Author Archives: Hiram
Living Pleasantly in Times of Coronavirus
The World Health Organization has officially declared coronavirus a global pandemic, and new routines are slowly creeping into workplaces and homes. Now one has to use disinfectant wipes when one presses the button in the elevator, or uses a fax machine or copier.
Coronavirus mortality rate is currently 3%. If today’s world population is estimated at 7,577,130,400 people, then the highest possible amount of deaths by coronavirus is 227,313,912. That’s almost 70 % of the US population. Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that the coronavirus was likely to infect about two-thirds of the German population, which is made up of 81.41 million people. Two thirds of that is 53,730,600, and a 3% mortality rate means that 1,611,918 Germans would die. This is a serious plague, even with its low mortality rate.
Plagues that kill a large proportion of the population happen every few generations, and became the stuff of myth and legend in many cultures. While during the present health crisis, many religious movements will act out their end-time fantasies and some will engage in eschatological activism, actively celebrating and pursuing their demented ideas about how the world should end, those of us who do not suffer from end-time fever will seek more prudent things to do with our time.
Pleasure ethics proponents like Aristippus teach that we should be adaptable and flexible, seeing in every situation opportunities for pleasure. Thinking like an Epicurean about the changes in lifestyle posed by coronavirus should lead us to build our pleasure regimen around the restrictions imposed by a pandemic.
We have reason to be germophobic these days. One of the easiest lifestyle changes we can implement is to be mindful of our personal space. Coronavirus transmits within about six feet (according to the CDC), so this is the recommended distance with strangers, say, on the train–if possible.
We should wash our hands frequently with anti-bacterial soap, and have anti-bacterial wipes handy. We should avoid touching our faces frequently, and avoid touching surfaces that are touched by many others, and we should use disinfected wipes to handle door knobs, elevator buttons, etc.
We do not have to wear facemasks unless we are caregivers to patients. Facemasks are in short supply, and should be reserved for those in close contact with patients. However, while riding the train, I’ve noticed that some people are using their scarves as both fashion and facemask.
The Pleasures of Nesting
Since in these times we must avoid crowds (no hospitals, no cruisers, no concerts, no sports events if at all possible), we should focus on the pleasures of privacy and make of our home a refuge of tranquil pleasure. These are times to make the most of the intimate pleasures. We may read or write in our journal, or engage in other private pleasures and hobbies that we at other times find easy excuses to dismiss for being too idle.
We may watch movies at home (or binge-watch a series or our favorite shows) alone or–better yet– with loved ones or friends, and cook and eat at home.
The Pleasures of Hygiene
The Goddess Hygeia is the personification of health, and her name shares semantic roots with the word hygiene. There has always existed an association between dis-ease and impurity, and between health and purity or cleanliness. Since purity/cleanliness has acquired increased importance now that we’re experiencing a global pandemic, we should take some time to focus on activities related to hygiene.
We should daily keep all the surfaces of our homes and work environments clean with disinfectants. I like to play lively music at home when I’m mopping and cleaning so that the activity is much more enjoyable. I also enjoy my bubble baths, but we can built our lifestyles around other hygiene rituals.
The Pleasures of Ataraxia
The most important and steady pleasure we should cultivate is keeping a pleasant disposition–of which we are in control–in spite of what we see in the news. We do not need to avoid the news, although it’s frequently useful to diminish our consumption of news media for the sake of peace of mind.
It is imprudent to panic. Death is nothing to us, so we should be concerned with the quality of our lives and the lives of those we love, for as long as we live.
Further Reading:
Learning from Lucretius in Times of Coronavirus
The Epicurean Doctrines on Wealth
At one and the same time we must philosophize, laugh, and manage our household and other business, while never ceasing to proclaim the words of true philosophy. – Vatican Saying 41
According to VS 41, the founders believed that economics is an important component of how Epicureans philosophize. Also, according to Philodemus:
We believe that the tranquil administration of one’s property does not require great subtlety and that wealth is superior to poverty. At the same time we believe that it’s necessary to hand down a tradition of the most general principles and to outline many details in the treatises concerning the care and preservation of possessions.
This means that ancient Epicureans were not only writing down outlines or epitomes of the doctrines on physics and on ethics, but also about economics. When we discuss economics here, we must not assume that the ancient Epicureans referred to what in modern English is referred to as macro-economics (monetary policy, etc.), but micro-economics (household management and business management). Again:
If someone reproaches us because we write about economy, that would be enough for us, together with Epicurus and Metrodorus, who give advice and exhortations on household management in a particularly accurate way, albeit with minimal details. – Philodemus, On Vices and Virtues
This means that these doctrines were handed down by the founders. The word used in these quotes was oikonomias (usually translated as household management). There’s also a Philodeman scroll that bears this name. This is from my commentary on Peri Oikonomias (translated as On the Art of Property Management):
Philodemus makes frequent appeals to the authority of Metrodorus, one of the founders of the School, who promoted the idea that hedonic calculus must be employed in the management of one’s household and economic affairs, making the point time and again that we must run certain risks and go through certain inconveniences in order to avoid greater ruin and gain greater advantages.
He disagreed with the destitute life of the Cynics, and appears to have made this point while arguing against them and in favor of a doctrine of the natural measure of wealth. This corresponds to that which is needed to secure the natural and necessary pleasures, and to have the confident expectation that we will be able to secure them in the future.
While many modern Epicureans are following the founders’ advice to write outlines of the doctrines concerning the physics and ethics, the study of Epicurean economics has been mostly neglected. My attempts to create an outline of the economics when I initially read Peri Oikonomias yielded “Seven Principles of Autarchy” (or, self-sufficiency) at the conclusion of my discussion of the scroll, and last year I dedicated my blog’s content at the evaluation of various aspects of the economics.
One other difficulty with dealing with these doctrines has to do with resistance from Epicureans who are critical of what they see as the so-called “minimalist interpretation”, but who do not seem to be critical of the limitless desires, consumerism, and other problems related to not being able to recognize the upper limit of the natural measure of wealth. This probably has to do with the influence of Ayn Rand and other neoliberal philosophers on many who come to the study of Epicurus, and who attempt to inject Randian conceptions of ambition and greed into Epicureanism–where they clearly do not belong, since Epicurus wanted his followers to have a mind that is content, satisfied, grateful, and capable of understanding how much is enough. For this reason, it is important to clearly understand what the original doctrines on economics were, so as to not be swayed by modern revisionism in either direction (towards extreme greed, or towards extreme minimalism).
Metrodorus Against the Cynics
As we saw above, these doctrines were in part inspired in a rejection of the destitute life of the cynics. We know from Diogenes Laertius’ biography that Epicurus also rejected the Cynic practice of begging daily because this is a wretched way of life and involves much toil and suffering (DL 10.119), and said that the sage would not be a mendicant and would “regard to his property and to his future” (DL 10.8). But Metrodorus may have taken issue with more than the Cynics’ full rejection of wealth. Cynics were known for living like dogs, in utter poverty, sleeping on the streets, not practicing hygiene, and having sex in public. The health and social problems associated with lack of hygiene and a life of squalor raise issues when we carry out hedonic calculus.
