Speaker 1: So I'm sold to Epicureanism, I think is better than
Speaker 1: than stoicism.
Speaker 2: We've all been to undergrad grad school, put our toes
Speaker 2: into every philosophy there is, and it happens we're coming
Speaker 2: to right now January twenty twenty six. We've figured it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird as stoicism is so popular. But then,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the reason I was trying to think,
Speaker 1: Like you know, when I was reading this, I was
Speaker 1: trying to imagine, like why isn't there a revival of
Speaker 1: like self help books that are epicurean as opposed to stoic,
Speaker 1: Like why is stoicism getting all the attention?
Speaker 3: Well, Eric, you.
Speaker 2: Converted to stoicism last episode, So are you are you switching.
Speaker 1: Or or is this or are you sticking with it?
Speaker 2: It does not do it for you?
Speaker 4: No, I'm going to try it out first. Well, like
Speaker 4: I mentioned last time, stoicism was a major inspiration behind
Speaker 4: the guy who came up with CE cognitive therapy and
Speaker 4: cognitive behavioral therapy CBT, which are like the gold standard
Speaker 4: kinds of therapies, along with dialectical behavior therapy, which came
Speaker 4: from somewhere else. And I haven't looked into the philosophical
Speaker 4: roots of that one. I think it's Stoicism's emotional control
Speaker 4: component that seem to be the most inspiring. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: don't have any plans of I think. I think Stoicism,
Speaker 4: like the data that they've gathered after having run this
Speaker 4: Stoicism Week thing for like ten years plus, seems to
Speaker 4: be pretty positive. And again, like I think there's a
Speaker 4: lot of elements of like a pan therapeutic effect where
Speaker 4: if you're just really reflecting on your moods and paying
Speaker 4: more attention to yourself and like you're going to get
Speaker 4: benefits anyway, and like stoicism may just be one route
Speaker 4: to that. But I don't know, like it does epicureanism
Speaker 4: have that sort of self care kind of element to it.
Speaker 1: Like, yes, I think it does.
Speaker 4: Even that Fuco kind of saw in Stoicism. It seemed
Speaker 4: later in his career he seemed to like be inspired
Speaker 4: to go on that care for the self direction with Stoicism.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is, but our audience whenever
Speaker 2: we say bring up CBT, which I think I don't
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is, even you guys talk
Speaker 2: about it every time, there's a very there's a very
Speaker 2: passionate discourse in the comments about the some people who
Speaker 2: hate CBT and some people who think it's it's I
Speaker 2: don't know if anyone extols it like unreservedly, but everyone's
Speaker 2: got a strong opinion on CBT and the other on
Speaker 2: dialectical something something. Oh DBT, All right, so there's opinions.
Speaker 3: Well, how does that one? How does that one come out?
Speaker 1: People want to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, DBT is like an alternative.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: When we're comparing the therapy schools Greek philosophy, the Greek
Speaker 2: philosophy schools are basically having the same argument, which philosophy,
Speaker 2: which method is best. It's just that their therapies also
Speaker 2: come with an entire cosmology and like an ordering of
Speaker 2: the human person along with it.
Speaker 1: I want to make a claim that I think Epicureanism
Speaker 1: and Stoicism are not totally incompatible. I think stoics think
Speaker 1: Stoics will want to reject a lot of things Epicureans say,
Speaker 1: But I feel like Epicureans would not necessarily reject everything
Speaker 1: that the Stoic says, especially when it comes to conduct
Speaker 1: like human well being. Like I felt, I was struck
Speaker 1: by the fact that it seems to me like they
Speaker 1: want similar outcomes. This I felt like I was reading
Speaker 1: the Epicurean a case for happiness as a kind of
Speaker 1: trinquil to be not that dissimilar than like what the
Speaker 1: Stoics say matters. It's just that obviously the way that
Speaker 1: they get there are very different. And certainly the thing
Speaker 1: that I liked much more about Epicureanism is again they
Speaker 1: emphasize relationality and friendship and other people, and I think
Speaker 1: that that's a huge plus for the Epicurean school.
Speaker 2: I think Epicureanism is logically correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like some Stoics were partly Epicurean, I don't think
Speaker 4: they're too different.
Speaker 2: Well, they disagree on the virtues, and we can get
Speaker 2: into the things they disagree on in detail. But let
Speaker 2: me say this, all of all of practical philosophy, whether
Speaker 2: it's Christian or Stoic, or Buddhist or Epicureanism or even
Speaker 2: the Platonists, really all of them agree that if you
Speaker 2: train your mind to control your desires, you'll be happier,
Speaker 2: and if the other way around, you won't be happy.
Speaker 2: So three thousand years of philosophy, all our years of
Speaker 2: studying some shit in grad school. All you actually need
Speaker 2: is your mind to control your desire, or, to put
Speaker 2: it in other terms, if you set your mind to
Speaker 2: giving negative feedback on desire instead of positive feedback. This
Speaker 2: is what the wisest people have all agreed is how
Speaker 2: to be happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. So it's not just stoicism and epicureanism
Speaker 1: that are compatible in that way. You're right, it's like
Speaker 1: the whole history of moral and the goal practical thinking.
Speaker 1: It's you're right. I think they all converge on some
Speaker 1: version of that. They obviously disagree with the underlying metaphysics
Speaker 1: or epistemology that make that possible, and therefore also probably
Speaker 1: disagree about some of the methods. But I think you're right.
Speaker 1: They agree on that outcome, or on that being the
Speaker 1: goal to like temper your desires.
Speaker 4: We kind of agree generally about like the outcome that
Speaker 4: should be happening, but like nobody agrees how to get there,
Speaker 4: and everyone fights passionately defending their point of view and
Speaker 4: how how they think they should get there, How to
Speaker 4: get to tranquility, how to get to emotional stability or whatever.
Speaker 4: The youdemonia happiness are flourishing, probably better because happiness implies
Speaker 4: like a psychological state, which.
Speaker 3: None of them are talking about.
Speaker 2: The goal of Epicureanism is what they call ataraxia, where
Speaker 2: taraxia means disturbances and a means no disturbances, so it's
Speaker 2: translated tranquility. But that's the goal, is a state of peace.
Speaker 1: Being at ease in your in yourself, in your body,
Speaker 1: in who you are.
Speaker 2: Ye, peace of mind might be a good uh translation.
Speaker 1: Being comfortable in your own skin, being comfortable with like yeah,
Speaker 1: like just like not worrying as much, right, I think
Speaker 1: like all those things are related as like an absence
Speaker 1: of disturbance, right, which to me makes sense. I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of I feel like Stoicism is worried
Speaker 1: about that too.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: This was one difference that I noticed is that Epicureanism
Speaker 4: seems to be decided that like like participation in politics
Speaker 4: and the life of the police is like a no go,
Speaker 4: like you should with live a kind of withdrawn life,
Speaker 4: and and Stoicism is actually divided on this question. This
Speaker 4: is that Which is another difference I'll get to is
Speaker 4: that Epicureanism is is slightly more on the on the
Speaker 4: dogmatic side, or some some make that claim, whereas so
Speaker 4: Stoics are divided on whether participating in politics is like, okay,
Speaker 4: something that should be part of the teachings. And I
Speaker 4: think the general answer is like yes, as long as
Speaker 4: it doesn't compromise virtue, which is the most important thing
Speaker 4: is training up that virtue that we mentioned last time.
Speaker 4: But for the Epicureans, right, it's more about withdrawing from
Speaker 4: politics and kind of living the simple life. Epicurus himself
Speaker 4: actually had his school outside the city walls, and there's
Speaker 4: the famous Epicurean garden there. They had the academy, the lyceum,
Speaker 4: the garden, and I guess just the barrel. If you're
Speaker 4: a cynic, you're just living in the barrel wherever you are.
Speaker 2: And the porch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Stoa some parts some places called the Stoa
Speaker 4: where the Stoics got their name from.
Speaker 2: Epicurus is the most woke. He let women come to
Speaker 2: the garden.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's true. I heard that, and yeah, yeah it
Speaker 1: was egalitarian.
Speaker 2: If you're on the porch, how do you stop, Like
Speaker 2: if women are walking by you, just you're like move on, lady,
Speaker 2: Like are they not allowed to listen? You're just out
Speaker 2: in public?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good question. Well, probably the different was
Speaker 1: they could listen, but they can't participate, right, whereas an
Speaker 1: epicurea epicurean probably could.
Speaker 4: Now, Stoicism did permit women as well. They were also
Speaker 4: sort of they were they were semi woke in in
Speaker 4: was it Musonius. Here's here's the line from our last reading.
Speaker 4: Musonius Rufus argued in his lectures that because young girls
Speaker 4: have the capacity to reason just as well as boys
Speaker 4: young boys, they too should receive a full education in philosophy.
Speaker 4: That's from the discourse. For in all the ways that
Speaker 4: matters most, there is no difference between men and women.
Speaker 4: As a consequence, it is equally appropriate for women to
Speaker 4: become philosophers as it is for men. That is an
Speaker 4: argument put forward by Musonius Rufus, who was the teacher
Speaker 4: of Epictetus. I believe, and Epictetus is one of the
Speaker 4: big three later Stoics whose work actually survives well.
