Philosophy

Epicurus

341–270 BC · Greek (Athenian citizen, born on Samos)

Epicureanism; Hellenistic philosophy

Epicurus founded Epicureanism, teaching at his school, the Garden, in Athens. He held that pleasure is the goal of life, but understood the highest pleasure as tranquillity of mind (ataraxia) and freedom from bodily pain (aponia), gained through simple living, friendship and freedom from fear of the gods and death. His physics, based on Democritus' atomism, was later set out in Latin verse by Lucretius.

How to spot them

▸The Garden (Kepos); ataraxia and aponia; 'Death is nothing to us'
▸Atomism inherited from Democritus, with the swerve of atoms (Lucretius' clinamen)
▸Letter to Menoeceus; Principal Doctrines (Kyriai Doxai); the tetrapharmakos or 'four-part cure'
▸Lucretius' De rerum natura as the great Latin exposition of his system

Key works

Letter to Menoeceus (c. early 3rd century BC)

Summary of his ethics: pleasure as the goal, sensible desires, and why death should not be feared

Principal Doctrines (Kyriai Doxai) (c. early 3rd century BC)

Forty key maxims of his philosophy, preserved by Diogenes Laërtius

Letter to Herodotus (c. early 3rd century BC)

Epitome of his physics: atoms moving in the void, and the mind and soul as material

On Nature (Peri Physeos) (c. 300–290 BC)

His 37-book magnum opus, surviving only in fragments, many from carbonised papyri at Herculaneum

Key ideas

Hedonism: pleasure is the beginning and end of the blessed life, but the goal is the absence of pain in the body (aponia) and of trouble in the mind (ataraxia), not sensual indulgence
Desires are natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, or empty (vain); satisfy the first, limit the second, reject the third
'Death is nothing to us': when we exist death is not present, and when death is present we do not exist
Everything consists of atoms and void; an unpredictable atomic swerve allows for free action
The gods exist as blessed, immortal beings but take no part in human affairs, so need not be feared
Friendship is among the greatest goods, and a quiet life withdrawn from politics is best ('live unnoticed', lathe biosas)

Quick-fire facts

•Born on Samos to Athenian parents; taught at Mytilene and Lampsacus before founding the Garden in Athens c. 306 BC
•The Garden notably admitted women and slaves
•His surviving letters and the Principal Doctrines were preserved in Book X of Diogenes Laërtius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers
•The tetrapharmakos summary (god is not to be feared, death is not to be worried about, the good is easy to get, the terrible is easy to endure) is transmitted by the later Epicurean Philodemus
•Lucretius' Latin poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things, 1st century BC) sets out his system
•Karl Marx's doctoral thesis (1841) compared the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus
•The 'Epicurean paradox' on the problem of evil is attributed to him only by the Christian writer Lactantius, and the attribution is doubted
•Despite the modern word 'epicure', he advocated a frugal diet and simple pleasures

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Sources

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Epicurus