[Music]
This is KZSU, Stanford.
Welcome to entitled opinions. My name is Robert Harrison
and we're coming to you live from the Stanford campus.
[Music]
There is much that is strange but nothing that surpasses man and strangeness.
He set sail on the frothing waters amid the south winds of winter,
tacking through the mountains and furious chasms of the waves, pondering and plotting.
He hunts the beasts of the wilderness,
yokes the Hearsuit neck of the stallion and the undaunted bull.
He wins his way between the laws of the earth and the adjurge justice of the gods.
Rising high above his place, he who for the sake of adventure
takes non being for being loses his place in the end.
Everywhere journeying inexperienced and without issue, he comes to nothingness.
Through no flight can he resist the one assault of death.
[Music]
There is much that is strange but nothing that surpasses man and strangeness.
From the famous odon man in Sophocles and Tigany.
Two and a half thousand years later we're still as strange as ever.
A nervous, driven, unsettled species, nothing makes us more illidies it seems than being at ease.
It's at best only a half-truth what philosophy has traditionally claimed about happiness,
being the goal of all human action and aspiration.
We don't really want to be happy. We may hank her after it as long as it eludes us
but somewhere deep inside of us the prospect of happiness frightens and horrifies us.
If man is the strangest of the many strange things on earth it's because our deepest desires and
even some of our basic needs have a way of working against their own impulse.
As if we were under a weird compulsion to remain agitated and out of place in the world.
Could it be that what we loathe is what we love namely the stress and tumble of things?
The fact is my friends that history thrives on our discontent and that we're history slaves.
That's the scandal which the gross indiscretions of the 20th century exposed.
I mean the scandal of this machine we call history which we have finally realized has no interest
in promoting human happiness nor in redeeming the sufferings and sacrifices it exacts from us
and it's drive to keep the story going. History is just like us. It doesn't know what it is up to,
it doesn't really know what it wants. It doesn't know how to cope with its anxieties
except by aggravating them. It's a beautiful planet we live on and maybe one day we'll learn to live on it
less fitfully. Meanwhile we continue to make ourselves miserable. We know more or less what our
survival needs are. Yet why is it that a number of our basic human needs go either unnoticed or
untended bias? For example many of us today who inhabit urban first world environments suffer
from a malaise for which there is no name. Let's call it for lack of a better term species loneliness.
Since our millennial beginnings human beings have always shared their worlds, their homes,
their nights and days with animals and I don't mean pets I mean our animal neighbors.
Now all of a sudden many of us live in worlds without animals, without the diurnal and
nocturnal presence of animal sounds. Why is this not an issue for us? What are the effects on us of
finding ourselves and feeling ourselves utterly alone as a species? What happens to our souls when
we suddenly lose this ancient kinship with the animal kingdom? Just as biofilia runs deep in our
veins so too does what I would call our choral filia. Deprived of green of plants of trees,
we succumb to a demoralization of spirit whose causes we often misidentify in favor of some
existential psychological or neurochemical etiology. Then one day we find ourselves in a garden or
park or countryside and feel the oppression vanish like magic. An environment without green is a
form of spiritual death for most of us and yet we create such environments for ourselves day in and day out
all around the world. Why? Why does the desertification of our life worlds meet with such little
resistance? Indeed with so much cooperation from us. Is it because a choral filia runs so deep that
we are barely conscious of its claims on us? Or is there something in us that actively turns
against this basic disposition? A counter disposition? A spiritual death drive perhaps.
I'm tempted to say that we've reached a point where we must now rest our happiness from the
historical forces that trample on its prospects. That we must take those prospects into our own
hands. But we need to know what we're doing. We need help from those who have been there before
and have something to teach us about how to go about assuming responsibility for our own happiness.
Who among the philosophers and sages can return to for help? Many philosophers have worried the
question of human happiness yet in my entitled opinion, the one who has the most to teach us in
this regard is Epicurus. Epicurus looked at the world and saw the absurdity of human
compulsion of the perverse drive among men to conspire against serenity, of the wild rage and the human
will to devalue the good and to bring on suffering and desolation that are optional rather than
necessary. What Epicurus found when he looked at this spectacle was that it was driven by a
deeply rooted anxiety about death. The fear of death, the dread and loathing of it was for him at
the core of all human folly and remained the major impediment to human happiness.
Epicurus is one of the few philosophers of the ancient world who advocated a sustained daily
cultivation of the condition of mortality as opposed to blindly warring against that condition.
