Tag Archives: death

Liber Tertivs: On the Nature of the Soul

Eikas cheers to all! We recently became aware of the book Epicurean Philosophy: An introduction from the “Garden of Athens”, edited / written by Christos Yapijakis, Panagiotis Panagiotopoulos, and others from the Epicurean Gardens in Greece.

The book Epicurus and His Influence on History, by Ben Gazur is available for pre-order. He has, in the past, written the essays An Epicurean Cure and Why Epicurus Matters Today.

This month, Revista Horizonte’s YouTube channel published the lecture “Perspectiva política de la filosofía epicúrea” by Estiven Valencia Marín. This is in Spanish, and the facilitator argues that Epicurean philosophy does not strictly forbid political engagement.

In Mahsa Amini: the new Iphianassa, we discussed that Lucretius opens his poem De rerum natura by giving various reasons for writing the poem, among them the perceived need for a new social contract that was not oppressive because of the corruption of religion. Near the opening, he also mentions that death and the nature of the soul are serious enough threats to human happiness, that they too were reasons for writing his poem.

For what the soul may be they do not know,
Whether ’tis born, or enter in at birth,
And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,
Or visit the shadows …
– Lucretius, De rerum natura, Liber Primus

Ergo, clarifying the nature of the soul is one of the intended purposes of De rerum natura. In the third of the six books, after summarizing Books 1 and 2 (verses 31-33), Lucretius introduces Liber Tertivm, the entirety of which (like Philodemus of Gadara’s wonderful scroll “Peri Thanatos” / “On Death”) contains meleta on Principal Doctrine 2, and which deals with both death and the nature of the soul. In fact, there are some parallels with the Philodeman scroll, and around verse 884 we see Lucretian criticism of being angry that one has to die and of worrying about various ways of dying, which is reminiscent of Peri Thanatos. The reason why he chose this particular subject (as per verses 36-93) is that he says that fear of hell and death lead to degrading or fear-based forms of religion, zeal (fanaticism), evil, greed, murder, and the quest for fame and of other vain and empty desires.

In verse 55, Lucretius says that when men are in doubt or in anger, we get to see what they’re made of, because they tend to use “the mask” of religious zeal. This is a profoundly insightful commentary on the nature of religiosity, and applies a Philodeman logic–where we diagnose some neurosis or what he calls “disease of the soul” based on signs.

Will hate of living and beholding light
Take hold on humankind that they inflict
Their own destruction with a gloomy heart-
Forgetful that this fear is font of cares,
This fear the plague upon their sense of shame,
And this that breaks the ties of comradry
And oversets all reverence and faith …

For just as children tremble and fear all
In the viewless dark, so even we at times
Dread in the light so many things that be
No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
Nor glittering arrows of morning sun disperse,
But only nature’s aspect and her law.

Defining the Natural Soul

Further Reading: The Concrete Self
Lucretius Book 3 – Death of the Soul, and Other Good Things

Epicurus instructs at the opening of his Epistle to Herotodus, that we must first define the object of our investigation, before we begin any discourse. We generally think of the natural soul as the condition of the living flesh that gives us life and sentience. As Epicureans, we are unconcerned with any supernatural or Platonic conception of the soul. Instead, we speak of the nature of the soul, even of the health of the soul, in wholly physical terms. Lucretius defined the soul as part of the body, and connects it with the head or the intellect from where the organism governs itself.

The mind (animus / sometimes translated as soul) which oft we call the intellect (mentem), wherein is seated life’s counsel and regimen, is part no less of man than hand and foot and eyes are parts of one whole breathing creature. – Liber Tertivs, 94-95

In Liber Tertivs, Lucretius is expounding the same theories that Epicurus expounds in his Letter to Herodotus (portions 63-68), and in more detail. To be clear, the soul is physical. Lucretius explains that the soul is mortal (416, 603-614) and that it gets sick and ages with the body (445-491), that wine gets the soul drunk, and that the soul’s diseases can be treated with medicine (510-525). We also learn that the soul has no weight (230), that the five senses are among the soul’s faculties (624-633), and that the first atomists imagined that the atoms of the soul were particularly subtle or tiny because neural activity happens so fast (177-205), and in this he uses the analogy of how water moves faster than honey because it’s less dense.

