Vatican Saying 45

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Template:Vatican Saying 45


This Saying extolls the virtues of those who (like, e.g. any conscientious Epicurean) delve into the "study of nature". There is no doubt that by this study Epicurus meant not physiology in the abstract, but his own, characteristic alloy of part natural science, part ethics.

This sort of study, Epicurus tells us, does not make people boastful; with this remark, he may have meant an oblique attack on Aristoteleans, who never missed an opportunity to exhibit their encyclopedic knowledge. Epicurus himself shunned this sort of "academic" knowledge, considering it useless insofar as it did not serve his knowledge-as-medicine requirement, i.e. as long as it did not lead along the path to ataraxia.

Nor does the study of nature make people "work out their voices" on the public forum. Unlike philosophers who assumed a higher profile and preached to the masses, or who entered into arguments with others at the Agora, Epicurus preferred the quiet confines of his Garden, where others would approach him by their own consent. Indirectly, this is an advice to all Epicureans that they share their beliefs quietly, non-combatively, among like-minded friends.

Epicurus also shows his familiar disdain towards "culture", the sort of education that is so ardently fought over by the many, the sort of education that well-born Athenians had been taught to revere and strive for ever since their birth. Again, the implicit doubt that Epicurus injects into what would have been an uncontestable worship of "high" culture is whether a cultured person, however admired by others, is in fact a happier one, one more at peace with oneself.

Instead, the study of nature makes people "serious", void of any affectation, and self-sufficient. They are so because they attach far more importance to their "own goods" (by which Epicurus must surely have meant that they rest assured on their beliefs regarding nature, and their place within it) rather than to "things" (by which Epicurus probably meant extraneous, circumstantial things, such as the admiration of others, one's public image).

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