SOURCE: Nichols, Jr., James H. “Conclusion: Lucretius and Modernity.” In Epicurean Political Philosophy: The “De rerum natura” of Lucretius, pp. 179-210. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1976.

[In the following excerpt, Nichols examines elements of Lucretius's thought present in the works of Thomas Hobbes, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.]

Of the Stoics, those famous rivals of the Epicureans, Nietzsche has written:

“According to nature” you want to live? O you noble Stoics, what deceptive words these are! Imagine a being like nature, wasteful beyond measure, indifferent beyond measure, without purposes and consideration, without mercy and justice, fertile and desolate and uncertain at the same time; imagine indifference itself as a power—how could you live according to this indifference? Living—is that not precisely wanting to be other than this nature?¹

Nietzsche goes on to assert that the Stoics by no means live according to nature; rather, they impose their own ideal on nature and demand “that she should be nature ‘according to the Stoa.’”

The main elements of this Nietzschean analysis of the Stoics are identical with the dominant contemporary view of the relation between our modern situation and the thought of classical antiquity. Our self-understanding is believed to face an unprecedented dilemma stemming from our knowledge that the natural universe is indifferent, without purposes and consideration, providing no support or guidance for human ends and aspirations; this knowledge is vouchsafed us by modern science. From this standpoint, ancient philosophy is generally looked upon sometimes with a regretful sense of loss (of assurance, or of innocence), and almost always with a sense of superiority. The ancients held a reassuring view: their philosophy was idealistic and they could really believe in it; nature was understood to be benevolent, informed with rational ends; and the natural universe was a rationally-ordered cosmos to which man belonged and in which he found a naturally-given place and hence guidance from nature on how he should live. Unfortunately, we now know better, and therefore cannot take seriously these comforting old views about man's relation to nature. Our astronomy has proved that the ancient conceptions of the whole were false, and our science of evolution has shown that man emerged from non-man by an accidental process, without direction from a purposeful nature, without fulfilling any naturally-given end. The contemporary view of ancient philosophy in regard to these matters tends to agree with Hobbes: “The natural Philosophy of those [ancient Greek] Schools, was rather a Dream than Science, and set forth in senseless and insignificant Language.”²

But the hopefulness, even exhilaration, that accompanied the introduction of modern science and philosophy, has by now been dissipated. The deepest contemporary response to the universe revealed by modern science is existentialism,³ the latest, or last, product of the development of the modern philosophy that arose in the seventeenth century. The dread, sense of forlornness, irrational will, and ultimate nihilism that constitute the core of existentialist thought provide ample motivation to seek other ways in which to understand our situation. Of ancient thinkers, Lucretius is the most accessible to us, precisely because his view of nature has the same fundamental features as our modern one. He is worthy of our serious consideration, because he articulates an altogether different human response to man's situation in an infinite, purposeless, natural universe: he accepts neither the mingled fanatical hope and abysmal despair of contemporary existentialism nor the hopeful projects of early modern philosophy. His reasoning leads to the conclusion that the best life for man must be led according to nature, unconsoling though his view of nature is. The Epicurean teaching is one of the fundamental philosophic alternatives.

When modern philosophy (including modern science) was emerging in the seventeenth century, it understood itself to be a new departure in philosophy and very consciously defined itself in opposition to the orthodox school that descended from Aristotle and Plato. In antiquity, Epicureanism had been the most powerful and radical opponent of Platonism and Aristotelianism, in most of its fundamental teachings. For this reason, Epicurus and Lucretius were widely read in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and were a source of inspiration in many ways for the new philosophic-scientific enterprise.⁴ The common ground shared by the new philosophy and Epicureanism is extensive and fundamental. But the new philosophy came to radically different conclusions concerning man's relation to nature, his self-understanding, and how he should live (especially in regard to politics).

Because Epicureanism and modern philosophy are simultaneously closely akin and radically different, I thought it appropriate to conclude this investigation of Epicurean political philosophy with a comparison of it to three modern political philosophers: Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. The purpose of this comparison is twofold: first, to highlight the fundamental elements of Lucretius' teaching by directly confronting it with ways of thought with which we are much more familiar; and second, to try to clarify the specific character of modern political philosophy by seeing where, and why, it parts company with ancient materialism so as to embark on a new project. This second purpose is perhaps the more important. For modern philosophy and its effects surround us so completely, like the atmosphere we breathe, that one can only with difficulty manage to discern its specific intention and character. But it is precisely such knowledge that we need, if we are to be able reasonably to judge the strengths and weaknesses of modern thought; for we desire neither blindly to accept nor irrationally to rebel against the thought that has produced our specifically modern world.

Hobbes agrees with Epicureanism on a wide range of fundamental views concerning nature in general and man's nature in particular. His conception of nature is nonteleological, mechanistic, and materialistic. He conceives of man as by nature an unpolitical being, without any natural inclination to seek his fulfillment in essentially social activities. The good for man manifests itself as pleasure, and evil as pain; like Epicurus, Hobbes views pleasure as essentially homogeneous—there is no natural hierarchy of specific pleasures. Finally, fear is what most needs to be overcome if man's lot is to be improved; fear of death, to the extent possible, through the new Hobbesian political order, and fear of powers invisible through enlightenment.

