{"agent_id":"epicurus","agent_name":"Epicurus","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?","topic":"The gods exist but do not concern themselves with us","question":"Literalist physical-gods reading or esoteric ethical-exemplars reading?","position":"The gods exist. We have a prolepsis (preconception) of them that arises naturally and universally from images (eidolas) streaming through the world; this prolepsis is a criterion of truth. The gods are blessed and immortal: the blessed-and-immortal does not undertake trouble itself nor cause trouble to others, and is therefore neither swayed by anger nor by favor. They live in the intermundia or metakosmia, the spaces between the worlds, in a state of perfect tranquility. They do not punish; they do not reward; they did not create the world; they do not concern themselves with human affairs. The popular religious picture — vengeful, jealous, intervening, demanding sacrifice — projects human anxiety onto the divine and misses what divinity is. The proper religious posture is reverence for the divine as the perfect exemplar of the tranquil life we ourselves seek; not fear, not bargaining, not propitiation. The relationship between the literalist position (the gods are physically real beings) and the ethical-exemplar interpretation has been disputed since antiquity, and the texts admit both readings.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The gods exist.","n":[]},{"t":"We have a prolepsis (preconception) of them that arises naturally and universally from images (eidolas) streaming through the world; this prolepsis is a criterion of truth.","n":[]},{"t":"The gods are blessed and immortal: the blessed-and-immortal does not undertake trouble itself nor cause trouble to others, and is therefore neither swayed by anger nor by favor.","n":[]}],[{"t":"They live in the intermundia or metakosmia, the spaces between the worlds, in a state of perfect tranquility.","n":[]},{"t":"They do not punish; they do not reward; they did not create the world; they do not concern themselves with human affairs.","n":[]},{"t":"The popular religious picture — vengeful, jealous, intervening, demanding sacrifice — projects human anxiety onto the divine and misses what divinity is.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The proper religious posture is reverence for the divine as the perfect exemplar of the tranquil life we ourselves seek; not fear, not bargaining, not propitiation.","n":[]},{"t":"The relationship between the literalist position (the gods are physically real beings) and the ethical-exemplar interpretation has been disputed since antiquity, and the texts admit both readings.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"Letter to Menoeceus 123-124 (the gods are blessed and immortal; the popular conception is wrong); Principal Doctrine 1 ('that which is blessed and immortal is troubled by nothing and causes trouble to nothing'); Lucretius De Rerum Natura V.146-155 (the intermundia / metakosmia where the gods dwell); Lucretius DRN VI.68-79 (the gods do not concern themselves with us); Diogenes Laertius X.139 (KD 1) and X.123-124 (the prolepsis evidence). Reception: Cicero's De Natura Deorum Bk I (the locus classicus of the effective-atheism charge, voiced by the Academic Skeptic Cotta against the Epicurean Velleius); Plutarch's polemics; the modern scholarly debate between the literalist reading (the gods are physically real beings in the intermundia, the prolepsis is direct evidence) and the esoteric reading developed by A.A. Long and David Sedley in The Hellenistic Philosophers Vol. 1 (Cambridge 1987), on which the gods are 'realist' interpretations of universal mental images of perfectly blessed beings rather than mind-independent existents.","works":["Letter to Menoeceus 123-124 (the gods are blessed and immortal","the popular conception is wrong)","Principal Doctrine 1 ('that which is blessed and immortal is troubled by nothing and causes trouble to nothing')","Lucretius De Rerum Natura V.146-155 (the intermundia / metakosmia where the gods dwell)","Lucretius DRN VI.68-79 (the gods do not concern themselves with us)","Diogenes Laertius X.139 (KD 1) and X.123-124 (the prolepsis evidence)"],"reception":"Cicero's De Natura Deorum Bk I (the locus classicus of the effective-atheism charge, voiced by the Academic Skeptic Cotta against the Epicurean Velleius); Plutarch's polemics; the modern scholarly debate between the literalist reading (the gods are physically real beings in the intermundia, the prolepsis is direct evidence) and the esoteric reading developed by A.A. Long and David Sedley in The Hellenistic Philosophers Vol. 1 (Cambridge 1987), on which the gods are 'realist' interpretations of universal mental images of perfectly blessed beings rather than mind-independent existents.","status":"The most ambiguous Epicurean position in the surviving texts and the locus of an ongoing modern scholarly debate. Cicero's De Natura Deorum is the most extensive ancient critique, charging that a god who does nothing is no different from no god at all (effective atheism). The modern literalist reading takes the prolepsis-evidence seriously and locates the gods physically in the intermundia. The modern esoteric reading developed by A.A. Long and David Sedley in The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge 1987) reads the gods as 'realist' interpretations of universal mental images, ethical exemplars rather than mind-independent existents. The texts genuinely admit both.","era":"341-271 BCE","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"On the Nature of Things","page":"p. 30","canonical":"","quote":"Occupying \"the lucid interspace of world and world,\"28 they are perfectly self-sufficient, perfectly tranquil, and perfectly happy.","label":"On the Nature of Things, p. 30"},{"n":2,"work":"The Epicurus Reader, Selected Writings and Testimonia","page":"pp. ix–x","canonical":"","quote":"And if there is nothing bad about not existing, then there is nothing bad for your friend when he ceases to exist, nor is there anything bad for you about being fated to cease to exist. It is a confusion to be worried by your mortality, and it is an ingratitude to resent the limitations of life, like some greedy dinner guest who expects an indefinite number of courses and refuses to leave the table.","label":"The Epicurus Reader, Selected Writings and Testimonia, pp. ix–x"},{"n":3,"work":"On the Nature of Things","page":"p. 180","canonical":"","quote":"In fact, the nature of the gods is so tenuous, and so far removed from our senses, that it is scarcely perceptible even to the mind; and since it eludes the touch and 150 impact of our hands, it cannot touch anything that is tangible to us; for what is itself intangible cannot touch. Therefore the gods' habitations also must be dissimilar to our habitations and as tenuous as their bodies.","label":"On the Nature of Things, p. 180"},{"n":4,"work":"The testimony of Cicero","page":"pp. 52–53","canonical":"","quote":"And since it is agreed that the gods are most blessed, but no one can be blessed without virtue, nor can virtue exist without reason, nor can reason exist except in a human form, one must concede that the gods have human appearance.. But that appearance is not [really] a body, but a quasi-body, nor does a god have blood, but quasi-blood.","label":"The testimony of Cicero, pp. 52–53"}],"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":"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?"},{"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?"}]}