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Hall of Greek Philosophers
Epicurus
Founder of Epicureanism; the Garden
- 341 – 270 BCE
- Greek Philosophers · 8 of 10
Hall of Greek Philosophers
Founder of Epicureanism; the Garden
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Epicurus (, EH-pih-KURE-əs; Ancient Greek: Ἐπίκουρος Epikouros; 341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who founded the philosophical school of Epicureanism, which teaches that management of one's desires, removal of unnecessary fears, friendship, and virtuous living lead to a pleasant life and constant happiness, the highest good.
Epicurus advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends; he and his followers were known for eating simple meals and discussing a wide range of philosophical subjects at "The Garden", the school he established in Athens. Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs. Like the earlier philosopher Democritus, Epicurus claimed that all occurrences in the natural world are ultimately the result of tiny, invisible particles known as atoms moving and interacting in empty space, though Epicurus also deviated from Democritus by proposing the idea of atomic "swerve", which holds that atoms may deviate from their expected course, thus permitting humans to possess free will in an otherwise deterministic universe.
Of the over 300 works Epicurus is said to have written about various subjects, the vast majority have been lost. Only a few letters and a collection of quotes—the Principal Doctrines—have survived intact, along with several fragments of his other writings, such as his major work On Nature. Most information about his philosophy comes through later authors, such as Lucretius and Diogenes of Oenoanda.
Epicureanism reached the height of its popularity during the late years of the Roman Republic, but by late antiquity, it had died out. Throughout the Middle Ages, Epicurus was popularly, though inaccurately, remembered as a patron of drunkards, whoremongers, and gluttons. His teachings gradually became more widely known in the fifteenth century with the rediscovery of important texts, but his ideas did not become acceptable until the seventeenth century, when the French Catholic priest Pierre Gassendi revived a modified version of them, which was promoted by other writers, including Walter Charleton and Robert Boyle. His influence grew considerably during and after the Enlightenment, impacting the ideas of major thinkers, including John Locke and Karl Marx.
Epicurus was born in the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos in February 341 BC. His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and his father was an Athenian citizen. Epicurus grew up during the final years of the Greek Classical Period. Plato had died seven years before Epicurus was born and Epicurus was seven years old when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Persia. As a child, Epicurus would have received a typical ruling-class ancient Greek education. Epicurus is known to have studied under the instruction of a Samian Platonist named Pamphilus, probably for about four years. His Letter of Menoeceus and surviving fragments of his other writings strongly suggest that he had extensive training in rhetoric. After the death of Alexander the Great, Perdiccas expelled the Athenian settlers on Samos to Colophon, on the coast of what is now Turkey. Epicurus joined his family there after the completion of his military service. He studied under Nausiphanes, who followed the teachings of Democritus.
Epicurus's teachings were heavily influenced by those of earlier philosophers, particularly Democritus. Nonetheless, Epicurus differed from his predecessors on several key points of determinism and vehemently denied having been influenced by any previous philosophers, whom he denounced as "confused". Instead, he insisted that he had been "self-taught".
According to DeWitt, Epicurus's teachings also show influences from the contemporary philosophical school of Cynicism. The Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope was still alive when Epicurus would have been in Athens for his required military training and it is possible they met. Diogenes's pupil Crates of Thebes (c. 365 – c. 285 BC) was a close contemporary of Epicurus. Epicurus agreed with the Cynics' quest for honesty, but rejected their "insolence and vulgarity", instead teaching that honesty must be coupled with courtesy and kindness. Epicurus shared this view with his contemporary, the comic playwright Menander.
Epicurus's Letter to Menoeceus, possibly an early work of his, is written in an eloquent style similar to that of the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates (436–338 BC), but, for his later works, he seems to have adopted the bald, intellectual style of the mathematician Euclid. Epicurus's epistemology also bears an unacknowledged debt to the later writings of Aristotle (384–322 BC), who rejected the Platonic idea of hypostatic Reason and instead relied on nature and empirical evidence for knowledge about the universe. During Epicurus's formative years, Greek knowledge about the rest of the world was rapidly expanding due to the Hellenization of the Near East and the rise of Hellenistic kingdoms. Epicurus's philosophy was consequently more universal in its outlook than those of his predecessors, since it took cognizance of non-Greek peoples as well as Greeks. He may have had access to the now-lost writings of the historian and ethnographer Megasthenes, who wrote during the reign of Seleucus I Nicator (ruled 305–281 BC).
During Epicurus's lifetime, Platonism was the dominant philosophy in higher education. Epicurus's opposition to Platonism formed a large part of his thought. Over half of the forty Principal Doctrines of Epicureanism are flat contradictions of Platonism. In around 311 BC, Epicurus, when he was around thirty years old, began teaching in Mytilene. Around this time, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, arrived in Athens, at the age of about twenty-one, but Zeno did not begin teaching what would become Stoicism for another twenty years. Although later texts, such as the writings of the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero, portray Epicureanism and Stoicism as rivals, this rivalry seems to have only emerged after Epicurus's death.
Epicurus's teachings caused strife in Mytilene and he was forced to leave. He then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens in c. 306 BC, where he remained until his death. There he founded The Garden (κῆπος), a school named for the garden he owned that served as the school's meeting place, about halfway between the locations of two other schools of philosophy, the Stoa and the Academy.