Epicurean literary tradition has one scene that shows what the exchanges between the Cynics and the Epicureans may have been like. Chapter Four of A Few Days in Athens depicts a visit made by Gryphus, who is described as a “pale, dirty, hairy cynic” whose tunic was torn, to the Garden.
Gryphus, short, square, and muscular; his tunic of the coarsest and not the cleanest woollen, in some places worn threadbare, and with one open rent of considerable magnitude, that proved the skin to be as well engrained as its covering : his girdle, a rope: his cloak, or rather rag, had the appearance of a sail taken from the wreck of an old trader: his feet bare, and thickly powdered with dust: of his face, little more might be distinguished than the nose; the lower part being obscured by a bushy and wide-spreading beard, and the upper, by a profusion of long, tangled, and grisly hair.
The chapter is meant to have comedic value, but there is of course educational value in it also.
The Natural Measure of Wealth
In arguing against the destitute life of the Cynics, the co-founder of Epicureanism Metrodorus taught the doctrine of the natural measure of wealth. What does this consist of?
The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. – Principal Doctrine 15
Poverty, if measured by the natural end, is great wealth; but wealth, if not limited, is great poverty. – Vatican Saying 25
We see here an Epicurean distinction between wealth that is “natural” (physikos) and wealth that is empty (kenos). Seneca attributes these words to Epicurus:
There is also this saying of Epicurus: “If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if you do so according to opinion, you will never be rich.” For nature’s wants are small; the demands of opinion are boundless.
According to the authors of Philodemus and the New Testament World
There is for the philosopher a measure of wealth that, following the founders of the school, we have passed down in “On Wealth”, so as to render the account of the art of managing the acquisition of this and the preservation of this. – Column 12 of On the art of property management
Concerning measuring our desires by nature rather than by culture, we must remember this from Letter to Menoeceus:
We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. – Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus
Natural wealth will, therefore, include that wealth by which we procure health (food, water, health care), happiness (friends), and safety (warmth, shelter). But those are just the necessary natural desires. There are additional natural desires which are not necessary, and which merely add variety to our pleasure regimen.
The natural measure of wealth (ploutou metron) is not absolute (it depends on context), but it’s also not arbitrary. Concerning which unnecessary desires may be considered natural, Principal Doctrine 15 teaches that natural wealth is distinguished for being easily acquired (euporistos) while empty wealth is not. Notice that there is no absolute amount of wealth that is assigned to this. The natural measure of wealth will vary according to circumstances.
Philodemus’ On Wealth
There’s one more Philodeman source dealing with wealth. The scroll On Wealth is fragmentary, but mentions that death is nothing to us, probably meaning to explain that wealth will not protect us from death. At a later point in the scroll, Philodemus cites Epicurus offering a point-by-point refutation of Menander’s Georgos (“The Farmer”), a parody of the burdens of poverty. In this parody, the poet personifies Poverty as a hag that would not go away.
The essay On Wealth: New Fragments of Empedocles, Menander, and Epicurus by David Armstrong and Joseph Ponczoch argues that Epicurus defends Poverty in Menander’s Georgos (presumably so long as one is able to procure one’s natural desires, unlike the total destitution of the Cynics), and that
as is apparent from PHerc. 1570 as much as from the texts Balch cites, one can actually distinguish four clear degrees of wealth, with two extremes and two middle terms: immense wealth, (respectable) wealth, (respectable) poverty, and destitution. The notion that a state of poverty can still be respectable is at the heart of the content of pc. 5
Against Extreme Minimalism
In the Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus described what could be described as a minimalist lifestyle
… we regard. independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when one the pain of want has been removed, while bread an water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one’s se therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies al that is needful for health, and enables a person to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking and it places us in a better condition when we approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune. – Epicurus, in his Letter to Menoeceus
There seems to be a curriculum of pleasure at play here. We educate ourselves to better enjoy luxurious pleasures if we do not have them frequently. This way, we avoid the hedonic treadmill. We also easily become self-sufficient and confident of our ability to procure our needs by adopting a simple way of living. What we need to keep in mind is:
Frugality too has a limit, and the man who disregards it is like him who errs through excess. – Vatican Saying 63
It’s important to note that the goal of the Epicurean is to live a life filled with all the pleasures that nature makes easily available to us, it’s not to live minimally. As Epicurus says to Menoeceus: it’s “not so as in all cases to use little”. So if the minimalist lifestyle we have chosen generates more disadvantages than advantages, it’s time to reassess the limits of our simple lifestyle. For this reason, Metrodorus said that sometimes we accept many disadvantages for the sake of things without which we would suffer greatly.
Against Extreme Ambition
Concerning the upper limit of the natural measure of wealth, the founders submit the following concerns to our consideration in our choices and avoidances:
The love of money, if unjustly gained, is impious, and, if justly gained, is shameful; for it is unseemly to be parsimonious even with justice on one’s side. – Vatican Saying 43
People generally dislike misers. The word used here, philokrematía (love of money), is also cited by Philodemus in Peri Oikonomias as a vice that we must guard against. It may lead to legal entanglements, reduce the number of our friends, and attract the distrust of friends and business associates. At least one of the Vatican Sayings criticizes how people sometimes sacrifice their freedom for money:
Since the attainment of great wealth can scarcely be accomplished without slavery to crowds or to politicians, a free life cannot obtain much wealth; but such a life already possesses everything in unfailing supply. Should such a life happen to achieve great wealth, this too it can share so as to gain the good will of one’s neighbors. – Vatican Saying 67
Being beholden to crowds or leaders, we may sacrifice our values, or our reputation, or our privacy for money. Some people sacrifice of too much time at work for the sake of money, without the balance of being able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. We call them workaholics. It is difficult to argue that this passes hedonic calculus.
The desire for fame, together with the desire for unlimited amounts of wealth, are both criticized here:
The soul neither rids itself of disturbance nor gains a worthwhile joy through the possession of greatest wealth, nor by the honor and admiration bestowed by the crowd, or through any of the other things sought by unlimited desire. – Vatican Saying 81
We are reminded of the Princeton University study that showed that happiness correlates to wealth with an income of up to $75,000. Beyond that, happiness varies according to other factors, like health, and the amount and quality of friends.
That wealth itself, once acquired, is far from a guarantee of happiness, is attested in the Philodeman scrolls where we see a huge amount of concern with flatterers as a category of false friends. This is probably due to the fact that Philodemus was teaching Epicureanism to wealthy Romans, who attracted many kinds of flatterers, false friends, and people who were seeking their own self-interest by associating with the wealthy. Therefore, even if one is very gifted in interpersonal charm and attracts true friends with ease, it may be difficult for a wealthy person to know with certainty which friends are true ones and which ones are flatterers.
