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Catherine Wilson on the Epicurean Life (Episode 70)
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Catherine Wilson is a Professor of Philosophy, currently at the City University of New York. She is the author of How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well, which covers Epicureanism, an ancient philosophy, as a way of life.
In this conversation Michael and Catherine cover the basics of Epicureanism, a philosophical alternative to Stoicism based on minimizing the painful experiences of yourself and others, while maximizing enjoyment. They also discuss the contrasts between Stoicism and Epicureanism, including the idea that Stoicism is a tool for stress management, while Epicureanism is a tool for stress avoidance.
This conversation is a must for anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of Hellenistic philosophy, or anyone interested in ancient philosophies of life besides Stoicism.
(01:33) Stoicism vs Epicureanism
(03:45) Convention vs Nature
(10:13) Epicurean Altruism
(20:35) The Garden
(25:17) Back to Convention
(29:11) Intellectual Pleasure
(30:49) Stoicism vs Epicureanism, Revisited
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Transcript
Epicurean Philosophy Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
The Epicurean way of looking at things is stay out of those situations in the first place. Choice and avoidance. Don't join the army because you're going to have to do and see horrible, painful things.
Introduction to Stoa Conversations
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. In this podcast, Caleb Ontiveros and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism.
00:00:23
Speaker
Each week we'll share two conversations, one between the two of us and the other will be an in-depth conversation with an expert.
Epicureanism vs. Stoicism
00:00:31
Speaker
In this conversation, I speak with Catherine Wilson, who is a professor of philosophy currently at the City University of New York. She is the author of How to Be an Epicurean, the Ancient Art of Living Well, which covers Epicureanism, a philosophy contemporary to Stoicism, and a different way of life.
00:00:49
Speaker
In this conversation, we cover the basics of Epicureanism, a philosophical alternative to Stoicism, based on minimizing the painful experiences of yourself and others while maximizing enjoyment.
00:01:01
Speaker
We also discussed the contrast between stoicism and epicureanism, including the idea of stoicism as a tool for stress management, while epicureanism is a tool for stress avoidance. This conversation is a must for anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of Hellenistic philosophy, or anyone interested in ancient philosophies other than stoicism that they could base their life on.
Catherine Wilson's Book Discussion
00:01:28
Speaker
Hi, Catherine. Thanks so much for coming on. Talk with me today. It's a pleasure to be here, but thanks for the invitation. So one thing I wanted to talk to you about, you have an excellent book out called How to Be an Epicurean.
00:01:40
Speaker
And I think that's really interesting because, you know, at STO, we talk a lot about stoicism, but Hellenistic philosophy, as you know, is kind of this rich tradition with a lot of different schools. So one thing I wanted to talk to you about was a bit about Epicureanism and then maybe a contrast between that and stoicism and develop, you know, how do these schools compete
Materialism in Epicureanism
00:02:00
Speaker
against each other? What do they agree on? What do they disagree on? What are some of the pieces that you think stoicism gets wrong? Maybe Epicureanism gets right. So before we jump into that,
00:02:10
Speaker
you can provide a brief introduction to Epicureanism, kind of what its main beliefs are, what its kind of core ideas are? Sure, I can do that. It's a materialistic philosophy, not in the sense of being consumer-oriented, but in the sense of starting from the position that there is only matter. So that means what's excluded is
00:02:35
Speaker
spirits, angels, gods, an incorporeal soul, and lots of other things, something we can talk about later in the session. It really sees nature as
00:02:49
Speaker
something quite different from human institutions and practices and socially constructed items. Trying to draw a sharp line, even if that's technically impossible, from where you view philosophy of science. But that's quite important because a lot of things that other Hellenistic philosophers kind of take for granted
00:03:11
Speaker
or think exists like the forms for Plato, Aristotle's celestial intelligences and physiological soul, those are all reduced to essentially atoms in the Epicurean system.
Nature vs. Human Conventions
00:03:26
Speaker
They were atomists who thought that the world is basically made of tiny particles with
00:03:32
Speaker
void space in between them. And these came together and interacted and coalesced and became the objects and people and animals that we have around us. So that was one thing that you talked about in your book that I thought was very interesting was this divide between convention and nature. If you could explain that a bit more. So we have kind of this picture of nature as being materialistic, atomistic. So what does that make convention? What's the role of convention then?
00:04:01
Speaker
Well, here's some things that are conventional, money, because a coin or a piece of paper has no intrinsic value, and it only works because we believe it works, we have faith in it, we're able to exchange it for things.
00:04:18
Speaker
but even value, an Epicurean would say, and maybe this makes their philosophy a little contradictory because they do say pleasure is the only good, they do talk about value, but the things that people value they would see as conventional, like fame, like honor,
00:04:40
Speaker
all kinds of status, wealth, poverty, all of those things they say only depend on human interests and agreement and human needs. So if you think of the world as just a collection of atoms that are differently configured into plants and animals and geographical features and objects, you can see that world is itself kind of value free.
