That understanding of courage [of First Nations tribes of the Great Plains] was itself almost utterly alien to, for instance, the classical Greeks. While Greek notions of military excellence had their roots in Homer (on this, see J.E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity (2005)) and an ethic of individual combat where honor was gained by killing notable enemies, by the fifth century this had been replaced by an ethic almost entirely focused on holding position in a formation. As Tyrtaeus, a Spartan poet, writes (trans. M.L. West):
I would not rate a man worth mention or account
either for speed of foot or wrestling skill,
not even if he had a Cyclops’ size and strength
or could outrun the fierce north wind of Thrace;
I would not care if he surpassed Tithonus’ looks,
or Cinyras’ or Midas’ famous wealth,
or were more royal than Pelops son of Tantalus,
or had Adrastus’ smooth persuasive tongue,
or fame for everything save only valour: no,
no man’s of high regard in time of war
unless he can endure the sight of blood and death,
and stand close to the enemy and fight.
This is the highest worth, the finest human prize
and fairest for a bold young man to win.
It benefits the whole community and state,
when with a firm stance in the foremost rank
a man bides steadfast, with no thought of shameful flight,
laying his life and stout heart on the line,
and standing by the next man speaks encouragement
This is the man of worth in time of war.This is not a daring courage, but a stoic (in the general sense) courage – the courage of standing a place in the line. And note for Tyrtaeus, that courage is more important than skill, or strength or speed; it matters not how well he fights, only that he “bides steadfast” “with a firm stance”. There is no place for individual exploits here. Indeed, when Aristodemus (another Spartan), eager to regain his honor lost by having survived the Battle of Thermopylae, recklessly charged out of the phalanx to meet the Persian advance at the Battle of Plataea, Herodotus pointedly notes that he was not given the award for bravery by the Spartans who instead recognized those who had held their place in line (Hdt. 9.71; Herodotus does not entirely concur with the Spartan judgement).
This was a form of courage that was evolving alongside the hoplite phalanx, where either shameful retreat or a reckless charge exposed one’s comrades to danger by removing a shield from the line. While, as Lendon is quick to note, there was still a very important aspect of personal competition (seeking to show that you, personally, had more bravery to hold your position than others), this is a fundamentally collective, not individual style of combat and it has values and virtues to match. Indeed, the Greeks frequently disparaged the fighting style of “barbarians” who would advance bravely but retreat quickly as cowardly.
And so the man who holds his place in the group and does not advance recklessly is the bravest of Greeks, but among the Crow Native Americans would seem a coward, while the bravest Crow who cleverly and daringly attacked, raided and got away before the enemy could respond would in turn be regarded by the Greeks as a reckless coward, unworthy of honor. These notions of courage aren’t merely different, they are diametrically opposed demanding entirely different actions in analogous circumstances!
The translator will call both of these ideas “courage”, but clearly when one gets down to it, they demand very different things. And these are just two examples. As Lendon notes (op. cit.), the virtus of the Roman was not the same as the andreia of the Greek, though both words might well be translated as “courage” or “valor” (and both words, etymologically mean “manliness”, lest we forget that these are very gender-stratified societies). Roman virtus was often expressed in taking individual initiative, but always restrained by Roman disciplina (discipline), making that system of military values still different from either the Crow or the Greek system.
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: The Universal Warrior, Part IIa: The Many Faces of Battle”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2021-02-05.
August 11, 2024
QotD: Greek and Roman notions of courage
April 21, 2024
Publius Rutilius Rufus, an honest man in a dishonest era
Lawrence W. Reed discusses the life and career of Publius Rutilius Rufus, Roman consul and historian, who suffered the revenge of corrupt tax farmers (publicani) after attempting to protect taxpayers from extortion in the province of Asia:
In the last decades of the Roman Republic, as its liberties crumbled and the dictatorship of the subsequent Empire loomed, honesty decayed with each successive generation—an omen we should think long and hard about today. Among the lessons of the Roman experience is this: Liberty is ultimately incompatible with widespread indifference to truth. A society of liars succumbs to the tyrant who brings “order” to its chaos and corruption.
