The Epicurus quote, Part I

I am thinking of Poisedon, pictured here, in connection with a famous quote of Epicurus, often set forward by atheists in our day as an example of a problem that (in their view) afflicts theists. The quote offers a trilemma, a menu of three unpalatable possibilities.

David Hume weighed in, quoting a classic author: "Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered. Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? The he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

There is no surviving text of Epicurus saying some Greek equivalent of this. The near-contemporary biographers like Diogenes Laertius did not quote him saying it. Where did Hume get it? He was presumably summarizing the words from a Christian writer, circa 300 AD, named Lactantius. Lactantius was actually an advisor to Constantine, so he was there as Christianity became THE official religion.

Apparently the new official religion still needed to be defended from pagan critiques, so Lactantius wrote On the Anger of God. This included the following passage. Note that as Lactantius puts it, this is a tetralemma, not a trilemma. Four impossible choices, not the three (like the number of prongs on Poisedon's trident) left in Hume's summary. Lactantius' account of Epicurus' view allows for the possibility of a God who is neither able NOR willing. It was sensible for Hume to edit that bit out -- Hume was not purporting to offer a direct quote, and from his point of view, the four prong added nothing to the general line of discussion.

"That argument also of Epicurus is done away. God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? or why does He not remove them?"

How does Lactantius think he has "done away" with the argument of Epicurus that he cites here? That question is a bit of a digression, allow me to discuss Epicurus a bit more first.

The accepted dates of Epicurus' life are: from 341 BC to 270 BC. So about as far away from Lactatius' day as we are from Machiavelli. Epicurus lived in Athens, Mytilene, Lampsacus and Athens again late in life. I'm not sure whether in his time and place he acquired any knowledge of the kind of God concept that Lactantius assumed, and that Hume was later disputing, in quoting or paraphrasing him. Try substituting the word "Zeus" for "God" in either the Humean or the Lactantius text above. It strikes a distinctly odd note, that substitution.

Take a simple example of an evil: an innocent sea voyage interrupted by a storm, destroying the ship and drowning the voyagers. Maybe Zeus wishes to take away such evils and is unable. Okay, d'uh. That is Poseidon's department. Or maybe Zeus is able and unwilling, because he is envious (that Poseidon has a niftier gig?) or malevolent in Hume's formulation (perhaps ticked off because the seafaring party failed to make the proper sacrifices before they left port?). None of this would much dent the belief system of any believer in Zeus and company.

Nor do I think would it have bothered those who created key philosophic formulations that would prove to have great impact on theology by Lactantius' time and with which Epicurus WOULD have been familiar. Plato's Form of the Good? Was not all-powerful. Plato compares it to the sun -- part of the point of the metaphor is precisely that the sun's rays do not penetrate the cave in which most humans most of the time actually live. So, yes, the Sun is not 'powerful' enough to illuminate the cave and resolve the evils there. We have to get to the Sun by our own efforts. This is not an argument contra Plato.

Aristotle's unmoved mover? Very much like Plato's Sun in this respect. Its lack of power over our quotidian troubles is a feature, not a bug.

If Epicurus said something like what Lactantius and Hume attribute to him: with whom was he arguing? I'll speak more of these points soon.

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