4. Ethics

Besides this description of the soul the philosophy of mind contains the ethics of Epicurus, which of all his doctrines are the most decried, and therefore the most interesting; they may, however, also be said to constitute the best part of that philosophy. The practical philosophy of Epicurus depends on the individuality of self-consciousness, just as much as does that of the Stoics; and the end of his ethics is in a measure the same, the unshaken tranquillity of the soul, and more particularly an undisturbed pure enjoyment of itself. Of course, if we regard the abstract principle involved in the ethics of Epicurus, our verdict cannot be other than exceedingly unfavourable. For if sensation, the feeling of pain and pleasure, is the criterion for the right, good, true, for that which man should make his aim in life, morality is really abrogated, or the moral principle is in fact not moral; at least we hold that the way is thereby opened up to all manner of arbitrariness in action. If it is now alleged that feeling is the ground of action, and that because I find a certain impulse in myself it is for that reason right—this is Epicurean reasoning. Everyone may have different feelings, and the same person, may feel differently at different times; in the same way with Epicurus it may be left to the subjectivity of the individual to determine the course of action. But it is of importance to notice this, that when Epicurus sets tip pleasure as the end, he concedes this only so far as its enjoyment is the result of philosophy. We have before now remarked (vol. i., p. 470) that even with the Cyrenaics, while on the one hand sensation was certainly made the principle, on the other hand it was essential that thought should be in intimate connection with it. Similarly it is the case with Epicurus that while he designated pleasure as the criterion of the good, he demanded a highly cultured consciousness, a power of reflection, which weighs pleasure to see if it is not combined with a greater degree of pain, and in this way forms a correct estimate of what it is. Diogenes Laërtius (X. 144) quotes from him with regard to this point of view: “The wise man owes but little to chance; Reason attains what is of the greatest consequence, and both directs it and will direct it his whole life long.” The particular pleasure is therefore regarded only with reference to the whole, and sensuous perception is not the one and only principle of the Epicureans; but while they made pleasure the principle, they made a principle at the same time of that happiness which is attained, and only attainable by reason; so that this happiness is to be sought in such a way that it may be free and independent of external contingencies, the contingencies of sensation. The true Epicureans were therefore, just as much as the Stoics, raised above all particular ties, for Epicurus, too, made his aim the undisturbed tranquillity of the wise man. In order to be free from superstition Epicurus specially requires physical science, as it sets men free from all the opinions which most disturb their rest—opinions regarding the gods, and their punishments, and more particularly from the thought of death. Freed from all this fear, and from the imaginings of the men who make any particular object their end and aim, the wise man seeks pleasure only as something universal, and holds this alone to be positive. Here the universal and the particular meet; or the particular, regarded only in its bearings to the whole, is raised into the form of universality. Thus it happens that, while materially, or as to content, Epicurus makes individuality a principle, on the other hand he requires the universality of thinking, and his philosophy is thus in accordance with that of the Stoics.

Seneca, who is known as a thorough-going and uncompromising Stoic, when in his treatise De Vita Beata (c. 12, 13) he happens to speak of the Epicureans, gives testimony which is above suspicion to the ethical system of Epicurus: “My verdict is, however—and in thus speaking I go, to some extent, against many of my own countrymen—that the moral precepts of Epicurus prescribe a way of life that is holy and just, and, when closely considered, even sorrowful. For every pleasure of Epicurus turns on something very paltry and poor, and we scarcely know how restricted it is, and how insipid. The self-same law which we lay down for virtue he prescribes for pleasure; he requires that Nature be obeyed; but very little in the way of luxury is required to satisfy Nature. What have we then here? He who calls a lazy, self-indulgent, and dissolute life happiness merely seeks a good authority for a thing that is evil, and while, drawn on by a dazzling name, he turns in the direction where he hears the praise of pleasure sounding, he does not follow the pleasures to which he is invited by Epicurus, but those which he himself brings with him. Men who thus abandon themselves to crime seek only to hide their wickedness under the mantle of philosophy, and to furnish for their excesses a pretext and an excuse. Thus it is by no means permitted that youth should hold up its head again for the reason that to the laxity of its morality an honourable title has been affixed.” By the employment of our reflective powers, which keep guard over pleasure and consider whether there can be any enjoyment in that which is fraught with dangers, fear, anxiety and other troubles, the possibility of our obtaining pleasure pure and unalloyed is reduced to a minimum. The principle of Epicurus is to live in freedom and ease, and with the mind at rest, and to this end it is needful to renounce much of that which men allow to sway them, and in which they find their pleasure. The life of a Stoic is therefore but little different from that of an Epicurean who keeps well before his eyes what Epicurus enjoins.