In a book I strongly recommend, The Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius, authors Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman tell us about a man named Publius Rutilius Rufus (158 B.C.-78 B.C.). They regard him as “the last honest man” of the dying Republic. Though that description surely contains ample hyperbole to emphasize a point, Rufus’s exceptional honesty was indeed notable in his day because it was no longer the rule in a decadent age. As Mark Twain would note many centuries later, “an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere”.
Rufus, the great-uncle of Julius Caesar (his sister Rutilia was Caesar’s maternal grandmother), built an illustrious career in the Roman military. Those under his command were known as “the best trained, the most disciplined, and the bravest” of the legions. He garnered enormous respect because of his Stoic virtues — courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice. In 105 B.C., he served in the highest political post in the Republic, the consulship. He was incorruptible, which meant he was a target of those who weren’t.
It had become a common practice in the late Republic for the government to hire private contractors to collect taxes. These “publicani” often extorted more from their victims than the taxes required because that’s the way the contracts were written. The government didn’t care what the publicani kept for themselves if it got its expected revenues. When Rufus attempted to stop the injustices this arrangement created, the publicani and their allies in the Roman Senate fought back. They arranged a sham trial with a pre-ordained verdict and charged Rufus with the very thing of which they themselves were guilty: extortion and corruption.
Historian Tom Holland in Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic writes that Rufus’s conviction was “the most notorious scandal in Roman legal history” and “an object lesson in how dangerous it could be to uphold ancient values against the predatory greed of corrupt officials”. With utterly no evidence and all credible testimony to the contrary, the accusers claimed Rufus had extorted money from Smyrna in the Roman province of Asia (what is now western Turkey).
Another historian, Mike Duncan, notes, “The charges were ludicrous as Rutilius [Rufus] was a model of probity and would later be cited by Cicero as the perfect model of a Roman administrator”.
As punishment for his trumped-up offense, Rufus was sent into exile but in deference to his past service, the court gave him the option of choosing where that would be. He chose Smyrna, the place he was charged with victimizing. When he arrived there, he was celebrated as the man who had tried to end the very practices of which he was wrongly convicted. Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman describe what happened to Rufus as “a very old trick”:
Accuse the honest man of precisely the opposite of what they’re doing, of the sin you yourself are doing. Use their reputation against them. Muddy the waters. Stain them with lies. Run them out of town by holding them to a standard that if equally applied would mean the corrupt but entrenched interests would never survive … Smyrna, grateful for the reforms and scrupulous honesty of the man who had once governed them, welcomed [Rufus] with open arms … Cicero would visit there in 78 B.C. and call him “a pattern of virtue, of old-time honor, and of wisdom”.
February 3, 2024
A Day in Ancient Rome
toldinstone
Published Nov 10, 2023Following Marcus Aurelius on the day of his final triumph.
Chapters:
0:00 Another day
1:05 Petitions
3:12 Breakfast
3:51 The Triumph
4:44 Romanis Magicae
5:37 Artifacts of the wars
7:09 Caesar, you are mortal
(more…)
September 20, 2023
“Future Edward Gibbons’ [will] have no problem piecing together precisely how our society went down the toilet”
In The Line, Andrew MacDougall finds something good to say about social media:
“Automotive Social Media Marketing” by socialautomotive is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Say what you will about social media, but one unalloyed good is the future Edward Gibbons’ of this parish are going to have no problem piecing together precisely how our society went down the toilet.
Future historians will not only know what happened as we cratered, but, thanks to our ubiquitous digital sketch pads, they will have all of the horrific micro detail. They will know how many times we circled the bowl, what we were saying about circling the bowl as we were circling it and which streaks we were or weren’t arguing about as we went down. Social media is an infinite canvas home to a limitless number of voices and — while we might not be richer for it in the present — our future societal homicide detectives will be forever grateful that we left so many stains to analyze.
