 Hi, my name is Monty Johnson. I teach philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and this is the third of six lectures on Lucretius. This one on the Epicurean theory of life and death, according to Lucretius in Dererim, Natura, Book 3, and I'm using the translation of Cyril Bailey, which is widely available in the public domain through the Internet Archive. Now, as we move into Book 3, we are talking about living things and souls, having just spent the last two books talking about the basic theory of atomism, that is how atoms exist in the void and how they move and combine to form complexes and visible compounds of things. Now we're going to get a theory about how some of these compounds can actually be alive. And so we're moving from the microscopic level of atoms in void onto the level of visible, sensible, living things, plants, animals, human beings, and we're getting the basic fundamental ideas about human psychology. We're still dealing with physical assumptions and talking about microscopic principles of nature insofar as we can infer those from macroscopic phenomena. So we're going to be talking about the basic propositions that Epicureans embrace about the soul and about living things. But by the end of this book, we will already start to draw out some ethical implications from those physical assumptions, in this case, about how it is irrational to fear death. And so we continue to grow, here we grow to the to the point of, as it were, adolescence when we recognize our own mortality. Now, book three specifically, like the other books, starts with an introduction, in this case, a praise of Epicurus, and an emphasis on the importance of conquering the fear of death. Then the bulk of the book consumed with arguments. These arguments basically about three propositions. First, the mind and the soul are parts of the body. Second, the mind and the soul are mortal. And third, that there is no reason to fear death. In general, in book three, we have less propositions being argued for, but many more arguments given for each proposition. So we're not as rapidly piling up propositions. Instead, we're digging in very deep on these extremely important propositions. And the finale of the book returns again to an exhortation to Epicurean philosophy is the only way to conquer the fear of death, given the fact that as has been shown throughout the book, the human soul is mortal. Now a little bit more about the introduction or prom to book three. Again, it's an ancomium or eulogy to Epicurus. Lucretius states his desire to emulate the great Epicurus. He refers to Epicurus as our father and thanks him for his fatherly advice, his ethical advice, which he takes to be kind of parental concern for his children. Quoting from the beginning of book three, for as soon as thy philosophy springing from thy godlike soul begins to proclaim aloud the nature of things, the terrors of the mind fly away, the walls of the world part asunder, I see things moving on through the void, the majesty of the gods is revealed, and their peace lists abuzz. Now notice again here there is both a reference to the Epicurean theory of the gods, these eternally living, blissed out beings that exist in intermundial space and are not at all concerned with nature or human affairs. Second, notice that Lucretius essentially deifies Epicurus while he calls him godlike, relating Epicurus to the Epicurean theory of the gods. Epicurus exists as existed as a tranquil being who was unconcerned with and even to some extent lack interest in many of the things that most humans are most concerned with. Epicurus is thus godlike in his ability to achieve this tranquility, a tranquility equal to the gods. That's what makes him godlike. But unlike the gods, he does bring the philosophy that makes this tranquility possible to people like Lucretius and Memius. So Epicurus is godlike in his own tranquility, but he is ungodlike in his concern for his friends and his followers and actually his fellow human beings who he aims to liberate from the domination of religious dogma. Now, the subject of this book is the theory of what makes some bodies living and others not alive. And that is a theory about the soul and it's a theory about death. So having briefly reviewed the results of the first two books, which gave the basic propositions of atomism, Lucretius then states the subject of book three as the nature of the mind or animus and the spirit or anima must now be displayed in my verses. So he's referring primarily to the principle of life, the principle that makes some bodies alive and others not alive. And in Greek, the term for that is psyche. Psyche is what differentiates inanimate bodies from animate ones. Animate bodies are literally those bodies that have a soul to speak generically. And sometimes Lucretius essentially does speak generically of the soul, but other times he speaks specifically of the mind animus or the spirit anima, although these combine together to form the human soul. Now, Lucretius argues that it is false philosophy and specifically false views about the soul that produce the fear of death, even in those who openly profess not to fear it as the worst of all things. The fear of death is, according to Lucretius, productive of almost all of the vices, not just cowardice, of course, many people do have a