Epicureanism and the harm of death May 3, 2008
Posted by tpummer in Epicurus, Lucretius, Philosophy.Tags: Death
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Here are some of the more or less distinct arguments I have been able to identify:
1. The “death is nothing to us” argument from Letter to Menoeceus. “Get used to believing that death is nothing to us. For all good and bad consists in sense-experience, and death is the privation of sense-experience” (124). And “since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. Therefore, it is relevant neither to the living nor to the dead, since it does not affect the former, and the latter do not exist” (125).
- Death is annihilation.
- The living have not yet been annihilated (otherwise they wouldn’t be alive).
- Death does not affect the living. (from 1 and 2)
- So, death is not bad for the living. (from 3)
- For something to be bad for somebody, that person has to exist, at least.
- The dead do not exist. (from 1)
- Therefore, death is not bad for the dead. (from 5 and 6)
- Therefore death is bad for neither the living nor the dead. (from 4 and 7)
2. The arguments concerning the Epicurean indifference to the temporal duration of the good (e.g., PD 19, 20; elsewhere), can be connected to the claim that death is not a harm. There appears to be textual evidence that this connection was intended or appreciated, e.g., Letter to Menoeceus 126, De Rerum Natura 3.940-50, 3.1088-90, probably elsewhere. (Lucretius’ point that “we cannot deduct a single moment of the time of our death” seems kind of irrelevant to me, as I would not think of the aim as minimizing the time that one is dead [an infinite span of time], but rather increasing the amount of time one spends enjoying life).
Since what gets identified with the highest good cannot be increased with time, cutting one’s pleasure short (via death) cannot be construed as a deprivation of goods. And so even if we allow that depriving someone of a good constitutes a harm, this does not occur in death. However, as I’ve expressed before, this notion of indifference to temporal duration is very mysterious to me — even on the assumption that the good for Epicureans involves a state of aponia and ataraxia. Nowhere in the readings can I find a cogent argument for such temporal duration indifference. Being in a good state for a longer period of time seems (all else equal) better than being in a good state for a shorter period of time.
If temporal duration indifference about the good is justified, this would seem to support the conclusion that death is not a harm. However, it seems that it could do so in a rather straightforward manner. Roughly: since more life is not better, and since death involves no negative sense experience, death is not a harm (or a bad thing). But then this seems to make the “no subject of harm” considerations (mentioned in Letter to Menoeceus) superfluous.
3. Lucretius’ “symmetry argument”: “Look back now and consider how the bygone ages of eternity that elapsed before our birth were nothing to us. Here, then, is a mirror in which nature shows us the time to come after our death. Do you see anything fearful in it? Do you perceive anything grim? Does it not appear more peaceful than the deepest sleep?” (De Rerum Natura 3.972-6).
Now, this might be interpreted not as an argument for the conclusion that death is not a harm, but rather merely as remarks intended to ameliorate one’s fear of death. The latter seems to be a viable interpretation, and I would not have much (if anything) to say against Lucretius on this score. But if this passage was intended to be an argument about the harmlessness of death, it does not seem to be very persuasive.
The most I would see it doing on this score is reiterating Epicurus’ claim that good and bad must consist in some sense-experience. It does not address the commonsense idea that a deprivation of a good is a bad thing (independent of any negative sense experience associated with the deprivation).
If deprivation of good is generally a bad thing, then we might accept some kind of temporal symmetry — and claim both that it is bad that a good life will not continue indefinitely into the future and that it is bad that a good life did not begin indefinitely far into the past. If deprivation of a good is not generally a bad thing, but a bad thing when it deprives, e.g., an identifiable individual (as opposed to possible, indeterminate individuals) of goods, then we might accept a kind of temporal asymmetry — and claim that, for a particular individual living a good life, while it is a bad thing that her life will not continue indefinitely into the future, it does not make sense to think of it as a bad thing that she was not born earlier. There are various reasons for deciding between an asymmetric view versus a symmetric view (e.g., whether harms and benefits must affect identifiable individuals; whether harms and benefits are relative to existent desires, etc.). Asymmetric views tend to think it sensible to speak of the harm or badness of death, but not of the harm or badness of not ever having been brought into existence. (Also see Thomas Nagel’s paper “Death” in Mortal Questions; and Parfit discusses many of these sorts issues in Reasons and Persons).