Speaker 1: I did want to go back to the point about
Speaker 1: withdrawing from public life, because that also stood out to
Speaker 1: me as very interesting, and I was sort of thinking
Speaker 1: about it, you know, you could think about it as
Speaker 1: a normative claim, or you could think about it as
Speaker 1: a descriptive claim, and I think I'm very sympathetic to
Speaker 1: it as a descriptive claim in the sense that participating
Speaker 1: in like politics is probably going to make you unhappy,
Speaker 1: like going and trying to like I mean, we all
Speaker 1: know it. It's like if you withdraw from Twitter or
Speaker 1: withdraw from like political arguments, like being involved in those
Speaker 1: is bad for your mental health. So like as a
Speaker 1: descriptive claim, I just think that that's one hundred percent right,
Speaker 1: Like it's just it's not going to be good for
Speaker 1: you as a moral claim. As a normative claim, like
Speaker 1: obviously there's going to be circumstances where you need to
Speaker 1: participate in politics, So I'm not for that. But I think,
Speaker 1: like from just the psychological claim, I mean, that doesn't
Speaker 1: seem that crazy to me. And and I think and
Speaker 1: I actually appreciate it as kind of a counter which
Speaker 1: even sort of dovetails into some of the work that
Speaker 1: I've done, even in my dissertation and stuff that you know,
Speaker 1: these views of democracy or politics that sort of glorify
Speaker 1: like the you know, the the meeting the council as
Speaker 1: these important parts of like a good life. Like I've
Speaker 1: always been skeptical of those, I'm like, that's bullshit, Like
Speaker 1: people going to those things is a pain in the ass,
Speaker 1: Like it's you know, it's not It's not like some
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. The outcome is beautiful, the work that it
Speaker 1: does could be beautiful, but like the actual thing itself
Speaker 1: is a pain in the ass. And then I guess
Speaker 1: the final thing I would say about it, though, is
Speaker 1: I do think it might expose attention in the ideal
Speaker 1: of like the epicurean community, and that just to me
Speaker 1: raises a question of, well, how do you make those
Speaker 1: communities work without politics? Like I don't understand it, Like
Speaker 1: how are you guys deciding things? Like it's it's going
Speaker 1: to be unavoidable. So I don't know if he had
Speaker 1: if there is an answer to that that I missed,
Speaker 1: but I was just curious, like these communities are with
Speaker 1: drawing from the city, but internally they must have maybe
Speaker 1: they remain small enough that it's like not a big
Speaker 1: deal to figure those things out, and like maybe the
Speaker 1: kind of politics he has in mind is like in
Speaker 1: the at the scale of the city or bigger, which sucks,
Speaker 1: And you know, just right about that, So that was
Speaker 1: that was interesting, and that that's kind of how I
Speaker 1: process that claim.
Speaker 2: Well, there are no commandments obviously in Epicuranism. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: there's no like there's nothing that says don't do politics.
Speaker 2: It's more like, if you're gonna dedicate your life to politics,
Speaker 2: this is most likely gonna make you unhappy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, if you're trying.
Speaker 2: To climb the ladder to to I don't know whatever
Speaker 2: the Greek equivalent of that, If you're trying to get
Speaker 2: famous and powerful, that leads to unhappiness.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's why I read it more as a
Speaker 1: descriptive claim exactly.
Speaker 2: But it's not retreating from the police in terms of
Speaker 2: being ascetic or like living in a cult because you
Speaker 2: need epicure. Epic gears is pretty you need money also
Speaker 2: to be happy. You just need not as much money
Speaker 2: as you think. You don't go for money for money's sake,
Speaker 2: you go for money for food sake.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, I think the cynics like rejected society sort of
Speaker 4: not even like ascetically, but just like almost in like
Speaker 4: a Russoian kind of way. Is just like no society
Speaker 4: is corrupting, And I think that's probably the view of
Speaker 4: politics too, is you know, like I said, for the
Speaker 4: stoics too, right, like participate in politics insofar as it
Speaker 4: does not compromise your virtue. And we all know politics
Speaker 4: can be extremely compromising for the development right.
Speaker 3: It's it often.
Speaker 4: Requires you to be cutthroat and immoral and lie and
Speaker 4: not cultivate your better virtues anyway, the character virtues.
Speaker 1: And it can also make you obsessed with some things
Speaker 1: like don't actually matter that much from the perspective, like prestige,
Speaker 1: and like these different things.
Speaker 3: That popularity, everything that.
Speaker 1: Popularity don't really matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's set up the comparison here for the stoics.
Speaker 2: To be happy, you need virtue. You live the virtuous life.
Speaker 2: You find virtue in nature, which is again much more
Speaker 2: expensive than the way we use it. But your nature
Speaker 2: is your fate. If you fight, if you live in
Speaker 2: accordance with nature, you'll live and die happy. Even if
Speaker 2: you have nothing and no one with you, Your happiness
Speaker 2: is there to be found. Epicureanism. They say that happiness
Speaker 2: is found in pleasure. That's it very simple. It's hedonistic.
Speaker 2: But like we use the word stoicism wrong. The way
Speaker 2: we use stoicism means like someone without emotion. Hedonism does
Speaker 2: not mean sex drugs and rock and roll. It literally
Speaker 2: just means the pursuit of pleasures.
Speaker 1: The British. The British are at fault for that because
Speaker 1: the British version of hedonism is the way that people
Speaker 1: think of hedonism. But it's not like that.
Speaker 4: Like also the term of materialism, what that tends to
Speaker 4: mean too, like being obsessed with material things, Like you know,
Speaker 4: we're all modern consumer culture running on that hedonic treadmill,
Speaker 4: waiting for the next iPhone to come out, and that's
Speaker 4: the only thing that makes you happy.
Speaker 3: No, like none, Yeah, put all of that out.
Speaker 1: None of that would apply. In fact that, as Pills
Speaker 1: just said, like trying to chase those material things would
Speaker 1: be a path to unhappiness for the epicurean.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If there's anything banned in epicureanism, it's chasing fame
Speaker 2: and fortune.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they say this will carry out in your actions. Really,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter what you believe at all.
Speaker 1: And it's not even and it's not even banned. It's
Speaker 1: just like be aware that that's actually like you're just
Speaker 1: increasing your likelihood of misery if you keep doing that.
Speaker 2: Like there's no there's no benefit to fame and fortune
Speaker 2: because Also another reason is they can't be limited. You
Speaker 2: can always have more, seek more fame, you can always
Speaker 2: seek more money, whereas the natural desires like food when
Speaker 2: you're when you're full, you can't eat anymore. So it's
Speaker 2: not an infinite waste. But yeah, happiness and the highest happiness,
Speaker 2: this is the highest goal. It's not a sage, it's
Speaker 2: not a person. The highest point of happiness is called
Speaker 2: I said it already at araxia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, being at ease at piece, and it.
Speaker 2: Means being free of pain. So the highest pleasure is
Speaker 2: not feeling pain and not physical pain. Right, So the
Speaker 2: main pains that you feel, the most intense pains you
Speaker 2: feel are fear and regret and anxiety. Says the mental pains,
Speaker 2: they can last forever because you can never be free
Speaker 2: of it until you deal with it. So physical, physical pleasure,
Speaker 2: physical pain, these are they're there, but you can basically
Speaker 2: get over it. But the main point of epicureanism is
Speaker 2: to free yourself from the pain of regret. The fear
Speaker 2: of death is a big one, and the fear of
Speaker 2: the gods, which he constantly brings up. This must have
Speaker 2: been a big issue, but he says the only purpose
Speaker 2: of the gods, they're made up by a corrupt society.
Speaker 1: Well actually make you feel shitty.
Speaker 2: Technically he doesn't say they're made up, but all the
Speaker 2: rules around them, they are made up to make you
Speaker 2: feel shitty. So one of the first things you got
Speaker 2: to do is get rid of religion and down the
Speaker 2: road Christianity would basically stamp out that picarianism for it's
Speaker 2: a pretty obvious reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know. That's that's super interesting. It also
Speaker 1: strikes me. One thing that strike struck me when you
Speaker 1: were talking their pills is how this ataraxia is that?
Speaker 1: Am I saying that? Right? This kind of like absence
Speaker 1: of pain. It's it reminds me of like the way
Speaker 1: modern times we talk about privilege, right, like something like
Speaker 1: white privilege, and people are like, oh, you don't notice
Speaker 1: your privilege. You just like you realize that you're at
Speaker 1: ease in a space. It's like I can go into
Speaker 1: a store and feel comfortable. Right. For example, if if
Speaker 1: you're a white person or whatever, and it strikes me
Speaker 1: that this account of like absence of pain, we could
Speaker 1: compare it conceptually to that, because it's like it's like
Speaker 1: an absence of worrying, right, Because The thing that makes
Speaker 1: white privilege good isn't that white people are like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm enjoying my white privilege so much, this
Speaker 1: is so great. It's the fact that they don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about things, which is the good part. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not some additive. It's actually a subtractive in a way.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't have to think about how people
Speaker 1: are looking at me when I'm in a space. Right.
Speaker 1: That's and I think in a way that's you want
Speaker 1: to expand that to all parts of your life, and
Speaker 1: that's I feel like, in a way, like the Epicurean good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I found there's this dope quote from seventeen seventy by
Speaker 4: a materialist named Baron Tolback, who wrote a text called
Speaker 4: The System of Nature seventeen seventy, and this just reminded
Speaker 4: me of what you were saying about the getting rid
Speaker 4: of the gods part of Epicureanism. It's like, the quote
Speaker 4: runs something like, if we go back to the beginning,
Speaker 4: we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods,
Speaker 4: That fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned them, that weakness worships them,
Speaker 4: that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny
Speaker 4: support them. And I think epicure Epicureanism was one of
Speaker 4: the main I mean, maybe we'll do another legacy thing later,
Speaker 4: but I just thought that was a badass quote to
Speaker 4: bring forward.
Speaker 2: Epicura says, if the gods exist, you're not going to
Speaker 2: be hearing from them, because if the gods who are
Speaker 2: who we think they are, then they're happy, and if
Speaker 2: they're happy, they're not going to pester us. And if
Speaker 2: they exist, they're also made of atoms. They're atom is there,
Speaker 2: so everything's made of atoms, including the gods. They're not special.