For Epicurus and this is his distinction, happiness became a matter of personal responsibility
to be assumed over and against the forces of history. And that is why we want to talk about him today
to see if there is anything we can learn from him that applies to some of the challenges we face
in our own very different yet in some respects very similar times.
All my guests on this show are special but when I say I have a very special guest with me in the
studio today I really mean it. Her name is Andrea Nightingale, professor of classics here at
Stanford and one of America's leading scholars of Plato. To have her as a colleague at Stanford I
count among my special blessings Andrea welcome to the program. Thank you Robert. Hi everybody.
Andrea I really appreciate your willingness to talk today about Epicureanism because I think Epicurus
is one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated philosophers. So hopefully together we'll
be able to do him justice in the next hour. So let's start right off who was Epicurus. What do we
know about him? Epicurus was an Athenian, a Greek philosopher who was living, he had born
341 BCE, died in 270. This historical period was a period in which the Macedonians, Philip and
ultimately Alexander had occupied Greece and this means that Athens had lost its political autonomy.
So I do think that the historical context is important for understanding Epicurus. In 306 BCE
Epicurus founded a school. It was called the Garden School and this was a unique school in the
ancient world. There were obviously other schools. What was unique about it was first of all that
Epicurus founded what we would call an alternative community. When you went to Epicurus
a school you lived there. If you went to Plato's school you didn't actually live there. So this was
a community that lived together and shared a specific set of values and practices. And the fact
that he named his garden school the Garden is to me very very interesting. It occupied a position
right outside the walls of Athens not far from Plato's academy and it did indeed have a garden
and indeed it was a kitchen garden as we call it which means that people there were growing food
to eat. The community was attempting to be self-sustaining and the reason why I think it's so
interesting that he not only called a school the Garden but also had a garden is that this
sub-tens Epicurus own philosophy because gardening makes us live with earth and on earth
and the whole notion of gardening is one which brings the Epicurean closer to the earth and therefore
is a sort of beautiful reflection of Epicurean philosophy. Yeah the Garden was not just
distinguished from the Platonic Academy by virtue of the fact that it had a garden but
Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum both of them were on public lands and they had gymnasiums
which meant that they were actually under the supervision of the gymnasiacs as they were called.
But Epicurus's Garden School from what I understand it was actually the title deeds were in his
own name and therefore it was private property and therefore it was not subject to supervision
by the authorities and maybe would you say that that's like the first school in history
to have something that we would call academic freedom these days because of its titular status as
private property? Absolutely again one of the unique and fascinating aspects of this school.
Okay the the school itself had many differences from Plato's Academy not just institutionally but
also philosophically. Why don't we talk a little bit about Epicurus's philosophy? The plateiness really went
after Epicurus and his disciples in a big way. They really loathe them the Stoics loathe
Epicureanism and so forth. What was all the animus about? What was it in the philosophy of Epicurus
that made people like the plateness so hostile to? Epicurus has had so many detractors.
I think one of the things that really bothered plateness Stoics and later of course Christians
was the atheism and the materialism of the Epicurean philosophy. Can we do those once? Let's
start with the atheism and materialism. Okay atheism did he deny the existence of the government? No he did not.
Okay. He claimed that there were gods but that they had absolutely no interest in the human world.
They seemed to have existed in the intermundia outside the human world and all they did they actually
didn't do anything. They simply enjoyed pleasure and serenity at all times. So they do not
function like any god that we know and we do have to remember that the gods themselves
were Epicurus were material being so they were made up of atoms as well. Okay let's talk about
the materials materialism everything in the universe is made up of atoms and the void. What does he mean
by that? First of all he is attacking platonic dualism head on and basically arguing that there is
no metaphysical entity whether it be a god, a form, a metaphysical soul, a metaphysical mind,
it's attack and attack on dualism and what you have is an atomic theory where everything that
exists is made up of atoms and void. Hmm when he denies that the gods not that the existence of
the gods but when he denies that the gods have any interest in human affairs some people can
take that as a form of profound pessimism it's like you know Nietzsche's death of god of
Oladeth. Epicurus however took that invited people to take that as a huge liberation
insofar as so much of human anxiety and ill-it-isness and suffering comes from
the uncertainty about what's going to happen to me after my death and whether the gods are going to
punish me for my wicked deeds on earth but if the gods are taken out of the picture
then is it true to say that for Epicurus this opens up the possibility of focusing all our intention
on maximizing the possibility of human happiness within our mortal lives? Yes that's very well put
Epicurus was not only attacking traditional Greek religion but of course the conception of the gods
articulated by Plato and Aristotle among others and also I would add the Stoics and the whole point
of removing the god and arguing against any kind of metaphysical entity means that we have to bring
ourselves back to earth because when you have a platonic god or even a Greek a traditional Greek
god there's a sense that we are going to live on after our deaths so this is a denial of any kind of
afterlife for the human being and it focuses us on earth and again when you think of a plate-nest
Plato didn't think we really belonged on earth we belong in our metaphysical minds ideally outside
the physical world on plate-nism is arguably arguably against the body and what Epicurus was
doing was bringing us back to our bodies and not letting us escape into fantasies which involved a kind
of flight from the body. Yeah and hence the importance of the garden did I
understand you correctly to say that this activity of literal gardening that took place in the school
was something that brought the disciples into direct contact with the earth and the laws of
generation and decay life and death the the interdependence of these principles. I would agree with that
we don't know as much as we'd like to know about what was going on in the Epicurean Garden.