4. If Epicureans lack a single, coherent argument to the conclusion that death is not a harm, then perhaps their multiple distinct arguments to this conclusion might be best explained by the pressing need to justify holding an anxiety-reducing belief (that death is not a harm). Without conclusive evidence that none of the Epicurean arguments establish the claim that death is not a harm, the below suggestion may seem uncharitable of me. However, perhaps the implicit reasoning of Epicureans went something like this: If we believe that death constitutes a harm (or a bad event) for us, then we will fear death. We should not fear death (as it causes unnecessary suffering). Therefore, we should not believe that death constitutes a harm for us. However, this line of reasoning would (at best) only support the conclusion that we should not believe that death is a harm for us, not that death is not (really) a harm for us.
Animus, anima, mens, et al. April 24, 2008
Posted by voidobsequy in Lucretius, Philosophy, Pleasure.Tags: Add new tag
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So, I looked over the Latin for the passage we briefly discussed at the end of the last class. This is III.135-145 or so. Briefly, our translation says that the mind and spirit form a substance. The ruler of the body is reason, called mind or intelligence.Later we hear that the rest of the soul is obedient to the will and mind.
Well, in Latin, we’ve got that the animus (mind/will/soul) and the anima (soul/breath/life) are fused in one natura (nature, not substance!) The ruler is the consilium (reason/judgement/will) which we call animus and mens (mind/intellect). The rest of the anima (same word as earlier!) is obedient to the numen (divine will/divine presence/god) and mens.
I’m just going by my abridged Oxford Latin dictionary here for the translations. So, two things jump out at me. First, where we have soul and spirit, the original just has anima. Second, natura is almost always best translated as nature, in my (well, pretty limited) experience. Substance fits the context, but it feels like a jump from the Latin.
A few other issues. I’m not totally clear on this, but I think “animus” is generally something like the mind and “anima” is generally something like an animating principal. Also, “consilium”, “animus” and “mens” all seem to identified with each other. Now, what to do with “numen”? Both our translation and the old Loeb give “will” for this, so maybe we should trust them. I’m just not that familiar with the term.
Brownian Motion April 24, 2008
Posted by voidobsequy in Epicurus, Lucretius, Philosophy.comments closed
This was something I wanted to draw attention to in class, just cause I thought it was neat. One of Lucretius’s arguments for the existence of atoms (II.125-142) seems to be the same as the argument in Einstein’s first published paper, which (as far as I know) used Brownian motion as evidence for the existence of atoms. That’s kick-ass. Of course, Einstein included detailed mathematical calculations and also included empirical verification of some of Boltzmann’s statistical mechanical predictions.
I think he also has the Stosszahlansatz at II.85.
-Nat
Receiving Images April 23, 2008
Posted by Mungovanlowe in Epicurus, Lucretius, Philosophy.comments closed
Epicureans think that we receive images (and other sense impressions) of things as result of thin films of the objects affecting our senses. The account of visual images is the most well-developed in Lucretius. He considers numerous purported counterexamples to the Epicurean theory and, I think, deals with many of them remarkably well. However, there appears to be some inconsistency between a few features of these films of atoms that provide us with visual images of objects.
In IV 177-216, Lucretius explains that the speed at which images travel is very fast. The idea, I take it, is mostly to explain the quickness of our visual cognition , but he also uses it explicitly to explain how the image of the heavens reflected in a lake can arrive at Earth and be visible despite the long distance it must travel (IV 210-215).
At IV 357, however, Lucretius gives an explanation of why images that travel from distant objects are fuzzier and more degraded. “The image loses its sharpness before it can deliver a blow to our eyes, because the images, during their long journey through the air, are constantly buffeted and so become blunted” (IV 357-360).
However, it seems like these two explanations are inconsistent. Images that must travel long distances will be degraded by various interfering particles (not to mention larger objects). But surely, very few images that we receive travel from as far as the heavens. Can Epicurus consistently claim that we can observe the heavens accurately, but that we cannot accurately observe, for example, a large oak tree that is just out of sight across a large flat field. Assuming that there are no solid objects to interfere with the film of atoms from the tree as it travels (at the speed of light) across the field, it seems we should be able to observe it easily.
I see one potential answer to this apparent inconsistency, but I don’t know if I should ascribe it to Lucretius and the Epicureans in general. Are there others? If so, are any better than the following?
The images that travel from the heavens just as matter of fact encounter less interference traveling through the ethereal realm than an image traveling across an long but unobstructed field. This isn’t crazy. And Lucretius would be sure to point out that the images from the heavens are obstructed by clouds. I think this claim would also demand a little more explanation of just what is buffeting the films of images in the case of the distant but unobstructed tree. Is it wind? Is it random particles?