For example, when historians consider — as they surely will — whether the moment Canada truly began to crumble was when a WestJet cabin crew allowed Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre to grab the conch and address a planeload of (mostly) Conservative Party of Canada delegates on his way back from a successful party convention, we will have a panoply of voices to consult. From all walks of life and social stations, too. What, for example, did a famous singer like Jann Arden have to say about the whole episode?
Well, thanks to our good friend ex-Twitter we don’t have to guess; we know. And what Arden said was: “Hey @WestJet you and I will not be doing business ever again. This is so ridiculously disappointing.”
In life, I try my best not to be insensitive, but imagine having so little going on that this is considered a good use of your time? Imagine possessing such a delicate constitution that you would rather chain yourself [to] the be-vomited reclining seats of Air Canada than ever fly WestJet again. When you live in Calgary. And what has to be going on to then quote-tweet a bunch of nasty replies and joust with a network of digital cretins, as Arden went on to do. Dozens of them. Who stirs the sewage and then pins the best turds to their page?
As someone who has spent (far) too much time wasting time on platforms like ex-Twitter, I feel I speak from experience. I’ve picked a fair few fights I didn’t need to pick. Both with randoms, and rock stars. I have fed the trolls and I have done performative tweeting. And you know what I’ve learned? The only people who win are our algorithmic overlords. People like Arden are the modern-day Olds-and-Milner lab mice hammering the dopamine reward button — look at me get likes and retweets! — until they (metaphorically) die.
April 17, 2023
The lingering pandemic of fear
Liz Hodgkinson on the pattern of fear that the state, media, and public health messaging instilled into so many people during the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic:
“Covid 19 Masks” by baldeaglebluff is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
The Stoics of ancient times believed that in many cases it was possible to control pain by thought alone. To achieve this, they stoically, as it were, accepted painful or unpleasant sensations, viewing them with studied indifference. As such, the pain often went away of its own accord, although to be fair they did use a painkiller known as theriac, which contained opium.
The opposite is also true, in that you can induce pain or disease by thought alone, causing acute and sometimes lasting physical symptoms. Although ancient and tribal societies understood that the power of suggestion can be so strong that it may make people well or ill, this seems to have been forgotten in modern, mechanistic medicine with its insistence on tests, scans, screens and so on.
Because of this, I am now wondering whether as many people would have gone down with Covid (or what passed for it) if, instead of a flu-like illness being ramped up as the worst and most dangerous disease ever to affect humankind, it had been ignored.
As it was, around 80 per cent – and it may have been more – of the world’s population were gripped by such a fear of the bug that they actually thought themselves into illness. Once the PCR test was introduced, people began testing themselves, sometimes hourly, and if the test showed positive they waited for symptoms to appear. More often than not, they obliged.
Then people became terrified to step out of the house without wearing a mask, even though all the evidence showed that these muzzles were more or less ineffective and that even the surgical-quality ones lasted only a couple of hours, at most. People were also nervous of getting close to anybody else, edging away if somebody came within a few feet of them. Only the other day, as I was in a queue waiting to pay for an item, a masked woman in front of me turned round and said crossly: “Do you mind not standing so close to me?” I wondered about making a quick riposte but decided that there was no way I could penetrate this kind of stupidity.
There was also the handwashing ritual where shops, doctors’ surgeries, solicitors’ and estate agents’ offices, for instance, forced hand sanitiser on to you, and sometimes took your temperature as you walked in.
The cleaning nonsense went even further, with hotels, gyms and other places where people gathered announcing “enhanced cleaning”. This may or may not have halted the virus in its tracks but it certainly increased fear. I still see people in the gym furiously scrubbing down bikes, treadmills and other equipment in case a germ from a previous user has had the audacity to linger on the machine.