Speaker 2: In other words, they're not special, and if they are happy,
Speaker 2: you're never even going to hear from them. So they're
Speaker 2: kind of like agnostic with respect to debating that. But
Speaker 2: what he cares about with respect to the gods is
Speaker 2: their main purpose seems to be coercing obedience out of
Speaker 2: people or making people afraid that they're doing the right thing.
Speaker 2: Are they being obedient to God or not? Are they
Speaker 2: going to go to hell after they die? I don't
Speaker 2: know what all the Greek equivalents to these things are,
Speaker 2: but in our terminology, yeah, God causes a lot of anxiety.
Speaker 2: This is kind of the inverse of the Calvinists. The
Speaker 2: Calvinist is so worried about whether he's going to heaven
Speaker 2: or not that he works his ass off his whole
Speaker 2: life just with the vain hope that somehow he'll squeak by.
Speaker 2: And the Epicurean works as little as possible because it's
Speaker 2: a waste of time and waste of happiness and tries
Speaker 2: to be at peace in the here and now.
Speaker 4: Well, the Calvinists kind of like Stoicism too, because of
Speaker 4: the fatalism there, whereas Epicureanism has the famous swerve idea
Speaker 4: the Clinemen the swerve where where atoms will just sort
Speaker 4: of completely randomly, by pure absolute chance diverge from their path,
Speaker 4: that they will dissent from the path that they're on,
Speaker 4: just like at random, which is a kind of they'll follow.
Speaker 3: I think the way I heard that is it'll follow it.
Speaker 4: Their inclinations and the inclinations of matter can just like
Speaker 4: take random turns and swerve, which is a little bit
Speaker 4: like what following pleasure is is about following the intrinsic
Speaker 4: like paths things want to take their inclinations as opposed
Speaker 4: to like psychological pleasure again and psychological happiness, although psychological
Speaker 4: hedonism is what this book calls Epicurus's position, But I
Speaker 4: think it has to do with inclination, because what we
Speaker 4: get right I see here. You know, one of the
Speaker 4: main differences between Epicureanism and Aristotle is the rejection of
Speaker 4: telos that things have a purpose, which is another one
Speaker 4: of those like I think you were saying earlier, like
Speaker 4: oh my god, this is so like correct, like it's
Speaker 4: so modern sounding, like it sounds like modern scientific materialism
Speaker 4: in the same way that it rejects teleological explanations and
Speaker 4: purposes and the idea that everything is like striving towards
Speaker 4: this wholeness, which is what the kind of root of
Speaker 4: telos is in Aristotle, like a wholeness, that things are
Speaker 4: kind of moving towards an end, a whole, and fulfilling
Speaker 4: a kind of purpose within that whole. Epicureanism does not
Speaker 4: that dismisses that entirely, saying no telos is telos is
Speaker 4: nothing for us. Things don't have purpose.
Speaker 1: Which sounds very modern. Well, they weren't right about everything,
Speaker 1: Like it's not true that sour foods taste sour because
Speaker 1: there's tiny little barbs in the food that stab our tongues.
Speaker 2: It's a good theory, you know. And our understanding of atoms,
Speaker 2: the secondary sources are like, oh they were, they were
Speaker 2: atomists and they were right, Like, no, they were not
Speaker 2: at all. Their understanding of atoms was like fire atoms
Speaker 2: are these tiny little triangles and like earth atoms are
Speaker 2: tiny little squares.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, they were only they were only broadly pointing
Speaker 1: in a roughly right direction. But they were very wrong
Speaker 1: about all the details.
Speaker 2: They were accidentally right. But this thing called swerve swerve,
Speaker 2: which sounds like sounds like zoomer TikTok slang. Every everything's
Speaker 2: got some swerve. Hashtag swerve, says the new wrapper, little
Speaker 2: skizzer or whatever. Anyway, Yeah, they're they're basically their universe
Speaker 2: is basically deterministic. There's all these little atoms that are
Speaker 2: flying in their own direction in which is pure determinism,
Speaker 2: except then every once in a while there's a swerve
Speaker 2: where they go to the left or to the right.
Speaker 2: They're still going in the same direction, but there's a
Speaker 2: little bit of like randomness. I guess you'd call it.
Speaker 2: And you could say, then it's a soft determinism. Instead
Speaker 2: of a hard determinism. So it's because atoms can move
Speaker 2: spontaneously that we have the ability to to change our lives.
Speaker 2: I guess. So there's an account of where our freedom
Speaker 2: comes from. But I know, I know, I hate when
Speaker 2: people do this, by the way, but it sounds so
Speaker 2: much like the double slit experiment, like you know where
Speaker 2: the you know where the beam starts, you know where
Speaker 2: it ends, but you don't know you don't know which
Speaker 2: way they got to get there. They weren't right about it.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying it's just a parallel, an accidental parallel.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I've I've heard many times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like epicureanism leaves room for free will, like true
Speaker 4: free will because of this swerve thing. But it is
Speaker 4: very unclear how you get from the clinemen to like
Speaker 4: human free will.
Speaker 3: There's no obvious path from.
Speaker 1: Like A to B. There.
Speaker 2: It's like Dpak Chopra. Are those all the New Age
Speaker 2: guru grifters who are like, well, there's an observer in
Speaker 2: quantum physics that changes reality. So if you talk to
Speaker 2: your plants, then they're going to grow greener. And if
Speaker 2: you think about money, it has no choice except to
Speaker 2: arrive in your bank account.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or like your brain is quantumly entangled with the
Speaker 4: whole universe, Like, yeah, okay, can.
Speaker 1: We also bring to the forefront. What I thought was
Speaker 1: maybe the most appealing, especially in contrast to stoicism, was
Speaker 1: the importance of relationality. I think is very appealing. You know,
Speaker 1: he talks about friendship being crucial At one point, I
Speaker 1: think the author quotes if not Epicurist and someone else
Speaker 1: who was a follower of Epicurus saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: we should even love our friends like that there's more
Speaker 1: pleasure in like loving your friends than loving yourself or
Speaker 1: something like that. And in a way I was thinking
Speaker 1: as I was reading that, you know, kind of the
Speaker 1: British liberal individualist version of hedonism we might call like
Speaker 1: rational egoism, right, it's like just worried about yourself. This
Speaker 1: almost sounded like rational collectivism in a weird sense. It's like,
Speaker 1: do things that benefit like your collective connections the most,
Speaker 1: and that's going to be a way of cementing and
Speaker 1: securing that kind of tranquility that you have, that having
Speaker 1: relations to other people both materially and emotionally secures your
Speaker 1: tranquility and your ease of mind, and it seems like
Speaker 1: for the stoic they would almost say, well, you can
Speaker 1: just get over not having friends, you can just you know. So,
Speaker 1: So this I liked and I think it's an interesting contrast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all these porn addicted eighteen year olds are in
Speaker 2: the discord trying out stoicism. They should be on epicureanism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if you're going to bring this up.
Speaker 2: I mean, I knew you were going to bring this up.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting that the reason to have friends is
Speaker 2: not any like good in itself, like it might be
Speaker 2: for play too. At the symposium, it's like, yeah, you
Speaker 2: need to have a network because at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, this is more likely to make you happy
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 1: So it's exactly, that's true.
Speaker 2: It's it's a little bit what would we call instrumental,
Speaker 2: But I mean it's true, that's true, right, It's true,
Speaker 2: not like not sentimental exactly, it's not sentimental.
Speaker 1: It's not intrinsic. And that's why I think that maybe
Speaker 1: like rational collectivism is like not a bad way of
Speaker 1: describing it, because it is like rationalistic instrumental. Uh, in
Speaker 1: a similar way that like rational egoism is kind of individualistic.
Speaker 1: H it is about your future well being, but it
Speaker 1: goes far right, It goes really far in the sense that,
Speaker 1: you know, it was striking to me again that he's
Speaker 1: saying that, Well, yeah, I don't know, maybe I need
Speaker 1: to take look at that section again. But it's interesting
Speaker 1: that he talks about how there can be more pleasure
Speaker 1: in enjoying the well being of your friend than even
Speaker 1: in yourself like that, And that's not I don't think
Speaker 1: he's trying to say that in some sentimentalist way like
Speaker 1: you said pills. It is almost coming from a place
Speaker 1: yeah that like, maybe there's a pleasure I need to
Speaker 1: check again in like enjoying your friends. That is a
Speaker 1: that is like a distinct kind of pleasure. And maybe
Speaker 1: this is a good way of leading into the conversation
Speaker 1: about the way that the Epicureans divide up the types
Speaker 1: of the types of pleasure.
Speaker 2: My aunt had a little poster in her bathroom that
Speaker 2: I remember when I was little, and it had two
Speaker 2: little kittens on it and it said, uh, trouble shared
Speaker 2: is trouble halved. Joy shared is joy doubled. So that's
Speaker 2: that's the.
Speaker 1: Right there, that is that is, Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 4: Epicureanism operates within a kind of Aristotelian ethical framework, and
Speaker 4: we do know that Aristotle makes a big deal out
Speaker 4: of friendships. And one of the things we learned about
Speaker 4: the difference between stoicism was, yeah, Victor's right. Stoicism really
Speaker 4: like doesn't emphasize friendship as super important alongside virtues on
Speaker 4: the pathway to happiness. Stoicism doesn't, like I guess, I
Speaker 4: guess one of the outcomes would be like your pleasant
Speaker 4: and a friendly person, like easy to get along with,
Speaker 4: if you're like the stoic on the way towards stage
Speaker 4: like qualities, but like, yeah, friendships not essential.
