Eikas cheers to all our readers. This month, we discovered the video Lucretius the Epicurean Poet, a friendly and short introduction to Lucretius’ De rerum natura. We also published a book review of The Happiness Diet, and considered whether this means that the nutrients that are considered essential (that is, that our body cannot make on its own) for both health and happiness must be incorporated into our hedonic regimen.
The thought-provoking Psyche.co essay Don’t be Stoic argues that prominent ancient Stoics show Stoicism’s perniciousness as the “philosophy of collaborators”, and shares case-studies of how Stoicism encourages collaboration with tyranny and cruelty by convincing people to completely submit to fate. In my mind, this is only a little different from Catholic instructions to “bear your cross”.
The essay Classifying the Epicurean Goods, by Alex R Gillham was shared with us. It invites us into a discussion of the “immortal goods” that Epicurus mentions in his Epistle to Menoeceus, and into what other goods exist in our ethics. It’s beyond the scope of this Twentieth message to delve too deeply into the essay, but I will mention that one method that Epicureans may use to move from the abstract to the concrete is to refer to them in the plural. In this case, “The Good” (which is a Platonic idea) is transformed into something useful and concrete–“the goods”. Even better–the author mentions intrinsic goods versus instrumental goods, etc., with specific mention of which goods are being discussed. This specificity de-Platonizes the Good and/or naturalizes the goods.
Today I’d like to consider the case study of the Pallini Declaration, better known as the Declaration of the right of happiness in the European Union, in light of Epicurean doctrines on justice and on the canon. The Pallini Declaration was co-edited by a group of Epicureans from Greece in 2014, with the intention of requesting that the European Union recognize the right to happiness as a foundational European value. Here is the Declaration:
One of the main foundations of European civilization is philosophy. Aristotle and Epicurus realized that the purpose of philosophy is happiness (well-being). Epicurus taught that happiness corresponds to absence of mental and physical pain and may be attained though observation of nature, prudence, free will, virtue and friendship.
Many centuries later, in 1776, the main author of the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, influenced by Epicurus’ teachings, included among basic human rights the right of pursuit of happiness. In 2012, the United Nations decided to recognize that the pursue of happiness is a fundamental human goal and right, designating the 20th of March of every year as International day of Happiness.
Given the fact that the right to pursue happiness is not included in the 54 articles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2010/C 83/02), we ask for the recognition of this right of happiness in the European Union, since it is self-evident that it is a fundamental human right and its non-recognition in any part of the world constitutes the violation of this natural right.
The Friends of Epicurean Philosophy “Garden” of Greece
4th Pan-Hellenic Symposium of Epicurean Philosophy
Pallini, Athens, Greece
February 15, 2014
The Pallini Declaration was unveiled during the Epicurean philosophy symposium in February 2014 at Gargettus, in the Municipality of Pallini, where Epicurus had his ancient Garden. The webpage for the Declaration contains some historical background, which ties back to the Greek Constitution and social contract, and reflects the Epicurean conception of agreed-upon law based on the principle of “not harming and not being harmed” (see Epicurus’ Principal Doctrine 31). There were 114 signatures on the Declaration, in honor of the 114 articles of the Greek Constitution.
The following is my meleta on the Pallini Declaration, which is a type of humanist and Epicurean manifesto.
The first paragraph contains three statements which are historical and not controversial, except that some people may have an issue with the statement that some philosophers have “realized” that happiness is the goal of life. This implies that the statement is a discovery and an insight or realization, not an invention. I do not take issue with this–in fact I affirm it–, but I realize that this is a doctrinal statement, framed within the larger tradition of humanist manifestos that includes the Declaration of Independence, the US and French Constitutions, and other documents that are meant to be treated as both social contract, as well as doctrinal (humanist) manifestos.
The second paragraph contains two additional historical statements, which are treated as precedents. It is here that Pallini Declaration appeals to Thomas Jefferson and the Enlightenment ideas that inspired him. In the third paragraph, the Declaration seeks to have a new statute added to what is seen as the social contract that applies to all Europeans.
The Declaration places the “right to happiness” within the context of European values, and ties these values to a shared heritage–which is claimed for all Europeans. Pallini is today where the ancient neighborhood of Gargettus was, where Epicurus founded his Garden around 2,300 years ago, and which for centuries was the seat of the Epicurean Mother Garden. By accentuating its place of origin, the Declaration is an acknowledgement of the deep Epicurean roots of Western civilization. It is a statement of our shared Western values, and claims some level of Epicurean identity or heritage for all Europeans.
