Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 056 - Am I Bothered - Epicurean Ethics.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust, online at www.historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode, Am I Bothered? Epicurean Ethics. Cynics, Stoics, skeptics, and Epicureans. We all talk about them, whether or not we are interested in the history of philosophy. The names have entered into our everyday language. A politician can cynically manipulate an election result, then show Stoic resolve when he loses anyway, because he was skeptical about whether he'd enjoy holding office. If he'd rather enjoy the good things in life, in particular, fine food and drink, then we might describe him as an Epicurean. For us, an Epicurean is not just someone who enjoys pleasure, after all, who doesn't, but someone who has refined taste in their pleasures. Epicurus, though, would have been surprised to discover his name being associated with the life of a gourmet. He encourages us to be ready to enjoy the simple delights of plain bread and water. Clearly, the modern use of the word Epicureanism is not the best guide to the philosophy of Epicurus. His philosophy certainly did not center around the search for refined pleasure. Yet it's true enough that he was a hedonist. This is another word that might confuse us. It comes from the ancient Greek word for pleasure, hedonē. Nowadays, we use hedonist to refer to someone who is unrestrained in their pursuit of pleasure. But although Epicurus was a hedonist, he certainly did not recommend the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure. Rather, he was a hedonist in the sense of someone who believes that pleasure is the good, the sole criterion we should use in determining the right way to live, the right choices to make, the right actions to perform. As we navigate our way through life, pleasure is the only star we need to steer by. But this does not imply lack of restraint or a thoughtless embrace of every pleasure that comes our way. On the contrary, Epicurus teaches that the most pleasant life is a life of moderation, discipline, and careful planning. In this, Epicureanism makes a contrast with the Cyrenaic teaching of Aristippus the Younger. The Epicureans and Cyrenaics shared a commitment to hedonism, so of course they were bitter rivals. There's nothing worse than an opponent who is uncomfortably close to agreeing with you. As we saw two episodes ago, the Cyrenaics valued only present pleasures. By contrast, Epicurus thinks that the memory of past pleasure and anticipation of future pleasure can make the wise man happy even when he is undergoing extreme pain. There is no more vivid example than Epicurus himself. We know of a letter he wrote to a friend from his deathbed as he is suffering agonizing pain from the illness that killed him. He writes that this is the happiest day of his life because he thinks back on pleasant conversations he has had in the past with his friend. Now, I know what you're thinking, this sounds too good to be true. But it is nothing less than what Epicurus would expect of himself and of us. His ethical teaching is not just a theory, it is a proposed way of life which is intended to make us all but invulnerable to changes of circumstance. The goal of his philosophy is to show us how we can avoid disturbance even in the face of, say, an excruciating illness. As you might remember, this was the objective of the Cynics and Cyrenaics as well, the sort of self-sufficiency that would make us all but invulnerable to turns of fortune. We'll see in due course that the same goal motivated Stoic ethics. Even skeptics claimed that their agnostic philosophy led to ataraxia, or lack of disturbance. But if this is the common destination, the Hellenistic schools travel different roads to get there. For the Epicureans, the recommended path was to memorize and internalize a teaching that maximized pleasure over a whole life rather than at the present moment. On his deathbed, Epicurus showed how a thorough training in these precepts could allow him to overcome even great physical torment. This was a possibility the Cyrenaics denied, on the basis that present physical pain would be far stronger than any memory or hope. Perhaps as Epicurus lay dying, he allowed himself to take a bit of added pleasure in proving his opponents wrong once and for all. Of course, invulnerability like this doesn't come cheap. It requires discipline, and Epicureans would claim to be more disciplined than their fellow hedonists, the Cyrenaics. Aristippus and the other Cyrenaics demand of us that we be satisfied with whatever pleasure we feel right now. The main strategy they offer for the future is imagining possible sufferings before we undergo them so that we can steel ourselves against them. The Epicureans dismissed this as ineffective, and offered more demanding instructions for how to be happy over a whole life. We are not just trying to enjoy our current