There are other problems tied to not recognizing the upper limit of the natural measure of wealth. Consumerism is tied to anxiety about status, and to false attribution of value to things rather than relations and experiences. Being ostentatious about one’s wealth and suffering from the “keeping up with the Joneses” syndrome may lead to additional problems of debt (which is a form of slavery), and constant craving for more unnecessary things. Once the things we acquire no longer “smell new”, we tire of them and want new toys.
Under what circumstances is ambition advantageous or not, useful or useless?
As we have seen with the “easily acquired” attribution of natural wealth, if the attainment of something comes with little effort and little to no disadvantages, it’s hard to argue against this type of ambition. Particularly, our ambitious efforts lead to wealth that is easily acquired if we employ our aptitude (that which we are good at), and if we enjoy doing what it takes to acquire things. In other words, the greater our aptitude, the less effort we have to put in. If we make great attempts at achieving something that we are not good at, or that we don’t like doing, the effort may not pass hedonic calculus.
Finally, one practical advice given by José Mujica, former president of Uruguay, is that we should measure the true value of things in terms of time instead of money. If we consider how many hours of work it will take to pay for our “new toys”–for instance, a new car–we will be more hesitant to buy frivolous things than if we merely think about the value we get from owning a status symbol. In reality, for as long as we earn an hourly income and have limited amounts of money available (as is the case with almost everyone), it may appear that we are buying things with cash, but we are really buying things with our time and with our lives. If we think about the money that we spend frivolously as the bond of our indentured servitude that it really is, we will become more humane towards ourselves.
Brief Dialogue on Ambition
In order to discern what other Epicureans think about ambition as a virtue or a vice, and about wealth, we had discussions in the Garden of Epicurus Facebook group. Here are a few highlights.
Hiram. What do others think about the ethics of ambition, from an Epicurean perspective? Under which circumstances is ambition advantageous / virtuous and under what conditions is it disadvantageous / a vice?
Ron. Clearly ambition can’t be inherently bad, because Epicurus was very ambitious himself.
Hiram. I don’t think anything is “inherently bad” in Epicurean philosophy, other than pain that doesn’t lead to a greater pleasure.
Doug. If you enjoy doing what you’re doing, it would seem to be fine. If you’re doing it for fame and status, there would be a problem.
Hiram. Is that because fame and status are desires that are impossible to satisfy?
Doug. That would be part of it. In the case of fame and status, there are downsides of these that are commonly not considered until they appear. I’m reminded of what Robert Pirsig did when his book became a best seller and his phone rang off the hook with people asking for interviews. He quit his job, loaded up his RV, and disappeared.
Hiram. Well, then there are people like Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson, who were clearly unhappy and didn’t live lives worth living in spite of their incredible success and fame.
Ron. Not sure about status. Low status can be a source of pain I think. But I would say there is a limit to how much is necessary for a pleasant life, beyond which striving for it is not worth it.
Mike. Let’s be honest. Fame and high status are like a double-edged sword. Yes, there is nothing wrong in desiring and enjoying them. However, that’s not always the case. In many cases, fame and status create much trouble. It is good if they provide peace of mind, bad if they produce anxiety and insecurities. Principal Doctrine 7 is clear on this: “Some people have sought to become famous and renowned, thinking that thus they would make themselves secure against their fellow-humans. If, then, the life of such persons really was secure, they attained natural good; if, however, it was insecure, they have not attained the end which by nature’s own prompting they originally sought.”
Hiram. Famous people frequently lose their privacy. Privacy is an extremely important pleasure that most people take for granted. Consider the British prince and Duchess Megan who recently moved to Canada. Even being royalty can’t make up for the difficulties.
Brief Dialogue on Wealth
Jason. It often results in unnecessary political and/or legal entanglements too. Look at Seneca for an ancient example of wealth not leading to a happy life. I’m sure we can all think of more recent examples too.
Hiram. I have an ambitious acquaintance who is workaholic. She has no children so no reason to work so hard but I have a feeling it keeps her from dealing with “stuff”. Some people avoid having an intellectual or philosophical life in order to avoid existential baggage.
Jason. I know more than one retiree who is “lost” as a result of no longer having to work for a living. I can’t imagine being so bored and incurious that I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Mike. Anxiety is not only a rich man’s disease. It is also a poor man’s problem. There are poor people who are too anxious even about little things. But the fact that Epicurus said that “Wealth, if not limited, is great poverty” implies that infinite desire is vain and therefore produces troubles in the soul such as anxiety, stress, or even paranoia.
An Outline of Oikonomias
I have carried out an investigation of Epicurean economics to the best of my ability, assured by Philodemus that it’s “necessary to hand down a tradition of the most general principles and to outline many details in the treatises concerning the care and preservation of possessions”. As a result of this, below is my outline of the doctrines concerning Epicurean micro-economics. I invite other students to develop their own outlines.
- There is a natural measure of wealth (ploutou metron), and an Epicurean distinction between wealth that is “natural” (physikos) and wealth that is empty (kenos). The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure (euporistos); but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity and is impossible or difficult to procure.
- In economics, as in all else, we must run certain risks and go through certain inconveniences in order to avoid greater ruin and gain greater advantages.
- Since the attainment of great wealth can scarcely be accomplished without slavery, a free life cannot obtain much wealth; but such a life already possesses everything in unfailing supply. Should such a life happen to achieve great wealth, this too it can share so as to gain the good will of one’s neighbors.
- Our ambitious efforts lead to wealth that is easily acquired if we employ our aptitude (that which we are good at), and if we enjoy doing what it takes to acquire things. In other words, the greater our aptitude, the less effort we have to put in. If we make great attempts at achieving something that we are not good at, or that we don’t like doing, the effort may not pass hedonic calculus.
- When we are habituated to simple pleasures, we are in a better position to enjoy luxurious ones.
- Frugality too has a limit, and the man who disregards it is like him who errs through excess.
- There is social wealth in addition to the wealth of things and possessions. Philodemus, in Art of Property Management, compares our investment of time and money and efforts on our friends with “sowing seeds” that will yield fruit in the future. (all the points that follow are from that scroll)
- Association makes labor pleasant. We must choose our company prudently.
- Our revenue must more than meet our immediate needs: it must facilitate a dignified life of leisure.
- It’s prudent to cultivate multiple streams of income, among which deriving fees from the Garden’s teaching mission, rental property income and business ownership, which includes gainful employment of others, have special priority.
- It’s prudent to have fruitful possessions, such as the various forms of ownership of means of production.
