Happy 20th of March to Epicureans everywhere. The UN has declared this date to be International Happiness Day, and I am happy to have Epicurean friends who contribute to the work of the Society of Epicurus. I wish to thank all my Patreon subscribers, and to give a special thanks this month to Alex and Anthony.
Last month we participated in the annual symposium of Epicurean philosophy in Athens, which held an English-language international session for the first time. Our Friend Christos (who sent us a full report of the symposium–here), one of three Kathegemones (Epicurean Guides) and Founder of the Epicurean Garden in Athens, and organizer of the annual symposium of Epicurean philosophy in Athens, argues that Epicureanism provides an ethical and philosophical answer to the problems that the world faces today, since it provides us with what he calls “a scientific humanism” with an ethics that leads to social utility and individual happiness.
This year, we submitted the video Society of Epicurus: a philosophical community, as our contribution to the symposium, and also in celebration of the 9-year anniversary of our founding. In the video, we list some of our achievements and history. Some literary updates:
The Loner’s Path | Philosophy for Non-Conformists covers some of the ideas that a few great thinkers have considered regarding the individual versus societal pressure. It includes mention of Camus, Nietzsche, and the essay Self-reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which I had the pleasure of reading. My curiosity was spurred by the fact that autarchy (self-rule or self-reliance) was one of the qualities of Epicurus which (according to Epicurean Saying 36) made his life “myth-like”, or legendary. Emerson’s essay has many thought-provoking quotes that deserve meleta.
Austin McConnell has published a YouTube video titled The Absurd 2nd Century Space Opera You’ll Never Read (referring to the novel True Story). It celebrates the literary legacy and genius of Lucian of Samosata, a brilliant ancient author from Syria who also authored Alexander the Oracle Monger (a work in which he praises both Epicurus and his Principal Doctrines).
Be an Epicurean | Ancient Philosophy Rap is a rap song by a YouTuber which invites people to become Epicurean. He has almost 7,000 subscribers, and makes me wonder whether Epicureanism is becoming mainstream.
As Russia continues its attack on the people of Ukraine, a blogger known as Duplavis posted this (titled “Peace”) in solidarity with Ukraine. It draws from the scene in De rerum natura where Venus conquers Mars / pleasure conquers violence.
The events unfolding in Ukraine provide a unique case-study for many philosophical problems. In this Eikas message, I’ll bring into relief some of the issues that come up when I read the news.
Countries are Social Contracts
Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal usefulness, neither to harm one another nor be harmed. – Principal Doctrine 31
Modern countries are convenient fictions: Platonic communities that legitimize themselves in legally-binding documents. Sometimes (as in the case of islands) the boundaries of a country are obvious. Sometimes the cultural identities of countries make them easily identifiable, but not always. Consider the arbitrary borders created by the European powers for the countries in Africa, with no regard for the cultural identities of the people who would be trapped in those borders.
Still, for as long as people agree to coexist together under a particular system of governance, their countries come into existence as social contracts. The Ukrainian people have a democratically elected president, and have for decades pushed their government to become more Westernized and to move away from the orbit of Russia. That is their social contract. In attempting to have Zelenskyy replaced by an unelected pro-Russia puppet, Putin has unjustly violated the Ukrainian people’s choice to be governed by a particular leader under a particular legal and political system, as they had agreed. This is what we at SoFE call the “problem of undue denial of consent” (where individuals or groups who are able and willing to choose or reject a social contract are denied the possibility of choice or rejection), and it renders the aggressor inherently unjust.
There was no justice or injustice with respect to all those animals which were unable to make pacts about neither harming one another nor being harmed. Similarly, [there was no justice or injustice] for all those nations which were unable or unwilling to make pacts about neither harming one another nor being harmed. – Principal Doctrine 32
In this case, the party that is inherently unjust (Putin) has chosen a “wild” / uncivilized / lawless state of existence, and we are now observing what this can look like.
Flattery and Authoritarianism
The Russian tyrant Putin is a case study for a problem diagnosed by the Epicurean Guide Philodemus of Gadara in his scroll “Peri Parrhesias” (On Frank Criticism): like many authoritarian leaders, he is surrounded by flatterers, not true friends.
We see that, while the Ukrainian president eats with his immediate advisors in a spirit of trust, Putin on the other hand sits at the extreme end of a long table so that his advisors may not have physical proximity with him. He appears to have no one he can trust, and he allows no one near him. Authoritarian leaders have a strong belief that they must rule by fear, so the element of trust is non-existent in their method of governance, and Putin clearly has no true friends–only flatterers, many of whom are scared of him and do not really consider him a friend.
Disinformation and Authoritarianism
Democracy functions best when the population is educated. If they’re not, a good argument can be made that it’s not prudent to trust people with the power of decision-making if people are ignorant about what is in their self-interest and in the interest of their communities.
