Epicurean Critic: Plutarch

Why does the great biographer think we are bad at pursuing pleasure?

The life of greater pleasure? Detail from Alexander and Porus by Charles Le Brun

Plutarch, the famous biographer of the first century CE, did not like Epicureanism. He himself was a Middle Platonist, viewing himself as an essentially faithful follower of the Academy, and penned numerous anti-Epicurean and anti-Stoic polemics, most of which have been lost. Three of his anti-Epicurean books have survived, however: the short Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept?, a rebuttal of a first-generation Epicurean entitled Against Colotes, and the more interesting follow-up That It Is Impossible Even to Live Pleasantly According to Epicurus.

These are not particularly widely read books today, but they contain some valuable quotes and testimonies of Epicurean doctrines, as well as a decent array of still extant criticisms and questions regarding Epicurean ethical advice. Why shouldn’t we pursue a life of intellectual contemplation, as praised by Plato? What about the life of glorious public action, as praised by much of society? Is traditional religion really harmful to happiness? Although these books are nominally dialogues, no characters really take up the Epicurean cause and push back against the arguments that Plutarch advances. So, as I recently did with Cicero’s objections, I will today take on that role myself, outlining Plutarch’s main critiques and offering my own responses.

Two practical notes on approaching these texts. First, if looking them up or seeing them referred to, you may often encounter the traditional Latin titles (though they were originally written in Greek), which are respectively De latenter vivendo (abbreviated De lat. viv.), Adversus Colotem (Adv. Col.), and Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum (Non posse).

Next, since these books have no truly modern English translation, the best edition in which to read these is clearly that of the Loeb Classical Library printing of Plutarch’s Moralia, Volume XIV. The 1967 Loeb translation by Einarson and De Lacy is generally readable and the introductory material is quite useful, including helpful systematic outlines of each book. If you read a free online copy or cheap ebook anthology, you will probably get the Goodwin translation from the 1870s. This is exceptionally cumbersome to understand, though fairly effective as an insomnia treatment. For example:

So that, should they pass for very knowing men upon all other accounts, yet their very calumnies and reviling language would bespeak them at the greatest distance from philosophy imaginable. For emulation can never enter that God-like consort, nor such fretfulness as wants resolution to conceal its own resentments. (Non posse §2)

With that said, let’s look at each of these three works, passing over the rather boring Against Colotes rather briefly in favor of the juicier ethical disputes.

Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept?

This short essay (about 10 pages) attacks the classic Epicurean maxim “Live unknown” (lathe biosas). Based on our extant texts, it is not known if Epicurus himself said those exact words, but it is clear that they were widely understood as expressing the consistent Epicurean counsel not to seek fame. Plutarch sometimes insinuates a slightly broader application, which I suspect is not really fair, but we admittedly do not have the exact original context. Overall, Plutarch makes five objections:

1. Epicurus wanted fame himself, so he is being dishonest or hypocritical.

I consider this baseless ad hominem. I know of no textual evidence that Epicurus ever sought fame as an intrinsic component of happiness or as an important instrument to its realization. As far as I know, fame came as a side effect of the activity he enjoyed doing anyways: writing and teaching. This is an important distinction. Certain kinds of fame may be acceptable, but fame is generally not worth seeking in itself. As far as we can reconstruct it, this appears to me to be the actual Epicurean position.

2. It is good for vices to be exposed so that they may be cured, while it is good for virtuous behavior to be public, so that others may be benefited.

“Live unknown” clearly does not mean that we should behave viciously in secret—to imply that is clearly a distortion of Epicurean advice. In reality, Epicurus frequently emphases how normal, everyday exposure to the judgment of society must necessarily shape our conduct and cannot be avoided. Nor does “live unknown” imply that we cannot help others. Personally, I would say that people who are of service to their family, friends, and community may often be more substantively helpful than those who seek the greatest celebrity (consider modern pop stars, actors, or any political figure you dislike). Occasionally, acts of helping others may result in some wider degree of recognition (as with Epicurus), but “level of famousness” does not correlate particularly tightly with “benefit to others.”