Further Reading:
On Philodemus’ Art of Property Management
Philodemus, On Property Management (Writings from the Greco-Roman World)
Horace, Ofellus and Philodemus of Gadara in Sermones 2.2, by Sergio Yona
An Epicurean measure of wealth in Horace
Philodemus and the New Testament World
Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 14 – 2019-20
Hiram Crespo
Epicurean Arguments Against Racism
November 20, 2019
Hiram Crespo
Book Review of “How to be Epicurean”, by Catherine Wilson
December 18, 2019
Hiram Crespo
The 20 Tenets of Society of Friends of Epicurus
December 20, 2019
Nathan Bartman
On “-Isms” and Pleasure Wisdom
December 22, 2019
Hiram Crespo
Book Review: How to Live a Good Life
January 7, 2020
Hiram Crespo
Advice to New Students of Epicurean Philosophy
January 16, 2020
Hiram Crespo
La Mettrie: An Epicurean System; The Canon; Against Creationism; Anti-Seneca
February 12-26, 2020
Dr. Christos Yapijakis
The Philosophy of Epicurus: Humanism and Science Aiming for Happiness
February 19, 2020
Hiram Crespo
Ethics of Motion: The Problem of Ataraxia in Nail; An Anarcho-Socialist Lucretius?; Epicurean Environmentalism; Conclusion: Ethics of Motion
April 11-14, 2020
Hiram Crespo
On Philodemus’ Scroll 1005
April 15, 2020
Hiram Crespo
Ethics of Philodemus Book Review: Philodemus’ Method of Studying and Cultivating the Virtues; On Frankness and On Conversation; Moral Portraiture and Seeing Before the Eyes; Against Maximalism; Philodemus’ Economics
May 26-31, 2020
Hiram Crespo
Some Epicurean Thoughts on the Riots and Peaceful Protest
June 2, 2020
Jordan Crago
What being an Epicurean means to me
June 8, 2020
Society of Friends of Epicurus (SoFE) Journal Volume 13 – 2018-19
Hiram Crespo
A Concrete Self
February 25, 2018
Various
Dialogue on the Extent to Which the Declaration of Independence is Consistent With Epicurean Philosophy
April 16, 2018
Michel Onfray
A Transcendental Epicureanism
July 6, 2018
Hiram Crespo
Swinish Herds and Pastafarians: Comedy as an Ideological Weapon
September 5, 2018
Hiram Crespo
Book Review of Ontology of Motion
December 9, 2018
Hiram Crespo
Hygge and the Landscape of Pleasure
March 15, 2019
Our Friend Joshua
Hermarchus, Seeing the Bust of Epicurus
Hiram Crespo
Metrodorus’ Epistle to Timocrates
July 11, 2019
Hiram Crespo
In Memory of “The Men”
July 20, 2019
Hiram Crespo
Epicurus’ On Nature, Books I-X , Books XI-XIV, Books XXV and XXVIII
July 25-August 5, 2019
Michele Pinto
Epicurean Festival in Italy
September 26, 2019
Meme Series
La Mettrie: Anti-Seneca
The following concludes a series of blogs dedicated to Julien de la Mettrie. Previous essays: An Epicurean System; The Canon; Against Creationism. This one focuses on his work titled “Anti-Seneca”.
While the Système d’Epicure focuses on the physics and was evidently influenced by Lucretius, Anti-Seneca embodies the ethics of La Mettrie and appears to be a response to Seneca’s On The Happy Life
In the initial portion of the work, La Mettrie begins his criticism of Seneca (and the Stoics) by saying:
They are all soul, ignoring their bodies; let’s be all body, ignoring our souls.
However, this must be understood as poetic language. A great part of La Mettrie’s intellectual legacy consists of studying the soul as a natural, physical part of our constitution, wholly embedded into the flesh. La Mettrie’s favoring the body over the soul reminded me of this quote from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra:
Once the soul looked contemptuously on the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing: the soul wished the body meagre, ghastly, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth.
Oh, that soul was itself meagre, ghastly, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of that soul!
But ye, also, my brethren, tell me: What doth your body say about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency?
La Mettrie locates many of the inherent tendencies of our character (melancholy, insight, tranquility, and happiness, among others) in the body. He says that much about what makes up our character is the result of our physical configuration, which we are born with.
Modern science of happiness research is still debating this issue, but some of the preliminary research seems to suggest that about 60 % of our happiness is up to nature–that is, genetics and environment–at least that’s what Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, claims. Other positive psychologists cite a 50/40/10 ratio where 50 % of our happiness is determined by genes, 40 % by our actions and attitudes (this includes what the ancient Epicureans knew as our “disposition”, of which we are in control), and they concede that 10 % depends on circumstances. This reminds us of Epicurus’ Epistle to Menoeceus, where he says that
… some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency.
While La Mettrie and Epicurus do not assign ratios, the idea here is similar. It would be imprudent to deny our facticity, the fact that so much of what makes up our lives was set from before our birth (necessity); and also, that life throws us challenges and difficulties from time to time (chance). And yet, philosophy teaches us that we are not only able but also responsible to sculpt our characters to more fully enjoy all the pleasures that nature easily makes available, in the same way that a lotus flower has the power to grow from out of the mud into the most fragrant and beautiful flower.
I’m convinced that it’s me who have taken the decision, and I exult in my liberty. Everyone of our freest actions are like these. An absolute and necessary determination pulls us along, we who would never opt for slavery. How mad we are! And all the more unhappy are we madmen for constantly castigating ourselves for failures where we have no power.
La Mettrie employs his qualified determinism (which allows for natural liberty and volition) in the service of the abolition of remorse–which he has added to fear of death and of the gods, and to limitless desires, as another one of the evils that we must banish in our souls in order to be able to better enjoy life.
I say “qualified determinism” because, while saying this, La Mettrie is arguing that, if wicked people are able to live happy lives without remorse, “it would take a rather bizarre and irrational person to refuse to accept that they could ever be happy“. La Mettrie wrote Anti-Seneca in defense of the thesis that happiness–particularly Epicurean, natural, fully embodied happiness–is possible, but only if we use philosophy to reduce the effects of culture and education, and avoid adding more prejudices and artificialities to the ones we have inherited. La Mettrie comes back again and again to the problem of education and how it interferes with our natural happiness. He is saying that, to some extent, happiness is made up of choices that a philosopher makes, together with a process of re-education of the character.
At one point in the book, La Mettrie nearly succumbs to a Cyrenaic type of hedonic solipsism, only to take us back to the study of nature. When La Mettrie says
Healthy or sick, awake or asleep, our imagination can make us glad.
he is echoing Epicurus’ retort against the Cyrenaics when he argued that the bodily pleasures and pains were more powerful than those of the mind. While Aristippus advised his followers to engage in a practice known as presentism, to be present to the pleasures of the moment, Epicurus told his followers that they could, in addition to that, engage in reminiscing past pleasures and anticipating future ones. In this way, they could abide in constant pleasures. In Principal Doctrine 20, he again taught that the mind (not the flesh) is able to grasp the limits of nature, and is therefore best equipped to procure pleasures.
La Mettrie also echoes Philodemus (for instance, in On Music) when he argues that reason must serve nature in aiding us to be happy. For instance, when discussing the need to remove the false opinions (added by “an all-too-onerous education”) that produce unwarranted remorse or guilt, he says:
No, I would like us to owe to reason what so many scoundrels owe to habit.
La Mettrie also paraphrases Vatican Saying 45, which says that “the study of nature does not make men productive of boasting“, when he says:
The fine knowledge on which our soul so liberally prides itself, does it more discredit than credit, by depriving it of what its acquisition presupposes.
