{"agent_id":"epicurus","agent_name":"Epicurus","slug":"friendship-as-supreme-practical-good-lath-bi-sas-live-unnoti","label":"Friendship as supreme practical good, lathē biōsas (live unnoticed), and justice as compact: is the Epicurean political stance defensible against the charge of irresponsibility?","topic":"Friendship as supreme practical good, lathē biōsas (live unnoticed), and justice as compact","question":"Is the Epicurean political stance defensible against the charge of irresponsibility?","position":"Friendship is the greatest of the practical goods for the pleasant life. Of the things wisdom acquires for the blessedness of the whole life, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship; \"friendship dances around the world, calling all of us to wake up to blessedness\" (Vatican Sayings 52). All friendship is desirable in itself, but it has its origin in usefulness; the dichotomy that some critics try to force between \"for its own sake\" and \"for utility\" misses what friendship in fact is. Concerning the political life: live unnoticed (lathē biōsas). Public office and the pursuit of fame produce anxieties that destroy ataraxia and offer no compensating goods that the natural-and-necessary life cannot supply more securely. The Garden, the small voluntary community of friends devoted to philosophy, is the proper social form, not the polis with its competitions and dangers. Concerning justice: justice is the compact among humans not to harm or be harmed. It has no independent reality apart from such compacts; what is just varies by circumstance and by community; animals not party to the compact are not subjects of justice toward us nor we toward them. Justice is real and binding for those who have entered the compact; it is not a Platonic Form, not a Stoic universal natural law, not the will of a god.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Friendship is the greatest of the practical goods for the pleasant life.","n":[]},{"t":"Of the things wisdom acquires for the blessedness of the whole life, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship; \"friendship dances around the world, calling all of us to wake up to blessedness\" (Vatican Sayings 52).","n":[1]},{"t":"All friendship is desirable in itself, but it has its origin in usefulness; the dichotomy that some critics try to force between \"for its own sake\" and \"for utility\" misses what friendship in fact is.","n":[]}],[{"t":"Concerning the political life: live unnoticed (lathē biōsas).","n":[]},{"t":"Public office and the pursuit of fame produce anxieties that destroy ataraxia and offer no compensating goods that the natural-and-necessary life cannot supply more securely.","n":[]},{"t":"The Garden, the small voluntary community of friends devoted to philosophy, is the proper social form, not the polis with its competitions and dangers.","n":[2]}],[{"t":"Concerning justice: justice is the compact among humans not to harm or be harmed.","n":[]},{"t":"It has no independent reality apart from such compacts; what is just varies by circumstance and by community; animals not party to the compact are not subjects of justice toward us nor we toward them.","n":[]},{"t":"Justice is real and binding for those who have entered the compact; it is not a Platonic Form, not a Stoic universal natural law, not the will of a god.","n":[3,4]}]],"texts":"Letter to Menoeceus 132 (on prudence and the virtues); Principal Doctrines 6, 7 (on safety and the desire for office), 14 (on safety and tranquility), 27 (on friendship as the most beautiful gift of wisdom), 28 (on the security of friendship), 31-38 (on justice as compact); Vatican Sayings 23 ('all friendship is desirable in itself, but it has its origin in usefulness'), 28 (the four-fold path), 39 (on friendship), 52 ('friendship dances around the world calling all of us to wake up to blessedness'), 58 (on releasing oneself from the prison of routine business and politics), 78 (on wisdom and friendship); the deathbed letter to Idomeneus preserved in Diogenes Laertius X.22; Cicero De Finibus I.65-70 (the Epicurean argument for friendship). Reception: Plutarch's Is 'Live Unnoticed' a Wise Precept? (the locus classicus of the political-irresponsibility charge); Plutarch's Adv. Colotem and Non Posse Suaviter Vivi; the Stoic critique on universal natural law; the Aristotelian critique that this is contractarian rather than civic; the modern liberal-democratic critique.","works":["Letter