Episode 300 - TD28 - An Epicurean Twist On The Legend of King Canute
Date: 09/18/25
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/4733-episode-300-td28-an-epicurean-twist-on-the-legend-of-king-canute/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”(Add summary here)
Transcript - Unedited
Section titled “Transcript - Unedited”Cassius (00:11): Welcome to episode 300 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@epicureanfriends.com where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes. This week is our 300th episode, and before we get back into the text of tus and Disputations, I’d like to spend a few minutes talking about where we’ve been, hopefully where we’re going to be going in the future, and to thank all of our podcasters currently and in the past for all of the contributions they’ve made to get us to this point in time.
(01:09): It’s been extremely rewarding for me over the last six years or so to have done these podcasts and I hope that they’re useful to our audience. We’re not primarily trying to dive into the details of the history of the Greek and Roman world as we go through either Lucretius or any of the other works of Epicurus or now these works of Cicero. We’re trying to dig out of these older works a useful and up-to-date understanding the way that they understood Epicurean philosophy to be and sort of dust off the accretions of other philosophies and other opinions that have been added over the top of it over the years since Epicurus is time so that we can understand it better and apply it more usefully in our own lives. Over the last year, we’ve been diving into the details mostly of works by Cicero, but of course what we’ve been doing during that time is focusing on the sections where Epicurean philosophy is being discussed most of the time being attacked by Cicero, and what we’ve been attempting to do is to reconstruct a response to those attacks from the position that we believe Epicurus would’ve taken.
(02:25): We have a lot of information, especially in some of Cicero’s works, where he will allow an epicurean speaker such as Quata to present the Epicurean perspective, but these are the main works that we have available to us today to understand how an ancient epicurean actually applied and understood the central ideas of Epicurus. We certainly have a number of Epicures own letters and some other quotations that appear to be authentic from which we can work to do that, but the life of the philosophy doesn’t come through nearly as effectively when you don’t hear people actively discussing it. That’s one of the benefits I hope we bring to you in the Lucretius Today podcast is using the power of the internet. We have been going out and looking for people who want to discuss epic curing philosophy and apply it on a daily basis who don’t consider Epicurean philosophy to be just of historical interest.
(03:21): The positions that Epicurus took then are instructive and useful for us today, even where some of the details of physics require updating against our most recent science. The core approach that Epicurus and the Epicureans were taking remains every bit as valid and as important today as ever before to focus on evidence of the senses, the things that we can validate through our own observation so that we can then swat down arguments that are based purely on prejudice or speculation or religious frenzy, belief without evidence, faith without evidence. Epicurus always insisted that the best philosophy, the best way of life is always going to be based on the facts of reality that we can validate ourselves in the coming months and years. We’ll continue to draw out these points and we’ll attempt to bring to you more discussion, more ideas about implementation, more YouTube videos, more Zoom sessions where we can interact with each other and support each other as we all engage in our own personal study of Epicurean philosophy and how to apply it better. Later in the episode, we’ll get back into section 20 of Tus and Disputations, but before we go further, Joshua, allow me to, again, thank you in particular. We’ve had many good podcasters over the years, but I don’t think anyone would be offended if I singled you out for the tremendous contributions that you make to the effectiveness of these podcasts. So thank you for what you’ve done already and what I hope will continue to do in the future.
Joshua (05:06): Yes, thank you, Cassius. It is hard to believe it’s been 300 episodes. Of course, I wasn’t here for probably the first a hundred or so, but it’s been such a fixture in my life for the last several years, and every time we come to another milestone, it feels like they just keep coming faster and faster. I think we both said separately on different occasions, Cassius, that even if no one listened to it, even if we didn’t publish it to the internet, this would still be worth doing because we learn so much from doing this. We learn so much from going through these texts, from wrangling with the arguments that are being made, especially when we’re going through a text that is critical of Epicurean philosophy. We get so much out of it, so much that’s worth talking about and it would be worth talking about even if people weren’t listening.
(05:53): But it’s also a great pleasure and delight to know that there are people who are interested and as engaged as we are in grappling with some of these questions, and so that has made it, I think one of the most rewarding experiences and I look forward to it every week. Recording the podcast on Sunday morning is really one of the highlights, maybe the main highlight of my week, and so no plans to stop or move on to something else because it’s such a positive benefit in my life and I hope it’s a positive benefit as well to the people who listen. But thank you for listening. Those of you who do, and thank you, Cassius, I certainly appreciate all the work that you do and Callini as well as one of our main coordinators for our various events, having you fulfill that role is also very important. Most of the people that we would want to thank aren’t here to thank of course, because we’ve had almost a complete turnover in the voices that you’ve heard on this podcast over the years, but most of those voices have kept in touch with us and I continue to think fondly of all of them. So it has been such a rewarding experience and I hope to continue to enjoy it for as long as I can. It’s absolute pleasure to be able to do this every week.