00:05:07
Speaker
and values come into the world only because people believe in them and pursue them or shun them. And so in that sense, they're conventional. I think we could kind of have this picture where they're conventional. I mean, maybe we end up something like this with the existentialists where we say, you know, they're conventional, but that's all we have. And that's great. But the Epicureans are going to, are going to break with this. They're going to say they're conventional and we often get them wrong. Or we often just like, we mistakenly think they're absolute. Is that kind of the problem?
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's what they would say. Like, veneration for leaders is really kind of irrational. What are you doing there? You're just kind of a victim of some psychological tendency to think that these people really are godlike in some way. And it's a very human thing to be impressed by status, to be impressed by wealth, to be impressed by prizes.
00:06:06
Speaker
And the Epicureans kind of think you shouldn't pursue those things if they come your way. That's perfectly fine. But you should be aware of the way in which your values are just based on either on something in your psychology that isn't entirely rational or on what other people think.
00:06:26
Speaker
How do we get to kind of this stereotype? I mean, and not just the stereotype, but this kind of robust theory of pleasure and pain then. So many of these things are conventional, but I guess pleasure and pain are not. And how do we end up there? What's that idea look like?
Epicurean Ethics
00:06:41
Speaker
Well, if you start with the idea that humans are just part of nature, and here's where I think Stoics and Epicureans tend to disagree. Stoics really think humans are like Platonists. They're really tapped into something much higher than just material nature and have special potential and special capabilities that really raise them above the rest of nature.
00:07:06
Speaker
for Epicureans you have to kind of come to terms with the fact that you are just a very clever very able linguistic animal among other animals and there's no ultimate purpose to the universe or your own life or the human species and what you should try to do is minimize your own pain and
00:07:35
Speaker
to a certain extent, enhance your own pleasure, though they're not big pleasure seekers. And also, though, this becomes important for their ethics to realize that other people just like you suffer and enjoy things, and your ethics should have a kind of outward focus on how your actions and behavior affect other people.
00:07:58
Speaker
I would love to talk about the altruism a bit in a bit, but just getting back to that kind of stoic comparison. So there's this real veneration for nature and stoicism as well. But what you're saying is the break happens with this kind of different picture of what nature is. So the stoics incorporate this conception of, you know, God, certainly God in a different sense, but kind of divine.
00:08:19
Speaker
Rationality that's in doing matter and coming to talk about you know you have a piece of zeus inside of you something like this like you are special and you are different from animals so. Is that where that's where the break begins it's both kind of we should live in accordance with nature but then there's this there's a different picture of nature is that right.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Yeah. You find that in Cicero, this lovely passage about living in accord with nature. And it turns out that what nature means is, as you're suggesting, human nature, which is different and exalted.
00:08:50
Speaker
ontologically special, not just special in terms of its ability to understand the world or its ability to have interesting social relations, but somehow really, really privileged. I don't exactly know what the Stoic thinking is on immortality, but of course the Epicureans reject it. They think death is absolutely the end. Do Stoics think that there's any kind of personal immortality for humans?
00:09:20
Speaker
No, there's no personal immortality, but I guess there is this conception of us all belonging. No, I was all belonging to kind of, I'm cautious to say God, because I think it can be easy to misunderstand with this kind of like, you know, rational universe. And that part of ourselves doesn't dissipate, right? It just kind of comes reabsorbed and reused in some other form. But there's no personal immortality there either, which is interesting, right?
Mortality and Materialism
00:09:45
Speaker
Because that's probably a big point of contention.
00:09:48
Speaker
or quite intimidating, at least in a contemporary context, how kind of this picture of like, you know, there's no afterlife. There's nothing going on afterwards. And it's the same kind of, Stoicism has this idea of providence, but it doesn't have this idea of kind of a God looking down and being like, okay, you know, that person prayed enough, I'll help them or something like this.
00:10:08
Speaker
like the rationality of the universe. Yes, exactly. There's a lot to dig into. I guess going back to that point about altruism, so how does the we are a particularly linguistically intelligent animal and how does that kind of get us to a kind of more robust so we should minimize our own pain and maximize to an extent that doesn't like
00:10:33
Speaker
causes future pain or be irresponsible or on pleasure. How does that kind of get us to the altruism or helping others kind of more, in a contemporary sense, you think of a more robust theory of ethics as being, how can you help other people? What obligations do you have to others? And of what does, what do they have to say on that?
00:10:52
Speaker
Well, I think what they were trying to do, and they did very successfully in this pithy remark that morality is a convention to prevent one person from harming another. Instead of starting kind of at the other end, as most moral philosophers do, and saying, what are the virtues? Okay. Honesty, courage, charity, benevolence, things like that. Then how do we get people to have those virtues?
00:11:22
Speaker
They kind of start at the other end and say, well, what is morality all about anyway? Why do we have these institutions? And why do we feel obliged by them? And what is the point after all? Why be honest? Why be courageous? And the answer they come up with is what morality is really about is just preventing harm. That's the whole basis. That's all you need to know.