to Menoeceus 132 (on prudence and the virtues)","Principal Doctrines 6, 7 (on safety and the desire for office), 14 (on safety and tranquility), 27 (on friendship as the most beautiful gift of wisdom), 28 (on the security of friendship), 31-38 (on justice as compact)","Vatican Sayings 23 ('all friendship is desirable in itself, but it has its origin in usefulness'), 28 (the four-fold path), 39 (on friendship), 52 ('friendship dances around the world calling all of us to wake up to blessedness'), 58 (on releasing oneself from the prison of routine business and politics), 78 (on wisdom and friendship)","the deathbed letter to Idomeneus preserved in Diogenes Laertius X.22","Cicero De Finibus I.65-70 (the Epicurean argument for friendship)"],"reception":"Plutarch's Is 'Live Unnoticed' a Wise Precept? (the locus classicus of the political-irresponsibility charge); Plutarch's Adv. Colotem and Non Posse Suaviter Vivi; the Stoic critique on universal natural law; the Aristotelian critique that this is contractarian rather than civic; the modern liberal-democratic critique.","status":"The most-criticized Epicurean position alongside the pleasure-doctrine and the death-doctrine. Plutarch's Is 'Live Unnoticed' a Wise Precept? is the locus classicus of the ancient political-irresponsibility charge. The Stoic critique through Cicero argues for universal natural law against the contractarian justice. Modern critics (liberal-democratic, communitarian) charge that political withdrawal is irresponsible in a polity that requires participation; defenders point to the Garden as a successful counter-example of voluntary community life.","era":"341-271 BCE","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Ancient collections of maxims","page":"pp. 34–35","canonical":"","quote":"XXVII Of the things which wisdom provides for the blessedness of one's whole life, by far the greatest is the possession of friendship. XXVIII The same understanding produces confidence about there being nothing terrible which is eternal or [even] long-lasting and has also realized that security amid even these limited [bad things] is most easily achieved through friendship.","label":"Ancient collections of maxims, pp. 34–35"},{"n":2,"work":"The Epicurus Reader, Selected Writings and Testimonia","page":"pp. xi–xii","canonical":"","quote":"Perhaps the best thing of all would be to have friends who shared our Epicurean philosophy with us; many Epicureans lived in small Epicurean communities, as did the followers of Pythagoras in earlier times.","label":"The Epicurus Reader, Selected Writings and Testimonia, pp. xi–xii"},{"n":3,"work":"On the Nature of Things","page":"pp. 13–14","canonical":"","quote":"Epicurus had discovered the truth and the whole truth, and Lucretius endeavors to communicate that truth as accurately, attractively, and persuasively as he can. The Epicurean school was very much a \"society of friends.\" Epicurus.","label":"On the Nature of Things, pp. 13–14"},{"n":4,"work":"Ancient collections of maxims","page":"pp. 38–39","canonical":"","quote":"He who claims that everything occurs by necessity has no com plaint against him who claims that everything does not occur by necessity. For he makes the very claim [in question] by necessity. 41. One must philosophize and at the same time laugh and take care of one's household and use the rest of our personal goods, and never stop proclaiming the utterances of correct philosophy. 42.","label":"Ancient collections of maxims, pp. 38–39"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"pleasure-as-the-highest-good","label":"Pleasure as the highest good: is the technical pleasure-doctrine (katastematic vs kinetic, the four-part cure) defensible against the popular vulgar reading and the philosophical charge of disguised asceticism?"},{"slug":"death-is-nothing-to-us","label":"Death is nothing to us: does the symmetry argument and the no-subject-of-harm argument survive contemporary deprivation accounts?"},{"slug":"the-gods-exist-but-do-not-concern-themselves-with-us","label":"The gods exist but do not concern themselves with us: literalist physical-gods reading or esoteric ethical-exemplars reading?"},{"slug":"atomism-materialism-the-swerve-and-the-mortal-soul","label":"Atomism, materialism, the swerve, and the mortal soul: does the original Epicurean physics survive the empirical falsifications of modern science, and does the broader naturalistic worldview survive intact?"}]}