Menoeceus 133-135
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[edit] Translation
Who could conceivably be better off than one who reveres the gods, who is utterly unafraid of death, and who has discovered the natural goal of life? Or one who understands that pleasure, the greatest good, is easily supplied to absolute fullness, while pain, the greatest evil, lasts only a moment when intense and is easily tolerated when prolonged? Or one who scoffs at fate, which is believed by some to be the mistress of all?
Such a man is better off than all, because he knows that the greater power of decision lies within oneself. He understands that while some things are indeed caused by fate, other things happen by chance or by choice. He sees that fate is irreproachable and chance unreliable, but choices deserve either praise or blame because what is decided by choice is not subject to any external power.
One would be better off believing in the myths about the gods than to be enslaved by the determinism proclaimed by certain physicists. At least the myths offer hope of winning divine favors through prayer, but fate can never be appealed.
One who is wise knows fortune is not god, as many believe, because the gods do not act randomly. Nor does he believe that everything is randomly caused. Nor does he believe that chance doles out good or evil for the sake of human happiness. He would actually prefer to suffer setbacks while acting wisely than to have miraculous luck while acting foolishly; for it would be better that well-planned actions should perchance fail than ill-planned actions should perchance succeed.
[edit] Analysis
Epicurus' buttresses all the previous assertions with a series of rhetorical questions, outlining the qualities of the one who has espoused Epicurean enlightenment. The "best person" exhibits
- correct beliefs regarding divinity,
- constant fearlessness towards death --the Greek expression dia pantos means "once and for all"-- and
- a rational understanding of the "goals of nature", or "natural goals", i.e. that what is good is easy to acquire, and that what is painful is brief.
Unlike others, such a person "laughs at Fate", which some consider a goddess and master of everything that ever happens, and assumes responsibility for his/her own actions. Here Epicurus embarks on a complex and comprehensive syllogism:
What happens, happens by
- necessity
- chance, or
- human agency
but
- one cannot possibly assume any responsibility for submitting to necessity,
- fortune is fickle, hard to discern, and thus cannot be relied upon, while
- we are free to make our own good or bad choices, deserving laud or blame respectively.
What hoi polloi call Fate, argues Epicurus, is entirely false. Fate is not a god worthy of the name, because god does not act in a haphazard manner, nor is it some other "uncertain cause" behind the workings of the world. Refining this last criticism, Epicurus offers practically nuanced advice: chance/fortune is not the giver or taker of the good things in life that lead to happiness; it is rather a point of departure, from which one ought to start one's own deliberations towards that end-goal. In fact, argues Epicurus, it is ironically better to have made prudent plans that, due to unforeseen circumstances, did not work out as hoped for, than to have made imprudent, poorly thought-out plans that did work out well thanks to dumb luck. On a deeper level, that is undeniably true: the human qualities that led to these respective choices far overshadow their opposite outcomes.
EDITORIAL NOTES:
- The first full sentence (ending with bracheis) is a rhetorical question; the Greek question mark is the same symbol as the English semicolon.
- It is commonly (and reasonably) surmised that, when Epicurus advises his followers not "to be enslaved to the fate ton physikon", he means not simply (and nonsensically) "natural" people, but the Natural Philosophers, whose world-view was deterministic and fate-driven. Epicurus' point is that, while the enlightened materialism he advocates leads to the optimal lifestyle, not all alternatives are equally bad: one would rather live as a believing follower of the various myths about the gods, who can be appeased by appropriate conduct, than as helpless subject of the inexorable Fate that the Natural Philosophers believed in.
Categories: The Sage | Choice and Avoidance | Pleasure | Pain | Death | Fate | Chance