Amicities, pacts and the just: Unorthodox epicureanism?

As usual, Lactantius refers to Epicurus in polemical terms. In a memorable and inaccurate passage (if one compares what Lactantius declares to the Epicurean textual evidence) of his Divine Institutions, he claims that, since for Epicurus the supreme good is pleasure, human society does not exist for the Epicurean.

In actual fact, it is not easy to ignore these verses of Lucretius; this is so because, in several Epicurus' texts, as we will show, friendship is presented in such generous terms that, at first glance, it is not easy to understand how those Epicurus' passages could be reconciled with the supposed Epicurean orthodoxy on hedonism and the utilitarianism of relations with others. The Vatican Sayings, found and edited by Wotke (in Wiener Studien 1888), with remarks by Hartel, Gomperz and Usener, include one sentence on friendship that produced Usener's perplexity. According to the reading proposed by Usener, VS 23 runs as follows: ‘Every friendship is worth choosing for its own sake, though it takes its origin from the benefits [it confers on us]'.³² In Usener's view, this sentence showed that Epicurus had modified his utilitarian standpoint.³³ However, it is not the only text in Epicureanism in which friendship is exalted. VS 78 qualifies friendship as an ‘immortal good' (see also Epicurus' PD 27 and 28). VS 52 is even more striking, since it extols friendship through the expressions of mystical cults: ‘Friendship dances around the world announcing to all of us that we must wake up to blessedness'.³⁴ Neither Hartel nor Usener accepted that such a disproportionate exaltation could refer to friendship. The former proposed the correction η φιλοσοφ(α instead of η φιλ(α, while Usener suggested reading ηλiου σφα(ρα (‘sphere of the sun') instead of η φιλfα (‘friendship'). For both of them it was inadmissible that Epicurus was referring to friendship in V^rS 52. But there are other striking texts in Epicureanism about friendship. Plutarch notes in Col. 1111B the statement by Epicurus to the effect that one will face the most severe sufferings for the sake of friends. Diogenes Laertius, for his part, points out that the wise person, according to Epicurus, will sometimes die for a friend (DL 10.

Like Usener, some contemporary interpreters have also highlighted that Epicurus' statements about friendship reflect tensions and inconsistencies in his ethical theory. This is due to the attempt to integrate friendship into hedonism as an ingredient of happiness (thus increasing the vulnerability of man that Epicureanism seeks to minimize).³⁵ Other interpreters have tried to show that Epicurus' statements about friendship are reconcilable with Epicurean egoism and that it does not provoke inconsistencies in Epicurean ethics.³⁶ These antagonistic interpretations share a noteworthy common ground regarding the concept of friendship. They tackle friendship from the selfishness-altruism disjunction. Yet this dichotomy presupposes a conception of what is understood by the ‘self' and by ‘the other' or ‘others' that is not straightforwardly applicable to the Greek world. In the ancient concept of φιλfα and in the ordinary use of expressions such as κοινωνfα, οlκειoτης, συγγενεια, oμoνοια and so on, a model is visible for comprehending interpersonal relations in which the selfishness-altruism disjunction is not useful. In fact, sharp borders between the self and the other are consistently blurred in the ancient understanding of friendship, so that as a result the idea of reciprocity and of a community of interests and purposes (understood in differing degrees of intensity) forms a fundamental part of the sphere of the self.³⁷

Both Gill and Algra³⁸ find an example of this traditional model in Aristotle's discussion of friendship. It is significant that when Aristotle clarifies (in a modal sense) the object of deliberation, he underlines that it is possible for us to do both what we ourselves can do and what we can do through our friends, as its realization is somehow our own [τα γαρ δια των φiλων δι' ημων πως εστfν]: this is so because the principle (surely of action) is in us (1112b27-28.

In the exposition that Torquatus devotes to friendship, Cicero points out that some Epicureans believe that the first human meetings, contacts and the will to establish close relationships came about due to pleasure. But when the progressive treatment or the frequency of association leads to familiarity or a certain kind of intimacy [cum autem usus progrediens familiaritatem effecerit], such a great love flourishes that, although no usefulness comes from friendship [e tiamsi nulla sit utilitas ex amicitia], friends are loved in themselves (Fin.

It is not difficult to recognize that the remarks of the Epicurean recentiores on friendship contain the combination of the two issues that Lucretius highlighted when referring to the pacts of the first human groupings: both the utility and the familiar treatment producing amicities. The very expression συστροφαf in PD 33 (see also Hermarchus' expression συντρεφομενους μετ' αλληλων in Porphyry, Abst. 1.10, 1) could designate a sense of familiarity and habituation.⁴² It is worth noting that Mitsis has argued (i) that this ‘associative' genealogy of altruism and friendship attributed to the Epicurean recentiores was simply the recognition of a psychological factum that could not be derived from a utilitarian justification of altruism and friendship.⁴³ He adds (ii) that the Epicurean theory of friendship was inconsistent, for if Epicureanism established hedonistic calculation in sober reasoning (LM 132) that subjected all desire and inclination to rational evaluation, the same should be done with the supposed tendency to altruism and friendship arising from utility [ usus] and familiarity ∖familiaritas].ⁱⁱ

The consideration of Mitsis' statements (i) and (ii) allows us to reaffirm the Epicurean orthodoxy of the reference to amicities in Lucretius, RN 5.1019.