Speaker 1: Don't they even go further the stoics and say, like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't they say that your dependence on friendship is an
Speaker 1: illusion and that if like you could just figure out
Speaker 1: that you all you need is yourself and your ver
Speaker 1: and that like, if you are overly dependent on friends,
Speaker 1: that you're that's like one of their lies or like
Speaker 1: false falsities. Right, It's like, that's that's just not true.
Speaker 1: Like the source of your virtue is internal. You don't
Speaker 1: actually need anyone.
Speaker 2: Your happiness shouldn't be dependent on them. But they're not
Speaker 2: gonna say, don't have friends.
Speaker 1: No, no, I agree, they're not going to say don't
Speaker 1: have friends. But they're gonna say. But if you think
Speaker 1: that it's like that your happiness depends on it, that's
Speaker 1: an illusion.
Speaker 4: The Seneca I think Seneca comments in one of his
Speaker 4: letters that he has no time for He doesn't care
Speaker 4: about the meaning of the word friend. He's only interested
Speaker 4: in guidance for how to treat his friends.
Speaker 3: So I guess.
Speaker 4: I guess in the sense that like friendship can be
Speaker 4: a source of like difficulty, then well.
Speaker 2: Let's say all the things that hedonism in this case
Speaker 2: is not because it's better to get all the junk
Speaker 2: out of the way. Hedonism is not wanting stuff because
Speaker 2: your stuff, if you have a lot of it, you're
Speaker 2: at risk of it being stolen from you. That's going
Speaker 2: to produce anxiety. That's why you want a lot of friends,
Speaker 2: but not a lot of stuff. I guess your friends
Speaker 2: can't be stolen from you in this example. Oh, you
Speaker 2: need variety in your life. Variety is a form of pleasure,
Speaker 2: So it's not this is a this is a reason
Speaker 2: to not eat like the same food all the time.
Speaker 2: Either bread or steak. Even if you're rich, you don't
Speaker 2: want to eat steak every day because if you eat
Speaker 2: steak every day, it gets boring and you're not going
Speaker 2: to get pleasure out of it. So you need a
Speaker 2: bit of variety. That's why it's it's best to eat
Speaker 2: bread like six days a week and have steak one
Speaker 2: day on the weekends to make it, to make it special.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: One of the problems he's dealing with, basically is that
Speaker 2: there's diminishing returns. There's diminishing returns from being bored of something,
Speaker 2: So you want to you want to be okay with
Speaker 2: the simple things enough so that when you get something special,
Speaker 2: then it's noteworthy. Then you can actually get pleasure, pleasure
Speaker 2: out of it. If you need luxury at all times,
Speaker 2: then you're gonna have a very hard time getting pleasure
Speaker 2: out of anything in your life. The other thing is
Speaker 2: Epicurius says we might desire things that we shouldn't however,
Speaker 2: and epicureanism, you're never prohibited by moral law. It's never
Speaker 2: because God said that you can't drink that you shouldn't drink.
Speaker 2: It's because if you drink too much, you're gonna get
Speaker 2: sick from it. You're gonna get sick the next day,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have a bad liver. But what it is
Speaker 2: to be rational and what it is to be human therefore,
Speaker 2: is to be able to plan in advance, to want
Speaker 2: the general health overall, not the pleasure in the moment.
Speaker 2: So you have to look to the future. Like if
Speaker 2: your doctor prescribes you oxycon, it's going to stop your
Speaker 2: it's going to stop your pain now, but the risks
Speaker 2: are too great of it causing unhappiness that you should
Speaker 2: probably you know, not take it. And other examples are
Speaker 2: you should experience pain now if you want to have
Speaker 2: pleasure later. So the main example for that is working out.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it hurts workout, you're tired, But overall this
Speaker 2: is it's going to be better for you. You're going
Speaker 2: to be happier, being more fit because it's easier to
Speaker 2: open doors and pick your kit up.
Speaker 1: And healthy long term health.
Speaker 2: One thing I thought was interesting here is the society
Speaker 2: corrupts because there's three types of desire, those that are
Speaker 2: necessary and natural. Those ones you should never inhibit yourself.
Speaker 2: That's food, shelter, you know, friendships, family, you should never
Speaker 2: prevent yourself from having those, which is in contrast to
Speaker 2: ascetics or Christians or like things that say you should
Speaker 2: fast to get yourself closer to God, you should starve yourself.
Speaker 2: All those losers, there's no point. It doesn't make you
Speaker 2: better to do any of those things. The second kind
Speaker 2: of desire is natural but not necessary. So this would
Speaker 2: be sexsive food. You know, it's natural to on expensive food,
Speaker 2: but you don't really need it now. Natural but not
Speaker 2: necessary you should do but in moderation, moderation, right right, right,
Speaker 2: in moderation, and you need to do natural but not
Speaker 2: necessary desires, give in to them just to increase the variety.
Speaker 2: Like it. You can survive on eating rice or bread
Speaker 2: every single day, but you're not going to be very
Speaker 2: happy doing that, So you've got to spice it up
Speaker 2: with natural but not necessary desires, even if it's unhealthy,
Speaker 2: as long as it's not too often.
Speaker 1: It was interesting when you talked about oh go sorry,
Speaker 1: if you're not done, continue last.
Speaker 2: There's only three types of desire that's natural and necessary,
Speaker 2: natural but not necessary that you should engage in in moderation.
Speaker 2: You know, recreational drug, drug use. All that goes into
Speaker 2: natural but not necessary but then the third category is
Speaker 2: vain and empty and vain desire. What classifies it is
Speaker 2: that it has no limit. So this is where you
Speaker 2: find the esteem of others or public esteem, or fame
Speaker 2: or celebrity or money or wealth or yeah, you think
Speaker 2: of anything else.
Speaker 1: And political, well that's where that's where the political realm is.
Speaker 1: I think that's why he worries about the political.
Speaker 2: Fit there too, anything that you're not, anything that can
Speaker 2: never satisfy you, that you only need more. This is
Speaker 2: only going to make you unhappy.
Speaker 1: Maybe like maybe like sleeping with a lot of people,
Speaker 1: like as much as you can. That could be like
Speaker 1: a kind of vein.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well say I think sex would be natural necessary.
Speaker 1: Right, but I guess, but maybe there's a separate category
Speaker 1: of like the I like being attached to the identity
Speaker 1: of like being like a player or something like that. Right,
Speaker 1: that's like a kind of vainglorious thing that goes with it.
Speaker 2: You have sex not even because you want to, just
Speaker 2: because you're trying to add to your body count.
Speaker 1: That's your exploits. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So three, that kind of desire you never need. Number
Speaker 2: one type of desire you should never you should never
Speaker 2: limit yourself, like if you're hungry, eat, there's no there's
Speaker 2: no benefit to fasting. I mean, unless there is a
Speaker 2: physical benefit to fast there's no moral benefit to fasting.
Speaker 2: And I thought that was just like that, that's how
Speaker 2: you do it. That's how you do it.
Speaker 1: Seems right, I mean, yeah, exactly, it seems totally right.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to quickly highlight when he talks about
Speaker 1: mental pleasures because that was interesting to me. Right now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he thinks that these like where
Speaker 1: these mental pleasures fit into the three that you mentioned there,
Speaker 1: but you know, for example, like like remembering really happy things.
Speaker 1: There's actually an example where apparently when Epicurus himself was dying,
Speaker 1: so he actually had a pretty painful, horrible death from
Speaker 1: like kidney stones, like really uncomfortable. He was in a
Speaker 1: lot of pain, and he apparently one of the letters
Speaker 1: he wrote to his friend, as he said, even now
Speaker 1: I remain what sustains my happiness is thinking about all
Speaker 1: the great philosophical conversations I had with my friends, and
Speaker 1: like that is like giving me Yeah, I know what
Speaker 1: a nerd, but that was kind of interesting to me,
Speaker 1: like like having like enjoying memories or anticipating future things
Speaker 1: that you're looking forward to, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: how pills, how do you think those fit into like natural, necessary,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 2: Well, he says, basically, ignorance is not bliss. So I
Speaker 2: think I think you need there's some amount of thought.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you necessarily say philosophy, but there's
Speaker 2: some amount of thought that is necessary, some amount of
Speaker 2: memory memories that are necessary. But then you can also
Speaker 2: move them in like if you're too obsessed with philosophy
Speaker 2: and all you want to talk about is philosophy all
Speaker 2: the time, to the point that you annoy other people,
Speaker 2: I know people like that, now you start causing. Now
Speaker 2: you start causing pain. Or if you were if you
Speaker 2: like your happy memories so much that you become nostalgic
Speaker 2: and it prevents you from acting. Now you're Now you're
Speaker 2: drifting into natural but not necessary. So you need to Yeah,
Speaker 2: everything in moderation. It's the most basic, which.
Speaker 1: Again is like like Eric said, it's you know it does.
Speaker 1: It does give Aristotelian virtues, which is maybe just a
Speaker 1: very Greek way, ancient Greek way of thinking about things.
Speaker 1: I did want to mention though, like this is reminding
Speaker 1: me to contrast to Epicureanism with Aristotelian ethics. Is I
Speaker 1: think they disagree? Yeah, is I think, And I think
Speaker 1: it has to do with the role of of telos
Speaker 1: right of teleology, because for for Aristotle, it seems like
Speaker 1: these things like have a proper place, like an appropriate place.
