Epicureanism and Christianity

EPICUREANISM AND CHRISTIANITY NORMAN W. DE\VITT I T has long bee~ ~ fixed beli~f.in ~he. cultu~~l tradition of, w,estern Europe , that of the anCIent morahtles It IS StolcIsm that exhIbIts the closest affinity with Christianity. This belief was not In the beginning the ~esult of positive teaching. Its origin is rather to be sought in a sympathetic reaction or association reflex. The original reaction was the heartening experience of Christianity' in discovering an extensive harmony and coincidence between its own ethics and the teachings of the philosopher Seneca, especially in his Moral Epistles. The sympathetic reaction was a ,feeling. of admiration for Stoicism, because the wisdom of Seneca bore a Stoic labe1. Subsequently this feeling was reinforced by the study of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, whose Stoic labels were printed in even larger letters. Only in later phases of this accumulating admiration for Stoicism was its affinity with Christianity subjected to analysis and rationalization. . This rationalization, in its turn, was largely a matter of labels and their manipulation. It is true, for example, that the Stoics, like the Christians, were monotheists, but this was true only after a fashion. Their God, though for diplomatic reasons often identified with Jupiter or Zeus, was not a personal god. He was described qualitatively as the divine fire or mindstuff , which, while permeating everything, was also thought of quantitatively as a vast reservoir of fire, located high in the celestial regions.1 Like the Christians, again, the Stoics believed in a divine Providence, but theirs was not a personal Providence interested in human beings as individuals, but r-ather a sovereign' world-mind that held the heavenly bodies true to their orbits and thus presented fpr the imitation of man the pattern 'and model of a rigidly rational life.2 Human emotions, as threatening to mar the imitation of the divine order, were feared and discouraged.3 Another doctrine that won favour for Stoicism in pious and respectable circles was the exaltation of virtue as the hi'ghest good in human conduct.4 This was the most effective of all their smart array of labels. Inscribe the blessed name of VIRTUE on a banner and even hypocrites will rally to its 'cover. On the same principle it was a label that damned Epicureanism even in antiquity. By Epicurus the highest good was id~ntified , with pleasure,& and, even though no godly man would stubbornly dissociate all forms of happiness from the highest good in human life, yet only the stouthearted and defiant would dare to label this happiness with the name of pleasure. lEduard Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics (London, 1870), 148-60. 2Jbid., 170-1. 3Ibid., 243-54. qbid.,225-41. f>Episl. 1o MmoecCtls, 128-9> in Cyril Bailey, Epicurlu (Oxford, 1926), 87. Hereafter cited as "Bailey." 250 EPICUREANISM AND CHRISTIANITY :!.51 It mattered nothing that. pleasure was so defined by Epicurus as to demand the abjura.tion of all pleasure as the world understands the term and the adoption in its stead of a life so simple as to fall little short of asceticism. It was the label that counted. It mattered nothing that the Stoic concept of virtue was inconsistent with the teachings of Christ) that it was unfeeling, uncompromising, unmerciful, unforgiving) and censorious .a It was the label that counted. Men are ruled by names, and this is more particularly true of pious and respectal;>le people. One all-important item of information that loving readers of Seneca were bound to lack, and could not have learned in any handbook, was this, that Epicurean doctrines, already in ancient times, were circulating under Stoic labels, just as good Italian wines have circulated under French labels. A single example will be illuminating. For the reason that Epicurus . denied the immortality of the soul, it followed ·with an inexorable logic that such a definition of happiness must be discovered by him as would be compatible with mortality. This problem he solved with his customary acumen. Starting from the assumption common to Greek philosophy that happiness depends upon the attainment of wisdom, he required of his disciples to habituate themselves to think of this attainment as a singular achievemen...