Epicurus, Punishment and Plato
According to Plutarch, Epicurus does not think that one ought to restrain people from injustice by any means other than the fear of punishment (Plutarch, Pleasant Life 1104B; Us.
534). As far as we can see, it is difficult to place this remark in context from the texts of Epicurus that have come down to us. But if fear of punishment is the only means of preventing people from carrying out unjust actions or, more dramatically, criminal acts, that certainly cannot be the reason why the Epicurean sage does not commit unjust acts. First, this is because if a person is wise, he does not submit to fear. Second, it is because, even though Epicurus understands the notion of justice as a ‘modality of usefulness, such usefulness cannot be understood solely in the individualistic sense of what is useful for oneself but rather always has a social dimension. The issue of punishment itself could be seen from a ‘utilitarian' point of view, as long as it can be considered as a ‘solitary and isolated experience', so to speak (i.e. when someone receives chastisement). Thus, punishment can be taken to be an evil by the offender due to the pain inflicted on him. By contrast, the chastisement considered as part of a social and legal system can be viewed as something useful or beneficial. Through a few punishments - the utilitarianist could argue - thousands of crimes might be avoided; thanks to the suffering of a few guilty people, the safety of many can be ‘purchased'.45 In other words, punishment is bad for the punished person but good for the social order, and if it is seen that way, there is a conflict of interest between the individual interest on the one hand and the general interest on the other. This account turns out to be helpful if considered from the perspective that it provides ‘the greatest good for the greatest number of people'.46Interestingly, in Plato's Gorgias the character Socrates maintains that punishment has an exemplary function that can help to avoid crime and is therefore valuable.
The soul of the criminal - the argument runs - is full not only of disorder but also of infamy because of his license, luxury, insolence, and the intemperance of his deeds (Gorg. 525a3-5). It behoves the one who is ‘rightly punished' [ oρθως τιμωρουμενω ] either to become better and profit from it, or to serve as an example to others (Gorg. 525b1-2) in order that they may fear and become better by seeing what he is suffering. Those who benefit by paying their penalty, both at the hands of the gods and of men, are those who commit crimes that admit of cure ( Gorg. 525b6). For those who have committed curable crimes, then, the punishment is not exemplary but therapeutic. In other words, just punishment has as its goal to make the punished person better, to increase his human excellence and, therefore, his happiness or well-being (cf. 476b-477a; 478d-e).But how helpful can this portentous Platonic passage be for understanding the function of (legal) punishment in the Epicurean society? Firstly, as we have already indicated, Epicurus does not support the idea that the gods are capable of, or interested in, punishing us. In fact, an Epicurean god is a blessed and indestructible entity having no troubles itself, nor giving trouble to anyone else. It is a self-sufficient entity that is not affected by any feeling (Epicurus, PD 1; this passage is paraphrased by Cicero, ND 1.45). Thus, if it really is a self-sustaining thing (as it is), it does not need anything else.47 Moreover, there is nothing better than a person who has pious opinions about the gods, Epicurus claims, since if you are a pious person, you will be always fearless about death and understand that the limit of good things is both easy to achieve and to provide. Again, according to Epicurus this is a quite simple account: if one is suspicious about the matters of the myths (stories that can involve the view that the gods are perverse and powerful beings, interested in perturbing human life with threats and exhibitions of their power), one cannot remove feelings of fear and hence cannot attain peace of mind and happiness.48
We hold that Plato's view that punishment is suitable for the one who is rightly punished (either to become better and profit from it, or to serve as an example to others) could have inspired Epicurus.