3. Obscurity leads to inaction, while public acclaim motivates to vigor and activity.

As with the above, I am unwilling to condemn all private lives and to praise all public lives. I think many obscure individuals have led happy lives that benefited those around them, while many well-known individuals made both themselves and others less happy by their activity. Think again of all the vapid celebrities, pointlessly wealthy plutocrats, and harmful political figures of history. An excessive concern with public opinion tends to distort our perception of what is truly valuable and can easily lead to socially counterproductive forms of “activity.”

4. Man by nature desires to know and be known, just as he loves sunlight and hates darkness.

Chapter 6 contains some fancy metaphors, mythology, and Platonizing, but is substantively both shallow and mistaken. The general human preference for light over darkness has no bearing on whether fame is worth seeking. If evolutionary biology were to be appealed to, I suspect we would find that humans are actually more contented when they secure the approval of a smaller tribal circle (which Epicurus would endorse) than when they engage in an endless quest for mass celebrity, which is necessarily difficult and unstable.

5. Those who have won fame go to a nice place with eternally flowering trees after death, while those who lived in obscurity must necessarily have been impious criminals who will be condemned to further eternal obscurity as a punishment.

I don’t think this is true.

Against Colotes

Colotes was a younger contemporary and direct student of Epicurus who wrote a lost book entitled On the Point that Conformity to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers Actually Makes it Impossible to Live. In it, Colotes apparently went through a bunch of other philosophers, picked out some lines in which they expressed skepticism about the reliability of our senses, and therefore accused them of making life impossible; his targets include Democritus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and the early skeptical turn of the Academy under Arcesilaus. Plutarch, offended by this disrespect towards the philosophers of the past, defends them all, and in turn takes phrases out of Epicurean philosophy to declare that no, your doctrines make life impossible.

Overall, it’s a pretty silly and pedantic competition of taking lines out of context (although I do think extreme skepticism is a practically unproductive line of thought). This book is substantially longer than the previous one (some 65 pages of English text in the Loeb edition), but contains relatively little that will be of interest to the average contemporary reader.

Portrait traditionally, though perhaps not accurately, identified as Plutarch (Archaeological Museum of Delphi)

That It Is Impossible Even to Live Pleasantly According to Epicurus

This other relatively long book (~70 pages) is the best of the three. Although I still disagree with the majority of Plutarch’s conclusions, they are—at least sometimes—based on substantive differences of opinion, and adopt a rather novel angle: rather than claim that Epicurean teachings are focused on the wrong goal (pleasure), this book argues that that alternative methods will secure greater pleasure. Here are four veins of critique that Plutarch develops at length:

1. Bodily pleasure is greatly overrated.

First, in chapters 3–8, Plutarch criticizes what he takes to be the Epicurean emphasis on the body. Mainly, he seems to adopt a jumping-off point based on a notorious sentence of Metrodorus that the good is found in the belly. A verbatim quote is not given here, but the reference is often taken to refer to a sentence preserved by Athenaeus:

The beginning and root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; all wisdom and refinement exist in reference to it. (Usener fragment 409)

From this, Plutarch launches into the usual reactions. Such physical “pleasure” is flimsy, unstable, and narrow, affecting only small parts of the body. Eating and drinking are minor notes in the goodness of a life. Sexual pleasure can be intense, but soon departs. Recollections of past pleasures are even less substantial. Meanwhile, the body is more often subject to pains, which are often not avoidable by any kind of prudence or philosophy: disease or injury can come for anyone, and so a stable expectation of health is impossible. In short, argues Plutarch, “not only is the basis that they assume for the pleasurable life untrustworthy and insecure, it is quite trivial and paltry as well” (1091A).

The first problem here, as in the previous books, is selective quotation. Epicureans do indeed think that we can’t ignore the pleasure and pain of the body, but they place quite little value on typical sensual pleasures and far more on satisfying the necessary desires for food, water, and shelter. Plutarch notes a few such quotes, but takes them as evidence of confusion and inconsistency, rather than making a real effort to interpret quotes such as the above in a consistent and charitable way. 90% of this particular section is therefore pure strawman: Epicureans do not advocate for the accumulation of sensual pleasures as the key to the good life.

