448. Living Your Best Epicurean Life with Catherine Wilson

UNS siloed podcast is produced by University FM elevating the stories of your institution this is Greg leblanca I'm here today with Katherine Wilson who is an amera professor at the University of York in philosophy also the author of a recent book called How To Be An Epicurean the Ancient Art of Living Well also written a bunch of other books a couple I have with me I have uh moral an and epicureanism at the origins of modernity welcome Catherine thank you Greg now I think somewhere in one of your books you said I guess you were

channeling Richard Nixon and you said that we are all epicureans now right I think you know it it's hard to make sense of that statement unless you are aware of what you are contrasting it with right and particularly when you go back to the 17th century you know and you see how epicureanism kind of informed almost all of the things that we now think of as the the founding philosophies of of modernity and I was actually very surprised to see how both Russo and Hobs were kind of building on epicurian um models but um but

you also say that in general you know um ancient moral philosophy is is relevant for us as moderns and you offer up a modern interpretation of epicureanism perhaps shorn of some of the somewhat bizarre scientific theories um but you know you comment on all sorts of public affairs and public events using an epicurian or should we say a lucretian perspective because I think that's really the way in which we know epicurian philosophy best is through the work of of lucretius and so why should we as moderns pay any attention what whatsoever to ancient moral philosophy

I mean you know if you're in physics you don't waste your time reading ancient physics and if you are a biologist you don't waste your time reading ancient biology look I know that pretty much everyone I I've have interviewed on this podcast has figured out some way to smuggle in Aristotle you know as a as as a um a source of some insight but it's it's usually not Aristotle's ethics and morals as much as it is his view of how to understand the world so why should we care why should we all be thinking about

getting up to speed or at least exposing ourselves to ancient moral philosophy well I think um epicureanism has been underappreciated relative to the other ancient philosophies of as we all know stoicism has become incredibly popular epicureanism is in many ways the foil to stoicism and frankly I wouldn't go to Aristotle or Plato particularly for moral advice um some good good parts of it but I think epicurian ISM really needed a fresh look and so what I tried to do in the in the book was to draw out in some ways possibly more fetched than than

they needed to be um some lessons or some some implications that we could Ed now taken directly from epicurus and lucretius so that was the idea and I think epicureanism is really uh I said a breath of fresh air in many ways well before we dig into the ethics and and the morality of epicureanism I mean you start the book with um by recounting their theory of the natural world um and you know it seems like for the ancients it was it was impossible to view what we might think of as as science and and

what we think of as ethics and morals independently right they were intricately tied together you know why is that I mean certainly in the modern times we we tend to think of the the positive and the normative as completely separate domains but the Ancients did not why why is that and do you think that we need to think about somehow bringing them back together in the modern world the way we think about morals we need to root it in some way in our understanding of the physical world yeah absolutely that was um that was an

effect of positivism that uh Drew this sharp line between the the factual and the normative and said you these are completely different spheres one has nothing to do with the other and that's true in a way um there's nothing that logically follows from the way the world is about what we should do but the more you know about the way the world is the more capable you are of responding to age-old human problems and political problems in a sensible way um another another field I've worked in is evolution and ethics and that comes out quite

a bit in the book because I talk about Darwin and uh evolutionary models of maybe I didn't talk there about evolutionary models of justice but that's of course an important topic these days Game Theory and uh um the evolution of cooperation the evolution of competition um so this is I think that the the connection is much closer in epicureanism than it is in stoicism for example stoics tell us that uh The World Is A deterministic system that fate determines what's going to happen happen and that's about all you get by way of connection between their

natural philosophy and their moral philosophy adjust to fate because you can't change anything whatever is going to happen happens and the Epicurean idea I started this book with a lot of as you say natural philosophy because I didn't want to start out with pleasure is the first and only good that's what everybody knows about epicureanism and if you don't put it in context it sounds very trivial or wrong but if you start I thought with the atoms as the basic elements of the universe and you start with their combination and disillusion you already get a

perspective about how things in the world come together and how they only stay together for a certain length of time before disintegrating you're already already in the realm of evolution change novelty construction and destruction and that leads you into all the problems of life and all the problems of politics so yeah it's kind of amazing to me when I read these when I read these old philosophers I mean I remember reading the presocratic and thinking man it must have been so exciting right to be the people who are thinking about this stuff really for the

