One of the advantages of breaking your leg and going through extensive rehabilitation is the possibility for considerable time spent in reflection. This year will long live in my memory as one associated with pain: the pain of breaking my leg and the pain of surgery, the humiliation and pain of turning up to my daughter’s wedding on crutches, the pain from impinged tendons in my shoulders from the wheelchair, a strained planter ligament in my foot and the burning pain in my neck and arm that have been my constant companions for the last two months.
Inevitably, as I have spent much time alone and in pain, this year, I have pondered that ancient question, Why do human beings suffer? You can’t dig around in this type of subject matter without those other thorny questions arising: Does God cause suffering? What should we do about suffering and can we prevent it?
Epicurus – the world’s first optimist
Today I read an article in the British magazine Philosophy Now (Benjamin Kerstein) about the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341 – 270 BC) who pondered these questions. Epicurus may have broken his leg skiing and had time to sit round and philosophise about this causal event in his life. Maybe not. Maybe he just sat around a lot.
Anyway, Epicurus seemed to believe that suffering is a defining feature of human life. Suffering forces us to confront some of the most fundamental and difficult questions of human existence: Why do we exist? Why are human beings condemned to an inevitable death? Why is suffering and injustice heaped on apparently good people, while the wicked prosper and flourish. Is there a God? And if there is, why does He allow suffering to continue? Inevitably does this lead humans to conclude that God is evil? I certainly have reached that conclusion on numerous occasions this year.
Alison Krauss, the US folk-singer, asks “Why do we suffer, crossing off the years, there must be a reason to it all.” Epicurus, who may have been a fan of her music, asked – is there really a reason? He believed that the world and everything in it was the result of the random activities of indivisible particles of matter (he postulated a philosophy called atomism. (The word atom means indivisible). He concluded that the world was not good nor bad, just indifferent. Human beings as part of this indifferent universe, will endure both good and bad fortune and all sorts of suffering. He concluded, rationally, that in the face of indifference and pain, the most reasonable response for a human being is to seek to minimise suffering – in particular one’s own suffering. To achieve this he believed people should cultivate pleasure, and seek enjoyment and tranquility in life. Mr Kestein said Epicurus cautions against seeing this as a call to hedonism – it is not a philosophy of sensual, pleasure seeking. Epicurus was apparently quite explicit about this. Instead, his philosophy advocated a search for ataxia – a form of happiness that was defined by an absence of pain, or at least an attempt to keep pain to an absolute minimum. Ataxia could not be achieved by hedonism. Epicurus advocated seeing a middle way between pleasure and pain thus there is pleasure to be had in food and drink but neither should be consumed to excess or suffering will result. Epicurus recommended a lot of moderation, derived from the pleasures of intellectual excellence, virtuous behaviour, the fulfilment of basic material needs and genuine, lasting friendships.
To my great relief, Epicurus also philosophised that suffering was not insurmountable. Suffering was the result of our inability to avoid all pain and sorrow. He also believed that death, as the end of all sensation, was nothing to be feared. In fact, it was something of a deliverance. Funny, I’ve felt that way a few times this year. He had a very interesting idea that nothing awaits us after death. It is the end of ourselves, the dispersion of our constituent atoms into the void. However, it’s also the end of all human suffering. As a result suffering should not be feared – suffering does not last.
Epicurus then, answered my question and that posited by Alison Krauss, through a rational philosophy of moderation as a means of moderating suffering. Life has no essential meaning according to Epicurus. What meaning we bring to it, we bring through our efforts to moderate its negative aspects, which we achieve by moderating ourselves and our behaviour. As a rationalist, Epicurus believed that the management of suffering is within human capabilities (Hope so). He was thus quintessentially Greek and was delving into questions which still trouble us today. They obviously also trouble US female, bluegrass singers.
I looked up some of Epicurus’s writings and he has some great quotes
- Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
- It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.
- Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
And to top it off he left us the English word Epicurean which means somebody who derives pleasure from food and drink. He was a busy man.
