Happy Twentieth to all the disciples of Epicurus! Psyche Magazine published an essay titled Sprinkle a little ancient philosophy into your daily routines, and the Ad Navseam podcast published an episode titled The Whole Enchilada: Epicureanism and Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. Unfortunately, midway through the episode the authors cast doubt on whether Epicureans can be good citizens–never mind the historian Diogenes Laertius’ testimony about the character of Epicurus. To balance this, I would invite the student to read John Thrasher’s essay on Epicurean contractarianism.
This month, the latest episode of the Newstalk podcast “Talking History” is titled “Epicurus: a Life”. Several scholars were interviewed.
Love Your Neighbor
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. ’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
– Jesus the Nazarene, in The Gospel according to Mark 12:28-31
Having been raised in a Christian household has made me aware of both the utility and the futility of Christian ethos–whether we delve into the details, or stick to the basics. Christianity provides a formative ethical framework for almost all of my family members and a large portion of the society I live in. Even after people leave Christianity behind, or stop taking most of its claims seriously, many still consider themselves Christian Humanists and frequently still unquestioningly accept the wisdom of “Love your neighbor“. Not wanting to embrace it or dismiss it without careful consideration, I decided to take a second look at the second of the two Christian commandments through the lens of my Epicurean ethical framework to see if “Love your neighbor” still works.
I believe that Epicurus would argue that a commandment to love God is a bit strange: if one is commanded to love someone, is it love or is it fear? Can sentient beings be ORDERED to feel an emotion? Furthermore, the Principal Doctrines on justice recognize the personal sovereignty of the individual, and so we do not have “commandments”, only doctrines and adages.
So the first Christian commandment is irrelevant to us, but I believe the second commandment is not only sound, but also that Epicurus and most of the Epicurean Guides might argue that it’s generally advantageous to love our neighbors–maybe not as much as we love ourselves, but we can still argue that it’s advantageous to let our brain brew its oxytocin and endorphin rush for them. I believe that they would argue this from the perspective of the safety and the advantages it brings, rather than merely virtue-signal around the teaching, as a sign of respect for the intelligence of their pupils. In fact, Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura 5:1015-27 includes compassion for the weak among the foundational cultural traits of human societies listed in Liber Qvintvs:
Then, too, did neighbours ‘gin to league as friends,
Eager to wrong no more or suffer wrong,
And urged for children and the womankind
Mercy, of fathers, whilst with cries and gestures
They stammered hints how meet it was that all
Should have compassion on the weak.
But first, let us clarify what the second Christian commandment says and what it doesn’t say. “Love your neighbor”, on its face, does not mean that we should love everyone everywhere and always. No one has the attention span or time to love everyone. It’s naturally impossible to love everyone. Love, if it’s true, if the word has any real meaning, is a time-consuming pleasure. Two individuals must have wholesome exchanges and get to know each other with some level of depth, which takes some time. They must take time to communicate, and to demonstrate care with concrete tokens of friendship.
Notice that the word chosen in English to translate the Gospel teaching is “neighbor”–which in its prolepsis implies physical proximity. In Spanish, the word chosen is “prójimo”, which is related to words like proximity and also implies nearness. Our friend Nathan adds:
Within the ancient Hebrew context of Leviticus, ‘neighbor’ does not refer to ‘humanity’, it only refers to ‘other members of our tribe’. The full quotation from Leviticus is important for context: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” (19:18 NRSV)
PD’s 27 and 39-40 argue for the benefits of loving our neighbors and keeping them near. The Doctrines seem to argue that it’s advantageous to love those who are in our proximity, for the sake of our safety and happiness. Although PD 39 is often used to justify the exclusion from our circles of people who bring trouble or conflict, it starts by spelling out the following ideal scenario:
The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can. – Principal Doctrine 39
Other issues we must discuss are the feasibility argument and the argument for a complete ethical education. We don’t know to what extent it’s possible to TRULY love all of our neighbors. It’s impractical for a community to set up a rule in its social contract that is impossible to follow, however, it’s not irrational to expect an agreement of harmlessness (rather than love) from relative strangers. While the Christian commandment is noble, it potentially imposes and breeds hypocrisy, whereas the Epicurean conception of justice founded on an agreement to neither harm nor be harmed is much more realistic and practical.
