Translation Tuesday: Letter to Menoeceus, Part 5
Fate, fortune, and living like a god among men
Whom do you consider better off than one holding pious opinions about the gods and completely free from the fear of death, who understands the end towards which we are oriented by nature, and who knows that the full extent of the good is easy to achieve, while all evils are limited to either a short duration or mild intensity? Who is better than one who laughs at fate, which some put forth as the mistress of all things? <The wise man gives his attention to what lies within our power—correctly recognizing that some things happen by necessity> and some by chance, while other things are up to us—for he sees that fate is beyond our control and chance is uncertain, but the things that are up to us answer to no master, and it is to these things that blame and praise rightfully attach.
It would be better to accept the stories about the gods than to be a slave to the fate of the natural philosophers, for the first offers some hope of entreating the gods through worship, while the second offers only an inexorable necessity. The wise man does not accept that fortune is a god, as the many believe, for nothing unpredictable and disorderly is done by a god, nor the unreliable cause <of our true good and bad>. For he does not believe that the good and bad of a blessed life come to men by chance, but that chance supplies only the starting basis for our greatest goods and evils. He holds it to be better to suffer misfortune while thinking correctly than to be successful while reasoning poorly, for it is better for what is well-chosen <to fail in its results than for a poor choice> to turn out well by chance.
Study these precepts and those that go with them, by day and by night, by yourself and with a like-minded companion, and you will never be troubled, neither waking nor asleep, but will live like a god among men, for a human who lives among such immortal goods no longer seems like just another mortal.
Commentary
In the final installment of our five-part series on the Letter to Menoeceus, we will cover the proper attitude towards fate and wrap up the letter as a whole, having now covered the true nature of the gods, why death is not an evil, the argument for hedonism, and the consequent case for simple living. This is the only part of the letter that has major textual difficulties, although most of them are not significant as to the core philosophical message. I’ll briefly discuss a few of these in my commentary, with more exact specifications of my editorial decisions beneath the Greek text at bottom. For now, note that bracketed text in the above translation is not in our received manuscripts but is the result of subsequent scholarly reconstruction.
Whom do you consider better off than one holding pious opinions about the gods and completely free from the fear of death, who understands the end towards which we are oriented by nature, and who knows that the full extent of the good is easy to achieve, while all evils are limited to either a short duration or mild intensity? Who is better than one who laughs at fate, which some put forth as the mistress of all things? <The wise man gives his attention to what lies within our power—correctly recognizing that some things happen by necessity> and some by chance, while other things are up to us—for he sees that fate is beyond our control and chance is uncertain, but the things that are up to us answer to no master, and it is to these things that blame and praise rightfully attach.
The first sentence here recapitulates the themes we have covered so far (as well as the first four Principal Doctrines), casting them briefly as characteristics of someone who has achieved great progress in philosophy. (While the phrase “the wise man” or “wise person” does not literally appear here, such phrasing does come up in other Epicurean maxims, so it seems like an unobjectionable addition for English clarity as the sentence gets increasingly long. It is also possibly that an equivalent phrase did appear in the text that has clearly dropped out in the middle of this paragraph.) As we’ve discussed: neither the gods or death should be feared, the good is easy to obtain, and the bad is easy to endure.
Our next topic is the proper attitude towards fate. Many later philosophers worried over the problem of free will vs. determinism. The contemporary Stoics argued that all events were part of a divinely ordained rational order and that “what is up to us” basically consists in how we feel about events—our desires, aversions, and other judgments about the world we interact with. This position has sometimes been summarized by the phrase amor fati, or love of fate. The Stoic position is that we should happily assent to the cosmic order; while we can follow natural human preferences in our actions, we will often have to accept “bad” events as part of a perfect pattern that we simply lack the ability to fully perceive.
Epicurus is different. His wise man does not accept fate, but rather “laughs at” or even “derides” it. This is the result of a tripartite division that seems more rooted in the realities of human motivation and decision-making than in a grand theoretical division: some things are “necessary” and fit within a deterministic worldview, but some things are up to chance, and other things are up to us. In practical terms, it makes sense to preserve the popular category of “chance” or “fortune,” recognizing that some circumstances are outside of our control, but that this does not mean they are ordained by a benevolent divinity.