The final point mentioned above—the idea that freedom from bodily pain is impossible to guarantee—is slightly more substantial, but I think also misses the mark. While guaranteeing a pain-free existence is, of course, impossible, Epicurean prudence will certainly reduce bodily pain on average, while Epicurus also offers advice for how to deal with unavoidable pain.

2. There are higher intellectual pleasures—but Epicureans don’t appreciate them.

Next, in chapters 9–14, Plutarch notes some pleasures that he does endorse, but which he thinks Epicureans are incapable of appreciating. As a Platonist, many of these naturally tend towards the intellectual: history and poetry are praised first (1092 F), followed by math, astronomy, and music (1093 D). He basically assumes that his audience will acknowledge the superiority of such pleasures, but offers a few interesting maxims by way of proof: apparently Pythagoras sacrificed an ox after making a mathematical discovery, while no one has ever done that after making love (1094 B).

Unfortunately, we don’t have any detailed account of Epicurus’ attitude towards history, poetry, and the rest. Instead, we have Plutarch’s uncharitable testimony and a few scattered aphorisms. From the direct quotes, it seems accurate to say that Epicurus was not enthusiastic about paideia, the traditional education of aristocratic Athenians, by which Plutarch seems to particularly mean mathematical study (1094 D). Metrodorus (in a book On Poems, let it be noted), advised someone to “not be dismayed” if he has not memorized Homer (1095 A). Later Epicureans of course wrote poetry themselves—most notably Lucretius and Philodemus, both writing before Plutarch—although neither are mentioned here. And Epicurus says that wise men will enjoy the theater and music, but that he does not recommend the “discussion of problems in music and poetry” (1095 D).

My impression, then, is that this criticism is also largely the result of distortion and uncharitable extrapolation from a few lines. Epicureans were obviously not illiterates. They enjoyed both theater and music. Some wrote poems. Where they did not agree with Academics (both capital and lower-case A) was whether specifically scholarly knowledge constituted a particularly high form of pleasure. Epicurus was the son of a lowly children’s schoolteacher and was mocked for his humble background. He himself did not go to elite prep schools or prestigious colleges, and naturally maintained that years of esoteric intellectual development are not prerequisites for living a good and happy life. This position seems correct to me: enjoy the pleasures of music and the like when they are evident and accessible to you—but recognize that a lot of literary criticism is empty pedantry and that the practitioners of higher mathematics are not necessarily higher men.

3. The active life also offers pleasures that Epicureans don’t appreciate.

To conclude Plutarch’s evaluation of earthly pleasures, he turns in chapters 15–19 to a discussion of the active or political life. Epicurus, he tells us, denigrates specific historical heroes like Themistocles and Miltiades (1097 C) and generally ignores the pleasures of “conveying great benefits” through political or military success. As you might expect of the great biographer of men of action, Plutarch thinks these kinds of glorious pleasures are the highest:

The love of honor and beneficence reaches out to eternity as it strives for the crown by deeds and benefactions that bring the doer a pleasure impossible to describe (1098 E).

Here at least we do not have a dramatic distortion of the Epicurean position: we do indeed recommend against dramatic political or military aspirations as a high-likelihood route to happiness. Plutarch, of course, presents a favorable portrait of such activity, listing off a few dozen celebrated and victorious champions. A more statistically unbiased account of the probability of such success would also need to include all of those who died or suffered disabling injury while trying to achieve such goals, those who made the attempt but failed and faded into obscurity, those who achieved prominence but turned it to bad ends that Plutarch and his peers would criticize, and those who achieved a noble renown but subsequently found themselves unhappy. I’m not sure how many would survive such a winnowing.