Must we not grant that mind and soul consist of a corporeal nature? – 167

The Head, the Chest, and the Belly

Mind and soul (animum atque animam), I say, are held conjoined one with other, and form one single nature of themselves; but chief (caput) and regnant through the frame entire is still that counsel which we call the mind, and that cleaves seated in the midmost breast.

“Caput” means “head”, and indicates that the soul is the head of the body. He may have been working with, and translating from, the Greek word “psyche” in his sources.

Lucretius argues (147-160, and again in 395-415) that the mind is stronger than the flesh. This idea of the soul as the head of the body echoes the logic of Principal Doctrine 20, which we also find in the Wall Inscription of Oenoanda.

Emotions in antiquity were associated with the chest, so it’s not surprising that the ancient Epicureans believed the soul was partially in the chest. This is likely based on the process of “reasoning by signs”, and the observation that strong emotions increase the heart rate and that the heart stops beating at the moment of death. In reality, as Lucretius explains elsewhere, the soul or animating power is found embedded throughout the entire bodily frame.

The focus on the chest as seat of the natural soul might be part of the Epicureans’ insistence that man is more than a rational animal, that he has irrational faculties that are just as important as reason. Lucretius mentions some of these non-rational feelings and faculties of the soul (joy, terror, dismay, etc.)

There are many instinctive psychological processes that happen in the belly, and we know that many of the so-called “happiness hormones” are synthesized in the belly as well. Some yoga instructors teach focused exercises for what they call the “solar plexus”. Some (like Osho)–in a manner that may remind some of Metrodorus’ arguments with his brother–insist that we must “befriend the belly”. Current research shows that the belly has enough neurons to constitute a “second brain”.

I do not wish to digress much into Taoism, but I wish to accentuate that one of its founders–Yang Chu, who was hugely influential among the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and many other later thinkers–based his entire philosophy on the body as our ultimate ontology. He is the author of several chapters of the second most important classic in Taoism, the Zhuang Tzu. The lack of a Platonic split between body and soul in Taoism has produced a vibrant philosophy that expresses itself in bodily practices related to preventive health, movement, and martial arts, with no boundary whatsoever between the so-called spiritual world and the body.

In Taoist martial arts and meditative practices, the belly is the focus of attention and breath-work, and considered an important means of grounding an stabilizing oneself. The belly, together with certain dietary practices, are important in other cultures’ regimens of self-care.

Treatments for Fear of Death

The main utility of studying the nature of the physical soul is to produce a theory and practice that works, and that can provide treatments for fear of death. These treatments, for the Epicureans, usually focus on arguments, repetition, placing before the eyes, and other similar techniques.

One such argument from Liber Tertivs (verse 904) consists of comparing death to being asleep. Another one is the symmetry argument, which compares the time after death with the time before birth of which we remember nothing, and so there is nothing to fear.

Other arguments are less therapeutic, and more about giving a more complete account of the nature of death in the context of our inter-existence with the other bodies that make up the cosmos. For instance, Lucretius says (in 970) that one thing grows from another, and since all bodies need the particles of other bodies in order to subsist, therefore we must accept that life is a loan.

Lucretian Reassessment of Myths

A naturalist redefinition of the soul and of death has the domino effect of dismantling much of the vulgar mythology that our ancestors have built around them. Lucretius argues that hell is on Earth, that Tartarus is not a place under the ground but represents fear of the gods and of fate, that Tityus is about the dangers of quick care and vague desire, and that the Sisyphus myth (which we discuss below) is about the tendency to seek power even if it does not add pleasure, which feels as if we were pushing a boulder up a hill.

