. . . Let them no longer, then, join
incongruous matters together, or connect pleasure with virtue, a mistake
whereby they court the worst of men. The reckless profligate, always in liquor
and belching out the fumes of wine, believes that he lives with virtue, because
he knows that he lives with pleasure, for he hears it said that pleasure cannot
exist apart from virtue.
Consequently he dubs his vices with the
title of wisdom and parades all that he ought to conceal. So, men are not
encouraged by Epicurus to run riot, but the vicious hide their excesses in the
lap of philosophy, and flock to the schools in which they hear the praises of
pleasure. They do not consider how sober and temperate —for so, by Hercules, I
believe it to be—that "pleasure" of Epicurus is, but they rush at his
mere name, seeking to obtain some protection and cloak for their vices.
They lose, therefore, the one virtue
which their evil life possessed, that of being ashamed of doing wrong: for they
praise what they used to blush at, and boast of their vices. Thus modesty can
never reassert itself, when shameful idleness is dignified with an honorable
name. The reason why that praise which your school lavishes upon pleasure is so
hurtful, is because the honorable part of its teaching passes unnoticed, but
the degrading part is seen by all.
—Seneca
the Younger, On the happy life,
Chapter 12 (tr Stewart)
Seneca
speaks his mind without hesitation, but he is not a close-minded or dismissive
philosopher. He still disagrees in principle with the Epicurean theory that
happiness is defined by pleasure, but he is also willing to see that Epicurus
himself also preached temperance and moderation, and that the greater problem
is how others misrepresent and abuse the Epicurean teachings.
It will
hardly help us to distinguish right from wrong, without also trying to
understand why people choose right
from wrong. Seneca considers the sensualists, and he thinks he sees one of the
ways their thinking has gone astray.
Perhaps
I have been told all of my life that I must somehow be “good”, even if I’ve
only been given some vague directions to behave myself and stay out of trouble,
while at the same time I’ve been warned that I must not simply do things
because they fulfill my appetites.
But now
imagine that a philosopher comes along who tells me that virtue is really just
whatever can give me the greatest pleasure. It hardly matters that Epicurus
also told us to be moderate in our pleasures in order to be happy, because the
teaching on the primacy of my appetites now seems to give me the excuse to do
whatever I want. I take that first bit, and ignore all the rest.
Before I
heard of this new philosophy, I might at least have felt ashamed of my vices,
but now I revel in them. I believe I have been liberated from all the old
restrictions by the illusion that something must be good only because I desire
it. Epicurus may never have intended it, but a corruption of his philosophy has
had the effect of making bad men even worse. Whatever there still was of a
conscience to provide restraint, however unformed, has now been completely
excised.
There
have been many times in my life where I’ve been drawn to various forms of
sensualism and relativism, usually under the counter-culture umbrella of “If it
feels good, do it.” I’ve felt the pressure of uptight moralists many times, the
ones who are all just about a heartless conformity to the rules, and I have
felt smothered.
Yet I
must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There must be
freedom and joy in life, but that cannot be at the cost of my sense of
responsibility and respect, or by making virtue a cloak for my vices. Things
don’t become good because I desire them, but I should rather desire them
because they are good, and this is why wisdom and virtue should rule over
passion and pleasure. Love is never the same thing as lust.
Written in 2/2006
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