Epicurus (341-270 BC) is commonly seen as an advocate of an expensive life, wealthy in good meals and different pleasures. That is incorrect. Epicurus was, if something, an ascetic: somebody who thought that pleasures and good meals have a detrimental impact on our happiness and that we should always prepare ourselves to benefit from the easier pleasures of life.
This text is a part of The Ultimate Guide to Epicurus.
Epicurus (341-270 BC)
When one hears of Epicurus right now, it’s typically within the context of fine meals or different pleasurable enjoyments.
Supply: Epicurious
And the American Heritage Dictionary defines “Epicurean” thus:
- Dedicated to the pursuit of sensual pleasure, particularly to the enjoyment of fine meals and luxury.
- A devotee to sensuous and opulent dwelling; an epicure.
However that is fairly a misunderstanding, as we are going to see later.
Epicurus was born round 341 BCE, seven years after Plato’s loss of life. He grew up within the Athenian colony of Samos, an island within the Mediterranean Sea, shut to what’s right now the shore of Turkey.
Like Aristotle and lots of different well-known Greek philosophers, he was not an actual Athenian – he did have the citizenship, however he was one from the colonies, not a member of one of many core Athenian tribes. But additionally, like Aristotle and many others, he was drawn to the legend of Athens, its democracy, its market and splendid public buildings, the place all types of philosophers, from the best within the identified world all the way down to the loopy preacher of the day, would give speeches and train their college students. In the event you have been a younger thinker at across the fifth or fourth century BC, then Athens was the one place value being.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Aristotle (384-322 BC), born in Stageira, Greece, is likely one of the most influential philosophers who ever lived. He labored not solely in philosophy, but in addition wrote dozens of books on all matters, from astronomy and biology to literary concept.
Epicurus was about 19 when Aristotle died and he studied philosophy below followers of Plato and Democritus. Democritus had developed a concept of atoms, tiny, indivisible particles of matter, and Epicurus noticed on this a manner out of superstitious beliefs in Gods, spirits and destiny. If every part was certainly atoms, then the world was a purely materials place. Even the human thoughts should then be made of those atoms and the legal guidelines that govern our ideas should be, in precept, as rational and comprehensible as these governing the motion of a horse-cart or a ball rolling down a slope. We’ll see later how this perception in atoms allowed Epicurus to take away one of many most important causes of hysteria and concern for the individuals of that point: the concern of the wrath of the Gods. If the world was simply atoms flying round, then the Gods had no say in its future and there was nothing to concern.
Like Aristotle, Epicurus too travelled fairly a bit across the Greek world earlier than he settled in Athens, and never at all times voluntarily. The Athenian inhabitants was expelled from his birthplace Samos when he was younger, and his household was compelled to maneuver to Colophon, a brief distance away on the Asian shore. Later he moved to Mytilene to show, however his teachings concerning the world being solely atoms fairly than the area of gods induced a lot bother that he was compelled to flee from there. And so he ended up in Athens at round 306 BC, within the hope that he would discover extra tolerance there for his unorthodox beliefs.
In Plato’s Symposium, Plato defines love as the will for the everlasting possession of the nice.
The Backyard
The issue was that Epicurus wasn’t a real Athenian – and the Athenians have been fairly fed up with penniless philosophers coming to their metropolis from all components of the world to query the native faith and to insult their gods.
It didn’t assist that Plato stored reminding them endlessly in his dialogues of how they’d unjustly killed his trainer Socrates so way back, and that Aristotle, one other thinker from the provinces, had ended up teaching Alexander the Great, the son of their enemy Philip of Macedonia. So the residents of Athens determined that they’d sufficient. They made a regulation that solely correct Athenian residents have been allowed to show philosophy in Athens. In the event you have been, like Epicurus, a foreigner, you have been welcome to do trustworthy work – however you’d higher maintain your mouth shut in public locations.
Epicurus. Supply: Wikipedia.
So Epicurus couldn’t simply go to the Stoa, like the Stoics did, or train in Plato’s Academy (even when they might have him). The one risk was to ask his followers to his personal home, away from the eyes of the general public. And so he purchased a home with a good looking backyard and this backyard (“the Backyard”, with a capital “G”) turned one of many symbols of Epicurean life: indifferent, quiet, peaceable, looking for and discovering the last word pleasure surrounded by associates and nature.
