Epicurus

Epicurus (Samos, 341 BC – Athens, 270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher. He started a school of philosophy called Epicureanism.

Epicurus
Roman marble bust of Epicurus
Born	February 341 BC Samos
Died	270 BC Athens
Era	Ancient philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Epicureanism, atomism, materialism, hedonism
Main interests	Physics, ethics, epistemology
Notable ideas	Pleasure principle, the "moving"/"static" pleasures distinction, ataraxia, aponia, atomic swerve
Influences Democritus, Pyrrho
Influenced Seneca the Younger, Hermarchus, Lucretius, Hobbes, Kant, Bentham, Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Onfray, Hadrian, Metrodorus, David Hume, Philodemus, Amafinius, Catius, Michel Foucault, Gassendi, Han Ryner

Life

As a boy he studied philosophy under the Platonist teacher Pamphilus for about four years. At the age of 18 he went to Athens for his two-year term of military service. Epicurus never married and had no children, so far as we know.

Teachings

Main page: Epicureanism

Epicurus helped in the development of science and the scientific method because he said that nothing should be believed except what we can test through direct observation and logical deduction. His ideas about nature and physics hinted at scientific concepts developed in modern times.

Works

Epicurus' only surviving complete works are three letters, which can be found in book X of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers, and two groups of quotes: the Principal Doctrines, reported as well in Diogenes' book X, and the Vatican Sayings, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library.

Many pieces of his thirty-seven volume treatise On Nature have been found in the burnt papyrus fragments at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.

Epicurus Media

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  Allocation of key positions and satrapies following the Partition of Babylon in 323 BC after the death of Alexander the Great. Epicurus came of age at a time when Greek intellectual horizons were vastly expanding due to the rise of the Hellenistic Kingdoms across the Near East.

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  Reconstruction by K. Fittschen of an Epicurus enthroned statue, presumably set up after his death. University of Göttingen, Abgußsammlung.

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  Illustration from 1885 of a small bronze bust of Epicurus from Herculaneum. Three Epicurus bronze busts were recovered from the Villa of the Papyri, as well as text fragments.

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  Marble relief from the first or second century showing the mythical transgressor Ixion being tortured on a spinning fiery wheel in Tartarus. Epicurus taught that stories of such punishment in the afterlife are ridiculous superstitions and that believing in them prevents people from attaining ataraxia.

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  The most famous version of the problem of evil is attributed to Epicurus by David Hume (pictured), who was relying on an attribution of it to him by the Christian apologist Lactantius. The trilemma does not occur in any of Epicurus's extant writings, however.

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  Epicurus, in the Nuremberg Chronicle

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  Bust of Epicurus leaning against his disciple Metrodorus in the Louvre Museum

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  Dante Alighieri meets Farinata, an Epicurean from Florence, in his Inferno in the Sixth Circle of Hell (canto 10). Epicurus and his followers are imprisoned in flaming coffins for the heretical belief that the soul dies with the body, shown here in an illustration by Gustave Doré.

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  Epicurus is shown among other famous philosophers in the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael's School of Athens (1509–1511). Epicurus's genuine busts were unknown prior to 1742, so early modern artists who wanted to depict him were forced to make up their own iconographies.

Further reading

• Bailey C. (1928) The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, Oxford.
• Bakalis Nikolaos (2005) Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing, ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
• Digireads.com The Works of Epicurus, January 2004.
• Eugene O’ Connor The Essential Epicurus, Prometheus Books, New York 1993.
• Edelstein Epicureanism, Two Collections of Fragments and Studies Garland Publ. March 1987
• Farrington, Benjamin. Science and Politics in the Ancient World, 2nd ed. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965. A Marxist interpretation of Epicurus, the Epicurean movement, and its opponents.
• Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. London: Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0-14-025274-6
• Inwood, Brad, tr. The Epicurus Reader, Hackett Publishing Co, March 1994.
• Oates Whitney Jenning, The Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius, Random House, 9th printing 1940.
• Panicha, George A. Epicurus, Twayne Publishers, 1967
• Prometheus Books, Epicurus Fragments, August 1992.
• Russel M. Geer Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, Bobbs-Merrill Co, January 1964.
• Diogenes of Oinoanda. The Epicurean Inscription, edited with Introduction, Translation and Notes by Martin Ferguson Smith, Bibliopolis, Naples 1993.

Other websites

• Epicurus.info Archived 2016-01-26 at the Wayback Machine – 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 Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature – Karl Marx’s doctoral thesis.
• "Epicurus on Happiness" Archived 2007-12-15 at the Wayback Machine – A documentary about the philosophy of Epicurus.
• Principal Doctrines Archived 2007-04-07 at the Wayback Machine
• Vatican Sayings Archived 2019-03-21 at the Wayback Machine
• The Garden of Epicurus – useful summary of the teachings of Epicurus
• Letters
  • Letter to Herodotus Archived 2018-10-09 at the Wayback Machine
  • Letter to Pythocles Archived 2018-10-09 at the Wayback Machine
  • Letter to Menoeceus Archived 2017-01-03 at the Wayback Machine