Hobbes disagrees with Lucretius, however, on a fundamental point: the conception of pleasure and happiness. Hobbes's view is not alien to Lucretius' poem, although it is not the view that Lucretius himself holds. Rather, it is the view that Lucretius ascribes to most men, as a result of his analysis of their passions and way of life. Hobbes simply accepts the view of happiness more or less consciously held by most men; his position on this issue is intimately connected with the primacy that politics takes on in his thought and the new expectations from politics that his philosophy offers.

Hobbes expresses this view of what happiness is: “There is no such Finis ultimus (utmost aim), nor Summum Bonum (greatest Good), as is spoken of in the Books of the old Moral Philosophers. … Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the latter.”⁵ This conception of felicity is identical with Lucretius' description of what most men do in fact seek in their lives. But for Lucretius, such an understanding of happiness is wholly unsatisfactory; a life of the sort described by Hobbes cannot lead to genuine satisfaction. For Lucretius, the way most men live so clearly fails to achieve true (pure) pleasure or full contentment, that the common notion of happiness must be radically criticized by philosophy; only thus can one replace it with an adequate view of what human fulfillment is. Hobbes's remarkable difference from Lucretius is that he adopts the opinion of the common man on this crucial question. Hobbes's philosophy is therefore fundamentally egalitarian. What is thus gained by Hobbes's teaching is immediately apparent: it can realistically hope to win broad popular support, for it can appeal to most men's existing passions. By contrast, Lucretius' teaching must somehow overcome the passions that dominate most men's lives if it is to win acceptance; and, in view of these obstacles, Lucretius expects only relatively few men to be persuaded. Accordingly, Hobbes's teaching can have, and in fact aims at, an unprecedented degree of political effectiveness. What is lost from Hobbes's teaching is equally apparent: the critical stance taken by philosophy in relation to common opinion on the most important question, the nature of the good life for man.

Given such a notion of happiness and the denial of a natural hierarchy of specific pleasures and passions, it becomes reasonable for men to seek ever more power, that universal means of obtaining the varying objects of the various passions. Hobbes therefore not only observes but accepts the “restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death.”⁶ And since the greatest of human powers comes from men's uniting together, politics, the commonwealth, assumes the greatest importance for man.

Hobbes takes a similarly different position from Lucretius' on the subject of fear. He does not try to show the way to freedom from all fear, or even from all fear of death; rather, he concentrates on the fear of violent death. He has two reasons for concentrating on this particular fear. The first stems from his adoption of the opinions commonly held by most men on goods and evils, pleasures and pains, happiness and misery. For most men the fear of violent death is the most powerful fear.⁷ To some extent, it seems to come about naturally that one's fear is most intense in the face of immediate danger of violence to one's body, and rather weaker in the contemplation of one's future death because of illness or old age. Perhaps more importantly, men can forget their mortality in the continual busy pursuit of pleasure and power, whereas an imminent threat of violent death forces itself on one's attention. Second, death itself is simply inevitable; but violent death caused by other men is potentially within human control. In regard to fear, too, politics therefore assumes primacy within the Hobbesian perspective.

The commonwealth proposed by Hobbes aims at securing man from the most terrible danger of violent death. But it cannot free men wholly from fear, because fear itself provides the basis for the foundation of the commonwealth. Fear reflects the real exposedness of man's situation and makes him amenable to reason, willing to make equal and reciprocal renunciations of right in order to institute a a sovereign power to protect the peace. In speaking of a commonwealth acquired by conquest, Hobbes says: “men who choose their Sovereign, do it for fear of one another, and not of him whom they institute: But in this case [of a commonwealth acquired by conquest] they subject themselves to him they are afraid of. In both cases they do it for fear.”⁸ The well-constructed Hobbesian commonwealth would mitigate but not expel the fear of violent death; in a peaceful commonwealth that fear would not be fiercely flaming, but it must still smoulder in order to remind men of the sound reasons for obeying the civil power; hence, too, it must not become weaker than other fears, above all fears of powers invisible and of punishments after death. On the importance of overcoming superstition, Hobbes agrees with Lucretius; his reason, however, is characteristically different: he is not primarily concerned with freeing our mind from vain fears and cares, but with getting rid of a potent source of sedition.

In short, Hobbes's political teaching aims at the fundamental Epicurean goal of security. But as political, that teaching aims at a much narrower goal in regard to relieving us of fear than the Epicurean teaching; as emphatically political, it is a goal in which most men must be able to participate. Hobbes seems to regard the Epicurean aim of fully expelling the fear of death (and therewith all other fears) as impossible; certainly, his political teaching requires what Lucretius seems to admit, that most men will always remain fearful of death.