Speaker 1: So even though they seem to functionally agree, it seems
Speaker 1: like for Epicureate Epicurus, there is no telos to like
Speaker 1: our bodies or our natural things, like there's not really
Speaker 1: I think I had a note on it somewhere here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like he just doesn't think that there's any like telos
Speaker 1: to our our organism. There's only a state of this ataraxia,
Speaker 1: this kind of like ease. But it's not because that's
Speaker 1: like naturally bat like he because for him, the universe
Speaker 1: is kind of a chaotic place, right, It's not like
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as some proper I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to find it. Oh yeah, okay, So I think like
Speaker 1: so Epicurus, I think agrees right that the highest good
Speaker 1: is in a way happiness and like the quality of
Speaker 1: your life, this being at ease. But Aristotle thinks that
Speaker 1: our organs have a purpose, right, that our hands have
Speaker 1: a purpose, that like there's that all these things have purpose.
Speaker 1: And I think Epicurus rejects that. He's like, there's no
Speaker 1: inherent purpose to organs or human beings there, We're just
Speaker 1: we're just floating the atoms bouncing together in the universe.
Speaker 1: And instead he pivots this this discussion of inherent teleology
Speaker 1: to I think, just an account, a descriptive account of desire, right,
Speaker 1: like what are the things that we desire and what
Speaker 1: leads to this like appealing place of of of like ataraxia,
Speaker 1: of being at ease, being tranquil. It's maybe a bit
Speaker 1: of a subtle just but it's like a claim that
Speaker 1: has to do with the metaphysics, right of like what
Speaker 1: the truth of the universe is. I might have missed something,
Speaker 1: so I don't know if you if you either be
Speaker 1: wanted to add or help clarify that.
Speaker 2: That sounds right to me. But although there's a few
Speaker 2: things that he does do that Aristotle would be very
Speaker 2: upset by. One is basically Epicurea says the only value,
Speaker 2: the only virtue that really matters, is prudence, and prudence
Speaker 2: should guide all the other ones. Right. Aristotle has all
Speaker 2: these balances. So prudence is just like if it works,
Speaker 2: if it's gonna work better, then it's the right thing
Speaker 2: to do. There's no like proper immaterial natural balance based
Speaker 2: on like the uzia and final causality. There's no such
Speaker 2: thing as predetermined outcomes because everything is matter in motion.
Speaker 2: So we have to be empirically practical about what we're
Speaker 2: gonna do. The one of courage, right, courage is like
Speaker 2: you have to die your city, if your if your
Speaker 2: city calls on you, and do it bravely, And Epicurius
Speaker 2: is like, you don't gotta you don't have to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like there's no there's no there's no benefit to courage
Speaker 2: if it means you just you die for someone else
Speaker 2: telling you to die, there's no there's no value to
Speaker 2: that virtue.
Speaker 1: I mean there might be prudential reasons to defend the city, right,
Speaker 1: which fine with right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Epicurus actually says like there, if you're going to
Speaker 2: go and display bravery, this is good because you might
Speaker 2: you might get land, like the Lord might give you
Speaker 2: land for going to fight and showing bravery. But if
Speaker 2: you're gonna for sure die, you for sure should run away,
Speaker 2: like this is what this is what would be cowardice
Speaker 2: and the Nicobakia ethics. But no, it's like, if you're
Speaker 2: going to die anyway, don't have a glorious death. Get
Speaker 2: out of there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well this is this is part of my problem
Speaker 4: with epicureanism is is it is kind of like a
Speaker 4: calculus of pleasure. Like the only reason that you shouldn't
Speaker 4: participate in some kind of pleasure like shooting up heroin
Speaker 4: or like playing with matches because it's fun, And the
Speaker 4: only reason you should do things that are painful like
Speaker 4: getting a root canal or I don't know, like passing
Speaker 4: a kidney stone or having loads of kids and undergoing
Speaker 4: birth pains is because of the long term benefits. Right,
Speaker 4: It's like a maximizing the pleasure in the long run.
Speaker 4: That's why prude prudence is the only important thing, because
Speaker 4: you have to have this foresight to see like whether
Speaker 4: choosing this pleasure now is going to be consistent with
Speaker 4: like maximizing the pleasure in your lifetime, which is kind
Speaker 4: of the annoying part I think to think about with epicureanism,
Speaker 4: Like this is why Cicero attacks it here and he
Speaker 4: mentions like Cicero's complaints about epicureanism right where they because
Speaker 4: pleasure is really the only thing that they care about,
Speaker 4: right like you, I don't know, you run into these problems.
Speaker 1: And the pleasure not in the sense of additive though, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's the thing that makes it a bit
Speaker 1: more subtle, is like the pleasure that you're after is
Speaker 1: actually this kind of absence of it's just being at ease,
Speaker 1: being at peace. It's not really like it's not trying
Speaker 1: to gather more pleasures in the in the sense of
Speaker 1: like the British, you know.
Speaker 4: And it's still it still lines up with like Don's
Speaker 4: kind of it still does line up with the general
Speaker 4: idea of like seeking pleasure and avoiding pain though.
Speaker 1: And it is.
Speaker 3: The pain.
Speaker 2: But what what I don't understand the objection.
Speaker 4: Well because it has a kind of well, because it
Speaker 4: has a kind of calculus to it. Instead of the
Speaker 4: idea that you could the idea that you could justify
Speaker 4: doing something compromising, like being a huge coward and running
Speaker 4: away because that's the right choice to maximize pleasure in
Speaker 4: the long run, or that you would participate the only
Speaker 4: reason you would participate in anything meaningful, like fighting for
Speaker 4: your country or joining a protest or anything is because
Speaker 4: it would maximize the pleasure for you and your immediate
Speaker 4: like comrades around you. It seems to me still kind
Speaker 4: of you know, there's like it seems like beyond a
Speaker 4: small group of people that you know directly, there's a
Speaker 4: kind of moral bankruptcy to it.
Speaker 2: But there's a rebuttal Epicureans think that they can undermine
Speaker 2: all the other rival philosophies because they all have the
Speaker 2: definition of of what's going to make you happy and
Speaker 2: the good. Right for Plato, the good is the highest,
Speaker 2: the highest form. The Stoics think virtue the highest good.
Speaker 2: Christians are Muslims will probably think like obedience to God
Speaker 2: is the highest good, and the Epicureans think that pleasure
Speaker 2: is the highest good. But the Epicureans think all of
Speaker 2: these other people they're actually doing it to maximize pleasure.
Speaker 2: They're just putting a different name on it. If you're
Speaker 2: obedient to God, it's because you think that God's going
Speaker 2: to give you a better life or a better afterlife.
Speaker 2: If you're seeking virtue as the highest good, it's because
Speaker 2: you think that's the thing that's going to make you
Speaker 2: have the least pain. Right, that's the point of avoiding
Speaker 2: relationships that can of people that can hurt you. So
Speaker 2: they're all doing the same thing as Epicureans. According to
Speaker 2: the Epicureans, the Epicureans are just saying, we're doing it. Honestly,
Speaker 2: we're saying that we're doing this for pleasure. You say
Speaker 2: you're doing it for God or Tellos or principles or virtue. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a pretty good response.
Speaker 4: I think there is a sense in which all of that,
Speaker 4: you know, you're categorizing different kinds of pleasure as you're saying.
Speaker 4: I mean, because Epicureans would accept the idea that like
Speaker 4: what's pleasurable for me is not pleasurable for you, and
Speaker 4: what's pleasurable now might lead to pain later like obviously,
Speaker 4: like shooting up Heroin. Like they would completely accept all
Speaker 4: of those things and say, no, you have to direct
Speaker 4: your efforts towards things that are like sustainably pleasurable and
Speaker 4: not destructive.
Speaker 3: In the long run.
Speaker 4: And and then you have to realize that nothing is
Speaker 4: intrinsically pleasurable, like like like just like what I said,
Speaker 4: it's like what's sauce for the gander? Whatever the saying
Speaker 4: is like what's what's pleasurable for me is not pleasurable
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 1: It's good for the gander.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the one, the gander better something like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they would accept all those things. Yeah, and I
Speaker 4: think I think even Aristotle, who would turn towards intellectual
Speaker 4: virtue as more on the higher side, right, like the
Speaker 4: intellectual thing there. Yeah, and it's a source of pleasure.
Speaker 4: Contemplating pure, pure contemplation of the forms of things is
Speaker 4: a pleasure in itself.
Speaker 3: It's just that.
Speaker 4: Yes, Okay, so there you go. You could you can
Speaker 4: see it. You can be a little bit cynical and
Speaker 4: just say, yeah, they're all just looking for that like
Speaker 4: enduring source of pleasure.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: But the Epicureans would definitely reject like eternal forms because
Speaker 4: for them it's all material. There are no forms separate
Speaker 4: from the matter in which they inhere and everything is changeable.
Speaker 2: What a relief.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's no, there's no eternal forms like they would
Speaker 4: be complete like kant would be not an Epicurean because
Speaker 4: the Kantient ethic is completely different in its sense of
Speaker 4: like being reason based.
Speaker 1: Well he's trying to I mean he's trying, he's trying
Speaker 1: to do something insane, which is locate pure practical reason,
Speaker 1: meaning practical reason that is totally devoid of any feeling,
Speaker 1: and it's just you're.
Speaker 4: Like universal universal validity would be Epicureans would be like huh.
Speaker 1: Well, they'd be like that doesn't exist. They would just
Speaker 1: be like that's not possible, yeah, which I kind of
Speaker 1: agree with.
Speaker 2: We could talk about politics in an Epicurean sense, like
Speaker 2: if you current current issues, if you object to your
Speaker 2: government bombing other people, that's a source of pain for you, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So you go to protest to not not because that
Speaker 2: you are morally obligated to, but because showing your displeasure
Speaker 2: with something being done on your behalf that brings you pleasure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: or at the very least, it assuages your guilty conscience
Speaker 2: because that's what your country is doing on your behalf.
