Continued from:

FIRST CONTEMPLATION: THE GODS

SECOND CONTEMPLATION: UTOPIA

THIRD CONTEMPLATION: THE SAGE

FOURTH CONTEMPLATION: THE FRIEND

FIFTH CONTEMPLATION: THE DEPARTED

Quote: Fragment from On the Gods by Philodemus[1]

Even if the gods’ community as a species is aloof from the supplying of things of practical help in order to motivate their companionship, their friendship communicates their feelings. For it is not possible for them to maintain their community as a species without any social intercourse. And indeed even amongst us, weak as we are, and needing from our friendship in addition things of practical help, no longer does our friendship to our friends we have lost provide practical help; and nonetheless our admiring reverence for characters which are peers of our own itself binds us together in affection, even in the highest degree. However, the gods also accept from each other what supplies their own needs, even though they are able to provide these things for themselves, just as we human beings sometimes do from those who have the same things as ourselves.

Commentary: divine friendship

In this passage, Philodemus is describing the lifestyle of the gods and how they interact with each other. Just like humans, they live in communities and have friends. What makes them different from us is that they do not share in our weakness, and do not need friendship to offer a sense of security by taking care of each other if they are sick, help them in case of financial difficulties, etc. And yet, the gods still choose to have friends. In fact they will even go as far accepting “from each other what supplies their own needs”, which seems to mean that they provide each other with gifts of some sort, perhaps a kind of nutrition that maintains their immortality, much like the ambrosia from the gods of myth, even though they can obtain it by themselves. The friendly gesture of gift exchange seems to serve a more psychological purpose, contributing to their blissfulness.

In order to make this clear, we can think of Epicurean friendship as having three levels (according to David Armstrong): (1) Friendships based on virtue, trust and mutual utility. (2) Friendships based on our strong natural desire for affection and open self-expression. This is only achievable after accomplishing the first kind of friendship. (3) God-like friendship, satisfying a desire for affection and open self-expression, apart from all consideration of utility.

This third type of friendship is mainly accessible to the gods, but only accessible to humans after the death of a friend once the mourning for our loss of them is over and we come to enjoy their memory. This is because once a loved one is dead, they no longer contribute to our basic needs beyond the psychological wellbeing acquired from the good memories. This helps us answer a question about why it is that Epicureans worship gods that do not intervene in human affairs, bestow favors, etc. The same could be said about our dead friends: why honor them when they are no longer there to serve our needs. This is because they fulfill a psychological need, even though they are no longer with us and in fact they don’t exist as their souls have been annihilated with their bodies.

However, they still exist in our memories, and this is why Epicurus referred to friendship as an immortal good, because even in death, they continue to impact us and they contributed in making us who we are. Remembering our friends is not a passive activity. This is why Epicurus set up rituals and festivities to commemorate his dead friends, Metrodorus and Polyaenus, as well as his parents and brothers.

Practice: friendship beyond death

First lesson: grieve for the loss of your friends. For Epicureans, friends can include family members as well, as is demonstrated by his devotion to his parents and brothers. He advises us not to suppress our emotions when faced with the loss of loved ones. The ancient writer Plutarch writes the following about the Epicureans: “They disagree with those who would do away with grief and tears and lamentation at the death of friends, and say that an absence of grief that renders us totally insensible stems from another great evil: hardness or a passion for notoriety so excessive as to be insane.”[2]

Second lesson: cultivate the good memories of your dead friends. After the grieving period which will vary from person to person, keep the flame of your friendship alive. They are a part of your life and nothing can take that away. This does not mean that you have to think about them all the time but every now and then, take a moment to bring up the pleasant times spent with that person in your mind and be thankful for the happiness they brought and continue to bring.

Third lesson: develop rituals to honor your friends. You might have kept photos, presents, letters from your lost friends. These are now sacred objects. It might be a good idea to develop some symbolic gestures and rituals to honor your friend. Perhaps there is a favorite song you shared. Perhaps you can listen to that music on your friend’s birthday. Or maybe you can just close your eyes and bring back a specific memory to your mind’s eye. There are countless ways to commemorate your loved ones.

Forth lesson: remember that the divine nature of friendship transcends life and death. This is how you become eternal. This is not just the final lesson of this Fifth Contemplation but of all five contemplations combined.

This is how you become a god. Atheists and other nonbelievers in supernatural religions are often asked this question: if there is no supernatural god ordering the universe and giving us purpose, if all that exists are atoms, molecules, forces, “stuff”, then all is without meaning. With no higher purpose, everything is empty, we are all alone. Many atheists bite the bullet and fall into nihilism. An Epicurean rejects this mode of reasoning entirely. We are not alone and without purpose. Life has meaning. Once we have a friend who acknowledges our existence and our value and we recognize them in return, and are committed to continue doing so for the long term, we become godlike. As Epicurus said to his friend and disciple Colotes, “go about as one immortal in my eyes, and think of me as immortal too.”

CONCLUSION

And now we see the connection between the two ideas mentioned in the beginning of our introduction: philosophizing with a like-minded friend and living as a god among men. It is through friendship that we realize the highest ideal of the philosophical life.

Through the five contemplations, we have progressively descended from the domain of the gods outside our world, to a hypothetical utopian society, to the Epicurean communities of sages from the past, to the gesture of reverence between to philosopher friends, to culminate with the memories of lost friends conjured up in our minds.

An atheist could argue that we could very much have come up with much of the same philosophy without any reference to gods that probably do not exist in the first place.[3] This may be the case. But in response to that, we could say that by invoking the divine as a concept, we are invoking something that has the highest value to us, beyond just atoms and void.

When describing Epicurean philosophy, people often refer to it as a materialist philosophy that rejects the supernatural and divine providence, or a hedonistic philosophy defending a life of pleasure, albeit a modest reasonable pleasure defined as an absence of suffering of the body and tranquility of the mind. But these descriptions are incomplete and give us a very limited scope of what the philosophy is really about. By putting the gods front and center in their function as role models and comparing the immortality of the gods to that of the relationship between friends, it might be most accurate for us to conclude that Epicureanism is first and foremost a religion of friendship.

Notes:

[1] Quote from article Utility and Affection in Epicurean Friendship by David Armstrong.
[2] From Plutarch, That Epicurus actually makes a pleasant life impossible. Quote from http://www.attalus.org/translate/epicurus.html
[3] Many modern Epicureans consider themselves atheists and think that modern Epicureanism no longer has any use for any conception of the divine. This article was intended to give an alternative to this perspective by rethinking what we understand as being divine. For more on this debate, read The Third Way to Think about the Epicurean Gods.