 Epicureans are criticized for not by Cicero for not essentially not having a moral theory right they don't have they don't put any importance on virtue and certain things that Epicurus says could be interpreted along those lines for example when he somewhere says I spit on your virtues in so far as they produce no pleasure right you know moralists tend to take that as being an indication that he has no concern for morality and that he makes no effort to incorporate morality or virtue into his system on the other hand Epicurus himself claims that one cannot live pleasantly and so achieve what he takes the highest good to be without also living wisely and justly that is without living morally and furthermore that it is impossible to live wisely and justly without living pleasantly and so Epicurus claims actually Epicureanism is the only method to be a moral person is the only one that truly incorporates morality into its account of the highest good but the reason people think that it isn't itself a moral theory is because he essentially takes the virtues not to be intrinsic goods that are valuable for their own sake but instrumental goods that are valuable for the sake of his highest end that is pleasure so let's just run down some of the virtues let's start with the big one wisdom wisdom is valuable because its function is to comprehend the logic and physics necessary to alleviate our fears of the gods and death and so forth and show us the pathways to tranquility it also wisdom gives us the means to distinguish between the desires that we really need to fulfill and those that it's okay to fulfill but you shouldn't work too hard to fulfill and those that you shouldn't come near with a 10 foot pole it also teaches us the limits of pain and the limits of pleasure and to what extent the former should be avoided and the latter should be pursued and therefore wisdom is not really perceived for its own sake but for the sake of all of those advantages that it brings us and one can't enjoy those advantages and thus enjoy the pleasant life unless one has exactly wisdom question yeah so all the virtues and all more instrumental and so the same thing goes for pleasure like you don't just go into life of dissipation because then the leads to pain afterwards so does that sort of seem to imply that even pleasure itself is instrumental to some other well one could say that pleasure for Epicureans is instrumental for eudaimonia or happiness the highest end okay that that you could probably say that without being inaccurate it would probably be more accurate to say however that pleasure constitutes eudaimonia or happiness okay and so that what what that is what success happiness prosperity and support is is the enjoyment of pleasure and so it's not really that pleasure is instrumental to that it's that pleasure constitutes that thing when you have it but you're quite right that the other things these other things that for example the Stoics take to be intrinsic goods and good for their own sake and should be pursued for their own sake they think are only instrumentally valuable for something something else they think is instrumentally valuable essentially for pleasure but again remember that they have a on the one hand they have a simple idea about what constitutes the final end by calling it pleasure on the other hand when we unpack what they mean by pleasure we see that that means oponia or lack of distress in the body and adoraxia or lack of mental illnesses and disturbances in the mind and so you can think of in a way pleasure being instrumental to relieving us from pains in the body and disturbances in the mind again you could put it that way that what we need to enjoy kinetic pleasures for for example the reason we need to get the pleasures from drinking or eating is to eliminate pains in the body or or in the mind and so in that way it can be described as instrumental but since they believe that that we could virtually replace this talk of eudaimonia with just calling it pleasure it probably makes more sense to talk of it as being a constitutive relationship instead of an instrumental one yeah so what what he's saying there is as we'll see there's moralists who will say oh you need to cultivate all these various virtues you need and not just the obvious ones like justice and wisdom and temperance and courage but you know Aristotle has a list of 30 virtues magnanimity and liberality and all these other things and and I'm sure you're you're used to being having inflicted on you since grade school all need to be excellent and you need to pursue excellence and so forth right and the Epicureans say all of that stuff is empty all of that those you know constant protractix and and encouragements to cultivating virtue as if it's valuable in and of itself are wrong there are virtues that are valuable for getting what is the highest end freedom of from pain in the body and disturbance in the mind and in so far as they get us that they're valuable but in so far as you're telling me I need to be an excellent scholar and things like that and trumpeting all these highfalutin sounding moral things I spit on those because they aren't actually connected with pleasure and they distract people from doing cultivating the virtues they need in order to really get pleasure so it does not mean I spit on wisdom temperance courage and justice because I have a theory about how not only are those conducive to the highest good but they are essential for the highest good nobody achieves the highest good without having doubts well that's kind of a complicated issue because we don't know exactly how he reacts to Aristotle's moral theory or to what extent he may have engaged in these other putative virtues and for any of them you could probably make out a case how Epicureans could as it were co-opt them as they do with the other cardinal virtues that I've already named and so there's a way that Epicureans will undoubtedly characterize themselves as being the most magnanimous and the most liberal and the most and then the most excellent and so forth but but what it really comes down to is that those things are in the service of this other and that's what really offends Cicero yeah I remember you mentioned before how Epicureans said that in order to live pleasantly you need to live morally yeah and Cicero criticized that by saying well then how come you have all these people who are really good but they end up living terrible lives and they end up having a lot of