We're uh was every member of the Epicurean community there with his ho or his his shovel we don't
actually know. Greeks in general lived pretty close to the earth but I do think it's important
that the garden was as a were the center of intellectual activity and I also think it's interesting
that he didn't call it for example the farm because farming has a sort of technological
basis there were farming manuals in the ancient world and the notion of a garden I think I'm not
trying to suggest that it's an attack on Technae. I'm sorry to attack on Stanford no.
Of the farm it's but I do think that a garden is different from a farm and it doesn't have quite
that technological aspect that a farm would have. Yeah it's also fascinating this correlation between
the cultivation that gardens involve and require and the self cultivation which Epicureanism calls
for in its in its notion of philosophy as a way of life we're going to talk shortly really about
why philosophy for Epicureanism is a way of life and not just a set of doctrines and and and
and creeds but um let's turn to this question of happiness if you take the we're taking we've
taken the gods out of the picture it leaves us human beings in our mortal selves on an earth
uh in the realm of a certain kind of weird materialism composed of atoms the soul he doesn't deny the
existence of the soul but the soul is also materially constituted as well as the body it dies with the
body and for Epicureanist it means that we have this one obligation while we're on earth which is
to find a way to make ourselves happy now happiness is uh as as I mentioned my opening remarks a lot of
philosophers have you know worried that question uh do you agree that Epicure is something of an
exception among Greek thinkers almost all of whom Plato Aristotle the sophists uh really did not
conceive of the possibility of human happiness outside of the concept of citizenship it's only within
the police or within the uh within the political that human beings could fulfill their potential
a cityless man is like a solitary piece of chess Aristotle says Epicure is it fair to say that he
did not look to the city as the place where the fulfillment of human happiness necessarily had to
take place on the contrary on the contrary that's right um the whole point of setting up the garden
community was um based on the view that people had to give up political ambitions political activities
social ambitions a whole range of desires that fueled um not only traditional Greek life but fueled
plateness and Aristotelians although we know that Plato also had this other part of his philosophy
whereby one was meant to somehow flee um beyond the physical world but Epicure is very consciously
bringing the human being outside of political life but we need to remember that his school was very
near Athens it was not a sort of flight into the wilderness and he was very much aware of what was
going on in Athens so I don't I don't like the arguments that suggest that he simply
ignoring the human world turning his back on everything human I agree entirely that's not a
simple escapism and this is one I think one of the misunderstandings about the Epicureism is that
it's a deliberate retreat from the world and application of responsibility for
you know the social sphere and the political sphere it is true that he was no Plato
Plato ultimately uh thought that philosophy that he was so committed to the police or Athens that
he thought philosophy had to revolutionize politics and that his political commitments were
were really quite unconditional up until the very end um one thing to point out about
Plato I completely agree that um his last work was his longest work the laws he was still working
on politics as a philosopher however Plato claimed that a philosopher who lives in a bad city should
shelter behind a wall I think that's an interesting metaphor because it indicates that the philosopher
should in some sense hide himself away and and hide behind a wall we can't actually see what's
going on in the world and I see the Epicureans as not sheltering behind a wall but living in a garden
community very near the city yeah it's important that it's a community too very much so it's an alternative
community mm-hmm so the famous concept of Atatak see Andrea the every time even people who don't
know that much about Epicure is or Epicureism they uh many people do know that it's associated
with this Greek word Atatak see how do you translate it to begin with yeah hard to translate it
it means sort of lack of anxiety lack of perturbation to use a very sort of ancient
sort of Latin Latin type of word however I do want to emphasize that Atarak see that that
definition sounds so negative as though you're simply lacking pain anxiety etc
atarak see a really needs to be conceived of as joy in my opinion it's not just this negative
state where sort of bad things are not present to one so it it includes joy and serenity and tranquility
I think those are the most important aspects of Atarak seea well serenity and tranquility uh I think are
good terms peace of mind good terms now the idea of joy I think is controversial I will be
probably tending to agree with you but you don't have to convince me a little bit more about that
in due time I suppose because I would like to see also Epicureism not just as striving towards
