Eikas cheers to all! Speaking of the Twentieth feast–this month, Paste magazine published the essay Eikas: The Dinner Party as Philosophy. The author makes the case that traditions like the Twentieth feast help to keep us human, rooted, and connected (particularly during the pandemic).
Our Friend Nate has added his compilation of multiple translations of the Kyriai Doxai in academia.edu as Key Doctrines of Epicurus. This is the most comprehensive compilation of translations of the PDs available.
Other literary updates include the Medium essay Epicurean philosophy as a way of life in Antiquity, and someone found a figurine from that Roman Era in England that they believe is Epicurus: Finds tray – Epicurus figurine.
The Lucretian Parable of the Alphabet
Nunc age dicta meo dulci quaesita labore percipe.
Come now and hear the words I chose with joy and care.
– Lucretius, De rerum natura, Liber Secvndvs, 730
In Atomic Poetics: Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, Gwendolyn Gruber says:
Atoms are like letters, Lucretius explains in Book 2 of De Rerum Natura. The finite number of various atomic shapes combine to create all the different things in the universe, just as the letters of the alphabet can be recombined in a variety of ways to create different words … This analogy can also be applied to Lucretius’ poetic endeavor. Just as the atoms join to make objects, Lucretius puts letters together to create words, and words together to create poetry. Just as combinations of atoms join to make large things, including the universe, Lucretius connects words and verses to produce a grand epic. In writing De Rerum Natura, Lucretius mimics the activity of the atoms and the poem’s structure can be viewed as a metaphor for Epicurean atomic theory.
As an author and word-smith, I’ve always loved the parable of the alphabet in De rerum natura. In the pen of Lucretius, the elements of nature create poetry, art, medicine, knowledge, values, meaning, and all the other things that letters can create. Nature makes art in the pen of Lucretius. Nature (which includes us) makes culture and artifice in the pen of Lucretius. Here are the relevant passages:
Nay, here in these our verses,
Elements many, common to many words,
Thou seest, though yet ’tis needful to confess
The words and verses differ, each from each,
Compounded out of different elements-
Not since few only, as common letters, run
Through all the words, or no two words are made,
One and the other, from all like elements,
But since they all, as general rule, are not
The same as all. Thus, too, in other things,
Whilst many germs common to many things
There are, yet they, combined among themselves,
Can form new wholes to others quite unlike.– De rerum natura, Liber Secvndvs, 708-720
And again:
Why, even in these our very verses here
It matters much with what and in what order
Each element is set: the same denote
Sky, and the ocean, lands, and streams, and sun;
The same, the grains, and trees, and living things.
And if not all alike, at least the most-
But what distinctions by positions wrought!
And thus no less in things themselves, when once
Around are changed the intervals between,
The paths of matter, its connections, weights,
Blows, clashings, motions, order, structure, shapes,
The things themselves must likewise changed be.– De rerum natura, Liber Secvndvs, 1012-1022
Lucretius returned more than once to the metaphor of the alphabet. It had been mentioned casually in Liber Primvs 196-198:
Thus easier ’tis to hold that many things
Have primal bodies in common (as we see
The single letters common to many words)
Than aught exists without its origins.
Now, in order to understand how brilliant this Lucretian parable is, and how it relates to the physics of Epicurus, we must understand that in his Epistle to Herodotus (tmíma/portion 42 in the Laertian division system), Epicurus asserts that there is an infinite number of atoms, but that these atoms assume a finite variety and number of possible combinations.
Furthermore, the atoms, which have no void in them–out of which composite bodies arise and into which they are dissolved–vary indefinitely in their shapes; for so many varieties of things as we see could never have arisen out of a recurrence of a definite number of the same shapes. The like atoms of each shape are absolutely infinite; but the variety of shapes, though indefinitely large, is not absolutely infinite.
Later, in De rerum natura, Liber Secvndvs, 496-499, Lucretius reiterates this by arguing that if elemental particles had infinite varieties of shapes, some of them would be visible to the naked eye, which is not what we observe:
Therefore you have no right to think atoms may vary indefinitely in shape; else you may force some to assume portentous vastness–but this I’ve shown cannot be true.
These particular portions of the Epistle to Herodotus and DRN are the thought-provoking key to developing a clear understanding of the Doctrine of Innumerable Worlds, and Epicurean cosmology in general, but in this essay I’d like to focus on the parable itself.
Nature’s Grammar
Just as each alphabetical system only has on average somewhere between 20-30 letters (“the atomic elements” within the parable) which must be combined to make words, similarly the laws of nature only allow for certain types of particles, and certain forms of atomic combinations:
- We see that the size and behavior of gas, ocean, and rocky planets depend on factors like access to solar light, pressure, distance from their star, mass accrued, and elements contained. Planets are not rocky if they grow beyond a certain size.
