Epicurus on what the gods are (and why they shouldn't be feared)

Epicurus (341 - 270 BC) believed that an important part of living well was being free from disturbances. There are different kinds of disturbances: mental and bodily disturbances. For instance, some bodily pleasures cause us pain in the long run, like the way that a big meal might be delicious at first but bring more trouble over time.

We’ve explored in another post the way that false beliefs about death being bad can produce mental disturbances. Epicurus thinks that the value of philosophy lies, at least partially, in its ability to clarify the true nature of things and remove troublesome false beliefs.

Death isn’t the only thing that can disturb us if we have false beliefs about it. There’s also the gods.

Careful philosophical study reveals to us, Epicurus thinks, that the gods are blessed, perfect, and indestructible. But he is emphatic that we should not attribute to them what people normally do:

“The man who denies the gods of the many is not impious, but rather he who ascribes to the gods the opinions of the many” (Letter to Menoeceus §123).

Here, he is saying that it is not impious to say that the gods are not what the common person says they are; instead, it is impious to believe what the common people believe.

Still, he is confident that the gods exist: “gods do exist, since we have clear knowledge of them” (§123).

So, we are left with many questions here, such as:

Why does Epicurus think that the gods exist?

What are the gods?

What’s wrong with what normal people believe about them?

Once we understand the answers to these questions, we’ll see why Epicurus thinks that getting rid of false beliefs about the gods will resolve some deep-seated mental disturbances.

Epicurus believes that common people get this wrong: they think that the gods are concerned with human affairs, but they are not.

The gods are entirely indifferent to us and are so preoccupied with themselves that they might not even know that we exist.

Epicurus would never deny that the gods are powerful beings, but they simply don’t care about us.

Someone might say that it is not obvious why Epicurus would believe in the existence of the gods at all, then. Why not just be an atheist?

It is true that Epicurus doesn’t want to assign to the gods a lot of work. He is very clear, for instance, that he doesn’t think that the gods created the cosmos. They live entirely carefree lives.

But that doesn’t mean he would have been OK with atheism. Epicurus thought that the gods impressed a conception of themselves on everyone’s souls. The idea of the divine is just too widespread to be ignored or discarded altogether.

This captures some of Epicurus’ reasoning quite well:

“For what all men by nature agree about must necessarily be true. So one must concede that the gods exist. Since this point is accepted by virtually everyone, philosophers and laymen alike, let us admit that the following point too is established, that we have this basic grasp, as I said before, or preconception about the gods […] — that we consider the gods to be blessed and immortal” (On the Nature of the Gods I.44-45).

Everything in the universe can be explained by appealing to atoms, their properties, and what happens when bulks of atoms come into contact with each other. The gods don’t play any explanatory role — but they do exist, and we know that they do because everyone has an impression of their existence.

The blessed and divine nature that the gods have means that they can’t be the source of anyone’s troubles, even their own. That just follows from a correct understanding of blessedness and divinity, according to Epicurus.

This is a glimpse into Epicurean reasoning:

“What is blessed and eternal neither has any troubles of its own nor provides them to others, and so is subject to neither anger nor gratitude, since everything of this nature is weak” (I.45).

In fact, the very first of the Principal Doctrines of Epicurus is:

“What is blessed and indestructible has no troubles itself, nor does it give trouble to anyone else, so that it is not affected by feelings of anger or gratitude. For all such things are a sign of weakness” (I).

Epicurus insists that the gods can’t be the source of anyone’s troubles because he knows that beliefs that the gods are the source of people’s troubles tend to lead to mental disturbances.

In the ancient world, people were afraid of the gods. They were afraid of making them angry, of stepping on their toes, and of being wronged by them. There were many stories of diseases and punishments afflicted by the gods.

Today, fewer people would think of themselves as possibly being wronged by the gods, but still, many people describe themselves as god-fearing and avoiding things that displease God or the gods.

Epicurus has reversed one common trope about belief in God: instead of viewing God’s existence or interaction with the world as a source of hope and optimism, Epicurus sees it as a possible source of mental disturbances. We bother ourselves with the belief that God has preferences for how we live that he enforces.

Epicurus, therefore, argues that the very nature of blessedness and divinity prevents this from happening. The gods don’t care about us; they don’t intervene or busy themselves with us.

In fact, the gods aren’t being busy at all. It isn’t as if they are concerned with some non-human business; they are concerned with nothing at all.

That’s because, in this respect, Epicurus thinks that the gods are an example to us. They paint a picture for us about how we should live: totally carefree and peacefully.

So, it comes back to the idea of living free from disturbances. That’s the Epicurean ideal for us, and the gods model that for us. So, their carefree style plays two roles: 1. it models for us what the best kind of life is, and 2. it ensures that nobody should be worked up or fearful about the gods.