In La Mettrie, this mockery of man’s pride is really a mockery of the hegemony of reason among the intellectual class. Like Nietzsche, he argues that men are not so rational, that reason merely rationalizes and masks the passions, often presenting them as virtues or hiding our ugliest instincts.
True philosophical education reconciles us with nature, but the education that arrogant people boast of typically is not of this kind. La Mettrie’s critique of virtue follows along the same lines: it distances people from nature, it’s artificial, and so it has no value. In A Few Days in Athens, this same idea is expressed:
Zeno hath his eye on man, I mine on men: none but philosophers can be stoics; Epicureans all may be.
This work, titled Anti-Seneca, was also titled “On Happiness” by the author, who believed that to speak against Seneca is to say something about happiness. We see a contrast between nature and culture expressed as Epicurean naturality and Stoic artificialness, of which the first is decidedly the one that brings true happiness. One of the central arguments of the entire book is, therefore, that education and culture (and reason) often tends to dismantle our initial, natural, innocent disposition, and that the study of true philosophy must restore this initial disposition (and must restore feeling).
While in paragraph 66 of Système d’Epicure, La Mettrie mentions in passing that he’s a Stoic only at the time of death, we find elsewhere in passage 74:
No, I shall not be the corrupter of that innate taste for life which we have, I shall not spread Stoicism’s dangerous poison on the fine days and even on the prosperity of our Luciliuses. On the contrary, I shall try to blunt life’s thorns if I cannot reduce their number, in order to increase the pleasure of gathering its roses. And I pray those who, due to a deplorably unfavourable organization, are dissatisfied with the world’s splendid spectacle, to stay here, for religion’s sake if they have no humanity or, which is grander, for humanity’s sake if they have no religion.
Anti-Seneca includes a passage on the pleasures of literature and the other intellectual pleasures.
Thinking is only another way of feeling: it’s a feeling that is withdrawn … To devote ourselves to reading and thinking about pleasant things is a way to implant a near-constant pleasant feeling in ourselves.
When addressing people with debauched tendencies, he tells them to “wallow like a pig, and you’ll be happy like one“. Later on, he explains that he is not encouraging evil:
I feel compassion for it, since I find its excuse in the organism itself, which as a rule is difficult and often impossible to tame.
La Mettrie then goes back to the idea that all the nerves have a rendez-vous point somewhere inside the brain, and that
… those whose nerves are most agreeably affected, no matter what causes it, are necessarily the happiest of all.
This is the trunk from which the branches of happiness sprout.
by which he intends to say that, not only is the soul physical, but the conditions that allow happiness are also physical and bodily.
La Mettrie closes Anti-Seneca with a comical mix of praise and insult for the Stoic thinker who is the subject of his treatise. The brilliance of this passage lies in that he is actually imitating many of the things he criticizes in Seneca, calling him an intellectual rather than a philosopher, and offering him a high dose of his own medicine and his own double-speech. Frankly, this passage is La Mettrie at his most deliciously smart-ass.
Anti-Seneca concludes by saying that each creature has its own share of happiness available to it according to its tendencies and its constitution.
While Anti-Seneca could have benefited from less verbosity, it has its brilliant and funny moments. This is a recommended essay if you’re interested in the centuries-old discussions and reproaches between Stoics and Epicureans.
Further Reading:
The essay reviewed above is part of the anthology The Hedonist Alternative: “Anti-Seneca” and Other Texts
La Mettrie: Against Creationism
The following is a continuation of the book review of Histoire Naturelle de l’Ame
Some passages by La Mettrie remind us of the book Ontology of Motion, which argues that Lucretius accentuated that motion is an attribute of matter.
The most important repercussion of this is that motion is natural and does not require gods, spirits, or animating forces outside of nature: nature is “free of masters”, as Lucretius states.
In La Mettrie, in addition to the essential attributes of matter, there is something he called “la force mortice” (the dynamic force), which is “puissance” (power). In page 9, the relation between force and motion is established. This “puissance motrice de la matière” (mobile power of matter) is in every moving body, and it’s impossible not to conceive of these two attributes: that which moves, that which is moved. As we saw in Ontology of motion, the role that this plays is to abolish all supernatural or superstitious animism, and to replace it with the concept of a mechanical nature that exhibits motion on its own according to natural laws.
Against the Theologians
In Histoire Naturelle de l’Ame
A hundred treatises on materialism are much less to fear than a merciless Jansenist or an ambitious Pontiff.
Nature has no Purpose
One of the features of the anti-creationist view of nature is that nature is blind, mechanical, that it does not “intend” to make this or that machine, this or that body, this organ or that ecosystem. These things appear as a result of random mutations or events, or of the never-ending dance of particles moving in space and relating to each other, and only once their function serves an advantage, do organisms begin to perfect the use of their organs. This argument was originally found in Lucretius.
Nature is blind, innocent, unaware, and in fact this blindness and innocence is a consolation for death.
Pre-Darwinian Naturalist Reasoning
La Mettrie lived prior to Darwin. His Lucretian argument for how humans emerged from the Earth are, therefore, pre-Darwinian, but based on the reasoning that if humans have not always existed, the Earth must have acted as the uterus of mankind.
Why, I ask you, modern anti-Epicureans, why should the Earth, that mother and nurse of all objects, have refused to animal seeds what she allowed to the meanest, most useless and most harmful vegetables?
Obviously, Darwin made huge contributions to our understanding of the evolution of life, and geneticists after him continued his work. But Lucretius demonstrates that the ancients did have an idea of natural selection, and La Mettrie is again writing a commentary on Lucretian ideas when he says:
Perfection was no more achieved in a day in nature than in art.
Art’s fumblings to imitate nature give us an idea of what nature’s fumblings were like.
The idea is that nature produced many anomalies and mutations. Those that were disadvantageous did not survive to pass on their seed, but those that were advantageous did pass on their seed, and after countless generations this produced beings that were increasingly adapted to their environment.
Man “came after” the beasts because man is more complex, therefore man took more time to make.
The case of mutants prove nature’s absent-mindedness and trial by error: her “innocence”, and her lack of intention and of “final causes”. Nature passed by many combinations before reaching the ones that worked effectively. Nature happens to have made eyes, not intending to, just as water serves as a mirror without intending to. He compares this to a metaphor of how chance on a canvas paints something.
Nature’s creation of eyes and ears follows laws of nature similar to the ones that govern the ebb and flow of the sea.
A Glorious Harbor
La Mettrie was deeply aware that much of what he was writing would be considered practically seditious by the religious authorities of his times, and yet he pressed these issues with zeal. We are reminded of chapter 14 of A Few Days in Athens, which closes with the following conclusion concerning the supposed immorality of atheism, originally believed by the character Theon to be a thought-crime. After explaining that it is no crime to believe with certainty in gods, but that’s it’s unreasonable, Wright’s Epicurus closes:
(Let) this truth remain with you: that an opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offence, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth, or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.