Look who I bumped into on Friday afternoon going for a run/ swim biathlon after work. Amelia K
Delphi Complete Works of Xenophon
In this work, during a conversation between Socrates, Antisthenes, Phillip and Charmides and others, Socrates said:
“Well gentlemen as far as drinking is concerned, you have my hearty approval; for wine does of a truth ‘moisten the spirit’ and lull our grief to sleep just as mandragora does with men, at the same awakening kindly feelings as oil quickens a flame.However I suspect that men’s bodies fare the same as those of plants that grow in the ground. When God gives the plants water in floods to drink, they cannot stand up straight or let the breezes blow through them; but when they drink only as much as they enjoy, they grow up very straight and tall and come to full and abundant fruitage.
So it is with us.
If we pour ourselves immense draughts, it will be no long time before both our bodies and our minds reel, and we shall not be able even to draw breath, much less to speak sensibly; but if the servants frequently ‘besprinkle’ us – if I may use a Gorgian expression – with small cups, we shall thus not be driven on by the wine to a state of intoxication, but instead shall be brought by its gentle persuasion to a more sportive mood”
I’m not sure what any Greek philosophers had to say about food.
Kirky
Kirky,
As a renowned Epicurean yourself, I should have known you would have the deep insight. I’m going to cut down on the mandragora from this point on.
Kieran
mandrake |ˈmandreɪk|
noun
a Mediterranean plant of the nightshade family, with a forked fleshy root which supposedly resembles the human form and which was formerly used in herbal medicine and magic; it was alleged to shriek when pulled from the ground.
●Mandragora officinarum, family Solanaceae.
ORIGIN
Middle English mandrag(g)e, from Middle Dutch mandrag(r)e, from medieval Latin mandragora; associated with man (because of the root) + drake in the Old English sense ‘dragon’.
Kirky,
I should have known you would have the good information on the Deadly Nightshade. Shakespeare introduced me to it at school. :
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owdst yesterday.
Othello Act III, Sc. 3
As I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in some considerable period of time I get this
deadly nightshade |dɛdliˈnʌɪtʃeɪd|
noun
a poisonous bushy Eurasian plant with drooping purple flowers and black cherry-like fruit. Also called belladonna.
●Atropa belladonna, family Solanaceae.
Just read your thank you (in About)
I obviously didn’t make a very good impression because you omitted me from the list of visitors you received in hospital!
A couple of books you might want to read:
From the Holy Mountain
William Dalrymple
A rich blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, laced with the thread of black comedy familiar to readers of William Dalrymple’s previous work. In AD 587, two monks, John Moschos and Sophronius the Sophist, embarked on an extraordinary journey across the Byzantine world, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Their aim: to collect the wisdom of the sages and mystics of the Byzantine East before their fragile world shattered under the eruption of Islam. Almost 1500 years later, using the writings of John Moschos as his guide, William Dalrymple set off to retrace their footsteps. Taking in a civil war in Turkey, the ruins of Beirut, the tensions of the West Bank and a fundamentalist uprising in Egypt, William Dalrymple’s account is a stirring elegy to the dying civilisation of Eastern Christianity.
and;
Vermeer’s Hat
Timothy Brook
In one painting, a Dutch military officer leans toward a laughing girl. In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. In a third, fruit spills from a porcelain bowl onto a Turkish carpet. The officer’s dashing hat is made of beaver fur, which European explorers got from Native Americans in exchange for weapons. Beaver pelts, in turn, financed the voyages of sailors seeking new routes to China. There – with silver mined in Peru – Europeans would purchase, by the thousands, the porcelain so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time. Vermeer’s haunting images hint at the stories behind these exquisitely rendered moments. As Timothy Brook shows us in Vermeer’s Hat, these pictures, which seem so intimate, actually open doors onto a rapidly expanding world.
See you Thursday?
No shame in swimming the Island in flippers and snorkel.
Kirky
Mike,
I am mortified that I left you off the list. I blame the morphine haze. I did imagine that Ava Gardner came in and saw me at one point but on refection later decided that this was unlikely. Appealing, but unlikely. So don’t feel bad that there was a bit of confusion. the list is now amended. Please check.
Thanks for the book suggestions. I’ll get into them. They both sound interesting.
Yes I’ll be down on Thursday. I did 2km of the 2/4/6 on the weekend with snorkel and flippers – the swim of shame. I have no pride left. Vermeer’s Hat. Kieran’s Flippers. I don’t think anyone will ever write a book abut my swimming.