From the rustic, lonely and primitive people to the first human groupings
The link between what is just and what is useful is by no means an idea that originates with Epicurus. To focus on philosophical discussion, it is present in Thrasymachus' contentions in Plato's Republic (also in the Theaetetus and the Gorgias), as well as in several passages of Aristotle's practical philosophy (Rh.
1375b3-4; EN 1159a10-13). The link between justice and agreement is also traditional; proof of this is that Aristotle deals with it as a commonplace in the Rhetoric and the Nicomachean Ethics. The formula not to harm or be harmed (used by Epicurus to refer to the purpose of the pact in PD 33) repeats a similar expression employed by Plato (Resp. 359a) that would seem to come from an earlier source.13 What the Epicureans take up in these ‘traditional' topics is, (i) the link between what is just and useful, (ii) the link between the just and the pact, and, finally, (iii) the purpose of the pact understood as neither harming nor being harmed. The Epicurean study of nature reworks these traditional topics of Greek thought in a way that returns to its origins. Thus, the Epicureans develop the fundamentally theoretical rationalist constructs of Ionian natural philosophy to explain the origin of living beings and of civilized life in society.14 One of the best testimonies of this rationalist tradition (and the significance of the pact in the origin of justice) is Lucretius' On the Nature of Things 5. By contrast, the Sophists and Plato represent two faces of the belligerent handling that this rationalist tradition of the genealogy of justice and the laws underwent in later philosophy. The Sophists question laws and customs through their confrontation with nature; Plato, particularly at the beginning of Laws 10, rejects this questioning as impious, subversive and nihilistic, and presents the physical theory and the contractual theory as two faces of the same coin or, to use his own words, ‘of the same disease' (Laws 888b8). Plato does not specify to what philosophers he attributes this harmful fusion of physicalist cosmogony and contractualism.15 Perhaps he had Archelaus in mind. In any case, the testimony transmitted by Diogenes Laertius is very significant since he states that, according to Diocles, Epicurus recognized Anaxagoras above all of the ancient philosophers (although he contradicted him on some points) and Archelaus (DL 10.12; Us. 240).Apparently, Epicurus dealt with the origin of civilization in On Nature 12.16 The epitome of Epicurean philosophy contained in the Letter to Herodotus picks up on a subject that the Epicureans seem to have considered especially appropriate to their theory of the beginnings of civilization: the origin of language. In the compressed lines that Epicurus dedicates to this topic, two fundamental explanatory guidelines stand out: the rejection of the figure of a divine or human legislator [νομοθετης] or of an inventor [πρωτος ευρετης] of language,17 and the recognition of two causes for the formation of language, i.e. the constraints of nature and the application of human ingenuity (LH 75-76). One of the traditional arguments for defending the conventional character of language was the diversity of languages. Epicurus reverses this argument by contending that this diversity is precisely due to the natural origin of language. In each instance, according to Epicurus, the constraints of nature are concretized in a specific ‘environment'. This causes similar natural reactions in the human groups that are part of specific linguistic communities and thus gives rise to particular linguistic codes.18 Unfortunately, Epicurus' preserved texts do not analyse the relationship between the origins of language and justice.19 Perhaps this kind of analysis would include references to the formation of the preconception [πρoληψις ] of the just mentioned in PD 37 and 38 (see chapter 3).
