The Epicurean Philosophy Notes

The Epicurean The foundations of the two major new schools of the Hellenistic era, the Epicureans and the Stoics, were laid simultaneously. Within a few years of each other, its founders, Epicurus and Zeno, established themselves as the leaders of their respective sects in Athens. They were born about the same time. Therefore, the first thing to think about is flavor. I'll start with the Epicureans as its founder set his beliefs once and for all, although Stoicism developed over a longer period of time and reached the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the year AD. 180. The primary source of Epicurus's biography is the third-century A.D. historian Diogenes Laertius. However, there are two issues: first, Diogenes Laertius is willing to accept legends that have little to no historical significance; second, a portion of his Life is devoted to summarizing the scandalous charges made against Epicurus by the Stoics, and it isn't always clear if he is making an original claim or merely bringing up a libel. The scandals that the Stoics concocted are facts about them, something to keep in mind when their high moral standards are extolled; they are not facts about Epicurus. Diogenes, for example, quotes Bailey as saying that there was a legend that his mother was a quack priestess: * "If there is any truth in the story that he went about with his mother as an acolyte, reciting the formulae of her incantations, he may well have been inspired in quite early years with the hatred of superstition, which was afterwards so prominent a feature in his teaching." This theory is appealing, but, given the extreme unscrupulousness of later antiquity in fabricating a scandal, I do not think it can be accepted as having any basis. * The fact that he had an exceptionally deep regard for his mother works against it. Nonetheless, the major details of Epicurus's life appear to be reasonably certain. Epicurus was born between 342-131 B.C., however it is unclear if he was born in Attica or Samos. His father was a poor Athenian colonist on Samos. Either way, he spent his childhood in Samos. He claims that around the age of fourteen, he began studying philosophy. Around the time of Alexander's death, in 322 B.C., Alexander, then eighteen years old, traveled to Athens ostensibly to secure his citizenship. However, while he was gone, the Athenian colonists were driven out of Samos. Epicurus found his family in Asia Minor, where they had fled as refugees. At Taos, he received philosophical instruction from a man named Nausiphanes, who seemed to be a disciple of Democritus, perhaps during this period or one previously. Though he owes Democritus more than any other philosopher for his developed philosophy, he never showed anything but disdain for Nausiphanes, the man he referred to as "The Mollusc." He established his school in 311 and it was initially located in Mitylene, then in Lampsacus, and from 307 onwards in Athens, where he passed away in 270–1 B.C. His life in Athens was peaceful after the difficult years of his boyhood, disrupted mainly by his poor health. He lived in a house with a garden (that looked to be apart from the house), and he taught in the garden. His three brothers and a few others had attended his school from the beginning, but in Athens, his group grew to include friends and their offspring, slaves, and hetaerae in addition to philosophic pupils. His adversaries wrongly, it seems, turned these last into a scandalous event. He was exceptionally gifted at fostering simple human friendships, and he enjoyed writing sweet letters to neighborhood kids. His writings are remarkably spontaneous and unaffected; he did not exhibit the dignity and restraint that was required of ancient philosophers while expressing their feelings. The community's way of life was quite straightforward, in part due to financial constraints and, no doubt, in principle. Bread and water were the major foods and beverages they consumed, which Epicurus thought to be exceedingly filling. The group was financially dependent, at least in part, on voluntary donations. "I am thrilled with pleasure in the body," he adds, "when I live on bread and water, and I spit on luxurious pleasures, not for their own sake, but because of the inconveniences that follow." He writes to another friend, "Send us offerings for the sustenance of our holy body on behalf of yourself and your children," and again, "The only contribution I require is that which—ordered the disciples to send me, even if they be among the Hyperboreans." "Send me some preserved cheese so that when I like, I may have a feast," he writes. I ask that everyone of you give me two hundred and twenty drachmae* a year, no more. Epicurus endured poor health his whole life, but he learned to bear it with amazing resilience. He was the first to argue that a man might be content while working as a racketeer, not a Stoic. He had some validity for this perspective, as evidenced by two letters he wrote: one on the day of his death and the other a few days prior. In the first, it states: "The stoppage became complete seven days prior to writing this, and I experienced