strolling through his garden. He died with dignity and courage after a protracted battle with a painful disease.
Epicureanism was grounded in the atomic theory of Democritus, but, in fact, Epicurus, like all post-Alexandrian philosophers, does not seem to have been really interested in science but in finding out about the good life. However, since Aristotle’s time, the
notion of the “good life” had suffered a setback. It no longer made sense to advocate being active, influential, political, and responsible as a way of self-improvement. Reality seemed to be unmoved by personal initiative, and the individual developed a feeling of power- lessness as he or she was about to be absorbed into the massive, impersonal bureaucracy of the Roman Empire. Like Aristotle, Epi- curus believed that the goal of life was happiness, but happiness he equated simply with pleasure. No act should be undertaken except for the pleasure in which it results, and no act should be rejected except for the pain that it produces. This belief provoked Epicurus to analyze the different kinds of pleasure. There are two kinds of desires, hence, two kinds of pleasure as a result of gratifying those desires: natural desire (which has two subclasses) and vain desire:
I. Natural desire
A. Necessary (e.g., desire for food and sleep) B. Unnecessary (e.g., desire for sex)
II. Vain desire (e.g., desire for decorative clothing or exotic food)
Natural necessary desires must be satisfied and are usually
easy to satisfy. They result in a good deal of pleasure and in very
few painful consequences. Vain desires do not need to be sat-
isfied and are not easy to sat- isfy. Because there are no nat- ural limits to them, they tend to become obsessive and lead to very painful consequences.
The desire for sex is nat- ural but usually can be overcome; and when it can be, it should be, because satisfaction of the sexual drive gives intense plea- sure, and all intense emotional states are dangerous. Also, the desire for sex puts people in relationships that are usually ultimately more painful than pleasant and
that are often extremely painful.
One of the natural and necessary desires to which Epicurus pays a great deal of attention is the desire for repose. This term is to be understood both physically and psychically. The truly good person (i.e., the one who experiences the most plea- sure) is the one who, having overcome all unnecessary desires, gratifies necessary desires in the most moderate
Epicureanism ◆ 93
More, more, more
way possible, leaves plenty of time for physical and mental repose, and is free from worry.
Notice that Epicu- rus’s definition of plea- sure is negative; that is, pleasure is the absence of pain. It is this negative definition that prevents Epicurus from falling into a crass sensualism. The trouble with this defini- tion is that, taken to its logical extremity, the absence of life is better
than any life at all (a conclusion Freud also came to in his text Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where he claimed that behind the “pleasure principle” is Thanatos, the death instinct).
This deduction is a bit ironic because Epicurus himself claimed that his phi- losophy dispelled the fear of death. Democritus’s atom- ism led Epicurus to believe that death was merely the absence of sensation and consciousness; therefore, there could be no sensation or consciousness of death to fear. “So long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist.”1
Cashier,
do you mind!!
Sshh!
She’s
reposing!
Some of Epicurus’s Roman followers interpreted “pleasure” quite differently, defining it as a positive titillation. It is because of these extremists that today Epicureanism is often associated with sensu- alistic hedonism. Sickly Epicurus, swinging in his hammock, would have disapproved. (Though not too harshly. Polemics cause agitation, which is painful.) Epicurus’s theory never constituted a major philo- sophical movement, but he had disciples in both Greece and Rome for a number of centuries. His most famous follower was the Roman Lucretius, who, in the first century B.C.E., wrote a long poem, On the Nature of Things, expounding the philosophy of his master. It is through Lucretius’s poem that many readers have been introduced to the thoughts of Epicurus.
Stoicism
Stoicism was another important Hellenistic philosophy that was transported to Rome. Stoicism was founded in Greece by Zeno of Cyprus (334–262 B.C.E.), who used to preach to his students from a portico, or stoa (hence the term “stoicism,” literally, “porchism”). Like
Stoicism ◆ 95
Epicureanism, stoicism had its roots in pre-Socratic materialism, but stoicism too, especially in its Roman form, became less inter- ested in physics and more particularly concerned with the problem of human conduct. The three most interesting of the Roman stoics were Seneca (4–65 C.E.), a dramatist and high-ranking statesman;
Epictetus (late first century C.E.), a slave who earned his freedom; and Marcus Aurelius (121–180 C.E.), a Roman emperor. (It’s quite striking that a slave and an emperor could share the same philoso- phy of resignation, though probably this philosophy was easier for the
emperor than for the slave!) The stoics accepted the Socratic equa- tion that virtue equals knowledge. There exists a cognitive state that, once achieved, expresses itself as a disposition to behave in a certain dispassionate manner, and in turn it guarantees complete well-being. One should strive throughout one’s life to acquire this wis- dom. Human excellence is attained instantaneously once one has gained the enlightenment.