Cassius (07:03): Callini one of our most recent additions to the podcast team. Any thoughts?
Kalosyni (07:07): Oh yes. I really enjoy participating because I learn a lot and so it’s been fun.
Cassius (07:14): Well, thanks for what you’ve put into it as well. We do not consider our podcast to be directed towards intellectuals with advanced philosophy degrees. We are targeting average people of common sense, and it’s good to have people such as yourself help remind us of that, that what we’re doing is not philosophy for the sake of philosophy or history for the sake of history. It is the study of both for the sake of living better and making all of this understandable. Before we move further and take up the third of Cicero’s objections to epicurean perspectives on pleasure and how to pursue it, an example of trying to make sure that we bring all of this down to practical application would be for us to take one more look at where Cicero says that it is the height of inconsistency for epicure is to take the position that he cannot imagine anything good unless the senses are tickled with some kind of pleasure, but then says that freedom from pain is not only a pleasure but the highest pleasure.
(08:20): This is a major, major area of interest for everybody who reached epicure and philosophy and we’ve discussed it many times and probably not going to say anything new about it today, but on our 300th episode, this is an appropriate time to make some more summary observations about that because this is where people need to understand the text on which these positions are based so that they can make up their own mind. One of the most specific texts that remains to us where Epicurus talks about different types of pleasure is contained in book 10 of section 1 36. We refer to this frequently, but I’m going to repeat it again this time, reading from the Cyril Bailey translation where he translates it as follows, Epicurus differs from the sacs about pleasure for they do not admit static pleasure, but only that which consists in motion. But Epicurus admits both kinds, both in the soul and in the body as he says in the work on choice and avoidance and in the book on the ends of life and in the first book on lives and in the letter to his friends in Lin, similarly DIY in the 17th book of miscellaneous and metro Dous in democracies speak Thus pleasure can be thought of both as consisting in motion and as static and epicurus in the work on choice speaks as follows, freedom from trouble in the mind and from pain in the body are static pleasures, but joy and exaltation are considered as active pleasures involving motion.
(10:02): Now this is where both Cicero and Pluto see a major contradiction and epicurean philosophy, and it’s where people throughout the subsequent centuries and especially today will have varying interpretations of what is really at stake here at the moment. What I would point out to people who struggle with this issue is that this final quotation that I just read from DOD and these ISTs is probably the most specific statement from Epicurus that we have about this issue. Freedom from trouble in the mind and from pain in the body are static pleasures, which is based on that word, but joy and exaltation are considered as active pleasures involving motion. For those people who get into the study of epicurus, go to Wikipedia, read many of the general articles about Epicurus, you will see the statement or implication that Epicurus held static pleasures, matic pleasures as particularly important in life, and it is clear from what Dogen lyrics is saying that epicure did hold freedom from trouble in the mind and freedom from pain in the body as very important along with joy and exaltation.
(11:17): And those people who are trying to fine tune their application of epicure and philosophy should reflect as deeply as they can about how this division is framed. When we talk about it on the podcast, we will frequently talk about this division as indicating pleasures that are established or more stable versus pleasures that implicitly are not as established and not as stable. And if you look up our conversations on the forum, you’ll see much back and forth about how to come up with examples of each type of pleasure because what we’re looking to do is to understand the essential difference between these two categories. You understand what a category is by understanding what the category is essentially describing and certainly being established and stable is different from being ephemeral or unstable. But what I’d suggest is that length of time does not strike me as the essential difference between these two categories, implying that joy and delight are temporary or short-lived as opposed to something that is longer term or more established is itself.
(12:31): A prejudgment about these two categories that may not go to the essential difference between them is epicure saying that joy and delight in life must be temporary, must last only for short periods of time, but that freedom from pain in the mind or the body must last longer than joy and delight. Certainly in some cases that would be true, but I’m not sure in my view that that is true in all or even a majority of cases. It would seem to me that someone’s calmness can be brought to an end unexpectedly without warning in short order just as much as any sense of joy or delight can be brought to an end. In short order unexpectedly this paragraph from Do Earth, he has talked about epicurus admitting both kinds of pleasure both in the soul and in the body, and its tempting to say that what is being discussed here is a division between mind and body in terms of pleasures as opposed to length of time of the pleasures of the mind or the body.