Are Rights Self-Evident, or Fictional?
That people have a right to happiness is not exactly what Epicurus argued: he taught that pleasure is a faculty that is native to our organism (“congenital to our nature”) and necessary for our choices and rejections, and that it helps us to discern the natural and pragmatic goal of life. He made a claim about nature, not about rights. The Pallini Declaration is making a new claim, an evolution of that original claim. And it makes a policy recommendation to government.
This level and type of involvement in public affairs is perhaps an innovation, but I argue that this innovation is rooted in Epicurean philosophy. From the perspective of the Doxai, this form of activism in favor of the inclusion of a “right to happiness” as a statute within the official social contract for all Europeans is, among other things, a way of practicing the Doxai on justice (PDs 30-38).
The Pallini Declaration is silent on the nature of “rights”, which can be argued to be fictions written into our legal systems. But notice that it still affirms their utility! From the perspective of the Doxai, by making this particular policy recommendation, the Declaration says that we find it advantageous for mutual association (see PD’s 37-38) to include happiness among the named human rights in our social contract or legal code. In other words, rights (even if fictional) are treated as concrete tokens of Epicurean justice. They’re agreements: useful statutes, or contracts, agreed upon for the sake of mutual association.
This social contract is the means by which Epicureans define justice in concrete terms. By explicitly naming itself Epicurean, the Declaration further recognizes that the right to be happy, once enshrined formally into the social contract and into the cultural and civilizational identity of all Europeans, will help to set the foundation for an Epicurean sense of justice or righteousness in the societies that uphold it. In other words, the recognition of this right to happiness will be a matter of justice and of the social contract, the formally agreed-upon values of all Europeans, and–once enshrined as law–it will be considered unjust to violate this right.
But let us look at the ontological status of rights, since there seems to be an unresolved controversy here. Most humanists believe that rights do not exist conventionally. They are not god-given, as many have claimed, and in fact many of the rights we enjoy today required generations of struggle to attain. But while these rights may be fictions in some sense, they’re still agreed-upon values which, by virtue of the shared agreement among the members of a society, have political and social power. They serve as guidelines for policy and are useful for co-existence. They have utility.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – United States’ Declaration of Independence (edited by Epicurean founding father Thomas Jefferson)
The framers of these humanist manifestos–from the founding fathers to the authors of the Pallini Declaration–are making claims about natural rights which invite a reassessment of the fictional nature of rights. They are taken to be “self-evident”, which is another Epicurean statement of doctrine, and in fact this can also be claimed about the nature of Epicurean justice: that justice can be observed with enargeia (clearly or self-evidently) based on its utility or benefit for mutual association. Since the authors of these manifestos are claiming enargeia (clarity, immediacy of experience) for these truth statements, I argue that they are making specifically Epicurean statements of doctrine that are based on our methods of studying nature. We saw in Principal Doctrine 22 that enargeia is part of the Epicurean toolkit, and that this particular Doctrine is found among the four canonical Doxai that act as a filter for truth claims.
While, to us, the Creator is nature, Jefferson was comfortable using the term “Creator” within the social contract to establish an ecumenical conversation between the various flavors of Christians and Humanists that deliberated on this particular social contract. Concerning life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we observe that humans are often willing to die for these principles, that without them it’s impossible to live well and pleasantly, and that they make life worth-living. Happiness and life (together with health) are included in the three categories of natural and necessary desires that Epicurus mentions in his Epistle to Menoeceus. Therefore, Epicurus was making similar (though not identical) claims in this epistle as Jefferson was making in the Declaration of Independence.
We have reason to be undecided as to the nature of these natural rights. On the one hand, Epicurean philosophy teaches that these rights are self-evident, and therefore that they’re not entirely fictional: they are self-evident and exist in some way. On the other hand, rights are not conventionally real–that is, they are not made up of particles. They seem to be relational, social and cultural products born from our mutual agreement and based on our mutual benefit. I wish to note here how Epicurean justice imitates the tendency towards symbiosis in nature, a system by which living bodies show a tendency to develop mutually-beneficial relations. The bottom line is that the pragmatic necessity of justice makes things like laws and rights a needed feature in all human-centered philosophy.
These are some of our initial deliberations on this, not the final word. We will continue our meleta about the nature of human rights. I’m curious to know what others think.