Epicurus is not highly prescriptive about what should be viewed as the product of “fate” and what of “chance.” You can apply what word you want as long as you recognize that the third category—what is up to us—is actually the most important. In Principal Doctrine 16 he makes this quite explicit:
Chance intrudes little in the life of the wise man, for reasoned calculation has, does, and will govern the greatest and most important things for the duration of his life.
Norman DeWitt paraphrases this mindset accurately: “Planning and the lack of planning make the difference between the wise man and the fool.”1 This emphasis on the ability of prudent, rational decision-making to improve our lives is one of the great distinctions between Epicureanism and Stoicism (and really most entries in the long line of idealist philosophies). The wise man can laugh at fate not because of any cosmic haughtiness, but because it is well within his power to secure what he needs for happiness once he reasons correctly about pleasure and pain and determines his actions accordingly.
It would be better to accept the stories about the gods than to be a slave to the fate of the natural philosophers, for the first offers some hope of entreating the gods through worship, while the second offers only an inexorable necessity. The wise man does not accept that fortune is a god, as the many believe, for nothing unpredictable and disorderly is done by a god, nor the unreliable cause <of our true good and bad>. For he does not believe that the good and bad of a blessed life come to men by chance, but that chance supplies only the starting basis for our greatest goods and evils. He holds it to be better to suffer misfortune while thinking correctly than to be successful while reasoning poorly, for it is better for what is well-chosen <to fail in its results than for a poor choice> to turn out well by chance.
Epicurus continues to lament the determinist mindset, which robs humans of hope and agency. Popular religion is clearly wrong—as he has previously discussed, stories about fickle gods are inconsistent and untenable—but even that vein of delusion would be preferable to strict determinism. It is therefore clear enough what he means when he says that the wise man “does not accept that fortune is a god,” but it is somewhat less obvious what he means by “nor an unreliable cause.” In the previous paragraph he had said chance was “uncertain” and in the following sentence he notes that chance can form the “start” or “beginning” of our human good and bad: this makes it seems like chance could be termed “an unreliable cause.” While most modern editors simply leave this phrase obscure, some earlier editors such as Bignone and Bailey conjecture that a word or phrase has dropped out here: Bailey suggests “an uncertain cause <of all things>” while Bignone proposes something along the lines of “an uncertain cause <of our greatest good and evil>. I follow this suggestion, which at least renders the passage comprehensible and consistent with the following sentences.
If chance can supply the beginning or starting point for good or bad, why does Epicurus consider it better to think well and have bad results than to think poorly and have good luck? (The text is emended here as well, but most scholars agree that something along these lines seems logically necessary.) I think this is again a primarily practical judgment: if you think correctly, over time you will achieve the best results. While bad luck is possible and can truly impact your well-being (misfortune is not part of a divine plan for you), correct thinking is the way to secure better results on average and overall.
Study these precepts and those that go with them, by day and by night, by yourself and with a like-minded companion, and you will never be troubled, neither waking nor asleep, but will live as a god among men, for a human who lives among such immortal goods no longer seems like just another mortal.
Here we come to the conclusion of the letter. Several themes are embedded in these short lines: Philosophy is a way of life, and its teachings need to be studied and meditated on repeatedly so that they can be fully internalized. Philosophy is an activity that is best pursued both privately and in company with like-minded friends. And the goal of philosophy is to be untroubled, to achieve ataraxia: one who reaches this condition is no low sensualist, no timid avoider of risks, but instead a fearless and serene being living in a state of tranquility worthy of the gods.