00:11:50
Speaker
And so the reason to be courageous is that when you're cowardly, people get hurt. Maybe not you, but other people. When you tell lies, people get hurt because they're shut out of information that they would like to have to make their own decisions.
00:12:06
Speaker
And so all the virtues they thought could really be analyzed in terms of avoiding harm to others. And other things that people have called virtue that don't have that feature are just illusions. So you think about something like honor killing.
00:12:24
Speaker
People take that as a virtue. It has to do with honor. But how could hurting somebody to sustain this idea, this conventional idea of honor, possibly count as ethical? So it's quite, I think, a powerful, powerful tool for thinking about what's wrong with certain conceptions of right and wrong. It makes you less of a moral relativist, can put it that way. Yeah, I never thought of it that way. That's really insightful because
00:12:54
Speaker
There is a lot of this kind of, this kind of like post-hoc, like you're, you're ending up with these, these, these key virtues in Plato of, you know, like Pydon temperance, jostles and courage. And these seem to me to be, you know, very ingrained and kind of Greek culture. And then all of these schools are kind of afterwards stoicism included trying to explain how they work and how they fit with their conception.
00:13:18
Speaker
And so you're trying to make it, as you said, I mean, it's a different direction to it. That's really interesting and kind of gives Epicureanism, I guess, a kind of applicability cross-culturally, right? So as you said, it's not relativist.
00:13:34
Speaker
And yeah, I guess I'm curious about some contemporary applications of that, or, I mean, they're obvious, perhaps not obvious, but maybe if you could draw some of them out where you think people are perhaps getting things wrong or people today are perhaps allowing convention to dictate them too strongly.
00:13:54
Speaker
Well, I think from the Epicurean perspective, too much emphasis on rights can be quite destructive.
Epicurean Morality in Modern Debates
00:14:02
Speaker
So we see this in some of the controversies of the time, like gun control and the abortion debates that are going on right now.
00:14:12
Speaker
So in gun control the issue seems to be my right to bear arms versus all these people getting hurt and killed accidentally and intentionally and killing themselves. So obviously if you want to minimize harm you need some policy that says no you don't have that right.
00:14:31
Speaker
The balance of injury just outweighs any satisfaction you could possibly get from being a gun owner. And of course, it's been shown that the number of crimes prevented by someone having a gun is fractional compared to the number of crimes that occur because somebody has a gun.
00:14:52
Speaker
And in abortion, I think it really doesn't help to talk about the rights of the fetus versus the rights of the woman. And this is completely abstract what people need to talk about. And what I think they're increasingly talking about is what difference does it make to the life of the child and the life of the woman and the life of other people involved if you permit this or don't permit this?
00:15:17
Speaker
And so we need testimony. We need people's stories. We need to hear what their experiences were. What did they suffer? What turned out well for them? And so again, pleasure and pain, but in this non-trivial sense, become really important.
00:15:34
Speaker
how then we're talking about this in like a more robust way, how is this differentiating itself? And I've kind of taken it all over the place for bearing with this, but how does that differentiate itself with kind of a utilitarianism or a consequentialism, or does it end up being very similar?
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, there's a real historical connection because Bentham and Mill, the founders of utilitarianism, were readers of Epicurus who said, yeah, he's basically got it right. I think the difference is that they were thinking in terms of social policies.
00:16:07
Speaker
legislators, jurists, they were really thinking about what you could do on a national level, essentially, not just relations between people. But there's a way in which utilitarianism has got a bad name because I think Kant kind of made this criticism that you can't go around calculating every decision in your life and deciding your lie is justified because
00:16:32
Speaker
You think that more pain will be caused if you tell the truth and if you don't. So there is some place for a kind of rigidity of what the other philosophers were calling virtues. You need that convention so that people know what to expect from others and what's expected of them. You can't always be improvising your moral decisions.
00:16:57
Speaker
Let's see, let's get back to the question you actually asked about utilitarianism. So the other big criticism, as you know, against utilitarianists is that it looks as though you can sacrifice one person's interest if you're doing a lot of good for everybody else. You kill one person they used to say in China, then you say 10,000 lives, or in the simpler example, you divert the trolley and
00:17:23
Speaker
kill one in order to say bye. And all these calculations seem very distasteful to us. Epicureans weren't really thinking in those terms at all. They didn't think in terms of social policy or even these sort of existential situations where you have to make those big decisions.
00:17:43
Speaker
I think yours does say somewhere that he would give his life for a friend, which is quite surprising that you don't expect that. It is interesting. Yeah. I guess it's this kind of, I mean, I'm not sure you would know better than me, but perhaps not virtue ethics with.
