Epicurus

Bust of Epicurus

Epicurus (Epikouros or Ἐπίκουρος in Greek) (341 B.C.E., Samos Island|Samos – 270 B.C.E., Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of Hellenistic Philosophy. He taught that happiness was the ultimate goal of life, and that it could be achieved by seeking pleasure and minimizing pain, including the pain of a troubled mind. He also encouraged the study of science as a way to overcome fear and ignorance and thus achieve mental calmness. He set up communities which tried to live by his philosophy. The Epicurean school remained active for several centuries and some of its teachings strongly influenced modern thinkers, particularly in the areas of civic justice and the study of physics.

Biography

Epicurus was born into an Athenian émigré family; his parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, both Athenian citizens, were sent to an Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos. According to Apollodorus (reported by Diogenes Laertius at X.14-15), he was born on the seventh day of the month Gamelion in the third year of the 109th Olympiad, in the archonship of Sosigenes (about February 341 B.C.E.). He returned to Athens at the age of 18 to serve in military training as a condition for Athenian citizenship.. The playwright Menander served in the same age-class of the ephebes as Epicurus.

Two years later, he joined his father in Colophon when the Athenian settlers at Samos were expelled by Perdiccas after the death of Alexander the Great (c. 320 B.C.E.). He spent several years in Colophon, and at the age of 32 began to teach. He set up Epicurean communities in Mytilene, where he met Hermarchus, his first disciple and later his successor as head of the Athenian school; and in Lampsacus, where he met Metrodorus and Polyaenus, Metrodorus’ brother Timocrates, Leonteus and his wife Themista, Colotes, and Metrodorus’ sister Batis and her husband Idomeneus. In the archonship of Anaxicrates (307 B.C.E.-306 B.C.E.), he returned to Athens where he formed The Garden (Ho Kepus), a school named for the house and garden he owned about halfway between the Stoa and the Academy that served as the school's meeting place. These communities set out to live the ideal Epicurean lifestyle, detaching themselves from political society, and devoting themselves to philosophical discourse and the cultivation of friendship. The members of Epicurus’ communities lived a simple life, eating barley bread and drinking water, although a daily ration of half a pint of wine was allowed. The letters which members of these communities wrote to each other were collected by later Epicureans and studied as a model of the philosophical life.

Samos, Colophon, Mytilene and Lampsacus were all in Asia, and Epicurus actively maintained his ties with Asia all his life, even traveling from Athens to Asia Minor several times. This Asiatic influence is reflected in his writing style and in the broad ecumenical scope of his ideas.

Epicurus and his three close colleagues, Merodorus (c. 331-278 B.C.E.), Hemarchus (his successor as head of the Athenian school) and Polyaenus (died 278 B.C.E.), known as “the Men” by later Epicureans, became the co-founders of Epicureanism, one of the three leading movements of Hellenistic thought.

Epicurus died in the second year of the 127th Olympiad, in the archonship of Pytharatus, at the age of 72. He reportedly suffered from kidney stones, and despite the prolonged pain involved, he is reported as saying in a letter to Idomeneus: "We have written this letter to you on a happy day to us, which is also the last day of our life. For strangury has attacked me, and also a dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which arises from their collection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worth of the devotion shown by the youth to me, and to philosophy" (Diogenes Laertius , X.22, trans. C.D. Yonge).

In his will Epicurus left the house and garden and some funds to the trustees of the school. He set aside funds to commemorate his deceased family and to celebrate his birthday annually and his memory monthly. He also freed his slaves and provided for the marriage of Metrodorus’ daughter.

The School

Epicurus' school had a small but devoted following in his lifetime. The primary members were Hermarchus, the financier Idomeneus, Leonteus and his wife Themista, the satirist Colotes, the mathematician Polyaenus of Lampsacus, and Metrodorus, the most famous popularizer of Epicureanism. This original school was based in Epicurus' home and garden. An inscription on the gate to the garden is recorded by Seneca in his Epistle XXI, “Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.” Unlike the other Athenean schools of Plato and Aristotle, Epicurus’ school admitted women and slaves. Its members sought to avoid politics and public life, and lived simply, cultivating friendship and philosophical discourse. The school's popularity grew and it became, along with Stoicism and Skepticism, one of the three dominant schools of Hellenistic philosophy, maintaining a strong following until the late Roman Empire. Only fragments of Epicurus’s prolific manuscripts remain, including three epitomes (Letter to Herodotus on physics, Letter to Pythocles on astronomy, and the Letter to Menoeceus on ethics), a group of maxims, and papyrus fragments of his masterwork, On Nature. Many of the details of Epicurean philosophy come to us from doxographers, secondary sources and the writings of later followers. In Rome, Lucretius was the school's greatest proponent, composing On the Nature of Things, an epic poem, in six books, designed to recruit new members. The poem mainly deals with the Epicurean philosophy of nature. Another major source of information is the Roman politician and amateur philosopher Cicero, although he was highly critical of Epicureanism. An ancient source is Diogenes of Oenoanda (c. 2 C.E.) who composed a large inscription in stone at Oenoanda in Lycia.

