Principal Doctrine 34:
Injustice is not bad in itself, but because of the fear and apprehension that one will not escape notice by those appointed to punish wrongdoing.
Principal Doctrine 35:
When someone secretly violates the covenants that men form with each other to neither harm nor be harmed, it is impossible for him to be sure that he will escape detection, even if he has done so ten thousand times. For until the end of his life, it will be uncertain if he will truly escape.
Commentary
A note on posting frequency: Since launching in April, Untroubled has been publishing every Tuesday and Friday, week in and week out. Given other current obligations, that pace is rather difficult to sustain, so I’ll be shifting to a once-a-week schedule going forward. Some weeks this will be a translation and commentary, some weeks an essay.
Last week, I introduced the Epicurean theory of justice in Principal Doctrines 31–33. There, we learned the basic Epicurean perspective: the rules and principles that we label as “just” arise from a kind of agreement between humans. In the most elementary historical form, this involved a reciprocal promise: I will not harm you, if you do not harm me. Next time, in PD 36–38, I’ll discuss some political ramifications of this concept of justice, such as the way it explains geographical variation in laws and the implications for how laws might change over time. Today, however, we’ll be dealing with an aspect of this theory that has particular relevance on the individual level: how does society enforce those just agreements, and how should the individual act in response?
Injustice is not bad in itself, but because of the fear and apprehension that one will not escape notice by those appointed to punish wrongdoing. (PD 34)
As we found last week in the case of “justice,” Epicureans deny independent existence to some absolute quality named “injustice.” Instead, what defines actions as unjust is their violation of social agreement, a status that brings along with it some form of punishment. This is most clearly the case with official, legally-defined crimes. For instance, most societies consider unprovoked killing of other humans to be unjust, statutorily declare such killings to be illegal, and officially appoint individuals to punish those who commit murder. This seems to the primary emphasis here, given the specific calling out of persons “appointed” as punishers.
There’s no reason, however, why the same principle can’t be applied to instances of non-illegal, but clearly anti-social conduct. Constant dramatic rudeness is not bad because of any cosmically inherent quality, but because it receives the “punishment” of social disapproval. Importantly, in contexts of both formal and informal sanctions, Epicurus does not simply say that the punishment alone makes the unjust actions bad, but that the fear or apprehension of such punishment is bad. This is a critical premise of the Epicurean theory: the fact that someone might seemingly escape punishment by committing a crime in secret does not make his crime good, because there is always the possibility of being found out—fear of punishment is therefore inescapable. That is the subject of the next maxim:
When someone secretly violates the covenants that men form with each other to neither harm nor be harmed, it is impossible for him to be sure that he will escape detection, even if he has done so ten thousand times. For until the end of his life, it will be uncertain if he will truly escape. (PD 35)
Some will dispute this on empirical grounds. Cicero, for instance, thinks that the Epicurean theory does not adequately account for crafty criminals who will aim only at “seeming good,” rather than truly being good. Epicurus denies this, not on the basis of an overly optimistic or rosy view of human good faith, but because of his insistence on the detrimental effect of any fear or uneasiness about our social relations. Do criminals exist, who apparently do not think that this psychological penalty outweighs the potential gains from their crimes? Certainly. But the core Epicurean interpretation denies that such criminals are actually maximizing the pleasure and happiness of their lives: the “benefits” of crime usually aim at fulfilling unnecessary desires, while some amount of unease is always present, even if it is somewhat repressed and non-obvious. I agree with this evaluation. Contra Cicero, I don’t think hardened criminals are generally good examples of hedonistic success.
