Epicurus also demotes the value ofpolitical activity. He believes that politics has merely instrumental value, because he thinks that everything besides pleasure has value if and only if it brings about pleasure. This private conception of the good - each person should pursue his or her own pleasure - departs radically from the dominant ideology’s conception of the good. But Epicurus’ understanding of pleasure is unusual, and although he generally favors the quiet life, he also lays the groundwork for a countercultural conception of politics.
Epicurus understands pleasure to be not sensual satisfaction but the absence of mental disturbance and physical pain. Thus he proposes that success in life requires cultivating bulwarks against disturbance and pain and avoiding circumstances that are likely to give rise to disturbance and pain. These two strategies might be thought to pull in two different directions. After all, the better one is equipped to shrug off what would pain most people, the less one needs avoidance, and the more one avoids pains, the less practice one has absorbing troublesome circumstances without trouble. But generally speaking, Epicurus prefers the odds of avoidance, and so he counsels against the political life (Sent. Vat. 58 and RS 14; cf. Diog. Laert. 10.119 and Plut. Adv. Col. 1126e-1127c).
Of course, this is general advice, and it admits of exceptions. If no one takes charge and political instability threatens, then the calculation might change. Epicurus’ pupil Colotes explains, ‘‘Those who arranged laws and customs and established kings and rulers in cities brought much security and tranquility to life and banished turmoil. If anyone takes these things away, we shall live the life of beasts, and one man who chances upon another will practically devour him’’ (Plut. Adv. Col. 1124d). This would be worse than a life engaged in politics. So, as Seneca reports, ‘‘Epicurus says that the sage will not engage in politics unless something intervenes’’ (Dial. 8.3.2). This no doubt explains why some Epicureans, such as Cassius, did engage during the Roman civil war in the first century bce (see Momi-gliano 1941).
It is worth noting, too, that one might accept the general framework of Epicurean ethics and nevertheless infer that one should engage in politics. One need only recalculate how politics and withdrawal would promote one’s private good. There is some reason to believe that Epicurus’ atomist predecessor Democritus favored this alternative calculation. According to later reconstructions, Democritus held that one should act always for the sake of one’s ‘‘good-spiritedness’’ (euthumia), and he identified ‘‘good-spiritedness’’ as something distinct from pleasure but reliably tracked by ‘‘enjoyment’’ (terpsis) (Diog. Laert. 9.45; Clem. Al. Strom. II 130; cf. fr. 189 DK). This makes his account of ethics a close cousin to Epicurus’: both locate the good in a private state of the individual. But unlike Epicurus, Democritus roundly encourages politics, at least according to our surviving fragments (Plut. Adv. Col. 1126a and 1100c (= fr. 157 DK) and fr. 252 DK).
The difference between Democritus’ support for the dominant ideology and Epicurus’ rejection of it seems to turn on a disagreement over the effects of one’s reputation. The fragments of Democritus include this: ‘‘If a man neglects the affairs of the people, he becomes ill spoken of, even if he does not steal or do anything wrong. Later, for the man who is negligent or does wrong, there is a risk of being ill spoken of and of suffering something. To err is inevitable, but it is not easy for human beings to forgive’’ (fr. 253 DK). Democritus does not encourage pursuit of the greatest honors (Plut. De tranq. anim. 465c = fr. 3 DK), but he does say that minding
One’s own business will bring trouble. That is, given the dominant ideology, one does not want the reputation of minding one’s own business. Epicureans surely faced the dominant ideology’s complaint that they were ‘‘free riding’’ (see Plut. Adv. Col. 1127a). But Epicurus nonetheless advises his followers to ‘‘live unnoticed’’ (fr. 551 Usener). He seems to believe that those who engage in politics are mistaken about how best to obtain security. They think that political power and honor will give them freedom from fear (RS 7). But in fact, Epicurus maintains, it is riskier to seek security among such people than it is to try to avoid notice. The Epicureans simply calculate the risks differently than Democritus, for they, unlike him, consistently conclude that it would be better to avoid politics (see also Roskam 2007).
But Epicureanism is not entirely apolitical, and the Epicureans who mind their own business do not entirely leave politics behind. They do not withdraw to live as separate individuals, each minding his own business. Rather, they cultivate friendship with other Epicureans as the greatest security against pain and disturbance ( RS 27 and 28, Sent. Vat. 34). In fact, the Epicureans lived together in Epicurus’ ‘‘Garden’’ (see Clay 1983). They established a community of like-minded people who helped each other by providing security so that each could best pursue pleasure (RS 40). The ideals of this community departed sharply from those of the polis from which the Epicureans withdraw: theirs was a countercultural community (see E. Brown forthcoming b; cf. Eur. Hipp. 1013-1020).
The Epicureans do not draw attention to the fact that their Garden counts as countercultural politics. This should not be surprising; they aim to ‘‘live unnoticed.’’ But the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, seems to have proposed a similarly countercultural community of friends, and he did draw attention to this in a work called Republic (Politeia). In this work, Zeno proposes an ideal political arrangement that embarrasses Plato's Republic by its impracticality. The ideal, Zeno suggests, would obtain were every adult human to be a Stoic sage. Any power-sharing arrangement among nonsages is doomed to faction: political peace requires like-mindedness (homonoia) which requires genuine wisdom. So on Zeno’s radically deinstitutionalized picture of ideal politics, a community of sages can be counted on to be friends and to educate the young to be virtuous adults. They will need no law courts or temples. Nor will they need a military, so long as the world is filled with cities each of which is filled exclusively with sages, sharing the same, Stoic way of life.
It is hard to see how such an ideal could have any practical import, since the Stoic sage is ‘‘rarer than the Phoenix.’’ But Zeno insisted on the relevance of his Republic right from its start (Phld. De Stoicis 12.2-8), where he also impugned the standard Greek education (Diog. Laert. 7.32). This suggests that he imagines that people might reject the standard education and seek to build a community with like-minded individuals who are committed to a Stoic education. If that is the import of Zeno’s Republic, and it is not easy to be sure about this, then it resembles the lesson of Epicurus’ Garden, with the challenge to traditional political theorizing made explicit (see E. Brown forthcoming c: ch. 6). Although Zeno and Epicurus start from very different assumptions about human beings and their good, Zeno’s proposal highlights the political implications of Epicurus’ particular way of minding his own business.
World History