as kind of a pathos state or a primitive state but actually a more positive one so
don't you see joy as a positive state I do that's what I'm saying okay that I'd like to see Atatak see
having this positive element okay not just a yeah this Atatak seea really comes for Epicure's
through philosophy no it's philosophy the precondition for achieving the state of mind which is
unperturbed utterly always why why is philosophy so crucial um happy it's crucial for number of
reasons that in order to achieve this kind of lack of anxiety and this pleasure the Epicurean
needs to take a very good hard look at his or her life the first thing you have to look at is
the problem of desire human beings tend to have a huge range of desires potentially sort of
infinite desires one of which would be for example the desire for immortality um we see nowadays
also you know the desire to reshape the human body become immortal this seems to be a human impulse
so in order to achieve serenity one of the first things you need to do is look at the fact of your
death and the atomic theory of course makes it very very clear that you are going to die and
that's going to be permanent and there is no afterlife so once you come to grips with your
finitude this is very much a philosophy of finitude you can therefore look again at your desires
and say which of these desires is leading me to pleasure to pleasures and which are actually
harming me and certainly the desire for example for immortality or desire for political
ambition social ambition wealth these things do not actually make us happy according to Epicurus
they are desires that are running away with us so we need to look at our desires and actually
limit them and i think that the sort of key point is you start with death and understand
the limits of the human being the limits of our lives and once you accept your finitude you can
then begin to understand the theory and practice a theory which aims at pleasure here on earth
pleasure is another translation of the Greek term he donate if i'm pronouncing it correctly
hey donate hey donate is that an adequate translation you think pleasure pleasure has a lot of
connotations in our society no we we we associated i think a little bit too much with
the gratification of desires exactly and i don't think that's what uh...
Epicurus well you know uh... it's interesting that so many people attacked Epicurus precisely
because they did even in in Epicurus to stay consider hey donate to be
pleasure in the sense that we now think of pleasure and they actually considered that what was
going on at the garden school was a kind of bakanalia that everybody was just drinking and eating
and engaging in lots of sexual activities so again and this goes back to your point
robert about the whole relation of Epicurus to the city one of the things that bothered people
was that the goal of human life is pleasure not virtue this bothered the stoics this bothered
the platelets however we need to point out that you can't live a pleasure for life as an
Epicurean unless in fact you do cultivate some quite a few virtues and you wouldn't be able to
have a pleasurable or ataracic life without um... discipline yourself and living within your own
smaller range of desires yeah we're gonna go through some of these uh... typically Epicurean
virtues in a minute uh... but let's make sure that we understood that we're dispelling
this notion that Epicureanism equals uh...
eat drink and be married for tomorrow we die that is not what epic absolutely not
in fact on the contrary yeah and actually people think of Epicureans as hedonists there is
there not hedonists they live a very very austere life um... a life that i think many
modern people would find boring and dull well in fact i think uh... Epicurus consistently
denounced lust gluttony and uh... indulgence and excess of any sort
yes he was very much against excess but i do want to point out that he was in favor of
enjoying sensual pleasures eating drinking sex these were good things as long as one did them
in engaged in these in measure in measure exactly out so he's not sort of against physical
pleasure is very much for it
within limits of course yeah
uh... it's not it's not this grasping at the
pleasures of the present in this uh... anxious way that i'm gonna die i better just kind of
uh... feel myself as much like him on a note
moderation
measure yeah and of course the fact is that
an Epicurean
uh... has no fear of death
Epicure says death is nothing to us and he argues for this luchricious argues for this
and so the point of being an Epicurean as you is that you have
stopped fearing death
yeah and for that reason if you don't have to eat drinking b-mary
this moment right because tomorrow you'll die the fact is it tomorrow if you
die tomorrow that's just fine
but now we want to talk about these pleasures which are much more refined or in a sense
cultivated
and then uh... you know mirror bodily pleasures even though there's no
prescription against them
the uh... you know eating drinking the sex and all the other
they have their place
but they uh...
they don't have the same sweetness i think he'd he donate a hidone has a
root uh... at a melodically coming in the word sweet but that
that kind of sweetness i think uh...