A library, dubbed the Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum, owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, was preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 C.E., and was found to contain a large number of works by Philodemus, a late Hellenistic Epicurean, and Epicurus himself, attesting to the school's enduring popularity more than 300 years after his death. The task of unrolling and deciphering the charred papyrus scrolls continues today.

After the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity an official religion of the Roman Empire, Epicureanism was suppressed. Epicurus' theory that the gods were unconcerned with human affairs had always clashed strongly with the Judeo-Christian concept of a monotheistic God, and the philosophies were essentially irreconcilable. In Talmudic literature, the word for a heretic is "Apikouros". Lactantius criticizes Epicurus at several points throughout his Divine Institutes. The Epicurean school endured a long period of obscurity and decline. However, atomism contributed to the study of physics by scientists in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the humanists of the Renaissance took a serious interest in Epicureanism.

Teachings:Physics

Epicurus' teachings represented a departure from the other major Greek thinkers of his period, and before, but was nevertheless founded on the atomism of Democritus. Everything that exists is either “body” or “space,” and both are infinite. Space includes absolute void, without which motion would not be possible. Body is made up of tiny indivisible particles, atoms, which can be further analyzed as sets of absolute “minima.” Atoms have only the primary properties of size, shape and weight, while secondary properties like color are generated by combinations of atoms. Atoms are constantly moving at a rapid pace, but large groups of atoms form stable compounds by falling into regular patterns of movement governed by three principles: weight (natural movement of falling in a straight line), collision (forced movement resulting from impact) and a “swerve,” or random free motion. This “swerve” initiates new patterns of movement and prevents determinism. Our world, and any other worlds that exist, is one of these complex groups of atoms, generated by chance. Everything that occurs is the result of the atoms colliding, rebounding, and becoming entangled with one another, with no purpose or plan behind their motions. Our world is not the creation of a divine will, and the gods are seen as ideal beings and models of ideal life, uninvolved with the affairs of man. Epicurus limited the number of sensible qualities by making the number of forms of the atoms finite, and to prevent combinations of atoms form resulting in infinite sensible qualities he developed a law of universal equilibrium of all the forces, or “isonomy.”

The Epicurean Canon, or rule (from a work, “On the Criterion, or Canon”) held that all sensations and representations are true and are one of three criteria of truth, along with the basic feelings of pleasure and pain, and prolepsis (concepts, or “a recollection of what has often been presented from without”). It is only when we begin to apply judgement to these criteria that error can occur. Using these three criteria we can infer the nature of a remote or microscopic object or phenomenon.

Epicurus concluded that the soul must be a body, made up of four types of atoms and consisiting of two parts: one distributed through the physical body and able to experience physical sensations; and a separate part, the psyche, located in the chest, which is the seat of thought, emotion and will. Thin films continuously issue from all bodies and reach the psyche through the pores. Thought occurs when the images constituted by these films are perceived by the psyche. The psyche is free to continually seize only the images it needs from these films.

Teachings: Ethics

Epicurus’ philosophy is based on the principle that “all sensations are true.” Sensations that cause pleasure are good and sensations that cause pain are bad. The object of ethics is to determine the desired end, and the means necessary to achieve that end. Epicurus examined the animal kingdom and concluded that the ultimate end is “pleasure.” He defined two types of pleasure; a “kinetic” pleasure that actively satisfies the receiving sense organ, and “static” pleasure which is the absence of pain. Epicurus declared that“freedom from pain in the body and trouble in the mind” is the ultimate goal in achieving a happy life.