The duration of such a life of perfection is indifferent (which fact leads to the stoic advocacy of suicide under certain circumstances). To achieve this state of blessedness, one must free oneself from all worldly demands, particularly those of the emotions and of pleasure seeking. The stoic wise person is an ascete who has transcended the passions that create a disorderly condition in the soul. The stoic has no interest in all those objects that in normal human beings excite the passions of grief, joy, hope, or fear.
I’m resigned to my fate.
Yes (sigh!). I too.
What is the content of stoic wisdom? It is similar to the Aristotelian
notion that the good consists of acting in accordance with one’s nature. The stoic addi- tion to this idea is that to so act requires acting in accordance with nature
itself, that is, with the totality of reality (which the stoics take to be divine). Considered as a whole, reality is perfect. Humans will also become perfect if they learn to live in accordance with the divine plan of reality. This accomplishment requires that one make one’s desires identical with the overall providential plan for the universe. In fact, a person can do nothing but conform to the grand design, and stoic wisdom consists in recognizing this truth. Fools are those who try to impose their own selfish desires on reality. This attempt results in unhappiness and unfreedom. If freedom is the unity of will and ability (i.e., being able to do
what one wants), then the only way to be free is to want what the universe wants. We shouldn’t wish that we could get what we de- sire; rather, we should desire what we get. If we could learn to equate what we want with what’s the case, then we would always
Stoicism ◆ 97 Just what I wanted! To
be robbed while fixing a flat in a rainstorm.
Don’t Try to Get What You Want— Rather, Want What You Get
THE PEAK OF WISDOM
be free and happy, because we’d always get just what we want. This is stoic wisdom.
The stoics real- ized that if one ever achieved this lofty state, the apparent harshness of reality might jeopardize one’s inner equilibrium, and one might backslide into pain and anxiety. For this reason, and because the stoics believed that the amount of time one spent in the enlightened state was indiffer- ent, the stoics advocated suicide in certain circumstances. If ex- treme conditions forced themselves upon one and if one realized that these conditions would destabilize the equilibrium of one’s stoic soul and plunge one into unacceptable emotional agitation, one had every right to escape those conditions through suicide. Epictetus said of suicide, “If the smoke is moderate I will stay: if excessive, I go out. . . . The door is always open.”2Marcus Aurelius used identical imagery: “The house is smoky, and I quit it.”3Seneca said, “If [the wise man] encounters many vexations which disturb his tranquillity, he will release himself. . . . To die well is to escape the danger of living ill.”4 In fact, on the advice of the emperor Nero, Seneca did step into the bath and open his veins.
During the period when stoicism was exercising its greatest influence, a new social and religious form of thought was coming to the fore: Christianity. Although Christians were still a minority in the Empire, their religion had found an ever-growing number of adherents because its promises resonated with the needs of people at all levels of society. It bestowed meaning on even the most wearisome features of life; it offered a direct and personal connection to divinity through
THIS WAY DOWN
the person of Jesus, the son of a carpenter; its communal basis offered an identity that was much more concrete than that obtained by mere residence in the Roman Empire; and it offered salvation and eternal life. Although the Christians had not learned to defend their new religion with a systematic philosophy as they would in the Middle Ages, their doctrine was in competition with the philosophies of the day for the hearts and minds of men and women. All such thought systems were responding to the same problems, so it is no surprise that there are some similarities between Christianity and a philoso- phy like stoicism; for example, both philosophies share the doctrine of resignation, the disdain for attachment to earthly things, and the concern with conforming to the will of divine Providence. The dif- ferences cannot be overlooked, however, such as the discrepancy between stoic and Christian teachings on suicide. Whereas the stoic believed that suicide was justified to prevent oneself from going against the divine plan of the world, Christians believed that the act of suicide was prohibited by that same divine plan. Also, stoicism was inclined to be quietistic and acquiescent to political authority, whereas in its inception Christianity tended to be activistic and
resistant to political domination. Epictetus said, “Refuse altogether to take an oath,
if it is possible; if it is not, refuse as far as you are
able.”5This attitude contrasts greatly
with that of many Christians who refused to swear an oath on the divinity of the emperor and were martyred for that refusal.
Neoplatonism
After the death of the stoic Marcus Aurelius (“the last good emperor”), a long period of upheaval and disorder ensued. The help- lessness that people felt in the face of the decadence of the crum- bling empire was responded to by a religious revival. The most promi- nent philosophical religious competitor with Christianity during the third century C.E. was a mystical form of Platonism known today as Neoplatonism, espoused by Plotinus (204–270). We have already seen a deep-seated propensity toward other-worldliness in Plato, which Aristotle had criticized. Plato’s claim of superiority for the other world fit in well with
the world-weariness of the third century.