Philodemus of Gadara lists four "guides" (hoi kathēgemones) of the first generation of the Garden who worked to establish its fundamental principles: Metrodorus, Hermarchus, Polyaneus, and Epicurus himself. Other disciples of Epicurus whose doctrines are known include Colotes, whose work On the Impossibility of Living According to the Doctrines of Other Philosophers was disputed in two extant works by Plutarch, and Carneiscus, whose work criticizing the peripatetic conception of friendship survives in a fragmentary state. Other students include Idomeneus, Pythocles, and Epicurus's three brothers: Neocles, Chaeridemus, and Aristobulus. The Garden also welcomed many female students during Epicurus's tenure, including Themista, Batis, Boidion, Demetria, Hedeia, Leontion, Mammarion, and Nikidion.
During the first generation, Epicurus and the other members of The Garden practiced a communal lifestyle, with the assets of all the members held in common, and no rigid hierarchy between teachers and students. They shared celebrations, festivals, banquets and funerals. Several rites that were celebrated at different times of the year: an annual funeral rite established by Epicurus in memory of his brothers and parents, two rites established for Epicurus himself; an annual one on his birthday (the 20th of Gamelion month) and one celebrated on the 20th of every other month in honor of both Epicurus and Metrodorus, another day dedicated to the memory of his brothers in the month of Poseidon, and another one for Polyaenus in the month of Metageitneon.
Diogenes Laërtius records that, according to Epicurus's successor Hermarchus, Epicurus died a slow and painful death in 270 BC at the age of seventy-two from a stone blockage of his urinary tract. Despite being in immense pain, Epicurus is said to have remained cheerful and to have continued to teach until the very end. Possible insights into Epicurus's death may be offered by the extremely brief Epistle to Idomeneus, included by Diogenes Laërtius in Book X of his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. The authenticity of this letter is uncertain; although the vast majority of scholars accept it as genuine along with ancient commentators like Cicero and Seneca.
I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the young man to me, and to philosophy.
Interestingly, Cicero quotes this letter as having being received by Hermarchus, not Idomeneus, which indicates either that Cicero was wrong, Diogenes was wrong, or that the letter had multiple recipients. It was used by ancient commentators to support the idea that Epicurus was able to remain joyful to the end, even in the midst of his suffering. It also demonstrates that he maintained a special concern for the well-being of children.
Epicurus believed in an eternal universe, where anything that comes into being must come from something that exists, all that is destroyed does not cease to exist, but all that exists always will. He held that this universe consists of two things; matter and void. Matter is made up of atoms, tiny bodies that are unable to be broken down into smaller parts, that only have the unchanging qualities of shape, size, and weight. There are an infinite number of these atoms, though only a finite number of types, and an infinite amount of void. Because of the infinite supply of atoms, there are an infinite number of worlds, each separated from each other by vast areas of void, some of which could be vastly different from our own.
The atoms are in constant motion through the void, moving in one of four different ways. They can collide with each other, either bouncing back, or joining together and vibrating to maintain the overall shape of the larger object. When not prevented by other atoms, all atoms naturally move at the same speed downwards in relation to the rest of the world, though they must also occasionally "swerve" randomly out of their usual path; without the swerving motion, atoms would never collide with each other from their parallel trajectory downwards. He also viewed weight as an inherent property of atoms which influences their movement. Epicurus argued that the swerve, which was absent in Democritus' earlier atomic theory, was also what accounted for humanity's free will; if it were not for the swerve, humans would be subject to a never-ending chain of cause and effect.
Epicurus also believed that senses relied on atoms; which were constantly being emitted from every object. Atoms themselves, which only had size, shape, and weight, did not possess the qualities perceived by the senses, such as redness, but instead would cause the observer to experience them in their mind. Because atoms moved sufficiently quickly, this would be experienced as a continuous sensation of vision.
Epicurus considered sense perception to be the foundation of knowledge. Although he had explained perception in terms of his atomic theory, he also designed his theory of knowledge to be independent of atomism, because he intended it to serve as justification for his philosophy of nature. Since Epicurus believed that sense perceptions were the basis of our knowledge, errors can only arise in how we judge those perceptions; although the senses sometimes receive contradictory information, they are the only means by which we receive information from the external world, and, recognizing the limits of our senses, it is necessary to use reason (dianoia) in order to organize the information we receive and determine whether our sense-organs are functioning correctly. However, reason still ultimately depends on the senses; Epicurus did not believe in the existence of abstract objects such as Plato's Theory of Forms that are derived entirely from thought.
In order to make judgements about the information we receive from our senses, Epicurus proposed three criteria of truth constituting the method through which we gain knowledge: sensations (aisthêsis), preconceptions (prolepsis), and feelings (pathê).
Sensations are the first and main criterion of truth for Epicureans; when judgments about things are formed, they can be verified or corrected through further closer examination, which eventually allows the observer to obtain "clear vision" (enargeia), a sensation of an object that is unchanged by further judgments or opinions and is a clear and direct perception of that object.
Preconceptions, Epicurus's second criterion of truth, are the concepts of what different things are that are formed in a person's mind through prior sense data. They are the background knowledge required for learning, allowing an observer to make judgments about perceived phenomena. When a word that relates to the preconception is used, these preconceptions are brought by the mind into the person's thoughts.
Epicurus's third criterion of truth are "choices and avoidances" which are the feelings of pleasure and pain that determine our actions. If something is pleasurable, we pursue it, and if something is painful, we avoid it. They are analogous to sensations in that they are a means of perception, but they perceive our internal state as opposed to external things.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Epicurus”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.