Epicurus & Apikorisim: The Influence of the Greek Epicurus and Jewish Apikorsim on Judaism

Edd Doerr reviews: Epicurus & Apikorisim: The Influence of the Greek Epicurus and Jewish Apikorsim on Judaism, by Yaakov Malkin. Milan Press, 173 pp, $16.80.

Apikorsim is the Hebrew word for heretics (apikorsut = heresy). The word is evidently derived from the name of the Greek philosopher Epicurus  (341-270 BCE), whose ideas spread throughout the Hellenic world, including what we call the Middle East, after the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE). Epicurus rejected the idea of divine providence and personal immortality. Malkin writes that Epicurus may well have influenced the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, one reason why many early Jewish religious authorities did  not want it included in the canon. Epicureanism, not to be confused with hedonism, was passed along by the great Roman writer Lucretius (95-55 BCE) and influenced secular Jewish thought, and even liberal Muslim thought, for centuries, extending all the way to the Dutch/Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), a precursor of modern Humanism, and such influential thinkers as John Locke and David Hume.

Israeli scholar Yaakov Malkin makes the point that “an individual or society can improve its quality of life by adopting the principle that happiness as its ultimate goal, as did the founders of the United States of America – the only state in the world to establish the Epicurean principle of ‘pursuit of happiness’ as a bedrock of all legislation and public policy. The inclusion of this idea in the American Declaration of Independence can be traced to Thomas Jefferson, who was a declared Epicurean.”  Malkin writes that the Deism of Jefferson and his generation was essentially an Epicureanism in which the word “God” was largely code for “Nature”.

Among Malkin’s insights is this: “Capitalism driven by hedonism, consumerism and globalization is generally not restrained by the principles of social justice and legislation based upon them. One of the exceptions to this rule is the state of affairs in Scandinavia, where there is no uncontrolled population growth, and where egalitarian (between men and women) democracy has succeeded in implementing policies based on a free-market economy and social legislation. In countries and regions suffering from population explosion, the suffering of the masses simply increases, while their ‘kleptocracies’ (as termed by Saul Bellow), are the main beneficiaries of financial aid from the world’s rich countries.” (We might note that the Norwegian Humanist Association, the Norsk HumanEtisk Forbund, is the largest Humanist organization in the world in terms of both numbers and percentage of national population.)

Malkin’s book was published in 2007, but, regrettably, my library is so full that I just got around to reading it. The book, incidentally, is dedicated to my late good friend Rabbi Sherwin Wine, the founder of the modern Humanistic Judaism movement and co-founder of Americans for Religious Liberty.

Interestingly, Malkin’s views on the importance and influence of Epicurus and Epicureans are very close to those of Matthew Stewart, whose excellent 2014 book Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic (Norton, 566 pp), I reviewed in the most recent Americans for Religious Liberty journal, Voice of Reason No. 128, accessible at arlinc.org.

What would David Hume Say?

By Gary Berg-Cross

Recently on Bill Maher's Real Time show Keith Olbermann and he engaged in a skit yelling at an unhearing "typical Republican voter" who was encased in a plastic bubble. It makes the point that some Republicans seem disconnected from reality and have their own set of facts. They are seemingly in denial about popular political topics like taxes. The fact is that taxes are at their lowest level in 50 years and that we’ve had relative prosperity with higher rates. They seem to be forgetful and are ahistorical at times, which can make conversation difficult.

They chose not to dwell on the fact that their hero Ronald Reagan raised taxes. They will claim that Obama’s stimulus did not create jobs. This ignores the Congressional Budget Office statement the stimulus created 1 million to 2.9 million jobs in one quarter alone. On climate change they will focus on one or two stats or a scandal and ignore the big picture. Instead they have beliefs that tie to things that seem like flat facts but are not exactly true in context. One example is the Fox news repeated claim as part of the fairness issue that “51% of Americans pay no federal taxes truths.” Well yes, but many of these are elderly and living on unemployment. Others earn less than $20,000 a year and do have payroll deductions.

These type of things are more misleading than true of untrue because they uses slippery categories. They would not pass David Hume’s principles of formalization concepts or based on observations. Long ago Hume warned that many bits of speech pretend to be knowledge, but in fact are part of metaphysical bubbles. He put it this way:

“When we feel compelled to peruse the stacks in libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion! (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg [Hackett Publishing Company, 1993])

Describing Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme" that will vanish for people in their 30s and 40s is one of those grey, slippery statements perhaps generated by ideology more than facts. Social Security is not a fraudulent criminal enterprise designed only to benefit current participants in the program or some wicked set of government officials that want to personally profit from it. The scheme idea ignores Social Security’s reality as a legitimate government program with a proven record and an intent to serve both current and future generations of retirees. The New York Times did some fact checking on this subject and stated that:

“Government projections have Social Security exhausting its reserves by 2037, absent any changes, but show that the payroll tax revenues coming in would cover more than three-quarters of benefits to recipients then.”

There’s lots that Hume would commit to the flames in today’s news stream of talking points. It is perhaps a legacy of modernity to be too far from the Enlightenment to remember to use some of its sounder principles such as critical thinking and respect for testable facts.