David B. Suits

Hobbes argues that it is reasonable to institute government. But there is a problem with a main proposition in that argument -- a proposition that, in varying forms, has found its way into some contemporary arguments in favor of government. "Without government there would be anarchy and chaos" might be the modern equivalent. I argue that, on the contrary, a "state of nature" need not be a state of war, that people in a state of nature can with reason enter into and perform some kinds of agreements, and that, where some power is required in order to assure performance, such power need be neither absolute nor common over everyone.

In Book 3 of _De Rerum Natura_, Lucretius wonders whether it is possible that we could have a postmortem existence. But he can reject the idea of future (and past) lives for three kinds of reasons. (1) He has already presented arguments for the mortality of the soul. (2) The internal evidence -- our lack of memories of any prior life -- is against the possibility of past lives. (3) A third argument relies in part on internal evidence, but it adds a new consideration. At 3.847-861 Lucretius takes a kind of pragmatic approach, concluding that any hypothesis of multiple existences ought to be, like death itself, nothing to us. In this essay I apply Lucretius's insight to several isssues: recombination of atoms, rebirth, Nietzschean recurrence, and cloning.

The philosophy of Epicurus (c. 341-271 B. C. E.), has been a quietly pervasive influence for more than two millennia. At present, when many long revered ideologies are proven empty, Epicureanism is powerfully and refreshingly relevant, offering a straightforward way of dealing with the issues of life and death. The chapters in this book provide a kaleidoscope of contemporary opinions about Epicurus' teachings. They tell us also about the archeological discoveries that promise to augment the scant remains we have of Epicurus's own writing. the breadth of this new work will be welcomed by those who value Epicurean philosophy as a scholarly and personal resource for contemporary life. "Epicurus: His Continuing Influence and Contemporary Relevance," is the title of a 2002 conference on Epicurus held at Rochester Institute of Technology, when many of the ideas here were first presented.

There is an interesting parallel between Epicurus and C.S. Peirce that may be helpful to better understand Epicurus's notions of katastematic pleasure and ataraxia. Epicurus, like Peirce, is a fallabilist. Although there is no final guarantee of success, we can hope for a reliable method which tends to work for satisfaction. For Peirce, a condition of doubt is an irritation which ends in the satisfaction of belief. For Epicurus, a condition of pain is an irritation which ends in the satisfaction of katastematic pleasure. For Peirce, meta-considerations about the stability of belief lead us to reflect on the methods by which belief might be attained and fixed. For Epicurus, meta-considerations about the stability of katastematic pleasure lead us to reflect on the methods by which satisfaction might be attained and made stable. For Peirce, the method of science is offered as the most reliable of the methods. For Epicurus, it is prudence, or "sober calculation which searches out the reasons for every choice and avoidance and drives out the opinions which are the source of the greatest turmoil for men's souls."

One kind of attempt to defeat the Epicurean conclusion that "death is nothing to us" is the claim that death could be some kind of unexperienced harm. The possibility of such harm is thought to be made plausible by analogy to the possibility of unexperienced harm in life, and it has motivated the invention of many thought experiments which attempt to show that in life one can indeed be harmed without experiencing the harm or its effects in any way. But such attempts fail to weaken the Epicurean conclusion because they fail to appreciate that something which is taken to be an unexperienceable misfortune could, with equal warrant, be claimed to be an unexperienceable good fortune. Indeed, a more accurate claim is that what is unexperienceable is neither good nor bad, but only nothing at all. At the conclusion of the essay I will propose a Principle of Nothing which expresses the Epicurean lesson to be learned from these investigations.

How is it possible to respond emotionally to that which we believe is not the case? All of the many responses to this "paradox of fiction" make one or more of three important mistakes: (1) neglecting the context of believing, (2) assuming that belief is an all-or-nothing affair, and (3) assuming that if you believe that p then you cannot also reasonably believe that not-p. My thesis is that we react emotionally to stories because we do believe what stories tell us – not fictionally-believe, not make-believe, but believe in the ordinary way in which we believe anything at all.

What is life without passion? What would even a few years without emotion be like? This and some related issues figure prominently in "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers", and they raise in dramatic form some important philosophical concerns. Personal identity: The pod-people are "perfect duplicates" of the originals. What makes for personal identity? In the story, a person falls asleep and wakes up as a pod-person. Or is the original destroyed and replaced by a duplicate? Stoicism: Epictetus recommended an emotional detachment from the world, which is accomplished only by accepting the world as it is, being satisfied with what actually happens and not railing against the gods for making the world be one way when you passionately wanted it to be otherwise. Give up those passions; they pave the road to frustration. Would it be better to be a pod-person? Momentous Decisions: Conversion to podhood is irreversible. How can one reasonably make such a momentious decision? John Stuart Mill said that some kinds of life are better than others. A proper judge of two kinds of life is a person who has experienced both. But then pod-people must be the proper judges. Progressive Beings: For the pod-people there can be only a cold Cartesian “I am”, and never an “I yearn for”. Pod-persons are not progressive beings precisely because they are passionless.

In recent philosophical debates a number of arguments have been used which have so much in common that it is useful to study them as having a similar structure. Many arguments -- Searle's Chinese Room, for example -- make use of thought experiments in which we are told a story or given a narrative context such that we feel we are in comfortable surroundings. A new notion is then introduced which clashes with our ordinary habits and associations. As a result, we do not bother to investigate seriously the new notion any further. I call such an arrangement, which is perhaps a variation of the fallacy of presumption, a Steep Cliff argument. One remedy for the misdirection of a Steep Cliff argument is to tell a counterstory from the point of view of the rejected notion.

Smith's view in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is that wealth provides us with "more means of happiness", but not happiness itself. The arguments in his The Wealth of Nations leaves unanswered two moral questions: What is it to lead a moral life? Is justice served, or best served, by the free enterprise system? The eleven essays in this volume give us a better understanding of the complexities and subtleties of Smith's thoughts about matters of morality and about his relations with his friend David Hume, from whom he drew much of his moral theory.

The ultimate goal for Epicurean philosophy was ataraxia, which is peace of mind, or tranquility –- a life that contains no serious problems. Ataraxia requires above all the removal of certain disturbing fears found in most people and in most cultures: fear of the gods, fear of the afterlife, and fear of death. For Epicurus, justice involves a contract (or agreement or understanding) of mutual non-interference –- a contract "not to harm or be harmed". The social result would seem to be either a very limited government, or perhaps anarchy.

I am concerned primarily with Rawls’s idea of the contract device as a tool for generating principles of justice. In this paper I hope to make plausible the claim that the original position device presupposes a certain fundamental principle of justice. If I am right that rules are necessary, in the first instance, in order to avoid, as much as possible, “appeals to Heaven” (to use Locke's phrase), then have we not already hit upon a principle of justice? Certainly in the case of individual actions we now have such a principle. Let me name this the Libertarian Principle: Do not initiate force or fraud. But Rawls insists that the primary subject of justice is not individuals but rather the basic structure of society. Yet it seems that in merely setting the stage for considerations about justice, we have inadvertently stumbled onto a principle of justice, and justice for individuals at that.