suffering it seems like Cicero was misrepresenting and and you forgot the other powerful part of that argument you have these people that need to live bad lives but they enjoy lots of pleasure right it's it seems like Cicero may have been putting what Epicure says backwards Epicure didn't say that living morally will lead to pleasure I think what he was saying by saying that well to live pleasantly is to live morally was that seeking pleasure leads to a moral life okay you think that's what he said I could see a problem with saying that most people would disagree that pursuing pleasure leads to a moral life more people would be willing to accept the idea that pursuing a moral life would bring some kind of pleasure with it but it seems easy to think how I can pursue pleasure without a moral life or it seems easy to think about that from the standpoint of common sense and Cicero and so forth so it or are a stupas for that matter right so sex drugs and rock and roll doesn't exactly create you know pursuing those things might give me a lot of pleasure but they don't seem to give me wisdom justice temperance and courage I guess but the pleasure that Pickers was talking about right only physical pleasure she was also talking about pleasure was the mind like seeking philosophy and wisdom correct so with that essentially to morals and things like that well right and so that's why these qualifications need to be made about number one what he means by pleasure and number two what he means by virtues I mean he's got a theory of virtues here it's not a theory that that other people share but in a way he can go through each of the virtues and say that the person who's aiming at having the most pleasant life as we in height enlightened heatheness not era stiffen heatheness but this enlightened form of heathenism where pleasure is identified with lack of disturbance in the mind and lack of pain in the body if one pursues those things then then one will tend to live morally and really it's it's it's the other way around that that's one who chooses to live to live morally will end up getting pleasure along with it and so I've already explained how that is with respect to wisdom but it's pretty easy to see how it works for the other virtues as well so temperance or self-control is one of the cardinal virtues but again it's not sought for its own sake but because it brings us peace and tranquility recall the method of selection which says that I ought to forego certain pleasures if foregoing those pleasures will bring greater pleasures later or the more obvious way to put that is will alleviate future pains so yeah heroin's great but I ought to have self-control and not indulge in it because it will result in great pains later of addiction and dependence and risking overdose and getting diseases from unclean needles and destroying your organs and so forth and similarly it shows why we should endure certain pains like going to the dentist and so forth in order to get certain pleasures later again it's easiest to put that in terms of avoiding certain pains later yes it hurts to have a dentist scrape my teeth with a sharp tool but if the option is is having to have a root canal later or having an abscess in my mouth or something then I should be willing to undergo that and so they define self-control or temperance as the wise employment of that method of selection courage what is courage it's freedom from fear and the greatest fears almost all fears descend from fears about death and pain which are views about death and pain which are based on natural science managed to alleviate cowardice the vice which is opposite of courage is condemned because it leads to pain through fear so we both show how to remove fear by means of our philosophy and thus how to be courageous now the most difficult one for the theory is justice and the one that Cicero spends the most amount of time harping on but let's think about what the Epicurean justice is first there's a claim that being just always benefits you but never harms you that the opposite of justice greed unfairness dishonesty and so forth all cause distress and stress which is painful so unjust acts cause rumor suspicion judgment punishment and so forth and even those who manage to escape detection and so aren't literally corporally punished they get plagued by their own consciences or their fears of eventually being discovered and those fears are painful and so in an effort to eliminate those fears we ought to avoid doing things that are unjust also the motives to unjustice to committing an act that's unjust for example to get more than my fair share of something our philosophy manages to eliminate the motivation for doing those unjust acts you don't need more than your fair share because the things that you need in order to be happy are easy to get without injustices I just need enough to drink and enough to eat and and some modest shelter and things like that but those things are readily available what motivates unjust crimes are people that think that they need wealth or they need power and things like that and we eliminate those motivations to action it's largely pursuit of empty desires that cause injustice according to the theory now those those are their accounts of the cardinal virtues to that after taking this question I will discuss their views on friendship which is the other most controversial aspect of the theory and the one which sister oh also spends a great deal of time talking about yes no because they think that those mental pains and conscious conscience and rumination about doing bad things and do people think I'm a bad person that all that stuff is really painful probably way more painful than even the physical pain of corporal punishment although remember that era stupas have an interesting position on this he argued that bodily pains are more severe than mental pains and as evidence for that is the fact that we punish criminals with corporal punishment so no in general they would say you have both reasons to avoid doing doing injustice now I thought what you were doing was trying to set up a counter example where I had some reason motivated by pleasure to pursue an unjust act and that reason would bring so much more pleasure that it would counteract the mere bodily pain of the corporal punishment that would result were I to be detected and they take on that case specifically and try to argue that that it would not and that in fact it would cause greater mental anguish and conscious