00:18:01
Speaker
Epicureanism, but there's still kind of, as you pointed out, not this focus on kind of, you know, what is the criteria by which we create social policy? It is about, you know, how to live well and kind of expanding out from that at this individual level. One thing you did say in the book, which I thought was interesting, was that Epicureanism is more relational rather than individualistic. And I wonder if you could talk more about that because I think
00:18:27
Speaker
I still tend to dispute towards stoicism personally, but I think Epicureanism, as you argue in your book, is a lot more robust and deserves a lot more credit than it's getting. And it has this kind of stereotype of being, I mean, it's very obvious to you, but this stereotype of being just this pure kind of selfish hedonism.
00:18:45
Speaker
So let me maybe two-prong that. So one, there's this kind of relational aspect that gets away from that that maybe you could speak to. And two, I guess maybe talk more about this kind of picture of harm reduction rather than just like 3D pleasure pursues, if you could.
Stoicism and Social Interactions
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, so the individualism, that's something that's very striking in stoicism, the idea that the person is an inner fortress and kind of impervious or can make themselves by having the right attitude towards all kinds of forces coming in from the outside and threatening the stability of the individual.
00:19:22
Speaker
And that can be quite consoling at certain times. It can be good kind of crisis management. But from an epic period perspective, it's a little unrealistic because really we are not, they would say, inner fortresses. We're always reacting to what's going on in the world and how other people are treating us, the difference between how they're treating us and how we want them to treat us.
00:19:49
Speaker
And so it's a kind of two-way street because we do need to interact with them in order to
00:19:56
Speaker
kind of ensure that there's a kind of social process of making your expectations and needs known to others and getting them recognized and doing the same thing reciprocally for them. So there's the kind of idea of constant exchanges to try to minimize friction and infelations rather than just being in yourself and trying not to kneel bad about things and trying not to get too upset.
00:20:25
Speaker
And of course the Epicureans lived in what was essentially a commune, or a kind of cult. There were a lot of personal relations going on there. Could you speak a bit more to that, the kind of commune aspect of it? A garden? Yeah, a garden probably without flowers.
00:20:44
Speaker
People didn't really start to cultivate flowers until somewhat later. So it would have been like a park or a grove with trees and a big house. How did someone like Epicurus get a big house? It doesn't look like he was wheeling and dealing and making a lot of money. The answer is that his benefactors, people who sympathized with the philosophy helped to melt there.
00:21:10
Speaker
But apparently these Epicureans had meals in common and got together to discuss things, kind of like book groups today to discuss scientific problems and maybe ethical problems. There's also a certain amount of sex. And we don't, I don't know too much about that or a real classicist would probably know, but there were certainly romantic relations
00:21:38
Speaker
that locks members of the group. That happens in any group like that.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah, I remember, I'm not an expert on this either, but I remember in stoicism, there was this idea of these kind of romantic relationships with older men and younger boys. And there was this kind of, it was deemed appropriate because you were loving the cultivation of virtue. You were like, this is not sexual that I'm the pleasure I'm getting out of this. I'm loving the act of like cultivating your character.
00:22:08
Speaker
which always struck me as again kind of like a similar thing you were talking about in the past was just this kind of like post hoc explanation of there's already this tradition that exists and now we need to kind of fit it into this stoic picture. So we're going to try to explain it in stoic terms where I guess the Epicureans would have a much simpler way of explaining something like that of just like, we're both enjoying this and it's not really harming.
00:22:29
Speaker
Yes, I want to get a bit to the contrast between Stoics and Epicureans, but before we do, could you talk a bit more about this idea of the pursuit of pleasure as, I mean, there's harm reduction and not just pleasure seeking. I remember this idea of.
00:22:49
Speaker
You know, what's kind of your needs are satisfied. Seeking pleasure above and beyond that is, is just kind of a way to lead to future harms, perhaps, or like unrealistic expectations. So yeah, maybe just talk a bit about more about what it means to kind of pursue pleasure and Epicure in picture.
00:23:05
Speaker
You're right and I don't think they exactly talk about pursuing pleasure because if you flat out pursue pleasure we all know where that leads. I think that the phrase that really resonates is choice and avoidance. So the kind of ideas that just as you go through life every day there are points for either choosing something or avoiding it.
00:23:29
Speaker
And you should try not to think any more than you have to. This is really horrible, but I'm just going to have to put up with it and bare a stiff upper lip. Instead, you could be thinking, how could I make this task more pleasant? How could I make this situation more pleasant? How can I reduce inconvenience and friction and difficulty? I think a lot of people discovered in the pandemic
00:23:55
Speaker
that they really didn't like their jobs. This is something that's emerged and they were incredibly relieved when they had a choice. Now what's going to happen when they have to go back to work or find another job. There are all sorts of problems with work in general.
00:24:14
Speaker
But it just goes to show that we put up with things that we really dislike doing and that are really inconvenient and troublesome and we could be more reflective about how to make changes.
00:24:28
Speaker
And why do you think we do that? So it's like a, a mistaken idea that we have. Does that come back to convention? Like it's like, this is something I have to do. Yes, exactly. This is what everybody else is doing. So I better do it too. This is the way to advancement and promotions and riches. So I better do it.
