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PD’s 39-40: An Intimate Koinonia of Friends

The man who best knows how to meet external threats makes into one family all the creatures he can; and those he can not, he at any rate does not treat as aliens; and where he finds even this impossible, he avoids all dealings, and, so far as is advantageous, excludes them from his life. – Principal Doctrine 39

In the past, the Koinonia of Friends of Epicurus has produced memes with the #KnowYourCircle hashtag. This is an appeal to the logic of concentric circles that we find in Doctrine 39, which says that we should have an inner circle of beings who are familiar and trustworthy, an outer circle of acquaintances with whom we have some familiarity, and then there may be people who are outside of our circles and worthy of avoidance for reasons of safety or due to other annoyances. This Doctrine may have been inspired by the Timocrates affair.

We call this the Doctrine of eumetry, a term coined by aesthetician Panayotis Michelis to denote a non-mathematical and non-symmetrical harmony that can at times even be superior to symmetry–which is often considered an important standard in aesthetics, or the study of beauty. Michelis was saying was that sometimes beauty can be measured in non-standard ways. However, neo-Epicurean French philosopher and historian Michel Onfray adapted this neologism for use in ethics. It comes from the Greek “eu-” (good) and “-metry” is related to measure, or distance, so that it implies keeping “a good distance”, or keeping “a safe distance: not too close, not too far”, as Onfray puts it. Knowing the right distance to keep with many people is meant to guarantee peace of mind.

One of the great life-long existential tasks that every Epicurean must carry out is expressed in Doctrine 27: it consists on building our own tribe, our own circle of friends. Since the closing of the Letter to Menoeceus says that we have two fields of praxis as Epicureans (introspective meleta by ourselves, and social meleta with friends of like mind), we must include some knowledgeable, sincere, and happy Epicureans in our circle of friends. By enshrining these things in Doctrine, Epicurus made it clear that he wanted his disciples to create intellectual tribes, to associate with and blend their minds with people who think alike.

Some of the Principal Doctrines “give a sermon together”–meaning, they must be interpreted in sequence or as part of a whole, because they seem to have been born as conclusions from a single, ongoing conversation among the Founders. That is the case with the last two Doctrines, and we must also consider why they were placed last. Once Doctrine 39 has been practiced consistently, and we have created an inner circle, Kyriai Doxai closes with these instructions:

Those who were best able to provide themselves with the means of security against their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee, passed the most pleasant life in each other’s society; and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy was such that, if one of them died before his time, the survivors did not mourn his death as if it called for sympathy. – Principal Doctrine 40

Once we have built our fortress of the soul and surrounded ourselves with “Friends of like mind”, we are able to enjoy an intimate society of Friends. This is the final instruction of Kyriai Doxai. It helps us to create a healthy and stimulating environment for Epicurean practice, for exploring the tasks and Doctrines both by ourselves and with others. It’s written in the past tense, which may indicate that we are to look to the founders as role models for ideas about what this intimate society of Friends looks like.

Perhaps as should be expected for the last one of the Principal Doctrines, it includes instructions on how NOT to mourn our Epicurean friends. Epicurus says we should remember them not with lamentations, but with pleasant remembrance. One of the Vatican Sayings teaches the practice of pleasant remembrance for that which we can not change. So there is a particular Epicurean tradition of remembering our Friends, which was enshrined in the Twentieth feasts which are in actuality memorial services for the Founders (and, broadly, for our Friends in philosophy who have parted).

Once you have an intimate society of Epicurean Friends, it’s natural that some will die, and we may be obligated (by oath) or compelled (by a sense of loyalty) to honor our friends’ memory in a manner that is true to their beliefs. The Roman Epicureans developed a tradition of burial where they placed the words “Non fvi. Fvi. Non svm. Non cvro.” (I was not, I was, I am not, I care not) on their tombstones. We may develop similar traditions today, or revive the ancient tradition. Part of the point of this Doctrine is that the practice of remembrance of our dead should be consistent with the rest of our theory and praxis. We must create Epicurean cultural expression that is authentic and reflects our values.