On the other hand, disinformation and authoritarianism need each other. We observe in authoritarian regimes a strong insistence on control of all media by those in power, control over all information, and aggressive, relentless campaigns to keep the people ignorant or confused.
Since traditional religions have perfected the art of keeping the populations ignorant, we also see a strong alliance between authoritarian leaders and certain churches (in the case of Russia, the Orthodox Church), and a strong insistence on which religions are allowed and which religions are banned (as we see in the case of China).
No one has perfected the art of disinformation like the churches, and the war has in fact been categorized as a religious war by at least two pundits on Patheos and National Review. The war furnishes an opportunity to observe a case study in how the most insidious forms of authoritarian religion dress up in innocence things that are deeply worthy of objection, specifically using techniques like public prayer. While praying for “unity”, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church meant the unity of Ukraine within Russia, as part of Russia, in fact denying their right to sovereignty and self-determination implicitly in his prayer in a way that suggests that he is pronouncing a blessing upon the genocide that is taking place (in his verbiage, for the sake of “unity” of Ukraine with Russia). He is also praying against “diabolical attacks” and external forces that “laugh at us”–here using public prayer to manufacture the consent that NATO is not only evil, but worse: a Satanic legion. Notice that when the patriarch prays against “the evil one” here, he is referring to Satan, not Putin. He is Platonizing and confusing the historical events.
He said all these things while soothing the members of his flock with the gentle tone of his prayer, and he was clearly dictating what the regime would like the faithful to pray for. Therefore, we cannot study this war as a case study in disinformation without taking a closer look at the role of religion, the narratives it sustains, and the devices it employs to support the Russian state’s authoritarianism (although, in frankness, we have many more examples of this much closer to home).
Vain and Empty Values
In Epicurean philosophy, we have a doctrine known as “the hierarchy of desires”, which includes:
- natural and necessary desires (which must be sought)
- natural and unnecessary desires (which are easy to dismiss if they’re hard to get or produce harm)
- neither natural nor necessary desires (which we do not actively pursue)
Putin’s war was initiated in pursuit of unnatural and unnecessary desires. He wants “glory”, “fame”, “immortality”, a place in history, which he will never be able to enjoy–since for most of eternity, he will not live to enjoy whatever notoriety he earns.
Putin has imperial ambitions. No human being needs his own country to govern, much less multiple foreign countries to claim as his own, and even much less countries that do not want him as a leader. No one needs an empire. Blind pursuit of power is unnecessary, vain, and empty, and in this case it generates a huge amount of unnecessary suffering, for which reason it’s clearly rejection-worthy from the perspective of Epicurean and natural hedonic calculus (since desires that create harm are easy to dismiss). Therefore, Putin is a good case study for the kinds of megalomaniacal arch-villains that blind pursuit of empty desires can create.
Putin is a Mortal
Our friend Anthony shared with us the essay Putin’s Attack on Ukraine Is an Attempt to Delay His Own Inevitable Demise–an insight which was also shared independently by Christos in the introduction to his report from the symposium. In the cited essay, Peter Pomerantsev argues that Putin has started this war because he is struggling with his impending death. In our last Eikas meeting (where we discussed coping with death), our Friend Marcus mentioned that the Epicureans treat death the same way that Freud treats sexuality: we argue that fears and apprehensions about death are at the root of much human behavior, particularly when they remain unacknowledged.
That mortals engage in evil acts out of a subconscious fear of and anger about their own mortality is one of the key ethical ideas that Lucretius expressed in Liber Tertivs (Book 3) of De rerum natura. This theory was elaborated further in modern times by anthropologist Ernest Becker in his work The Denial of Death.
Technique: View Tragedy as if from a Fortress
In De rerum natura, Lucretius gives us an example of a technique for awakening the pleasure faculty that I will call “shift in perspective”. In the Fortress of the Wise parable, Lucretius speaks frankly about the pleasure he gets from watching tragedies unfold elsewhere (or even a tragic play?), not because he’s happy about the pains of others, but because it reminds him of what he’s safe from and grateful for currently.
Lucretius specifically mentions that he is not applying this technique in a spirit that is callous or cruel (that is, the pleasure or medicine of the technique does not lie in sadism). His disposition is inspired by gratitude and relief. There is real suffering in Ukraine. But there are also hundreds of news media attempting to get everyone’s attention on this and to control the narrative (or rectify it, which is an unfortunate necessity), and it is sometimes easy to lose ourselves in the news cycle, or even embitter ourselves due to politics. Setting a healthy boundary between us and the news cycle is, perhaps, good for our happiness.
For this reason, Lucretius’ Fortress of the Wise “shift in perspective” technique (which is a version of the “view from above” technique popular among Stoics) serves as a way out of unhealthy paradigms of thought, a way to replace them with something that is conducive to our mental health and happiness. A shift in perspective is particularly useful if the tragic situation is outside our field of influence, as is the case with war in other lands.