pains like men nearing their last day." The second reads, "On this truly happy day of my life, as I am at the point of death, I write this to you. Do you look after the children of Metrodorus for four or five years, but do not spend any more on them than you now spend on me if anything happens to me?" The illnesses that I have in my stomach and bladder are progressing as planned, not less severe than normal, yet despite everything, I am filled with happiness when I think back on our chats. As one might anticipate from your childhood commitment to me and philosophy, do you take excellent care of Metrodorus's children? Metrodorus was one of Epicurus's first pupils, and after his death, he left a will that provided for his children. While Epicurus was generally fair and kind with others, his interactions with philosophers— particularly those he may be deemed obligated to—showed a distinct side of his personality. "I assume that these critics will consider me to be a follower of The Mollusc (Nausiphanes) and that I attended his lessons alongside a few boisterous young people," he remarks. * He never acknowledged the extent of his debt to Democritus, and as for Leucippus, he claimed that there was no such philosopher—meaning, no doubt, that there was a man, but that the man was not a philosopher. For indeed, the fellow was a bad man, and his habits such as could never lead to wisdom. Diogenes Laertius lists several derogatory terms that he is said to have used against the most notable of his forebears. This callous disregard for the opinions of other philosophers is accompanied by another serious flaw: authoritarian dogmatism. His adherents were forbidden from challenging his beliefs and were required to memorize a sort of credo that embodied them. None of them changed or contributed anything in the end. Lucretius contributed, as far as can be assessed, nothing theoretical to the master's teachings when, two centuries later, he transformed the philosophy of Epicurus into poetry. Lucretius closely agrees with the original wherever comparison is available, and it is generally accepted that he may be utilized elsewhere to fill in the knowledge gaps left by the loss of all three hundred volumes written by Epicurus. save for a few letters, a few fragments, and a statement of "Principal Doctrines," nothing exists of Epicurus's writings. Like all the philosophers of his day (save for Scepticism), the major goal of Epicurus' philosophy was to ensure peace. He believed that pleasure was the good, and he remarkably consistently followed all the implications of this belief. "The beginning and the root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; even wisdom and culture must be referred to this," he said, quoting Diogenes Laertius as saying in a book on The End of Life. "I know not how I can conceive the good, if I withdraw the pleasures of taste and withdraw the pleasures of love and those of hearing and sight." We are also told that the pleasure of the mind is the contemplation of pleasures of the body. The sole benefit it has over physical pleasures is that we can train our minds to focus on pleasure instead of suffering, giving us greater control over mental rather than physical pleasures. "Virtue" is a meaningless term unless it refers to "prudence in the pursuit of pleasure." For instance, justice is acting in a way that prevents one from having cause to dread the wrath of other people. This perspective gives rise to an explanation of society's origins that is similar to the Social Contract idea. Regarding the distinction between dynamic and static, or active and passive, pleasures, Epicurus differs from some of his hedonist forebears. Dynamic joys come from achieving a goal after suffering in order to reach the initial objective. Static pleasures are characterized by an equilibrium that arises from the type of condition that they are. activities that, in its absence, would be desirable. It is possible, in my opinion, to distinguish between a dynamic and static pleasure when hunger is being filled and the quiescence that follows when it is fully satiated. Between the two types, Epicurus believes it would be wiser to follow the second as it is pure and doesn't rely on suffering to pique desire. Since pain does not exist in an equilibrium condition of the body, we should strive for equilibrium and peaceful pleasures rather than more intense ones. It appears that Epicurus would like to constantly remain in the position of having eaten modestly rather than having a ravenous urge to eat, if that were even possible. As a result, he begins to view the wise man's objective as the absence of suffering rather than the presence of pleasure. * Although the stomach is often blamed for problems, Epicurus lived off of bread and occasionally indulged in cheese on feast days since the agony of stomach aches outweighed the joys of gluttony. Desires like riches and honor are pointless as they drive an individual to become restless when they may be satisfied. Philosophy, as he saw it, was a practical system meant to insure a happy existence; it required simply common sense, not logic or mathematics or any of the rigorous