March 7, 2023
QotD: The Stoic view of beauty
Like all materialists, then, Stoics had a real problem with things like beauty. If you’re a materialist, Beauty is either a refutation of your theory, or a tautology (“certain arrangements of atoms produce chemical reactions that our brains interpret as pleasant” is just a fancy way of saying “beautiful things are beautiful because they’re beautiful”). Back in grad school, in one of the deepest, darkest, most dungeon-like corners of the university’s book morgue, I discovered Ayn Rand’s attempt at an Objectivist aesthetics. Her conclusion, stripped of her inimitable self-congratulatory prose, is here:
At the base of her argument, Rand asserts that one cannot create art without infusing a given work with one’s own value judgments and personal philosophy. Even if the artist attempts to withhold moral overtones, the work becomes tinged with a deterministic or naturalistic message. The next logical step of Rand’s argument is that the audience of any particular work cannot help but come away with some sense of a philosophical message, colored by his or her own personal values, ingrained into their psyche by whatever degree of emotional impact the work holds for them.
Rand goes on to divide artistic endeavors into “valid” and “invalid” forms …
In other words, there’s no art, only propaganda. Looks like ol’ Marcus really missed a trick, statecraft-wise, doesn’t it?
Severian, “On Fine Writing Etc.”, Everyday Stoicism, 2020-05-04.
November 17, 2022
QotD: The Dummies’ Guide to Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Who: Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor in the mid-late 2nd century AD. The last of the “Five Good Emperors”, Marcus spent much of his time dealing with barbarian incursions and plague. There are some good biographies of the man, but Wiki covers the high points.
What: Because of the above, the Meditations were something like Marcus’s private self-help manual. He’s reminding himself to remain literally Stoic in the face of serious, seemingly unsolvable problems.
When: Late 2nd century AD. Greco-Roman philosophy was well-developed at this point; Stoicism was part of the classical tradition.
Where: In general, the European part of the Roman Empire. Specifically, on campaign against the barbarians – Marcus wrote a lot of the Meditations at the front.
Why: Because this man was the richest, most powerful individual in his world … and hated it. As a Stoic, he believed that virtue was its own — and, indeed, the only — reward, but as Roman Emperor he was forced to do un-virtuous things all day every day. It’s good instruction for how to live with yourself — how to be a man in a world that so often forces you to act like a snake.
Essential Background: Not much beyond the above.
Nice to have: The basics of Stoic doctrine. Specifically, their belief that “living virtuously” and “living according to nature” were basically synonymous, and that they were the only way to true happiness. A little Stoic epistemology, too — as their way of life depends on seeing the true nature of things, their standards for knowledge (what we’d call “justified true belief”) are extremely high. A statement like “pain is indifferent” is clear, and useful, on its own, but knowing the Stoic view of knowledge helps one appreciate just how prevalent the “indifferents” are, and how tough being truly indifferent is. Also nice to know: The wholesale adoption of Marcus by medieval Christians. There’s a very strong Stoic streak in Christianity’s first 1500 years; Marcus is always up there with the very best of the “virtuous pagans”.
None of these are necessary, though — you could lightly edit the Meditations (taking out the “thank you’s” at the start of Book One, explaining a few allusions) — and publish it today as a self-help manual. Also not necessary: Any real background in ancient philosophy. Back then, “philosophy” meant “a way of living”, not “a system for investigating the world”. Since Marcus is convinced of Stoicism’s truth, he doesn’t spend any time engaging the doctrines of other schools.
Severian, “Reading the Classics: An Illustration”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-02-14.
May 3, 2022
History of Rome in 15 Buildings 07. The Column of Marcus Aurelius
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Published 27 Sep 2018Roman troops file in neat lines over raging rivers and trackless mountains. They crush barbarian forces in battle after battle, leaving fields of corpses in their wake. Villages burn, captives weep – and the lonely figure of the philosopher-emperor leads his legions to victory. So the spiraling reliefs of the Column of Marcus Aurelius, subject of the seventh episode in our History of Rome, represent the brutal conflict that turned back the first wave of the barbarian invasions.
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December 10, 2021
Was Constantine’s conversion a form of reaction to societal decadence?