For Plotinus, as for Plato before him, absolute truth and certainty can- not be found in this world. Plato had taught a purely rational method for tran- scending the flux of the world and achieving truth and certainty, but Plotinus preached that such a vision can only be achieved extra-rationally, through a kind of ecstatic union with the One. The One was for Plotinus the Absolute, or God. Nothing can be truly
known about the One in any rational sense, nor can any characteriza- tion of the One be strictly correct. If we review Plato’s Simile of the Line from a Plotinian perspective, we see that language, and therefore thought, functions by drawing distinctions (we say “this is a pen,”
meaning it is not the desk). But in the One, no distinctions exist; hence, nothing can be thought or said about it. A person can know the One only by uniting with it. That union can be achieved in this life in moments of mystical rapture, but in the long run the goal can only be achieved in death.
One can prepare for the ultimate union through an ascetic pro- gram of virtuous living. Plotinus’s own version of the Line is based on his idea that God, or the Absolute, does not perform acts of creation (that would sully God’s unchangeableness); rather, God “emanates.” That is, God is reflected onto lower planes, and these reflections rep- resent kinds of imitations of God’s perfection in descending degrees of fragmentation. (What we have
here is a kind of “gooey” Simile of the Line.) This metaphysics bor- ders on pantheism—the view that reality and God are the same.
Because the philosophy of Plotinus and his followers was the last philosophy of the classical period, his version of Platonism was the one that was
Neoplatonism ◆ 101 Physical World Intelligible World Ultimate Reality Concepts Particulars Images
Beyond
Language
and
Thought
The Domain
of
Language
and
Thought
The
Absolute
Intellect
Soul
Matter
First Emanation Second Emanation Third Emanationhanded down to the medieval world. Because of this fact, we will see that the problem of pantheism cropped up again in the Middle Ages, this time to haunt not the death scene of classicism but the birth scene of Christian philosophy. When the early Christian thinkers faced the task of unifying and systematizing the Christian worldview, they turned to the prevailing Platonic metaphysical scheme as a frame- work, and the Platonism they found was already heavily influenced by Plotinus’s thought.
Topics for Consideration
1. Show why Epicurus’s decision to define pleasure negatively (in terms of a lack of agitation) produces a very different philosophy from the Roman version of Epicureanism based on a positive definition of pleasure (in terms of the experience of titillation).
2. It is often believed that desires for food and sex are based on natural (i.e., biological) needs. Epicurus too calls them “natural” but claims that the fulfillment of the desire for food is “necessary,” while the fulfillment of the desire for sex is “unnecessary.” Explain what he means; explain what effect acting on his philosophy would have on one’s life.
3. Write a short essay defending or attacking the view that repose is a key element of the “good life.”
4. Are you convinced that both an emperor and a slave could follow the principles of stoicism? Explain your position.
5. Stoic philosophers claimed that we are happy only if we are free. What did they mean by “happiness” and “freedom”? Why, if freedom is such an important virtue, did they not agonize over choices that faced them? 6. Compare and contrast stoicism with Epicureanism as practiced by
Epicurus, and then again with the later followers of Epicurus in Rome. 7. Compare and contrast Plato’s version of the Simile of the Line (in Chap-
ter 2) with Plotinus’s version of it.
Notes
1. Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus,” trans. C. Bailey, in The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius, ed. Whitney J. Oats (New York: Modern Library, 1940), 31.
2. Epictetus, “Discourses of Epictetus,” trans. P. E. Matheson, in The Stoic and Epi- curean Philosophers, 267.
3. Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations,” trans. G. Long, in The Stoic and Epicurean Philoso- phers, 523.
4. Seneca, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, ed. and trans. Moses Hadas (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1958), 202–3.
5. Epictetus, “The Encheiridion,” in The Discourses of Epictetus, ed. and trans. George Land (Mount Vernon, Va.: Peter Pauper Press, n.d.), 22.
All three of the main Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—had their birth in the land that was home to the ancient Mediterranean desert cultures, in today’s Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. By the beginning of the period now known as the Middle Ages, Islam had not yet appeared on the scene (I will speak more of Islam shortly), and Christianity was barely 400 years old. But the main books
of the Hebrew Bible on which Judaism was based already dated back 1,200 years.
Judaism itself developed out of earlier, tribal poly- theistic religions from which Judaism distin- guished itself when it proclaimed that there was but one God, Jeho- vah, who had chosen the natives of ancient Judea—the Jews—with whom to establish a