On Koinonia

I spoke here about our circles as intellectual tribes, and in my essay for How to Live a Good Life, I defended tribalism as a non-politically-correct but naturally-correct practice, based on the hundreds of thousands of years during which our ancestors evolved in tribal societies, and based on the Dunbar number. There’d be nothing special about being Epicurean if everyone could be Epicurean. It’s an intimate circle of friends, and somewhat exclusive. I now wish to tie this communitarian Doctrine to the sources.

Epicurean Koinonia are bound by hedonic contracts. Epicurus, in Principal Doctrines 37-38, uses the term κοινωνία (koinonia), saying that justice exists only in the context of companions who have agreements of mutual benefit. Depending on how the Doctrines are worded in English, it translates as “companions” or as “association”. When used in the New Testament, it’s often translated as “fellowship”, which is defined as:

1 : companionship, company
2a : community of interest, activity, feeling, or experience
b : the state of being a fellow or associate
3 : a company of equals or friends : association
4 : the quality or state of being comradely
5 obsolete : membership, partnership

The word is of Greek origin and was not used by Jesus, who spoke Aramaic. It appears in the Pauline literature in Acts 2:42, in 2 Corinthians 9:13, and in Philippians 3:10, which lends credibility to the theory by Norman DeWitt that the “apostle” Paul (who is credited with authoring these epistles) appropriated many Epicurean concepts and adapted them for his New Testament epistles (he also imitated our epistolary literary tradition).

DeWitt’s theory is that Paul was steeped in the study of Epicureanism, and that he transferred the concepts from our philosophy into his new religion, assigning new meaning to the concepts. But we are not interested in what koinonia came to mean for Christians. If we try to imagine ways in which Paul would have discovered the joys of fellowship among the Epicureans, or ways in which we can experience these pleasures today, we would come up with:

spending time with our friends and blending our minds with theirs
studying, learning, practicing, teaching, and creating together
honoring each other with gifts and celebrating each other’s birthdays and other joys
helping each other, when necessary
trusting our Epicurean Friends and turning to them when we have problems
even when we apply parrhesia (frank criticism), we may use suavity (the Epicurean virtue of sweet, kind speech) to soften the harshness of our words

Concerning the first point, the Havamal (although it’s from another tradition) has one stanza that accurately explains that “care will gnaw at your heart if you can’t share all your mind with another“. The second point fulfils Epicurus’ instructions on meleta, which should be done both by ourselves (introspection) and with “others of like mind“.

One further point must be made, based on the contextual interpretation of PD’s 37-38. These Doctrines deal with problems related to discerning how natural justice applies in a particular situation. Natural justice exists only where there are agreements between Friends. Since the use of koinonia in the Epicurean scriptures is restricted to this context, we assume that this fellowship is only possible among Friends who have such agreements (which require trust and a high degree of clear communication). These agreements may take the concrete forms of written contracts, verbal agreements, or oaths. Outside of this, there is no natural, concrete justice, and therefore no koinonia. This means that justice (defined as mutual benefit, and avoidance of mutual harm) is one of the foundations for Epicurean Friendship, since it’s not seen to flourish among people who do not agree to not harm each other, but to benefit each other. In this way, we can understand why the Doctrines on justice precede the final two in the progression of ideas that we find in the Kyriai Doxai, and why they’re advantageous for our happiness, and therefore included in the canonical collection of maxims as required practice.

Since these Doctrines discuss the intimacy of our communities, they’re a good place to evaluate the utility of the word Koinonia. It might be more advantageous for us to refer to the Society of Friends of Epicurus as a Koinonia, rather than as “this Society”, which may at times (by people who are hostile to us, or who are ignorant) be misconstrued to refer to the entire society of which we are part of, when we in reality are only referring to those who are in our circle and who are armed for happiness. The adoption of the term Koinonia may, therefore, be a clearer and more specific way for Epicureans to refer to our own circles of Friends, rather than “society” or other words whose meaning is broader.

Ubuntu: African Humanism and Epicurean Philanthropy

From time to time, I evaluate philosophical concepts from various cultures or intellectuals, and write about them from an Epicurean perspective in order to explore what a cosmopolitan Epicureanism would look like. I’ve written about African philosophical concepts before–see, for instance, this essay on the virtue of coolness. Today I’m exploring the idea of humanity and humaneness, and of how we become humanized through friendship and wholesome social relations.