- We see that each element behaves differently at diverse temperatures: water acts as ice or gas at certain degrees, and so do other elements, which is why on Earth we have a water-ocean and in Titan there are lakes of methane at freezing temperatures.
- We see that different elements interact differently with each other, some joining together and others repelling each other, according to their properties, etc.
The limits of what is possible are set by the elemental particles and their possible combinations. In this way, the limits set by nature allow us to perceive order in the cosmos and to articulate scientific truths.
In Lucretius’ pen, nature has a grammar. Sometimes elements interact in a manner that is active or dynamic (forming something like a verb within a sentence, which carries the action). Sometimes two bodies interact so that they change each other, like an adjective changes a noun. Sometimes their interaction is so dramatic that they form a new compound word, in the same way that in lichen life-forms, fungi and algae become a single symbiotic life-form-system. The preceding simple nouns have combined.
The rules of nature’s grammar are pragmatically discernible just as our language faculty allow us to make words discernible to us. If you say “QYTP” to someone who speaks Spanish, that person will not make sense of what you’ve said because this particular combination of letters does not produce meaning in Spanish. If you say “sol”, or “luna”, that person will understand that you speak of the sun and the moon because this particular combination of letters produces those meanings. The natural elements are like these letters within the language in which we can read nature.
The idea of nature’s grammar reminds me of the four “letters” that we find in the double strand of DNA: G, T, C, A. They’re not “letters”, they’re molecules, but they operate like letters to create information in our cells, and scientists have always casually compared them to and treated them as letters. They’re only four, and their possible combinations are strictly limited, yet together they form a wonderful variety of life.
One of the things that Lucretius is saying in this parable, is that we can find “meaning” in the study of nature and in the realism it unveils (since meaning can only be expressed in signs in some way, which are constituted by these elemental “letters”). When in Liber Tertivs, Lucretius explains how scents and chemicals travel in the air and are picked up by the nose, he poetically refers to these particles as “winged words”.
This parable aligns with the Epicurean Guides’ insistence that our words must correspond clearly with the nature of things. This insistence necessitates the conviction that it is indeed possible to express the true nature of things in human language. This belief is part of the philosophical foundation on which this parable stands, and is attested elsewhere in Epicurean writings, even if the methodology needed for this is sometimes admittedly problematic.
An Anti-Skeptic Commentary
Parables are useful, but they cannot replace the true nature of things. One difference between our alphabets and the elements is that, unlike the letters of the alphabet, the elements are not subject to cultural or philosophical relativism. Gravity will always pull our bodies down. H2O molecules will always behave and exist as water in nature’s grammar.
I read in this parable a positive statement of the possibility of pragmatic knowledge–an assertion that we can, indeed, articulate the nature of things with the use of conventional language. This makes it possible to have established scientific theories, as well as orthodox beliefs about the nature of things that are based on the evidence and the study of nature.
One ethically-significant value that is contained in this belief is intellectual honesty, which is essential in an evidence-based philosophical system like ours. To an Epicurean, defense of this belief constitutes a defense of intellectual honesty–which is to say, trust in the evidence of nature, and clarity of speech.
This belief in the possibility of knowledge was and is still rejected by committed Skeptics, who argue that words (signs, to linguists) are not the same as the things they name (signifiers). This is true: language is a cognitive means to apprehend the nature of things. But only mystics and magicians claim that the word is the thing meant: words are signs that refer to the things that are meant or signified. Notice that the prolepsis of the word “signify” (signi-ficare, “sign-making” in verb form) implies that the things that are meant are made into signs. Language is a sign-making technology.
The Epicureans have always insisted on clear speech. Language must be clear in order to fulfill its utility. The concrete signs we use must align clearly with the nature of things.
We also insist that our meaning-making faculty of conceptualization (prolepsis) is part of the Canon, or standard of truth. Since the prolepsis of words derives from an original attestation, words reliably denote something that was at one point empirically available to someone, and words therefore can have empirical and pragmatic origins.
This is not to say that we deny the difficulties we sometimes encounter in this challenge to speak clearly. Case studies concerning the incorrect use of language led the original Epicureans to a process of language reform in the service of clarity, and influenced a “third stage of language development” within the Epicurean theory of language, where philosophers, and experts in various fields of knowledge, develop methods by which they apply the prolepsis of common language to the coining of new words of specialized abstract, scientific, or ethical utility.
An Anti-Nihilist Commentary
Since Epicurus says that philosophy that does not cure the soul is no better than medicine that does not heal the body, we apply the therapeutic interpretation to our sources in order to gain insights about the utility of the Doxai of the Epicurean Guides. This parable contains, in my view, philosophical medicine for the type of nihilism that rejects all values. It argues an ontological realism that says that we have the faculty to discern truths and values in nature. Whatever difficulties we may find in this activity do not justify giving up on the task of articulating the nature of things using language.
