Epicurus | PHILOSOPHY

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Epicurus (341-270 BCE)

A Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy.
He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents.
Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonism of his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens.
Epicurus and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects.
He openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy.
Of the over 300 works said to have been written by Epicurus about various subjects, the vast majority have been destroyed.
Only three letters written by him—the letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus—and two collections of quotes—the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived intact, along with a few fragments of his other writings.
As a result of his work's destruction, most knowledge about his philosophy is due to later authors, particularly the biographer Diogenes Laertius, the Epicurean Roman poet Lucretius and the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, as well as the hostile but largely accurate accounts by the Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus, and the Academic Skeptic and statesman Cicero.

Quotes by Epicurus:

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.
Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience;... Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.
The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.
With the Epicureans it was never science for the sake of science but always science for the sake of human happiness.
Happiness is man’s greatest aim in life. Tranquility and rationality are the cornerstones of happiness.
Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.
Virtue consisteth of three parts,—temperance, fortitude, and justice.
If you would enjoy real freedom, you must be the slave of Philosophy.
The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.
Men inflict injuries from hatred, jealousy or contempt, but the wise man masters all these passions by means of reason.
In a philosophical dispute, he gains most who is defeated, since he learns most.
He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.
You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.
True wisdom, the real superiority does not win by fighting but by letting it happen for themselves. Plants that resist wind break, while the flexible plants survive the hurricane.

The Epicurean Philosophy:

Epicurus maintained that the senses never deceive humans, but that the senses can be misinterpreted. Epicurus held that the purpose of all knowledge is to aid humans in attaining ataraxia. He taught that knowledge is learned through experiences rather than innate and that the acceptance of the fundamental truth of the things a person perceives is essential to a person's moral and spiritual health. In the Letter to Pythocles, he states, "If a person fights the clear evidence of his senses he will never be able to share in genuine tranquility."Epicurus regarded gut feelings as the ultimate authority on matters of morality and held that whether a person feels an action is right or wrong is a far more cogent guide to whether that act really is right or wrong than abstracts maxims, strict codified rules of ethics, or even reason itself.

Epicurus permitted that any and every statement that is not directly contrary to human perception has the possibility to be true. Nonetheless, anything contrary to a person's experience can be ruled out as false.Epicureans often used analogies to everyday experience to support their argument of so-called "imperceptibles", which included anything that a human being cannot perceive, such as the motion of atoms. In line with this principle of non-contradiction, the Epicureans believed that events in the natural world may have multiple causes that are all equally possible and probable.

In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus explains that people seek wealth and power on account of these fears, believing that having more money, prestige, or political clout will save them from death. He, however, maintains that death is the end of existence, that the terrifying stories of punishment in the afterlife are ridiculous superstitions, and that death is therefore nothing to be feared. He writes in his Letter to Menoeceus: "Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply sentience, and death is the privation of all sentience;... Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not." From this doctrine arose the Epicurean epitaph: Non fui, fui, non-sum, non-curo ("I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care"), which is inscribed on the gravestones of his followers and seen on many ancient gravestones of the Roman Empire. This quotation is often used today at humanist funerals.

Although Epicurus has been commonly misunderstood as an advocate of the rampant pursuit of pleasure, he, in fact, maintained that a person can only be happy and free from suffering by living wisely, soberly, and morally. He strongly disapproved of raw, excessive sensuality and warned that a person must take into account whether the consequences of his actions will result in suffering, writing, "the pleasant life is produced not by a string of drinking bouts and revelries, nor by the enjoyment of boys and women, nor by fish and the other items on an expensive menu, but by sober reasoning."

Epicurus distinguishes between three types of desires: natural and necessary, natural but unnecessary, and vain and empty. Natural and necessary desires include the desires for food and shelter. These are easy to satisfy, difficult to eliminate, bring pleasure when satisfied, and are naturally limited. Going beyond these limits produces unnecessary desires, such as the desire for luxury foods. Although food is necessary, luxury food is not necessary.

He idiosyncratically defined "pleasure" as the absence of suffering and taught that all humans should seek to attain the state of ataraxia, meaning "untroubledness", a state in which the person is completely free from all pain or suffering. He argued that most of the suffering which human beings experience is caused by the irrational fears of death, divine retribution, and punishment in the afterlife.