THE WORST CASE OF PHILOSOPHICAL MISCONSTRUCTION

(In the chronological sequence within the Significant Others section, this entry follows The Dogs Of Virtue,  devoted to the Greek Cynics, which was posted on this blog in two parts: on September 17/18, 2012.)

In all reputable histories of philosophy it is customary to place the Greek skeptics after the Greek cynics. I, however, am not writing another such history. My organizational principle for this section,-- as well as for the previous one-- is purely chronological, in the sense that if Epicurus’ date of birth precedes that of Zeno the Stoic and Timon the Skeptic, then Epicurus must come up first. Technical, but simple, and well suited for my particular purpose here. (For the formal record, Epicurus lived from 342 to 270 BC, and died, most probably of kidney stones, at the age of 72.)

Considering how badly the modern meaning of the word “cynic” has diverged from the Greek original, the linguistic incongruity in that case is horrible, but not as bad as in the case of the poor old sick philosopher Epicurus, which takes the cake as the worst case of philosophical misconstruction in history.

In the popular mind, Epicurus was a promoter of pleasure at all costs, a dissipate “epicure” (this word has entered all dictionaries to denote a discerning gourmet, a lover of sensual pleasures, and of luxury, hardly a man having anything to do with intellectual pursuits, and philosophy), and likewise. This is a sad injustice to his memory. Epicurus was, above all, a great philosopher. Our old friend W. T. Jones treats him as a pre-Socratic, adding him and Lucretius to Leucippus and Democritus in the long chapter on Atomism. Russell gives him a full long chapter in his History of Western Philosophy. Epicurus is one of the most interesting and profound philosophers to Schopenhauer, and, as for Nietzsche, the great genius chooses him as one of the eight great shadows he has descended into the underworld to communicate with… Nietzsche identifies him with great precision not as a hedonist, but an optimist, asking the following question: “Could it be that Epicurus was an optimist precisely because he suffered?”

He is, however, dissatisfied with Epicurus’ definition of happiness, that is the highest good, as “the absence of pain,” which for him is overly passive and philosophically negative (defined as the absence of evil). But this treatment of pain as the worst evil and an obstacle to all kinds of virtues, has attracted Schopenhauer the most to Epicurus’ teachings, and ipse facto proves both the great Greek’s philosophical originality and his considerable theoretical value.

Among other examples of Epicurus’ appreciation by all serious thinkers, is the fact that Karl Marx made a comparison of the Democritean and Epicurean philosophies of nature the subject of his doctoral thesis. As for Epicurus’ influence on John Locke and the founding fathers of the American Revolution, this is a well-known fact. Thomas Jefferson even considered himself an Epicurean, and wrote the following in his Letter to William Short, written in 1819: I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed!) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome left us.

In summary of his views, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by “ataraxia,” peace and freedom from fear, and “aponia,” the absence of pain, and by living a self-sufficient life, surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of the body and the soul, and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and, being an Atomist and follower of Democritus, he proposed that all events are of necessity based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

As we look at the Greek words ataraxia and aponia, it is easy to see what Nietzsche had in mind: they both contain the negative prefix a-. With regard to his teaching on the importance of friendship, it will be easy to see how a prejudiced mind can deliberately and maliciously misinterpret the following line on friendship as a hedonistic advice on how to throw a boisterous party: “We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.”

The present entry’s title’s question of gross misconstruction may have already been answered in part, that is without resorting to a lengthy discourse on philosophical Epicureanism which the reader may find in proper academic reference sources, but this is a relatively minor task. The bigger question is why such a deliberate misrepresentation has become possible in the first place.

One of the reasons for this historical travesty was competition from the Stoics, who saw Epicureanism as a threat to their own philosophy, and therefore tried (successfully, as we shall see) to misrepresent, and even foul-mouth Epicurus in any which way they could. The illustrious Epictetus, whom we shall talk about in a later entry, talks about Epicurus in his Discourses in the following, most unseemly manner: “This is the life of which you pronounce yourself worthy: eating, drinking, copulation, evacuation, and snoring.”

Epicurus was an unpretentious man living a simple life, and although he liked to dine in the company of his brothers, pupils, friends, women, and slaves (he was naturally egalitarian, and his relationships with women were always on a friendship basis), the meals usually consisted of bread and water. (Having cheese for dinner constituted an Epicurean feast!) As he wrote in an often cited letter, “I am thrilled with pleasure in the body when I live on bread and water, and I spit on luxurious pleasures not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow them… But send me some preserved cheese that when I like I may have a feast.”

The already incongruous prejudice against him, on the part of the Stoics, is further magnified in Christian literature. The Christian Church objected to Epicurus’ negative attitude toward religion and to his concept of death, plus, to his denial of the immortality of the soul. All of this is true, although Epicurus was not an atheist. But he saw religion and death as two major causes of fear, and wished to neutralize that fear in his teachings. There will be no punishment from the gods, either in this life (because the gods do not interfere in human lives) nor after death, because death means the end of all existence, and therefore the end of pain and suffering inherent in it.--- Death is nothing to us, he taught, for what is dissolved, is without sensation, and what lacks sensation is nothing to us. When his time to die had come, he called it this truly happy day of my life, as I am at the point of death.

From everything we know about him, Epicurus was a modest and honorable man. It is a pity that the great Dante, through no personal fault of his, but clearly influenced by the dominant opinion of the Church, put this noble-hearted poor sufferer in the flaming sixth circle of Hell reserved for unrepentant heretics. (If we can still remember, Diogenes was allotted a place in the harmless first circle!)

Epicurus’ most famous follower was the Roman poet Lucretius (99-55 BC), who, although not an original thinker himself, popularized Epicurus’ teachings in his poetic masterpiece De Rerum Natura. We will not have a special entry on Lucretius in this or any other section of the book, but he certainly deserves a highly honorable mention, both as a great poet and as the man thanks to whom we have learned much more about Epicurus and the philosophy of Atomism than we would have known otherwise, and such ignorance surely would have constituted a shameful gap in our historical memory of the sources of Western Civilization.