Category Archives: epicurus

Reasonings on the Other Races of Men

In my book Tending the Epicurean Garden, I attempt to articulate a dialectical relationship between contemporary science and ancient Epicureanism. I focus mostly on modern atomism, neuroscience and the social sciences, as I feel this is necessary for keeping our tradition relevant.

I barely cover Darwinism in the book but there is an intimate connection between Darwinism and our Canon, as well as many of our doctrines, that deserves to evolve into a full revision of Epicurean theory. Darwin, in a way, brought to completion what Lucretius and many ancient atomists had begun, and brought new insights so significant that they deserve to be considered non-different from Epicurean teaching, adding flesh to the bones of the original doctrines.

There are other worlds in other parts of the universe
and other races of men and of wild beasts.

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book II

After considering the infinitude of atoms and the number of combinations of bodies possible in the universe, Lucretius did not hesitate to conclude that there are other humanlike species in other planets.

We do not yet have confirmation of the many races of men and creatures, but we do have thousands of confirmed exoplanets, all within our galactic neighborhood, which leads us to reasonably expect that these worlds must number in the trillions if we count all the galaxies, and if we include their orbiting moons.

Today there is another, non-atomist way to reason about the Other Races of Men Hypothesis: by evaluating what we know of natural selection. If life evolved in other worlds, there is no reason to suppose that natural selection would have operated in ways different from how it has operated in the varieties of niches for life on Earth.

Necessity creates evolutionary pressures that force creatures to adapt. Only the members of the species that adapt in the face of these evolutionary pressures and challenges, get to survive and pass on their DNA. What this means is that creatures invariably are expected to gain traits that produce advantage over the long term, particularly as they are confronted with evolutionary pressures.

Intelligence is among the traits favored by natural selection, but only in certain instances. Hunters often have to develop social skills to be more successful in their hunt, and complex collectivist behavior requires communication and bonding, which require some level of intelligence. Intelligence makes entities resourceful and much more adaptable than non-intelligent entities so that, although it only happens rarely, when it does happen it greatly benefits creatures.

Nature favors and rewards adaptability and increases the most adaptable creatures over many generations so that the most adaptable survive and pass on their genes over the long term.

Intelligence has varied expressions, among them communication and tool-making. On Earth, there are many species that are extremely intelligent: octopi are able to escape from captivity, some elephants have been taught to create complex paintings, dolphins have the ability of language and each answers to its own name, monkeys and the great apes are known to be very curious and to make tools, with the bonobos even being rumored to have recently mastered the art of making fire.

More intelligent creatures oftentimes operate successfully to the detriment of less intelligent creatures. We see how humans are believed to have brought neanderthals and the mammoth to extinction, just as we’re doing today with thousands of species.

It’s likely that one species, or several (as on Earth), over the long term will develop very high levels of intelligence and adaptability in any planet where life evolves. It’s also likely that some of these species, like ours, will gain so much power over their environment that they will drive many other species to extinction as we are doing.

Humans occupy a unique place within the evolution of life here: we have more power over our environment than any other creature in the past. If comparably intelligent races evolve elsewhere, the ethical questions, dangers and responsibilities that this would raise for them would likely be similar to our own: issues of environmental justice, ethical use of science, etc. Let us call these creatures, these crowns of planetary and galactic evolution, the alpha sapiens, or the wisest of the creatures for each planet where there is life, as the main evolutionary adaptation that alpha sapiens have is their intelligence. Notice that we humans lack the canines of predators and the claws of bears: we have gotten domesticated and have no choice but to live from our wits and tools.

Presumably it’s likely that any other alpha sapiens species that has learned to live by its wits and developed culture, may also go through a similar domestication of itself and several other vegetable and animal species.

I chose the term alpha sapiens to denote that, when Lucretius speaks of other races of men, it’s healthier to assume that he speaks of the sapiens portion of homo sapiens. In other words, we have more reason to expect to find an exceptionally wise species than to find wise hominids elsewhere or even wise mammalians. The specific anatomical features will depend on the niche they evolve in (aquatic, terrestrial, etc.), but an alpha sapiens would likely have tool-making abilities and intelligence enough to develop communication and inventiveness. It might even develop the sciences, so that for all purposes its species is the humanity of its planet.

This leads to consider the notion of self-creation as it relates to the volition of creatures. Animals bodies change, over many generations, as a result of dietary choices and other acts of volition, choices made by creatures regarding their survival strategies. Turtles in one Galapagos island, for instance, developed a different shell and longer limbs and neck to access certain cacti, whereas in other islands their shells remained circular. Something similar happened with giraffes: they chose to eat the fruits and leaves from the highest part of the tree so that they have little competition for food. This produced their uniquely tall anatomy.

We can understand how acts of volition changed our hands and feet by considering our decision to get off the trees and live on the savannah. Notice, by the way, how it is through necessity that the adaptability and inventiveness of a species is tested: desertification during an Ice Age led to the death of the trees, and our ancestors had to join the savannah. We would have stayed in the trees if it had been easier. It was safer, no doubt. Need is the mother of invention, and I suspect also of volition. Need pushes creatures out of their comfort zone.

Now, the new science of neuroplasticity is teaching us about how fast the activities we engage in can change the human brain, not within generations but within months. The knowledge of how we consciously change who we are and how we can steer our own evolution has led to some people considering the possibility of transcending our natural identity and joining the transhumanist movement.

It’s true that scientific insight into cancer and certain hereditary diseases may justify some of the ethical claims of the transhumanists, but it’s also clear that there are serious dangers associated with transhumanist technology: a post-human super-race might be likely to threaten modern humans and make us obsolete much faster than it took us to replace the neanderthals, or at least relegate us to a place in history similar to that of Cro-Magnon and other primitive cultures. Then again, if other sapiens races do transcend their beastlike traits and we don’t, this may represent a severe disadvantage in any future process of transplanetary diplomacy and scientific research.

Although the idea of other races of men sounds fascinating, we should all have mixed feelings about meeting another sapiens species. As the masters of our environment, we have always woven narratives of terror around the idea of an alien invasion of Earth: would it not be fair to expect any other sapiens species to be similarly disposed to distrust the intentions of our visit, if we ever find them?

Nature rewards those who can both identify opportunities as well as take advantage of them, that is: perception and wits. Therefore, life elsewhere is likely to eventually exhibit these traits. If it can eventually raise a domesticated alpha sapiens species that removes every trace of the ancestral beast enough to be trustworthy and form healthy, productive interplanetary relations, then it’s natural that we would wish to learn their sciences, their philosophies, their cultures, etc. But as for humans, I don’t think we’re there yet. We may be big-headed, but we’re still hairy beasts.

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Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Death

The meditation of the wise man is a meditation on life, not on death.

– Wisdom 6:1, Humanist Bible

The beginning parts of the scroll On Death are very fragmentary and very little can be deciphered, but the scroll gets easier to read in its later portions. After studying its contents, I found it refreshing that a scroll on how death is nothing to us took such pains to dismantle the death-based cultural forms two millenia prior to Nietzche’s accusation that Christianity is a cult of death. Although Nietzche is a post-Christian philosopher who is known for having announced the death of God, much of what we think of as Nietzchean discourse began much earlier than Nietzche, with the Epicureans and our philosophy of life.

On the Error of Measuring Good by Time

In our considerations On Choices and Avoidances we learned about the Doctrine of the Chief Goods. We return to this doctrine. The readable portion of the scroll begins with a consideration of how men shun untimely death hoping to gain goods in additional time. Philodemus argues that it’s better to have lived a young life with the things that matter than to die without finding anything naturally good.

14.2 For it is characteristic of a sensible man to yearn to live on for a certain amount of time in order that he may complete his congenital and natural desires and receive in full the most fitting way of life that .. is possible … and consequently be filled full of good things and cast off all the disturbance that is concerned with the desires, sharing in stillness.

Epicurus said that we should live as long as we’re alive. Quality of our life marks the difference between merely existing and truly living. This is an important precept. It is foolish to wish to extend our lifespan if we are miserable and do not know how to live. The foolish man gains nothing by living a long life as long as he lives with fear, violence, envy and other vices, instead of acquiring the things that make life worth living.

For those who live a wretched life, death is a release (21.3-6) According to Philodemus losing our life at a young age, similarly, is only bad because we may be unable to procure the things that make life worth living, a task which requires some progress in philosophy. If we have lived a pleasant life, no one and nothing can take this away from us. When we die we won’t know that we have died because we won’t have our perception and awareness (19.27).

Therefore, the only thing that will have mattered is that we lived well. As we have seen, these reasonings are all consistent both with the doctrine of the principal things (kyriotatai) that truly matter and with the goal of calcualted hedonism: in the end, life must be pleasant.