cowardly fear of death. But he claims that fear of death is what causes avarice or greed and the craving for empty fame and honors and envy, betrayal of friends and family and so forth. Practically, all of the vices are traceable to the fear of death. And if you could eliminate the fear of death and install tranquility, then the motives to these vices would disappear according to Lucretius. So it's a grand philosophical project aimed at dealing with all of the vices by going for a critical juncture, beliefs about life and death. And so even while focusing on this specific of a topic, he concludes the poem by repeating the overall slogan of the work as he has in the introductions of the two previous books, this terror, then this darkness of the mind must needs be scattered not by the rays of the sun and the gleaming shafts of day, but by the outer view and the inner law of nature, that is, by a theory of nature, the atomistic theory of Epicureanism. Now the argument that the soul is a part of the body, Lucretius begins by discussing the mind which he identifies with the part of us, the part of humans that has wisdom and understanding and thinking and so on. Now this part of you that thinks he asserts to be a part of your body, just like your hand or foot or eye. And he rejects and contrasts a rival theory, which we know is the Pythagorean theory of the soul, according to which the soul is not itself a body, but it's like a harmony or fitting arrangement of parts of the body, not itself a body part, but an overall arrangement of parts of the body. He says that's not the case, instead there are actual parts of the body, particles of the body that correspond to the soul. So this is an important proposition in the first one he discusses in this book. The mind is a part of the body for if it were not, then it could not alternatively suffer from or be free from the afflictions of the body. But we see that the mind may suffer either alone or along with other parts of the body, just as one may have a headache because of or alternatively without a sore foot. So one may suffer in a psychological illness, be anxious on account of a physical illness or without any pain in the body at all. And one can be anxious and depressed with or without a headache. So that's the first reason he gives. There is an unacceptable conclusion of the contrary of the proposition. So we must embrace the proposition that the mind is a part of the body and further considerations support the same point. If it weren't part of the body, then it wouldn't be able to be active alternatively with or without the body. But we know that the mind may be active with the body as when it's awake and sensing, or may not be active with the body as when it's sleeping and dreaming. So the rest of the body isn't acting, but the soul or mind is active. And also if it weren't part of the body, then it couldn't survive when some but not all of the other parts of the body were removed. But we see that the mind can survive amputation of some limbs or like amputation of the fingers, amputation of the hand, even amputations of the arms, but not when there is no breath left. That is when the breath's heat and air are entirely removed from the body. There is then a heat and life giving wind in the very body, which abandons our dying frame. And that is the most literal definition of death. Now, the point of this overall argument is headed to explaining why the mind and the soul are mortal. And for that reason, one should not fear death. But as he's elaborating the theory, he indicates some unique aspects of the Epicurean theory of mind and soul, which I should point out. So first is that mind and spirit, while they're both particles of the body, they form a single compound nature, which we can call soul. And furthermore, this soul is commingled with the rest of the body, the soul both is a body, and it's commingled with the rest of the body parts, the limbs and so forth, down to the to the actual atoms that all of those consist of. Now, the mind is located in the region of the breast, according to this theory. So the heart is crucial to the theory. You might think, you know, the heart is essentially where they think the brain resides. The spirit, however, the animal spirits are spread throughout the whole body and its limbs, wherever there is a sensitive part or a part that can be moved, it must be connected to this spirit that is itself connected to this mind that controls the motions of the limbs and also is the subject of the experiences, the sensory experiences of hot and cold or colors or whatever that happen in those limbs. Now, the mind can feel and be afflicted by a motion either by itself or along with the body. And mental affections can even cause bodily affections. For example, fear, which is, you know, due to ideas or thoughts in the mind may cause the heart to race or embarrassment may cause blushing, changing, changing color and so forth. So it's clear that the body can affect the mind and that the mind can affect the body, which means they have something in common and what they have in common is both being kinds of body. So since the soul can act on the body and the body can affect the soul, the soul in the mind must both be bodily. Now, in the theory, there are actually four kinds of soul particles that correspond to progressively