(13:35): But that’s not clear either from this short passage that we have here at the moment relating back to what we’ve been discussing in recent episodes, I’m drawn to the comparison of the opening of book one of Lucretius versus the opening of Book two of Lucretius and observing that in book one Lucretius points to nature through pleasure leading all animal life to move across the lands and the seas and do everything that’s necessary to maintain their lives and pursue the continuity of the species. Whereas at the beginning of book two, reus is pointing out the pleasure. That also comes from knowing that there are many kinds of pain which we can be free from through a proper knowledge of the way things are and all of the conclusions that are led to through epicurean physics and epicurean canons. That’s not a strict mental versus bodily division, but I think when I hear most people, no matter what their view of matic versus kinetic, they’ll come around to focusing on mental attitudes, mental positions, conclusions such as the absence of supernatural Gods telling us what to do, the absence of punishment for an eternity after death, and the confidence that we can continue to be happy in our lives through knowledge that it’s not necessary to live an unlimited amount of time.
(14:59): It’s not necessary to be rich and powerful and famous, but that we can still live happily with the great majority of our lives being a balance of pleasures over pains. And so these mental conclusions that we come to as a result of epicurean philosophy, I think most everyone agrees, are a very important part of what Epicurus is talking about. Not just the pleasures of banquets, sex, drugs, rock and roll, those things that bring us stimulative pleasures, but also the pleasures that come from a mind that is properly conditioned by epicurean philosophy to live successfully in this world. And so adding all of those types of pleasures into the mix and realizing that pains are generally going to be short if they’re intense or manageable if they’re long is where we get the confidence that we can live happily. So the reason we spend so much time discussing these issues is similar to the reason we do the podcast.
(15:58): There are hurdles to be overcome in the study of epicurus that turn off a lot of people and discourage them from pursuing epicurean philosophy because they’ve essentially bought into the criticisms of Cicero or plu tar or the church fathers who allege that epicureans live with their heads in the sand locked away in their dark rooms eating bread and water and fantasizing to themselves that they can compete with the gods due to pleasure under such conditions. And depending on what you read and where you read it, you’ll hear a lot of argument that goes in that direction. But here in the 300th episode of the Lucretius Today Podcast, I’m as convinced as I ever was that that is an incorrect interpretation of and philosophy that the last thing we need to do is to buy into and admit the criticisms of Cicero and plu tar, that there is an inconsistency here that cannot be readily explained, and the ready explanation is right there in the letters of Epicurus when he talks about pleasure.
(17:01): It’s right there in the poem of Lucretius. It’s right there in the wall of dogen of oil ander. And it is a general common sense understanding that there are many types of pleasures, all pleasures factor in to the life of happiness, which consists of a life in which pleasure predominates over pain, a life in which we have more reason for joy than for vation at any particular point, whether we look to mental established attitudes or whether we are enjoying the pleasures of the body, which we can do unmixed with pains in the mind because we have the strength and confidence to understand how the world works. So that’s what I wanted to say before we left the second of Cicero’s criticisms. Joshua, any thoughts before we move to the third?
Joshua (17:50): Well, Cassius, the thing that it occurs to me to say on our 300th episode is that neither of us would say that we’re here because we think that we’re the most qualified people on the planet to talk about or to explain epicurean philosophy. And that fact may become apparent as soon as I start speaking Greek, which I’m about to do in a moment. This passage from DIY layers just that you quoted, contains, as you brightly said, this is the main source in the well-known works. If you go into the fragmentary sources of on nature and on, there’s probably more in there, but this is the main source of this distinction between kinetic and matic, and I think it’s fruitful to look at the words that he was using. And then we can go back as you just did into Lucius to get a sense, a flavor of what we’re grappling towards here.
(18:36): So the passage you quoted from DGen LAIs was 1 36 in which he quotes Epicurus in the work on choices. He says, Epicurus speaks as follows, freedom from trouble in the mind and from pain in the body are static pleasures, but joy and exaltation are considered as active pleasures involving motion. And so we’re dealing here potentially with a very precise use of terminology on epic’s part in this lost work that we don’t have in which he discusses this division of pleasures into kinetic and matic. And again, DIY LAIs is attributing this to epicurus as if it’s a quote. And the words epicurus uses in that quote are ataxia apia. So you have absence of disturbance in the mind or absence of trouble in the mind and absence of pain. Sometimes apia can even mean not just pain, but toil and drudgery. It’s this sense of the body is undergoing hardships of many different kinds, right?