00:24:49
Speaker
and the rest of the time I'm just too exhausted and tired to change the things around me like my worn out shoes or my refrigerator that doesn't work or something like that. To the extent that I recommend things, I'm not really a lifestyle guru as you know, but I say don't put up with things. If you don't like the way it looks, get a new one. If it's not functioning, throw it out.
00:25:16
Speaker
Yeah, I like to think of this idea that there's perhaps many ways to live correctly, and that there's kind of this plurality of good ways perhaps, but there's certainly very unambiguous bad ways. It's easier to say that, and like we think of that perhaps in terms of being unethical, but you're pointing out perhaps not even in an ethical sense, but just in a
00:25:38
Speaker
Because of this false connection to convention, we, we, we kind of suffer, I guess it's kind of this like midlife crisis paradigm of that, right? It's kind of like, when you realize you're going to die, you kind of take a step back and say like, is this, is this really worth it? Or people kind of begin that examined life. What is kind of the, I don't know if a personal or perhaps an epicuring recommendation of how do you kind of achieve that examined state?
Questioning Mainstream Values
00:26:03
Speaker
If convention is so strong, how do you break free from that?
00:26:07
Speaker
Well, I think you can really reflect on mainstream values and which ones you want to go along with for one reason or another, and which ones you really want to question. Things like the better house, the better car, often you can just make small changes, inexpensive changes that just give gratification, make things more pleasant, aren't a lot of trouble, without having to strive so hard.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, that was another thing that I really liked about the book is you talked about like we've kind of work in this conception that like enduring pain is good or like, you know, because we've become so separate from this like simple pain and pleasure explanation. It's this idea of like, there's this, there's this thing that I want, perhaps again, it's fame, it's, it's riches, it's wealth, it's a status. And now I'm going to suffer for 50 years to achieve that. And then.
00:27:01
Speaker
And kind of the perversity of that and the liberation of giving yourself permission to not suffer. I thought that was really profound and quite simple and applicable. The most meaningful work is really what makes people very, very happy when they can
00:27:19
Speaker
use their minds, use their hands, use their knowledge to do something that they just find in the moment. They get the sense of flow in the moment. And I think Epicurus would say, too, that's one of the most satisfying things you can do. And unfortunately, in so much work and so much of life, people have no chance to experience that.
00:27:44
Speaker
And for you, do you achieve that flow? Is that research teaching? Where kind of have you sought out those flow moments? Certainly in writing, reading, teaching sometimes, I'm also a tango dancer.
00:28:01
Speaker
Oh, great. And that's a skill that it gives a great deal of pleasure. We're known as a community of addicts, but addicts need me in a good way. And we don't stop anytime.
00:28:15
Speaker
So I do, I do martial arts and it's kind of this interesting thing when I was studying philosophy full time where it's like, I would spend so much time in my head where there would be this, I'm sure you'd probably feel the same way dancing as you're talking about, you achieve this kind of flow state and you're like, wow, it's been half an hour and I've been doing very complex things, but I haven't really been, you know, kind of hyper reflecting on them.
00:28:39
Speaker
There's a real liberation that something about kind of this embodied experience being connected with your body that I'm sure. Sure. There's a connection to epicureanism there. So I think that's really cool that you're dancing. Absolutely. But if you, if you kind of practice mindfulness and things like, I don't know, ironing, ironing is something really boring, but make it into something as aesthetic as possible.
00:29:05
Speaker
And once you make up your mind, you're going to do it. It's going to be quite pleasant. Yeah, that's great. The last thing I wanted to hit on was kind of this rule of intellectual pleasures and where that fits in. Yeah, so there's this kind of idea of, you know, good food, you know, sleep, a comfy bed. But I know that Epicureanism had a bit more of a robust picture of, you know, there's things like friendship or
00:29:31
Speaker
You know, maybe perhaps the contemplation of interesting ideas and puzzles. Yeah. Where does intellectual pleasure fit into this? Well, they really wanted to explain nature and explain society. So they wanted to think of, I think you're understood, animistic explanations for everything they could, like the weather.
00:29:51
Speaker
how plants grow or how we feel things or see things. In some of these departments, they were more successful than others. It's very hard to explain the orbits of the planets in atomic terms. So they didn't do so well there. But they thought just, I don't know if they really did experiments, but observations, hypotheses, speculations about how things could be.
00:30:19
Speaker
And, of course, since they are atheistic at least, they believe that everything that happened had a completely natural explanation. Even if you could never quite figure out what it was, because of course you couldn't see the atoms and what they were doing, you could still speculate on how it might work. I think Epicureanism has always appealed to people of a kind of scientific or puzzle-solving frame of mind.
00:30:49
Speaker
They have this kind of picture of the swerve too, right? Of how can we have, if everything's natural, if everything's kind of this movement, where do we kind of get the change? And it was this picture of where some of the atoms kind of just do their own thing sometimes and move around. I don't know if I'm doing justice to that. And from that we get this kind of, this randomness introduced that creates this development.