On Rejoicing About Death

Since the dead don’t mind mockery, only the living, this is considered foolish and it generates no suffering to the person mocked when that person is dead and no longer exists. Similarly, rejoicing at the prospect of our own death is foolish if we have good. It only makes sense to rejoice at our death if it is perceived as liberation from intense suffering.

On Being Troubled by the Prospect of Death

22.1 In fact it is precisely in anticipating this while they are alive that they have the (sort of) death that has to do with them, whereas we are not troubled at any such prospect.

Because we only have perception and use of our senses while we live, the only way in which we experience our own death is indirectly as a prospect. In other words, we do not experience death when it comes. We are not there at all. Therefore, our apprehension of our future death is considered imprudent, as it is unavoidable that we will die and fearing it or losing our peace because of our future death does not change the fact of our mortality. Another way in which we trouble ourselves with death is by worrying about the extinction of our family line and about leaving a name. Because we won’t be there at all after we die, both relatives and strangers will have nothing to do with us and even people who have many descendants do not add enjoyment to their lives from their progeny after they die. Philodemus also argues that there are many others who bear our same name.

On Inheritance

Philodemus recognizes that it’s best to leave inheritance to our children, and that dying without offspring is naturally painful. So is leaving behind immediate family members who lack basic needs. One is to write a will to ensure that only the worthy will enjoy our inheritance. There is concern about the fruits of one’s labor going to relatives who might be wicked, who would not profit from our wealth at all. On the other hand, if one does not have worthy heirs, that is truly a reason for pity: it means that we haven’t lived well enough to nurture wholesome relations.

On Perturbations Due to Manner of Death

Ancient men often worried about things like dying at sea, or about dying a glorious death as a result of the belief that a better afterlife awaits those who die in battle (for instance: as heroes in Valhalla, or as jihadists with virgin attendants in the Islamic heaven) while old ladies who die a natural death, presumably, end up in Hades with all the other ordinary dead people.

Conversely, many people who deserve glory and fame, and are remembered for having lived noble lives, died natural deaths. If only a so-called “noble death” in battle makes one glorious, then most cultural heroes of humanity would have to be deemed ignoble. Therefore, we should not deem heroic our deaths instead of our lives. Living heroically is what has value and honor, says Philodemus. A dead person can perform no glorious deeds, and whatever glorious deeds are performed happen while we’re alive.

For a sensible person, the only way that dying in battle is desireable is if we are wounded and wish to be released from terrible pain. Philodemus derisively says that soldiers in battle die like cattle.

These false beliefs about a noble afterlife for those who die in battle are a great moral evil and have always been promoted by warlords and governments with military interests who have profited from the carnage. We’re reminded of oil investors and investors in the military industrial complex who today benefit handsomely from the use of apocalyptic imagery by conservative Christians who legitimize military intervention abroad, as these few have become powerful and wealthy interests in Western politics. However, it’s usually the poor who die in battle.

Many Catholics used to worry excessively about baptising their newborn in fear of a belief that unbaptised babies end up in limbo. When in recent years the Catholic Church changed its mind about limbo, many Catholics began raising questions about where these spurious afterlife teachings are drawn from and how they can change.

As for dying at sea, or in a bathtub or jacuzzi or pool for that matter, the scroll compares worrying about this to worrying about whether one’s corpse will be “eaten by fish or by maggots”. It won’t make a difference.

Some argued in antiquity that it was fortunate or noble to die in battle at sea, as if dying at sea for the sake of visiting friends or for the sake of learning was less noble. If anything is ignoble about dying at sea, it’s if one dies in search of profit or vain pursuits, but it is one’s life that’s wretched in this case, not one’s death.

Another matter attended in the scroll is the death of Socrates and other innocent victims that are either executed by miscarriages of justice, or justly executed. If one is guilty, this is pitiable not because of the manner of death, but because of how one lived. If one is innocent, then the most one can do is attempt to endure nobly and to be moderately troubled, as if it was an illness.

This portion is perhaps the least convincing in the entire scroll, which is otherwise powerful and cogent. We know in our day that there are countries where the innocent are put to death for apostasy, for being gay, or sometimes the punishment is not proportionate to the crime as in the case of stoning adulterers and women who wish to choose their husbands in Islamic societies. As Muslims move to Western countries, we are hearing more of “honor” killings of daughters by their own fathers or brothers, and even of “honor rapings” of women who do not cover their bodies “properly”.

These practices are certainly a great evil and the moral problem raised by Philodemus concerning the execution of the innocent is very complicated. It is difficult, we must concede, to remain unperturbed. As to those who worry about sudden death, Philodemus argues that all death is sudden. There is nothing extraordinary about sudden death, on the contrary, we should be surprised to live exceptionally long lives.

Unfinished Business

We all have projects that we would like to see concluded. Many people feel that they wish to leave a lasting legacy, but Philodemus says that very few great men achieve this and that this is an empty and vain desire. If fame while alive is empty, then fame after one is dead is even less of a source of true pleasure.

Sometimes it’s not death, but necessity or fortune that impedes us from achieving our goals in life and materializing our plans. Therefore, if we are concerned about dying prior to seeing one of our goals achieved, we should apply the same consolations that we apply in life to these troubles. If we know what matters (the chief goods), we’re unaffected and enjoy the good things in life, the things that make life worth living, unperturbed. It is here that Philodemus speaks of how the prudent man lives ready for his burial.

38.14 The sensible man, having received that which can secure the whole of what is sufficient for a happy life … goes about laid out for burial, and he profits by (each) day as if would by eternity.

One naturally feels concern for those close to us that have problems or who lack an art of living and haven’t learned to be happy. But these are things that are outside our control. Philodemus argues that the man who has lived well should not lament others’ miseries after he has escaped his own: he should go to his death happy that he lived well.

On Funeral Planning

There is another way in which people concern themselves too much with death and its cult. It is foolish to worry about the appearance of our corpse at the wake. Philodemus argues against those who are disgusted by the bad appearance of the corpse, or who worry about beauty, saying that all who die–beautiful or not–become skeletons within a short amount of time. He also argues against planning lavish burials as a waste of time and resources.

We are reminded of many of the practices associated with kings and chiefs, which incorporated not only the inclusion of material goods in the tomb but even such evil practices as burial of live slaves and widows with them. These traditions persisted in most continents for millenia.

Burials, if they are to be celebrated, are for the living, not for the dead. They help with closure. Philodemus praises decent burial practices that were emerging during his lifetime, where the expenditure that used to go toward lavish burials of wealthy senators were instead being spent on the living:

31.5 Among lawgivers, too, those who made dispositions naturally and well can be seen actually to have prevented excessive expenditure at funerals on the grounds that the living were being deprived of services: many give orders to do away with their property precisely because they begrudge this.

A lavish burial won’t fix a life lived wretchedly. On the other hand, a pleasant life well lived among friends can not be taken away from us if we don’t get a proper burial: this does not take away in the least from our happiness while we lived. Many great people have died without a burial. The scroll also argues convincingly against pitying the dead, for instance, if we happen to come across an unnamed tomb (32.24), saying that it is unintelligent to pity the dead.

32.20 Who is there who, on considering the matter with a clear head, will suppose that it makes the slightest difference, never mind a great one, whether it is above ground or below ground that one is unconscious?

The pain of not being remembered at all after death seems natural, but if one is friendless and has nothing good, then we get no relief from being remembered well or even as blessed. If, on the other hand we have many friends and live well, then being remembered or not after we die, again, takes nothing from that.

On the other hand, if our friends die before we do, then we might as well mourn everyone who was and ever will be. After we’re all dead, there won’t be anyone to remember us. Therefore, the issue of being remembered (or reviled, for that matter) after one dies should not be a source of perturbances. Instead, one should worry about living well.

Live Well, Die Well

It is important to understand that living well and dying well are the same thing. Philodemus criticizes rich men who think they won’t get old and die, don’t even write a will (an act which indicates some level of coming to terms with our own end), and are perplexed to see an old king as if power and old age were mutually exclusive. He says that they are attached to life out of fear of death, not because they live pleasantly. One should live while one is alive, but peacefully and prudently accept one’s mortality and natural limits.

***

The above reasonings were inspired by Philodemus: On Death (Writings from the Greco-Roman World 29) (Greek and English Edition), by Philodemus and W. Benjamin Henry.