Hobbes asserts that “there may Principles of Reason be found out, by industrious meditation, to make the constitution [of commonwealths] (excepting by external violence) everlasting. And such are those which I have in this discourse set forth.”⁹ A Hobbesian commonwealth would accomplish the fundamental purpose of defense and internal peace, but would also seek to procure “not a bare Preservation, but also all other Contentments of life, which every man by lawful Industry, without danger, or hurt to the Commonwealth, shall acquire to himself.”¹⁰ Furthermore, Hobbes presents a new conception of philosophy or science, according to which the purpose of philosophy is to procure ever more such contentments. He defines philosophy as “the Knowledge acquired by Reasoning, from the Manner of the Generation of any thing, to the Properties; or from the Properties, to some possible Way of Generation of the same; to the end to be able to produce, as far as matter, and human force permit, such Effects, as human life requireth.”¹¹ Or, in Descartes' more vivid statement, the speculative philosophy of the ancients is to be replaced by “a practical one, by which, knowing the force and actions of fire, water, air, stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us … we can employ them for all the uses to which they are proper, and thus make ourselves like masters and possessors of nature.”¹²

Hobbes foresees the possibility of everlastingly stable political peace thanks to the new political philosophy, and of an ever more successful conquest of nature to provide ever more contentments of life thanks to the new mathematical physical science; he is moved by this prospect to work for the hope of a continually improving life for mankind. The appeal of these hopes and this vision is easily appreciated; there is little of the bitterness or austerity of the Lucretian teaching. If nature is as indifferent to our well-being as depicted by Lucretius, why not conquer it to the full extent of our ever-growing power? If most men are tormented by fears, why not reorder our politics with the hope of reducing one of the worst of them? If most men are not satisfied with a moderate amount of external goods, why not put science to work providing an ever-increasing supply of ever-improving contentments?

For Lucretius, domestic political tranquillity and peace are surely good; in the beginning of his poem he prays for peace, so that he will be able calmly to proceed with his task. Material prosperity and the development of the arts are also good, up to a point; some minimum level is necessary for the existence of the leisure that makes philosophy possible. But these things, though necessary to happiness, are of wholly secondary importance. To attribute the greatest importance to politics and technology, to pin one's hopes on progress in these areas, is necessarily to turn away from concern with what is crucial for genuine happiness.

The turmoil of civil war, or the power of the political order, may of course lead to one's untimely death. But Lucretius takes the same position toward such danger as Socrates, who, in response to Crito's remark on the power of the many, said, “Would that the many were able to accomplish the greatest evils, so that they would be able to accomplish the greatest goods too, and all would be fine. But in fact they can do neither.”¹³ We must die in any case, and the fear of violent death is only one of our fears.¹⁴ Far more important to our well-being than the inevitably fruitless attempt to preserve our life is the search to understand the nature of things, our own nature, and above all our necessary mortality. Only then can one reconcile oneself, with full awareness, to the reality of the human situation; so that as long as the nature of things and the fortune of human affairs permit one to live, one may enjoy the pleasure of life unspoiled by more or less conscious gnawing anxieties. To strive with hopeful heart for political ends is to condemn oneself to mental anguish at each set-back in a project that must necessarily fail to attain what matters most. Above all, such vain hopes for security nourish an inner dependency on other men and on external events, whereas the austere self-sufficiency of the Epicurean strives for the essential element of happiness, which is within an individual's natural power.

The project of mastering nature to provide greater contentments of life would fall under a similar evaluation, from the standpoint of Lucretius. His argument is that, beyond the natural limits, the pleasures depend on the imagination; their range and variety are unlimited, but the genuine satisfaction (or the amount of pure pleasure) is not increased. On the contrary, the pursuit of unlimited pleasures is necessarily contaminated by a greater admixture of pains. Such a project, then, is founded on an illusion, a forgetting of the natural limits by which we are bounded. And the more the project advanced, the more dependent men must become (to avoid mental pains of deprivation) on more external goods and on other men. Worst of all, by enlisting philosophy in the service of unlimited desires, this project would drag philosophy away from its highest purpose: to show the way to the best life for those who are capable of it. Philosophy is the means by which men can free themselves from false beliefs, unnatural desires, and vain fears. Only through its austere recognition and acceptance of necessity can a man find genuine independence. To attain its end, philosophy must reject empty hopes, however broad the appeal of those hopes may be.

Montesquieu, in analyzing the causes of the decline of the Romans, states his belief that “the sect of Epicurus, which was introduced at Rome toward the end of the republic, contributed much towards tainting the heart and mind of the Romans.” He gives as evidence a letter of Cicero's recounting Memmius' corrupt political machinations and perjuries, the very Memmius to whom Lucretius addressed his poem De rerum natura.¹⁵ The accusation against Epicureanism made by Montesquieu is therefore twofold: the Epicurean teaching undermines men's attachment to the ancient republic; it corrupts their civic virtue. Moreover, having done this, it fails to persuade most men to live according to Epicurean philosophic principles; it fails to purify most men's hearts of excessive desires; for even the specific addressee of Lucretius' teaching remains governed by political ambition. Epicureanism harms a republic of the ancient type whose principle is virtue, without succeeding in reforming most men according to the Epicurean model.

In the Spirit of the Laws Montesquieu gives his highest praise to the government of England, a mixed regime (part monarchy, part republic) not dependent on virtue for its stability and prosperity. Men can be ambitious, factious, selfish; they can pursue comfort and wealth through industry and commerce. In short, they can pursue the things that vulgarized Epicureanism in fact led most corrupted Romans to pursue. But England, unlike Rome, is not led to ruin by this lack of virtue, by these selfish passions. The separation and balance of powers, the institutional structure, enable England to preserve liberty and to thrive nonetheless. In depicting England as a model worthy of imitation, Montesquieu points the way to how the political order can be made safe for vulgar Epicureanism instead of corrupted and ruined by it.