(19:40): Because the Greek chord for pain actually is algae. And so epicurus does use a word that is perhaps more focused on the body, but it does admit of a wider range of interpretations, I think. But so you have those two words, anorexia and dip ponia, and those two words are as Epicurus says, cata high. So that’s our use of what we would say is cata. Those pleasures, those aspects of hedon pleasure, which are freedom from trouble, fear, distress, pain in the mind and from pain in the body are cata, and this is the word that’s being translated in Bailey’s text as static. And then he goes on to say that karara and rosy are kinetic pleasures that these are moving pleasures. So karara can mean joy or delight, and rosy can mean mirth or merriment or again, joy. And of course this being Greek, these words also were the names of notable immortals who were associated with these particular qualities.
(20:46): But what epicure says is carra and rosini are kinetic pleasures. And in Greek that is kinesis or kinesin involved in motion, and the word there is eria. So energy. So the distinction that we see in the Greek vocabulary that we’re using here is axia and apia are static cata pleasures and Kara and Rosini, joy, delight, mirth, cheer merriment, these are kinetic or moving pleasures. That’s the distinction. And I do sometimes think that framing it in terms of the language that he was using can help us get closer to what he was thinking. But this is my usual caveat when we use words like aia, I think that because we’re not speaking Greek, we’re speaking a different language and words when ported directly from one language to another can take on a larger significance or an extra meaning or presence that they wouldn’t perhaps have had in the original.
(21:47): And so that’s always going to be in the background of my approach to this, but when we’re talking about absence of distress in the mind and absence of pain in the body, those are those two words, ataxia and up ponia. And if you go to the Wikipedia page for Epicurus, if you go to a summary of Epicurean philosophy, if you look epicurus up in some other encyclopedia or you see him referenced in the news media or something, you’re going to see a boilerplate description that just gets repeated endlessly about epicurean philosophy and what it means. And very often in that boilerplate description, you’ll see them saying things like, well, Epicurus was a hedonist, so he pursued pleasure, but he didn’t pursue sensory pleasures. He pursued freedom from pain and freedom from distress in the mind and so on, and credit to Cicero where it’s due.
(22:37): This is a mistake that Cicero himself is not likely to make. Cicero takes great delight in pointing out that Epicurus does talk about sensory pleasures. He says that he cannot conceive the good apart from sensory pleasures, that sensory pleasures are just as much an aspect of how we should understand pleasure in all of its meanings as freedom from pain in the body and from distress in the mind. And so in many ways, I think that some of our modern commentators are getting it even more wrong than Cicero who is trying as hard as he can to make up a curious look foolish, but your point, Cassius was a good one, which is that we have two categories. We ought to be able to infer some information about what is being placed into these two categories by comparing them with each other. How does AIA and Nia compare with Karara and Rosine joy, mirth, delight, Merriman?
(23:32): What are the differences there? And answering that question I think has proved to be somewhat challenging, and it’s challenging as usual in part because we don’t have the fullest explication of this from Epicurus himself because the works don’t survive in which he was most clear on this point. One thing I’m going to suggest that we can do is go to Lucious and Lucious in book five uses a very particular word in Latin which he contrasts with the word that he had used earlier in the poem. In fact, at the very beginning of the poem in this very famous line, Tuit Religio Malorum, this is one of the most famous lines in Lucius’s poem, so potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds. And there’s been a great deal of discussion among scholars and readers over the years as to what exactly he meant by religio.
(24:24): Is religion all beliefs concerning the existence of gods or is religion merely those beliefs which we might consider to be superstitious from time to time? You may remember that at the beginning of our discussion of tus and disputations where we’re going through the first section on death and the interlocutor had said, I’m afraid of death. And Cicero had said, are you afraid of death because you think that when you die, you’re going to go to Hades and cross the sticks and you’re going to meet mins and ratman and these horrible judges and heavier soul compared to the weight of a feather? And the interlocutor said, oh, no, no, no, certainly not. I don’t believe in all of that old nonsense. And Cicero says something like, I’m very sorry to hear that because it would’ve been so much easier for me to discredit that fear. It would’ve been so much easier for me to reveal how baseless that fear is compared to the fear that is not based on these ancient superstitions, the fear of death that comes from a more clear-eyed understanding of life in nature.
(25:23): And we were surprised to find that. I think you’ll remember this, Cassius, we were surprised to find Cicero so casually disregarding what we think of as some of the foundation of Western literature, Homer and Geia, and for Cicero to just hand wave this away and say, oh, that old nonsense, no, of course not. That’s not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about death. We’re talking about something that is not connected with these old stories. So again, I bring that up merely to point out that the use of the word religio by lucious is similarly controversial. Is he referring to all discussions surrounding gods of any description or is he only referring to again, Homer and Hesi? He had just made a reference to the sacrifice of eiah by her father Emon to win from Poseidon of affairs, sea wind to get them to Troy, and is that what he means by religio?