A Stoic is an adherent of Stoicism, an historic Greek and Roman philosophy of life. Stoics thought that, with the intention to be glad, we should be taught to differentiate between what we are able to management and what we can’t.
Epicurus’ backyard and the group of “associates” who met there have been additionally exceptional for an additional peculiarity. Epicurus himself had been the son of working dad and mom: his father was a trainer and, by some accounts, evidently his mom may need been a fortune-teller. So Epicurus knew the world of working individuals, not like many different Athenian philosophers who had been born into the aristocracy and by no means labored a day of their lives. And Epicurus by no means forgot how life had been for him as a baby and for his household. So when he opened his personal college of philosophy, he made positive that everybody could be allowed to attend his lectures: not solely the sons of the wealthy, but in addition working individuals and even slaves, and, maybe most scandalous of all, ladies. So Epicurus is likely to be up there with Sappho, the lesbian poet, and Aspasia, the spouse of Athens’ Golden Age ruler Pericles – as one of many first supporters of ladies’s emancipation within the historic Greek world.
Epicurus’ legacy
Epicurus, attempting to offer his followers braveness even in instances of sickness, as soon as wrote:
Steady ache doesn’t final lengthy within the physique; quite the opposite, ache, if excessive, is current a short while, and even that diploma of ache which barely outweighs pleasure within the physique doesn’t final for a lot of days collectively. Sicknesses of lengthy period even allow of an extra of enjoyment over ache within the physique. (Principal Doctrines, 4)
In an unimaginable stroke of dangerous luck, as if the gods needed lastly to take their revenge on the faithless thinker, they gave him kidney stones on the finish of his life: probably the most painful, lengthy drawn-out loss of life possible, a direct refutation by instance of his Principal Doctrine quantity 4.
Epicurus remained immensely in style for hundreds of years after his loss of life. In his basic “St Paul and Epicurus” (1954), Norman DeWitt factors out the similarities between the peaceable, bearded face of Epicurus, identified from statues all around the Greek world – and the peaceable, bearded face of Jesus.
Daniel Klein: Travels with Epicurus.
A splendidly human meditation on outdated age. A person travels to a Greek island with a suitcase filled with books, in the hunt for a greater, extra dignified technique to age.
Amazon affiliate hyperlink. In the event you purchase via this hyperlink, Day by day Philosophy will get a small fee for gratis to you. Thanks!
When St. Paul (AD 5-67), 300 years later, was attempting to show the Christian message, he had generally bother explaining the distinction between Christianity and Epicureanism to his viewers. Each talked of friendship. Each have been mentioned in small communities that met in non-public properties. Each taught indifference to worldly riches, benevolence and moderation. The Epicureans have been identified all over the place because the “associates of Epicurus”. The idea of friendship was so strongly related to Epicurus that St Paul prevented the phrase itself, in response to DeWitt, preferring to speak of love as a substitute.
The query concerning the nature of affection has plagued philosophers from the traditional instances to right now. On this mini-series of posts, we hint the historical past of the idea of affection from Plato and Aristotle via the Christian world to the Desert Fathers of the fifth century AD. Within the subsequent submit, we are going to talk about the medieval and romantic ideas of affection.
And so Epicurus’ message stayed on, even via the texts of those that thought him an enemy. He was luckier than many different historic philosophers in that we’ve two fairly full books describing his ethics: the Principal Doctrines and his Letter to Menoeceus.
Within the different articles on this information, we don’t solely take an excellent take a look at these Epicurean books – we additionally attempt to see whether or not (and the way precisely) the concepts of the bearded thinker of friendship can be utilized to dwell a greater life right now, in our personal world. So learn on!
Return to The Ultimate Guide to Epicurus.
The Artwork of Happiness is a set of Epicurus’ writings associated to his philosophy of happiness. Epicurus is straightforward and entertaining to learn and has rather a lot to show us in our fashionable (and sometimes misguided) societies about learn how to dwell a cheerful life.
Amazon affiliate hyperlink. In the event you purchase via this hyperlink, Day by day Philosophy will get a small fee for gratis to you. Thanks!
Share this:
