Epicurus believes that unnecessary fears are the main source of unhappiness. Hence ridding oneself of them is key to living a satisfying life. He focuses on three sources of fear: fear of the divine, fear of unfulfilled desires, and fear of death. Let us consider each in turn.
As to fear of the divine, note that Epicurus is primarily concerned with plural gods. The analysis he offers, however, is equally applicable to a monotheistic perspective, and to emphasize this point we shall refer to the focus of his thinking as “God.”
The existence of God is not for Epicurus a matter of dispute, given its wide acceptance as an item of knowledge. But why should we fear God, given that our experience does not extend beyond the natural world?
Many suppose that a reason for concern is that God rewards the good and punishes the wicked. As Epicurus observes, however, this claim is not borne out by the available evidence. That “the greatest misfortunes befall the wicked and the greatest blessings the good” are “false sup positions.”
1 How do believers reply when confronted by this challenge? They are inclined to deny that we understand God. Such an approach, for instance, is taken by many commentators on the Book of Job. Their response to God’s unsavory bet with Satan is to deny that we comprehend God’s purposes.
For example, “the Book of Job teaches us that God’s ways are beyond the complete understanding of our little minds. Like Job, we must believe that God, who placed us in this world, knows what is best for us. Such faith in the goodness of God, even though we cannot altogether understand it, brings us strength and confidence to face our calamities, and sorrows and sufferings.”
2Here’s another instance: “The total mystery of God can be gleaned from the Book of Job…. [Job] cannot any longer allow himself to think of God as just or unjust, at least as these terms are understood by man. These categories have no meaning when applied to God.”
3The problem, however, is that if words do not have their ordinary meaning when applied to God, what do they mean? For example, if God’s knowledge has nothing in common with human knowledge, then, as the medieval Jewish philosopher Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides) argues, we might as well say that God lacks knowledge, adding the proviso that the term “knowledge” applied to God does not have the same meaning as it does ordinarily. In other words, once we allow ourselves to use terms without being able to offer any explanation of them, we might as well say anything at all, for none of what we say makes any sense.
Suppose, though, we use words with their ordinary meaning. Then we face the problem of evil, which in the following succinct formulation Hume attributes to Epicurus: “Is he [God] willing to prevent evil but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”
4One popular response to this challenge is to take refuge in the claim that God is unknowable. But this admission undermines the impact of the theistic position. To see why, suppose we reduce theism to its least controversial version, one that Hume in his
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion attributes to Philo the skeptic: “
the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.” Given, however, the vagueness introduced by the phrases “cause or causes,” “probably,” and “remote analogy,” the theistic position is robbed of significance. We are left only with Philo’s observation that theism so understood “affords no inference that affects human life.”
5This view is the one Epicurus espouses, when he says that “the impious man is not he who denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many.”
6 For if the theistic beliefs of the many are not true, if God is not properly described as just or unjust and if God exceeds human understanding, then why should divine matters be a source of anxiety?
You might as well tremble at a possible threat from a snark.
7 What is a snark? It’s nature is incomprehensible. Why, then, be frightened of it? Someone who dreads a snark but grasps nothing about any impact it has on us is unnecessarily concerned. Epicurus would say the same about anyone who fears the divine.
A near contemporary of Epicurus, living far away, adopts a similar approach. His name is Xunzi (pronounced “shun-see”), a Confucian scholar of the third century
B.C.E. He considers any belief in supernaturalism to be pointless because whatever “Heaven” may be, it is not concerned with human action and provides no rewards or punishments. Rites are not appeals to otherworldly forces but human inventions that ornament social life and serve as expressions of emotion. In his view, “You pray for rain and it rains. Why? For no particular reason, I say. It is just as though you had not prayed for rain and it rained anyhow.”
8 Xunzi’s rationalism strongly influenced the later development of Confucianism.
Many centuries later in the West, a similar position is held by those who are known as “deists.” They affirm the existence of God but find formal religion superfluous and deny all claims to supernatural revelation, thus providing no reason to look to the divine as a source of help or hindrance. Among the deists are Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson, an estimable group indeed.
In sum, to the extent Epicurus contemplates deities, he thinks of them, in D. S. Hutchinson’s words, as “in a state of bliss, unconcerned about anything, without needs, invulnerable to any harm, and generally living an enviable life.”
9 While we may pray to the divine, sacrifice to the divine, or worship the divine, the divine remains unconcerned about us. Why, then, be afraid?