00:31:14
Speaker
So now that we have a built out of picture of Epicureanism, a lot of people won't have been exposed to it because I think what's really popular right now, like a temporary scene is Stoicism. And I'm obviously part from towards Stoicism and I think there's a lot of value to it, but I think it might be valuable to talk a bit about what you think Stoicism might get wrong or where you think Epicureanism might do some things a bit better or could provide more value for kind of the average person.
00:31:43
Speaker
From my understanding of stoicism, I kind of see it as a philosophy that's very helpful to people under certain kinds of stresses. They're feeling a lot of pressure from relationships or the situation they're in. I think stoicism has often been taught to and appealed to people in military contexts.
00:32:04
Speaker
who are under fire themselves or have to do or see horrible things. And it's kind of taught to them as a way to cope, to think again of this inner citadel that you can be pure, you can be imperturbable, you can let all these things go around outside you, but they don't have to kind of get to your inner essence. And we were saying earlier that that Epicurean personality is much more permeable.
00:32:34
Speaker
and reactive to external things. So I think people in those crisis situations tend to go for stoicism as a kind of therapy. Many people have reported success with controlling their anger, for instance, or reframing situations so they're not so bothered by them.
00:32:57
Speaker
The Epicurean way of looking at things is stay out of those situations in the first place. Choice and avoidance. Don't join the army because you're going to have to do and see horrible, painful things.
00:33:12
Speaker
Don't. There are certain other things that you probably wouldn't want to do. Martial arts, that's different. So you shouldn't even be putting yourself in a situation, I think they would say, where you have to retreat to the inner citadel. Or you should at least strive not to be in those situations as much as you can. So now you're sort of liberated because you're not trying to defend yourself against the external world.
00:33:41
Speaker
You're not struggling and striving and being disappointed.
Managing Stress: Epicurean vs. Stoic Approaches
00:33:45
Speaker
And now you can just turn your understanding to trying to make sense of the world, trying to figure out how it works, trying to make choices that make your life more pleasant and make other people's lives more pleasant. So I see it as a kind of stress avoidance rather than a stress management and a philosophy.
00:34:09
Speaker
The idea is that you just gain a lot of extra psychological surplus if you're not defending yourself, if you don't have to defend yourself as much.
00:34:20
Speaker
That was really profound. I never thought of it in that way. So the kind of stoic picture, again, I'm seeing this like reoccurring theme of most philosophers are taking a lot for granted and then trying to kind of deconstruct or work out. And then the, the Epicureans are kind of going back a level and just be like, why are we even doing this in the first place? Cause you got to have this picture of like, you have this really stressful job and you come in as a stoic and you're like, as you said, how can I stress manage this job that I have? It's like really difficult or hard and I don't find fulfilling.
00:34:49
Speaker
And now the Stoics are going to give you all these kind of tools. I, you know, I'm being more charitable at procuringism here because that's part of the discussion. But like one criticism might be that the Stoics are going to give you or use the dichotomy of control or reframe it as an opportunity to become better. And it's like, oh, thank you for giving me these tools. So now I can now do this job that is like.
00:35:08
Speaker
not a thing that's like fulfilling for me, which is a very strange way. Now you talk about like that's very strange way to approach it, right? The other picture is like, why are you doing that job? You're probably doing it because you're caught up in these kinds of conventions of what your life is supposed to look like. So now you need to manage the stress that comes with that where there's instead this stress avoidance.
00:35:29
Speaker
That was more just repeating what you were saying, but that was a real click. And you see a lot of that in contemporary stoicism or modern stoicism. We try to move away from it as much as possible, but you see a lot of that again as a stress management tool. I think that's dead on instead of going more high level. How do we avoid it? That's great. Yeah, exactly. And then I guess the other kind of differences would be.
00:35:58
Speaker
You talk about the inner citadel, but I'm guessing you think there's something wrong about that? We talk about the competing pictures of nature. Do you think something's lost when you take this kind of inner citadel perspective? Us is like this blocking ourselves off from these external harms.
00:36:22
Speaker
Well, of course, as an anti-war theorist, I think it is unfortunate that we teach people to desensitize themselves to what they're doing in warfare. And I think that is unfortunately a large part of military education, is making oneself insensitive to killing other people and to destroying their possessions.
00:36:47
Speaker
So I'm suspicious of that whole bravery, courage, valor, and you can still be pure in the middle of it and protect yourself way of thinking. Is it otherwise harmful? Even if you practice choice and avoidance sensibly, there are always things that can catch you off balance.
00:37:08
Speaker
Because other people are a bit unpredictable and you can find yourself in a stressful situation that you could not have got out of the way of. And then stowing techniques can be really useful in those times of personal crisis and real existential threats. But as a way of life, right there, right, I am suspicious. It's a good way to live.