training advocated by Plato. "The greatest good of all is prudence: it is a more precious thing even than philosophy." As a natural outgrowth of his beliefs, he counseled abstinence from public life, telling his young disciple and friend Pythocles to "flee from every form of culture." This is because, in proportion to a man's rise to power, there are an increasing number of people who are envious of him and want to harm him. It is hard to have peace of mind in such a position, even if he manages to avoid external catastrophe. In order to avoid adversaries, the smart guy will make an effort to live inconspicuous. Being one of the most "dynamic" sensations, sexual love is obviously forbidden. The philosopher was enamored of children (other people's), but it appears that in order to satisfy this craving, he relied on other people not to follow his counsel. "Sexual intercourse has never done a man good and he is lucky if it has not harmed him." Contrary to his better judgment, it appears that he enjoyed having kids since he saw marriage and kids as a diversion from more important goals. Following him in rejecting love, Lucretius believes that having sex as long as it is free of passion is harmless. Friendship is the safest of all social joys, according to Epicurus. Like Bentham, Epicurus believes that everyone is motivated solely by their own desires, sometimes in a wise and sometimes in an unwise way. However, like Bentham, he is continually drawn into admirable behavior that he should have refrained from based on his own theories because of his own tender and loving nature. It was clear that he enjoyed his friendships regardless of what he gained from them, but he convinced himself that he was just as self-centered as his ideology claimed all men to be. * Epicurus, though his ethic seemed to others swinish and lacking in moral exaltation, was very much in earnest. * Cicero claims that he held the opinion that "friendship cannot be divorced from pleasure, and for that reason must be cultivated, because without it neither can we live in safety and without fear, nor even pleasantly." Occasionally, however, he forgets his theories more or less: "all friendship is desirable in itself," he says, adding "though it starts from the need of help." As we've seen, he had the fervor of a religious reformer, published a book on holiness, and refers to the group of people in the garden as "our holy body." He must have felt deeply sorry for humankind's suffering and been adamant that if people adopted his philosophy, those pains would be significantly reduced. It was a valetudinarian worldview, crafted to fit a society where finding adventurous satisfaction was becoming increasingly rare. Eat little because of fear of indigestion; drink little out of fear of the next morning; shun politics, love, and all other intensely passionate pursuits; avoid being a hostage to fate by not getting married and starting a family; and train your mind to focus on joys rather than sufferings. Physical pain is undoubtedly a terrible thing, but if it is severe, it will pass quickly; if it persists, it may be tolerated with mental fortitude and the practice of finding joy in the midst of it. Live your life avoiding fear above everything else. The issue of avoiding fear was what ultimately guided Epicurus into the field of theoretical philosophy. He believed that fear stemmed from two main places: religion and the fear of dying. These two things were related since religion promoted the idea that the dead are not happy. As a result, he looked for a metaphysic that would demonstrate that the soul dies along with the body and that the gods are not involved in human matters. For Epicurus, religion was the antithesis of solace, as most modern people would have us believe. He considered immortality to be deadly to the goal of being freed from pain, and supernatural meddling with the natural order to be a cause of horror. As a result, he developed a complex theory intended to rid men of ideas that instill terror. Though not a determinist, Epicurus was a materialist. He shared Democritus' belief that the world is made up of atoms and the void, but he disagreed with Democritus' view that natural rules always exert total control over the atoms. As we've seen, necessity had a religious background in ancient Greece, so maybe he was correct when he said that criticizing religion would fall short if it let necessity to persist. His atoms had mass and were constantly falling—not toward the earth's center, but in a direction that seemed absolute. Occasionally, though, an atom could deviate slightly from the straight downward course due to something akin to free will, and as a result, collide with another atom. The formation of vortices, etc., continued from this point on in a manner similar to that described by Democritus. The soul is made of tangible substances, such as heat and breath. Soulatoms are dispersed throughout the body (Epicurus believed that breath and wind were not just air in motion, but rather had a separate composition). Thin films that are released by bodies and continue till they come into contact with soul-atoms are what cause sensation. Dreams