Ubuntu: an African Humanism

Modern African cultures are notoriously colonized by Islamic and Christian ideas, frequently to their detriment: Boko Haram’s–a group whose name means “books are forbidden”–sexual enslavement of school girls in Nigeria, and the threats by Islamists to destroy medieval scrolls of incalculable value in Timbuktu, come to mind. Increasingly, less of the aboriginal wisdom traditions survive, and often only in syncretistic forms. It’s therefore refreshing to find a vibrant humanist philosophical discourse in the south of the continent around the concept of Ubuntu. It’s a Bantu term that translates as “humanity”, and is often related to the proverb “I am because we are”–which implies that people form their identities by socialization.

This reminds me of another saying that the Mayans have: “I am another you”–which implies that when we see the other, we are seeing a mirror of us. AND, if you’ll indulge my pop culture reference, Ubuntu also reminds me of Michael Jackson’s epic song Another Part of Me–where he argues that we (who want a better world) are legion.

Ubuntu is a secular humanistic tradition indigenous to Africa. According to Wikipedia:

Ubuntu asserts that society, not a transcendent being, gives human beings their humanity. An example is a Zulu-speaking person who when commanding to speak in Zulu would say “khuluma isintu,” which means “speak the language of people”.

This reminds us a bit of Epicurus’ insistence on clear and conventional speech, which avoids “flowery words” and empty flattery linked to inauthenticity. Ubuntu carries the implication of being real, of not being fake, of being authentic. In a later example, the essay says:

According to Michael Onyebuchi Eze, the core of ubuntu can best be summarised as follows: ” A person is a person through other people” strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an ‘other’ in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the ‘other’ becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. …

Notice–in spite of the “idealism” reference–how the concreteness of the personhood of each individual is acknowledged. Here, we see a different, more egalitarian, approach to inter-subjectivity than, say, Sartre’s existentialist exploration of it. Sartre concludes that all or most interpersonal relations turn the other into an object, and that the objectified other resents the power exerted by the observer. Here, instead, the idea of a mirror is introduced, which implies an understanding of human nature that is much less oppressive, much more receptive of the other. This seems to be demonstrated in studies of bodily mirroring and empathy among humans and primates, as I discussed in my book review of The Bonobo and the Atheist:

… the author argues that these mechanisms are physical and neurological. He discusses processes of bodily synchronization, contagion of happiness or sadness, and yawn contagion which are seen in nature among many primates, and what is known as mirror neurons that “fuse people at a bodily level”.

“… we activate neural representations of motor actions in our brain similar to the ones we perceive or expect in the other … Frowns induce sadness, smiles happiness. Ulf Dimberg, the Swedish psychologist who conducted this research, told me about the initial resistance, which made it hard to get his findings published in the 1990s … at the time, empathy was viewed as a complex skill under cerebral control. We decide to be empathic, so the thinking went, on the basis of deliberate simulations in our head of how we would feel in someone else’s situation. Empathy was seen as a cognitive skill. Now we know that the process is both simpler and more automatic. It’s not that we lack control (breathing is automatic too, but we are still in command), but science looked at empathy entirely the wrong way. Empathy stems from unconscious bodily connections involving faces, voices, and emotions. Humans don’t decide to be empathic; they just are.”

Epicureans believe in polyvalent logic: we observe that sometimes not just one, but many truths and many interpretations are evident. Perhaps a synthesis of Sartre’s subject-object model and these subject-subject models might provide us with a more complete understanding of empathy?

In the context of post-apartheid South African history, Ubuntu was appropriated by Christian theologians (like Desmond Tutu) to promote interracial forgiveness and reconciliation. But it was about much more than “Christian” forgiveness, and secularists must be careful to preserve the “secular spirit” of this African humanism because–even if we admit that Christianity helped to inspire the crucial reconciliation work in South Africa–we know that non-Christians also frequently see it advantageous to forgive, as we saw in the Lucretius’ passage. It is not usually in our nature to want to be in perpetual conflict with our neighbors.