The bottom line is that there is NO other world or afterlife, and that the only relevance of these myths is found in this world.

The Jar Parable

Although the Punctured Jar parable is treated in Liber Sextvs, in the third book we see that the imagery of the jar is an ongoing theme in Lucretius. Here, the body is compared to a jar that cracks open at the time of death and releases its vitality (verses 434-444). Around verse 793 we read that the mind requires the body as a “vessel”, again refuting the idea that a soul may exist without a host body. That the mind needs the body as a vessel is again mentioned around verse 555:

And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart,
Severed from us, can neither feel nor be,
But in the least of time is left to rot,
Thus mind alone can never be, without
The body and the man himself, which seems,
As ’twere the vessel of the same- or aught
Whate’er thou’lt feign as yet more closely joined:
Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds.

It seems like the punctured jar parable was part of a long string of meditations and parables on the physical nature of the soul, which in Liber Sextvs culminates in a salvific teaching.

Around verse 1000, while discussing the myth of Sisyphus, Lucretius makes another reference to the idea of the soul as a jar when he compared Sisyphus’ pushing a stone uphill to the behavior of someone who “feeds forever a thankless heart with good things yet never fills it”.

Here in this life also a Sisyphus
In him who seeketh of the populace
The rods, the axes fell, and evermore
Retires a beaten and a gloomy man.
For to seek after power- an empty name,
Nor given at all- and ever in the search
To endure a world of toil, O this it is
To shove with shoulder up the hill a stone
Which yet comes rolling back from off the top,
And headlong makes for levels of the plain.
Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind,
Filling with good things, satisfying never-
As do the seasons of the year for us,
When they return and bring their progenies
And varied charms, and we are never filled
With the fruits of life- O this, I fancy, ’tis
To pour, like those young virgins in the tale,
Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever.

In the jar metaphor, Lucretius is using poetic imagery as an expedient means to instruct us on the nature of the soul and its need for philosophy, while still employing poetry, parables, and myths. He does not dismiss these cultural devices, but employs them according to the study of nature. In doing this, Lucretius helps to construct a new spirituality, one that is fully physical and consistent with the scientific worldview and with the study of nature, but yet does not reject storytelling, poetry, imagery, parables, etc. In other words, he’s continuing Epicurus’ project of elaborating a complete worldview and cosmology–from the elemental particles all the way to the innumerable worlds–that yet satisfies and cares for the soul and all of its existential needs.

Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Death

The meditation of the wise man is a meditation on life, not on death.

– Wisdom 6:1, Humanist Bible

The beginning parts of the scroll On Death are very fragmentary and very little can be deciphered, but the scroll gets easier to read in its later portions. After studying its contents, I found it refreshing that a scroll on how death is nothing to us took such pains to dismantle the death-based cultural forms two millenia prior to Nietzche’s accusation that Christianity is a cult of death. Although Nietzche is a post-Christian philosopher who is known for having announced the death of God, much of what we think of as Nietzchean discourse began much earlier than Nietzche, with the Epicureans and our philosophy of life.

On the Error of Measuring Good by Time

In our considerations On Choices and Avoidances we learned about the Doctrine of the Chief Goods. We return to this doctrine. The readable portion of the scroll begins with a consideration of how men shun untimely death hoping to gain goods in additional time. Philodemus argues that it’s better to have lived a young life with the things that matter than to die without finding anything naturally good.

14.2 For it is characteristic of a sensible man to yearn to live on for a certain amount of time in order that he may complete his congenital and natural desires and receive in full the most fitting way of life that .. is possible … and consequently be filled full of good things and cast off all the disturbance that is concerned with the desires, sharing in stillness.

Epicurus said that we should live as long as we’re alive. Quality of our life marks the difference between merely existing and truly living. This is an important precept. It is foolish to wish to extend our lifespan if we are miserable and do not know how to live. The foolish man gains nothing by living a long life as long as he lives with fear, violence, envy and other vices, instead of acquiring the things that make life worth living.