Speaker 2: But whether or not it accomplishes something is not really
Speaker 2: an issue, know, in protest. For that reason, what matters
Speaker 2: is that you feel, Okay, I have been now, I've
Speaker 2: been seen, i have been heard, and if anyone asks,
Speaker 2: they know I'm not a part of this. That's the
Speaker 2: thing you're receiving pleasure from. Maybe you have more vein
Speaker 2: motives and you're just trying to get on TV. But
Speaker 2: at minimum you're assuaging the pain you feel at being
Speaker 2: responsible for what your country's doing because you're not stopping
Speaker 2: the bombs in all likelihood. But at least you can
Speaker 2: sleep at night, So that's that's a win. No problem
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're showing you're expressing disapproval.
Speaker 2: Now, if you're in so much pain and you have
Speaker 2: convinced yourself for you believe that there's only one way
Speaker 2: to alleviate how much pain you're in, and that's to
Speaker 2: go it in public and light yourself on fire. Now,
Speaker 2: this is it's a little bit harder to justify as
Speaker 2: an epicurean, but not impossible. So the first reason is
Speaker 2: that they say there's no point in being afraid of death.
Speaker 2: Death has nothing to fear. It's just the end of fear.
Speaker 2: It's the end of pain or pleasure. Yeah, exactly, but
Speaker 2: there is sort of a pleasure involved, and the pleasure
Speaker 2: is something like the idea of dying a hero, or
Speaker 2: the idea of dying a meaningful death, u maybe having
Speaker 2: faith that you'll be remembered. Now, to be clear, for epicurean,
Speaker 2: all of these are irrational because you'll never get to
Speaker 2: experience the cost benefit. You'll never get to experience that
Speaker 2: because you're dead, So you're dying with zero empirical basis.
Speaker 2: But even so, it's not precluded, it's.
Speaker 1: Not I agree. I kind of think almost nothing is precluded.
Speaker 1: But I think what the epicurean might wonder about someone
Speaker 1: who does that is what's going on in that person's
Speaker 1: life that they want to do that, right, Like, maybe
Speaker 1: that person should examine like the balance of things in
Speaker 1: their life that causes them to want to do that,
Speaker 1: I feel.
Speaker 4: Like, but then there'd be a healthy dose of the
Speaker 4: idea that like, pleasure is relative to the experiencer. So
Speaker 4: it could be the case that they get pleasure out
Speaker 4: of it, truly, it could be the case that they're
Speaker 4: masochistic or just you know, doing it because they look
Speaker 4: they want to look.
Speaker 3: A certain way.
Speaker 4: I mean, the same person who experience this is pain
Speaker 4: at the idea of their country bombing and other country, uh,
Speaker 4: someone else, I mean my experience kind of pleasure a patriotic, patriotic, nationalistic,
Speaker 4: jingoist joy in their country attacking another country and winning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. You can't you can't really say things
Speaker 2: are or you can't really evaluate things based on their
Speaker 2: morality or immorality.
Speaker 1: Right, it's all and I like prudence, I like that
Speaker 1: this is that that's the only virtue it kind of
Speaker 1: it kind of yeah, it makes sense to me.
Speaker 4: Isn't that a source of something to be worried about?
Speaker 4: With an endorsing epicureanism is is a kind of moral
Speaker 4: bankruptcy when it comes to pleasure being the ultimate good.
Speaker 2: No, no, if you have if you take pleasure in
Speaker 2: your government dropping bombs somewhere else, this already proves you're
Speaker 2: extremely fucked up. However, it's not because it's immoral. It's
Speaker 2: because if you are so, if you live in such
Speaker 2: a fake, imaginary world that you think something happening on
Speaker 2: the other side of the world that's not even good,
Speaker 2: but more that has nothing to do with you at all,
Speaker 2: that has no effect on you, and that you didn't
Speaker 2: plan to put your stock, your feeling and desire into that,
Speaker 2: that's what's fucked up. It's like it's like saying I'm
Speaker 2: not happy, but I would be if I won the
Speaker 2: lottery and walking around with that belief all day. If
Speaker 2: it's wholly distinct from nature or necessity, and you believe
Speaker 2: that that makes you happy. You're doomed, You're you lived
Speaker 2: in a fucked up society and you're fucked up.
Speaker 4: Like if even being ethical and more and acting morally
Speaker 4: is only good because it's a source of pleasure for
Speaker 4: the one acting in that way, Like, what does that say?
Speaker 4: I don't know, it does it does seem it? Is
Speaker 4: there a rebuttal for that kind of to say that
Speaker 4: that's okay, that's pure hedonism to say that even even
Speaker 4: the good is only good in so far as it's pleasurable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they go even further than that, they say
Speaker 2: positing the good as this otherworldly thing that is also
Speaker 2: an active pleasure. People follow morality to avoid pain, not
Speaker 2: because the thing out there is real, because there is
Speaker 2: no real morale, moral good out there in the universe,
Speaker 2: because we've seen it all and it's all atoms.
Speaker 4: Well, like I'm pretty sure the Stoics also were thorough
Speaker 4: going materialists, but still had a sense.
Speaker 3: Of well a god.
Speaker 4: They just hadn't exist that there's a material god, and
Speaker 4: they had a sense of soul. It's just a material soul.
Speaker 4: Like the Stoics were thorough going materialists, and they're also
Speaker 4: fatalists and determinists. They didn't have this swerve thing going
Speaker 4: which seems to change a lot, which is to say that, like,
Speaker 4: you don't have control over your circumstances, and going against
Speaker 4: I guess an epicurean reading, going against what fate has
Speaker 4: decreed is to be your lot, is going to cause
Speaker 4: you a lot of anguish and pain, and you should
Speaker 4: avoid that by going with the flow. I don't know,
Speaker 4: but that seems a little bit different to me. That
Speaker 4: still doesn't say, you know, pleasure is the highest good.
Speaker 4: That's now saying okay, Well.
Speaker 1: I almost feel like using the English word pleasure is
Speaker 1: as being the highest good is somehow misleading to what
Speaker 1: epicureanism is really about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds too horny, does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not really right. That's not right, And I
Speaker 1: think it's an easy way to for people who haven't
Speaker 1: read it to think that it's something that it's not.
Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, I was looking in the glossary and
Speaker 4: it's not defined in there. You have atyraxia as pills was,
Speaker 4: which is lack of mental turmoil, tranquility, or peace of mind,
Speaker 4: considered the limit of mental pleasure by the epicureans. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's the highest, the primary constituent of the happy life.
Speaker 4: So the idea of something being the limit of mental pleasure. Okay,
Speaker 4: so I saw this about pain too. It's not like
Speaker 4: pain is bad, it's just pain is the limit. Pain
Speaker 4: marks out the point where pleasure stops. And that's the
Speaker 4: only thing that's not great about pain. Otherwise, Otherwise, you know,
Speaker 4: you should do the painful thing if it's going to
Speaker 4: you know, have prudence, do the painful thing if it's
Speaker 4: going to result in a lot of pleasure. Like, don't
Speaker 4: avoid your problems just because it'll be painful to deal
Speaker 4: with them, you know, like, do deal with your problems,
Speaker 4: deal with that toothache, because yeah, it's going to cause
Speaker 4: you more pain in the future.
Speaker 2: I feel like where the stoics said that they were
Speaker 2: doing a consequentialist argument about what virtue is, Like this
Speaker 2: is what works, So this is what we have retroactively
Speaker 2: decided what virtue is. This is actually doing consequentialist ethics.
Speaker 2: There's nothing good or bad, but you'll find out, and
Speaker 2: you should pay attention to the wise people who have
Speaker 2: come before you and gave you advice. But you don't
Speaker 2: have to like, maybe they're.
Speaker 1: Wrong, figure it out for yourself. Be prudential exactly.
Speaker 2: The ultimate, the ultimate uh Epicurean happiness is having a
Speaker 2: summer barbecue with the boys. Like you don't and you
Speaker 2: don't eat, you don't drink too much, you don't drink,
Speaker 2: you don't eat.
Speaker 1: Too reasonable amount. You have a reasonable amount of hot dogs,
Speaker 1: a reasonable amount of drinks.
Speaker 2: And you don't. You don't get the cheapest hot dogs.
Speaker 2: You can have the good hot dogs. It's a it's
Speaker 2: a Sunday, you have the boys over. But what else
Speaker 2: do you do it? In epicureanism, it's like setting setting
Speaker 2: accomplishable goals. Then you accomplish them, then you get new goals.
Speaker 1: Stress yourself out, having lots of lively conversation at the barbecue.
Speaker 1: As much of that as as you can enjoy.
Speaker 3: You should.
Speaker 2: Yep, you should stress a little bit, but not too much,
Speaker 2: not so much stress that you're always stressed and anxious.
Speaker 2: Be healthy now if you can, so don't don't have
Speaker 2: cigarettes at the barbecue. You'll thank yourself later and get
Speaker 2: a good sleep whenever you can. This is, like the epicurean.
Speaker 1: Pretty basic and also like where there's overlap I think
Speaker 1: with the stoics is, yeah, try to like sever yourself
Speaker 1: from worrying about things related to vanity, right, like, for example,
Speaker 1: social media. Obviously it didn't exist back then, but I
Speaker 1: think clear epicuring advice would be, you know, stop fixating
Speaker 1: on social media, probably because most of the people on
Speaker 1: social media don't even know you, so like you're letting
Speaker 1: these other people who aren't actually substantively in your life
Speaker 1: dictate your happiness and well being. You shouldn't do that.
Speaker 2: This is why you have to have a barbecue with
Speaker 2: the boys, because I don't think there's any epicure and
Speaker 2: justification to have a wife and a kids and a mortgage.
Speaker 2: This is that's way, that's way too much potential for pain, stress, anxiety.