At this point, an elaboration of the distinction between genuine Epicureanism and vulgar Epicureanism may be in order. The genuine Epicureanism presented by Lucretius requires, as we have seen, a difficult transformation of ordinary opinions, concerns, and passions—a transformation of which few men are capable. On the other hand, because of its clear argument that pleasure is the good for man, and its clear rejection of ordinary opinions that restrain men, such as those of religion, Epicureanism can bring about an unintended effect. Without basically altering the passions of men, Epicureanism can free men from the usual restraints and undermine devotion to family and country. Thus it can tend to produce a way of life oriented toward unrestrained pleasure-seeking, without in any way purifying the character of the pleasures sought. The ultimately clear austerity, even harshness, of Lucretius' own teaching aims at reducing this undesired effect. Montesquieu on the contrary accepts this consequence and points the way to a political order that can safely flourish in the presence of widespread vulgar Epicureanism.

In these respects and on this level of generality, Montesquieu's purpose is in agreement with Hobbes's. But Montesquieu considerably broadens the scope of the fundamental Epicuro-Hobbesian purpose of freeing men from fear through politics. He includes, of course, Hobbes's basic concern with civil peace, with a strong and stable political order. But—like most of Hobbes's critics, most importantly Locke—Montesquieu is equally concerned with the fear that men experience of the very government under which they live. This fear is at its peak in a despotism, whose very principle is fear; Montesquieu—again like Locke—clearly fears that unmitigated Hobbesian principles would produce despotism. Certainly Hobbes concedes that his political order would fundamentally rely on fear, or, in Burke's phrase, at the end of every vista stands the gallows. Accordingly, Montesquieu investigates and reports favorably on various ways in which government can be moderated and limited: in this regard England seems to be a model. But a monarchy like France can also have much to recommend it, provided that intermediary powers such as the nobility remain vital enough to cause the monarch to govern according to fundamental laws.

Montesquieu's broadened concern with relieving men's fear leads him to be concerned with the mildness of government, with the sense of security that government can provide through the whole range of its operations. A harsh element remains quite apparent in Hobbes's teaching, with its emphasis on fear of the sovereign. Montesquieu, on the other hand, tries to lessen and to camouflage the political foundation of compulsion and fear. His emphasis on the political goal of mildness and humanity aims at providing a broader sense of security to the citizen than would exist in a Hobbesian regime. This sense of security would, within limits, bear some resemblance to the peace of mind that Epicureanism strives to attain. But this Montesquieuan political goal is something easily achieved, within the reach of almost all citizens; it does not require—is in fact incompatible with—the Lucretian contemplation of harsh natural necessity.

The clearest example of the broader scope of Montesquieu's, as compared to Hobbes's, attempt to reduce men's fears is the importance Montesquieu attributes to criminal laws, the mode of procedure in criminal trials, and the punishments inflicted. Political liberty in its relation to each citizen “consists in security, or at least in the opinion one has of one's security. This security is never attacked more than in public or private accusations. It is therefore on the goodness of criminal laws that the liberty of the citizen principally depends.” Montesquieu even goes so far as to say that “The knowledge that has been acquired in some countries, and that will be acquired in others, on the most sure rules to be held in criminal judgments, is of more interest to the human race than anything there is in the world.”¹⁶ Punishments inflicted tend to vary with the form of government. They are harsh, indeed ferocious, in despotism; they can be milder and still fulfill their function, in moderate governments. Extremely happy and extremely wretched men are harsh (Montesquieu gives the examples of monks and conquerors); a mediocrity and a mixture of good and bad fortune can produce mildness or sweetness (douceur) and pity. Similar differences are manifested in various nations. Among savages and people ruled despotically, men are cruel. “Mildness (douceur) reigns in moderate governments. When we read in histories the examples of the sultan's atrocious justice, we feel, with a kind of pain, the evils of human nature. In moderate governments, anything, for a good legislator, can serve as a punishment.”¹⁷ Montesquieu draws this conclusion on punishments: “Men must not be led through extreme paths; one must use sparingly the means that nature gives us to guide them. … Let us follow nature, who gave men shame as their scourge, and let the greatest part of the punishment be the infamy of suffering it.”¹⁸

It is very difficult to make general assertions about Montesquieu, because of the vast scope of his investigations into the whole range of political orders and the enormous diversity of causes related to politics. Nevertheless, it seems safe to assert that the central thrust of his teaching is to favor those governments which, while maintaining adequate order, inflict the least pain on their citizens and inspire the least fear in them. As Hobbes does, but more broadly, Montesquieu aims at an Epicurean goal transposed into the political sphere. Accordingly, he opposes despotism, harsh governments and laws, and extremes of numerous kinds that conduce to harshness and violence; he favors moderation, mildness, gentleness, and humane compassion.

The vast scope of Montesquieu's teaching and his refraining from presenting one universal doctrine of legitimate sovereignty are connected with this central concern of his. Men live in enormously varied situations—of climate, geography, livelihood. Man, “that flexible being” as Montesquieu calls him,¹⁹ has over time responded to these various situations by developing still more varied sets of habits, beliefs, ways of organizing society. To impose any one form of government, or to insist on one universal doctrine of legitimacy, is unrealistic, probably impossible, and if attempted would necessitate the use of terrible force. Such an attempt would produce the very evils that Montesquieu most wants political society to avoid. Accordingly, while he points toward possible improvements in the direction indicated, he does so in a very moderate and mild reformist way.