Further Reading:
Is it moral to respect the wishes of the dead, above the living?
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Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety (Part IV)

Continued from Part III

Socrates and the Live Unknown Maxim

The papyrus makes mention of the fact that, unlike Socrates, Epicurus never had one single quarrel against the Athenians and never presented a single lawsuit against them (or they against him) during his entire life. Comedians, who often mocked the virtuous in their plays and works, never made fun of Epicurus, while Socrates was frequently characterized as a trouble-maker among the Athenians even in spite of his great wisdom, and other philosophers were kicked out of the city and created troubles and perturbances.

As a result, because Socrates did not have the prudence to “Live Unknown” but was always walking about and questioning people’s beliefs, he was in the end killed in spite of being an innocent and virtuous man, and was even accused of impiety and atheism in spite of being a truly pious man by Epicurean standards. By living among the crowd, he incited anger, put his life in danger, and was in the end killed.

And so, the events surrounding Socrates’ life and death are used didactically (and implicitly, not directly) in the papyrus to exemplify and demonstrate why living unknown enhances the safety of the philosopher, particularly if his views are not understood by the many.

Against the Atheists

It’s ironic that so many atheists today consider Epicurus as one among their number. Epicurus mentions the need to despise atheists, reproaches them as mad, Bacchic revellers and admonishes them “not to trouble or disturb us”, mentioning Critias, Doagoras and Prodicus by name.

The piety of Epicurus and his followers is mentioned frequently in the Philodeman scroll. It describes how celebrations of the 20th were, originally, in part religious and Epicurus’ “house was decorated piously” for the occasion. The oaths and invocations were, also, religious in nature and in his Epistle to Diotimus, Epicurus is said to have warned against “violating the covenant of the sacred festival table”.

We must grant, however, that the laws in the Greek city stipulated that any organization of the sort that Epicurus was trying to establish needed to have a religious character and worship the Gods of the city. Hence the insistence of abiding by law and custom.

Therefore, even if they are now in the majority, Epicurean atheist thinkers are part of the contemporary branch of the tradition and could not have emerged at the roots of our history. Epicurus would not have had it.

Having said that, modern Epicurean atheology is happy to concede that the allegations by opponents of our founders that Gods can’t have imperishable, atomic bodies are legitimate arguments against the realist interpretation of the Gods. If Gods can not be physical, then they must be non-existent and the idealist interpretation–which is, perhaps, atheistic or at least debases the worship of Gods to a mere artform, a technique for the cultivation of virtue–is the only way to reconcile materialism with pious philosophy.

Conclusion

We have seen that, for people who are religious and who embrace Epicureanism, our discourse on piety has the potential to save and to fully civilize religion, enhancing it, raising it to new heights and making it noble. Not only can Epicureanism be credited with fighting both the ignorant and innocent as well as the vile and heinous forms of superstition: it also seeks to preserve the best in religion, the blissful, the ecstatic, the joyous, every source of pleasure within it that does not defile the mortal soul.

Epicureans are not the enemies of religion, as some contend. In fact, most of us do not expect religion to ever disappear. But we do have noble expectations concerning any claim of true piety. This Philodeman scroll is more than an olive branch from secularists to religious people: it creates in effect an ecumenical tone in the way our teachings are imparted.

There are several key teachings that emerge from studying Philodemus’ On Piety. The main ones can be summed:

  1. God(s) can be understood from realist or idealist interpretations.
  2. Humans imitate the qualities they see in divinity. Therefore, the wise have noble expectations concerning the Gods.
  3. Worship is an act of self-expression and only benefits the worshiper. It does not necessarily affect the object of worship.
  4. There is good, pure and wholesome religion as well as defiled and unwholesome religion.
  5. Worship affects reality because it affects character.
  6. Epicurean doctrines are considered the true cause of our tranquility.
  7. Piety is a sort of art of divine attunement with the philosophical virtues that produces wholesome, blessed, blissful, therapeutic states of mind.

*

The above reasonings were inspired by Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1), by Philodemus, edited by Dirk Obbink.

Buy Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1) – Clarendon Press

Buy Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1) by Philodemus (1997-02-13) – Oxford University Press

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Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety (Part III)

… Continued from Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety (Part II)

On the Purpose of Religion, and On Whether it’s Natural and Necessary

The idealist Epicurean theology produces the urgence to raise questions about the true purpose of religion. Is it even necessary or useful? It also raises questions as to whether religion can be judged by the same criteria as desires, anger, and knowledge, and therefore understood as natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, or unnatural and unnecessary.

Is religion natural and necessary? The first Epicureans, in unison, seemed to think it’s both, but modern Epicureans may hold different views. Specifically as to whether religion is natural, the papyrus says:

To pray is natural. – Epicurus, in On Lifecourses

Again, because Gods are not concerned with mortals, prayer is of a non-petitionary nature. It’s an act of self-expression meant to affirm and nurture the virtues and abiding (katastemic) pleasure. Gratitude is one of its main uses.

As to whether religion is necessary, that is less clear.  Epicurus believes it is, but Philodemus (judging from his admission that the existence of the Gods has not been proven conclusively) appears to leave room for the legitimacy of doubt, even if by giving a voice to his predecessors he seems to be in more or less complete concordance with their views.

If religion is to be viewed as natural and necessary, then we can understand why Epicurus included pious displays in the decorations for the 20th and why the oath included religious references. Now, notice how much the Epicurean oath is non-different from piety:

Piety and justice appear to be almost the same thing … because to break one’s oath is to be unjust and also to lie, and both are disturbing.

The Epicurean oath originally produced religious duties among the disciples, and it is within this context that pious activities and duties were performed as remedies used to remove vice and increase virtue. Since all duties (religious or not, if we are consistent with the doctrine of natural justice) can only emerge as a result of agreements, then the only way in which the celebrations of the 20th and the other duties that are mentioned in the sources can be said to have existed is as a result of oath-taking.

The oath called into existence the hedonic covenant of the Epicureans: an oath not to harm or be harmed, which today thinkers like French philosopher Michel Onfrey have expanded to include an agreement to maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain of all covenant-members. We can therefore understand how the Gardens were mutual aid societies, the fraternities that early Christians admired so much and imitated.

If religion is to be viewed as both unnatural and unnecessary by some Epicureans, and therefore, empty and vain, then a new branch of Epicurean atheology emerges and piety as a virtue may lose value for many. However, even within the idealist view, there seems to be a case for piety as a remedy, as a way to cultivate the virtues that deserves exploration and experimentation (particularly in view of the available research on the benefits of chanting, prayer and other pious activities).

Can these pious activities be incorporated into a non-theistic form of religiosity? Certainly: Buddhism is a cogent and culturally rich, vibrant non-theistic religious tradition. We’ve previously shared on Society of Epicurus the beautiful sutra of loving-kindness. The Gods are not the only object of pious devotion: the virtues themselves, sacred teachings or books, one’s homeland, our departed loved ones, the most noble and virtuous among our friends, Gurus or teachers, and one’s parents can be the recipients of pious gratitude and love.

In the early Epicurean communities, there are fragments that suggest that the etiquette among Friends was to treat each other with pious devotion. This is a peculiar instance of recognition of divine immanence generously extended to all of virtuous humanity. It’s reminiscent of the Vaishnava Hindu tradition that all devotees are worthy of reverence and even resonates a bit with the Christian tradition about Christ washing the feet of his disciples. The following are some examples of this:

In your feeling of reverence for what I was then saying you were seized with an unaccountable desire to embrace me and clasp my knees and show me all the signs of homage paid by men in prayers and supplications to others; so you made me return all these proofs of veneration and respect to you. Go on thy way as immortal and think of us too as immortal. – Epicurus to Colotes

 Lord and Savior, my dearest Leontion, what a hurrahing you drew from us, when we read aloud your dear letter. – Epicurus to Leontion

I shall sit down and await your lovely and godlike appearance. – Epicurus to Pythocles

In this manner, piety is used didactically to teach human values and how to properly treat each other. The image that emerges is one where communities of Friends create cultural spaces where they express their affection for each other in a celebratory manner (“what a hurrahing you drew from us!“). Piety towards our dearest Epicurean Friends is also consistent with the tradition that Epicureans are to live as Gods among the mortals.

God as a Verb, Not a Noun

We started our reasonings discussing how atomists legitimized the existence of physical Gods, but if the question they were trying to answer was flawed, the answer will be flawed too. What if we are idealists? What if the Gods do not inherently exist, except as (natural? necessary? useful?) cultural constructs?

The apotheosis of his Friends by Epicurus also raises questions about how Gods or objects of piety are created. We can worship stones, as well as real or imaginary (non-physical) beings. In all cases, anything worshipped is a God to someone. Epicurean realist theology was the result of atomist doctrine, but perhaps a theology of this sort was unnecessary and only one of many ways to go about studying the phenomenon of Gods which some people (philosopher Daniel Dennet among them) believe should be studied as a natural phenomenon, and Howard Bloom has suggested that the Gods are memes or cultural artifacts within our superorganisms involved in the collective psychological evolution of different portions the human race.

