ep. Id., DL X 22, IG 1–41).

  Philosophy

  Wisdom itself is given the same sort of justification as the other virtues. Practically speaking, wisdom is needed to engage in the sort of cost-benefit analysis of desires discussed in Chapter 12: we need to use our reason in order to realize that the natural and necessary desires are limited and easy to fulfil, and should be fulfilled, whereas the other sorts of desires are based on groundless opinions and should be rejected. Infants are ruled by the pleasure principle, going for whatever pleasure immediately beckons. As adults we are still at root motivated by the desire for pleasure. But we need to move from the pleasure principle to the reality principle, delaying gratification when needed. Virtues such as courage come to be through a calculation of what is advantageous (DL X 120), and this is why Epicurus says practical wisdom (phronesis, also translated as “prudence”) is the source of all of the other virtues.

  In order to attain happiness, however, such practical wisdom regarding the consequences of our actions and the limits of our desires is not enough. We also need “theoretical” wisdom: a proper understanding of the principles of atomism and how they can explain the world around us. As Epicurus puts it, even if we gain security from other people, this will not be enough to help us live securely if we are still troubled about the possibility of harm from the gods or the other creatures depicted in superstitious myths. And if you are ignorant about the nature of the universe, you cannot get rid of these fears. You need natural science to understand the true causes of natural phenomena and dispel such fears (KD 11–13).

  The other fear that theoretical wisdom helps dispel is the fear of death. As we shall see, Epicurus argues that there is nothing to fear in death, if death is annihilation. But a proper understanding of the corporeal nature of the mind – that it is a bodily organ, perishing along with the rest of the body on death – is needed to grasp that death is annihilation. Without such an understanding, fear of the unknown in death would still plague us.

  As with courage, this explanation of the value of wisdom would strike somebody like Aristotle as debased. For Aristotle, the highest part of humanity is reason. And the activity of understanding God and the cosmos is the highest expression of our reason, and as such is valuable for its own sake, not just because it secures us peace of mind. Indeed, if the Epicureans stick to their thesis that all mental pleasures are ultimately based on bodily pleasures (through memory or anticipation), they cannot even say that we find understanding the cosmos or other intellectual activities pleasurable in themselves. (Plutarch clucks disapprovingly in A Pleasant Life 1093c that the Epicureans reject even the pleasures of mathematics.) As noted earlier, Lucretius seems to admit that learning the hidden workings of nature fills him with an awestruck pleasure. And Epicurus says that the process of learning philosophy is pleasant (SV 27) and that the wise person takes more pleasure in contemplation than do others (DL X 120). But in both cases, the explanation of the pleasure would probably be in terms of the way in which learning helps drive out anxiety.

  The Epicureans hold that philosophizing produces mental health (SV 54), just as medicine produces bodily health. This trope is common, going back at least to Plato (e.g. Grg. 521e–522a). But the Epicureans take the analogy very strictly: nobody thinks that surgery or cough syrup are good per se, apart from their promotion of bodily health, so too with argumentation and psychic health – “Empty is the argument of the philosopher which heals no human disease; for just as there is no benefit in medicine if it does not drive out bodily diseases, so there is no benefit in philosophy if it does drive out the disease of the mind”.2

  Quotations like this may raise the suspicion that Epicurus is urging us to believe the Epicurean theses about atoms, the gods and the mind simply because they are comforting, and that he seeks to revive the Democritean atomist worldview because of its effectiveness in combating fears of the gods and death. But this is not quite right. After all, the following inference is invalid:

  1.

  Believing p would be comforting to me.

  * * *

  2.

  Therefore, p.

  Such wishful thinking cannot provide a secure foundation for psychic health. Epicurus thinks that only the wise person is unshakeably persuaded of anything, and a repeated refrain of Lucretius is that we must study the underlying principles of nature in order to dispel the terrifying darkness that covers our minds.3 So the Epicurean arguments in physics are supposed to establish, in the usual way, that their conclusions are tr
ue, not merely that believing them helps us feel good. The pragmatic justification comes in, instead, to answer the question of why we should bother to engage in the activity of trying to understand the workings of the world in the first place. And here, the Epicureans appeal not to the intrinsic value of understanding the world or how this activity is the fulfilment of human nature, but to how it secures tranquillity: ignorance is not bliss.

  Still, with their stress on practical effectiveness above all else, it seems like the Epicureans would have no bar in theory in putting forward bad but effective arguments, or in using techniques that are (from a rational point of view) dubious. And some of the actual Epicurean techniques might seem to bear this out.4

  The Epicureans are convinced that Epicurus is not merely the discoverer of many interesting and cogent arguments. Instead, he is the saviour of humanity, and the only route to salvation from superstitious fears and empty desires is by fully accepting his message. Because of this, even though Epicurus’ arguments are supposed to be cogent, the Epicureans are interested in producing fervent disciples, not dispassionate critical thinkers. The Epicureans encourage a fawning adulation of Epicurus, as expressed in Lucretius’ glowing descriptions of Epicurus as our redeemer (DRN I 62–79) and as a god (DRN V 8). Naturally, this goes along with viewing Epicurus as an authority figure whose wisdom we need to accept. In the eulogy to Epicurus that opens the third book of De Rerum Natura, Lucretius declaims “You are our father and the discoverer of truth: you supply us with fatherly precepts; and from your pages, illustrious master, like the bees which in flowerful vales sip each bloom, we sip on each golden saying – golden and ever most worthy of eternal life” (DRN III 9–13; trans. in Smith 2001).