Mitsis' remark (ii), we hold, disregards the prudential tradition behind the Epicurean reference of all choice to ‘sober reasoning' (νηφων λογισμoς ; LM 132). This is not something that is strictly specified in the form of axiomatic prescriptions for hedonistic calculation; rather, faithful to the prudential tradition to which Epicurus belongs (and which Aubenque so brilliantly discusses),⁴⁶ it also assumes and weighs up singularities and individual facts and leaves evidence of this in the repeated recognition of the relevance of contexts, exceptions and alternatives. The fact that the famous slogans attributed to the Epicureans - ‘live unnoticed' and ‘do not participate in politics' - do not even appear in the P rincipal Doctrines proves that the hedonistic calculation is not specified in absolute prescriptions. This being so, Roskam seems to be right when he characterizes Epicureanism as a moral philosophy of ‘conditional qualifying’.⁴⁷ Fish has also referred to the flexibility of Epicureanism regarding one's lifestyle choices.⁴⁸ Inherited status and the condition of homo novus, for example, are facts that the Epicureans seem to have considered when assessing dedication to politics (we examine these approaches in detail in chapter 6).⁴9 The preceding considerations demonstrate that the Lucretian verses which focused on the way that primitive relations of amicities and the pacts between neighbours [finitimi] give rise to justice did not constitute approaches foreign to Epicureanism. Additional proof of this is provided by its concordance with a thesis highlighted in the excerptum on the genealogy of justice and the laws by Epicurus' successor, Hermarchus, as transmitted by Porphyry. As we have already indicated, the establishment of laws and sanctions is regarded (by both Hermarchus and Lucretius) as not only posterior to the human groupings that were aware of the utility of the just for survival (‘neither harming one another nor being harmed'), but also as a response to new social realities.

In Porphyry's excerpt, when referring to the original establishment of laws by outstanding people (not by force of their bodies, but by wisdom of their souls), the Epicurean Hermarchus indicates that such an establishment was preceded by an irrational perception (or awareness) of what is useful [αλoγως αυτου - sc. του χρησ(μου - πρoτερον cd,σθανομενους ], but one that operated without reason and which was often forgotten. These wise people induced those who held these irrational perceptions to a comparative appreciation of what is useful [εiς επιλογισμoν του χρησ(μου].⁵⁰ The others they frightened through the severity of the punishments (Abst. 1.8, 1-2) and the instigation of an irrational fear of being impure for the crime committed (1.9, 4). Presumably, this was a ploy involving fear of the gods. Hermarchus states that laws would be unnecessary if everyone could see what was useful and hold it in their memory. The ‘contemplation' (or simply ‘the vision', θεωρiα) of the useful and the harmful would be sufficient to bring about the choice of what is useful and the avoidance of what is harmful (Abst. 1.8, 19-20). Hermarchus suggests that the event of forgetting the non- rational perception (or awareness) of what is useful is the result of population increase (and the presumable mitigation of social bonds) as well as the diminution of dangers such as the threat of wild beasts which in the (distant) past made the advantage of group solidarity obvious (see Porphyry, Abst. 1.8, 4; 1.10, 4). Thus, Hermarchus attributes the need to introduce laws and sanctions to the dissipation of the two causes to which Lucretius ascribes the advent of the pacts in the first human groupings: neighbourhood relations and amicities, and the recognition of the usefulness of justice for the survival of the community as well as the individual.

For his part, Lucretius links the establishment of laws and sanctions to a double process: after the formation of the first groups, some men became kings, founded cities, and built fortresses for their defence and shelter. The kings distributed cattle and fields ‘according to the beauty', strength and ingenuity - until wealth took precedence over all else. Then, according to Lucretius, the vain and greedy desires emerged that gave rise to the search for security through power, wealth and fame. The kings were murdered, and the human race was immersed in wars and violence until, tired of anarchy, people voluntarily submitted to the laws that magistrates taught them. Lucretius also stresses that the introduction of penalties represented a bitter milestone in history: ‘Ever since that time fear of punishment has poisoned the blessings of life' (RN 5.1115).

Thus, the pacts that sustained increasingly extensive societies with laws, sanctions and magistracies were fundamentally the result of calculation and utility. However, when explaining the pacts of justice among later human groups in relation to the experience of primitive, lone and wandering men (that is, a person that had yet to establish familiar bonds and pacts), the Epicureans seem to have combined an explanation of utility with approaches similar to the Stoic theory of familiarization [οlκεfωσις]. Such views, though, would be different from Stoic familiarization because of their not-strictly natural character. Ultimately, Lucretius refers to pacts between finitimi, people who are immersed in affective relations that do not emerge against the backdrop of a Hobbesian war of all against all and in which vain and irrational desires do not seem to prevail. On the contrary, according to Lucretius, the establishment of magistracies, of a sense of the right and of the laws obeyed the desire to end the general state of dissension and violence that emerged after the original pacts had broken down.

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