Perhaps what should be of concern to us is the process of deification and whether it is intelligent or healthy to deify anything or anyone at all. If deification is chosen, then how is this choice most prudently made? It is clearly more intelligent and more pleasure-inducing to worship ideals of prudence, cheerfulness and love than to worship ideals of warfare, hostility and anger. We’ve seen examples of both in our world.

In all cases, whether we adopt realist or naturalist views, whether we think religion is necessary and natural or whether we don’t, all Epicureans agree that the Gods don’t need a cult, and that they don’t enjoy it. They’ll remain imperturbable with or without our attention. The true function and purpose of piety and religion is for the benefit of mortals: to increase our pleasure and minimize our suffering.

Even if it’s natural for wise men to worship, true piety only benefits the pious, and then trickles down through them. It is therefore understood as an act of self-expression, of pressing out of the Self the contents of one’s character, an expression of a man’s virtue or vice … and of a philosopher’s art of living.

… Continues in Part IV

Buy Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1) – Clarendon Press

Buy Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1) by Philodemus (1997-02-13) – Oxford University Press

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Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety (Part II)

 … Continued from Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety (Part I)

Doctrine of Harm and Benefit of the Gods

(To others,) piety appears to include not harming both other people and especially one’s benefactors and homeland.  To be sure, they honor something rather kindly and propitious, whereas we all regard our views as the true cause of our tranquility.

The accusers also criticized Epicureans for “depriving good and just men of the fine expectations which they have of the Gods”, which generated a discussion of what harms and benefits can be legitimately attributed to the Gods. As with many other doctrines, this one evolved as a result of the interaction with other schools of philosophy and in the process of evaluating the criticism of others.

Although the Gods do not concern themselves with mortals, there is harm and benefit that can be derived from our conception of them. In particular, our views about the Gods affect our imperturbability, virtue and tranquility. With the Gods understood by their effects in this manner, true piety therefore can be seen as a way to nurture virtue.

The papyrus explains that if people imagine their Gods as tyrants and with bad character, they will suppose bad things will befall them, whereas by imagining the Gods as harmless and virtuous, humans will seek to imitate these qualities. Likewise, and just as importantly, bad or evil conceptions of the Gods defile humans and produce depravity even in well-meaning people. A contemporary version of this teaching was articulated by an anti-religious thinker:

 Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. – Steven Weinberg

Horrible conceptions of divinity, even if they are traditionally accepted by the many, are considered by the wise to be blasphemous, not pious in the true sense of the word.

… for every wise man holds pure and holy beliefs about the Divine. – Epicurus

The worship of raging, mad Gods by the likes of jihadists and the Westboro Baptist Church produces harm and vice as much as the worship of virtuous Gods produces virtue. These extend, in both cases, to both the worshiper and those around him, and these effects can be as tangible as terrorist attacks and feeding the poor, with all the underlying emotions both hostile and tender, vulgar and sublime, in all these cases. Worship affects reality because it affects character.

According to the Philodeman papyrus, Epicurus advised mortals not to think that (anything worthy of the name) God is bad-tempered. In order to be imperturbable and safe from harm, the Gods could also not be imagined as initiating disputes. However, the text laments that “things unworthy of indestructibility and blessedness are sought in prayer” by common people.  According to the text,

But those who believe our oracles about the Gods will first wish to imitate their blessedness, insofar as mortals can, so that, since it was seen to come from doing no harm to anyone, they will endeavor most of all to make themselves harmless to everyone as far as it is within their power, and second, to make themselves noble …

The just person has noble expectations concerning the Gods, and at the same time exceedingly enjoys pleasures that are unalloyed and effortless.

The undefiled, pure, noble, virtuous Epicurean Gods are an easily acquired source of pure pleasure. To a worshiper, it is always a pleasure to associate with them.

The unjust, on the other hand fear detection forever once they have committed injustices and also fear the Gods’ retribution, in spite of the fact that (as per a Hermarchus quote) “the Gods do not appear to harm wrongdoers even if the worst of mankind escape notice”. Even if they don’t fear the Gods’ retribution, they still “believe they are going to inflict everlasting misfortunes, so that they undergo no less disturbance than if they were really suffering such things”. They have no tranquility as a result.

The Philodeman papyrus states:

In On Holiness, he (Epicurus) calls a life of perfection the most pleasant and most blessed, and instructs us to guide against all defilement, with our intellect comprehensively viewing the best psychosomatic dispositions for the sake of fitting all that happens to us to blessedness …

The word psychosomatic translates as symptoms exhibited by both body and mind, which can represent either disease or wellbeing. The reference to psychosomatic dispositions here, within the context of contemplation of the Gods, gives us an intriguing insight into Epicurean spirituality, which must never be divorced from nature and from the body. Both the diseases of the soul and its wellbeing manifest themselves in the body, in physical symptoms. Anger is one of the diseases most famously described in psychosomatic terms in Epicurean therapy: the face can turn red (from the blood rushing), the facial features get ugly, the body heats up, the rhythm of the pulse increases.

We must, therefore, suppose that imperturbability, cheerfulness and serenity also have symptoms within the body and its health, and this is obviously the case. The heart and blood pressure are calmer, and the body secretes more serotonin instead of cortisol, the toxic stress hormone. True spirituality and philosophy are medicinal in a very literal sense.

Epicurus believed that true piety requires that we see Gods as immortal and blessed, and as embodying other virtues. Ares, for instance, embodies steadfastness, virility and courage; Aphrodite embodies the purest pleasure and suavity; Athena is the noble embodiment of Prudence and Wisdom; Hera of loyalty, Hephaistos of inventiveness, resourcefulness and creativity; Zeus embodies self-sufficiency and victory; Apollo embodies lucidity and clarity while Dionysus embodies sublime release and rapture.

If we were to assume a Unitarian/Jeffersonian approach to Christianity and apply Epicurean criteria to it, the Heavenly Father might be syncretized with Nature, with the Holy Spirit or Good Breath embodying the principle of Life. That Jesus worshiped God as Breath is a very intimate insight into his transpersonal and immanent God’s immediacy and easily lends itself to a naturalist interpretation of what Jesus called the God of the Living. In a philosophy of life, things have value only for the sake of living, breathing beings, how much pleasure they add to them, and how much pain is removed from them. This Holy Spirit of Life and Breath at once embodies both nature and all the philosophical virtues, and–while irrelevant to non-religious Epicureans–may serve as an outlet for piety among Epicureans with Christian-influenced religious tendencies.

Affinity for the virtues of the Gods makes us susceptible and receptive to them. Ancient Epicureans believed that the pious can tune into their virtuous frequencies through worship, which is an interesting feature of Epicurean religion: piety is here understood as wholesome, therapeutic brainwaves. In other words, something that one can tune into. Many Hindus and Sikhs have similar beliefs about Divinity manifested as sound vibration. There is also mention of alienation of the Gods from those who have no affinity with the virtues. This understanding resonates with the original semantical root for the word religion, the Latin re-ligare, meaning to re-connect. Perhaps if we used the verb re-connecting instead of the noun religion, we would be able to once again grasp and speak accurately about the art of piety and its true nature and purpose.

Whether we are really attuning to something physical and natural (as the realists believe) or whether this divine attunement is merely a mental construct (as we idealists believe), the important thing to understand about piety is that it is meant to beautify the character, to produce healing, virtue, happiness, wellbeing and tranquility. Piety serves therapeutic purposes.

Against the Poets and Theologians

… poets and theologians are praised by our attackers.

The reference to the poets as the creators of distortions in people’s values must be traced back to Epicurus’ early years studying the Greek Pagan creation myths (compiled by the poet Hesiod) under a Platonist instructor who was unable to explain the notion of Chaos. From this, he concluded, even as a child, that humanity needed a naturalist, scientific cosmology … and poets may be fine writers, but unless they’re scientists or philosophers, they’re not qualified to write with authority about cosmology or ethics.

Also, we know of Zeus’ bisexual escapades, of Hera’s jealousy, of Aphrodite’s infidelity with Ares, of Poseidon’s rage, and many other signs of divine perturbance that were imagined by the poets, epileptics, and mystics.

What are we to make of the poets that compiled the Quran, the Bible, the Book of Mormon and other, equally perturbed scriptures, which also distort historical and scientific facts? In them not only is creation imagined in an entirely unnatural manner which is known to be manifestly fraudulent, but God is attributed with laws that say that women can be sold like cattle, married off against their will at a young age, and stoned for adultery if they don’t like it. He orders genocide, institutes slavery and declares black skin to be a curse. He even accepts human sacrifice like Molok, and orders that gays be stoned to death. The God of these books is as impossible to reconcile with wholesome philosophy as the folk beliefs about the Gods of Greece were.  Philodemus declares:

The false views of poets don’t lead to virtuous or happy lives …

Impious is not so much the man who denies the Gods of the many as the man who attributes the beliefs of the many to them.