It might perhaps occur to us that the Cyrenaics had the same moral principle as the Epicureans, but Diogenes Laërtius (X. 139, 136, 137) shows us the difference that there was between them. The Cyrenaics rather made pleasure as a particular thing their end, while Epicurus, on the contrary, regarded it as a means, since he asserted painlessness to be pleasure, and allowed of no intermediate state. “Neither do the Cyrenaics recognize pleasure in rest (καταστηματικήν), but only in the determination of motion,” or as something affirmative, that consists in the enjoyment of the pleasant; “Epicurus, on the contrary, admits both—the pleasure of the body as well as that of the soul.” He meant by this that pleasure in rest is negative, as the absence of the unpleasant, and also an inward contentment, whereby rest is maintained within the mind. Epicurus explained these two kinds of pleasure more clearly as follows: “Freedom from fear and desire (ἀταραξία) and from pain and trouble (ἀπονία) are the passive pleasures (καταστηματικὶα ἡδοναί),”—the setting of our affections on nothing which we may run the risk of losing; pleasures of the senses, on the other hand, like “joy and mirth (χαρὰ δὲ καὶ εὐφροσύνη), are pleasures involving movement (κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ βλέπονται.9)” The former pleasures Epicurus held to be the truest and highest. “Besides this, pain of the body was held by the Cyrenaics to be worse than sorrow of the soul, while with the Epicureans this is reversed.”

The main teaching of Epicurus in respect of morals is contained in a letter to Men\nceus, which Diogenes Laërtius has preserved, and in which Epicurus expresses himself as follows: “The youth must neither be slow to study philosophy, nor must the old man feel it a burden, for no one is either too young or too old to study the health of his soul. We must therefore endeavour to find out wherein the happy life consists; the following are its elements: First, we must hold that God is a living Being, incorruptible and happy, as the general belief supposes Him to be; and that nothing is lacking to His incorruptibility nor to His happiness. But though the existence of the gods is known to be a fact, yet they are not such as the multitude suppose them to be. He is therefore not impious who discards his faith in the gods of the multitude, but he who applies to them the opinions entertained of them by the mass.” By these gods of Epicurus we can understand nothing else than the Holy, the Universal, in concrete form. The Stoics held more to the ordinary conception, without indeed giving much thought to the Being of God; with the Epicureans, on the other hand, the gods express an immediate Idea of the system. Epicurus says: “That which is holy and incorruptible has itself no trouble nor causes it to others; therefore it is unstirred by either anger or show of favour, for it is in weakness only that such find a place. The gods may be known by means of Reason; they consist partly in Number; others are the perfected type of man, which, owing to the similarity of the images, arises from the continuous confluence of like images on one and the same subject.” The gods are thus the altogether general images which we receive into ourselves; and Cicero says (De Natura Deorum, 18, 38) that they come singly upon us in sleep. This general image, which is at the same time an anthropomorphic conception, is the same to which we give the name of Ideal, only that here the source assigned to it is the reiterated occurrence of images. The gods thus seem to Epicurus to be Ideals of the holy life; they are also existent things, consisting of the finest atoms; they are, however, pure souls, unmixed with any grosser element, and therefore exempt from toil and trouble and pain. Their self-enjoyment is wholly passive, as it must be if consistent, for action has always in it something alien, the opposition of itself and reality, and the toil and trouble which are involved in it really represent the aspect of consciousness of opposition rather than that of realization. The gods lead an existence of pure and passive self enjoyment, and trouble themselves not with the affairs of the world and of men. Epicurus goes on to say: “Men must pay reverence to the gods on account of the perfection of their nature and their surpassing holiness, not in order to gain from them some special good, or for the sake of this or that advantage,” The manner in which Epicurus represents the gods as corporeal Beings in human likeness has been much derided; thus Cicero, for instance, in the passage quoted (c. 18) laughs at Epicurus for alleging that the gods have only quasi bodies, flesh and blood. But from this there follows only that they are, as it were, the implicit, as we see it stated of the soul and things palpable to the senses, that they have behind them what is implicit. Our talk of qualities is no better; for if justice, goodness, and so on, are to be taken in sensu eminentiori, and not as they are with men, we have in God a Being in the same way possessed of only something resembling justice and the other qualities. With this there is closely connected the theory of Epicurus that the gods dwell in vacant space, in the intermediate spaces of the world, where they are exposed neither to rain or wind or snow or the like. For the intermediate spaces are the vacuum, wherein, as the principle of movement, are the atoms in themselves. Worlds, as phenomena, are complete continuous concretions of such atoms, but concretions which are only external relations. Between them, as in vacuum, there are thus these Beings also, which themselves are certainly concretions of atoms, but concretions which remain implicit. Yet this leads only to confusion, if a closer definition is given, for concretion constitutes what is for the senses, but the gods, even if they were concretions, would not be realities exactly such as these. In illogical fashion the general, the implicit, is taken out of reality and set above it, not as atoms, but just as before, as a combination of these atoms; in this way this combination is not itself the sensuous. This seems ridiculous, but it is connected with the interruptions spoken of, and with the relation of the vacuum to the plenum, the atom. So far, therefore, the gods belong to the category of negativity as against sensuality, and as this negative is thought, in that sense what Epicurus said of the gods may still to some extent be said. To this determination of God a larger measure of objectivity of course belongs, but it is a perfectly correct assertion that God, as Thought, is a holy Being, to whom reverence is due for His own sake alone. The first element in a happy life is therefore reverence for the gods, uninfluenced by fear or hope.