As Plato stresses, punishment can have a therapeutic function insofar as just punishment is for the sake of making the punished person better. Indeed, Epicurus does not say that punishment makes the person better, but he strongly suggests that the suspicion that one will not escape the notice of those assigned to punish bad actions works as a sort of chastisement for the offenders (PD 34-35). For Epicurus ‘suspicion' [υποψ(α] is responsible for the fear of being caught committing an injustice (PD 34), but this view, we suggest, is once again trivialized and (perhaps consciously) misinterpreted by Plutarch when he states that Epicurus denies that one ought to restrain people from injustice by any means other than the fear of punishments (Pleasant Life 1104B; Us. 534). This is so because he takes justice to be the same for everyone (PD 36), but ‘mere immunity from punishment gives no happiness'.49 But the sage is the one who has already attained happiness. Thus, immunity of punishment is irrelevant for attaining happiness (which is the same as attaining wisdom, peace of mind and so on). This, we suggest, is probably a desideratum shared by any human being (after all, there is nothing to prevent anyone from becoming an Epicurean sage). If this is so, the burden of proof is not to be found in punishment, but in the way a person is able to get rid of his unfounded fears through Epicurean ‘physiology' for the sake of achieving wisdom.Now, can this Epicurean stance be understood in a utilitarian manner a la John Stuart Mill? We believe that the answer must be ‘no’, since what Epicurus and the Epicureans claim or suggest is that the interest of the individual must match with the social interest,50 which immediately eliminates the very possibility of a conflict of interests.51 The good of the individual is a social good. It is true that the study of nature creates strong and self-sufficient [ αυταρκεις ] people, who pride themselves on their own personal goods and not those of external circumstances (VS 45), but those persons live in mutual associations.
Further, such self-sufficiency is clarified by Epicurus himself: when the wise person ‘is brought face to face with the necessities of life, he knows how to give rather than receive - such a treasury of self-sufficiency has he found’. In other words, the sage’s self-sufficiency also has a social dimension: it is self-sufficient because he can give his personal goods to those who need them more than he does (see VS 44).If this is so, it follows that, given that the self-sufficiency of the wise person does not have an egoistic character but a generous social dimension, it is more understandable why the pleasant life (synonymous with a happy life) is supposed to be an ‘honourable’ life (LM 132; PD 5). Again, the pleasurable life of the Epicurean sage is not a life of pure personal, sensual pleasure, but a life in which living wisely and prudently is tantamount to living honourably, justly and pleasantly. In fact, the adverb ‘honourably’, so profusely used by Epicurus, along with the adverb ‘justly’ qualifies the life of the Epicurean sage in different terms from a simple attachment to the laws. Indeed, there are behaviours authorized by the law that do not correspond to the sage, such as ‘being sordidly stingy’ ( VS 43) and in general the love of money (φιλοχρηματ(α; see Philodemus, On Property Management col. xvii 2-14, xxv 23-24).52 Likewise, the expression ‘living honourably’ encompasses behaviours of the Epicurean sage that go beyond what is required by law in social relations, such as, giving and donating, friendship or philanthropy. This characterization of the life of the Epicurean sage does not, in our view, imply a tension between the relational imprint of the ‘contractual’ justice, circumscribed by the structure of mutual obligations, and the apparently intrinsic and personal scope of the expression ‘living honourably and justly’ in LM 132 and PD 5. We hold this is so because both cases fit, in an Epicurean view, into the purpose of human being’s happiness.
Additionally, such ‘fitness’ has an interesting causal structure: on the one hand, the wise person living with justice requires the security [ασφαλεια] provided by contractual justice. It is precisely in this sense that a passage of Stobaeus (Us. 530) may be interpreted; there it is pointed out that the laws are established for the sake of the wise [χαριν των σοφων], not so that they will not commit injustice but so that they will not suffer it.53 On the other hand, by living honourably and justly the Epicurean sage at once strengthens his security and promotes the reduction of the causes of harm and being harmed, to the avoidance of which, as is well-known, the arrival of the pact and justice is orientated (PD 33). In fact, as we have already indicated, some Epicureans seem to have considered that a consequence of the universalization of Epicureanism would be the elimination of laws and penalties as unnecessary. This was so because, in an ideal but nonetheless possible scenario, if everyone became an Epicurean wise person no one would harm anyone and no one would be harmed. But while Epicurus may have considered this possibility, his ‘political realism', as we argued extensively in chapter 3, led him to emphasize the need for laws to change as circumstances change (without that entailing a crude ‘relativism').
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