To a theist philosopher like Epicurus, these false views about the Gods do not originate in natural prolepsis or anticipations, but are the product of cultural corruption. It’s up to non-theist Epicureans to investigate whether we humans carry anticipations that deserve our pious attention. I personally believe that some forms of piety, such as our instinctive and natural filial piety towards our parents and other family elders, are entirely natural and based on the Canon and on anticipations.

 (continued …) Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety (Part III)

Buy Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1) – Clarendon Press

Buy Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1) by Philodemus (1997-02-13) – Oxford University Press

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Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety (Part I)

As was the case with my previous commentaries on Philodemus’ works, I have taken the liberty to distill the basic teachings of the scroll, as well as add my own commentary, in a manner that modern audiences can understand in order to advance a new and fresh Epicurean discourse in the 21st Century.

Contemporary Epicureanism is mostly made up of atheists and agnostics and must therefore take up the task of articulating an atheology founded on the ancient doctrine, but many militant and intellectual atheists who have appropriated Epicurus and who propagate atheist cultural memes with his quotes will be surprised to learn of the hostility that Epicurus exhibited against some of the atheists that he knew and of the great value that was placed on true piety, as defined by naturalist philosophy.

Even a non-religious Epicurean should find ways to cultivate the virtue of piety, as the quintessential katastemic practice is gratitude (usually towards nature, or life), which is an expression of piety. All of these matters will be attended in my reasonings on Philodemus’ scroll titled On Piety.

Epicurus and Metrodorus Versus the Accusers

There were two main types of accusation that were raised by opponents of the early Epicurean school. First, there was the accusation of impiety or insincerity in their belief in Gods, which is what inspired Philodemus’ work On Piety.  In the work, he sets on a journey to establish a clearer understanding of true piety, and opposes this true virtue to the vulgar beliefs of the many. He also persistently reiterates how the founders of the school both produced arguments for the existence of the Gods and encouraged their followers to participate in worship and to be truly pious, in reply to the accusers’ argument that it is foolish to celebrate festivals if Gods could care less.

The second type of accusation, once these arguments were presented, constitutes an attack on the imperfections or features of the Epicurean arguments for the existence of natural Gods. For in materialism, things can only exist insofar as they are composed of atoms. According to the traditional, realist interpretation of the Gods, if they do not have atomic bodies, Gods can not be said to exist in any form.

The accusers said that Gods can not have bodies, for bodies are compounds of atoms and all things that are composed of atoms are impermanent. They are subject to change, decay and death. Therefore, because compounds are destructible, these atomic Gods can not be immortal.

Philodemus then cites an argument made by Metrodorus, where he explained that if a compound is made of things that aren’t numerically distinct, these things may be imperishable and indestructible or divine.  In his work On Holiness, Epicurus is quoted as elaborating a doctrine about the physical Gods being eternal and indestructible, and saying that one who exists in this manner “in perfection as one and the same entity, is termed unified entity“.

The original founders, says Philodemus, supposed that Epicurus never had reason to question the existence of Gods. It is universally accepted that Epicurus believed that the Gods were “clearly” conceived originally (by ancient people) as eternal and blessed, and that this was a preconception or anticipation (one of the elements in the Canon). However, Epicurus believed that people in later generations developed defiled ideas about the Gods and warned his followers to only hold “the purest and holiest beliefs about the Gods” and to avoid defiled views.

The accusations of inconsistency went back and forth between the Epicureans and the non-Epicureans.  Philodemus argues against the accusers who claim that Gods can’t be physical, saying that this is inconsistent with his opponents’ view of Gods as having perception and experiencing pleasure.

Before we move on, we must make the observation that Epicurus believed that there was good, pure and wholesome religion as well as defiled and unwholesome religion, and that not all religion was the same. This is an important distinction, if we are to discern between true piety and false piety.

The Ontology of the Gods: In What Way Do They Exist?

For the sake of clarity, the original belief in the Gods within Epicureanism involved their physicality. They had bodies made of atoms. This was a necessity of Epicurean theology because nature and reality are one and the same in materialism and in atomism: Gods can only exist in nature. No-thing exists outside of nature.

Beyond this, other debates occur about what the Gods are in themselves, in what way they exist. One theory was that they lived in the space between the worlds. When we discuss virtue as it relates to piety, we’ll see that the Gods are assumed to exist in a way somewhat similar to what we may think of today as radio waves or sound waves, or at least exude some similar quality … an intriguing insight.

On Piety includes a frank admission by Philodemus, which opens the door for an Epicurean atheology and for the contemporary idealist interpretation of the Gods in Epicurean discourse, where they are merely viewed as concepts. This view is opposed to the traditional realist view, where they are conceived as natural beings with atomic bodies. The passage is as follows:

It would be fitting to describe all men as impious, inasmuch as no one has been prolific in finding convincing demonstrations for the existence of the gods; nevertheless all men, with the exception of some madmen, worship them, as do we.

Philodemus concedes that there is no convincing proof for their existence, yet he worships the Gods. Epicureans who embrace the idealist view (whom I imagine to be in the majority today) think that the Gods may be useful objects of contemplation, but that they are not real in the objective sense as natural beings.

Throughout the text, it is evident that worship serves, in part, to conform to societal expectations and laws. People were killed in the days of Epicurus for atheism. These pressures are no longer relevant, even if being a law-abiding citizens does contribute to our greater tranquility. However, this entire scroll is testament of the fact that we must not be quick to accept the accusers’ claim that Epicureans were insincere in their piety, for their piety was true as we will see in future installations.

(continues …) Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety (Part II)

Buy Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1) – Clarendon Press

Buy Philodemus On Piety: Critical Text with Commentary Part 1 (Philodemus Translation Series) (Pt.1) by Philodemus (1997-02-13) – Oxford University Press

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Tending the Epicurean Garden

My book Tending the Epicurean Garden is available from amazon and can also be purchased directly from Humanist Press. I am very thrilled that, after the many months of hard work that went into the book, I’m finally able to take others on this adventure with me to discover Epicureanism on its own terms.

There are sources on Epicureanism, but many are indirect and some are hostile. It’s important for us in the Epicurean movement that there exist Epicurean sources for our tradition that explain it on our own terms.

Another reason why this book is extremely important is that there is a huge body of interdisciplinary research that vindicates the teachings of Epicurus, which calls for an update to how they’re presented. This includes not just research by social scientists but also in fields as varied as diet and neuroplasticity.

Epicureanism is not a fossilized, archaic Greek philosophical school but a cosmopolitan, contemporary, scientific wisdom tradition that is alive and changing as new information becomes available on the science of happiness and wellbeing.

Lovers of Epicurean tradition who make a resolution to apply philosophy in their daily lives will benefit the most from the book, which is meant to set the foundation for the work of the Society of Friends of Epicurus.

The best way for Epicureanism to grow, in my view, is organically and slowly beginning with small circles of Friends. I also believe that the current generation of Epicureans has a pivotal role in the future of our tradition, and that the most effective way to revitalize our tradition is by implementing exercises based on the insights presented in the book about katastemic and contemplative practices, by nurturing their wisdom traditions, etc. Insights gained through these experiments, if shared with the larger Epicurean community, might be of great benefit to many.

I hope you find as much pleasure in reading the book as I found in writing it!

Hiram Crespo

Book Reviews

By Michael Fontaine, a Cornell University classicist, written for The Humanist, a publication of the American Humanist Association

By Greg Sadler, Philosopher and YouTuber

By David Tamayo, of Hispanic American Freethinkers

By Rick Heller, written for secularbuddhism.org

By Alan Furth (en español) for the Las Indias blog

NewEpicurean.com review by Cassius Amicus

Balance Pleasure and Structure?, from the Brian Beholds blog

Reviewer Feedback

In Tending the Epicurean Garden Crespo has given all of us a way to think about how we live—our choices, abilities, appetites, freedoms, and responsibilities. He distills the relevant scholarship on Epicureanism in a succinct and unassuming way.

Michael Fontaine, for The Humanist

Hiram Crespo has done a masterful job in describing the teachings of Epicurus and making them relevant to modern life … “Tending the Epicurean Garden” is a breath of fresh air if, like me, you have tried to read the dull prose of some professional philosophers.