La Mettrie closes his book by beautifully celebrating the breath of fresh air that intellectuals of his time were enjoying as a result of finally being able to openly discuss the anti-clerical ideas that they were entertaining. The Enlightenment had managed to create a “glorious harbor” for intellectuals, and it’s only here that intellectual life had been able to flourish after centuries under the asphyxiating grip of the clergy:
I salute you, favourable climate where any man who lives like others can think differently from others; where theologians do not act as judges of philosophers, a role of which they are incapable; where the freedom of the mind, humanity’s finest attribute, is not chained by prejudices; where one is not ashamed to say what one does not blush to think; and where there is no risk of becoming a martyr to the doctrine whose apostle one is. I salute you, country already celebrated by philosophers, where all those persecuted by tyranny find (if they are deserving and reputable), not a safe asylum but a glorious harbour; where one feels how far the victories of the mind are above all others; where the philosopher, finally crowned with honours and kindness, is only a monster to the minds of the mindless. May you, oh fortunate land, bloom more and more! May you appreciate your good fortune and make yourself worthy in everything, if possible, of the great man who is your King! Muses, Graces, Cupids and you, wise Minerva, when crowning with the most splendid laurels the august brow of this modern Julian — as worthy of governing, as learned, as clever and as philosophical as the classical one — you are only crowning your own handiwork.
Further Reading:
Book Review of Ontology of Motion
Histoire Naturelle de l’Ame (French Edition)
The Philosophy of Epicurus: Humanism and Science Aiming for Happiness
What follows is the report on the 10th Panhellenic Symposium of Epicurean Philosophy, February 8-9, 2020, Cultural Center of Pallini, Athens, Greece by Dr. Christos Yapijakis.
From left to right: Panagiotopoulos (Garden of Athens), Prof. Liolios, Prof. Chrousos, Mayor Zoutsos, Prof. Krimigis, Dr. Simopoulos, Prof. Pelegrinis, Prof. Yapijakis (Garden of Athens)
A top-of-the-world cultural event, the 10th Panhellenic Symposium of Epicurean Philosophy took place on the weekend of 8 and 9 February 2020 with the participation of a record number of more than five hundred Greeks inspired by the enlightening and humanistic philosophy of Epicurus. This is a unique philosophical conference, as it is the only one organized worldwide dedicated exclusively to Epicurean philosophy. It is also the largest national philosophical conference and the only one in Greece that has been established since 2011 as an institution from the people rather than from the university philosophers. It is organized annually with free entrance for the public by the Municipality of Pallini and the Friends of Epicurean Philosophy Garden of Athens; and Garden of Salonica; at the Cultural Center of Gerakas, located within the ancient area of Gargettus, from which the philosopher Epicurus originated from.
The commencement of the Symposium was held by the Mayor of Pallini, Athanasios Zoutsos, followed by greetings from friends of Epicurus from all over the world and Greece. In this year’s 10th anniversary Panhellenic Symposium, Epicurus’ timeless contribution to human thought was highlighted by distinguished scientists and philosophers in a roundtable discussion coordinated by Christos Yapijakis, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Athens and founding member of the “Garden of Athens”. Theodosis Pelegrinis, Professor of Philosophy and Former Rector of the University of Athens, referred to the humanistic philosophy of Epicurus; George Chrousos Professor of Medicine at the University of Athens, highlighted the Epicurean psychotherapeutic approach to stress management; Evangelos Protopapadakis, Assistant Professor of Philosophy of the University of Athens, discussed Epicurean ethics as based on human biology (bioethics); Anastasios Liolios, Professor of Physics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and CERN researcher, presented Epicurean atomic physics as the ancestor of modern particle physics and quantum physics; Dionysis Simopoulos, Director Emeritus of Eugenides Planetarium, discussed the Epicurean perception regarding the existence of many worlds in the universe as confirmed by modern astronomy; Stamatios Krimigis, Professor of Space Physics and renown NASA scientist, described modern exploration of the possible existence of life on other planets, as predicted by Epicurus.
The amphitheater was packed – People sitting on the side stairs
Distinguished members of the “Gardens” made important speeches, among which it is worth mentioning “a new fragment of Diogenes of Oenoanda” by Yannis Avramidis of the Garden of Thessaloniki, and “Epicurean philosophy and nutrition” by Klea Nomikou-Tsantsaridi of the Garden of Athens.
In the artistic part of the Symposium, the presentation of one scene from Christos Yapijakis’ new theatrical play A Happy Greek, regarding Epicurus’ life and work, stood out. Directed by Stavros Spyrakis, the four amateur actors thrilled the audience with their performance and were rewarded by a particularly warm applause.
The 10th Panhellenic Symposium of Epicurean Philosophy has allowed hundreds of Greeks who have a need for learning and a desire for a better world to experience the timeless utility of Epicurean philosophy, which offers a mental shield to putative individual and social deadlocks. The scientific, humanistic and psychotherapeutic message of Epicurus on one hand expresses the simplest and most profound way of approaching a happy life with friendship and solidarity, even in difficult times, and on the other hand it differs fundamentally from the fashionable superficial message of “prosperity” propagated in Greece and internationally.
Dr. Christos Yapijakis, DMD, MS, PhD.
Associate Professor of Genetics
Learn More:
The Epicurean Canon in La Mettrie
The following is part of a book review of Histoire Naturelle de l’Ame
In his Letter to Herodotus, Epicurus establishes the criteria of truth. This criteria are the faculties that nature gave us as a contact with reality: the anticipations (which form as we encounter and memorize sense objects), the five senses, and the pleasure-pain faculty.
It is essential that the first mental image associated with each word should be regarded, and that there should be no need of explanation, if we are really to have a standard to which to refer a problem of investigation or reflection or a mental inference. And besides we must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations, and in particular with the immediate apprehensions whether of the mind or of any one of the instruments of judgment, and likewise in accord with the feelings existing in us, in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen. – Epicurus, in his Epistle to Herodotus
In this essay I will evaluate passages from Natural History of the Soul that discuss how the canon is to be used. We will once again see that his system and method are essentially Epicurean.
But, first of all, why is this subject important? In the first pages of the book, La Mettrie explains that not knowing the nature of the soul makes us submit to ignorance and faith, and that one can’t conceive the soul as abstraction, separate from the body. Body and soul were made at once together; to know the properties of the soul one must research those of the body, of which the soul is the animating principle. Since all properties that we observe suppose a subject they’re based on, idealists posit the soul exists by itself without the body, that it is unnatural or immaterial. In setting up a doctrine of unity of body and soul, La Mettrie answers to the idealists:
Yes, BUT why do you want me to imagine this subject to be of a nature absolutely distinct from the body?
The key premise of Natural History of the Soul is that the soul is physical, part of the body, and that it’s born with and dies with the body. Like Epicurus explains in his Epistle to Herodotus, the body is the passive component and the soul is the active component of the self; and furthermore, he says that there are no surer guides than the senses in our inquiry into the nature of the soul.
Reason: a Mechanism that Can Go Wrong
La Mettrie is, among other things, a defender of pleasure and highly skeptical of the value of reason. He also argues that happiness is not found in thoughts or in reason, but is born of the body.