smaller and finer kinds of particles. The largest soul particle is called breath, then air, then heat, and then there's a fourth smaller one that doesn't have a specific name. We just call it the fourth nameless kind, but it corresponds to the sensitive and motor powers of the body. And since these operate more quickly than any other bodily function, they must be the smallest, fastest and most mobile atomic shape. So they must be extremely small, rounded or spherical particles. Now, when motion is initiated, the fourth kind of soul, the smallest nameless kind of particle is what actually moves first. And then it triggers a kind of train chain reaction where it impacts the heat particles, the heat particles, the wind particles, the wind particles, the air particles, and then the air particles directly blow on and collide with and move the parts, other grosser parts of the body and the limbs of the body. And so this is how the mind is able to move the body by a chain reaction of collisions in a materialist theory. Now, these four kinds of soul particles form one co-mingled interconnected hole, which is again interconnected with all of the other body parts, and no part of it acts entirely separately, but we depend on all of them for the good functioning of mind and body. Now, in an interesting digression, Lucretius sets up a correlation between the different kinds of soul particles and different psychological temperaments or affections, and he also draws a correspondence between these and certain kinds of animals. So each of the kind of soul corresponds to a each of the kind of soul corresponds to a major kind of soul or affection, heat to anger, wind to fear, air to calmness and tranquility. And so when one of when when the atoms of one of these kinds of soul is dominant, then that characteristic is manifest in the affection. And certain animals, he takes to be dominated by certain kinds of soul. So lions are dominated by the heat kind, and this is why they exhibit such ferocious anger. And stags, very fearful, careful stags are dominated by wind particles and placid cows, their calmness corresponds to the air particles that are dominant in their souls. Now, humans have a share of each of these kinds of soul in addition to the fourth unnamed kind of soul, that fourth kind of soul presumably corresponds to human beings. But Lucretius concludes the discussion by saying that through reason and philosophy, humans can basically erase the tendency towards these cruder affections like fear and anger, and thus live tranquilly a life worthy of the gods. So the union of soul and body and their commonality is crucial to the thesis. The union of soul and body atoms is what causes certain compound bodies to be alive. And the lack of union or lack of proper inner penetration and interlacement of soul and body atoms is what makes other compound bodies not alive. And death is the separation or dis-entanglement, the elimination of the good commingling of the soul and body atoms. Bodies can't be born or survive without soul atoms. Functional body parts themselves, however, have sensation. So Lucretius points out that the eyes aren't just windows or doors into the solar mind, but they actively sense things and the ears actively sense things. They're not just channels through which sensations are conveyed to the heart or the brain. They are an active part of the process. And against Democritus, he argues that soul and body atoms don't alternate one for one, rather there's an unequal number of each kind of soul atom. And they are unequally distributed in the body and its limbs. And that's why some body parts are more sensitive than others and have different sensory modalities than others, because they exist in different combinations in different ways and different configurations in the different sense organs. And this is also why some parts of the body are stronger and more dominant over other parts. Now, all of that was just to show that the soul is part of the body. And it almost immediately follows from that that the soul is mortal. But the next 400 or 500 lines of the poem are direct arguments, something like 30 independent arguments that the soul is mortal. And we can group these arguments in different ways. For the purpose of this presentation, I will present several examples of arguments in each of these groups. So first arguments about the structure of the soul, then arguments about diseases and cures, then arguments about the connection between the soul and the body, arguments about the inseparability of the soul from the body, arguments against theory of reincarnation or trans migration of souls. And then finally an independent ontological argument. So let's take up the first of these, the arguments about the structure of the soul. Now, it's already been established, of course, that the soul consists of extremely small rounded particles. And in other cases of small particles that are contained in a finite space, if you think of clouds, smoke, water, etc. When the vessels that are containing those particles are destroyed or broken, then the particles within them are scattered. And so they can't form a tight close unity. And in the case of the soul, when parts of the body are broken down, then the body can no longer contain the soul particles and thus form the right kind of unity with the