00:37:38
Speaker
Very interesting, a kind of a cautiousness to numbness, I think is very important and a kind of cautiousness, I guess, to the kind of information the situation is giving you. So you have kind of that intense example of war, the simpler example of the Java. I guess you're getting a kind of personal information from your suffering. And if what you do is attempt to manage that instead of like, take a step back and say, I probably shouldn't be doing this or something's wrong about this.
00:38:03
Speaker
That's interesting. Now, I'm sure you have a reasonable response to this, but there's this kind of classic, I guess, utilitarian, pleasure-based criticism where, you know, if we're not grounded in the virtues, what do we do in these kinds of situations where pleasure again comes at the heart of somebody else, for example, how does an Epicurean perspective navigate that when something might feel good, but might seem to conflict again with a right or something like this, as you talked about.
Social Harmony through Epicurean Ethics
00:38:33
Speaker
Well, if ethics is basically harm reduction to the extent that you're an ethical person, you will avoid harming others. So there's nothing in epicureanism that sends that you should seek your pleasure at the expense of others. Ethics is built into it. Even if you can't actually get that ethics to kind of follow from the
00:38:56
Speaker
the physical beliefs of the Epicureans about how the world is. So I think you need this kind of extra, extra step in saying, well, by nature we are social creatures. We have to get along with others. We do suffer punishment.
00:39:13
Speaker
Punishment is an institution, is a feedback institution. And even apart from legal punishment, there are all sorts of ways that we encourage and discourage other people from behaving in certain ways towards us. And one reason to be a virtuous person is that you don't get a lot of social punishment if you are known as keeping your word and showing up on time.
00:39:39
Speaker
being trustworthy. But we probably have to teach our children with the names of the virtues. Be truthful, be brave. It's a good shorthand for oral teaching.
00:39:51
Speaker
Again, the morality is harm reduction. So the point is that there's these pro-social benefits being the kind of person that has these. And if you find yourself in a weird position, as you mentioned before, where there's some sort of virtue that doesn't have any harm reduction benefit, like honor killing, then it's, you have a clear reason to reject it in the Epicurean picture.
00:40:13
Speaker
I guess, yeah, I have maybe two more questions. One is, what do you think Epicureanism gets wrong? Or what do you think people who say, oh, this sounds great. This is really interesting. I'm going to start adapting to it right away. What are kind of the things, if not wrong, what are the things they have to be cautious about in terms of doing it incorrectly, practicing it incorrectly?
Criticism: Epicureanism and Politics
00:40:31
Speaker
Well, one thing the Epicureans got criticized for from the beginning was being apolitical.
00:40:37
Speaker
So the Epicurean practice of withdrawing with your group of friends somewhere where someone else is essentially paying the bills for you and having a nice life and say, well, maybe there's something wrong with that. We have to be politically engaged and publicly engaged. It would be nice if someone else did all that work.
00:41:00
Speaker
And fortunately, there are people who do find a great deal of pleasure and political activity of a not overly ambitious sword. But I think Cicero was right on that score to criticize the Epicureans, that we have a lot of problems facing the world and we have to kind of take a stance on them, even if we aren't watching in the streets every day.
00:41:27
Speaker
And I really looked to the younger generation to undo some of the very bad things that my generation and the one above it did, political activity. And the other things I think I might have mentioned this in the book is that Epicureans weren't too keen on family life, where I think the Stoics, at least Cicero, were quite interested in children.
00:41:52
Speaker
and the way in which children learn and develop and take an interest in the world. And I don't remember any Epicurean having anything to say about family life, which I think is a good thing. So I'm with the Stoics there against these periods. A political argument is one that gets used against the Stoics as well.
00:42:15
Speaker
I mean, I do wonder maybe more charitably than Epicureanism. I know I did ask you for the problem, but if there's kind of this, perhaps this middle ground where a lot of problems come from kind of meddling, perhaps, and if we can remove the kind of political meddling, but keep the, I guess, like anything else, take out the bad stuff and keep the good stuff, because I guess there is a certain
00:42:39
Speaker
about your kind of anti-war work as well, right? There's a certain kind of political action which is non-productive and harmful. So perhaps there's some sort of middle ground where we remove that and we're right to kind of receive from that, but we need to keep the productive political work. Something like that? Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.
00:43:03
Speaker
Your political opinions are based on principle of who is being harmed and how much and how can we remove that harm. And I think it's very clear what causes you should be committed to.
00:43:16
Speaker
We might've hit on this already a bit, but one last question I was interested in was why you think that stoicism has become more popular, both in terms of it increasing in popularity substantially recently and kind of elbowing out other Hellenistic schools. Where do you think that appeal lies and what would you want to tell people to get them kind of more towards an Epicureanism or more considering that approach?
00:43:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And I tried to think about, well, what is the appeal here? And I think one reason is that where stoicism has been sort of narrowed down to its
00:43:58
Speaker
psychological helping aspect. I think most people who think of themselves as stoics, they're not interested in the doctrines of providence or stoic logic or stoic cosmology or any of that. Whereas the Epicureanism is more of a package with perhaps less emphasis on lifestyle or psychological management.