Our knowledge of the Epicurean genealogy of justice and laws primarily derives from the extract of Hermarchus in Porphyry and from Lucretius' On the Nature of Things 5 (which also refers to language). In these verses (RN 5.1020-23) Lucretius highlights the cohesive function of language for the strengthening of pacts and justice. This approach is focused in turn on the persuasive function of language, a connection which is already underlined in the references to the origin of laws that populate Greek fifth-century literature.20 The decisive contribution of language in the formation of human associations and pacts was a common topic in ancient literature. This idea is found at the beginning of Aristotle's Pol. 1253a7-18, as well as in Cicero's On the Republic (De Re. 1.25, 40). Hermarchus and Lucretius, despite some differences, coincide in their approaches to the genealogy of human groupings, justice and laws. Both take human groupings and justice to predate the existence of laws and sanctions.The traditional contrast between primitive bestial life without order [ ατακτος καi θηριωδης βiος] and civilized ways of life thus receives an interesting reformulation in Lucretius.21 He does not describe a Hobbesian bestial and warlike ‘prehistoric' life of human beings. In his opinion, early humans were stronger than modern humans and led a solitary and wandering existence in the manner of beasts (more ferarum; RN 5.931-932, 948); violence was sporadic. Lucretius contrasts this primitive state of human beings not only with the arrival of human groups and justice, but also with the subsequent stage in which it became necessary to establish laws and sanctions. As is the case today, ancient reconstructions of humankind's earliest times function primarily as expressions of their authors' theories and ideals. Throughout On the Nature of Things 5 the Epicurean Lucretius does not fail to point out the absence of superstitions about gods and death in primitive pre-social human beings, and the easy satisfaction of their natural desires.
Lucretius also emphasizes the emergence of pacts of justice, framed in friendly relations, without the need for laws and sanctions. He thus finds a sort of ‘authentication' of Epicurean ethics in prehistoric humankind and also reveals its genealogical superiority over rival philosophical schools. In this way the story of the primitive discovery of justice takes on paradigmatic status for the Epicureans in their reflections on justice, and comes to represent a symbol of an Epicurean utopia in which laws, sanctions and boundaries would vanish. For the Epicureans, the universalization of their philosophy would imply the disappearance of the causes that produce the vain desires and fears that trigger political ambition and the greed that makes laws and sanctions necessary. For the adversaries of the Epicureans (mainly Cicero and Plutarch), however, itsuniversalization would mean the impossibility of all concord among men. One of the fragments of the Epicurean from the second century ad Diogenes of Oenoanda (fr. 56 Smith) seems to refer to just utopian societies that function without laws or sanctions. Therein, a singular community version of the traditional topic of the assimilation to god [δμοfωσις θεω ] is presented, a theme to which, as Erler shows, Epicureanism was in no way foreign.22 In both societies (the primitive and the utopian of Diogenes of Oenoanda), there is pact and justice, but no laws.
The rationalist treatments of prehistory in antiquity appropriately dismiss the intervention of gods or providential individuals and bring natural causes into play. However, the repeated reference to the steps as very gradual, the anonymity of the actors, and the spatial and temporal indeterminations show that these are fundamental attempts at reconstruction through analogies, extrapolations and so on. Thus, at the end of book 5, Lucretius indicates that our age cannot know anything of what happened previously except for the vestiges discovered by reason ( nisi qua ratio vestigia monstrat,RN5.1447).23 In his reconstruction of the origin of justice, Lucretius stresses that the just is based on a pact resulting from a gradual process of softening [mollescere], physical and psychological, that affected the rustic, solitary and self-focused primitive man.
Through this humanization,24 primitive men began to establish relations of friendship [amicities] and pacts foedera] with neighbours [finitimi], so as to neither harm nor be harmed (RN 5.1020):Next, they provided themselves with huts and skins and fire, and woman, united to man, went to live in one [place with him. The advantages of cohabitation] were learned, and they saw the birth of their own offspring. It was then that human beings first began to lose their toughness [mollescere]: the use of fire rendered their shivering bodies less able to endure the cold beneath the pavilion of the sky; Venus sapped their strength; and the children with their charming ways easily broke down the stern disposition of their parents. It was then, too, that neighbors [finitimi], in their eagerness neither to harm nor be harmed, began to form mutual pacts [foedera] of friendship [ amicitiem], and claimed protection for their children and womenfolk, indicating by means of inarticulate cries and gestures that everyone ought to have compassion on the weak [ imbecillorum esse aequum misererier omnis]. Although it was not possible for concord to be achieved universally, the great majority kept their compacts loyally. Otherwise, the human race would have been entirely extinguished at that early stage and could not have propagated and preserved itself to the present day.