Montesquieu is nondoctrinaire, tolerant of—and even, it seems, delighted by—the remarkable diversity of human things. The successful pursuit of the political goal of minimizing fear and pain requires that one take full account of the existing situation in a political society and that one limit what government tries to do. In particular, the existing general spirit of a nation should govern lawmaking. “If in general the character is good, what difference do some defects in it make?” Montesquieu asks. “It is the legislator's task to follow the nation's spirit, when it is not contrary to the principles of government; for we do nothing better than what we do freely, and in following our natural génie.”²⁰ “One must not correct everything.”²¹ Montesquieu does not say this kind of thing, he insists, “to diminish at all the infinite distance between the vices and the virtues. A Dieu ne plaise! [God forbid.] I just wanted to make clear that all political vices are not moral vices, and that all moral vices are not political vices; that is what those who make laws that shock the general spirit must not ignore.”²²

By thus limiting the scope of laws and government, Montesquieu would make the political world safe for Epicureanism in another sense. A Montesquieuan government would make fewer demands, be less prying and pervasive, allow a greater sphere to private life than an ancient republic, a despotism, or a Hobbesian monarchy. Thus the garden of the Epicureans could more readily be tolerated in a Montesquieuan regime. The regime might even try to mitigate their hostile posture toward politics by providing support for thinkers, through academies, and perhaps seek to turn their reflection into paths more productive of goods for the whole of society. Through changes in both politics and philosophy, mutually beneficient cooperation could arise.

Montesquieu tries to extend the scope of the freedom from fear that a good political order could provide, and he points toward how this can be done with a minimum of constraint, with as little interference as possible with our natural inclinations. Lucretius found that political life was essentially characterized by compulsion and fear of punishments; of the introduction of laws that ended civil war he proclaimed: “Thence the fear of punishment stains the prizes of life” (V, 1151). Montesquieu does not claim that compulsion and fear can be eliminated; they remain always necessary. But, while accepting the fundamental Epicurean conception of the crucial role played by freedom from pain and fear in constituting happiness or pleasure, he tries to meet the Epicurean objection to politics, as much as possible, by limiting the scope of compulsory political laws, making their enforcement more regular and certain, and urging more humane punishments. It seems likely that Lucretius would consider the specific ways in which Montesquieu differs from Hobbes to be sensible political ameliorations. If Montesquieu's principles can produce adequate domestic political peace with less terrible punishments and with more limited interference in the citizens' lives, it is hard to imagine any Epicurean objections to the change away from strict Hobbesian principles. On the other hand, the softness, attractiveness, and mildness of Montesquieu's political teaching lead men even further away from facing the Lucretian truth about nature and human life than Hobbes's teaching does. In any case, the fundamental Lucretian objections that we considered in relation to Hobbes would also apply to Montesquieu's teaching. And many of these were about to find new expression through the powerful voice of Rousseau.

Rousseau's amazingly strong impact on modern political philosophy—and indeed on the beliefs and tastes of whole peoples—begins with a radical critique of the whole Hobbesian-Montesquieuan-Enlightenment project in politics. This critique is made partly in the name of virtue and of the needs of the political order, and as such harks back to the classical political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle: this aspect is the principal thrust of the First Discourse and of the “Dedication to Geneva” of the Second. The critique is developed more fundamentally in the name of the happiness of human beings in the Second Discourse—a writing that Rousseau called his boldest, and the first in which he fully developed the fundamentals of his system.²³ And in this particular work Rousseau is most obviously inspired by Lucretius: the analysis of man's primitive condition, and of the subsequent steps of development out of it; the character of prepolitical society; and thereafter the movement via disorder and violence to the institution by compact of political society with coercive laws—on all these points Rousseau follows the main lines of the Lucretian account.

One could sum up much of the most important agreement between Rousseau and Lucretius this way: Rousseau displays as much hostility to political society as does Lucretius, and for fundamentally the same reasons—political society is the realm of false opinions, unnatural passions, and aggravated fears, all of which are incompatible with genuine happiness, with natural satisfaction, with unspoiled pleasure. Man is originally independent, self-sufficient, with desires limited to natural pleasures. The development of living together with other men, the discovery of new things that seem to improve life, arts, and greater foresight—all these serve to destroy man's former self-sufficiency and to present limitless new objects of desire. The crucial interrelated elements in all this, for both Rousseau and Lucretius, are vanity or pride, a concern for and a dependency on the opinions of other men, an ambitious desire for superiority over others in wealth, power, and esteem, and in consequence the unlimited desire for things that are not by nature good, but are merely goods in the (misguided) opinions of others. Lucretius put the point this way: “Let them sweat blood, tired out in vain, struggling through the narrow path of ambition; for they are wise out of the mouths of others [sapiunt alieno ex ore] and seek things on the basis of what they hear rather than from their own senses” (V, 1131-1134). Rousseau states the same point this way: for a savage to understand why an ambitious man performs the toilsome tasks he does, “these words, power and reputation, would have to have a meaning in his mind, he would have to learn that there is a type of men who count the regards of the rest of the universe for something, who can be happy and content with themselves on the testimony of others rather than on their own. Such, in fact, is the true cause of all these differences: the Savage lives in himself, the sociable man, always outside of himself, can only live in the opinion of others, and it is, so to speak, only from their judgment that he draws the sentiment of his own existence.”²⁴