(26:14): Well, the answer for me comes in book five because in book five, he bookends that thought with a contrast of another word in Latin, and that word is pietas or piety. It’s a shame we had to wait five books to get it because contrasting religio in book one with pietas in book five, I think makes it very clear what Lucretius is trying to say there in book five. This is 1194 and this is the Cy Bailey translation. Lucretia says this, he says, oh, unhappy race of men when it has assigned such acts to the gods and joined their with bitter anger. What groaning did they then beget for themselves? What sores for us? What tears for our children to come, nor is it piety at all to be seen often with veiled head turning towards a stone and to draw near to every altar, no nor till I prostrate on the ground with outstretched palms before the shrines of the gods, nor to sprinkle the altars with the streaming blood of beasts, nor to link vow to vow, but rather to be able to contemplate all things with a mind at rest.
(27:25): That last line there I think is connected not just with this interesting contrast between religio and pietas, but with what Epicurus himself is trying to get across in his use of the words kinetic and catastrophe. The static versus the moving lucretius does go on to describe the cause of so much of our fear and distress and the cause of religious superstition as well and how these are connected. So he goes on to say, for indeed, when we look up at the heavenly quarters of the great world and the firm set ether above the twinkling stars and it comes to our mind to think of the journeying of sun and moon, then into our hearts weighed down with other ills, this misgiving too begins to rise up its wakened head that there may be per chance some immeasurable power of the gods over us, which whirls on the bright stars in their diverse motions for lack of reasoning, assails our minds with doubt whether there was any creation and beginning of the world.
(28:28): And again, whether there is an end until which the walls of the world may be able to endure this weariness of restless motion or whether gifted by the god’s will with an everlasting being, they may be able to glide on down the everlasting groove of time and set at not the mighty strength of measureless time. And he’s not by any means done there because he goes on to describe the hearts of men shrinking with terror of the Gods limbs crouched in fear, the parched earth trembling beneath the awful strokes of lightning and rumblings running across the sky, a do not people and nations tremble and proud kings shrink in every limb thrilled with fear of the gods, lest for some foul crime or haughty word, the heavy time of retribution be ripe. Or again, when the fiercest force of furious wind at sea sweeps the commander of a fleet over the waters with his strong legions and elephants, all in light case does he not seek with vows, the peace of the gods and fearfully crave in prayer, a calm from wind and favoring breezes.
(29:36): And then he goes on to say again, when the whole earth rocks beneath men’s feet and cities are shaken to their fall or threatened doubtful of their doom, what wonder if the races of mortal men despise themselves and leave room in the world for the mighty power and marvelous strength of the gods to guide all things? The thing that strikes me about all of the descriptive words that he’s using your Cassius is he’s using words that imply a kind of fear at the idea that nature is in constant and ceaseless motion. The earth is shaking and the sea is buffeting the ship that’s on its surface and the wind is raking across the landscape blowing people over. And amidst all of this motion, you have human beings who are themselves moved in fear and terror and in their fear and terror cry out to the gods to deliver them from this horrible fate of what they fear is going to happen to them.
(30:31): And so the people themselves are moving, they’re shrinking and trembling and shaking, and he’s using all of these words that suggest motion. And as I’m reading this, I think back to what he said before he started talking about this and what he said was he said, nor is it piety at all to be seen often with veiled head turning towards a stone to draw near to every altar, nor do I prostrate on the ground outstretched palms before the shrines of the gods, nor to link vow with vow or sprinkle the altars with the streaming blood of beasts. But true piety consists in looking at all things with a master eye and a mind at peace. The mind that is at peace in this passage is the only thing in this passage that is at peace because everything else is shaking and trembling and the mind that can withstand the fear produced by the movements of nature is the mind for Epicurus that rests in epicure and philosophy.
(31:31): He says that we wonder if even the walls of the world may be able to endure this weariness of restless motion, but it’s the mind of the philosopher, the student of philosophy at rest in that philosophy that is able to withstand this weariness of restless motion. And this is not at all to say that we should think that the operations of nature are terrifying. Epicurus, the Himself says that we study nature specifically to discover that it does not hold terror of the kind that we frighten ourselves with because when lightning strikes, we make it worse by imagining that the lightning was sent by a God as a punishment. And when you understand that nature doesn’t work that way, actually relieve yourself of a lot of fear at her movements and at her operations, but to connect that experience of freedom from pain in the body and distress in the mind to connect it with that word piety to me is such an interesting choice of language on Lucius’s part, and I wish I was better equipped to explore this further, but because the source texts are so paltry on this question, I always find when the subject of kinetic versus stic shows up in discussion that I find it very difficult to come down to firm conclusions about what exactly Epicurus was trying to convey there.