Robert and Martha Hanrott, of the Epicurus blog

This is one of the few absolutely pro-Epicurean books to have been written in the last several hundred years … One can read this book without any knowledge at all of the history or doctrine of Epicurus, because the author provides a good measure of both history and teachings in the course of the book … Hopefully there will be more to come from the same author.

Cassius Amicus, of newepicurean.com

This brilliant book may certainly be the first of its kind. There are many academic introductions to Ancient Philosophy out there, just as there are countless self-help books often drawing on various spiritual of esoteric traditions. Crespo’s book is a bit of both … A highly educational and enjoyable read!

Sasha Euler, ethics professor

The more I understand Epicurus the more affinity I feel. This is rare. This guy was sticking it to the superstitious and flipping off the pretentious philosophers consumed with metaphysical nonsense. He sounds like the Christopher Hitchens of the ancient world! Don’t fear God! Don’t fear death! Trust your senses for that is how most knowledge is acquired. Have a few good friends. Concern yourself with what you can control. Find ways to minimize emotional and physical suffering and maximize pleasure with the checks and balances of natural consequences. What’s not to love? Hiram Crespo, I loved your book! Deeply provocative!

Eric Sherman, reader

Hiram Crespo’s book “Tending the Epicurean Garden” is a concise and wholesome presentation of Epicurean philosophy, which I very much enjoyed reading … The basics of Epicurean philosophy is presented in a simple, user-friendly, narrative way but at the same time, when needed, it is corroborated by current scientific findings and it is paralled correspondingly with other similar concepts from various schools of thought and cultures of Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa.

Christos Yapijakis, member of the Athens Garden

The book presents complex material, clearly written … Secular Buddhists can clearly benefit from allowing another stream of ancient wisdom to flow into this emerging project of seeking abiding tranquility and the end of suffering.

Rick Heller, co-founder of the Humanist Mindfulness Group and contributor to secularbuddhism.org

El libro es una resumida pero muy completa introducción a los principios básicos y la práctica del epicureísmo. Pero también brinda una interesante interpretación de las enseñanzas de Epicuro desde el punto de vista de la psicología positiva, la neurociencia y otras disciplinas científicas que hoy en día corroboran gran parte del legado del maestro.

Alan Furth, Las Indias blogger

Tending the Epicurean Garden

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Review of The Good Book: a Humanist Bible

It’s difficult to do a fair and complete review of a book that will likely take a lifetime to read and is not meant to be read in one sitting or within one week or one month even. But the Good Book deserves some attention, as it constitutes a modern attempt to produce a scripture that fits within naturalist philosophy and, in some ways, continues the work of Epicurus, Lucretius and other Masters of our tradition.

The basic idea of the Good Book is that it celebrates the format of scripture as a means to transmit wisdom and tradition. It imitates the editorial style of the Judeo-Christian Bible and of the Qur’an, but is entirely secular and makes no mention of God. It is, in essence, a philosopher’s Bible.  It reads like scripture and contains the philosophical books of Genesis, Wisdom, Parables, Concord, Lamentations, Consolations, Sages, Songs, Histories, Proverbs, The Lawgiver, Acts, Epistles, and The Good.

In it is gathered the wisdom of countless sages of humanity’s history. Like with the Bible, no mention is made of the sources and authors that inspire each verse and chapter and the content is mixed together in such a way that it’s better to simply read the Good Book as scripture without worrying too much about sources and other academic concerns. Similarly, it lends itself for use as liturgy to mark rites of passage, weddings, funerals and so on, as with other scriptures.

The Good Book begins, as it should, with a natural account of the beginnings. This one is not as long as Lucretius, of course, and is shorter than the Biblical book of Genesis. It reiterates important Epicurean adages like “nothing comes from nothing” (Gen. 4:10), in chapter five explains how atoms recombine to form many things in a manner very reminiscent of Lucretius, and even includes praise for atomism:

“The first inquirers named nature’s elements atoms, matter, seeds, primal bodies, and understood that they are coeval with the world; They saw that nothing comes from nothing, so that discovering the elements reveals how the things of nature exist and evolve. Fear holds dominion over people when they understand little, and need simple stories and legends to comfort and explain; But legends and the ignorance that give them birth are a house of limitation and darkness. Knowledge is freedom, freedom from ignorance and its offspring fear; knowledge is light and liberation.” – Genesis 2:7-11

Later, we find mention of the need for a Canon (an “aid” to reason) and a warning against false philosophy :

“It follows that the entire fabric of human reason employed in the inquisition of nature, is badly built up, like a great structure lacking foundations. For while people are occupied in admiring and applauding the false powers of the mind, they pass by and throw away its true powers which, if supplied with proper aids, and if content to wait upon nature instead of vainly affecting to overrule her, are within its reach. Such is the way to truth and the advancement of understanding“- Genesis 14:9-12

Other instances where Epicurean teachings resonate with the Good Book are the mention in Consolations 1:19 that friends are irreplaceable; Cons. 2:2 later advises the grateful rememberance of those who have passed. Cons. 1:5 also praises autarchy and mocks Fortuna, saying “Your wisdom consists in this, that you look upon yourself as self-sufficing, and regard the accidents of life as powerless to affect your virtue“.  And there’s this advise against bad association:

Who lies down with dogs will rise with fleas. – Proverbs 34:8

There are many more passages that resonate with Epicurean teaching so that, even if it’s not a specifically Epicurean scripture, it can still be useful in the study and promotion Epicurean cultural memes and doctrines.

My review of the Book of Acts is here. Some of the other highlights of the Good Book are Parables, which reads like a philosopher’s 1001 Nights and ends with a legend that calls for the education of girls (contrast that to Taliban bombings of girl schools and with the recent Boko Haram affair) and Lawgiver, which contains within it a complete wisdom tradition around the idea of leadership.

The Good Book is, as you may well imagine, not for everyone. It’s likely to appeal to people who love reading, who enjoy philosophy and who hold wisdom traditions in very high regard. It also would be of use to Humanist chaplains. Henceforward, whenever you see mention of quotes from the Good Book or to the Humanist Bible within the Society of Epicurus webpages, it’s

A.C. Grayling’s Bible that’s being referred to. Below are some reviews of specific books or portions from the Humanist Bible:

Book of Acts

Book of Epistles

Concord: a Book on Friendship

Closing Chapter of the Book of Histories

Lawgiver: the Philosophy of Leadership

Sheeple Meme

Parables: the Joys of Being Carried

The Good

For more Good Book quotes, please visit thgdbk.net

The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

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On the Natural Measure of Pride

How Pride Came to Matter 

June has come to be known as Pride month.  It all started in 1969 when the police carried out a raid at the Stonewall Inn, a New York gay bar.  As a matter of routine, the cops humiliated the sissies and drag queens, called them names, and began to imprison citizens for no apparent reason.  This had been the norm for most of the 60s, but this night in June the gay community spontaneously decided it had had enough and exploded in indignation, in fury, and in pride.

People felt that this treatment was undeserved, that they deserved more humane treatment from the police.

The first armed uprising by sexual minorities in history took place that weekend in June.  For a few nights, Stonewall Inn was afire with pride and anger against the police and the homophobic values and the hateful society they embodied.  After the 1969 Stonewall Riots, every year in June there are Pride celebrations almost everywhere.

Pride has evolved from a political rally cry for gay rights into a general celebration of people’s right to be happy.  Other discourses have made their way into the Pride celebrations: even autistic people are beginning to celebrate Autistic Pride during June to help educate others on the importance of neurodiversity.  One of my personal autistic heroes, the celebrated Dr. Temple Grandin, eloquently made this case in a TED speech where she argued that the world needs all kinds of minds.

For many generations, most people had been religious and had mindlessly accepted that pride was sinful, as was man and all things human.  But the Stonewall Riots and the gay movement with the Pride discourse that emerged from it produced a series of moral and intellectual challenges that are philosophically and ethically very interesting.  It was not just an affront put up by a group of people who were demoralized and brutalized weekly by the police.  Pride, within this context, was a cure against undeserved humiliation and shame.

And so, before we move forward and attempt to evaluate Pride as a virtue, the first thing we must acknowledge, the first benefit that Pride confers upon human civilization is that it protects individuals and groups from tyranny and oppression.  Pride can be a spiritual power that takes over a person who is abused, tired or humiliated, and helps that person to stand up, to defend his or her rights, to fight for his dignity and for justice.  Pride can be creative, like the volcano that erupts and is violent and disruptive at first, but then its flow can make new islands or new land, create new possibilities.

Vanity, Shame and Pride: On the Need to Recognize Vice and Virtue

When should we be proud and when should we be humble?  To many of us, this seems a simple enough question, but it has been the subject of much careful consideration for moral thinkers throughout the ages.