body that is necessary for life. And the body and the mind are born and develop, mature, decline, and die all in parallel. So just as the body grows in strength until it starts declining and then ceases to function altogether. So the reasoning of the mind develops in its sharpness until it starts declining and then ceases to function altogether. This ceasing to function of mind and body means death. Now, then we get a different set of, we get another set of arguments about diseases and cures. Actually, they flow quite nicely from the discussion, the argument about the breakdown of the body that was just made. But the first of these arguments says that just as the body experiences pains and illnesses, so the mind experiences pains and illnesses. In fact, mental illnesses often follow physical illnesses. And as we pointed out earlier, physical illnesses can create mental illnesses and vice versa, or they can be experienced separately. But since pains and illnesses bring death for the body, it's reasonable to think that they do so for the mind as well. And consider how wine or alcohol or drugs affect the mind. Maybe you think of it as damaging it, at least temporarily. Well, the effect of a physical body like wine on the mind shows that mind and body must be confounded and entangled and so share a common fate. Epilepsy is an example of a disease that affects both body and mind. Primarily, it has a physical cause. But this again shows how physical bodies can damage and even destroy the mind. And medicine and drugs in general work on both the mind as well as the body. But if these physical drugs are able to alter the mind, as Lucretius says, they must add parts to it or transfer them from their order or take away from some small part from the whole. But an immortal thing doesn't permit its parts to be transposed, nor that any wit should be added or depart from it. So the actions and the mechanisms of drugs and their effects on the mind show how the parts of the soul may be transposed, increased or decreased. But what can be transposed, increased or decreased is necessarily mortal. And when parts of the body are diminished through amputation, the corresponding capabilities for sensation and motion are removed. So it's reasonable to infer that total destruction of the body would totally destroy the soul. Next, moving on to the arguments about the connection between the soul and the body, just as separated body parts like eyes or hands cannot see or grasp without the soul, so the soul could not function without closely mingling with the body. When soul atoms aren't closely mingled, there can be no functioning. Otherwise, ambient soul atoms would be alive and the air would be some kind of immortal creature since they're scattered and floating around out there like dust in the sunbeam. Now the slow decay of the body occurs while soul atoms depart from it and disperse. The body loses its structure when separated from the soul and it decays like a corpse. So the soul, of course, loses its structure when it's not commingled with that body, has an even more rapid deterioration of its structure. And strong blows and shocks to the body disrupt the soul temporarily or permanently. The soul separated from the body must be even more frail and liable to destruction than the body. Now, at death, apparently, one does not feel one soul departing from the body all of all of the sudden. Rather, in the Epicurean view, death is experienced as a gradual destruction decline and destruction of the body. It's at the same time a destruction of the soul. But if the soul were immortal, it would be felt to sort of slither out of the dead body like a snake all at once and have all of its parts and be perfectly well preserved. Now, the mind, of course, must be in a specific place in the body, in the brain or the heart or whatever, and can't just be in any place whatsoever, such as the hands or the feet, for the mind controls the hands and the feet, not vice versa. So when the mind is removed from that place, it cannot possibly function, but that happens at death. Now, several more arguments about the inseparability of the soul from the body. First, it's impossible to imagine a soul, especially a human soul, without some senses, some of the five senses, but the operation of the five senses depend on sense organs which cannot exist without a body. Therefore, the soul must perish with the body. Second, when part of the body is cut off, even the head, life continues for a brief time in the separated part, but only for a very short time. Thus, the soul can be divided and reduced, or the whole soul doesn't persist in each severed part, but again, that which can be divided and reduced is subject to perishing. So the whole soul must be subject to perishing. And if the soul were eternal, we'd have memories of its earlier existence. If we're so entirely cut off by birth from our previous life that we can't remember anything of it at all, then this is equivalent to death. And if the soul were fully formed, already its own intact eternal thing, when it entered the body, it wouldn't develop and grow along with the body and be so co-mingled and so interpenetrate the body through nerves and sinews that even the teeth are sensitive as toothache shows. So even if the soul were thought to permeate and infuse throughout the whole