For man grew weary: the life of violence
and hatred left him sick, and more disposed
freely to choose the yoke of law and statute.
For angered men kept calling for revenge
more savage than just law will now permit;
this made man sicken of life by violence …

Better be a subject and at peace – Lucretius

Ubuntu is part of the philosophical heritage of several countries in Southern Africa, including places like Botswana and Zimbabwe. Madonna has linked her work with orphans in Malawi to this tradition. Recently, Botswana abolished the illegality of gay sex. It came as a surprise to me when, in the aftermath of the abolition of apartheid, South Africa became the first and only country in Africa to approve gay marriage. This is a continent whose countries are known for having very repressive attitudes towards LGBT people, and where until recently Ugandan Christians were trying to pass the “Kill the Gays” bill. The homophobic cruelty that is pervasive in so much of Africa is one of the saddest aspects of the Islamic and Western colonial legacies.

And so Ubuntu in post-apartheid South Africa was about more than forgiveness: it was about the re-humanization of the other, who had been dehumanized. It’s also about letting the other be a subject, and not just an object. This included blacks and whites, and colored, and LGBT people. Ubuntu includes everyone, and in this it departs from African religious philosophies–which usually exclude and dehumanize LGBT people–and is all-encompassing and all-inclusive. It also inspires traditional respect for elders, hospitality, and other African values and concrete actions that are done to help ensure that people belong and feel fully human in the presence of others. Ubuntu demonstrates that a type of secular humanism has come to furnish moral guidance to societies in southern Africa and exhibits the power to transform how people treat each other.

Community and Humaneness

Humaneness is not an exclusively African concept, although it takes on a particularly collectivist expression there because African societies are tribal. In my studies of Confucius, I learned about the concept of ren. Back then, I wrote:

which has multiple translations and is tied to the experience and the art of friendship. It can translate as humanity or authoritative conduct, virtue within society, manly or humane (as opposed to beastly), and carries the connotation of humane-ness. According to wikipedia, it’s “the good feeling a person experiences when being altruistic“, but according to Brooks & Brooks, the word carries different meanings according to context … The virtue of ren is so quintessential to civilized human life that it can properly be understood as the art of being human. In other words, we become truly human-like by association with other humans.

This insight stayed with me because it was fundamental to my understanding of Epicurus’ doctrines. Norman DeWitt, in Epicurus and His Philosophy, says that philanthropy–here understood as love of humanity–was a feature of ancient Epicureanism, and that the Christians appropriated this and many other features of how the Epicureans organized themselves.

Epicurus’ philanthropy was not empty virtue-signaling. We see in Principal Doctrine 39 that loving and accepting everyone is not very realistic–as the early Epicureans learned from their experience with Timocrates–so that type of Platonic, unnatural philanthropy is not what is meant here. The founders of Epicureanism were adamant that we should stick to the clear meaning of words, and that we should cultivate certain habitual dispositions (diathesis) that were healthy and pleasant. Philanthropy is composed of philos (love, friendship) and anthropos (humans). If friendship is a natural good that makes life worth living, and is one of the most important ingredients of human happiness (as our doctrine teaches), this means that people should make great efforts to acquire many friends, and to become worth-befriending themselves. This is how philanthropy may serve as a tool to create a pleasant life.

All of us live in a pluralistic society, and there is much that we as Epicureans can learn about the intellectual traditions, history, and practices of African Humanism, and the more recent research that also empirically supports the values of Ubuntu.

Review of The Book of Community

The following five reasonings comprise, together, a long and in-depth review of The Book of Community, by the collective of bloggers known as Los Indianos.

The members of Las Indias make up a coop whose communal experiments have been inspired, in part, by Epicurus’ Garden, and who have written in the past about Epicurean philosophy. In my exchanges with them, many new insights have emerged that expand our understanding of key Epicurean concepts.

One of the most fruitful conversations has been the natural community discourse, which differentiates between Platonic, imagined communities versus real, inter-subjective and interpersonal communities. This distinction is much more crucial than we may initially think. Indianos argue against involvement in politics based on the view that it replaces natural community with Platonic, imagined identities that do not necessarily constitute real communal life, real conversation and interaction. They even argue that Epicurean cosmopolitanism was a reaction again the citizen identity conferred by the polis–city-state–and that the early Gardens constituted communal experiments timidly suggestive of the ideals of statelessness. While reading the book, further insights emerged on the subject of natural community. Here is a quote from the review:

The Book of Community, among other things, expands on a conversation that inspired me to blog about natural community based on some of the insights that the Indianos have shared on their blog … Indianos interestingly cite how in 1993, Robin Dunbar published a study that predicted “the maximum size of a human group” to be 147.8. This is known as the Dunbar number, interpreted as “the cognitive limit in the number of individuals with whom any person can maintain stable relationships“. This seems to not only vindicate the doctrine on natural community which was initially formulated as a result of my exchange with the Indianos, but also attaches a specific number of individuals to the size of a natural community.