entails cultivating a number of uh... different sort of states of mind as
as well as virtues
that we uh... that we want to talk about now
i'm certainly one of the great pleasures for an Epicurean was friendship
yeah let's start with friendship because chief among the Epicurean's
virtues is really friendship like i can quote something i have a quote here
from him
of all the preparations which wisdom makes for the blessedness of the
complete life
by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship
it's beautiful it's part of the one of the most beautiful aspects of
Epicurean philosophy because friendship
enables us to not only enjoy pleasure with one's friends
but also
expect ongoing pleasures
yeah in fact that the curious
here you go
he held that it was more important to have someone to eat with
then to have something to eat
he did
uh... actually speaking of pleasures i'd like it to take a moment
uh... to give robert
a gift
and uh... in this period of
friendship and pleasure and
gardening in fact
as well as uh...
this is not scripted by this is not scripted i have a gift for robert
which um... is celebrating
Epicurean virtues and this gift is a bottle of
luddite wine
her hair and i've uh... i'm showing this now to robert
the beauty of this wine is not only that it's called luddite wine
but that on the label which by the way looks a little bit like a piece of
parchment
uh... you have a picture drawn of two human hands holding a little
little pot of soil and out of the plot of soil is growing
a
uh... a little plant so it has a kind of gardening aspect
uh... i'm not trying to suggest that Epicureus is a proto-ledite but i think
you can see
the points of contact
so i'm uh... in this period of friendship and pleasure
uh...
i'm i'm giving this gift to robert
i do want to add one little point about let i'd wine for those of you who are
interested in this issue
luddite wine costs nineteen dollars in the only reason i bring this up
is because you'd expect that i'd like to be about three bucks fifty for the
ordinary let
uh... my guess is that they had to basically sort of import let i
it's all over the nation who could come and
step on grapes with their bare feet
and that this no doubt drove the price up
but here is let i'd wine for robert and it must be
uh... enjoyed in a specific context
in a garden setting with friends
uh... i think this one needs some cheese
maybe some let i'd cheese
and i'd also like to ask you if you could
report on a later show robert about the quality of
let i'd like to listen if i had a bottle open or i would pop it open right
no we're not we're not in a garden or not in a garden well this is uh...
i accept this you know i'm
i'm very moved thank you and i accepted the spirit of friendship which is
offered
and it's certainly that a peculiar uh...
spirit that uh... comes through here it is actually is called the language
duck
is that the
on the back there's the language we did that the language that which has a
kind of nice
city of blood i
thirteen point two
by volume that is a lot that's a very serious pleasure do you like
don't you love this um...
yes this label with the little plant
i do i do i like the fact that nothing is there is just a lot i'd vineyards
that's all yeah this great
anyway i'm back to the question of
uh... not just friendship but i think that
we were talking about a pecure in virtues that are not
just a matter of enjoying physical pleasures
yeah and and friendship is a is a case of where
these are not uh... virtues that are are are are spontaneous or natural
they have to be cultivated
in fact if you're says it is necessary however to prepare the way for
friendship in advance for we also so see in the ground
and so
it's a beautiful friendship is not a given it's a virtue that has to be
practice and refine
and cultivated
uh...
absolutely first and foremost cultivating certain
uh... virtues in your cell qualities in yourself that will render render you
attractive to your friend
that's exactly right you can't be
a good friend unless you've already cultivated
yourself yeah you have to bring something to the table yeah
almost literally the table because the uh... the conversation the in fact
let's talk about conversation which is so intimately related to
uh... friendship
that conversation is the other great virtue
uh... for a peculiar
very much so the greatest pleasure in life i think so is conversing with your
friends absolutely i think that was critical
to the a peculiar life
and i myself
i happen to think it is one of the great choice of life
i do too and that's why
i started this radio program
this is your you know
conversation in the a security spirit mostly with friends but not you know
or if you come on here you become my friend that's right if you're not
already
but uh...
it you know it's certainly the case that like with friendship you have to
cultivate that you
if a conversation is not something that we're born with either
to become a worthy interlocutor you have to develop a mastery of verbal
skills
you have to uh...
a tainic degree of let's say unaffected eloquence
and you also have to expand your mind you have to have something to say
you do have to and that means that you should be setting philosophy or what
is it
because you come to the table with ideas it's above all the exchange
of ideas that the pleasures of friendship
that's correct so there there's a sense in which
to be a true epicurean you actually have to be
a philosopher
we exactly
and this is something that if the students were listening to us really
should take to heart which is that uh... these uh... the kind of cultivation
of things that we're talking about here
uh... or what we're also trying to teach no
very much so
a lot of ideas
not to uh...