Happiness depends on bodily causes, such as certain dispositions of the body, natural or acquired–that is, procured by the action of foreigner bodies over ours. – La Mettrie, in Histoire naturelle de l’ame, page 135-136
He argues that some people are by birth happier than others. He also argues that proud reason is a mechanism which can go wrong, and in paragraph 79 of his Système d’Epicure he speaks of how cold reason “disconcerts, freezes the imagination and makes pleasures flee“.
The Senses
It’s difficult to know to what extent La Mettrie based his Natural History of the Soul on Lucretius.
To speak the truth, the senses never fail us, except when we judge their reports with too much precipitation, for otherwise they are loyal ministers. The soul may surely count on being averted by them of pitfalls thrown its way. The senses are ever alert, and are always ready to correct each other’s errors. – Histoire Naturelle de l’Ame, p. 69
Elsewhere he seems to concede that the senses aren’t fully reliable because perceptions can change. Sweet fruit becomes sour, even colors change with lighting. To all this, Epicurus would answer that even if we concede that the senses can err (and they do), still they are our best and only criteria that connect us with reality.
Towards the end of the book, we are raptured into a fascinating world of real-life Tarzans from European history when the author shares several stories that confirm that all ideas come from the senses. He narrates one story about a deaf man from Chartres who, upon hearing bells, started recovering his hearing. When he later started talking and was questioned by theologians, he didn’t understand the meaning of the concept of god or ideas related to the afterlife, etc. Another story had to do with a blind man who had to use touch to get an idea of things. Finally, he narrates the story of Amman, who taught the deaf to speak with touch and sight. He would have them touch their throat to feel the vibration of sound there, and read lips and use mirrors to practice using sight. (Interestingly, the It’s Okay to be Smart YouTube channel has a video on how blind people see with sound) At the closing of the book, the author says:
From all that has been said up to the present, it is easy to conclude with evidence that we don’t have a single innate idea, and that they’re all the products of the senses
He goes on to offer the formula:
No education, no ideas.
No senses, no ideas.
Less senses, less ideas.
Anticipations: a Constant Law
While La Mettrie doesn’t directly mention anticipations (the third canonic faculty), he does describe this faculty when he discusses speech and memory. I will make an attempt to offer a clear translation from the French, which is made difficult by the fact that the author uses long sentences.
The cause of memory is, in fact, mechanic–as memory itself is. It seems to depend on that which is nearby the bodily impressions of the brain, which trace ideas that follow it. The soul can not discover a trace, or an idea, without reminding the others which customarily went together. – La Mettrie, speaking of the “bodily impressions of the brain in p. 88-89 of “Natural history of the soul”
Since in order for a new movement (for instance, the beginning of a verse or a sound that hits the ears) to communicate on the field its impression to the part of the brain that is analogous to where one finds the first vestige of what one searches (that is, this other part of the brain (see note) where memory hides, or the trace of the following verses, and represents to the soul the follow-up to the first idea, or to the first words, it is necessary that new ideas be carried by a CONSTANT LAW to the same place to where the other ideas of the same nature as these were carried. – La Mettrie, speaking of the “constant law” by which memory functions in p. 89-90 of “Natural history of the soul”
(note: he uses the word moelle, which translates as “bone morrow”, but he must be referring to brian tissue or brain lobe of some sort)
Now, we know that much of La Mettrie’s writing was inspired on or based on Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, and this passage in particular is related to the passage where Lucretius mentions neural pathways in the brain. Notice that La Mettrie also refers to ideas tracing a path inside the brain.
Notice also that this is remarkably scientific, considering when it was written. To La Mettrie, ideas are “bodily impressions” in the brain. Ideas are material: they are physical and are lodged in (or happen to) the brain. Today we know that ideas are, concretely, electric signals shared by neurons according to established connections in the nodes between them, which are formed as a result of habitual and instinctive behavior by the animal.
Furthermore–and this is another feature of the canon as it is understood by most modern Epicureans: in p. 93 La Mettrie argues that the fact that we remember or recognize ideas with or without the consent of the will is seen as proof that they are pre-rational. The anticipations are sub-conscious, and obey what La Mettrie calls an “internal cause”.
Some Conclusions
The author seems intimately familiar with many details of the Epicurean canon. It seems that much of what he wrote were commentaries on Lucretian ideas, and that he was unfamiliar with Epicurus as a direct source. His familiarity was with Lucretius, which was a popular document in the intellectual life of anti-religious intellectuals of his day.
He does not use the same words as Lucretius (or Epicurus) used. He is employing clear speech in his native language to name things that we know as anticipations, canon, dogmatism, etc. He used “système” for dogmatic systems of philosophy, and referred to anticipations functionally as they related to memory and speech.
La Mettrie regards reason and the canonic faculties similarly to how the orthodox Epicurean does. He says of reason that it’s a “mechanism which often fails”. He frequently uses the term “internal causes” here (as opposed to “external”), perhaps admitting some acknowledgement of the existence of the unconscious or subconscious mind. That he goes to such lengths to argue that these faculties are pre-rational is very interesting.
Next, we will be focusing on controversies against the creationists and theologians.
Further Reading:
La Mettrie: an Epicurean System
The following essay (first in a series) is a review of Système d’Épicure (published in 1750), subtitled Philosophical reflections on the origins of animals, by French materialist philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie. The book is unfortunately not available (as far as I know) in English.
Other blogs: The Canon in LM, Against Creationism, and Anti-Seneca.
Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751) was a physician who treated venereal dis-eases. He seems to have seen himself as a philosophical functionary of Venus, perhaps (metaphorically) a priest or healer. We have to imagine that La Mettrie had to discuss with his patients very intimate details of their sexual lives and tendencies with frankness, and in a spirit of trust, and that this job would have required of him a willingness to not judge or shame his patients. From all this, and also from his body of literature, we may deduce his progressive sexual and social values–particularly progressive for his time.
In the essay A happiness fit for organic bodies: La Mettrie’s medical Epicureanism, Charles T. Wolfe reports that La Mettrie himself (in an anonymous work) referred to his philosophy as an Epicuro-Cartesian System, although in some of his writings he was critical of Descartes. His intellectual legacy involved the re-joining of the soul and the body by describing the soul as material and as part of the body, in this way materializing Cartesianism and healing the Platonic split between body and soul. Wolfe also claims that La Mettrie is an Epicuro-Spinozan, and says that he created a
new and perhaps unique form of Epicureanism in and for the Enlightenment: neither a mere hedonism nor a strict materialist speculation on the nature of living bodies, but a ‘medical Epicureanism’.
Wolfe also cites La Mettrie as saying “The physician is the only philosopher worthy of his country“, and explains that what he means is that the physician defines truth according to matter and nature, rather than as defined by religion or convention. La Mettrie also said: “The best philosophy is that of the physicians“.
La Mettrie, the physician, sees the body as a machine–a machine that produces pleasure (and pain). He firmly roots the search for happiness in the body and in matter. In Man, a Machine, he says: “Nature created us all to be happy“.