The problem, in particular for those of us who grew up with a Christian epistemology, is one of muddling of our moral compass by false opinion and cultural corruption.  By blindly making humility a virtue and pride a sin, and one of the so-called deadly sins at that, there was within the church a tradition of misuse of vanity, pride and humility in the service of social convention, supernaturalism and superstition.

We must recognize that there is a legitimate need and legitimate times for shame.  But there has never been an authentic need for an entire culture, or an entire cosmology, built around shame (OR vanity, for that matter).

The church proposed that people should feel unnecessary shame at various forms of imaginary crimes, including the original sin that all babies are supposedly born with.  Let’s call it the mea culpa complex.  This produced unnecessary and unnatural guilt, which was also oftentimes disproportionate with the associated crime and, among the very pious, culminated in public and private expressions of self-loathing that sometimes carried neurotic elements.  Denial of our sexual and natural selves, self-flagellation, mortification of the body, and other practices of sadism, torture and mutilation were culturally-accepted outlets for the mea culpa complex for centuries.

The fruit of knowledge was also forbidden and denigrated, as was philosophy (love of wisdom) and science: all carried the label of sin.

Although their beliefs were not self-evident, the false prophets who ruled society required blind acceptance of their doctrines, no matter how ridiculous or improbable they seemed.  And so, vanity was also equated with intellectual stamina: the faithful, who equate credulity with virtue, at times consider the need for evidence and for rational explanations of baseless beliefs as a form of intellectual vanity rather than the natural, prudent and necessary requirements for an evidence-based search for truth.

The dictionary.com definition of pride is as follows:

a becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one’s position or character; self-respect; self-esteem.

pleasure or satisfaction taken in something done by or belonging to oneself or believed to reflect credit upon oneself: civic pride.

something that causes a person or persons to be proud: His art collection was the pride of the family.

satisfaction or pleasure taken in one’s own or another’s success, achievements, etc.

Origin:
before 1000; Middle English (noun); Old English prȳde (cognate with Old Norse prȳthi bravery, pomp), derivative of prūd proud

The application of prudence to the issue of pride as a virtue or a vice requires that we accurately measure our self-worth. This implies, no doubt, how productive we are as members of our society; how true we are to our word and how capable of fulfilling our familial and societal duties. It’s also tied to how educated we are, and any other accomplishments. In fact, anything that would go on a resume, presumably, should be a legitimate source of pride.

The content of our character should also be a source of pride or shame: if we are wholesome, pleasant, and happy, employ suavity in our speech; if we through effort overcome our vices and cultivate our virtues, if we lead pleasant lives, we should be proud of that.

The Philosophers Opine

One of the early philosophers who discussed pride as a virtue was Aristotle, who identified pride as the crown of the virtues:

Now the man is thought to be proud who thinks himself worthy of great things, being worthy of them; for he who does so beyond his deserts is a fool, but no virtuous man is foolish or silly. The proud man, then, is the man we have described. For he who is worthy of little and thinks himself worthy of little is temperate, but not proud; for pride implies greatness …

To Aristotle, pride requires that a man both be virtuous and magnanimous (worthy of great things) and that he think himself worthy of great things.  Temperance is also a virtue.  Both virtues depend on how deserving one is.

A man, therefore, can not be proud if he is not deserving, worthy of great things.  If he thinks himself worthy but is not, then he is vain and conceited.  Vanity is not pride, but a vice that looks like it, a false or disproportionate sense of pride.

According to Aristotle, not many men can be truly proud. For pride to be a virtue, there needs to be an accurate sense of our worth, abilities and talents. It then becomes the cherry on top with the sprinkles. A mediocre worker or a man with a mean character, for instance, has a right to be temperate, not proud. Only a magnanimous being can be truly proud.

There are men who are puffed up with vanity, but there is also another vice based on an inaccurate sense of humility.  Pusillanimity is the false humility, the shyness of a man who is of great worth but who thinks lowly of himself.  The coward who thinks himself worthy of less than he is worthy of, is pusillanimous.

A 20th Century disciple of Aristotle, the objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand argued adamantly that pride has to be earned and taught that we should make ourselves worthy of life and love:

“One must earn the right to hold oneself as one’s own highest value by achieving one’s own moral perfection”

– The Virtue of Selfishness

She also argued that man should never take pride in accidental facts laid out by Fortune, like our race or gender or nationality, because they’re not in themselves achievements.  Epicurean doctrine seems to somewhat echo this belief:

The study of nature does not create men who are fond of boasting and chattering or who show off the culture that impresses the many, but rather men who are strong and self-sufficient, and who take pride in their own personal qualities not in those that depend on external circumstances. – Vatican Saying 45

For a moment, it seems like Rand is making sense but she isn’t.  We’re left with no possibility of inherent human dignity if we ignore that Pride can also be a cure for needless self-deprecation and shame resulting from societal corruption.  Just as there is a natural measure of wealth versus cultural measures of wealth–which oftentimes lead to vain and empty desires–, there also seems to exist tension between our natural and cultural measures of pride.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be proud of things we didn’t choose (being of a certain ethnicity, sexual orientation, or nationality), but by the same token we should also not be ashamed of those things.  There is a conception of pride as a healthy self-appreciation, an accurate and wholesome sense of self-esteem (sometimes in spite of societal pressure), that is missing from Randian discourse.

Perhaps this sense of inherent dignity should be called self-respect, but it often looks and feels like pride, and someone who has to work for years to achieve this sense of self-respect under the pressure of societal loathing or ignorance, might experience it as an accomplishment.

There’s another problem with the Randian approach to pride.  If we take it at face value, what will we make of a human baby that is born entirely vulnerable?  It has not lived long enough to accomplish anything, and so therefore is not worthy of love and protection, but it needs love and protection and will not survive without it.  And what about autistic children and others who are capable of greatness but require very special attention to achieve it?  There is no possibility of a continued humanity if we take this notion of earning our pride at face value.  We would degenerate into beasts if we failed to respect and nurture the weak and the vulnerable: there is a missing ingredient here.

Rand believes that life is the highest good, but forgets to honor the pleasure principle, by which nature guides us, as equal to life: it is pleasure that seals the bond between mother and child, it is pleasure that makes things valuable, and in fact it is pleasure that makes life itself worth living.  This is the immediate, direct experience of natural beings, and not dependent on culture.

And so Pride, as a virtue, must serve pleasure and its measurement must be subjected to hedonic calculus.  Pleasure must always be our pole star.  While it’s true that gay people did not experience the Pride revolution until after they stood up for themselves and carried out an uprising against police brutality at Stonewall, it’s also true that the brutality was uncalled for and that if society’s values had been better informed by hedonism, the embarrassing episode at the Stonewall Inn would have been entirely unnecessary.

It would have been a greater achievement, and one to be truly proud of, if we had been able to create a priori a pleasant society where people had the ability to lead happy lives, a society of free people that avoids the unpleasantness of uprisings in order to assert the right of consenting adults to enjoy sex and to love freely.  In retrospect, the avoidance of unpleasantness is blessedness.  We should take pride in the fact that we abolished and overcame slavery, for instance.

Similarly, if we as individuals develop an art of living pleasantly and avoid the detrimental repercussions of living violently, vulgarly, of living lives of vice, we also have every right to take pride in our technique of living, our guiding philosophy, because it leads to the creation of beautiful, happy lives, lives that are worth living, lives we can be proud of.  It’s not just wealth and productivity, but also quality of life that gives a sense of worth to people.

Autarchy as the Natural Measure of Pride

We have seen in Vatican Saying 45 that self-sufficiency is tied to Epicurean notions of pride.  Notice also that proportion also matters to us in helping to discern the natural measure of pride: conceit and vanity, false pride, are tied in Epicureanism with limitless and empty desires that enslave us.  Philodemus warned us against spending more than what we have in order to fulfil the duties of our social status or to be ostentatious.  Even the accurately proud man spends and lives within his means.

The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. – Principal Doctrines 15

Pride, to an Epicurean, assumes the garb of autarchy, self sufficiency, not just as an economic ideal but also as a spiritual ideal. A proud Epicurean will not rely on Fortune, or fear her, but will build his own destiny and attempt to remain imperturbable and impervious to forces beyond his power.

I have anticipated you, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks. And we will not give ourselves up as captives to you or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it, we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that we have lived well. – Vatican Saying 47

Going back to the mea culpa complex, we must ask ourselves who was really puffed up with vanity.  We must ask this as we ponder the true virtues of pride and temperance and the vices of vanity and pusillanimity against the tireless efforts made by science and empirical inquiry over millenia to uncover truth and the efforts made by religion to cover it, to ban it, to persecute it, and religion’s lazy explanations for things that had a discernable, natural explanation.