situation, like the Cyrenaics. This means we should often forego a current pleasure because of the pain it will bring later. Obvious examples include overeating and getting drunk. These might be fun here and now. In fact, let's face it, they are fun here and now. But we will regret it later when we have stomach aches and hangovers. Epicurus also cautions us against indulging in sex, at least in part because however pleasant sex might be, having children leads to more than enough worry and trouble to overwhelm that initial pleasure. The hedonistic calculation favors chastity over family life, as far as Epicurus is concerned. For the same reason, Epicureans avoided engagement in day-to-day political life when possible because the anxiety involved would outweigh the pleasure politics can provide. Of course, these same Epicureans might be willing to seek office to prevent personal disruption and worry. If the city of Athens had suddenly tried to evict Epicurus and his friends from their garden, they would presumably have been willing to confront this threat in the political arena. But in general, politics is a fool's game, being a source of anxiety rather than pleasure. It may seem to offer great pleasure. The successful politician may be acclaimed by the crowd or see statues raised in his honor and get pleasure as a result. But the Epicureans discourage us from pursuing such pleasures, labeling them as unnatural. Unnatural pleasures are poisoned chalices, guaranteed to yield more pain than pleasure in the long run. Instead, Epicurus tells us, we should look to nature itself to learn which pleasures are worth pursuing. This is another point of agreement with the cynics and Cyrenaics. In fact, in a work comparing the various Hellenistic schools, Cicero tells us that Epicurus deployed an argument also used by the Cyrenaics in support of hedonism. According to this argument, even animals and children seek pleasant feelings. This instinct is so deeply rooted in our nature that we cannot conceive of any good apart from pleasant feeling. Epicurus can improve on the Cyrenaics' use of this argument in light of his epistemology. As we saw last time, he sees sensation as the measuring stick of all belief. So, he declares that there is no need to argue for the goodness of pleasure. Any creature endowed with sensation, the capacity to have feelings, will seek out pleasure. The example of small children and animals is intended to illustrate this point, that nature itself calls us to identify pleasure with the good. But nature does not call us to seek statues or cheering crowds, the way it tells us to eat when we are hungry, to drink when we are thirsty. It is only these natural desires that we ought to satisfy. Fulfilling natural desires and being satisfied with that degree of fulfillment is the surest road to lack of disturbance. As Epicurus says, again echoing cynic and Cyrenaic ideas, natural pleasure is easy to obtain since it is always ready to hand. Furthermore, these pleasures can be as intense as any others. When we are genuinely in need of food and drink, plain bread and water are so thoroughly enjoyable that nothing could improve upon them. Epicurus' praise of natural and necessary pleasures, the pleasures we really need if we are to avoid pain, has led many to believe that he is that most paradoxical of philosophers, an ascetic hedonist. In his letter on ethics, written to a friend named Menoichias, Epicurus memorably says that when he encourages us to pursue pleasure, he does not mean the pleasure of boys, women, and fish, that is pederasty, sex, and fine food. Such passages encourage the idea that Epicurus wants us to avoid luxurious pleasures at all costs, steering clear of anything nicer than the most basic necessities. After all, he might say, luxury is always going to be more trouble than it's worth. But this seems wrong. Epicurus is not Diogenes the Cynic, after all. He is deeply convinced that pleasure is good, indeed the good. It would be inconsistent for him to avoid a pleasure if he could have it without incurring a pain that would outweigh that pleasure. A preferable interpretation to my mind is that Epicurus wants us to train ourselves to be happy with a moderate, even minimal, array of pleasures. We need to be ready to live happily on bread and water, in case circumstances offer us nothing more. Furthermore, we should not undergo great stress or exert ourselves painfully to get luxuries. That would be counterproductive. Nonetheless, the Epicurean will still enjoy luxuries if they come along and are easy to procure. On this point, I agree with my colleague Raefel Wolf, who wrote an article on this question and offered an illuminating example, which I'm now going to steal. If an Epicurean were getting on a plane, and the airline offered to bump him up to first class, would he accept? The answer is yes. First class is more pleasant than economy, and in this case, will cost him nothing in terms of worry