for the first time time and um and I was really struck by how it seems like the epicurian view is kind of like a a Proto darwinian view of of the world I mean there are these huge Echo but Darwin never gave any credit right to lucrecias or to the epicurian right I mean he clearly he must have been aware of them but he never seemed to give any credit to them oh absolutely yeah um he didn't want to because his wife was a Christian but everybody who read Darwin who was educated knew and I

think I I quote in the book someone who says this is just uh warmed over lucretius or this is lucretius but really put on a firm footing now um his his own grandfather was well versed in lucretius and had written his own dactic poem about Evolution so yeah but so so epicureanism is kind of like a a bogey man during the Christian era right and it seems like you know Christianity seems to have I mean we all know about the scholasticism and the aristotlean roots of Christian theology but there's also like a heavy strain of

stoicism in in Christianity and uh and so the epicurian represented something that was very materialistic and um and threatening to the Christian order um you know why was that I mean is that is that because they had an accurate understanding of epicureanism or is it because they distorted it into this kind of exaggerated hedonistic view of the world well I think it was it was both um they knew that the epicureans denied the V Divine creation of the world supervision of the World by God or Gods any kind of planning or Providence they knew that

epicureans thought the soul was Mortal when you die you just uh turned into dust and uh Christianity validated suffering whole idea of suffering on the cross and sacrifice and of course as a political instrument um Christians were told for centuries uh your suffering doesn't matter just consider how much worse it was for the one on the cross your problems are trivial your economic and political problems are trivial compared to that so Epicurean idea that pleasure is the first and only real good was completely antithetical to what they wanted to say epican seem to have a

view of Pleasure and Pain as something primary right something that is is very very direct but but you also point out that they they had this understanding that things like color and and taste I mean they were really uh a function of the perspective or the subjective experience and and and so I mean isn't the Pleasure and Pain that one experiences also in part a function of sort of how you decide that you're going to you know interpret your experience yeah what gives some people pleasure leaves other people completely indifferent or they don't like it

taste travel certain kinds of music so it is an individual thing but they still thought in their and they pointed in a way that offended stoics and Christians as well they said um just look at the animals they're trying to pursue pleasure and Escape pain and all the opponents said you are reducing humans to the level of animals and of course once you get into the real details of epicureanism they were doing no such thing but it was a a cheap yet effective shot that their opponents could produce so I think a lot of people

are surprised when they find out that epicurus had a relatively simple life right you know he's eating what like you know bread and and and a little bit of cheese and stuff I mean I think most people would suspect that he'd be at the banquets right you know it'd be hanging out at the uh you know French Laundry and and uh you know lounging on couches and living some kind of uh debauched uh life I mean is is that the way I mean if you were to survey the average person who had heard of epicureanism

I'm sure that that's what they would think right that maximizing pleasure means debauchery it means you know carpay DM right yeah question right I'm not sure that uh epicurus really subsisted on cheese bread and water but that's what he says is all you need probably the diet was a little more uh Mediterranean and varied than than comes across but it's an interesting question and I don't exactly know the answer to this question how did the image of the epicurian become shift from something like pigs in the trough or drunken people staggering around into something like

a refined epicurian dilettantish um what uh a ficado of wines and 175 varieties of cheese because this transformation did happen and I think it began in the 18th century um it probably has to do with the luxury trade and wealth and secularization uh but I've never read anything that explained exactly the formation of this new image nevertheless it's well and well I mean you say I mean in your advice I mean this book is imp partially it's it's a bit of a book of advice I mean you're kind of offering people some self-help to some

degree about how to live as as an epicurian and and you say that you know well yeah by all means um enjoy your 500 uh types of cheese just don't get too obsessed with it but you know lucretius I mean the guy killed himself over some kind of what romantic uh mishap I mean how do you I mean that that seems that doesn't seem uh consistent with with the story that you tell I mean who goes around killing themselves over heartbreak um if they're a philosopher that doesn't seem very philosophical uh no that's right um