In a certain way Rousseau is an even harsher critic of political society than Lucretius, in that Rousseau paints a more attractive picture of the life of primitive men. They both agree that primitive man was strong, independent, limited in his desires, and without superstitious terrors. But Lucretius indicates real defects in that primitive state; men without clothing and fire might well be tortured by cold; they might have suffered violent death from some wild beasts; if they escaped with severe wounds, then ignorance of the medical art might lead to their death; and they might often suffer from lack of food. Rousseau, on the other hand, explicitly argues against each of these points, dwelling instead on the abundance of food provided by nature, on man's natural capacity to be a match for any animals, and on his natural health independent of any medical art. Hence for Lucretius the developments away from the primitive state have the character of a natural progression; whereas for Rousseau the changes require some unusual violent cause or accident.²⁵ Lucretius emphasizes the natural beginnings of all these later developments and hence leaves an impression of a continuity between the several stages of development, even though the final outcome of political society, as we have seen, is filled with unnatural desires, fears, and opinions. Rousseau emphasizes the completeness of the original state of nature, the absence of natural needs to move out of it, and the lack of any natural faculty (above all, reason, which for Rousseau is simply nonexistent in natural man) whose fulfillment must lead men out of it. Hence Rousseau ends up stressing the enormous difference, the “immense space,”²⁶ that separates the state of civil man from the state of nature. In consequence, the situation of most men in political society appears almost desperate, even worse for Rousseau than for Lucretius.

And yet it is Rousseau and not Lucretius who holds forth some hope of remedying the defective character of political life, who sets forth a project for the transformation of politics. This fact seems paradoxical at first, but it is in fact connected with the differences I have just discussed. The “immense space” that Rousseau sees between natural man and man today points to the perfectibility or malleability that certainly distinguishes man from the other animals. This perfectibility is “almost unlimited”;²⁷ the strongest indication of this is that natural man had none of the attributes that we think of as distinctively human, like reason. It therefore becomes possible for Rousseau to conceive of a radically transformed political order, in which man has been remolded and his passions reformed to make him a devoted and satisfied citizen of a fundamentally egalitarian democracy. The life of such a man would not be a return to the state of nature, but an imitation or likeness, though made of quite different elements, of the wholeness and satisfaction of life in the state of nature.

Rousseau's fullest discussion of what a happy life, resembling a natural one, might be for a man who lives in society is presented in the Emile. In the education for happiness set forth there, we can see Rousseau adopting most of the elements that constitute the Epicurean conception of happiness. It is not much of an overstatement to say that the Emile shows how to educate an ordinary man of no special gifts to be the equivalent in most respects of an Epicurean wise man. The key to how Rousseau can imagine leading an ordinary man to attain such a goal is the distinctively negative character of the education he proposes. It aims at preventing all the passions, prejudices, and fears that both Lucretius and Rousseau identify as afflicting most men in society from arising in the first place. This negative education depends on the Rousseauan notion, which both Lucretius and Plato would reject, that a man can live in a kind of natural ignorance without opinions—not having philosophic knowledge but not governed by false opinions either. Accordingly, a basic principle that guides the education is “Pas de préceptes!” (“No precepts!”). If a child is told what to do, he may wish to do otherwise and become angry and rebellious or deceptive; if confronted with commands, he may become servile, or ambitious of attaining a similar position of command over others, or both. In any case, he will come to care for the opinions of others and thus to depend on others for his happiness. Rousseau tries instead to educate him to be self-sufficient, with a real inner independence in regard to his passions and his judgment. For this reason, he is raised very much alone, so as not to develop the vain passions that arise from competitive relations with others. Without precepts, he will learn from experience of the whole world of things around him. He will not be overprotected from things, but through experience, some of it painful, will learn to accept the laws of necessity that govern the world. The culmination of this kind of education is knowledge of his place in the world, an independent judgment that relates things to his genuine natural well-being, and a healthy calm satisfaction in his activities and pleasures.

The Epicurean wise man must make great efforts, through philosophy, to free himself from the unlimited desires, false opinions, and vain fears that corrupt our happiness. The way of life that results from this difficult effort is according to nature, in that it is based on understanding and accepting the truth about the nature of things in general and our human nature in particular. Emile, by contrast, is to attain a similar state of mind easily, thanks to the negative education, without the need for extraordinary exertions or unusual capacities: naturally, so to speak. On the other hand, however, Emile's education is highly artificial. His environment is totally planned and controlled by his wise and far-sighted tutor; the education is even deceptive, in that Emile is unaware of this human control and thinks he learns only from simple experience of the things of the world. Accordingly, the life of Emile as educated is not natural in any usual sense of the term, but is very much the product of Rousseau's artful construction. Rousseau's justification for calling this education natural is that “it is necessary to use a great deal of art in order to prevent social man from being completely artificial.”²⁸

The amount of artifice, and the questionable naturalness, in Emile's education become significantly greater as Rousseau forms him more directly for life in society in Books IV and V. Rousseau's treatment of love is a particularly striking example, both in itself and in comparison with Lucretius. For the latter, as we have seen, love is an illusion: it depends on the imagination's endowing the beloved object with attributes beyond what is really there. This fact, together with the turmoil, loss of independence, and pain that love can cause, led him to teach that solid happiness requires overcoming the passion of love. Rousseau agrees with Lucretius on the character of love: love is “chimera, lie, illusion. One loves the image that one makes for oneself much more than the object to which one applies it. If one saw what one loves exactly as it is, there would be no more love on earth.”²⁹ Yet far from rejecting the illusory passion of love, Rousseau cultivates it in Emile and leads him to conceive an imaginary ideal of his future wife. Rousseau uses this imaginary passion to repress Emile's nascent sexuality and channel the resultant psychic energy into the development of other sentiments needed in social life, such as compassion. Through love, Emile is finally fashioned into a loving husband, deeply attached to wife and family, and thereby linked with society as a whole.