Let us use a case study to see how the ethics and physics intersect in our system, producing ethical values from the study of nature that must be part of our hedonic calculus, of our choices and rejections. The value of water is undeniable for humans: we can live without food for 21 days, but we can only survive no more than three days without water. The “value” of H2O is, therefore, not culturally relative. In our bodies, the absence of H2O is experienced as a pain of lack (thirst, and other symptoms in an advance stage), while we observe that a natural measure of the presence of it is experienced as health, vitality, and pleasure. The pleasures and pains produced by H2O molecules in our bodies (or lack thereof) are not a matter of debate, but of physical observation. Access to water is a natural and necessary desire. Each human being needs a certain amount of water to survive. This is why all ancient civilizations emerged alongside water sources and rivers.
Valid and true philosophical and scientific statements that help us to form clear and unerring models of the nature of things have tangible, pragmatic value for how we live and how we plan our lives and communities. We are entering a dangerous time of restricted access to water resources in many places, where the distinction between the necessary desires and unnecessary or arbitrary ones will become painfully clear to many. There’s talk of water wars in the future (although the water wars have already happened in places like Bolivia), and access to this basic resource will increasingly become a prominent economic, ethical and political issue in the coming decades.
Thanks to the constitution of our bodies and our particular faculties, certain values exist in nature. In this way, the Epicurean “study of nature” has an acidic effect on nihilism (if you’ll indulge my chemistry metaphor), if nihilism is defined as the complete absence of definite and clear values.
The Elements of Right Living
There is another way in which this philosophical application of physics insights in the realm of ethics fights nihilism: it creates concrete pleasures, values, and meaning. Epicurus refers to the contents of his Epistle to Menoeceus as comprising the “elements of right living” … which–just like the elements of nature–must be incorporated and constituted together, so that we live ethical and pleasant lives.
Small things show the likeness of larger and the steps that lead to knowledge. – Lucretius, De rerum natura, Liber Secvndvs, 123-124
Elements combine to form bodies of greater and greater complexity, which in turn at greater magnitudes show specific emergent properties. Similarly, large projects must be tackled in the details, in the small things, day by day, moment by moment. Great works are not completed in a day. By applying this model of elemental combination–and the emergence paradigm–to our choices and rejections, to how we plan our lives, we may more efficiently accomplish great works in the long term.
Norman DeWitt ascribed the following proverb to Epicurean philosophy: “The unplanned life is not worth living“. Even philosophers of nihilistic tendency, like many Existentialists, argue that we can create meaning and value by enacting existential projects that render our lives pleasant, meaningful, and complete. Planning requires concrete combinations of many elements.
A Grammar of Salvific Pleasure
The self-referential comparison of the verses in De rerum natura to honey in Liber Qvartvs 9-25 means to sweeten the harsh medicine of philosophy, points to pleasure / sweetness as an ethical point of reference, and asserts that it is possible to combine elemental letters into philosophical and ethical medicine. Here is the Lucretian passage:
First, since I teach concerning mighty things,
And go right on to loose from round the mind
The tightened coils of dread religion;
Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame
Song so pellucid, touching all throughout
Even with the Muses’ charm- which, as ‘twould seem,
Is not without a reasonable ground:
For as physicians, when they seek to give
Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch
The brim around the cup with the sweet juice
And yellow of the honey, in order that
The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled
As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down
The wormwood’s bitter draught, and, though befooled,
Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus
Grow strong again with recreated health:
So now I too (since this my doctrine seems
In general somewhat woeful unto those
Who’ve had it not in hand, and since the crowd
Starts back from it in horror) have desired
To expound our doctrine unto thee in song
Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as ’twere,
To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse-
If by such method haply I might hold
The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,
Till thou dost learn the nature of all things
And understandest their utility.
This passage concerns the nature of true and therapeutic philosophy itself, which is concretely made up of these words that Lucretius has smeared in poetic honey. He elsewhere refers to Epicurus’ words as “Aurea Dicta” (golden words … worthy of immortal life), and compares them to ambrosia, the nectar of immortality.
In Vatican Saying 41, the Scholarch Hermarchus outlines a practice that involves concrete utterances being spoken out-loud (phonás aphientas, scattered sounds). Philodemus, too, said that the medicine of true philosophy is found in its healing words. Since the Epicurean Guides have an agenda of healing the souls, the parable of the alphabet is more than a passive contemplation of theory: it’s a dynamic part of a salvific toolkit. Epicurus and Lucretius are like shamanic guides who combine letters and words to make philosophical cures for the soul.
In the pen of Lucretius, poetry can be more than poetry. Art can be more than art. Some word combinations may heal nihilistic tendencies, or cure our fears. They may have a superior potency, a medicinal use, but there’s nothing mystical about them: they’re still made up of the same elemental letters as every other word.
