Menoeceus 123-124

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Translation

I encourage you, as always, to study and practice the things which are the ingredients of happiness. First of all, consider that a god is an immortal and happy being, as is commonly written. But do not believe anything about divine nature other than what is congenial for an eternally happy existence. The gods do exist because we have preconceived notions of them. But they are not like how most people describe them, because they do not retain the notion of the gods that they first receive. Rejecting the popular myths does not make one impious. Impious is one who upholds popular beliefs about the gods, because those pronouncements are false opinions rather than actual preconceptions. Hence the severest harm from the gods is anticipated by the many, while benefits are reaped by the virtuous. The reason being is that those who reflect upon their own virtues regard the gods as resembling themselves, and reject all else as outlandish.

Analysis

Having established the lasting usefulness of philosophy in general, Epicurus proceeds in this excerpt to his theology in particular, one of the cornerstones of Epicureanism. The edifice of Epicurean theology is built in several, sequential steps of consciousness:

• One ought to consider god to be blissful and indestructible because this is how god is believed to be according to the common views held by all humankind. All other views that are inconsistent with these two attributes of divinity should be summarily discarded.(On an even more fundamental level, Epicurus takes the universal human awareness of the gods as adequate proof that they exist altogether: if humans are vividly aware of the gods, the gods must surely exist, just like everything else we are clearly aware of.)

• Sifting, however, through the various opinions held about the gods by the many, hoi polloi, one finds that some are in fact inconsistent with the blissfulness and indestructibility of the gods; people falsely ascribe to the gods all sorts of inappropriate qualities. (Later on in this same excerpt, Epicurus points out with great psychological acuity that people distort the correct view of the gods by projecting their own vices and weaknesses on them, believing the gods to be spiteful, vengeful, or susceptible to favors and bribes.)

• Thus Menoeceus is admonished to distance himself from the erroneous views of the many. In defense against the expectable accusation of impiety, Epicurus argues that impious is not the one who believes the gods to be as they really are, ipso facto rejecting the erroneous views of the many, but those who uncritically share share those views.(Related to Epicurus' epistemology is the statement that the views of the many regarding the gods are not true conceptions, but false, uncritical suppositions.)

• Although Epicurus was only very tenuously a theist thinker, on this occasion he validates divinity in an ingenuous, brilliantly rhetorical turning of the tables by "agent inversion": it is not the gods who bestow benefits or inflict harm on people, but people who, by their own correct/incorrect theology, do this to themselves. Despite the vagueness of Epicurean gods, it is irrefutable that people who fear (in this case, the gods) live fearfully, and vice versa. The psychological truth of Epicurus' assertion is self-evident.

EDITORIAL NOTE: The editorial, bracketed tois agathois in the penultimate sentence serves to avoid a possible confusion; in fact, it might have been even better if, earlier in the same sentence, a similar editorial insertion of tois pollois had also been made. The dichotomy clearly intended by Epicurus is as follows:

Due to the very same cause of their respective understanding/misunderstanding of the gods

A. the many suffer the greatest damages, while

B. the good (the wise, the virtuous) enjoy the greatest benefits.