Friendship as supreme practical good, lathē biōsas (live unnoticed), and justice as compact: is the Epicurean political stance defensible against the charge of irresponsibility?

Epicurus, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

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.¹²

Sources

1. If on each occasion instead of referring your Necessity of actions to the end of nature, you turn to some other nearer reference to standard when you are making a choice or an avoidance, standard. your actions will not be consistent with your principles. XXVI.

   The Extant Remains, pp. 101–103

2. So the wise man will always have a continu- Text 23.57-Text 26.67 ous and interconnected [set of] pleasures, since the expectation of hoped-for pleasures is linked to the memory of pleasures already perceived. 26: On Goals 1.65-70. There remains a topic which is especially important for our present debate, that is friendship.

   The testimony of Cicero, pp. 63–64

Where the argument is made

• 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)

How the argument was received

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.