or pain. The only exception would be if the Epicurean knew that it would pain him on future flights to sit in economy, having tasted the delights of first class. But a well-trained Epicurean would not have this problem, since he has many times rehearsed the teachings which remind him that natural and necessary pleasure is enough. So, a critic of Epicurus will need to do better than just insult him for being a debauched and mindless pleasure seeker. To that accusation, Epicurus will say, I believe you have Aristippus the Younger in mind. My hedonism is thoughtful, and requires me to resist pleasure just as often as I partake in it. Can the critic do better? He can if he has read his Plato. In several dialogues, including The Republic, Plato has his characters mount an anti-hedonistic argument that goes something like this. Imagine that you're thirsty. This clearly is painful, which we can agree is a bad thing. Fortunately, there's a solution. Go drink something. Drinking is pleasant, precisely because it restores the body to its balanced state. But as soon as the painful condition of thirst is gone, so is the pleasure. It's not nice to keep drinking when you aren't thirsty anymore. If all pleasure is like this, the hedonist is in trouble. The best we can do is break even with the pain of thirst being balanced out by the pleasure of drinking. When we are done experiencing pain, the pleasure will be gone too, and soon enough the pain will start anew as we grow thirsty again. So, a life devoted to this sort of pleasure is doomed to failure, because you can never come out ahead, like someone who can't save money because they only earn enough to pay off the debts they are constantly accruing. In The Gorgias, Plato memorably compares someone in this situation to a man continually trying to fill a leaky jar. Epicurus answers this critique of the hedonist life, but in doing so he is forced to make his most controversial and least convincing ethical claim. Firstly, he thinks that when I am having pleasure, that precludes feeling pain, so I am not still pained by thirst as I am drinking. This isn't enough though, if it turns out that every pleasure I have is balanced out by a prior or future pain. What he needs to do is show that I can do better than break even. Here comes the controversial part. Epicurus claims that when I am no longer in pain, that will in itself constitute the greatest possible pleasure. As he says in one of the pithy remarks he offered for his students' self-training, the cry of the flesh is to be neither hungry nor thirsty nor cold. Someone who is without these and expects to be free of them in the future rivals the god Zeus for happiness. Later authors tell us that Epicurus developed some newfangled terminology in explaining this idea. The terms don't appear in his extant works, but Epicurus did have a fondness for coining technical expressions, and they are well attested in our sources. He distinguished, we are told, between two kinds of pleasure, kinetic and static. The difference is that a kinetic pleasure involves some kind of change or process. The word kinetic comes from the Greek kinesis, which means motion or change. A static pleasure, by contrast, is stable and does not involve any process of transition. Paradigmatic examples of kinetic pleasures would be things like eating, drinking, and sex. These are, of course, the pleasures considered in Plato's anti-hedonistic argument. Epicurus outflanks Plato by insisting that the state in which pain has been eliminated is not merely neutral, a brief and bland respite before the next round of pain and kinetic pleasure begin. Instead, this pain-free state is pleasant, indeed so pleasant that nothing could improve upon it. This does answer Plato and significantly fleshes out our picture of the ideal Epicurean life. It is a life of moderation, intended to minimize the fluctuations of pain and kinetic pleasure, and to maximize the time we spend in the serene, static pleasure that comes with the elimination of all suffering. This helps explain why we should only value natural and necessary pleasures. If we allow the absence of fine dining or honour to upset us, even slightly, we risk missing out on the supreme pleasure that is lack of pain. It also enables Epicurus to combine his two preferred answers to the question of what constitutes the happy life. On the one hand, there is pleasure. On the other, there is ataraxia, the lack of disturbance. It turns out, on his theory of static pleasure, that these are actually one and the same, since lack of pain and disturbance just is static pleasure, the best pleasure there is. This is a brilliant move on Epicurus's part. Unfortunately, it is at best controversial and at worst wildly implausible. Later critics such as Cicero scornfully reject the claim that the mere absence of pain is the best pleasure we can have. To some extent, this comes down to a clash of differing intuitions. Plato assumes that the