Happy Twentieth! On the misfortune of the wise and the prosperity of the fool

Happy Twentieth of September! Some updates: SoFE has a new Instagram Feed and a new Books We Recommend section, and I translated the essay Epicurean ethics as a morality of self-care from Spanish. A new video on the Epicurean gods is the first in a new Tetrapharmakos series of videos. The second one is titled Death is Nothing to Us: The Epicureans on Death. We will be publishing many more educational modules. If you’d like to support the teaching mission of the Epicurean Gardens, please consider subscribing to my Patreon.

Jordan, author of the Modern Epicurean blog, published Epicurean Ethics Considered and Defended–a commentary on Toby Sherman’s thesis “Epicureanism: An Ancient Guide to Modern Wellbeing”. This is a summary of a thesis which aims to defend the Epicurean claim that the upper limit of pleasure is the absence of pain. Jordan says that “it’s a fairly advanced piece, and that one would need a fair grasp of Epicurean ethics before reading it”. One needs to understanding aponia and ataraxia, the distinctions amongst desires, and the difference between kinetic and static pleasure.

George Kateb has posted a video about Epicurean Thoughts on Death, and popular YouTuber Einzelgänger has posted a video titled How Epicurus Keeps Calm. Medium has published The Epicurean Guide to Happiness by Aushaf Widisto.

A new pamphlet has been added to SoFE: Epicureanism, a brief introduction gives a quick overview of the Four Cures.

In the essay How to not fear your death, the author mentions some of the Epicurean therapeutic teachings to heal fear of death.

Parts I, II, III and IV of the book review of Pyrrho’s Way: The Ancient Greek Version of Buddhism. In this review, I use a modern introduction and explanation of Pyrrhonic Skepticism to defend the Epicurean canon, and to explain the difference between Skeptic and Epicurean conceptions of ataraxia. Doug Bates–author of the book I reviewed–replied with an essay titled Epicureanism Versus Pyrrhonism. Overall, these discussions have been very productive and help students of EP to discern the difference between the two traditions and to understand the importance of the canon.

In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus says that the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. This is a radical statement, and I decided to attempt to unpack this. Vatican Saying 53 may help with this:

We must envy no one, for the good do not deserve envy and the bad, the more they prosper, the more they injure themselves.

The argument here seems to be that the ignorant to not know how to enjoy life. It can be dangerous for a person who is foolish or who suffers from mental health issues to have unlimited access to wealth, particularly if she’s not able to discern the limits of pleasure.

By now, we are all acquainted with celebrities who die an early death, or who fall into addiction. My first thought when I read about this has to do with people I’ve known who, upon getting money in excess of what they need, have spent it on unnecessary cosmetic surgery. One friend who did this was in his 30’s, was obsessed with his appearance, and at one point disappeared from social media and we did not hear from him again. He had been dealing with depression, and it’s common for depressed people to self-isolate, but in his case I always wondered if maybe he did the ONE cosmetic surgery that went too far and is now embarrassed to be seen in public.

I believe that the saying that “the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool” is, in part, a critique of the meritocracy myth. Perhaps others agree, or disagree. Let me know in the comments. But it is clear, from this statement, that not everyone who is wise gets prosperity and that not everyone who is foolish is also poor, and that the wise know what to do with their prosperity OR poverty whereas the foolish do not know what to do with either.

The meritocracy myth says that those who prosper DESERVE to prosper, and that they know better what to do with their prosperity than those who fail to prosper. While it is true that sometimes good people do prosper (and, presumably, do deserve to prosper), the Letter to Menoeceus and VS 53 remind us that evil people and foolish people may also prosper, and that when they do they often injure themselves.

One final point I wish to make is that this distinction between the wise and the foolish is key to understanding the Epicurean approach to moral problems, and how “justice” is not the same for everyone (as the Principal Doctrines declare). Prudence is important to Epicureans, and observing the behavior of people who lack prudence versus those who are wise is an important exercise. It helps us to understand that not everyone is equally deserving of trust, or equally capable of carrying certain responsibilities.