We must ask who is really puffed up with vanity when we contrast the contented attitude of the naturalist who accepts his mortality with equanimity versus the charlatan priest, pastor, guru or imam who will promise mortals an immortality that he has no way of conferring and that is not to be found anywhere in nature, for our senses all tell us that all that is born must die.

Epicurus was a proud man who claimed to be self-taught and did not give credit to his predecessors for his teachings. His doctrine was founded upon a Canon, a measuring stick that made evidence from the senses a criterion for truth.  From the onset and from its very foundation, this is a philosophy that respects our intelligence.

He also was temperate in that he humbly accepted his natural limits and proclaimed that he did not need what he didn’t have, exhibiting a sober awareness of the right proportions of pride, and an awareness of where it degenerates into vanity or false humility.  He lived a happy and virtuous life, and died grateful like one who is satisfied after a banquet.

This month, begin to consider how you earn the crown of autarchy and make the resolution to build a place in your soul for pride in your personal qualities and in your self-sufficiency.  Have a Happy Pride Month.

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Pythagoras and the Swerve

In recent weeks, I held a private conversation (and there was a public conversation also in our forums) with an Epicurean who was turned off by what he perceived as the “dogmatism” of some of the more “orthodox” voices in our tradition (if there can be such a thing in a heterodoxic philosophy), things like their unwillingness to accept the theory of the Big Bang because it contradicted our doctrine about the universe having existed forever.  The important thing to accept as an Epicurean is that, whatever shape the Universe takes in terms of time and size, the proper explanation is always naturalist and never supernatural.  On this we must coincide to remain within the bounds of our tradition.

Two other perceived instances where Epicureans might be unorthodox deal with accepting some degree of determinism and with accepting some form of a mathematical (neo-Pythagorean) cosmology, including insights from the field of quantum physics.

While it is true that Pythagoras was as much a mystic as he was a mathematician and philosopher, we should at least concede that nature does exhibit mathematical “skills” in a manner of speaking.  Isaac Newton demonstrated that there are definite equations that apply to gravity and to mass; that nature’s laws can be translated into precise, discoverable mathematical equations.

Recent research on plants that time their consumption of starch in expectation of the next sunrise also shows that plants have an anticipation that is tied to the circadian rhythms of day and night.  Many reptiles are also attuned to the circadian rhythms, as this is vital for organisms that are cold-blooded and cannot regulate their body temperature at night, when it’s colder.  Many organisms (including humans) also tie their fertility seasons with the lunar cycles.  Corals, for instance, release their eggs at a very precise moment in the lunar calendar.

These types of adaptations require the bio-mechanical equivalent of a clock, and require mathematics.  Nature had to observe these cycles through the faculties of living entities, and then compute the ideal timing for the behaviors crucial to their survival.  Nature does math.

Pythagorean ideas related to musical harmony and math might also help to explain research on how chanting and sound meditation affects the brain.  Many religious traditions employ mantra technology, if I’m allowed that word, to produce blissful and serene states of meditative trance, but these practices have always been enveloped in mysticism.  Recent developments in the field of neuroplasticity prove that contemplative practices have a much stronger scientific base than they’ve ever been given credit for.  Chanting is not only soothing and pleasant (and should therefore should be a subject of research for those of us who wish to understand the science of hedonism), it also creates long-term changes in the brain and actually has medicinal and analgesic effects.

While we are grateful to the Pythagoreans and the mathematicians for their useful insights into the nature of things, ultimately when we deconstruct reality, there are atoms and void, not numbers. Reality is still, fundamentally, material. Atoms and elements and the things that they compose can be oftentimes discerned and studied mathematically, and that is as far as Pythagoreanism takes us. Math, like reason, only works when it has legitimate raw data discerned through the senses and empirical methods.

As for natural (as opposed to theological) theories of determinism, we must first contextualize Epicurus’ role as a moral reformer by understanding that he emerged from the early school of atomists that believed in a purely mechanical cosmos.  The atomists understood the universe as a machinery of eternal causation. Chance was impossible in this early scientific cosmology.

Nothing occurs at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity. – Leucippus, Democritus’ associate and and co-proponent of the original atomist doctrine

Hence, Epicurus saw the need for a theory of chaos, some kind of break in the chain of causality that would account for the evident volition and innovation that we see around us, particularly among living entities who have the power to change their environment and to make moral and creative choices.  This he called the swerve.  The important thing about the swerve is it attempts to explain how there are sometimes things that happen without a cause, without mechanically depending on the laws of nature.

This does not mean that some things aren’t determined by nature.  In a strict sense, Epicureans are really compatibilists.  Strict determinism renders the cosmos a tyrant that rules over automatons, while strict non-determinism renders and the laws of nature impossible to discern.  None of these two views really works when we study the nature of things.  It would be impossible to study nature’s laws if there didn’t exist predictable patterns: two members of one species will invariably mate to produce a third, never a member of another species.  Gravity will pull us.  Stars will engage in nuclear fusion.  These things are determined.

What we rebel against is the belief that our destinies are determined by the movements of the stars or the whims of spirits and gods; that Krishna established the caste system in the Bhagavad Gita; that Jehovah established the perpetual slavery of women in Genesis to punish Eve’s transgression; that Allah established shari’a laws by which society must be governed; that our lives are and must be ruled by unnecessary restrictions and ancient taboos that are beyond reproach.  These things are not determined by the laws of nature.  They are forms of cultural corruption.

The swerve is more than the random movement of an atom, or the random mutation of molecules within a gene that happens naturally in every generation, or the sudden decision by a primate to begin fashioning a new tool.  Epicurus saw a cultural determinism that claimed to be natural, an inertia, a program that benefited certain groups, a series of unchallenged false premises that the mobs were governed by and that he wanted to emancipate men from.  He saw these false views lucidly for the superstitions that they were.  He saw that these premises had no legitimate scientific foundation.  So he named this spark of freedom without which we would be robots.

His swerve is why we must own our creation as ethical agents rather than give credit to nature for everything that we do, for good or ill.  It’s how natural beings can be civilized, and–more importantly–free.

Epicurus battled another moral evil: false prophets who instill fear and awe in credulous people.  Insofar as the world is deterministic, prophecy is possible.  We can safely utter the prophecy that tomorrow the Sun will rise.  We can predict how many minutes there will be in the day and in the night in different parts of our globe.  There is research on the nature of things that gives us this information.  But we can not know the time and circumstances of our death or other future events with absolute certainty.  We can not know the future choices that our children will make, much less predict a cataclysm at the end of the world from the vantage point of a Bronze Age worldview, or via psychic abilities.  Only through telescopes can we detect potential meteors and such things, and only in modern times.

If Thales was able to predict a lunar eclipse, it’s because generations of Babylonian astronomers had studied the movements of the stars and, after careful and diligent observations, developed calendars and mathematical models of such movements.  With a proper understanding of the nature of things we learn that prophecy can only emerge from scientific insight, and that it’s not supernatural.

While there is research that seems to indicate that some people have a pre-natal impulse that leads to alcoholism or even to depression, to violence, or to becoming a serial killer, we must again return to our comment on how naturalist prophecy relies on empirical observation of the nature of things.  Furthermore, there are limits to the ability to prophesize about choices made by free agents.  We must consider improbable any theory that certain choices are inevitable in view of our current inability to travel back in time and attempt to orchestrate different outcomes in a given story-line.  We can fairly conclude that John Doe is likely to have an addictive or violent personality because of his genes (at least until we develop the gene therapy to treat it), but not that he will abuse his wife, or kill his neighbor, or specifically become a heroin addict.

Epicurus championed the use of knowledge to spiritually and ideologically liberate humanity from a state of primal fear, inertia, and ignorance.  The swerve can be understood as the philosophical equivalent of Prometheus’ theft of the Gods’ fire.  Like all living entities, humans have the power to change their environment, and the more we learn about the nature of things and the more science we acquire, the more radically we are free to transform our environment.

Epicureanism runs on friendship (philos). – Norman Dewitt

In the extant fragments left by our founders we see Epicurus and Polyaenus, who was himself a mathematician, arguing about whether there was heat in wine, proposing various theories, and exchanging differences of opinion.

Very few doctrines characterize Epicurean “orthodoxy”, if understood only on dogmatic terms. But our tradition is not mere doctrine: its most important consolations derive from solidarity and affiliation (philos). Our tradition is an ancient and ever-evolving series of conversations between friends that began with our founders, and that is nurtured by continued wholesome association. Seen in this light, the Epicurean who understands the spirit of true philosophy simply enjoys the pleasure of the discourse, and the mellows of friendship, unperturbed by our differences of opinion.

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