body, it would still be mortal because what is subject to diffusion and permeation is subjected to destruction. Finally, Lucretius argues that worms that grow out of corpses must grow from remnants of soul particles that are left over from the diffusion of the soul from the body at death. He says it's very unlikely that worms would just all happen to show up all of the sudden where corpses happen to be. Now, he also makes several independent arguments against reincarnation or the theory of trans migration of souls, the idea that the soul at death could migrate into another body, another body of a human or another animal body or an astral body or whatever. He's already shown many reasons why that's impossible, but these are further considerations about why reincarnation is impossible. First, if souls were immortal, they could pass and could pass from body to body even into other species or other members of the same species, then we would not observe characteristic differences and conflicts that we do so regularly see in nature among different species or among individuals of the same species since we would it would be the same kinds of beings moving through all different species, they wouldn't have natural enmities with each other, but we perceive, for example, predator-prey relations among them. Also, how could souls grow strong with a new body unless they were born with it? And he ridicules the notion that why would a soul want to rid itself of an old body even a corpse is not as if they fear the frailties of the body for there are no dangers for something that's immortal. It's also ridiculous, he says, and here the satire is wonderful, ridiculous to imagine souls queued up and lined up waiting on the parturition of wild beasts in order to take off their new bodies. And finally, the nature of the mind is such that it can't exist apart from a body and even the specific part within a specific kind of the body, for example, in a human body with a human heart or a human brain. Otherwise, other body parts like hands and feet could become intelligent and human minds could come to be in different parts of entirely different kinds of animals. But as it is, of course, everything has its proper niche, and a tree can't grow from the sky, nor can fish live in the fields. So souls can't come to be in any sorts of creatures whatsoever, but only in those with which they are born and grow up and develop and then eventually wither and die with. Now, the last major argument about the mortality of the soul against the immortality of the soul is a kind of ontological argument where Lucretius distinguishes between three different kinds of eternal things. First, things that are eternal because they're solid, impenetrable and indivisible, like the atoms. Second, things that are immune to all blows and remain entirely unaffected by movement within its environment, like the void. And then a third kind, what has nothing outside of itself into which it might disperse or from which it might be penetrated. And that's the situation with the universe as a whole. So recall the idea that the universe is a kind of steady state that exists eternally despite its internal changes and transmutations, and there are an infinite number of those, but the universe as a whole does not change. Neither does any individual atom or any region of the void. But the soul isn't an atom, and it's not void, nor is the soul the universe. Instead, a soul is a temporary collection and structure of atoms and void within the universe. So it can break down from the inside through internal diseases or weaknesses, or be penetrated from the outside, for example, by a sword resulting in a violent death. Therefore, the soul just isn't the kind of thing that can be eternal. It, like every other compound body, is temporary, comes into being, grows, develops, declines, decays, and passes away. Now, having established that the soul is a part of the body, and as such, it is mortal, the next thing to do is to make the, draw the ethical implication out of this, that one should not fear death. Now the Epicureans have a lot of arguments for why one shouldn't fear death, but the main argument is that death is nothing to us because the soul is mortal. And that's why this argument comes immediately after having showed that. So we would only have cause to fear death if we had immortal souls, for then something could in theory happen to us after death, but since our souls are mortal, since they will be dispersed and not able to, we won't be able to continue experiencing anything, nothing can happen to us after death. Therefore, death is nothing to us. Now, some will argue that we should fear things that we won't be able to experience after death, even if we don't fear things that will happen to us after death, we fear the things that we won't be able to get because we won't be alive anymore. But Lucretius rejects that because we don't miss the things that existed before we were born and fearing things that will happen to us after we die is a lot like fearing things that happened to us before we were born. None of us fear, for example, the Punic Wars, but whatever is happening in the future will be as relevant and as connected to us as the Punic Wars, so we should not fear death. And even if a soul could somehow exist separately from our bodies and experience