(32:45): But I think looking at lucretius in book five here, it gets us close to an understanding and that understanding is that the mind that is free from disturbance and distress and fear is the mind that is at peace even though everything else is in constant motion because the atoms themselves are in constant motion, nature is in constant motion. That’s where I’m at right now. Cassius, with this classically thorny problem of kinetic versus cosmetic pleasures is to look at lucious and see what he says, but I’m curious if you have a response to any of that because it seems that the words that we’re using, whether those words are ataxia, apia, religio, pietas, kinetic cata, the words often carry the sense of being very precisely used in the ancient world, less precisely used by commentators when they’re talking about them later. And I certainly know that I struggled to achieve levels of precision that I think Epicurus is looking for when he is using these words.
Cassius (33:43): Yeah, Josh, we’re very close to the end there of what you were talking about is what I was going to emphasize in elaboration of what you’re saying that the universe, the world around us is and always will be in constant motion. And what you’re talking about, what Lucius is saying is that the mind of the person that is best equipped to deal with that constant motion is a mind understanding of the way things are. And that doesn’t mean that the mind is able to stand atop the world and say, stop and stop the world from motion because the world around us is going to continue to be in motion all the time, and we cannot stop the world from moving any more than Epicurus could stop the pain of his kidney disease by simply thinking about more pleasant things. Both are true at the same time, the world is in constant motion.
(34:41): It requires constant motion by us in order to stay alive, in order to stay happy and to prosper the best way, however, to surf that wave, the best way to deal with the motion that’s constantly going on around us is for us to have an understanding through epicurean philosophy that these events and these motions are not brought about by a malicious supernatural God, that we are not going to be judged and sent to hell if we violate the rules of some priest. And that having such a knowledge of the way the world really works is what allows us to live happily even in the midst of all this motion. I think that what you’ve said does focus my mind on what I consider to be a real problem with the interpretation that some people are placing on all this is that they seem to be implying to the novice at epicure in philosophy that by taking an attitude of focusing on matic pleasure, we essentially bring these events to an end around us, that we stop the motion of the world and stop anything from affecting us in a sense, taking a very stoic like position that we can rise above and essentially nullify what’s going on around us because as the stoics think, the only thing that’s really as important to them is their internal sense of virtue and commonality with the divine fire and so forth.
(36:15): Well, the problem with that attitude is that’s simply not true. The truth is, as Lucretius is talking about in Book one and Book two, the world is constantly in motion. You are a part of the world and are going to be constantly in motion. The question is how you handle that motion and in your mind, are you going to allow yourself to live in fear of it and be a slave of these false threats by people who don’t understand the world, but who are telling you what amounts to lies and manipulation to get you to go along with their version of events? What Epicurus is doing, the reason Lucretius considers him to be a savior, is that Epicurus shows us that those lies and misrepresentations of the other philosophies and the false religions are simply not true. And there’s no need for us to give in and be buffeted by concerns that are simply never going to plague us at all.
(37:17): And then to realize in addition to that, those things which are realistically of concern to us, the fact that in fact the Persians do send their armies over to Greece and there are diseases, there are criminals, there are all sorts of bad things that happen in life that we can through proper attitude, philosophy towards life, overcome those and live happily despite their existence. I sometimes think it’s useful to think in terms of the way common people will talk about philosophy in the sense of that it’s my philosophy of life that I’m going to make the best of it regardless of what comes my way. When they say something like that, they’re not using a technical formula. They’re not saying that I, because I can diagnose the way the atoms move, can live forever. They’re not saying something specific that their words are magic and can change the world about them.
(38:12): They’re saying that through my attitude towards life, through my philosophy of life, I can make the best of the circumstances that are given to me. I can change them when I can accept the ones that I don’t have the ability to change. And as a result of that attitude, I will have more reason for happiness than for pain throughout my life. I think that’s what Epicurus is really doing here because of the physics, because of the technicalities of philosophy. It can seem, I think to some people like Epicurus is changing reality through his words that Epicurus is saying that all we have to do is be calm and everything’s going to work out fine for us. And I don’t think he’s saying that at all. He’s not guaranteeing that everything’s going to work out fine for us because it is possible we’re going to get struck by lightning or hit by a meteor or get struck down by disease or a car wreck or accidents, all sorts of things that are in fact beyond our full control to prevent.
