Lucretius: Philosophy vs. Religion
By: Steven Gambardella
Tags: Culture, Philosophy, Self, Poetry, History

Matter and Void

“…there isn’t anything you could count

Entirely distinct from void or body [matter], to amount

To a sort of third nature.”

Before Epicurus, philosophers like Plato and his pupil Aristotle taught us to look inwards and work out the nature of reality. The truth, these philosophers believed, was to be found in our own minds by a process of abstract reasoning.

By contrast, Epicurus looked to the natural sciences as the root of philosophical understanding. The Epicurean philosophical system begins not with abstract reasoning, but with the external world.

Epicurus looked back to the philosophers before Socrates and Plato, who sought to answer the question “what is reality?”. Democritus —a “pre-Socratic” active around 400 BC — was Epicurus’s chief influence.

Both thinkers deduced from the physical phenomena around us that all matter is made up of small, indivisible particles: atoms.

The Greek word “Atomos” means “un-cuttable”. Democritus reasoned that you could only cut matter so many times before it could no longer be cut. You would be left with the basic “un-cuttable” unit of matter.

Epicurus believed that there must be empty space too for atoms to be able to move through. So nothing exists except atoms and empty void. No atom can be created, and none can be destroyed.

Space is infinite, as is the number of atoms that move within it. All Events and processes are merely the effects of the movement of atoms. All existence is material. Everything that exists is part of nature, and therefore, there can be no supernatural realm.

Whether Epicurus truly believed in the existence of the gods is a matter of speculation. The view the philosopher seemed to take is that the gods exist as entirely independent entities, but insofar as gods exist, they must be made of atoms, like everything else.

As well as being physical and made of atoms, the gods play no part in the universe’s governance, and they take no interest in human affairs. Why would they? Epicurus reasoned that if the gods were perfect, they would have no reason to concern themselves in human affairs.

Hedonism

Epicurus argues certain moral truths follow necessarily from the scientific facts inherited from Democritus. The fundamental belief of Epicureanism is that nobody could rationally pursue anything other than their own pleasure.

Epicurus was a hedonist in that he believed that pleasure was the greatest good, the aspiration we should all have is a life of pleasure. However, the philosopher doesn’t condone the kind of indulgences we would ordinarily associate with hedonism.

For modern readers, hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure of the rock star: “sex, drugs and rock and roll” — or the luxuries of the billionaire: private planes, vintage champagnes, supermodel spouses and superyachts.

The Epicurean idea of pleasure could not be further from these modern associations. Hunger, thirst and sexual desire are instinctive appetites, but we should try to moderate them as far as our natures allow.

Epicurus maintained that ataraxia — “serenity”— is our natural state, a kind of hypostasis of the mind. When a need rises up in us, we are no longer in a state of ataraxia. But all that is required is to satiate our needs by the necessary means to return to ataraxia. The minimum effective dose to cure thirst is a glass of water, not a sugary soda or a glass of vintage wine. To overindulge our senses would create only more desires.

Rational self-control is the key to ataraxia. Romantic love (and the sexual pleasure that comes with it), for example, is to be avoided, as it involves a loss of rational thinking. All pleasures of the senses are inferior to such abstract pleasures as friendship and philosophical contemplation. Epicurus thought friendship was a superior cure to the need for company than romance.

The true Epicurean couldn’t be further from the modern meaning of the word, which summons visions of expensive food and a discerning taste for alcohol. The reality is that Epicureanism is rather austere. The philosopher even disdained poetry as an art form that overcomplicates.

Lucretius was aware of this irony. He justified the poem by comparing philosophy to medicine. Complicated theories can, like medicine, be difficult to swallow. But like the doctor coats the goblet’s lip with honey, so the poet sugarcoats the philosophy: “to kiss it, as it were, with the sweet honey of the Muse.”