An Epicurean System
The Système consists on numbered paragraphs with philosophical contemplations on nature, and appears to have been written as a prose commentary on some of the ideas expressed by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura. La Mettrie seemed unfamiliar with Epicurus as a primary, direct source, but he knew of Lucretius and cited him often, as noted by André Comte-Sponville in the essay La Mettrie et le «Système d’Épicure».
In paragraph 49, he labels the latter part of the book “a project for life and death worthy of crowning an Epicurean system“. Considering that the author is elsewhere critical of philosophers who create systems, we have to evaluate this. Epicureanism is a coherent dogmatic philosophy whose ideas are all inter-connected, and here La Mettrie knows and begrudgingly acknowledges that he has birthed a system, and even confers a crown upon it. I say he did so bregudgingly, because he recognized that all these ideas flowed from his first principles, and were connected to each other in such a way, that it was impossible to deny that they made up a philosophical system, and one nearly identical to Epicurus’ own, so that he labeled it “an Epicurean system“.
In The Natural History of the Soul (review upcoming), La Mettrie severely criticizes the “systematizers” of philosophy, but in this book, we see him choosing the words “AN Epicurean system”–which implies that there are OTHER Epicurean systems, and many ways of being Epicurean–, and here we do not see his anti-système rhetoric.
So what does this critique of the systematizers consist of?
A Mass of Prejudices
He says the systematizers are full of bias and prejudice, which impedes the development of true wisdom because they have made up their mind prior to addressing the questions. In paragraph 64 of his Système, La Mettrie says his own “mass of prejudices” of education “disappeared early on in the divine brilliance of philosophy“–which further indicates that he observed how these prejudices were acquired through his society’s education system. We will revisit this when we discuss Anti-Seneca.
Elsewhere in his Natural History of the Soul, he makes frequent appeals to reason without bias or prejudice, saying that pre-judging is not the same as true wisdom. In our present book, he further links true judgement with seeing the relation between two or more ideas with an unbiased mind.
Systems and Presumption
So many philosophers have supported the opinion of Epicurus, that I dared to mix my voice with theirs; Like they did, what I am creating is nothing more than a system; Which shows us what an abyss we are immersed in when, wanting to break through the mists of time, we want to take presumptuous glances at what offers us no grip: because–admit creation (by God) or reject it–it is everywhere the same mystery, everywhere the same incomprehensibility. How did this Earth I live in form? … This is what the greatest geniuses will never do; they will battle in the philosophical field, as I have; they will sound the alarm to devotees, and will not teach us anything. – La Mettrie, Paragraph 41 of Système d’Epicure
We will address creationism at a later point. This is just one of several instances where the author connects systematization with the arrogance and presumption of philosophers. Later, in paragraph 44, he says:
It seems pleasant for (the philosopher) to live, pleasant to be the toy of himself, to play such a funny role, and to believe himself an important character.
This is, on its face, a legitimate critique of the philosopher. Perhaps we are the center of our own worlds in our own lives and experiences, but no individual or species is at the center of THE universe.
But this critique does deserve at least one reply: I disagree that the philosophers “will not teach us anything“. I mean, as opposed to whom? Do the theologians teach us SOMETHING? Aren’t theologians even more presumptuous when–unlike us materialists–we know that their hypotheses are not based on the study of nature?
Castles in the Air
In his Natural History of the Soul (and you will see that counter-references from his other works will often be useful when studying La Mettrie), in the instances where he is most critical of the systematizing philosophers, we see that he specifically is addressing the idealists–mentioning Malebranche, Leibniz and Descartes by name. He says these idealists built “castles in the air” (châteaux dans l’air). He elsewhere says that these “ambitious metaphysicians” have a “presumptuous imagination“.
Therefore, his critique against systems is specifically a critique of idealists, some of whom he mentions by name, and his accusation of building castles in the air relates to the problem of idealism and lack of empirical, material base in these systems. His reference to having created something “WORTHY OF crowning an Epicurean system” is therefore understood as following on this critique. He is saying that anything worthy of being called a system must first abandon idealism in favor of materialism.
And so, his anti-système rhetoric is a critique of the idealists in particular. When we discuss his argument that we get all our ideas from the senses at the end of this book, this critique will come into relief and focus, but for now it should be noted that the novel A Few Days in Athens–which was also produced by intellectuals from the Enlightenment generation–has parallel sayings where the author charges that the “pedantry of Aristotle” makes people confuse “prejudice for wisdom“. Both the accusation of presumption and the bias argument are made against the other philosophers.
An Epicurean Sceptic?
“The primary springs of all bodies, as well as of our own, are hidden from us and will probably always be.”
It is clear that La Mettrie follows the Epicurean tradition of philosophy, and even at times falls in the lineage of the laughing philosophers (if we consider his “advise to an old lady” who has lost her youth and sexual attraction). Towards the end of his Système, he says:
“… these “projects for life and death”: a voluptuous Epicurean in the course of life until my last breath, and a steady Stoic at the approach of death” … have left in my soul a feeling of voluptuousness which does not prevent me from laughing at the first.”
He is referring to all the paragraphs from the first part of the Système prior to the 49th, which is where he announces his Epicurean “system”. However, he claims, even insists that he is a sceptic and only begrudgingly admits that he is a dogmatist (a “systematizer”, to use his own term). In his Natural History of the Soul, he says “the true philosophy” doesn’t exist.
This raises questions concerning the extent to which it’s prudent to accept truths for which we have no evidence based on analogy with the available evidence, before we must adopt the label “sceptic” about this or that type of truth. To what extent are we being truly humble, and not imprudent or lacking in ability to infer truths, when we admit we do now know something that is considered a dark, unclear mystery? As the Epistle to Herodotus puts it:
We must by all means stick to our sensations, that is, simply to the present impressions whether of the mind or of any criterion whatever, and similarly to our actual feelings, in order that we may have the means of determining that which needs confirmation and that which is obscure.
One final note concerning how, in my view, La Mettrie’s epistemological approach is essentially Epicurean despite his hesitation to call himself a dogmatist: to him, knowledge that does not bring pleasure is rejected–and it is rejected BECAUSE it does not bring pleasure! In paragraph 26 he contrasts the pleasure of being in nature with trying to understand everything rationally, which is more an act of power over nature rather than blissful immersion in it:
Let us take things for what they seem to be. Let us look all around us: this circumspection is not devoid of pleasure and the sight is enchanting. Let us watch it admiringly, but without that useless itch to understand everything and without being tortured by curiosity, which is always superfluous when our senses do not share it with our minds.
On Religion and Politics
While others have related the Epicurean advise to remain apolitical and irreligious to the distinction between imagined community and natural communities, La Mettrie gives us this curious insight in paragraph 76:
Religion is only necessary for those who are incapable of feeling humanity. It is certain that it is useless to the intercourse of honest people. But only superior souls can feel this great truth. For whom then is the wonderful construction of politics made? For minds who would perhaps have found other checks insufficient, a species which unfortunately constitutes the greatest number.
In the next entry, we will see how La Mettrie treats the subject of the Epicurean canon.
Further Reading:
