Episode 211 - Cicero's On Ends - Book Two - Part 18 - Battle Of The Images
Welcome to Episode 211 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where you will find a discussion thread for each of our podcast episodes and many other topics.This week we continue our discussion of Book Two of Cicero's On Ends, which is largely devoted Cicero's attack on Epicurean Philosophy. Going through this book gives us the opportunity to review those attacks, take them apart, and respond to them as an ancient Epicurean might have done, and much more fully than Cicero allowed Torquatus, his Epicurean spokesman, to do.Follow along with us here: Cicero's On Ends - Complete Reid Edition. Check any typos or other questions against the original PDF which can be found here.This week we move into Section XXI:XXI.You must either blame these examples, Torquatus, or must abandon your advocacy of pleasure. But what kind of advocacy is this, or what sort of case can you make out for pleasure, which will never be able to call witnesses either to fact or to character from among men of distinction? While we are wont to summon as our witnesses from the records of the past men whose whole life was spent in noble exertion, who would never be able to listen to the name of pleasure, on the other hand in your debates history is silent. I have never heard that in any discussion carried on by Epicurus the names of Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades, Themistocles, Epaminondas were mentioned, men who are ever on the lips of all the other philosophers. Now however, seeing that we Romans also have begun to handle these subjects, what fine and great men will Atticus produce for us from his stores! Is it not better to say something of these men than to talk through such ponderous tomes about Themista? Let us allow such things to be characteristic of Greeks; though it is from them that we derive philosophy and all liberal arts; but still there are things which are not permitted to us, though permitted to them.The Stoics are at war with the Peripatetics. The one school declares that there is nothing good but what is moral; the other that it assigns the highest, aye, infinitely the highest value to morality, but that nevertheless there are some good things connected with our bodies and also some external to us. What a moral debate, what a noble disagreement! In truth, the whole struggle concerns the prestige of virtue. But whenever you discuss with your fellow disciples, you must listen to much that concerns the impure pleasures, of which Epicurus very often speaks. Believe me, then, Torquatus, you cannot maintain your doctrines, if you once gain a clear view of your own nature and your own thoughts and inclinations; you will blush, I say, for that picture which Cleanthes used to paint, certainly very neatly, in his conversation. He bade his audience imagine to themselves pleasure painted in a picture as sitting on a throne, with most lovely raiment and queenly apparel; the virtues near her as her handmaidens, with no other employment, and no thought of other duty, than to wait upon pleasure, and merely to whisper in her ear (if only painting could convey such meaning) to guard against doing anything heedlessly, which might wound men’s feelings, or anything from which some pain might spring. We virtues, indeed, were born to be your thralls; we have no other function.