Further, a second point with Epicurus is the contemplation of death, the negative of existence, of self-consciousness in man; he requires us to have a true conception of death, because otherwise it disturbs our tranquillity. He accordingly says: “Accustom thyself then to the thought that death concerns us not; for all good and evil is a matter of sensation, but death is a deprivation (στέρησις) of sensation. Therefore the true reflection that death is no concern of ours, makes our mortal life one of enjoyment, since this thought does not add an endless length of days, but does away with the longing after immortality. For nothing in life has terrors for him who has once truly recognized the fact that not to live is not a matter of dread. Thus it is a vain thing to fear death, not because its presence but because the anticipation of it brings us pain. For how can the anticipation of a thing pain us when its reality does not? There is therefore in death nothing to trouble us. For when we are in life, death is not there, and when death is there, we are not. Therefore death does not concern either the living or the dead.” This is quite correct, if we look at the immediate; it is a thought full of meaning, and drives away fear. Mere privation, which death is, is not to be confounded with the feeling of being alive, which is positive; and there is no reason for worrying oneself about it. “But the future in general is neither ours, nor is it not ours; hence we must not count upon it as something that will come to pass, nor yet despair of it, as if it would not come to pass.” It is no concern of ours either that it is or that it is not; and it need not therefore cause us uneasiness. This the right way in which to regard the future also.