to expand you know your verbal skills also at the same time
cut
speaking complaints
and what a more actually since i am myself a let i i
really emphasize reading and speaking
in my classes i don't use power point et cetera
i i believe we have to do
develop in our students the ability to read well and to speak well
you know at the end of his life when uh... a peculiar with suffering from
uh... ailments uh... on his death bed
we read what do you what does he remember with grand we're going to talk about
gratitude in the
conversations with his friends know you were telling about this letter he writes
yet he actually light writes a letter on his death bed he's suffering from a
whole range of physical
agonies
and yet he's able to experience pleasure in the midst of that physical pain
and he writes in his will
uh... and he writes a letter to a friend saying you know i'm here experiencing
the greatest
pleasure failing grateful for the conversations we had with one another
so gratitude is absolutely critical and i would point out
that uh...
epicure us was very well aware that human beings experience pain
and misfortune all the time
and part of what we need to achieve is epicurees is an ongoing state of
autorexia and pleasure even in the midst of pains
so here's a good example of a man who was experiencing a great deal of
physical pain but nonetheless
he remains in this sort of tranquil pleasurable state because
he has gratitude
for the conversations he had with dear friends
i want to mention very briefly just three other
kind of personality traits that needed cultivation for the Epicurean
uh... so wavity
you know you're not going to get philosophers talking a lot about that but
so i've it the which then was very important for the romans swavitas
yeah and sisorog
you know defines it i think
correctly as a certain agreeableness of speech and manners again you render
yourself attractive to people you do to your friends in so i've it and uh...
another is
epikea or consideration for others
very proton christian that you had a consideration this wasn't the condescension
of the magnanimous man exactly or the other sort of
uh...
the courtesy of the noble no this was a real consideration or philia
love for mankind that he really called for a love of mankind he did
and it's a very sort of
anti-competitive he feels yes
and fact i think the Epicureans in roam were like the most pleasant people
uh...
probably the one that i can hang out with
and even though they they had that kind of uh...
let's say you know the criticism
they also if you get pattsey honesty of speech if you're not a cure in you
don't spare the feelings even of your best friend
uh... or anyone if
you have to tell the truth
about something and that was a prime directive you know so it was against
lottery
there was no radically so in fact there's a whole treatise written
uh... against
but says peri parisias
by a follower of epicureus
and it really details the ways in which you have to tell the truth to your
friends even if it's
a painful truth
so parisia is very very important
yeah so here we're talking you know friendship conversation swabity all
these things at and he also praises you know the traditional virtues of
temperance prudence encouraging all this is part of a project of self
humanisation
you don't go you don't
with drop in the city of athons into the garden
you know just to kind of
hang around
note you go there in order to uh...
cultivate and develop a whole series of social virtues not political
virtues
but let's face it
whatever we might understand by political virtues they are founded i think
on first and foremost social virtues
now and actually
robert makes an excellent point
that people think that because the epicureans are somehow turning their back
on the city
that they're turning their back on virtues that's quite wrong there they're
turning their back on political virtues while
uh... devoting themselves to the cultivation of social virtues and that's the
key
uh... difference between say epicureus and the platonists and so on
and we talked about gratitude why
is gratitude such a crucial
uh... state of mind or virtue for epicureus
you know gratitude
it's so interesting i've been thinking about modern day america
and how little gratitude
we have
i think it's because we live in a very consumerist culture where we always
want something more something more
and this is true whether one has political ambition social ambition are
just likes to buy things
uh... we're never really grateful for what we have because we want something
more than we can have
for a period that means you're going to experience pain because you're going to
always
that not have something that you you want
and so i take it that a lot of americans have not
uh... are not cultivating the virtue of gratitude
which to me is so essential to living a good
unhappy life i actually believe the gratitude is fundamental
and that part of
what a peter is called pain management is to look into the past
and remember
uh... with grateful miss
the pleasures one had
and there's even this notion of the art of forgetting that you're in some
sense meant to forget
the pains you had in the past
this doesn't mean going into denial it's not as though you're supposed to
forget things that happened
but i think the point here is
to uh... emphasize and cultivate gratitude gratitude such that those pains in
the past
uh... are put in a context of of pleasure
fascinating
here here is a quote the life of the fool is marked by ingratitude and
apprehension
the drift of his thought is exclusively toward the future
it's amazing isn't it this it sounds very much like at the american
that you're describing an america which prides itself on always forward
looking this
like uh... moving on this hold uh... but now thing about a moving on
and
the uh...