(39:11): But if we have the right philosophy of life, we deal with the bad times and we don’t let the bad times overwhelm us, we get back on the horse and ride again when we’re thrown off. And I really think that that is one way of looking at all this very practically that would resolve some of the concerns I think that some people have when they start reading that Epicurus is telling everybody that the body doesn’t matter, all that matters is the mind and being free from pain, and all we have to do is basically take the right drug, get rid of pain, and we’re experiencing the greatest pleasure that any human being could possibly experience that is not a realistic understanding of what epic curian philosophy would be all about, but you can see how it gets twisted into that result. And it’s that twisting, which I think was behind exactly what Cicero and Pluto and other enemies of Epicurus were doing 2000 years ago and what the enemies and maybe false friends of Epicurus do today as well.
(40:15): One of the other citations that I always like to include in any of these discussions is the letter to men by Epicurus himself, section 1 26 where Epicurus says in words that I think are very clear, quote and justice with food. He, the wise man does not seek simply the larger share and nothing else, but rather the most pleasant. So he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time, but the most pleasant to me. I see in that very concise statement the insight that it is not length of time or duration that is the key to how we’re going to choose to live our lives. We are charged not with living the longest period of time, but using our life to the best effect using our life in the most pleasant way possible to us. And then another theme that we’ve been stressing in recent weeks, it’s not up to us to get into the mind of other people and say, what is the most pleasant thing to do for every person at every place and every time?
(41:23): Because Epicurus himself clearly says that it is pleasure. That is the overriding goal. And in terms of good and bad, sometimes we’re going to treat the bad as good, and sometimes we’re going to treat the good as bad because ultimately it is only pleasure that is the constant. So the constant in all of this analysis is not time. It is not the parts of the body, the mind versus the hands or any other part of the body, and it’s not intensity that is an overriding factor in deciding what is the most pleasant life. That question has to be answered by each of us under our own circumstances because only we are going to eventually get to the end of our lives and look back and think about how we’ve spent it and either be happy that we’ve spent it the best way we could or be sad that we have to regret that we made all sorts of mistakes that we would not have made had we had a better understanding of life all the way through. That’s where Lucious praises epicurus for delivering us from all these errors of mind that lead many people to disastrous experiences because they don’t keep their focus on the target, which cannot be expressed any more universally other than to call it pleasure, because pleasure is where nature herself tells us in our own deepest feelings that we have done something that’s either agreeable to us or disagreeable to us. So I think you’ve done a very good job of going back into Lucretius and pointing out these other citations that support this kind of interpretation.
Joshua (43:05): Cassius, as you’re talking there about standing over nature and yelling, stop, I was reminded of a story. This was found in a 12th century history of England that was written by a man named Henry of Huntington, and it’s become a very well-known story, at least probably in the UK more so than America. But it tells the story of an 11th century king named Knut Knut the great and in the story the king set his throne by the seashore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not to wet his feet and robes and Huntington’s account of the event is that the sea continuing to rise as usual dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards saying, let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, but there is none worthy of the name, but he whom heaven, earthed, and sea obey by eternal laws.
(44:03): And it said that he then hung his gold crown on a crucifix and never wore it again to the honor of God the almighty King. And there as the story has been transmitted over the centuries disparate versions and accounts of the story, some of which seem to suggest that Knud himself was very foolish for genuinely thinking that as king, he did have the power to stop the tides and other versions of the story, suggesting that Knut was very wise for demonstrating to his flattering cortier, these sycophants that he was surrounded with, that he was wisely explaining to them by dragging his throne out to the seashore, that he didn’t have the power to stop the tides. In either case, I think it’s an interesting story, obviously because of the time period and so on, he’s drawing the conclusion that he draws is totally opposite to the conclusion that Lucious draws, right?
(44:53): The conclusion that he draws from this episode is, I’m going to hang my gold crown on a crucifix and never wear it again because there is none worthy of the name of king, but he whom heaven earth and see obey by eternal laws. This is not the conclusion that Lucretius reaches with his own examination of the unstoppable movements of nature. His conclusion is that not only are we not going to blame the motions of nature on the gods, but that it would actually be impious to do so. The part of his understanding of the word piety is wrapped up in the idea that laying all of our blame and fear and terror at the feet of the gods would actually be the wrong course, not just because it makes us unhappy, but because we’re not treating with piety what we should be and we’re being foolish and callous in our study of nature.