For those who live a wretched life, death is a release (21.3-6) According to Philodemus losing our life at a young age, similarly, is only bad because we may be unable to procure the things that make life worth living, a task which requires some progress in philosophy. If we have lived a pleasant life, no one and nothing can take this away from us. When we die we won’t know that we have died because we won’t have our perception and awareness (19.27).

Therefore, the only thing that will have mattered is that we lived well. As we have seen, these reasonings are all consistent both with the doctrine of the principal things (kyriotatai) that truly matter and with the goal of calcualted hedonism: in the end, life must be pleasant.

On Rejoicing About Death

Since the dead don’t mind mockery, only the living, this is considered foolish and it generates no suffering to the person mocked when that person is dead and no longer exists. Similarly, rejoicing at the prospect of our own death is foolish if we have good. It only makes sense to rejoice at our death if it is perceived as liberation from intense suffering.

On Being Troubled by the Prospect of Death

22.1 In fact it is precisely in anticipating this while they are alive that they have the (sort of) death that has to do with them, whereas we are not troubled at any such prospect.

Because we only have perception and use of our senses while we live, the only way in which we experience our own death is indirectly as a prospect. In other words, we do not experience death when it comes. We are not there at all. Therefore, our apprehension of our future death is considered imprudent, as it is unavoidable that we will die and fearing it or losing our peace because of our future death does not change the fact of our mortality. Another way in which we trouble ourselves with death is by worrying about the extinction of our family line and about leaving a name. Because we won’t be there at all after we die, both relatives and strangers will have nothing to do with us and even people who have many descendants do not add enjoyment to their lives from their progeny after they die. Philodemus also argues that there are many others who bear our same name.

On Inheritance

Philodemus recognizes that it’s best to leave inheritance to our children, and that dying without offspring is naturally painful. So is leaving behind immediate family members who lack basic needs. One is to write a will to ensure that only the worthy will enjoy our inheritance. There is concern about the fruits of one’s labor going to relatives who might be wicked, who would not profit from our wealth at all. On the other hand, if one does not have worthy heirs, that is truly a reason for pity: it means that we haven’t lived well enough to nurture wholesome relations.

On Perturbations Due to Manner of Death

Ancient men often worried about things like dying at sea, or about dying a glorious death as a result of the belief that a better afterlife awaits those who die in battle (for instance: as heroes in Valhalla, or as jihadists with virgin attendants in the Islamic heaven) while old ladies who die a natural death, presumably, end up in Hades with all the other ordinary dead people.

Conversely, many people who deserve glory and fame, and are remembered for having lived noble lives, died natural deaths. If only a so-called “noble death” in battle makes one glorious, then most cultural heroes of humanity would have to be deemed ignoble. Therefore, we should not deem heroic our deaths instead of our lives. Living heroically is what has value and honor, says Philodemus. A dead person can perform no glorious deeds, and whatever glorious deeds are performed happen while we’re alive.

For a sensible person, the only way that dying in battle is desireable is if we are wounded and wish to be released from terrible pain. Philodemus derisively says that soldiers in battle die like cattle.

These false beliefs about a noble afterlife for those who die in battle are a great moral evil and have always been promoted by warlords and governments with military interests who have profited from the carnage. We’re reminded of oil investors and investors in the military industrial complex who today benefit handsomely from the use of apocalyptic imagery by conservative Christians who legitimize military intervention abroad, as these few have become powerful and wealthy interests in Western politics. However, it’s usually the poor who die in battle.

Many Catholics used to worry excessively about baptising their newborn in fear of a belief that unbaptised babies end up in limbo. When in recent years the Catholic Church changed its mind about limbo, many Catholics began raising questions about where these spurious afterlife teachings are drawn from and how they can change.