RN 5.1011-1027
Lucretius reconstructs the transition from the life of primitive man more ferarum to the beginnings of civilized life, and compresses into a few lines processes that give rise to knowledge, capacities and relationships of various kinds between human beings. Interpreters have generally focused on one of the processes mentioned: the birth of justice through pacts of friendship. The scarcity of Epicurean texts on the origin of justice and the significance of friendship in Epicureanism explain this focus and the prevailing doctrinal approach to the passage. Before referring to discussions about the ‘orthodoxy' of the passage, it is important to remember its place in the plot of Lucretius' poem.
The arrival of justice constitutes the final moment in the sequence of processes that Lucretius postulates as an explanation of the survival of the human species and the origin of civilized life. It is a task framed by the overall purpose of On the Nature of Things 5 to explain the origin of life and the survival and extinction of the species without resorting to god or teleological explanations. Lucretius highlights the difference between the explanations required in the case of the human species and those of other species (except for the animals under the care of man), dramatically contrasting the endowments with which animals come into the world with the perilous condition of human infants. The child, Lucretius emphasizes, is thrown into the world as a castaway, naked, speechless, and lacking any help for life (RN 5.218-227).25This poetic image dramatizes the idea that nature has not been created by divinity in the interest of human beings (RN 5.195-200) and that, consequently, their survival and propagation is due to creations, inventions and strategies established by human beings themselves. The establishment of life by couples and the recognition of children by their parents represent, for Lucretius, fundamental causes of the survival and propagation of the human species.26 Lucretius seems ingeniously to adapt the traditional idea of the family as the seed of the polis to his reconstruction of the processes of prehistory that made possible the arrival of pacts of friendship and justice.27 According to Lucretius, a psychological softening of the human being takes place first within the family, which seems to make possible the neighbourhood relations from which the first human groupings were established. Certainly, those who come to such covenants are not rough and lonely primitive men, but rather parents who experience pity for the weak (women and children) and recognize the convenience of protecting them, along with themselves, so that all should survive. The recognition of children by their parents as their own creations should also have contributed to the genesis of the parents' awareness of their own weakness.28 Thus, the pact of justice seems to extend the experiences that arise from establishing the family.
Maybe the development of emotions favoured by the mollescere of the primitive man also contributed, in Lucretius' view, to the evolution of language.29 Several ancient authors emphasized the contribution of friendship and piety to the establishment and preservation of human groupings. The distinctive feature of Lucretius' treatment of this topic is his evolutionist and rationalist approach. In contrast to authors such as Polybius, who relates friendship and sociability in a primarily historical manner (Histories 6.5 9-10; 6.6 2-5), or Lactantius, who points out that God bestowed piety on human beings for the mutual protection of their lives (Epitome 55 1, 60 2; Div. Inst. 5.7 1; 6.10 2), Lucretius presents friendship and piety as the results of evolutionary transformations of prehistoric human beings due to strictly human processes.
Lucretius points out that concord was not universal, but that the vast majority kept their pacts faithfully. Without this broad agreement, Lucretius insists, the human race would have perished entirely (RN 5.1024-1027). Hermarchus also emphasizes that if human beings had not united to defend themselves from the beasts and other human beings, they would not have survived (Porphyry, Abs. 1.10, 1). Regardless of the meaning given to the term amicities,3° there is no doubt that Lucretius speaks of pacts, which are made between subjects who already possess and share techniques (fire, clothing, dwellings) and modes of socialization (coupling, offspring, neighbourhood) and who come to these civilizational techniques out of, and for the sake of, their own benefit. In other words, they are not beings who, like the rustic primitive people, fend only for themselves and live as they please (R N 5. 960-961) in the way of wild beasts ( more ferarum; RN 5.932). Rather, they are individuals whose use of fire and life alongside couples, children and neighbours in sheltered dwellings has softened them, configuring them properly as a socialized ‘I' immersed in mutually helpful and affective relationships.
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