(45:43): So I think the story is a very interesting one of Knut, the great sitting on his throne at the edge of the sea, commanding the tide not to get his feet wet, but of course it is going to get your feet wet if you try this yourself because you don’t have the power to stand over nature and yell, stop, and of course, an epicurean philosophy that part of the conclusion is nobody has the power, there is no being, there is no source of power that is outside of nature that can affect tide and time and in all the rest.
Cassius (46:11): Joshua, in a similar way, we don’t have the power to extend time and get back into Cicero today as I expected to do would, but because you’ve raised that analogy, I think that’s a great way for us to begin to come to a conclusion here in our 300th episode because I think that analogy of canoe attempting to command nature to stop is probably one of the better analogies we could make to the entire philosophical dispute here between Epicurus and the other schools because the stoics, the Platonist, all these people who want to say that through their syllogisms and through their geometry, through their speculations, they can see some other reality outside of some cave and that they can thereby transcend nature and ultimately command nature and tell it to stop doing the things that they don’t like. That attitude is the total opposite of what Epicurus is saying.
(47:20): Epicurus is looking at nature and saying, I am part of nature. I am going to work with nature. I am not going to attempt to dictate to nature how the world should operate. I can certainly attempt to change the circumstances of my life and make my life a better place for myself and my friends and everyone around me by taking certain actions. But on the ultimate questions of the universe, what happens to me after I die? Whether there are supernatural forces at work, I’m not going to attempt to dictate my preferences and wishes to nature. What I’m going to do is look at nature and learn from nature and take nature’s guidance as my ultimate rule for the best way to live. And what I’m seeing in nature is that you can put as many adverbs and adjectives in front of the word pleasure as you like, but ultimately nature delivers to me as firmly as she delivers, sight, sound, touch, taste, smell.
(48:32): She delivers a sense within me of what is agreeable and what is disagreeable, and it’s up to my mind to adjust my realities to make sure that I spend as much of my time in the agreeable category and as little of my time in the disagreeable category as I can possibly do. But I’m not going to attempt to reverse the laws of nature through religion, through false philosophy, through arguing that my mind is the only thing that’s important to me, being virtuous, being part of fate and divine fire. Those attitudes display an attempt to dictate to nature. There’s some famous quotes from Nietzsche about this in terms of what the stoics were attempting to do. I’ll put that in the show notes for this week. But ultimately, Epicurean philosophy is working with nature while these other philosophies are attempting to dictate to nature. And the example of King K has been referenced, I think many times over the years since then because it is such a perceptive analogy, and in our study of epicurean philosophy, what we are trying to do is learn from nature so that we can cooperate with it and live the best life possible to us and not substitute our own judgment the way we wish things were for the way things really are.
(50:03): So we’re probably about out of time for episode 300. Let’s see if anyone has anything else before we close out the episode. Callini, anything today,
Kalosyni (50:12): I just wanted to add something else regarding this 300th episode. I do want to say thank you for including me and allowing me to participate.
Cassius (50:22): You’re very welcome, Callini. It’s been a pleasure having you with us, and we hope to have you many more episodes to come. Joshua, any thoughts from you?
Joshua (50:31): We are moving at a snail’s pace through this text. We’ve talked about part of one sentence today from Cicero’s text, and I think we did about the same last week, but again, this is all part of it. You have to take the time that it takes to think through this stuff. You have to take the time to weigh these different sources against each other. What is Epicurus saying in this text and how can we relate it and compare it to what he’s saying over here, and that’s how you develop and enrich a deeper understanding of what Epicurus was trying to communicate, using words like kinetic and cata and anorexia and apia and so on. It is a time intensive and laborious process, but it’s also, as Epicurus himself says, in Vatican saying 27, in the case of other occupations, the fruit of one’s labor comes upon completion of a task.
(51:24): While in the case of philosophy, pleasure is concurrent with knowledge because enjoyment does not come after learning, but at the same time with learning. So we’ve spent the entire episode on one part of one sentence, and sometimes it goes like that. It’s this balancing different translations and pushing things further to see how you should properly understand them. But it’s certainly after 300 episodes, it’s still such a rewarding experience to be able to do it. I think that’s my summation of the episode today, is even when we do spend the entire episode talking about part of one sentence, it’s such a pleasure to be able to speak with the two of you every Sunday morning because the pleasure is concurrent with the knowledge that we get from doing it while we’re doing it.
Cassius (52:11): Thank you, Joshua. That is exactly correct. Okay. As always, we invite everyone to drop by the form and let us know if you have any questions, comments, suggestions about this or our other episodes. That’s all we have time for today. We’ll be back again soon. See you next week. Bye.