As for dying at sea, or in a bathtub or jacuzzi or pool for that matter, the scroll compares worrying about this to worrying about whether one’s corpse will be “eaten by fish or by maggots”. It won’t make a difference.

Some argued in antiquity that it was fortunate or noble to die in battle at sea, as if dying at sea for the sake of visiting friends or for the sake of learning was less noble. If anything is ignoble about dying at sea, it’s if one dies in search of profit or vain pursuits, but it is one’s life that’s wretched in this case, not one’s death.

Another matter attended in the scroll is the death of Socrates and other innocent victims that are either executed by miscarriages of justice, or justly executed. If one is guilty, this is pitiable not because of the manner of death, but because of how one lived. If one is innocent, then the most one can do is attempt to endure nobly and to be moderately troubled, as if it was an illness.

This portion is perhaps the least convincing in the entire scroll, which is otherwise powerful and cogent. We know in our day that there are countries where the innocent are put to death for apostasy, for being gay, or sometimes the punishment is not proportionate to the crime as in the case of stoning adulterers and women who wish to choose their husbands in Islamic societies. As Muslims move to Western countries, we are hearing more of “honor” killings of daughters by their own fathers or brothers, and even of “honor rapings” of women who do not cover their bodies “properly”.

These practices are certainly a great evil and the moral problem raised by Philodemus concerning the execution of the innocent is very complicated. It is difficult, we must concede, to remain unperturbed. As to those who worry about sudden death, Philodemus argues that all death is sudden. There is nothing extraordinary about sudden death, on the contrary, we should be surprised to live exceptionally long lives.

Unfinished Business

We all have projects that we would like to see concluded. Many people feel that they wish to leave a lasting legacy, but Philodemus says that very few great men achieve this and that this is an empty and vain desire. If fame while alive is empty, then fame after one is dead is even less of a source of true pleasure.

Sometimes it’s not death, but necessity or fortune that impedes us from achieving our goals in life and materializing our plans. Therefore, if we are concerned about dying prior to seeing one of our goals achieved, we should apply the same consolations that we apply in life to these troubles. If we know what matters (the chief goods), we’re unaffected and enjoy the good things in life, the things that make life worth living, unperturbed. It is here that Philodemus speaks of how the prudent man lives ready for his burial.

38.14 The sensible man, having received that which can secure the whole of what is sufficient for a happy life … goes about laid out for burial, and he profits by (each) day as if would by eternity.

One naturally feels concern for those close to us that have problems or who lack an art of living and haven’t learned to be happy. But these are things that are outside our control. Philodemus argues that the man who has lived well should not lament others’ miseries after he has escaped his own: he should go to his death happy that he lived well.

On Funeral Planning

There is another way in which people concern themselves too much with death and its cult. It is foolish to worry about the appearance of our corpse at the wake. Philodemus argues against those who are disgusted by the bad appearance of the corpse, or who worry about beauty, saying that all who die–beautiful or not–become skeletons within a short amount of time. He also argues against planning lavish burials as a waste of time and resources.

We are reminded of many of the practices associated with kings and chiefs, which incorporated not only the inclusion of material goods in the tomb but even such evil practices as burial of live slaves and widows with them. These traditions persisted in most continents for millenia.

Burials, if they are to be celebrated, are for the living, not for the dead. They help with closure. Philodemus praises decent burial practices that were emerging during his lifetime, where the expenditure that used to go toward lavish burials of wealthy senators were instead being spent on the living:

31.5 Among lawgivers, too, those who made dispositions naturally and well can be seen actually to have prevented excessive expenditure at funerals on the grounds that the living were being deprived of services: many give orders to do away with their property precisely because they begrudge this.

A lavish burial won’t fix a life lived wretchedly. On the other hand, a pleasant life well lived among friends can not be taken away from us if we don’t get a proper burial: this does not take away in the least from our happiness while we lived. Many great people have died without a burial. The scroll also argues convincingly against pitying the dead, for instance, if we happen to come across an unnamed tomb (32.24), saying that it is unintelligent to pity the dead.