In the book, they explain in detail the lathe biosas teaching on why political involvement is bad for organic communities because manufactured narratives tend to compete with communal ones, they call for the use of ceremony in order to strengthen community, they celebrate autarchy and criticize the narrative of the “common good”. Please enjoy the five-part series of articles on community.

Part I: Book Review
Part II: Community Vs. Polis
Part III: Ceremony
Part IV: On Productive Autonomy
Part V: Learning in Community

On Natural Community

In Epicurean discourse we often get into discussions of minimalism from the perspective of natural and necessary desires: minimalism not for the sake of frugality and simplicity, but for the sake of having a deep conviction of what is and what isn’t necessary.

The natural measure of wealth is that which corresponds to our natural and necessary desires.

Thus, in our discussions of autarchy we talk about the natural measure of wealth, and during Pride month I discussed the natural measure of Pride (many people are forced into a healthy re-assessment of their self-worth as a result of bigotry and mistreatment). In a naturalist evaluation of equality, which is a term so misused and confusing, I argued that our shared, natural limitations and needs provide the basis for a REAL, experienced equality and that, because all mortals have a universal need to feed, when we gather around the tables we can experience true communal equality.

The contributors of the Las Indias blog, a bilingual virtual community dedicated to cooperative ethics which proclaims itself proudly Epicurean, has been steadily making the case for natural community. In a recent piece, David the Ugarte makes the case for the Epicurean communal model:

Indianos takes part in an Epicurean communitarian tradition: the community is a «society» of friends. From the Epicurean point of view friendship (fraternity) and knowledge are the central goals of community itself. So, you will accept and look for people you can become friend of. But you also will put (an)other condition to them: to share basic common contexts in order to be able (to) learn together. Consequently, community is something that happens (within) a cultural and philosophical common ground, not just a set of rules open to everybody.

The link to Epicurean communitarian tradition leads to another blog entry on community and happiness. At the core of Las Indias’ communitarian doctrine we find Adlerian theories on natural community (which is smaller in scale and based on REAL interpersonal relations), as opposed to non-natural or Platonic community: artificial ideological constructs and narratives that people use to weave their identities but that do not constitute real communities or translate into real interpersonal relations. Nation-building is the prime example. There are many other imagined communities based on political strategy and ideology that also fit the Platonic definition of being artificial communities.

Notice, also, how communities of friends evolve naturally and organically. It is easier to become friends with our friends’ friends because there is already some familiarity. A recent 20-year-long study proves that happiness (and sadness) spread like a contagion, which means that even at very subtle levels we mirror behavioral and psychological patterns in our social environment. Herd instincts exist in all social entities, whether we’re aware, whether we accept this or not. The fact that the term “contagious” is used in the study, places social relations within the framework of nature, not culture.

The idea of Epicurean friendship and intimacy is that we should be invested in the happiness, self-overcoming and moral betterment of our friends (and they in ours). In light of recent research, it makes perfect sense why this is so important: unlike with patriotic narratives and imaginary communities, in natural communities the happiness of our friends has a direct, tangible, measurable effect on our own long-term wellbeing.

Recent research on isolation demonstrates how it feels cold in the body, and how it’s a health risk factor that shortens one’s life span on par with obesity and smoking. People need to feel both productive and loved. If and when they don’t, their bodies and minds begin decaying. In other words, community is both natural and necessary, and (as with wealth, pride, etc.) people need at least a natural measure of community in their lives.

What to do? The wisdom tradition of the Scandinavians says it well in stanzas 43-44 of the Havamal. Call up your good and true friends and see them frequently, blend your mind with theirs, befriend their friends, never betray them, and honor them with gifts:

To his friend a man should bear him as friend,
to him and a friend of his;
but let him beware that he be not the friend
of one who is friend to his foe.

Do you have a friend whom you trust well,
from whom you crave good?
Share your mind with him, exchange gifts with him,
make efforts to find him often.