but the epicurian unlike the stoics did not think we are in complete control of our emotional reactions and when he talks about romantic disappointment lucous says by the time you're into it it's too late if you want to save yourself some anguish stop the thing in its tracks before it gets to that stage so apparent apply he didn't stop it in its tracks and I don't know the details whether it really was a romantic suicide or what but that was what was what was reported so do as I say not as I do that that

kind of thing well yeah I mean he certainly doesn't recommend suicide for romantic disappointment but he doesn't underestimate you know the the force of uh Roman IC attachments or what they can drive people to he says jealousy is one of the most horrible emotions that anyone can experience that's certainly true leads people to murder and suicide so maybe stoicism would be would be useful so I I remember reading um folks like you know John Lock who they were inspired by lucrecias right about this whole idea of pleasure and and pain but I think their view

was that this was consistent with their view of Christianity and that you know the signals of Pleasure and Pain these were kind of divinely ordained they they were like this is God's instruction this is how you know what's good for you if it's if it's pleasurable then it must be good for you and if it's it's painful it it must be uh be bad for you right um I mean that that seemed to be a domestication of or christianization of epicureanism did that come from I think you you you cited uh Pierre gassendi I mean

was he the one that first tried to stitch these things together well that there is a movement called uh Christian epicureanism um that's uh associated with the Renaissance but I think it's really deart who starts this and lot gets it from deart because um deart has this idea of the body as a machine and the body is responding to stimuli from the external world that are showing it what to pursue and what to avoid in order to maintain its short life and then of course this has to be has to be given a theological frame

because that's what deart does in his famous meditations so he can say uh God has constructed the human body and the human reactions um with this in mind that will be driven by these forces and um that's how God wants it to be and uh L takes this even further as you said he actually has a hedonistic ethics that's this has been realized for some time then of course there's the uh the part where you say it and the part where you take it all back as Austin said then he he has to point out

that you can always say stop you can always resist um even the if the drunker really prefers losing his eyesight to giving up his soak in the tavern as lock puts it know he he could say stop but maybe he doesn't because he doesn't take I you yeah well that that's where I guess Prudence comes in I think um you say that Lucius really prioritizes uh Prudence um but I mean we normally think of prudence as a as a virtue right there like an aristotlean uh virtue um but the word Virtue never seems to pop

up in your account of the epicurian and so you know how is Prudence I think you said the Prudence is is derived from from nature in some way so how how how should we be thinking how should we be thinking of prudence as a as a as a governing principle yeah um for for epicurus it's pure self-interest if you take the Long View if you know how the world works and what's likely to happen then accepting some present pains in order to make your life less painful or more pleasant later is rational and so you

do it and conversely accepting some pain now pain now for future pleasure and avoiding some pleasure now in order to prevent future pains is also self-protective so it all comes down to self-interest yeah I mean this this start this part seemed very consistent with a lot of the what we might think of as um psychology rooted self-help right that people get exposed to um I was just um doing an interview recently on hedonic adap ation and you know the idea that we often times um we don't think through how things are going to affect us

right in in the future maybe our discount rates are a little bit too high you know we're we're not thinking of these uh spillover effects and so forth um and so in in some sense you know Lucius is a psychological realist he he's he's deeply interested in in how our subjective impressions of what gives us pleasure might differ from what actually gives us pleasure so in that sense he's a psychologist right um yeah I don't think he's skeptical about what gives me pleasure right now I know whether I'm having a good time or a bad

time pretty much um but what I have to be more thoughtful about is where is this leading what's going to happen if I persist in this pursuit or this behavior um what happens if I don't take certain precautions and this uh um hedonic um watch acceptability point one can set it too low or Too High um you can be overly prudent you can take out unnecessary insurance against things that are never going to happen you can deny yourself nice experiences because you think you have to save $5 million by the time you're 65 even though

you don't so well the usual example is of people being imprudent and too careless about the future including in lock um you have to find the balance MH so when he's critiquing the the people in his his Society for uh failing to kind of get it right what's his big what's his main critique is it that there are people who are unnecessarily depriving others or themselves of of pleasure for illusory um goals and purposes or is it that he thinks people fail to understand you know what they're you know how to manage their pleasure and