In forming Emile for happiness, Rousseau thus adopts substantial elements of the Epicurean conception, but abandons its austere insistence on the greatest possible self-sufficiency or independence and on facing the bare truth of our nature and situation without any illusion. This difference comes partly from Rousseau's political intention. Emile is formed to be a good citizen, if the character of the political community in which he lives makes genuine citizenship possible. Furthermore, as an ordinary man, he seems to need, in Rousseau's judgment, whole-hearted attachments to wife and family and active compassion for all his fellows, which are undermined by the Epicurean teaching.

In any case, Emile's happiness, while higher than that of most men, is less perfect than the happiness attained by Rousseau himself, as described in the Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Here Rousseau presents himself as solitary, resigned, without concern for anything outside himself. He has found a state of reverie in which he can experience the pure sentiment of existence. This state is so sweet as to provide compensation for all the human felicities of which misfortune or men's malice may deprive one; and in this state one is self-sufficient like God.³⁰ This final contentment of Rousseau is closer to the self-sufficiency of the Epicurean goal than Emile's happiness is. But it depends on imagination, dreaming, and illusion, rather than on the Epicurean contemplation, understanding, and acceptance of nature. Rousseau seems ultimately to find the austere Lucretian view of the whole of nature as unbearable for himself as it is unsuitable for Emile. Above all, Rousseau devotes none of his teaching to the origin and future destruction of our world, or to the eternal nature of which our world is but one short-lived production.

In the breadth of his investigation into the problem of human happiness, Rousseau is closer to the Lucretian understanding than Hobbes and Montesquieu are. He reopens questions about the difficulty of human satisfaction that the Hobbesian and Montesquieuan teachings had tried to solve or to exclude from the scope of political philosophy. With Rousseau, the grounds of man's attachment to society again become complicated and problematic; progress in science and the arts and economic development are called into question; the relation between philosophy or science and the well-being of society is once more understood to be tense. In elaborating these difficulties Rousseau sometimes expresses almost-Lucretian bleakness or gloom: “Always more sufferings than joys; that is the difference common to all men. The felicity of man here below is therefore only a negative state; one must measure it by the least quantity of evils that he suffers.”³¹ But in another respect, Rousseau is even farther from the Lucretian perspective than, say, Hobbes: his hopes for improvements in the human condition are still more radical. He believes man's nature to be more flexible, more malleable, than it had previously been thought. Through the agency of the imagination, man's passions can be reformed; and through this means Rousseau envisages possible changes in man's moral sentiments and political life that could produce significantly greater happiness. Instead of the calm Lucretian acceptance of harsh natural necessities, Rousseau offers new hopes: for ordinary men, a democratic society characterized by respect for the equal rights of all and by compassion; for the extraordinary man, a kind of dreamy bliss.

Much as the modern philosophers we have discussed share in common with Lucretius, and much as they differ one from another, all three share a hopefulness for fundamental improvements in man's lot that sets them apart from Lucretius. He cherishes no such hopes of truly important changes for the better. To look to politics for a solution to the problem of human happiness is necessarily, for Lucretius, to forget what is most important: a clear understanding of the nature of things and our place in it, so that our pleasure may be as pure, and our happiness as stable and free from anxious dependency on other men and on fortune, as the nature of things permits. To seek an improvement in man's estate through the technological conquest of nature is self-forgetting, impossible, and undesirable: self-forgetting because it obscures our real insignificance in relation to an infinite and eternal natural universe; impossible because that infinite nature, far from being mastered, will eventually destroy our world and all our works; and undesirable because it rests on a surrender to the unlimited desires of the imagination, which must instead be curbed for the sake of genuine happiness. To lead a better life requires a change in man himself; but for Lucretius this change must come from learning the truth and reforming one's passions and way of life accordingly. But because of the bitter aspects of the truth as seen by Lucretius, few men will come to know and accept it; it can therefore not be the source of a reformation of politics. As to any attempt to reform the majority of men through new works of the imagination, whether poetry or political ideology or religion, Lucretius rejects all beliefs that obstruct his highest goal of leading those who are capable of it to the fullest possible human happiness.

The hopes of modern philosophers and the projects in which they issued have produced enormous changes in the world, from which we have benefited in evident ways. Our political societies have provided an unprecedented degree of equal freedom for all, of comfort and luxury, and of power. Yet the goal of human actions, real happiness, seems as elusive as ever. Speaking of the illusions of love, Lucretius wrote that “from the middle of the fountain of charms something bitter rises up, which torments them amidst the very flowers.” Similarly, in the midst of the remarkable achievements of the modern world, dissatisfactions and anxieties abound. Even the most basic goal of modern politics, security, escapes our grasp. The continued development of applied sciences is, as Lucretius argued, inextricably connected with the development of ever more terrible weapons of war. In consequence, a nation's defense depends on new scientific discoveries, which as such are essentially unpredictable; and political security is therefore no less dependent on chance than it ever was. The whole project of conquering nature for the relief of man's estate is running so much more obviously with each passing year into limits imposed by nature, that one can only wonder whether it will be the exhaustion of resources, or the increase of pollution, or the growth of population, that will first put a stop to it. Finally, the other aspect of the basic goal of security, domestic political tranquillity, is anything but assured. Despite our freedom and wealth, dissatisfaction is widespread and deepening into demoralization; crimes increase, and the order of society threatens to break down into chaos.