Speaker 2: You have to continue to work, you can never take
Speaker 2: time off. This is so this is philosophy for the
Speaker 2: Broskis bro This is Broski philosophy. Okay, well, no, there
Speaker 2: is a reason to have to have kids and a
Speaker 2: wife and a mortgage. It's if your your life is
Speaker 2: unbearable without it, or you think in the future it
Speaker 2: will be too lonely or unbearable.
Speaker 1: Surely there's got to be some account of romantic good
Speaker 1: in epicureanism, like like love of a woman or of
Speaker 1: a significant other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, but you're rolling the dice with like
Speaker 2: roping yourself into commitments that you don't know if you'll
Speaker 2: be able to keep or if they will.
Speaker 4: It says here that everything has value either as a
Speaker 4: constituent of pleasure or a means to pleasure. So if
Speaker 4: it's either a constituent of one's pleasure or a means
Speaker 4: to pleasure, then it is good and pleasure. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: not like this hedonistic, sensualist pleasure. It's mental. I guess
Speaker 4: there's a distinction between bodily and mental pleasure.
Speaker 1: And it's being at ease. It's not even additive. It's
Speaker 1: like just being relaxed, just like you know.
Speaker 3: That's the thing. It's like pleasant.
Speaker 4: It's it's that it goes back to that living the
Speaker 4: simple life. It's like what's pleasant is you know, if
Speaker 4: it's pleasant.
Speaker 3: Then it's good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like like yeah, that's a.
Speaker 2: Way better word seeking pleasantness, pleasantness instead of pleasure.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. It's that does.
Speaker 4: Get into weird like like kind of what's pleasing?
Speaker 3: That's very pleasing, I don't know, but.
Speaker 1: It's also I think, but I still, but I still exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's why even that word is is like slightly misleading,
Speaker 1: because it is very notable that this adoraxia or whatever
Speaker 1: it is is the highest good, which is really just
Speaker 1: taking away disturbances, right, removing anything that preoccupies you, that
Speaker 1: stresses you out, that like that gives you anxiety, that
Speaker 1: gives you like that makes you feel depressed, like taking
Speaker 1: away those things and then just being like, ah, I'm chill,
Speaker 1: like I feel fine, I'm at ease.
Speaker 2: This is so anti Kant.
Speaker 3: It just feels like it just feels like Grand Tour.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 4: People people who want to play Skyrim and see all
Speaker 4: the nice views and love the graphics and oh my god,
Speaker 4: this world is rendered so pleasantly and beautifully.
Speaker 1: That's why pleasantness isn't right. Yeah, that's fine too, That's
Speaker 1: why pleasantness isn't the right word either.
Speaker 2: If you like fighting, if you like jiu jitsu, it
Speaker 2: causes you pain, but it's good good in the end,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Or watching watching or reading a really sad novel that
Speaker 1: like makes you cry, there's still a weird like pleasure
Speaker 1: in that too, Like if you can if you can
Speaker 1: handle it, you know.
Speaker 2: Horror movies. What struck me by the end of this
Speaker 2: is how absolutely he says, kind of like Rousseau civilization,
Speaker 2: society corrupts you ultimately because of its values, and this
Speaker 2: is like, this is where we live in the most
Speaker 2: anti Epicurean society in history. There's no way for guys
Speaker 2: to have friends. That's why they're all addicted to peorn
Speaker 2: in video games.
Speaker 1: Well that's perfect because I was going to ask you,
Speaker 1: pills if you retract what you've been saying before that
Speaker 1: everyone's an epicurean.
Speaker 2: Yes, because they're not stoics, they're not platonists, they're not skeptics.
Speaker 2: But they are also not good Epicureans. They're very bad
Speaker 2: at picureans. Yeah, everyone believes that the pleasure is the good,
Speaker 2: but they're not doing the philosophy part of epicureanism.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. I think everyone's like a base cringe
Speaker 1: like British Enlightenment hedonist Jesus.
Speaker 2: But if you think of what he says, like don't
Speaker 2: ever do, don't ever do vain and empty desires. If
Speaker 2: you think of our advertising, our politics, celebrity, social media,
Speaker 2: every single person knows all these things make you sad
Speaker 2: and depressed and anxious, and everyone does. The man.
Speaker 1: There's hours and hours of podcasts talking about that.
Speaker 2: There's hours and hours of our podcast talk about things
Speaker 2: that don't make you happier. And there is a certain
Speaker 2: pleasure in it, right, There's a certain pleasure in dissection
Speaker 2: or understanding. And this is why even mathematics and philosophy
Speaker 2: are Those are fun for certain people. Those are pleasant
Speaker 2: and pleasurable for certain people, and you should do it.
Speaker 2: You should do everything in moderation. But if you had
Speaker 2: read this book and you're like, let's do everything the opposite.
Speaker 2: Let's let's be the least happy people. The people we
Speaker 2: talk about are unhappy. The people we see on TV,
Speaker 2: the people that make it in this society, they're vain
Speaker 2: and unhappy, the worst form of desire. We don't look
Speaker 2: for people who are happy, to admonish. Happiness is not
Speaker 2: a goal. And the people who rule us our slaves
Speaker 2: to the most empty desires. We have all the information
Speaker 2: in everything that's ever happened in the universe, but no
Speaker 2: way for bros to make friends.
Speaker 4: And then again, there's no there's I can't believe I'd
Speaker 4: say it this way, but like there'd be no room
Speaker 4: for like that kind of that kind of martyrdom, that
Speaker 4: kind of self sacrifice that is also like important, you
Speaker 4: know from a from a so at least just from
Speaker 4: not even religious like from a social justice perspective.
Speaker 3: I guess you wouldn't have.
Speaker 4: People like oh God, I think they're still room for it,
Speaker 4: gandhi mother Teresa. Would they be Epicureans too? When you
Speaker 4: have when you have this really strong moral sense, like
Speaker 4: I feel like what the Epicurean position, Okay, you're gonna
Speaker 4: have to accept things that say Russo says right, or
Speaker 4: even Freud and civilization and its discontents, right, Like you
Speaker 4: know you're operating on the pleasure principle, this sort of
Speaker 4: now now now, and you have to sort of like
Speaker 4: civilization means you're repressing your instincts and desires in favor
Speaker 4: of a reality principle that allows you to get along
Speaker 4: with other people. Like I guess you still have still
Speaker 4: even in Freuden psychoanalysis, you still have this fundamental like
Speaker 4: pleasure and pain driving you. And then you have the
Speaker 4: pleasure principle being suppressed in favor of the reality principle,
Speaker 4: and you have the idea that society is just like
Speaker 4: bad and that's why, you know, Epicureans are like, you know,
Speaker 4: don't participate in politics because it's it's not very pleasurable.
Speaker 4: Stoic's being like, well, maybe participate in politics because they're
Speaker 4: still roomful compromise your virtue, and then like Rousseau and
Speaker 4: Freud being like, no, like, society is fundamentally corrupting, and
Speaker 4: in nature we are good and we can pursue our
Speaker 4: desires immediately without all of these complicated ways of having
Speaker 4: to channel our desires into creativity and all that bullshit.
Speaker 4: We can just go straight for them. But society, civilization
Speaker 4: doesn't let us. Does that epicurean lead to that kind
Speaker 4: of like, No, I don't think so anti social.
Speaker 1: I think there's still room. I think there's still room
Speaker 1: for all those things. Even before when we were talking
Speaker 1: about politics. I think there's still space for participating in politics.
Speaker 1: I mean, Pills even said there might even be space
Speaker 1: for self immolation if you're you know, to free Palestine,
Speaker 1: so that which would be like a case of martyrdom.
Speaker 1: But I think what there's not room for is deluding
Speaker 1: yourself into thinking that it's like based on some higher principle,
Speaker 1: and it's more admitting and foregrounding the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of ajouissance and pleasure in like being a
Speaker 1: martyr or an activist that you're kind of getting off
Speaker 1: on it. And it's like if you're cool with it,
Speaker 1: like if you're cool with admitting that. And also certainly
Speaker 1: they would be critical of people who let well, not
Speaker 1: even critical, but they would just say there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with you if you let it like consume your life.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't even know. It's it's tough
Speaker 1: to say, like whether they would condemn it, because I
Speaker 1: feel like they're not really in the business of morally
Speaker 1: condemning things. They would just be like, you seem kind
Speaker 1: of an unhappy, Like you seem sad, Like you seem
Speaker 1: like you're not living a good life. Like it would
Speaker 1: be like descriptive, it would be diagnostic and descriptive. It's
Speaker 1: like your whole life is about, you know, like being
Speaker 1: a trotskyist in the street talking to people all the day,
Speaker 1: trying to convince them. You seem kind of unhappy, like
Speaker 1: your life seems a bit sad to me. But like
Speaker 1: if you want to do it, like go ahead, right,
Speaker 1: Like that. But but I don't think they're going to
Speaker 1: be like, that's morally wrong what you're doing. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't feel like they would say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we Epicureans were probably not going to be the
Speaker 2: first one on the barricade, but it doesn't mean we're
Speaker 2: not going to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly. I agree.
Speaker 4: I just I just love this part though. Here's here's
Speaker 4: part of what we read as as Aristotle puts it,
Speaker 4: he does them for the sake of to kalon, the
Speaker 4: noble or the fine, a person who behaves courageously, but
Speaker 4: does so only for the sake of the good consequences,
Speaker 4: and not because the action itself is noble and fine,
Speaker 4: is not truly courageous, but pseudo courageous. Epicurus yields no
Speaker 4: ground before such high minded criticisms, however, saying that he
Speaker 4: spits on the noble and on those who vainly admire
Speaker 4: it whenever it does not produce pleasure.