how to how to be prudent with respect to their pleasure yeah there's certainly um a lot to say about individual individual Behavior individual Behavior that's um purely structured on self-interest and about ethical relations with others um where self-interest comes into it but in a sort of different way so he epicurus did think and lucretius as well most people are pursuing something that will not make them happy and that will just create a lot of trouble trouble and aggravation political ambition um wealth um dominance in in a field all of these things end up uh usually

involving people in very painful experiences people who just have to be the best at everything know we know about all these actors and actresses who come to unfortunate ends because or addictions alcoholism uh because the costs of this sort of struggle are are pretty overwhelming so the Epicurean wants to focus on your intrinsic motivations for doing things um if you want to be a if you want to study logic do it because you find logic absolutely fascinating if you want to be a Pianist do it because you love playing the piano but if your if

your goal is being the best best or the highest paid or the most important you're probably letting yourself in for you know disappointment and pain so lowering aspirations doing things for intrinsic reasons is an important part of it so this is kind of the basis for a therapeutic uh protocol I mean why haven't we seen I mean we see a lot of Freudian psychotherapists where are are epicurian therapists could this be a new uh a new uh new discipline yeah this could this could be a thing yeah so we could uh slogan could be the

opposite of be best isn't that the Millennia Trump slogan you don't have to be the best well but I but I think a lot of people would also say and I think you allude to this in the book that um one maybe misinterpretation of that form of therapy is that you should kind of I don't know tune out right just check out I mean isn't candid cultivating his garden kind of an epicurian because he sort of removed himself from the the political realm from the social realm you know he's he's not trying to make the

world a better place he's not trying trying to do anything other than just look around and see how beautiful nature is and you know have a nice day I mean isn't that a critique that you know this is a way of abdicating one's responsibility to the world yeah well this is this is the weak point of epicureanism in my view um it is a kind of checking out um epicureans moved outside the city they didn't want to have anything to do with politics or um legal struggles or anything like that they just wanted to read

study learn talk to each other have conversations and communal meals and that was enough so yes you can say this is um this is irresponsible we should take political stands we should be active in making the world a better place and I think that's that's quite right that's that's good criticism um but where I think the the position makes makes sense is in questioning many of the ideals that we give to young people we we teach them to pursue external validation rather than finding things that are gratifying and interesting to them as human beings as

human beings people like to learn and understand and enjoy nature and those things should be cultivated so and so I guess you're saying that it's if we had to choose between people cultivating themselves and engaging in you know Warfare and conquest and domination if that's what it means to be concerned with the external world then no thank you right so perhaps more harm comes out of this desire to engage the world than than benefit absolutely absolutely um uh the epicureans take us a very critical perspective on warfare and kingship and political domination and what leads

to it they think the world would be a better place if people uh weren't struggling to dominate and control others and seize their resources which they do not need so the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of Power are the root of all evil in their View and so that seems to be part of the critique of the stoics right so I think you know I mean it's kind of hard to disagree with the notion that you know courage and and bravery and fortitude is is a virtue but I I think the critique would be

that if if those things are in the service of of conquest or or war or domination then you know they're they're less desirable I mean is it necessarily the case that something like stoicism is ultimately going to be in League with with those those negative goals negative ends I'm afraid so I think this is uh this is the philosophy that is taught in military acmis which are sympathetic to stoicism of course there is I think a current of Enlightenment in some military academies and some rethinking of how to think about War and Peace and uh

I mean look would you would you want your soldiers to be focused on you know pleasure I mean you know you're going to fight the enemy and then you know you have I mean that was the the joke about the French soldiers that they would spend all their time drinking wine and and eating Pate instead of fighting the Germans right yeah well I don't want them uh fight fighting in the first place um if they're going to fight if it's necessary to police the world to prevent wrongdoing yes it's better that they should be they

should be courageous but the epicurian perspective is that because we have a whole culture or did have a whole culture now it's being questioned that really valorized aggression and power and domination the way we're taught history history is about the great conquerors and uh what they how they extended their territories and all of that um that's the background to our culture and the epicurian says wait a minute doesn't have to be that way um you look back at that history as even Bale said in the 17th century is just a record of crimes and misfortunes