can be explained by the possibility that these films persist after the body from which they originated have disintegrated. The soul disperses after death, and although its constituent atoms continue to exist, they are no longer attached to the body and so cannot feel. Epicurus holds a strong belief in the existence of the gods because he is unable to explain why the concept of gods is so widely held. As a result, he states, "Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved, is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us." However, he is certain that they are not concerned with the matters pertaining to our human world. They are sensible hedonists who abide by his teachings and stay out of the public eye; they consider government to be superfluous labor and are not tempted by it in their life of total bliss. Naturally, all forms of divination, augury, and similar rituals are superstitions, just as the belief in Providence is. Therefore, there's no reason to be afraid of facing the gods' wrath or ending up in Hades after death. We have free will and, to some extent, control over our destiny even if we are subject to the forces of nature, which can be objectively observed through science. Death is inevitable, but when it is properly understood,* it is not a bad thing. If we follow Epicurus's maxims and live well, we will most likely experience some degree of pain relief. Although this message is minimal, it was enough to pique the interest of a man who was moved by the suffering of others. Epicurus loves science only insofar as it offers naturalistic explanations for events that superstition ascribe to the action of the gods. He has no interest in science in and of itself. He maintains that there is no use in attempting to choose between many plausible naturalistic explanations. For example, there are several explanations for the phases of the moon; figuring out which of them is accurate would be pointless as any explanation is valid as long as it does not summon the gods. It is understandable why the Epicureans made almost little contributions to the field of natural science. Their protest against the later pagans' growing infatuation with astrology, magic, and divination was a helpful endeavor, but they remained, like their founder, dogmatic, narrow-minded, and uninterested in everything but personal fulfillment. Over the years that the school endured, they learned the Epicurean credo by memory and made no additions to it. The sole notable pupil of Epicurus is the poet Lucretius (c. 99–55 B.C.), who lived during Julius Caesar's time. During the latter days of the Roman Republic, educated individuals favored the ideas of Epicurus, and free thinking was fashionable. Lucretius's On the Nature of Things became unpopular during the reign of Emperor Augustus, when he instituted an archaistic rebirth of old virtue and religion. This unpopularity persisted until the Renaissance. Its single surviving manuscript is the one that just missed being destroyed by bigots during the Middle Ages. Very few great poets have had to wait as long to be recognized, yet in the present era, his talents are nearly generally accepted. For instance, Shelley's favorite writers were him and Benjamin Franklin. His poem lays out Epicurus's ideas in poetry. Despite sharing the same ideology, the two men are radically different in character. Because of his enthusiasm, Lucretius needed more encouragement to exercise caution than Epicurus did. He killed himself, and it seems that he had episodes of insanity, which were allegedly caused by the anguish of love or the inadvertent consequences of a romantic relationship gone wrong. Seeing Epicurus as a savior, he treats the man he believes to be the destroyer of religion with religious fervor: * When human life was visibly crushed and trampled under the cruelty of religion, and her face emerged from the heavens above, descending on mortal men with a horrifying aspect, no man in Greece dared to raise his mortal eyes against her before him. He was the first to rise and resist her. Stories of the gods, lightning, and heaven's menacing threats could not calm him; instead, they heightened his inner courage to the point that he yearned to be the first to enter the tightly locked gates of nature. As a result, his intense mental energy won out, and he continued on, traveling far beyond the blazing walls of the world and spanning in spirit and mind across the infinite cosmos. From there, like a conqueror, he returns to us, imparting knowledge about both what can and cannot come into being as well as the fine principles that determine each thing's deep-set boundary stone and its limited powers. Religion has thus been crushed beneath men's feet and trodden upon in turn: We lift ourselves heaven-high with his victory. If one believes the standard portrayals of the joyousness of Greek religion and ritual, it is difficult to comprehend the disdain of religion voiced by Epicurus and Lucretius. For example, Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn honors a religious ritual, yet it does not conjure up images of dark, menacing horror. I believe that the majority of people did