32.20 Who is there who, on considering the matter with a clear head, will suppose that it makes the slightest difference, never mind a great one, whether it is above ground or below ground that one is unconscious?

The pain of not being remembered at all after death seems natural, but if one is friendless and has nothing good, then we get no relief from being remembered well or even as blessed. If, on the other hand we have many friends and live well, then being remembered or not after we die, again, takes nothing from that.

On the other hand, if our friends die before we do, then we might as well mourn everyone who was and ever will be. After we’re all dead, there won’t be anyone to remember us. Therefore, the issue of being remembered (or reviled, for that matter) after one dies should not be a source of perturbances. Instead, one should worry about living well.

Live Well, Die Well

It is important to understand that living well and dying well are the same thing. Philodemus criticizes rich men who think they won’t get old and die, don’t even write a will (an act which indicates some level of coming to terms with our own end), and are perplexed to see an old king as if power and old age were mutually exclusive. He says that they are attached to life out of fear of death, not because they live pleasantly. One should live while one is alive, but peacefully and prudently accept one’s mortality and natural limits.

***

The above reasonings were inspired by Philodemus: On Death (Writings from the Greco-Roman World 29) (Greek and English Edition), by Philodemus and W. Benjamin Henry.

Further Reading:
Is it moral to respect the wishes of the dead, above the living?
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Twe et This

The Philodemus Series

I learned about the papyri from the villa at Herculaneum and their importance while doing research for my book, Tending the Epicurean Garden, where I dedicate a chapter to fiscal and spiritual autarchy, and delve a bit into the need for reinventing labor and retirement in our society now that machines are replacing us, and elsewhere discuss the complexities of Epicurean friendship. Two of Philodemus’ scrolls dealt with economy and frank speech, which got me thinking about what would be the ideal professions and means of making a living for an Epicurean philosopher living in contemporary society and with modern labor conditions. The following is the fruit of these reasonings:

On Philodemus’ Art of Property Management

Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Frank Criticism:

(Part I) The Role of Frankness in a Philosophy of Freedom and Friendship
(Part II) The Masters as Moral Models
(Part III) Against the Charlatans

The Reasonings about Philodemus’ On Piety conclude, as in the case of On Property Management, with seven general teachings related to Piety and with an invitation to an ecumenic conversation between theists and Epicureans. His work On Death is, in my view, the greatest and most useful masterpiece in the application of personal ethics.

(Part I) Against the Accusers
(Part II) Doctrine of Harm and Benefits of the Gods, Against the Theologians
(Part III) On the Purpose of Religion and On Whether It’s Natural and Necessary
(Part IV) Socrates and the Live Unknown Maxim; Against the Atheists; Conclusion

Reasonings about On Death

Other works:

Reasonings About On Methods of Inference

Reasonings About Rhetorica

On Philodemus’ Scroll 1005

Reasonings On Anger

Reasonings about On Arrogance

Reasonings About On the Stoics

Reasonings About On Music

Reasonings About The Poems

Reasonings About Philodemus’ On Choices and Avoidances:

(Part I) Doctrine of the Principal Things

(Part II) Imaginary Evils

(Part III) Against Existing Only to Die

In addition to Philodemus’ works, the Library at Herculaneum included works by others. The works at the library were charred when Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79, but fragments have been rescued and deciphered over the last few centuries and recent scientific breakthroughs give us hope that more content will soon be desciphered. It’s possible that this collection of Herculaneum scrolls may continue to expand in the future.

The following is based on Polystratus, who was the third Scholarch of the Athenian Garden. Two extant scrolls by him were found at Herculaneum. Here, he expounds a doctrine of hedonist moral realism, and argues that the cultivation of virtue without the study of nature–which we frequently see in many religions–is not profitable and degenerates into superstitious fear and arrogance.

Reasonings About Polystratus’ On Irrational Contempt

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