why aren't we doing something different why don't we have why don't we try harder to arrange our political system so that uh we don't have to confront the other great powers of the world with our own great power and I think there's also a very different view of uh the genders and a different view of of slavery and and this this comes from emphasizing the distinction between nature and and convention uh and that's you know the classic dichotomy that you see through about Greek philosophy but it has has really profound consequences and it also makes

it very different from I guess we might think of as Neo Darwinism right because Neo Darwinism tries to condense everything to Nature right and and is is not as um it makes makes less effort to right uh emphasize this distinction between what is what is man-made and and what is not um and so you know why is it so important to maintain that theoretical or conceptual distinction between nature and culture or you know nomos and and and physic well it used to be that nature was what you couldn't change and culture was what you could

change the boundary is not that sharp between nature and culture um for one thing humans aren't like the other animals as the epicurian stress uh because our cognitive capacities are so complicated so powerful um the range of imagination and understanding and what we can do with our hands and what we can do with our bodies is far beyond what any other animal can do and this of course means that um this sort of simplistic versions of evolutionary psychology uh are don't really capture much of Human Experience or don't provide much of a guideline about how

we should organize a society but it's still useful to think in terms of what is just a cultural invention that doesn't have to be this way that just came along for historical reasons and that we could rethink or is it now a lot of people people are wanting to rethink deep into nature like genetic engineering U neurological re-engineering um these would be very when AR so when Aristotle saw for instance you know differential gender roles or the kind of universal existence of of slavery in every society that just seemed like um natural phenomenon right yeah

he looked around and said ah I see we have these slaves and we have these Masters and now I'm going to theorize for you uh why it is that way and he ends up saying well it's built into the cosmos they're higher beings and lower beings and besides the the grain doesn't thresh itself someone has to do it so it all seemed logical people looked at uh what women were doing what men were doing and said now I'll theorize that for you here's why it is the way it is the women aren't very bright but

they're very well adapted to bearing children and taking care of them and of course now we know that wasn't the whole story and there's a lot more to the question why do we see what we see when we look at the social he you know you had this wonderful section on how epicureanism is consistent with sort of a a scientific view of provisional beliefs right and how it Advocates a kind of comfort with uncertainty and this bit about um what un things right when you discover that something is is no longer true um you're like

okay well let's just you know flush that and and and move on um I mean that that seems this comfort with provisional beliefs I mean this this does make it different from lots of other schools of philosophy right uh because your beliefs are uh always open to revision based on further experience yeah I think this is not this is not stressed in Aristotle or Plato or stoicism which I try to tell you here's how the world works I figured it out here you go and this is uh I think one of the most appealing features

of epicureanism that because nature is always making new combinations and presenting you with new experiences uh you're constantly having to update your beliefs rethink your assumptions well I I think that one of the biggest critiques of epicurism has to do with it view of of of morals right um and and so you know you you defined morals in one of your books as um what was it like disad disadv dis disadvantaging yourself or or something you know uh hampering your your self-interest in some way and it's seemed kind of hard to reconcile that with a

view of you know self-interest and so you know one way is to say oh well it's enlightened self-interest or and there's this idea that well if you do something that harms others sooner or later it's going to catch up to you and and and way this doesn't seem that different from the pulling a rabbit out of a hat in the same way the people who believe in the afterlife would say well if you behave poorly in this world you know ultimately you'll pay the price uh later I mean is that's certainly not the only reason

why one ought to try to be moral for fear of of punishment but it seems to play a big role and it does do they kind of try a little bit too hard to reconcile prudence and and morality um that seems to be a big critique yeah yeah and um that is another weak point um I think there there two aspects here what's the content of morality what's morality really about and two what's the motivation to be moral I think Kant was very clear that these are two separate questions and he thought the stoics were

very good on the content but gave you no motive and the epicureans were terrible on the content but at least they gave you a motive Pleasure and Pain um so you know you mentioned the the thesis in moral animals that morality is what I called an advantage reducing imperative um to be moral is to not do something you could do that will make your position better or not worse uh but that extracts a cost from someone else and that's very much the content of epicurian morality epicura says morality is a convention whereby one person does

not harm another avoids harming another it's about minimizing harm to others there's the content that's all it is we don't even have to talk about courage and wisdom and Temperance and all of that just don't harm but now they have a problem how do you motivate that because it's in your advantage to harm somebody else by withholding the truth or exploiting them or keeping them in ignorance or doing something else and as you say the uh the Epicurean said uh well we have a system of social punishment you always get found out and you get

