Principal Doctrine 31:
That which is just according to nature stems from a pledge of mutual advantage, an agreement not to harm one another and not to be harmed.
Principal Doctrine 32:
For animals that are unable to form agreements not to harm one another and not to be harmed, nothing is either just or unjust. It is the same for tribes that are unable or unwilling to form agreements not to harm or be harmed.
Principal Doctrine 33:
Justice does not exist as a thing in itself, but rather is found in men’s dealings with each other, on any scale, whenever there is a covenant not to harm or be harmed.
Commentary
Our continued progress through the Principal Doctrines is drawing towards the finish line. Today, I’ll outline the basic Epicurean theory of justice in PD 31, 32, and 33. The next two installments will deepen the discussion, dealing first with the implications of the theory for one’s personal conduct (PD 34 and 35), then with the implications regarding cultural variability and political change (PD 36–38). Finally, the last two Principal Doctrines (39 and 40) will move on to a connected but somewhat distinct subject: how cooperative alliances between individuals can enhance our security.
In this opening discussion of Epicurean justice, then, I’ll mostly stick to an introductory outline, clearing up some conceptual issues, but leaving the full ramifications of the theory for both individual and political action to future installments. Let’s take PD 31 and PD 33 in conjunction first, as both seem to offer fairly general definitions.
That which is just according to nature stems from a pledge of mutual advantage, an agreement not to harm one another and not to be harmed. (PD 31)
Justice does not exist as a thing in itself, but rather is found in men’s dealings with each other, on any scale, whenever there is a covenant to not harm and not be harmed. (PD 33)
The first thing to note is Epicurus’ clear rejection of an eternal, freestanding, ideal, capital-J “Justice.” The breadth and consistency of this rejection is somewhat obscured in many translations: only in PD 33 does he employ the hypostasizing, idealist term of dikaiosyne (δικαιοσύνη) familiar from Plato as the “Form” of Justice, specifically in order to deny its independent existence. In all the other Principal Doctrines, Epicurus instead refers to to dikaion (τὸ δίκαιον), which has more of a lowercase, everyday kind of feel, and which I have accordingly translated as “that which is just.” We can have red things, but Redness does not exist as an independent form. We can usefully describe certain social arrangements as just, but that does not mean that Justice is an eternal ideal we are always striving to perceive.
Instead, justice is the result of a kind of contract or covenant between human beings, with one preeminent objective: avoiding mutual harm. Many modern philosophers later elaborated their own versions of social contract theory, with varying degrees of resemblance to (what remains of) the Epicurean position. Particularly notable, however, is that very specific and limited goal which Epicurus repeats in all three of today’s maxims: the behavior which we are most obviously and universally interested in is to avoid being harmed. This kind of general inclination towards limiting the influence of social agreements over the individual will strike many readers as anticipating John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle,” originally formulated in On Liberty and subsequently adopted as a foundational plank for many modern libertarians:
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. (On Liberty, Introductory Chapter)
Of course, determining the situations in which individuals “harm one another” has become increasingly complex in the modern world. Mill wanted to avoid paternalistic policy that impinged upon individual freedom, but once society also agrees to pool resources for, say, old age pensions and medical care, then are some paternalistic nudges justified to reduce the waste of those universally appropriated funds? These are questions that Epicurus doesn’t deal with. I can only speculate that his general orientation would probably continue to lean towards an emphasis on individual action and small-scale alliances over grand social reforms or utopian projects.
Speaking of those “small-scale alliances”: this is a second oversight omitted by many translations. PD 33 contains a phrase which I have translated as “on any scale” (opelikous topous, ὁπηλίκους τόπους, literally “in places however big”). For some reason, the most popular modern translators (Long & Sedley; Inwood & Gerson) entirely omit this phrase, despite previous translators retaining it (Strodach, DeWitt). Maybe they just found it clunky. It’s actually fairly important: Epicurus believes that justice can be a quality found within any form of covenant, from a group of friends or communal organization to a city state or larger nation. The ability for an agreement to reflect the justice of nature is not dependent on an elaborate legal apparatus or powerful enforcement mechanisms. It’s a basic principle which we can perceive in all our dealings with others.
Finally, as a last clarification on these two maxims, note that the dependence of justice on the existence of some kind of social contract does not mean that justice is entirely mutable or subjective: there is a “justice of nature.” We will delve much more deeply into this notion that justice is an objective term, despite the changing arrangements in which we find it, in PD 36–38. For now, the basic idea is this: an agreement is only just if it actually benefits the various participants. This is basically the idea of Utilitarianism, at least of those forms of Utilitarianism that focus on the human participants in given society. Epicureans are egoists, but we recognize the usefulness of “just” as a term that equates roughly to “mutually beneficial” or “fair”—something that is just is something in which each individual will rationally want to participate.