Speaker 1: Amen, brother, Like, oh, come on, that's a little bit.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems it seems descriptively correct. Though. That's
Speaker 1: the thing that I feel like I can't get over,
Speaker 1: Like it's just.
Speaker 4: The guy who's self emilating it. The guy who's self
Speaker 4: emilating is not doing it because.
Speaker 3: Of a higher more a callage.
Speaker 4: He's doing it because he's just imagining in his head
Speaker 4: what he's going to look like on social media, even
Speaker 4: though even though he's not going to be there to
Speaker 4: see it, he's gonna be like, it's gonna look pretty
Speaker 4: fucking good.
Speaker 1: That sounds worse than it is, though, because I think
Speaker 1: in the epicurean world, do you there's still space, Like
Speaker 1: he genuinely is concerned about the people in Palestine suffering, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's giving him pain, right to So I think
Speaker 1: there's still room for having that account. But yes, ultimately
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, how what what? What kind of message
Speaker 1: is this going to send?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, it's what. It depends. It depends the motivation,
Speaker 2: It depends on why he did it. But an epicurean
Speaker 2: is never going to care why someone else did something either.
Speaker 2: So it's possible that an epicurean could be like, you
Speaker 2: know what, I I don't fear death because I'm a
Speaker 2: proper philosopher and I think that this is like the
Speaker 2: best use of my energy is to burn myself alive.
Speaker 2: That's it's completely possible, possible, Yeah, that an epicurean makes
Speaker 2: that rational distinction. I just I doubt it. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I doubt they wouldn't. They wouldn't do it diluted though.
Speaker 2: And this is kind of what I believe about epicureanism,
Speaker 2: is they say everyone else is diluted, and we're doing
Speaker 2: this honestly, and then everyone starts yelling at them, no,
Speaker 2: we're not diluted. You're diluted, and they're like, yeah, fine, bro, whatever,
Speaker 2: I'm eating my burger exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm converted. I'm converted. I mean not that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even say that I'm converted, because it's not like I
Speaker 1: was anything else. But I like it well.
Speaker 3: As you could probably predict.
Speaker 4: Nietzsche appreciates elements of epicureanism, but also ends up finding
Speaker 4: a life denying aspect to it, and a life denying of.
Speaker 2: Course he does.
Speaker 1: Psycho's Psycho.
Speaker 4: Yes, as he finds in everything. He appreciates their free spiritedness.
Speaker 1: But doesn't like they're they're they're overly indulgent.
Speaker 2: Overly Yeah, I think nature would say, you have to
Speaker 2: be you have to be absolutely obsessed day and night
Speaker 2: with your aesthetic project. Let nothing get it in the way,
Speaker 2: starve if you have to, as long as you get
Speaker 2: the thing done. And the Epicureans are like no, no, no.
Speaker 1: No, no no, bro no, yeah, exactly that's right, that's
Speaker 1: exactly right.
Speaker 4: They don't leave enough room for the will to power
Speaker 4: over other people and ultimately power over yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Although I didn't I didn't even think of the word
Speaker 2: jewey songs though, But this is like, this is like
Speaker 2: everyone else, everyone else pretends they're not doing jewy songs,
Speaker 2: and these guys just go, no, this is that's the law.
Speaker 2: This is it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one's mind goes to psychoanalysis. I think more when
Speaker 4: reading Epicureanism than reading Stoicism, because stoicism from from that
Speaker 4: perspective just seems like pure repression, which which which would
Speaker 4: be a problematic reading. But it does seem like that
Speaker 4: you're not controlling your emotions, you're oppressing your emotions.
Speaker 1: That was my fear, And actually I wish I would
Speaker 1: have used that language in Arstosism episode, because I think
Speaker 1: that's exactly one of my worries with it. It feels repressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's a there is something another place to
Speaker 2: go with this because we've kind of focused on like
Speaker 2: individual decisions and all that, but there's a lot of
Speaker 2: there's a lot of society being illusion or illusory or
Speaker 2: setting up all these rat rat races. How does that happen?
Speaker 2: And how does it how does everyone buy into it?
Speaker 2: I think the Epicurean answer is a little bit too simple,
Speaker 2: just saying, well, that's all that's all a lie and
Speaker 2: everyone's falling for it, and everyone's falling for it because
Speaker 2: they're stupid. Now, that could be, that could be correct,
Speaker 2: and it might be just that simple, but I think
Speaker 2: there may be missing how much in their analysis of pleasure,
Speaker 2: there might be missing how much pleasure we get from
Speaker 2: illusion itself.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a good point.
Speaker 2: Instead of just from truth, they're focused on how much
Speaker 2: they're focused on how much pleasure we get from true,
Speaker 2: but there's no mention of how much pleasure we get
Speaker 2: from illusion.
Speaker 1: That's a good point, which makes sense at the time
Speaker 1: because not that there wouldn't have been like ways of
Speaker 1: discussing that. But I do feel like the modern age
Speaker 1: is there's so much more I guess awareness of like
Speaker 1: layer upon layer of ideology and like propaganda. There must
Speaker 1: have been people back then who were talking about things. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it would have been, you know, the sophists
Speaker 1: would be like the closest thing to like the propagandist
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: But Epicureanism basically died out or was absorbed into aspects
Speaker 2: of Christian humanism, especially but in general, the Christianity is
Speaker 2: obviously hostile to this saying that there's no God, there's
Speaker 2: no other world, that there's no no law.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's always been the interesting thing about these materialistic
Speaker 4: philosophies is that they've always been very trenchant, very a
Speaker 4: source of a source of disquiet. Throughout the Christian period,
Speaker 4: they fed into you know, there's been materialistic movements and
Speaker 4: closely connected usually with like atheism and free thinking and
Speaker 4: like libertarianism in the old sense, and even in Marx
Speaker 4: right studying Democritis and Epicurus and his dissertation back in
Speaker 4: his university days and finding things to appreciate in the
Speaker 4: early materialists and finding inspiration for his own positions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm again confident in saying that the worst of
Speaker 2: the Greek philosophies the worst of the Athenian philosophies. One.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the other thing we said at the beginning, though,
Speaker 4: is that like Epicureanism seems so right because it's so
Speaker 4: much like scientific materialism today as well.
Speaker 3: It has those parallels.
Speaker 1: And not even its metaphysical claims though, it just I
Speaker 1: feel like it just rings true. It's weird, it's almost
Speaker 1: it's almost spooky. How true it rings to me?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, not just the atomism, not just the lack
Speaker 4: of telos, but that certainly helps the atheism.
Speaker 3: It does have.
Speaker 4: The hallmarks of like a very modern way of thinking.
Speaker 4: I think all those things together and then just looking
Speaker 4: at pleasure as like the highest good.
Speaker 1: Imagine a world where Epicureanism had won, Imagine what the
Speaker 1: world would look like.
Speaker 2: Well, actually, I'm just looking at Wikipedia right now. There's
Speaker 2: a book called The Swerve and it's How the World
Speaker 2: became Modern, And it looks like from the summary that
Speaker 2: the claim is that the rediscovery of Lucretius's book because
Speaker 2: Lucretius wasn't read and Epicureanism wasn't read for like over
Speaker 2: a thousand year, and then a random monk, a random
Speaker 2: monk in the what is it fifteenth century went to
Speaker 2: a monastery in Germany and found a random copy of Lucretius's.
Speaker 3: On Nature de rerum natura right.
Speaker 2: And then supposedly this sparked the Renaissance and a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of stuff. This is just from the summary. I
Speaker 2: haven't read it, that's yeah, And it says it won
Speaker 2: a Pulitzer Prize for General nonfiction. So it's a pop
Speaker 2: a pop philosophy book. It'd be what's it called the Swerve?
Speaker 1: The Swerve interesting? Maybe i'll get it on audible.
Speaker 2: Stephen Greenblatt. So it's interesting. It's interesting to think that
Speaker 2: after this, these the Dark Ages, which was scholastic Aristotelianism,
Speaker 2: then they rediscovered some some epicurean atomism and we're like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, everything we're doing is bullshit. Let's go back
Speaker 2: to Let's go back to the simple pleasures of sculpting
Speaker 2: and painting.
Speaker 4: Stephen Greenblatt is a major twentieth century literary theorist who's
Speaker 4: part of the New Critical School, and I think he
Speaker 4: was one of the ones who published the New Historicism.
Speaker 4: That's the school he's associated with, although he wouldn't call
Speaker 4: it that.
Speaker 2: I think, well, if it's true, then this is the
Speaker 2: key swerve in the history of the West. Is the
Speaker 2: rediscovery of epicureanism.
Speaker 1: Hashtags, I guess so good place to wrap it ups.
Speaker 1: Hashtag swerve, hashtag modernity. I feel like no one actually
Speaker 1: does hashtags anymore. It's actually I'm realizing it. It actually
Speaker 1: dates no, it totally. Yeah exactly. It actually makes me
Speaker 1: seem like a clear millennial and not at all.
Speaker 4: I don't know swerve swarf, I don't know sibb skibbitty toilet?
Speaker 1: Is that.
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Well that was fun.
Speaker 3: I'm on the fence boys.
Speaker 1: Eric is just he's just too attached to his principles.
Speaker 1: He's too attached to his principles, which are really just Jewissance,
Speaker 1: but he wants to say they're really about principles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to be actually courageous, it would
Speaker 2: be more courageous to say I'm sticking to my principles
Speaker 2: even though they have no basis and they don't even exist.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I'm a little too high minded for all this pleasure nonsense.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 4: I am epicurious about the cynics, though, I must say
Speaker 2: All right, stay tuned, see you then, everyone, all right,
Speaker 2: did you stop it?