a bad reputation and people don't cooperate with you this was already what Adam Smith and uh David Hume were kind of saying in their 18th century textbooks and it's what contemporary game theorists tell us as well you don't want to be get a reputation as a non- cooperator and someone who exploits U because people won't U won't treat you very well the problem is the system is imperfect social punishment doesn't always work just as legal punishment doesn't always work so they're always going to be people who get away with things on the uh exalted political

level as well as on the personal level you can't do much about those people you can pursue them with the instruments of Justice which try to prevent harm you can pursue them with social punishment um or you can avoid them if you can um but that's why uh many religions insisted that there must be some retribution and some reward after death because uh everyone can see it doesn't always happen in this world but that that that doesn't sound like morality that sounds like you know self-interest that sounds like convention I mean normally we think of

morality as something where even in the absence of any kind of punishment even in the absence of any loss of reputation you know you do it you do it when no one's looking right you know you you you you you don't let the right hand know what the left hand is doing right I mean that that's sort of the whole when we think of morality as a separate category separate from Prudence right and this is what Adam Smith tried to do to say well you internalize the judg M of society know the the impartial Observer

you're able to um treat yourself as as the impartial Observer would in assessing your situation and what you're doing um so you're right that it's hard to hook up the content of morality don't harm other people for your advantage with this Advantage based theory of motivation and they don't do it but um I don't think any other moral theory doesn't either do you think it's hard to live an Epicurean life I mean it it sounds like a lot of fun I mean it sounds pretty attractive but but I think you you you highlight how there

are always pressures to to deviate from it some some of which come from say you know a stoic view but but probably more common would be you talk about like the the merchants of of pleasure and there are all these sort of uh Temptations and and pressures um that kind of will get you off this this course and Al I mean which is which is the the biggest threat you think for someone who is is trying to follow this course yeah um well in in the book I spend a lot of time ridiculing consumerism and

trying to show that a lot of uh purchases that we make don't actually satisfy us or make us any happier than we were but I think so so the people we call hedonists are aren't really hedonists in the epicurian sense people we call henness um you know people who are gorging themselves on brownies or whatever I don't know but the way we're wired we we respond to novelty um we like glittery fast complicated things um we love sweets we like alcohol some of us like drugs you talked about like glitter socks what the heck are

glitter socks I this is something I read about used that example I was like what the heck are these I've never seen these things what are glitter socks oh you haven't spent much time in your local warts no yeah I don't think so or Walmart um so our our nervous systems are kind of keyed up to enjoy these things and to want to possess them and and have them and even though we know on some level that they won't make us happy the next day uh we pursue them so just getting getting an awareness of

this is helpful um asking oneself uh do I really expect to get much long-term pleasure out of this for what is going to cost me is important and do you think that is what accounts for the renewed success of stoicism in popular culture now is it because is this sort of a I don't know a reaction to the hollow of um consumerism well I would I would have thought that the popularity of stoicism comes from Human suffering that people are are unhappy in relationships they unhappy in their family life they're unhappy in their work life

and stoicism kind of says well you are you and you are a fortress in yourself and you have to not be so worried about what other people are doing that is making you miserable and and believe that it's under your control whether you're miserable or not and this seems to me completely on the wrong track when other people in other situations are making you miserable you ought to try to change them speak up or get out of there um don't suffer in silence was I think the the title of one of the chapters and I

I think I referred there to Hershman uh how do you respond to bad situations exit Voice or loyalty yeah I was glad you got an economist in there we need you got to have at least one Economist in there but um but I think one of the biggest critiques of both um epicureanism and stoicism is that they they don't really address this idea of of meaning adequately and purpose right and and I think this would be um you know a critique that Christians would offer but also a non-Christian folks um is that is that a

problem uh for some of these schools of ancient philosophy um meaning um yeah I've never exactly understood this problem although I know I know it comes up I know it comes up in the literature I know it comes up uh I had a family member who was very worried about the meaning of life and what's it all about and I could never quite see it um because it seems to me that even if you're Napoleon or Alexander or you get The Nobel Prize for physics it's just not going to matter very much in 5,000 years