These considerations are perhaps sufficient to enable us to give serious, that is, truly open-minded, consideration to the possibility that the Lucretian analysis of human happiness is correct. From his standpoint, the goals aimed at by modern political philosophy are of decidedly secondary importance, and can become our central concern only if we forget our true nature and situation. Above all, the hopes of modern political philosophy involve forgetting the relevance of eternity to our understanding of our own situation. Whereas the moderns are silent on the end of our world, and on the brevity of our world's duration, this consideration is ever present in Lucretius' mind. What is crucial for our well-being is the health of our souls, without which all external goods are spoiled and worthless. The health of our souls requires knowledge, and calm acceptance, of our natural limits, that is, knowledge of our place within nature. This nature is eternal: it infinitely preceded, and will forever outlast, not only each of us but our entire world. We can understand our own nature and truly evaluate the meaning of our life and of all that concerns us, only in the light of knowledge of this infinite and eternal natural universe. Fullness of satisfaction unspoiled by foolish cares is possible only for him who can contemplate nature, and his place in it, with a peaceful mind.

This Lucretian teaching is not a program for political action, and on this account it tends to make us uneasy. Because it tries to show how an individual can attain happiness for himself and asserts that an individual can only attain happiness for himself, it seems selfish, and we may feel guilty about taking it seriously. Needless to say, such feelings could not justify failing to examine adequately a fundamental philosophic alternative. Furthermore, if the Lucretian understanding is essentially true, it would teach us something important about politics. By analyzing the complexity and difficulty of attaining genuine human happiness without false beliefs and empty hopes, Lucretius enables us to see the limits of what politics can achieve for men. This insight in turn could aid us to abandon unreasonable expectations and demands from our political communities. Reasonably lowered expectations might contribute not only to our private contentment but to the well-being of the political community as well.

Notes

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, tr. W. Kaufmann (New York, 1966) aph. 9.

2. Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 46, p. 686.

3. The connection between existentialism and the modern view of nature is very interestingly discussed by Jonas in “Epilogue: Gnosticism, Nihilism and Existentialism” in The Gnostic Religion, pp. 320-340, and by Karl Löwith in Nature, History, and Existentialism (Evanston, 1966), especially chapters 2 and 6.

4. The following works help to show the diffusion and influence of Epicureanism: Hadzits, Lucretius and His Influence; John S. Spink, French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire (London, 1960); C.-A. Fusil, “Lucrèce et les philosophes du XVIII^e siècle” in Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 35 (1928), 194-210, and “Lucrèce et les littérateurs, poètes et artistes du XVIII^e siècle,” ibid., 37 (1930), 161-176; Norman W. DeWitt, Epicurus and His Philosophy (Minneapolis, 1954), esp. pp. 8 and 35.

5. Leviathan, chap. 11, p. 160.

6. Leviathan, p. 161.

7. This assertion must be qualified by consideration of the fact, noted by Hobbes as well as by Lucretius, that fear of powers invisible, and still more fear of eternal torments in hell, can be stronger than fear of violent death. But Hobbes tries through his teaching to solve the problem posed by such fears.

8. Leviathan, chap. 20, p. 252.

9. Leviathan, chap. 30, p. 378.

10. Chap. 30, p. 376.

11. Chap. 46, p. 682.

12. Descartes, Discourse on Method, pt. VI, para. 2.

13. Plato, Crito 44D.

14. Epicurus, Principal Doctrines XIII: “It would be no advantage to provide security from human beings, if we look with suspicious fear on the things aloft and under the earth and generally in the infinite.”

15. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, tr. D. Lowenthal (Ithaca, N.Y., 1968), chap. 10, pp. 97-98.

16. Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois, 2 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1961), bk. XII, chap. 2 (I, 197).

17. Bk. VI, chap. 9 (I, 89).

18. Bk. VI, chap. 12 (I, 91).

19. Preface, p. 2.

20. Bk. XIX, chap. 5 (I, 319-320).

21. Bk. XIX, chap. 6, title (I, 320).

22. Bk. XIX, chap. 11 (I, 323).

23. Oeuvres complètes I, 388, and 407.

24. Oeuvres complètes; III, 193.

25. René Hubert, discussing the accidental external circumstances that lead to man's development, makes a fascinating suggestion: “c'est presque, transporté sur le terrain social, le clinamen épicurien” (“It is almost the Epicurean clinamen [random swerve of the atoms] carried over into the social realm”), Rousseau et l'Encyclopédie (Paris, 1928), p. 95.

26. Oeuvres complètes, III, 192.

27. Oeuvres complètes, III, 142.

28. Oeuvres complètes, IV, 640.

29. Oeuvres complètes, IV, 656.

30. Oeuvres complètes, I, 1047.

31. Oeuvres complètes, IV, 303.