The modern-day terms “epicure” and “epicurean” imply extreme self-indulgence, but Epicurus was by no means a hedonist in the modern sense of the word. The highest pleasure, for both soul and body, is a satisfied state, “katastematic pleasure.” Self-indulgence and the enjoyment of luxuries may affect this state, but do not increase or heighten it. Instead, the effects of over-indulgence and the effort to accumulate wealth often lead to pain and vulnerability to fortune. Man’s primary goal should be to minimize pain. This can be accomplished for the body through a simple way of life which satisfies the basic physical needs, and this is relatively easy to obtain. Pain of the soul can be minimized through the study of physics (science) which eliminates fear and ignorance. Physcial pain can be far outweighed by mental pleasure because it is temporary, while the pleasure of the mind ranges across time and space.

Another important component of happiness and satisfaction is friendship. The world of Epicurus’ time was one of violence and war, and it was necessary to ensure security in order to achieve pleasure. Epicurus advocated avoiding involvement with public life and the competition of society, to “live hidden.” A system of civic justice is important as a contract among human beings to refrain from harmful activity in order to maintain society. This contract is not absolute, but can be revised as changing circumstances demanded it. In addition it is necessary to enter into a private compact of friendship with like-minded individuals. This friendship, though entered into for utility, becomes a desirable source of pleasure in itself. Epicurus said, “for love of friendship one has even to put in jeopardy love itself,” and that a wise man, “if his friend is put to torture, suffers as if he himself were there.”

Epicurus recognized two great fears as causes of pain and mental anguish: fear of the gods and fear of death. He advocated the study of science to overcome these fears: “If we were not troubled by our suspicions of the phenomena of the sky and about death, and also by our failure to grasp the limits of pain and desires, we should have no need for natural science.” By using science to explain natural phenomena, it becomes clear that celestial phenomena are acts of nature and not acts of vengeance by the gods, who are unconcerned with human affairs. According to Epicurus, the soul and body both dissolve after death. There is no need to fear death while we are alive (and not dead), and once we die we cease to exist and can’t feel fear at all. If we understand that pleasure is perfect at each instant in our lives, and cannot be accummulated, we can see that “infinite time contains no greater pleasure than limited time,” and therefore it is vain to desire immortality.

The most well-known Epicurean verse, which epitomizes his philosophy, is lathe biōsas λάθε βιώσας (Plutarchus De latenter vivendo 1128c; Flavius Philostratus Vita Apollonii 8.28.12), meaning "live secretly", "get through life without drawing attention to yourself", i. e. live without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, enjoying little things like food, the company of friends, etc.

The Tetrapharmacon, preserved by Philodemus, sums up the teachings of Epicurus: “The gods are not to be feared. Death is not a thing one must fear. Good is easy to obtain. Evil is easy to tolerate.”

Legacy

Elements of Epicurean philosophy have resonated and resurfaced in the works of various thinkers and movements throughout Western intellectual history. The Epicurean paradox is a famous argument against the existence of God. Epicurus was one of the first thinkers to develop the notion of justice as a social contract. He defined justice as an agreement "neither to harm nor be harmed." The point of living in a society with laws and punishments is to be protected from harm so that one is free to pursue happiness. Because of this, laws that do not help contribute to promoting human happiness are not just. This was later picked up by Rousseau and the democratic thinkers of the French Revolution, and by others, like John Locke, who wrote that people had a right to "life, liberty, and property." To Locke, one's own body was part of their property, and thus one's right to property would theoretically guarantee safety for their persons, as well as their possessions. This triad was carried forward into the American freedom movement and Declaration of Independence, by American founding father, Thomas Jefferson, as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Karl Marx's doctoral thesis was on "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature." [1] Epicurus was also a significant source of inspiration and interest for Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche cites his affinities to Epicurus in a number of his works, including The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and his private letters to Peter Gast. Nietzsche was attracted to, among other things, Epicurus' ability to maintain a cheerful philosophical outlook in the face of painful physical ailments. Nietzsche also suffered from a number of sicknesses during his lifetime. However, he thought that Epicurus' conception of happiness as freedom from anxiety was too passive and negative.

External links

• Epicurus.info - Epicurean Philosophy Online: features classical e-texts & photos of Epicurean artifacts.
• Epicurus.net - Epicurus and Epicurean Philosophy
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Entry for "Epicurus"
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Entry for "Epicurus"
• Epicurus & Lucretius - Small article by "P. Dionysius Mus"
• The Epicurean Group - Yahoo Discussion Group
• The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature - Karl Marx’s doctoral thesis.
• GardenofEpicurus.com - A Directory of Epicurean Gardens, FAQ, and information on how to become an Epicurean.

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