That is the feasibility argument. The argument for a complete ethical education, on the other hand, says: while a commandment by a god to love him makes that god sound narcissistic, and while his commanding us to love others sounds authoritarian, Epicurus’ approach of expounding arguments for the advantages and benefits of befriending and loving our neighbors constitutes a more complete ethical education, and appeals to both our self-interest and our prudence. Most importantly, it does not produce false reasons to love our neighbors, and respects the intelligence and autarchy of the practitioner of philosophy.
Some enemies of Epicurean philosophy have argued that Epicureans would not make good citizens, or have concern for others outside of their immediate circle, however:
- Epicurus took care of orphans: he adopted and provided for the daughter of his best friend Metrodorus when she was orphaned. She must have been very young when Metro died, as he died eight years prior to Epicurus’ death and, as of the writing of his final will, Epicurus had not yet made arrangements for her to get married. Therefore, Epicurus had assumed responsibility for her and helped to raise her into adulthood
- Epicurus taught his friends how to live properly and pleasantly: he had a concrete and useful curriculum that provided an ethical and philosophical education for both young and old in his community which specifically contributed to their happiness and to living correctly
- The practice of friendship (philía) was a central aspect of the teaching mission. Each friend furnishes a concrete instance of loving our neighbor
- Epicurus fed the people every month in a feast: his Kepos functioned like what we would think of today as a communal non-profit organization. The welcome sign at the gate in the garden said “_STRANGER_, here you do well to tarry”. Since strangers were welcome in the garden, this means that Epicurus fed strangers, which sounds like near-universal charity
Epicurus, I would argue, was an exemplary citizen by any measure who sought to make into one tribe all the creatures that he was able to befriend. When asking about this subject in our FB group, one of the group members Shahab had this to say:
I think showing affection toward a neighbor makes you feel more safe beside them. Nothing is guaranteed, as men wish more harm upon each other. In any case, your neighbor may be a religious, a superstitious family, or they may be from people working for the government (as in authoritarian regimes). In these cases you wouldn’t feel safe if you don’t show them friendly feelings, or once upon a time, inviting them for a party where they can find, at least, Epicurean friendly attitude, reassuring for a healthy happy life. Malevolent neighbors can sabotage your reputation, making you feel unsafe in the neighborhood. So, as long as it benefits an Epicurean, showing a well-calculated love and friendliness toward one’s neighbor is, to me, a wise thing to do.
Not everyone considers “Love your neighbor” as being useful. Jason says:
PD 39 sums it up for me. Enroll everyone possible into the social contract. Benevolence meets benevolence. If they cannot or will not keep the contract, avoid them and their disturbance. If they cannot be avoided, expel them. The English word love is too much of a catch-all term for all of the varieties of positive feeling I experience to apply it universally to all sentients.
The biochemistry of my brain responds differently to different people and circumstances. Putting all those feelings under one word makes for vague speech, something Christianity, out of all the Abrahamic faiths, excels in. It is precisely that vagueness that makes it incompatible with Epicurean philosophy.
Nathan also says:
“He who best knew how to meet fear of external foes made into one family all the creatures he could; and those he could not, he at any rate did not treat as aliens; and where he found even this impossible, he avoided all association, and, so far as was useful, kept them at a distance” (Principal Doctrine 39).
I invite everyone to heed scientific research, get vaccinated, and wear a mask. To those who are unable to get vaccinated, I understand and encourage safe practices. To those who take unnecessary risks, I’ll avoid like the plague.
To answer your original question: no, Epicurus would not have endorsed (Love thy neighbor), because that proposition is justified by devotional worship of a Creator and does not consider any negative consequences of unconditional love.
From PD 39, and from the above discussion, we conclude that he wisdom of setting boundaries must be balanced with making into one tribe everyone we can … and it’s up to each one of us to determine the extent of each.
Therefore, I believe Epicurus loved his neighbors just as well or better than any good Christian, because he demonstrated life-long love for those who were near him (and taught them by example how to love each other) not with naive, religious idealisms but with concrete tokens of benefits, and for the right reasons.