that's always about something that's gonna happen in the future
and i do think that
uh... epicure set of very interesting notion of temporality
that he understood that the human mind he actually thinks that the human mind
experiences more pain than the body
because mind rags us into the past and drags us into the future it means that we
can experience anxieties
about the future fears about the future
so the mind is
uh... something that really needs to be managed
and i do think that part of what he's arguing
is that you know these anxieties we have for the future and also desires
for things that are going to happen in the future and are not happening now
are something that need to be
uh...
if not squelged then
seriously we considered we need to bring ourselves
to the table as it were and enjoy
what we have here and now and that includes of course
enjoying
uh... the pleasures that we've had in the past via memory
and were also supposed to cultivate hope hope
or pleasurable activities in the future
and since we don't fear death
and death is quote nothing to us
there's nothing again to be anxious about
vis-a-vis the future
so i i i would i love about this philosophy is it brings us
uh...
it brings us back to earth
to the here and now
compels us to take pleasure in what we do have
and not be sort of striving for things that we don't have and can't have
and there's i i i have some quotes that
confirm what you're saying and so relevant to
i think you're absolutely right about uh... gratitude being
let's say the the most underrepresented
under cultivated
virtue among us but he even has hit the brilliant
linking of
ungratefulness to gluttony
listen to this
and when i read this i think i think of our society of it
it is the ungratefulness in the soul
that renders the creature
endlessly licorice
of embellishments in diet
amazing
an amazing quote
so the lack of gratitude is a form of greed
it's a form of greed and it means that you can never get enough and this is a
kind of gluttony that would pertain
what you were saying earlier about those who would if they could would want
to go on living forever never having had enough of life
yeah and you were
alluding i think that these would be a more lists in our midst who uh...
you know
uh... have this kind of insane sort of hope now that with modern technology and
stem cell research and nanotechnology and
and uh...
that that somehow life can be endlessly prolonged
but for epicure us
that is
on the one hand at
a lack of gratitude
and it's also doesn't he say somewhere that
uh... if we were to be a mortally would not add anything that's right
would add anything whatsoever to what we already have
but i do think that
uh...
that
you know when you think of the modern day desire for at more life
what you're really seeing is a body-hating culture
and i do think that human beings tend to have a love-hate relationship with
the earth and with the body might even say a hate-hate relationship in some cases
i think one of the reasons why people
eight the earth
will because of course we know that we're going to die and we're conscious
beings also we live in time which
doesn't allow us to just be here in the present
so there's a sense in which we look at earth and we see it as
not really our home we don't really dwell on earth
and therefore i think we're
we create fantasies of some other place that we might well something better
uh... we might see earth in fact as
in terms of a home it would be the home of our corpse rather than the home
that were meant to live in
so what i see an epicureus is an attack on this body-hating
earth-hating culture
and uh... a philosophy that asks us to embrace our bodies and embrace our
earthliness
our bodily life
and our finitude
and therefore actually experienced the pleasures that we can have
and the concept of finitude is crucial to understanding the wholeness of a life or
the fact that it's uh... like a meal i i bring up the analogy of a meal because i
think
and if not a pique is at one of his disciples
uh... said that we take leave of life as after a feast
you know we're satiated but
we don't want anymore it's it's it's enough
this is a famous limits the limits are there yet the famous passage in the
crease and it's also a gratitude what he says is
uh... if you have not enjoyed your life greatly
why is it that you want more life which will also not be fun for you
anyway why not retire from the feast with gratitude so again
is whole image of the feast is not only that you should
be satisfied with having enough but again
be grateful for what you have
and that if if you're not a grateful
feistor or a grateful person at the feast
you're only going to go on having more
unhappy experiences
and just a last thing on gratitude the uh... you know that
epicure says that
the ungrateful
uh...
become old here's the quote forgetting the good that has been
the ungrateful person becomes an old man this very day
yeah that goes that puts it well
and then he says
when
both when young and old one should devote oneself to philosophy
in order that while growing old he shall be young in blessings
through gratitude for what has been
beautiful i don't think we can
overestimate the importance that gratitude plays in his whole uh...
screwn happiness i see it absolutely crucial
absolutely crucial and if you cannot
cultivate an experience gratitude
then you cannot be happy and i'd like the way believe that this is true
happiness is uh...
again philosophers have
talked about happiness a lot uh... but
but
why don't we talk a little bit about the legacy of epicureism
for i think many people are realized that it was one of the most successful schools of philosophy
in
all of western history
uh...
actually they were
garden cultures in asian minor
agent
idli
uh... in addition to the school in ash
at the so there were garden schools all over the mediterranean in the ancient world
yes and and it last i mean i think he found the school in three or six b_c_
but then we have uh...