At his new place, Severian makes a case for Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity being a reaction to (and attempted cure for) civilizational decadence:
The Vision of Constantine the Great by Stylianos Stavrakis (1709-1786). “The emperor, depicted mounting and dressed in decorated military uniform, appears to gaze at the Inscription ΕΝ ΤΟΥΤΩ ΝΙΚΑ ΚΩΝΣΤΑΝΤΙΝΕ/ In hoc signo vinces, that is written around a cycle of stars enclosing a cross. The scene is set in front of the harbour of a town, probably Constantinople, with low hills and pine slopes.”
Byzantine Museum via Wikimedia Commons.
The legend says that as Constantine the Great was preparing to fight the Battle of Milvian Bridge, he saw a cross in the sky and the words “In Hoc Signo Vinces” — “in this sign you shall conquer”. He converted to Christianity on the spot, won the battle, and made Christianity the official religion of the now-reunified Roman Empire.
If any of that is true is, of course, impossible to know. He’d been at least favorable to Christianity for some time, helping to promulgate the Edict of Milan that extended toleration to Christianity across the parts of the Empire where his writ ran. However it happened, Constantine’s conversion story — the myth that has come down to us — carries a lesson we Dissidents should study.
Constantine came up at the tail end of the Crisis of the Third Century, in which the Roman Empire all but collapsed. It’s traditional to say that the CTC “ended” with Diocletian (r. 284-305), but obviously the ructions continued, as the Battle of Milvian Bridge was one of several in a new round of civil wars. I’m no scholar of Late Antiquity, but I can boil down all the many overlapping causes of the CTC to a word: Decadence.
The Roman Empire after Aurelius was simply too decadent to go on. Your Marxist would point to serious and irreparable class divisions within the Empire, and he’d be right. Other Marxist-flavored historians would point out the collapse of the currency, the rudimentary and laughably flawed taxation system, and so forth, and they’d be right, too. Military historians would say that the Empire simply lacked sufficient manpower, or at least, sufficient high-quality manpower, for the tasks at hand, exacerbated by the other stuff we just discussed … and they, too, would be right. Let’s not forget the Antonine Plagues, of course, which older historians argued were horrible but, as I understand it, a new generation of bio-archaeologists are proving were far worse than we suspected …
All that played its part, but above all, the Empire was just tired. Bored. Worn out. Overstuffed. Made sick by its own excesses. In a word, decadent.
That’s where Constantine’s conversion comes in. Marcus Aurelius, the last good Emperor, was the world’s most famous Stoic, then as now. Stoicism is indeed proof against decadence … but Stoicism is a harsh, cold philosophy. It’s not just “suppressing your emotions and acting like a hardass all the time,” as so many young men on the internet seem to think — far, far from that — but the Stoic lives by reason. His whole goal in life is to live “in conformity to nature,” and on the Stoic view, “Reason” and “Nature” are one and the same.
For all Stoic discipline seems to focus on the body, then, it’s really in the mind where true Stoics are made. If it’s a religion – and I’d argue that it is, but that’s irrelevant — then it’s the most cerebral creed ever devised. You don’t have to be a brainiac to be a Stoic — no less a Stoic than Marcus frequently upbraids himself for being a bit slow on the uptake — but you do have to live, and have an overwhelming desire to live, entirely inside your own head.
April 19, 2020
QotD: Early Greek philosophers
Democritus was still living when the new scientific movement suffered a violent reverse. It was in Athens, a center of conservatism, that the opposition arose and it was brilliantly headed. The leader was no other than Socrates, who despaired of the possibility of scientific knowledge. Even Aristotle, who pioneered in some branches of science, rejected the atomic theory. Between these two great names came that of Plato, who believed the ultimate realities to be not atoms but triangles, cubes, spheres and the like. By a kind of analogy he extended this doctrine to the realm of abstract thought. If, for example, perfect spheres exist, why should not perfect justice exist also? Convinced that such perfect justice did exist, he sought in his own way to find it. The ten books of his Republic record only part of his searchings of the mind. At the core of all this thinking lies the doctrine that the eternal, unchangeable things are forms, shapes, models, patterns, or, what means the same thing in Greek, “ideas.” All visible things are but changing copies of unchanging forms.