absence of pain is compatible with the absence of pleasure, and that someone who is merely free of pain may feel nothing at all, whether good or bad. By contrast, Epicurus thinks the same state would be one of utter bliss. He does, however, make sure to head off one possible objection. An opponent might say that even someone who is free of pain would have reason to seek out additional kinetic pleasure. For instance, if I am in this blissful state and someone offers me an almond croissant, I may well say yes, even without being hungry just because they taste good. Epicurus doesn't deny this, but insists that when I eat the croissant, I am not actually making my life more pleasant, I am simply adding variety. Someone who managed to go through life without pain, but without almond croissants, would still be as happy as Zeus. But as we saw with luxuries in general, I might have reason to eat the almond croissant even if it doesn't increase my share of happiness. From what I've said so far, you might think that the right lifestyle for the Epicurean would be one of isolated moderation, minimizing contact with other people and their projects. We already saw that family life is a potential source of disturbance. But what about these friends who were the recipients of Epicurus' letters? Okay, one of his letters was to his mother, and he was pretty much stuck with her, and vice versa. Fortunately for him, his advice to avoid having children came too late to help her. But what about the other friends and those who spent time with Epicurus in his garden? Aren't such engagements a potential source of pain, to be avoided at all costs? Far from it. Epicurus in fact claims that there is quite literally nothing that can safeguard our happiness so well as friendship. For one thing, friendship and companionable conversation is itself one of the greatest pleasures we can have. It's no accident that it was a memory of this kind of pleasure that consoled Epicurus on his deathbed. Also, Epicurus realizes that even someone who is neither hungry nor thirsty nor cold might still worry about where their next meal is coming from, or how they will stay warm when winter comes. Remember, to attain a life like that of Zeus, we also need to expect that we will avoid pain in the future, the reverse of the Cyrenaic idea of rehearsing the likelihood of future suffering. Friends are the greatest boon we can have in this respect, the ultimate insurance policy. Friends do each other good, and know that they can call upon each other for help in the future. If I have many friends, I know I will never need to go hungry, because if it comes to it, I can get a meal at a friend's house. Thus, friendship, says Epicurus, has its roots in mutual benefit. This means not so much the actual benefits we give one another, as our confidence that more benefit is available later on if we need it. So friendship is, on two counts, crucial for the happy life. It is itself a great source of pleasure, and it helps protect us against disturbance, including the disturbance of worrying about tomorrow. This seems to make Epicurus vulnerable to an objection I raised when looking at Aristotle's theory of friendship. Shouldn't we value our friends for a reason other than our own happiness? Epicurus has made it sound like my friends are mere instruments for avoiding disturbance. He might be able to explain why I would undergo pains for the sake of friends, in order to build up mutual confidence of future beneficial behaviour, but this all ultimately boils down to I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. It looks to be a depressingly selfish view of friendship. Some interpreters find grounds for optimism though. They suggest that there is a two-level strategy here. In general, I want to have friends because it benefits me, but in order to achieve that, I must genuinely cherish some individual people as friends. All well and good, you might say, but ultimately there is at least one threat that no friends and no amount of moderate living can protect me from. No matter how much you are enjoying this episode of the podcast, your enjoyment is diminished by the knowledge that it will end soon. And so it is with life. I can never truly be free of anxiety and disturbance, because I am going to die someday. This, you might think, is the real problem with not being Zeus. He gets to be immortal, and we don't. And speaking of Zeus, shouldn't I also worry that the gods might inflict all kinds of torment on me in the afterlife? If you thought all that hunger and thirst was bad, wait until you get to Tartarus. If you're not worried about this, then you need to listen back to the episode about Plato's myths. As usual, though, Epicurus is way ahead of us. He has detailed arguments for why we should fear neither death nor the gods. I fear, however, that if you want to hear those arguments, you'll have to join me next time, on The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.