the epicurian perspective is really cosmological it says you are here for a very short amount of time in the history of the universe you came from dust you're going to end up in dust what you should do in that short time is have a nice life do the things you enjoy doing and learning and teaching and figuring things out and taking part in Family Life those are the things that usually give people the most satisfaction in life as human beings that's what we like to do so you don't have to right go to excess and

well mean seems like um I mean Lucius at least seems to be both an optimist and a pessimist at the same time I mean if you read you know uh book one you you you get you get one view of the world which is enchanting and and charming and beautiful and you know every day you're surrounded by um wonder and gratitude and and amazement and then you know you get to book six and it's just a yeah veil of tears I mean how can the both views coexist I mean these two different people two different

worlds or were they written at different points in time you know pre and post plague I mean what was going on here it's all all part of life um as we know from the plague that we just experienced that um killed and crippled so many millions of people um we are not powerful against nature as a whole we can be temporarily powerful but nature in the end is more powerful as Spinosa I think said um so yeah there is this need to carve out your sphere of Happiness while you can um being aware that it

could all come to an end any time because of the forces of nature well you know um I always wonder about the influence of different authors and different books and it seems like lucrecias is probably the most influential author who and least read author right if there was a ratio of influence to actual direct exposure I mean he would probably have the the biggest biggest ratio I mean I I took many philosophy classes and history classes and and you know we were never assigned lucretius I I had to go read it myself because I kept

seeing all these you know references and I said well I got to go check it out for my myself I mean it's probably never assigned in you know most schools and and most classes and yet it the influences everywhere is do we need direct exposure should we should we you know rehabilitate uh these these primary texts um can you think of another author who's had such a similar ratio of influence to exposure no I think that's that's just right when I had ancient philosophy we had Aristotle Plato and stoics maybe we had some cynics or

somebody thrown in there or we learned a little bit about democratus he said everything is Adams a few sayings of epicurus but no lucretius and of course epicur Lu lucretius being a poet this is sort of a barrier for many people you might think why in a introductory philosophy course should I read some poetry and you have to read quite a bit of the Poetry to get to the ethical part or to try to extract that so um yes I think we need to revise our teaching methods and we need to um keep trying to

combat this image of the epicureans as basically superficial trivial people um that cannot be taken seriously because they don't understand ethics they don't understand politics um they are uh they are reduce humans to the level of animals and all this other all the other criticisms that we've uh heard for Millennia we need to take them in their own terms now when you look around the world today at the Contemporary landscape where do you see Echoes of of epicureanism I mean because said we're all epicurian now but it it seems to just exist as a as

a as a sort of substrate I mean do do we have philosophers in the world now do we have public figures in the world now who are espousing something that is recognizably epicurian to your view well not really because um everybody has to be nominally Christian in politics and uh refer to God and pray for things and pray for people and all of that that's completely non Epicurean um but of course all policies that have to do with with the welfare of human beings that take their pains and Pleasures especially their pains seriously because in

a way epicureanism is more about preventing and avoiding pain than it is about pursuing pleasure um all programs that are designed to relieve suffering in politics which all the parties of course want to do Democrats more visibly than Republicans but but he did also say that it would be credential for you to wear on the outside the the conventional beliefs of your Society right you you don't want to especially in a society that is intolerant of your perspective it it makes sense to at least um go through the Notions of presenting yourself as Pious or

devout oh well epicurus thought he he had to do that of course um everyone had the lesson of of Plato in mind who openly was accused of right corrupting the Athenian Youth and Socrates Socrates yeah Socrates yeah suffered for it had to get himself out of the way to avoid a worse fate um but no um conforming to convention epicurus was uh thought to be Pious but um many people thought yes he was doing it for reasons of self-preservation but I wouldn't put a lot of um a lot of emphasis on Conformity to mainstream social

beliefs as part of epicureanism well Katherine I you know if we had time I would be asking you for restaurant recommendations I'd be asking you for uh places where I ought to travel because I know that you probably uh have some insight there um certainly based on the book um I think you you figured out a way to uh live a good life um of intellectual excitement and and pleasure so thanks so much for joining me uh this book is called how to be an epicurean the ancient art and Modern Art of Living well thanks

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