Epicureanism vs. Religion
00:44:21
Speaker
It's more a kind of orienting philosophy. Life is finite.
00:44:27
Speaker
Everybody dies wanting to prolong your life. To live to be 150 is sort of vulgar and stupid. You live in a world of plants and animals that were here long before you were. You should respect them. They too are finite. Everything is fragile. Everything can fall apart.
00:44:48
Speaker
Just try to enjoy your life as long as you're an intact natural being, and don't do too much damage to other people and things if you can help it. The whole atomistic package, the theory of the corporeality of the soul and its mortality,
00:45:06
Speaker
That all kind of fits together and gives people a kind of system that is different from religion, which gives them another kind of system, and that isn't quite so narrowly focused on how to act, how to behave, how to live.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah. So, so, so one idea here is that I think stoicism does have that robust system, but it also lends itself very well to engaging with it in terms of just the kind of self-help tools. How do I manage stress reframing as we talked about.
00:45:38
Speaker
And I think curinism doesn't lend itself well to that. It is this kind of package that is built into this kind of metaphysics and atomism. And it's not kind of, it doesn't have that kind of life hack snappiness. It's more of a reorientation, which could perhaps be not as intuitive and quite difficult. Is that right?
00:46:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And it's a philosophy that encourages you to question mainstream values and conventions and to keep asking yourself, how real is this? How important is this really? It's kind of park in that sense. That is cool. Stoicism is this weird thing where
00:46:22
Speaker
Epictetus really admired the cynics as kind of, as this, this ideal and kind of Socrates is this ideal. And they were really, they really pushed back against the status quo. And you know, Epictetus even talks about, you know, not everybody's going to be able to be a cynic because that is the, that is the highest calling. That is just like incredible.
00:46:40
Speaker
to push back into self-convention, but then it manifests itself as Seneca and Marcus Aurelius and these kind of figures who were deeply entwined in convention and the ordinary. So it has these kind of dualities that push back against each other, but it doesn't seem that way for Epicureanism. There's not really this.
00:47:01
Speaker
There's such an emphasis on questioning convention. There doesn't really seem to be these people tied up in convention being like, oh, but I'm an Epicurean because I'm going to, you know, do this instead of that. I said it's kind of this package deal.
00:47:13
Speaker
And that's really cool. Yeah. I think this has been, it's been very helpful for my understanding and I think it'll be helpful for others as well. So as we wrap up here, I mean, first of all, I want to recommend anyone to check out your book, How to Be Epicurean, especially if you just stumbled upon Stoicism, there's this whole robust tradition with, you know, I mean, you gotta pick and choose by actively engaging with other kinds of schools of thought.
Podcast Conclusion
00:47:39
Speaker
or just as an intellectual exercise. It's really interesting. So I really recommend anyone to read your book, but is there anything else you want to kind of conclude with or say, or anything else that you're working on that might be of interest to people?
00:47:51
Speaker
Oh, well, I'm just wrapping up a study of Kant in the 18th century, Kant in 18th century science. And of course the theme is that what Kant is resisting are the Epicurean movements of the 18th century in philosophy, in ethics, in politics. So it'll be very interesting to see how that idea plays out once the book comes out.
00:48:17
Speaker
I'm just doing some copy edits now and should be out next year. That was very exciting. And this, I guess also points to, as you were saying, the kind of influence, you know, so we're seeing this influence in utilitarianism. We're seeing this kind of pushback from Kant, the kind of influence the Epicureans had in contemporary philosophy as well, because so much of contemporary philosophy is built on that kind of early modern period and the kind of influence they had. That's, that's, that's cool.
00:48:45
Speaker
Great. Thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed talking to you. I learned a lot and it's, I always think it should be about this pursuit of truth. I really don't think, even if you've been practicing stoicism for a while or someone like myself, I really think you should be very open to discussing alternatives and kind of looking at, uh, criticisms and perspectives. And I think you had a really great kind of outside perspective from this stoicism style and can sometimes get into it and obviously really well informed. Yeah.
00:49:11
Speaker
That's good to hear. I'm a huge fan of Marcus Aurelius, actually. Oh, great. He's wonderful. There you go. Okay, so we're getting out of here. That's actually how different the different Stoics are. Seneca is completely different from Cicero, who's different from Epictetus, who's different from Marcus. Yes. No, that is interesting. And that's kind of, you end up with these kind of small camps.
00:49:37
Speaker
within the community themselves. I think somebody will know I've been, you know, I've been reading the stoicism for 10 years and they've, they've only been reading Seneca because that's who they really love. And you end up with these different flavors. I'm an Epictetus person and I wonder, I have to constantly check myself in terms of being like, you know, that's why, that's why I wrote my, my PhD on and how much I have to think is, is that stoicism or is that Epictetus? I have to kind of often think about separating those two. But again, Kevin, thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed talking to you. Thanks for the talk.
00:50:07
Speaker
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00:50:37
Speaker
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00:51:00
Speaker
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