Original Text
[133] ἐπεὶ τίνα νομίζεις εἶναι κρείττονα τοῦ καὶ περὶ θεῶν ὅσια δοξάζοντος, καὶ περὶ θανάτου διὰ παντὸς ἀφόβως ἔχοντος, καὶ τὸ τῆς φύσεως ἐπιλελογισμένου τέλος, καὶ τὸ μὲν τῶν ἀγαθῶν πέρας ὡς ἔστιν εὐσυμπλήρωτόν τε καὶ εὐπόριστον διαλαμβάνοντος, τὸ δὲ τῶν κακῶν ὡς ἢ χρόνους ἢ πόνους ἔχει βραχεῖς; τὴν δὲ ὑπό τινων δεσπότιν εἰσαγομένην πάντων ἄν γελῶντος <εἱμαρμένην… ῶν ἃ μὲν κατ’ ἀνάγκην γίνεται]>2 ἃ δὲ ἀπὸ τύχης, ἃ δὲ παρ’ ἡμᾶς, διὰ τὸ τὴν μὲν ἀνάγκην ἀνυπεύθυνον εἶναι, τὴν δὲ τύχην ἄστατον ὁρᾶν, τὸ δὲ παρ’ ἡμᾶς ἀδέσποτον, ᾧ καὶ τὸ μεμπτὸν καὶ τὸ ἐναντίον παρακολουθεῖν πέφυκεν.
[134] ἐπεὶ κρεῖττον ἦν τῷ περὶ θεῶν μύθῳ κατακολουθεῖν ἢ τῇ τῶν φυσικῶν εἱμαρμένῃ δουλεύειν· ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐλπίδα παραιτήσεως ὑπογράφει θεῶν διὰ τιμῆς, ἡ δὲ ἀπαραίτητον ἔχει τὴν ἀνάγκην. τὴν δὲ τύχην οὔτε θεόν, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν, ὑπολαμβάνων (οὐθὲν γὰρ ἀτάκτως θεῷ πράττεται) οὔτε <μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν ἢ κακῶν>3 ἀβέβαιον αἰτίαν, <οὐκ> οἴεται μὲν γὰρ ἀγαθὸν ἢ κακὸν ἐκ ταύτης πρὸς τὸ μακαρίως ζῆν ἀνθρώποις δίδοσθαι, ἀρχὰς μέντοι μεγάλων ἀγαθῶν ἢ κακῶν ὑπὸ ταύτης χορηγεῖσθαι, [135] κρεῖττον εἶναι νομίζει εὐλογίστως ἀτυχεῖν ἢ ἀλογίστως εὐτυχεῖν· (βέλτιον γὰρ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι τὸ καλῶς κριθὲν <σφαλῆναι μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ κακῶς κριθὲν>4 ὀρθωθῆναι διὰ ταύτην).
ταῦτα οὖν καὶ τὰ τούτοις συγγενῆ μελέτα πρὸς σεαυτὸν ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς πρὸς <τε> τὸν ὅμοιον σεαυτῷ, καὶ οὐδέποτε οὔθ’ ὕπαρ οὔτ’ ὄναρ διαταραχθήσῃ, ζήσῃ δὲ ὡς θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις. οὐθὲν γὰρ ἔοικε θνητῷ ζῴῳ ζῶν ἄνθρωπος ἐν ἀθανάτοις ἀγαθοῖς.
Norman W. DeWitt, Epicurus and His Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954), 178.
There is a significant lacuna here. I have opted for Sedley’s reading ἄν γελῶντος for the contested text immediately prior to the lacuna proper, while opting for the sense of Bailey’s translation for the missing segment. Most editors agree that the lacuna must end with something along the lines of Bailey’s ῶν ἃ μὲν κατ’ ἀνάγκην γίνεται, so I have included that in my Greek text, but any additional completing text must necessarily be somewhat speculative.
μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν ἢ κακῶν is a suggestion of Bignone generally approved of by Bailey (though he prefers a simpler πάντων). The majority of modern editors are more conservative and decline to make additions here that are not grammatically necessary, but an unemended text is quite unclear as to what “an uncertain cause” would mean alone. See main commentary above. Almost all agree, however, that οὐκ is necessary in the following clause.
σφαλῆναι μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ κακῶς κριθὲν (… to fail rather than that a bad choice…) is Bailey’s suggestion. Something along these lines is generally considered necessary by most editors, although though the exact wording will vary.