sensation, that wouldn't be anything to us since we're wedded to the soul that is co-mingled with our specific present bodies. And he engages in an interesting thought experiment, even if some future time atoms and void could be rearranged into the same exact structure as our bodies and souls are now, that also wouldn't be anything to us because we're entirely cut off from that future structure. And even now, we care nothing about any self of ours that might have existed before we were born. So we shouldn't care about any self of ours that might exist after we die. In fact, it's impossible to experience misery and pain if you don't exist. And after death, you won't exist. So it's irrational to fear death. Once we're dead, it matters not to us either that we are dead, or even that we were ever born. Now, that's why we shouldn't fear death. But in a way, we should actually be happy about death, embrace death, because death is a release from pains and desires. And if it weren't for death, these pains could go on indefinitely. And unfulfilled desires could go on indefinitely. And that would be a kind of torture and a kind of hell. And there's no reason to worry about your corpse suffering. In order to worry about that, you'd have to imagine that something of you survives to suffer. But we've already shown that nothing survives. And there's no reason to worry that you'll be deprived of life's joys such as sensual pleasures, because you'll no longer have any desire for those things. And there's nothing bad about being at rest, like in a very deep sleep. We actually like that quite a lot. And death is just absolutely being at rest, like the deepest possible sleep. Now, nature might well bring a charge against those who fear death. If your desires were gratified during life, then you should leave contented from life like a banquet or who's had enough at the party. If you didn't get enough, and you're not satisfied with it, then death will release you from that painful desire to have more. And in general, the old should be happy and ungrudgingly make way for the young and the new. They've had their period of life. Now, part of Lucretius' mission is the anti-religious mission where he's attacking traditional Greco-Roman religion and mythology, which causes great fear of death, especially through traditional religious fables about eternal torture that await those who die. And he says, these are all actually false, but there we can learn something for them if we interpret them as allegories about things happening in this life. So tantalists over whom a great rock hangs constantly threatening to crush him, Lucretius says, is like somebody in awe of religion and who has religious fear of the gods so that it's an oppressive weight hanging over him. And Titius, who for eternity is rummaged and picked at by winged creatures, he compares to those who are constantly tortured and suffer from passions and anxieties, that is desires for certain things, erotic desires, and anxieties like the fear of death. Or Sisyphus, who forever pushes a rock up a hill which rolls down once he's reached the top. This is like seeking power or glory or fame or something that is empty and it's exhausting, tall, undertaken for no reason. And the Danades who try to fill up vessels that ever leak their contents out are like those who are never content and are constantly trying to fulfill their desires. Kerberus, the Furies and Tartarus, of course, they don't in truth exist, but fear of punishment for evil deeds causes a guilty terrified conscience like the hell on earth inhabited by these mythological figures. Now, Epicureanism has cures for each of those painful forms of torture that we inflict on ourselves with our false philosophy and our false views about the nature of life and the nature of desire. Now, as a final piece of consolation, Lucretius encourages us to reflect on others who have died, the great kings and politicians and warriors and wise men and poets and even philosophers that have all died. If they've died, then you should be happy to join their company. And here he specifically singles out his main heroes, Homer, Democritus and Epicurus, putting them all in a line. And he berates us that worrying about losing our own wretched lives when such great predecessors like Socrates or even our own ancestors had to die is a ridiculous complaint. Now, don't worry about the misery after death. Stop worrying about that. Worry instead about avoiding misery in this life. And you can do that by seeking the salvation offered by Epicurean philosophy. There's nothing newer or better in life to crave and nothing greater that will be lost when we die. So that's the final bit of book three. And book three is very unified and has a tight purpose. And in the previous two books, we saw that there were something like 24 different basic propositions of atomism discussed over those two books. In this book, I think we can reduce them down to three basic propositions. And so add them as the 25th, 26th and 27th. The soul is part of the body. As part of the body, it's mortal and death is inevitable. And because death is inevitable and the soul is mortal, there is no reason to fear death. So now we have begun to draw the ethical implications of the physical assumptions that we defended through the propositions in the earlier books.