The Justice of the Epicurean Wise Man

Author:

Vander Waerdt P. A.

Abstract

In this essay I discuss an important but neglected controversy in which the Stoics sought to discredit Epicurus' teaching on justice by showing that the Epicurean wise man, if immune from detection or punishment, will commit injustice whenever he may profit from it. Under the influence of this criticism, tradition has developed a view of Epicurus' position that makes it so weak and vulnerable that it is difficult to see how Epicureans could have defended it over the course of several centuries. There is decisive evidence, however, that Epicurus' critics seriously misrepresented his position, and that the tradition influenced by their polemic stands in need of fundamental revision.1 My purpose here is to prove that the Epicurean wise man will not commit injustice, secretly or openly, because it is in his self–interest to be just; to reconstruct Epicurus' arguments for this teaching; to show how he defends his position against natural right theorists; and to clarify the larger issues at stake in his controversy with the Stoics. I begin by sketching the Stoic criticisms and the Epicurean response (section I).

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Subject

Literature and Literary Theory,Philosophy,History,Classics

Reference70 articles.

1. Denyer N. , ‘The Origins of Justice’, 133–52; and now the work of Long A. A. (‘Pleasure and Social Utility - the virtues of being Epicurean’, Entretiens sur Tantiquite classiqw32 [1986], 283–329) and of P. Mitsis (see infra,n. 80), which was not available to me at the time of writing. Long does not consider the problem of the wise man′s justice, but his wide-ranging discussion of the relation between Epicurus′ doctrine of pleasure and his social philosophy is largely compatible with, and provides additional support for, the interpretation advanced herein (for our most important difference, see infra,n. 54). The main texts for Epicurus′ teaching on justice are KD5, 17, 31–8; Ep. ad Men.132; SV7, 51, 70 and F519, F53O–4 (fragments are cited according to H. Usener, Epicurea[Leipzig, 1887]), which should be supplemented by Hermarchus′ account of the Epicurean genealogy of morals ap.Porphyry, De Abst.1.7–12 ( = F24 in

2. On katastematic pleasure see Rist (supra[n. 14], 102–22, 170–2). There is a challenging and thoughtful discussion in J. Gosling and C. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure(Oxford, 1982), 365–96, but I am not persuaded by their attempt to banish the distinction between katastematic and kinetic pleasure from Epicurus' thought: they do not seem to me justified in rejecting Cicero's unequivocal evidence or the traditional interpretation of D. L. 10.136. My argument in this essay does not require that Cicero's understanding of katastematic pleasure be correct, although it does require that De Fin.2.28 be an accurate report of Epicurus' line of argument.

3. Horace here is contradicting the Stoic view according to which nee solum ius el iniuria natura dividicatur, sed omnino omnia honesta et turpia(Cic. De Leg.1.44); for his use of Epicurean doctrine in this Satiresee Goldschmidt (supra[n. 1], 150–65).

4. The sceptic's two kinds of assent and the question of the possibility of knowledge

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