not have these upbeat ideas. Compared to other Greek religions, worship of the Olympians was less characterized by superstitious violence. However, mythology and theater document the Olympian gods' periodic demand for human sacrifice up until the seventh or sixth century B.C. * Human sacrifice was still accepted in the barbarian world throughout Epicurus's day; up to the Roman invasion, even the most cultured barbarian nations engaged in it during times of crisis, like the Punic Wars. In addition to the official cults of Zeus and his family, the Greeks also had other, more primal beliefs connected to practices that were essentially barbaric, as Jane Harrison most persuasively demonstrated. These found their way into Orphism, which eventually became the dominant belief among males who identified as religious. It's a common misconception that Hell was created by Christians, nevertheless. In this sense, all that Christianity accomplished was organize preexisting popular ideas. It is evident from the outset of Plato's Republic that Athens in the fifth century had a widespread fear of retribution after death, and it seems unlikely that this worry decreased in the years between Socrates and Epicurus. (I am referring to the general populace, not the educated few.) It was also customary to blame failure to heed the omens or divine disfavor for tragedies like plagues, earthquakes, and military losses. In my opinion, Greek art and literature most likely propagate false ideas about popular culture. If the only things that remain of the late eighteenth-century Methodism that we know about are the writings and art of the aristocracy? Like religion in the Hellenistic era, Methodism's influence arose from below; it was already strong during the lives of Boswell and Sir Joshua Reynolds, but it is unclear how much of an impact they had from their references. Therefore, we cannot evaluate Greek common religion just on the artwork on "Grecian Urns" or the writings of poets and aristocratic thinkers. Possibly due to his lack of aristocratic connections or birth, Epicurus had a strong dislike towards religion. Since the Renaissance, readers have mostly become familiar with Epicurus' thought thanks to the poem Lucretius. When they were not trained philosophers, what struck them the most was how different Christian beliefs were on topics like materialism, rejecting immortality, and denying Providence. The presentation of these views—which are today typically seen as dark and depressing—as a gospel of freedom from the weight of dread strikes a modern reader as particularly remarkable. As much a Christian as Lucretius is convinced of the significance of genuine belief in religious things. He begins by explaining how men, when faced with internal conflict, try to flee from themselves and hopelessly find solace in moving to a new location. * Every man flees from his own self; however, he has no power to escape from that self in reality. He clings to it in his own despite, and loathes it too, because, though he is sick, he perceives not the cause of his disease: Which, if he could but comprehend aright, Every one of them would put everything else aside and begin studying the nature of the world, since it is our state during eternal time, not just for a single hour, that is uncertain, and that is the state in which mortals must spend their entire afterlife. Epicurus lived in a tired era when annihilation can seem like a pleasant reprieve from mental toil. In contrast, the majority of Romans did not view the latter era of the Republic as a period of despair since titanically powerful individuals were bringing order out of chaos, something the Macedonians had failed to accomplish. To the Roman aristocrat who refrained from involvement in politics and showed no interest in the competition for dominance and loot, the current state of affairs must have been extremely disheartening. It is hardly surprising that Lucretius saw the prospect of non-existence as a rescue when the condition of repeated insanity was added to this. However, because people's fear of dying is ingrained in their instincts, Epicurus' gospel has never been widely accepted by the public and has always been the belief of a refined minority. After the reign of Augustus, it was generally disapproved of even by intellectuals, who preferred stoicism. It is true that it persisted for six hundred years after Epicurus's death, albeit with waning vigor; yet, as human oppression grew due to the hardships of earthly existence, people need ever-stronger remedies from philosophy or religion. With rare exceptions, the philosophers sought solace in Neoplatonism; the illiterate resorted to a variety of Eastern superstitions before, in ever-growing numbers, turning to Christianity, which in its primitive form offered people a gospel diametrically opposed to Epicurus's. However, at the end of the eighteenth century, the French philosophes revived doctrines very similar to his own, which were then brought to England by Bentham and his followers. This was done deliberately in opposition to Christianity, which these men viewed with the same hostility as Epicurus did the religions of his day.