Epicurus passes on to speak of impulses, saying: “This moreover is to be kept in mind, that amongst impulses some are natural, but others are vain; and of those that are natural some are necessary while others are natural only. Those that are necessary are either necessary to happiness, or tend to save the body from pain, or to self-preservation in general. The perfect theory teaches how to choose that which promotes health of body and steadfastness of soul, and how to reject what impairs them, this being the aim of the holy life. This is the end of all our actions, to have neither pain of body nor uneasiness of mind. If we but attain to this, all turmoil of the soul is stilled, since the life no longer has to strive after something which it needs, and no longer has to seek anything outside of itself by which the welfare of soul and body is arrived at. But even on the supposition that pleasure is the first and the inborn good, we do not for that reason choose all pleasures, but many we renounce, when they are more than counterbalanced by their painful results; and many pains we prefer to pleasures, if there follows from them a pleasure that is greater. Contentment we hold to be a good, not that we may aim at merely reducing our requirements to a minimum, as the Cynics did, but that we may seek not to be discontented even when we have not very much, knowing that they most enjoy abundance who can do without it, and that what is naturally desired is easy to procure, while what is a mere idle fancy can be procured only with difficulty. Simple dishes afford just as much enjoyment as costly banquets, if they appease hunger. Therefore when we make pleasure our aim, it is not the enjoyments of the gourmand, as is often falsely thought, but freedom from both pain of body and uneasiness of mind. We attain to this life of happiness by sober reason alone, which examines the grounds of all choice and all rejection, and expels the thoughts by which the soul’s rest is most disturbed. It is surely better to be unhappy and reasonable than to be happy and unreasonable; for it is better that in our actions we should judge correctly than that we should be favoured by luck. Meditate on this day and night, and let thyself be shaken by nought from thy peace of soul, that thou mayest live as a god amongst men; for the man who lives amongst such imperishable treasures has nothing in common with mortal men. Of all those the first and foremost is reasonableness (φρόνησις), which on this account is still more excellent than philosophy; from it spring all the other virtues. For they show that one cannot live happily, unless he lives wisely and honourably and justly: nor can he live wisely and honourably and justly without living happily.”

Therefore, although at first sight there seems not much to be said for the principle of Epicurus, nevertheless by means of the inversion of making the guiding principle to be found in thought proceeding from Reason, it passes into Stoicism, as even Seneca himself has admitted (v. supra, pp. 302, 303); and actually the same result is reached as with the Stoics. Hence the Epicureans describe their wise man in at least as glowing terms as the Stoics do theirs; and in both these systems the wise man is depicted with the same qualities, these being negative. With the Stoics the Universal is the essential principle,—not pleasure, the self-consciousness of the particular as particular; but the reality of this self-consciousness is equally something pleasant. With the Epicureans pleasure is the essential principle, but pleasure sought and enjoyed in such a way that it is pure and unalloyed, that is to say, in accordance with sound judgment, and with no greater evil following to destroy it: therefore pleasure is regarded in its whole extent, that is, as being itself a universal. In Diogenes Laërtius, however (X. 117-121), the Epicurean delineation of the wise man has a character of greater mildness; he shapes his conduct more according to laws already in operation, while the Stoic wise man, on the other hand, does not take these into account at all. The Epicurean wise man is less combative than the Stoic, because the latter makes his starting-point the thought of self-dependence, which, while denying self, exercises activity: the Epicureans, on the other hand, proceed from the thought of existence, which is not so exacting, and seeks not so much this activity directed outwards, as rest; this, however, is not won by lethargy, but by the highest mental culture. Yet although the content of the Epicurean philosophy, its aim and result, stands thus on as high a level as the Stoic philosophy, and is its exact parallel, the two are nevertheless in other respects directly opposed to one another; but each of these systems is one-sided, and therefore both of them are dogmatisms inconsistent with themselves by the necessity of the Notion, that is, they contain the contrary principle within them. The Stoics take the content of their thought from Being, from the sensuous, demanding that thought should be the thought of something existent: the Epicureans, on the contrary, extend their particularity of existence to the atoms which are only things of thought, and to pleasure as a universal; but in accordance with their respective principles, both schools know themselves to be definitely opposed to each other.

The negative mean to these one-sided principles is the Notion, which, abrogating fixed extremes of determination such as these, moves them and sets them free from a mere state of opposition. This movement of the Notion, the revival of dialectic—directed as it is against these one-sided principles of abstract thinking and sensation—we now see in its negative aspect, both in the New Academy and in the Sceptics. Even the Stoics, as having their principle in thought, cultivated dialectic, though theirs was (pp. 254, 255) a common logic, in which the form of simplicity passes for the Notion, while the Notion, as such, represents the negative element in it, and dissolves the determinations, which are taken up into that simplicity. There is a higher form of the Notion of dialectic reality, which not only applies itself to sensuous existence, but also to determinate Notions, and which brings to consciousness the opposition between thought and existence; not expressing the Universal as simple Idea, but as a universality in which all comes back into consciousness as an essential moment of existence. In Scepticism we now really have an abrogation of the two one-sided systems that we have hitherto dealt with; but this negative remains negative only, and is incapable of passing into an affirmative.