In accordance with this theory, our third maxim sets out some limits on the contexts in which justice is a relevant concept:
For animals that are unable to form agreements not to harm one another and not to be harmed, nothing is either just or unjust. It is the same for tribes that are unable or unwilling to form agreements not to harm or be harmed. (PD 32)
According to the Epicureans, there is no such thing as justice towards animals. If we could make a deal with lions or mosquitoes not to harm us, that would be nice, but we cannot; consequently, we do not have any moral obligations towards them. Hermarchus, Epicurus’ immediate successor as head of the Garden, elaborated on this position in a passage preserved by Porphyry:
For there is not, one must say, any such animal among those which the law allows us kill, which would not become harmful to us if allowed to become excessively abundant, even while it produces some benefits to us while kept in its present number. Sheep, cattle, and all such animals, when moderate in number, are helpful in meeting the necessities of life. But if they were to multiply excessively and far exceed the appropriate population, they would become harmful to us, either by turning to resist us by force—which they are by nature well capable of—or simply through their consumption of the food imparted to us by the earth. It is for this reason that it was not forbidden to kill these animals either, so that a number advantageous for our needs and easily mastered might remain. (Of Abstinence 11)
This doesn’t deny the possibility of some reasons for limiting harsh treatment of animals. Maybe we think it breeds cruelty of character—Kant’s argument. Maybe we think reducing meat consumption would reduce the impacts of climate change in a way that yielded human benefit. But killing animals cannot be simply and flatly wrong, according to the Epicurean theory. While animal rights defenders are more numerous among philosophers than the populace at large, I think the Epicurean position is in closer alignment with the intuitions of normal people and I would agree: hunting, killing pests, and eating meat are not inherently unjust.
When he extends the same argument to barbarous tribes, modern people are probably even more inclined to get touchy. Most of the world has moved past this debate, but it did endure for thousands of years after Epicurus. Mill, for instance, articulated a similar position in the very next paragraph of On Liberty from that cited above, in 1859:
It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties... For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.
For Mill, this justified British colonial activity in India. Similar arguments have been made by various self-appointed representatives of “civilization” throughout history and are mostly out of fashion today. On some level, however, I think Epicurus’ contention is quite understandable: if some non-aggressive travelers were passing through an unknown country and were attacked by a vicious band of savage warriors who made no overtures of peace before commencing violence, rape, and robbery, then I think one can make a strong case that the victims needn’t quibble too much about using potentially lethal force to defend themselves, for instance. Perhaps this kind of thing is what Epicurus had in mind, integrating scary stories from exotic lands into his speculation on the origins of social contracts.
If we accept the premise of violent and unreasoning savages, then, this seems defensible. It’s true that similar arguments have often been invoked over the intervening millennia to justify not forming or abiding by covenants that presumably would have been beneficial as a whole, but I don’t think we can really lay responsibility for all such conduct at Epicurus’ feet. Nothing suggests that he was a vigorous enthusiast for repressive colonialism. His primary interest here was probably anthropological, tracing how one prominent motive for early social alliance was mutual protection against outside threats. This story is also elaborated in that same Hermarchus passage found in Porphyry:
Holding back from harming one another and injuring those who had come together in the same place was useful not only for the exclusion of other kinds of animals, but also for excluding other men who came with harmful intentions. (Of Abstinence, 10)
Now we know what Epicurean justice is, in broad outline: that which is mutually beneficial in an agreement between human beings, with a particular focus on promises to refrain from harming one another in exchange for reciprocal security against being harmed oneself. In future installments, we’ll expand upon this account, discussing how such agreements can be adequately enforced by sanctions (without any particular invocation of moral obligation), recognizing how an individual should live in a society, and evaluating the ways in which specific laws and customs vary from place to place and across time.
If you’ve ever heard that Epicureans are unprincipled cowards who throw out all civilized morality, or selfish isolationists who rule out the possibility of political progress, you will soon be equipped to rebut such misconceptions. It is true that we do not believe in a transcendent Justice existing independently of all human activity. But we are firm believers in the benefits of just agreements that lead to the greater happiness of all.
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Original Text
31: τὸ τῆς φύσεως δίκαιόν ἐστι σύμβολον τοῦ συμφέροντος εἰς τὸ μὴ βλάπτειν ἀλλήλους μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι.
32: ὅσα τῶν ζῴων μὴ ἐδύνατο συνθήκας ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν ἄλληλα μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι, πρὸς ταῦτα οὐθὲν ἦν δίκαιον οὐδὲ ἄδικον· ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν ὅσα μὴ ἐδύνατο ἢ μὴ ἐβούλετο τὰς συνθήκας ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι.
33: οὐκ ἦν τι καθʼ ἑαυτὸ δικαιοσύνη, ἀλλʼ ἐν ταῖς μετʼ ἀλλήλων συστροφαῖς καθʼ ὁπηλίκους δήποτε ἀεὶ τόπους συνθήκη τις ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν ἢ βλάπτεσθαι.