The question still remains: do those who win the most praise thereby achieve the greatest pleasure? I am very skeptical. I live in the United States: it seems that anyone who achieves great political success must almost necessarily incur the dislike of roughly half of the country. No matter what one’s political affiliations, I think one would be hard pressed to say that either Joe Biden or Donald Trump represent the peak of possible human happiness, despite reaching the summit of the ladder of political achievement. Military glory is likewise in much lower standing than in Plutarch’s day: we’ve fought many wars, but I’m not sure any has secured significant approbation by the populace at large since World War II. Perhaps we could add other spheres of public-facing activity: are the most famous actors, musicians, or athletes the happiest people in the world? I doubt it.

Plutarch represents a common impulse to seek popular acclaim. But I think that dispassionate consideration of the empirical evidence would suggest that earning the love and respect of one’s friends and family is more valuable to one’s happiness than is the praise of the masses.

4. Traditional religion brings people pleasure.

Finally, for the last chapters of the book (20–33), Plutarch turns to a discussion of the hedonistic implications of Epicurean teachings on religion. As is clear from Principal Doctrines 1 and 2, Epicurus believes that there are no gods—beneficent or vindictive—judging our behavior, and that there is no afterlife. Plutarch interestingly does not attempt to contest these claims on the basis of their falsehood, but solely on the question of whether Epicurean teachings actually increase our pleasure.

According to him, even those who are afraid of divine punishment benefit from their beliefs, since that fear prompts them to good behavior (which, as Epicurus would agree, leads to better hedonistic outcomes than crime). More commonly, however, Plutarch holds that people’s fear of the gods is outweighed by the “cheerful hope” and “exultant joy” we derive from religion (1101 E). He specifically asserts that this is due to our sense of proximity to divine influence, rather than the incidental pleasures of communal ceremony and festivity. For good people, Plutarch considers belief in the gods to be purely a source of pleasure, since they will be confident that it is impossible “that one dear to the gods should fail to prosper” (1102 F).

The same is true of belief in the afterlife. Fear of bad outcomes after death makes bad people behave better, while good people are comforted by the thought of the pleasant existence that awaits them. Epicurus’ suggestion of posthumous nonexistence is no comfort at all, but is instead viewed with dread by most people: “in abolishing belief in immortality they also abolish the pleasantest and greatest hopes of ordinary men,” Plutarch claims (1105 C).

This section also does not explicitly misrepresent Epicurean teachings. Again, however, it presents a picture of religion that is very rosy and questionable on factual grounds. Some people derive comfort from religion, certainly. But how much of that is from the sense of community, the participation in shared festivities, and the redirection of attention from worldly goals to ethical reflection? Epicureanism embraces all of those activities. And some people certainly do have negative experiences of religion. I am unable to judge what the typical balance of positive and negative emotions from belief in traditional religion was in the ancient world, but that some people exist today who cause themselves unnecessary pain due to feelings of religious guilt, shame, or forced adherence to unreasonable dogmas, I feel quite confident. For myself, I have always found nonexistence quite unworrying, a position which I have generally attributed to my lack of religious upbringing.

All this talk of the instrumental benefits of religion also sets aside, of course, a very major question: are those religious doctrines true? And if beneficent gods and the immortality of the human soul seem like entirely unevidenced and extremely unlikely propositions to you, can you choose to believe in them on the basis of hoped-for emotional comfort? I don’t believe in such things, and don’t think I could even if I wanted to.

More broadly, the Epicurean tenets on religion are part of an overall system of thought that asserts the explicability of the world and our own individual agency. We believe that a reasonable weighing of the evidence will necessarily rule out superstitious theories, and that adopting overall habits of forming our beliefs and making decisions without ideological precommitments will lead to our greater happiness. We do not idolize the world of ideas, as Platonists do, but we do have great respect for a firm grounding in the truth. To argue for an untrue idea because it promises comfort is no solid path to pleasure. Illusions are inherently unstable, and prone to disappoint.

Epicurus advocates for the pleasures of living in the real world. These pleasures are not restricted to mathematicians or literary theorists. They are not reserved for lawmakers and generals. And they are not founded on fantasies or lies.