The Epicurean Revival
After the great triumvirate of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had passed away the scientific tradition was revived with timely amendments by Epicurus. In his time it was the prevalent teaching that the qualities of compound bodies must be explained by the qualities of the ingredients. If the compound body was cold, then it must contain the cold element air, if moist, water, if dry, earth, and if hot, fire. Even Aristotle sanctioned this belief in the four elements. Epicurus, on the contrary, maintained that colorless atoms could produce a compound of any color according to the circumstances of their combination. This was the first definite recognition of what we now know as chemical change.
The Stoic Reaction
Epicurus was still a young man when Athenian conservatism bred a second reaction to the new science. This was headed by Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. His followers welcomed a regression more extreme than that of Aristotle in respect to the prime elements. For the source of their physical theories they went back to Heracleitus, who believed that the sole element was fire. This was not a return to the Stone Age but it was a longish way in that direction.
This Heracleitus had been a doleful and eccentric individual and became known, in contrast to the cheerful Democritus, as the weeping philosopher. His gloom was perpetuated in Stoicism, a cheerless creed, of which the founder is described as “the sour and scowling Zeno.” Epicurus, on the contrary, urged his disciples to “wear a smile while they practiced their philosophy.”
Running parallel to these contrasting attitudes toward life and physical theories was an equally unbroken social divergence. Platonism as a creed was always aristocratic and in favor in royal courts. “I prefer to agree with Plato and be wrong than to agree with those Epicureans and be right,” wrote Cicero, and this snobbish attitude was not peculiar to him. Close to Platonism in point of social ranking stood Stoicism, which steadily extolled virtue, logic, and divine providence. This specious front was no less acceptable to hypocrites than to saints. Aptly the poet Horace, describing a pair of high-born hypocrites, mentions “Stoic tracts strewn among the silken cushions.” Epicureanism, on the contrary, offered no bait to the silk-cushion trade. It eschewed all social distinction. The advice of the founder was to have only so much regard for public opinion as to avoid unfriendly criticism for either sordidness or luxury. This was no fit creed for the socially or politically ambitious.
Norman W. DeWitt, “Epicurus: Philosophy for the Millions”, The Classical Journal, 1947-01.
October 5, 2018
QotD: Thomas Jefferson, Epicurean
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed, has given us what was good of the stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse, vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind, has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians; because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of their own invention. These they fathered blasphemously on him who they claimed as their founder, but who would disclaim them with the indignation which their caricatures of his religion so justly excite. Of Socrates we have nothing genuine but in the Memorabilia of Xenophon; for Plato makes him one of his Collocutors merely to cover his own whimsies under the mantle of his name; a liberty of which we are told Socrates himself complained. Seneca is indeed a fine moralist, disguising his work at times with some Stoicisms, and affecting too much of antithesis and point, yet giving us on the whole a great deal of sound and practical morality. But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it form the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, **** invented by ultra-Christian sects, and unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain form the chaff of the historians of his life. I have sometimes thought of translating Epictetus (for he has never been tolerably translated into English) by adding the genuine doctrines of Epicurus from the Syntagma of Gassendi, and an abstract from the Evangelists of whatever has the stamp of the eloquence and fine imagination of Jesus. The last I attempted too hastily some twelve or fifteen years ago. It was the work of two or three nights only, at Washington, after getting through the evening task of reading the letters and papers of the day. But with one foot in the grave, these are now idle projects for me. My business is to beguile the wearisomeness of declining life, as I endeavor to do, by the delights of classical reading and of mathematical truths, and by the consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and fear.