Philosophy as therapy April 9, 2008
Posted by Don in Philosophy, Skepticism, Stoicism.comments closed
The image of philosophy as a form of therapy–a treatment for the sickness of the soul–is pervasive among the Hellenistic schools (Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics). Each school presents its own diagnosis of this sickness and its distinctive account of the remedy that philosophy provides. At the same time, the schools share a psychological reference point: the soul’s sickness manifests itself in our “disturbance,” our lack of a calm and steady mind. Accordingly, each of the schools is concerned with the way in which philosophy can be productive of a state of equanimity, tranquility and lack of disturbance (ataraxia)–goals that we have seen can be traced to Democritus.
In the debates among the schools, this shared concern with achieving a certain psychological outcome (“peace of mind”) can lead to a blurring of doctrinal differences. This is especially evident among later writers such as Seneca, who (as a Stoic) comes close to identifying the goal of philosophy with the attainment of this preferred mental state:
The Greeks call this stable state of the soul euthymia, on which there is an excellent book by Democritus; I call it tranquility…. What we are seeking, therefore, is how the soul may always pursue a steady and favorable course, may be well-disposed towards itself, and may view its condition with joy, and suffer no interruption of this joy, but may remain in a peaceful state, being never exalted nor dejected. This will be tranquility. (On the Tranquility of the Soul, 2.3-4)
On the basis of passages like this, one may be apt to think that the schools have identified a common problem (the soul’s “disturbance”) to which they propose competing solutions. But this, I believe, is a misleading way of representing their disagreement. Although the schools fix on what appears to be a single psychological state, they offer different analyses of the causes of our affective discomfort. Consequently, their real disagreement is about what this discomfort signifies, or what is wrong with the way in which we comport ourselves to the world. Here we find three very different accounts.
Cicero offers one of the most explicit statements of the therapeutic model in his Tusculan Disputations:
Assuredly there is an art of healing the soul [animi medicina]–I mean philosophy, whose aid must be sought not, as in bodily diseases, outside ourselves, and we must use our utmost endeavor, with all our resources and strength, to have the power to be ourselves our own physicians. (III.3)
Cicero presents this view from the perspective of the Stoics, for whom passions (pleasure, distress, lust, fear) are “diseases” of the soul that leave us discontent and incapable of happiness. Part of what is being picked out here is the unsatisfying affective condition we are in when we allow ourselves to be moved hither and thither by the passions. We are disturbed rather than calm; we do not feel right. Yet for the Stoics there is a deeper point at stake: when we live under the sway of the passions, we are incapable of happiness (eudaimonia), in the sense of a “successful life”–one that, objectively, goes as well as a human life can go. So, it is not just that we do not feel right: we are not right. Our soul is unhealthy (insanitas) rather than healthy (sanitas). We live in a condition of mindlessness (amentia), or “insanity” (dementia) (III.10)
For the Stoics, there is only one cure for what ails us: philosophy, whose goal is the production of that state of mind which finds us well-ordered with respect to our own constitution as rational beings and to the cosmos. And the only way to achieve this state is to know the truth–about the necessary order of nature, things to be pursued and avoided, and ultimately virtue and the good. The perfection of this state of knowing is wisdom.
Pyrrhonian skeptics offer the opposite treatment program. For them, the cause of our sickness and lack of tranquility is our vain conviction that we can know the true natures of things. We are full of opinions about how things really are, but these opinions are inevitably at odds with each other, and so we sway wildly from one belief to another, never at rest. Again, philosophy comes to the rescue. This time, however, the cure is to be shaken out of our dogmatism through the distinctive form of argument employed by the skeptic (the “modes”):
The skeptic, because he loves humanity, wishes to cure dogmatists of their opinions and rashness, with reasoning, so far as possible. So, just as doctors have remedies of different strengths for bodily ailments and for those suffering excessively employ the strong ones and for those suffering mildly the mild ones, so the skeptic puts forth arguments that differ in strength. (Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 3.280)
Both the Stoics and the Skeptics promise tranquility of mind, but they do so on the basis of opposing accounts of why we lack tranquility: either because we lack the knowledge that would right us to the world, or because we think that there is some such knowledge to be had. Deciding between the “remedies” offered by the two schools, therefore, cannot be compared to choosing one brand of cough syrup over another. It is not a case of one illness and two competing drugs; rather, we have two competing diagnoses of a symptom and two remedies to treat the (different) proposed underlying causes.
In my next post, I will extend this account to the position of Epicurus and consider some of the specific issues it raises.
