Happy 20th! The Parables of the Hunter and the Isle of the Blessed

Happy Twentieth to Epicureans everywhere! Some literary updates:

A new, English-language Friends of Epicurus Epitome is finally available (only on Kindle for now). Students of Epicurean philosophy in antiquity were known to carry epitomes to help them in their studies. Initially, they read the Little Epitome (Epicurus’ Epistle to Herodotus), and they later moved on to more advanced literature compiled into the Big Epitome. This modern Epitome by the Society of Friends of Epicurus (a non-academic fraternity of philosopher friends) contains Epicurus’ main epistles, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings with a thematic index and study guide.

We have a new video titled The Epicurean Tradition of Frank Criticism.

Catherine Wilson wrote an essay titled Why Epicureanism, not Stoicism, is the philosophy we need now.

SoFE also published the “Isle of the Blessed” portion of Lucian’s True Story, which is available in its entirety at Gutenberg.org. True Story has continued relevance to our generation because it is a parody and commentary on “fake news”, on popular resistance against empirical thinking, and on people’s frequent inability to discern truth from falsehood.

Continuing our study of the PD’s, our Friend Harmonious wrote the Parable of the Hunter, which eloquently illustrates the pragmatic repercussions of Principal Doctrine 5, and the essay On the utility of the Epicurean Gods gives a pragmatic encounter with PD 1.

Both the Isle of the Blessed and the Parable of the Hunter raise interesting questions for us. The founders of Epicureanism were adamant that disciples must employ clear speech in all communication. For instance, when discussing rhetoric, Epicurus made clarity the only requirement. This was meant to avoid the empty words, confusion and word-play of many other philosophers.

Colotes (a first generation disciple) argued that “it is unworthy of the truthfulness of a philosopher to use fables in his teaching“, but Lucretius–who wrote De Rerum Natura a couple of centuries later–would disagree. And so would many modern Epicureans: for instance, the Punctured Jar parable is one of the best allegories for understanding the salvific power of the words of true philosophy, as it was understood by Lucretius in the First Century.

Also, parables are a way to practice “placing before the eyes”, which is a visualization exercise used in Epicureanism in order to help us clearly understand the teachings. For this reason, I believe the Parable of the Hunter is extremely useful and powerful, and also that Principal Doctrine 5 requires “placing before the eyes” in order to be properly understood. This is because the Epicurean conception of justice is based on agreements, and the parable helps us to see a concrete example of justice in terms of agreements. It is easy to fall into the temptation to reduce justice to arbitrary notions like equality/civil rights or guilt/obedience, depending on whether we are influenced by modern social and constitutional conventions or sin-based/authoritarian religions. But even in a very simple society there can be justice based on mutual benefit and on agreements, as our Principal Doctrines teach, and it can manifest in something as simple as an agreement to hunt down prey for a tribe.

In Lucian’s Isle of the Blessed, on the other hand, we find a treasure trove of beautiful Epicurean imagery and allegory. Without losing sight of the original comedic intention of the author, and while still laughing and enjoying the work in its original context, we can still exploit and take pleasure in the myth-making powers of our mind for didactic and ethical purposes using the colorful and potent ideas that Lucian deposited in this passage of True Story.

If I, as an Epicurean Guide, was to make the Isle of the Blessed even more advantageous for the happiness of a student, I would point out that the Well of Pleasure represents our hedonic regimen, our easy sources of pleasure that we can draw water from time and again; that the Well of Laughter represents all the memories and experiences in our own mind that we can rely on to easily make us laugh and lighten up our day, so that it becomes a reminder to carry out the practice of laughter yoga; that the Seven Gates to the Golden City represent different ways in which we can “enter”, interpret or gain clear cognitive assimilation of the Golden Words (the Lucretian Aurea Dicta, which is to say, the Doctrines of True Philosophy).

I would go as far as to compare Lucian’s Isle of the Blessed with the Lotus Sutra in Mahayana Buddhism, in terms of the potential usefulness of its allegories. But there’s a difference. Buddhist upayas (“efficient means” used by the enlightened beings in order to save suffering sentient beings) are often excuses for the white lies of conventional religion, and a major theme in the Lotus Sutra. On the other hand, in Epicureanism our advantageous and efficient means to happiness may include parables, but these parables and their imagery awaken the seeds of pleasure in our minds without obscuring the clear, simple truths we gain from the study of nature.

Here’s another parable or metaphor to illustrate my point: Lucretius says that Epicurus, with his Doctrines, has conquered and tamed religion, and left it trampled at our feet. This is powerful imagery. We may read it in passing in De Rerum Natura without thinking much of it, but it amounts to a Promethean epiphany. It goes to the heart of Epicurean spirituality. The Hegemon has stolen the fire of religion and given us a tamed version of religiosity in the service of pleasure ethics, teaching us that religiosity must serve mortals, and never the other way around. Imagine what world we could create, if even 10% or 20% percent of mortals–rather than give up religion altogether and passively accept the nihilism of our age–woke up to the truths of this parable, and found religion trampled at their feet?! They would stop mindlessly projecting their power and creativity–and displaying (sometimes vulgarly) the unexamined content of their character in their projections–and they would maturely start taking full ownership of the content of their character, of their religiosity, of their speech, and of their spiritual practice. They would elevate religion to a form of art, following Epicurus’ and Lucretius’ example.

I said this in Tending the Epicurean Garden, and I’ll say it again: we should attribute to philosophy the same dignity that philosophy confers upon us. In order to clearly understand how philosophy dignifies us, parables like these ones are advantageous.

If you’d like to study EP with us, please join us at the Garden of Epicurus FaceBook group. You may also support us by subscribing to me on Patreon, or by buying our merch on our new SoFE shop.