I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that “that indulgence which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided.” Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road. Weigh this matter well; brace yourself up; take a seat with Correa, and come and see the finest portion of your country, which, if you have not forgotten, you still do not know, because it is no longer the same as when you knew it. It will add much to the happiness of my recovery to be able to receive Correa and yourself, and prove the estimation in which I hold you both. Come, too, sand see your incipient University, which has advanced with great activity this year. By the end of the next, we shall have elegant accommodations for seven professors, and the year following the professors themselves. No secondary character will be received among them. Either the ablest which America or Europe can furnish, or none at all. They will give us the selected society of a great city separated from the dissipations and levities of its ephemeral insects.
I am glad the bust of Condorcet has been saved and so well placed. His genius should be before us; while the lamentable, but singular act of ingratitude which tarnished his latter days, may be thrown behind us.
I will place under this a syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus, somewhat in the lapidary style, which I wrote some twenty years ago; a like one of the philosophy of Jesus of nearly the same age, is too long to be copied. Vale, et tibi persuade carissimum te esse mihi.
**** e. g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, &c.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, 1819-10-31.
Syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus
Physical
The Universe eternal.
Its parts, great and small, interchangeable
Matter and Void alone.
Motion inherent in matter, which is weighty & declining
eternal circulation of the elements of bodies.
Gods, an order of beings next superior to man.
enjoying in their sphere their own felicities,
but not meddling with the concerns of the scale of beings below them
Moral
Happiness the aim of life
Virtue the foundation of happiness
Utility the test of virtue.
Pleasure active and in-dolent.
In-dolence is the absence of pain, the true felicity
Active, consists in agreeable motion
it is not happiness, but the means to produce it.
thus the absence of hunger is an article of felicity; eating the means to produce it.
The summum bonum is to be not pained in body, nor troubled in mind
i.e. In-dolence of body, tranquility of mind.
to procure tranquility of mind we must avoid desire & fear, the two
principal diseases of the mind.
Man is a free agent.
Virtue consists in: 1. Prudence 2. Temperance 3. Fortitude 4. Justice
to which are opposed: 1. Folly 2. Desire 3. Fear 4. Deceit
July 10, 2018
QotD: Epicurean philosophy
Epicurus was born in 341 B.C., only six years after Plato’s death. He was 18 when Alexander the Great died. This event conventionally separates the classical Greece of independent city-states from the Hellenistic period, when Alexander’s generals and their dynasties ruled vast kingdoms in the former Persian Empire. He set up his school in a Garden in the outskirt of Athens. There is very little that survived from his many books. But fortunately, the work of his Roman disciple Lucretius, who lived in the first century B.C., De Rerum Natura, or On the Nature of Things, was rediscovered in the 15th century.
Through this work, Epicureanism had a major influence on the development of science in the following centuries. Epicurus had borrowed and refined the atomic hypothesis of earlier philosophers, and De Rerum Natura was studied and discussed by most scientists and philosophers of the West. The physics of Epicureanism, which explains that worlds spontaneously emerge from the interaction of millions of tiny particles, still looks amazingly modern. It is the only scientific view coming out of the Ancient World that one can still read today and find relevant.
Those influenced by Epicureanism include Hobbes, Mandeville, Hume, Locke, Smith, and many of the British moralists up to the 19th century. They not only discussed the Atomic theory, but Epicurean ethics, his views on the origin of society, on religion, his evolutionary account of life, and other aspects of his philosophy.
To me, Epicureanism is the closest thing to a libertarian philosophy that you can find in Antiquity. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, were all statists to various degrees, glorified political involvement, and devised political programs for their audiences of rich and well-connected aristocrats. Epicurus focused on the individual search for happiness, counselled not to get involved in politics because of the personal trouble it brings, and thought that politics was irrelevant. His school included women and slaves. He had no political program to offer and one can find no concept of collective virtues or order or justice in his teachings. On the contrary, the search for happiness implied that individuals should be as free as possible to plan their lives. To him, as one of his sayings goes “natural justice is a pledge guaranteeing mutual advantage, to prevent one from harming others and to keep oneself from being harmed.”
Martin Masse, “The Epicurean roots of some classical liberal and Misesian concepts“, speaking at the Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn Alabama, 2005-03-18.