how many centuries at least until
the uh...
the
the air of constant
now and beyond
epicureanism was a dominant philosophy all around the world now
very much so or least around the epic uh... over the mediterranean world yet but
it is true that ultimately the christians
uh... especially in the period of constant
basically sort of killed it off to the extent that it could
and i don't really think that epicureanism became
popular again until the enlightenment when people were attacking religion and religious
fanaticism
and uh...
privileging reason
that's when you start seeing people
uh... warming towards epicureanism
some some names that come to mind are locked
jefferson and of course later marks
so uh...
it's interesting that while
at the three in a certain point underground during uh...
middle ages and the renaissance
it emerged
in the enlightenment
we're talking about seven centuries now
uh... before
let's say the the air of constant in i would also argue that
a lot of epicureanism doctrine was actually incorporated rather than
repudiated in christian now
in saint paul at least a call new very well with the epicurean's war
he refers he eludes to them i think in the first letter the salonians
about the peace and safety crowd
where this alluding to this doctrine that the only role of government
is to provide us with
peace and safety
that's interesting to very minimalist notion of government
and actually is one that uh... i think was inherited by tomas jefferson and
others that or that lock in notion that
that government governs best which governs least that's exactly right
although jefferson
uh... claim to be a materialists so he's not
in fact coming out
but not it is he does not
claim to be a christian in the later part of his life he adopted a kind of
day is a buddy was quite atman about the fact that he was a materialist
and indeed an epicurean
well i i think some strains of epicureanism getting incorporated by paul
for example
epi curse speaks about the fullness of life or the fullness of this life
i think that same phrase gets taken over by paul to speak about the fullness of
course of the next life
uh... and all these virtues which is supposed to be realized here for
the curious then are projected into this other
epicurean heaven you know after death but
it's very much joy
serenity
yes peace of mind the christian uh... paradise is
i think you have a cure you look at
the case of this
but you get your glorified body so it's not only but i do have to say that
also you know early christians were forming alternative communities and and
we're cutting themselves off from various sort of political
uh... regime so there is that similarities well
well finally we don't have the well they have a few minutes of how about
how about we talk a little bit about jefferson in what way was he an
epicurean
yet so interesting because
modern day america i would argue is
so anti-epicurean we've already talked about this but
the sort of consumerism in american culture in the desired to get more and
more and more and a better body in a longer
life etc
is
very anti-epicurean but what so interesting is that
Thomas jefferson
who of course wrote the declaration of independence and has so much to do
with
america and american ideology
identified himself as an epicurean
obviously very different from the modern
uh... american here's a quote
from jefferson who wrote
to a friend
in eighteen nineteen
i two eminepecurean
i consider the genuine doctrines of epicureus and as containing everything
rational and moral philosophy which greece and rom have left us
the practice of epicureanism would
in time it would be hope
affect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of big-it-treat and
fanaticism which is so long triumphed over human reason and so deeply afflicted
mankind
one of epicureus's canons
was that the indulgence
which prevents a greater pleasure or produces greater pain
is to be avoided
consider the happiness
which the well regulated indulgences ensure
fortitude
you know is one of epicureus's cardinal virtues
that teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties not to fly from them
like cowards and to fly to in vain
for they will meet an arrest us at every turn of the road
so that's Thomas jefferson in eighteen nineteen
that's that's great at least not forget he's the author of the declaration of
independence and
what are we talking about their life liberty and the pursuit of happiness
what a weird
concept at the time that one of our you know
in a little right should be
the pursuit of happiness that was utterly unique
and and a brand new idea for uh... for a founding of uh...
of a country
so we'll leave our listeners with that uh... invitation that they should
uh... follow
the injunctions of jefferson
become epicurean in
you know a pursuit of happiness but you need to know
what it takes you need the teacher
and uh... i think you and i agree and you that
epicure is not a bad place to start in that regard
no i actually think that america could use a
heavy dose of epicureus and all right
so let me remind our listeners before we leave the air that uh...
coming up after me is decka with her
show at the cafe bohemium
bohemian
uh... followed by the bar and then sports cap
after that
we also have a web page for this program entitled opinions
just log on to the home page of the french and a tally in department
uh... and click on entitled opinions and there you can listen to pass shows
online and you can leave your comments
about the show that you heard today for example
uh...
so and yet this has been great thanks again i think we did do some justice to
him
in this hour
there's more to come
and uh...
i look forward to having you on the program again
thanks robert
this was really fun
uh...
(upbeat music)
(bouncy music)