You might still find the Epicurean position empirically questionable as an absolute statement. Surely, there are some cases where individuals have the opportunity to secretly violate a law or social norm with minimal fear of punishment? I think this is true, and I don’t think that even Epicurus would outright deny it, despite the seemingly blunt “it is impossible” of this maxim. The truth is that Epicurus can sometimes be somewhat hyperbolic, especially given that much of our extant texts consist of aphorisms, rather than extended treatises. In this case, however, we do have another text that acknowledges this gray zone of very-unlikely-to-be-detected crimes:
In his Problems, [Epicurus] asks whether a wise person will do something that the laws forbid, if he knows that he will escape detection. And he answers that it is not easy to give an unqualified response. (Plutarch Adv. Col. 1127D, Usener Fragment 18)
Plutarch, of course, interprets this straightforwardly as a cause for criticism: “I will do it, but I do not wish to admit it,” he says that the Epicurean statement means. And he isn’t entirely wrong! As I interpret Epicurus (again, lacking all the more extended discussion that would have been present in the original text), if you postulate that the subject in question knows absolutely that he will escape detection, then such a subject might be justified in violating the law. In practice, such a situation implies that little or no harm is being done to anyone—if there were major harm involved, then we would presumably have more safeguards to prevent it and subsequent investigation to discourage it. If little or no harm is being done to anyone, and there is no chance of legal or social penalty, then there might well not be a strong reason to prohibit the action in our ethical guidance. Plutarch is simply being a stiff-necked moralist who thinks that every little white lie, for instance, is a grave moral failing. They aren’t.
So why doesn’t Epicurus simply say, “yes, the wise man would break the law in that circumstance”? Because he doesn’t think it is realistic, or at least not representative of anything like our common experience. In real life, it is quite rare for someone to be presented with an opportunity for utterly secret, practically victimless crime, that actually serves our well-considered best interest. There is always some chance of detection, broadly considered: legal penalties are undesirable, social disapproval is undesirable, the need to lie and maintain consistent fictions for the rest of our lives whenever the event or time of our misdeed is under discussion is undesirable.
Furthermore, it is important to remember the place of this doctrine within the whole of Epicurean ethical advice: we think wealth, luxury, power, and fame are all largely worthless and often counterproductive for the happy life. When evaluating the desirability of violating a law, then, you have to look at both sides. What does one gain? Worthless things. What does one lose? Peace of mind.
If you really want to shoplift, you can find opportunities to do so, but the payoff-to-risk ratio is terrible for people of adequate resources. Why steal some trivial little thing that you could buy if you really wanted it? Why risk punishment for monetary gain, when you can earn money through a socially-approved channel? Epicureans have moderated their material and psychological needs, and so they always feel like their resources are already adequate for happiness: willfully inviting fear into our lives for such worthless objects would be foolish.
In practice, then, the wise wouldn’t want the “advantages” promised by law-breaking, even if the laws didn’t exist. Another fragment reveals the real purpose of laws and sanctions:
Laws are established for the sake of the wise, not to keep them from doing wrong, but to protect them from being wronged. (Usener Fragment 530)
Formal laws and punishments do not create the reason for just conduct. The reason to act justly stems from the underlying benefit of social agreement and concord: it is legitimately impossible to live peacefully if you have hostile relations with all of your peers. The wise don’t need this to be formalized into laws and underlined with institutional threats. The purpose of those kinds of threats is to make the hedonic calculus more obvious for those who are not wise, those who are not skilled at evaluating the long-term consequences of their actions.
While some people cling to the possibility of retribution as an inherent virtue of legal punishment, I think most thoughtful modern people align more with the Epicurean view: legal punishments exist primarily for their deterrent effect. When we decide our fines and prison sentences, we do not accordingly consult some heavenly book of objective justice, but measure their deterrent effect against their other costs and impacts in an attempt to achieve the most beneficial outcome for society. In our next installment, we’ll turn to those kinds of societal issues and answer some frequently asked questions: Are Epicureans complete relativists? Will they criticize or violate laws they believe to be unjust? Do Epicureans contribute to societal progress, or are they necessarily advocates for the status quo?
We are frequently criticized on many of these fronts, but I think we have good answers. To learn them, check back soon for our penultimate chapter on Epicurus’ Principal Doctrines.
Explore the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.
Original Text
34. ἡ ἀδικία οὐ καθʼ ἑαυτὴν κακόν, ἀλλʼ ἐν τῷ κατὰ τὴν ὑποψίαν φόβῳ, εἰ μὴ λήσει τοὺς ὑπὲρ τῶν τοιούτων ἐφεστηκότας κολαστάς.
35. οὐκ ἔστι τὸν λάθρα τι ποιοῦντα ὧν συνέθεντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους εἰς τὸ μὴ βλάπτειν μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι, πιστεύειν ὅτι λήσει, κἄν μυριάκις ἐπὶ τοῦ παρόντος λανθάνῃ· μέχρι γὰρ καταστροφῆς ἄδηλον εἰ καὶ λήσει.