Greek philosopher, born in Samos, Greece. He visited Athens when he was 18, then opened a school at Mitylene (310 BC), and taught there and at Lampsacus. In 305 BC he returned to Athens, where he established a successful school of philosophy, leading a life of great temperance and simplicity. He divided philosophy into three parts: logic; physics, where he developed the atomistic ideas of Democritus; and ethics, where he held that pleasure is the chief good, by which he meant freedom from pain and anxiety, not (as the term epicurean has since come to mean) one who indulges sensual pleasures without stint. He is said to have written 300 volumes on many subjects, but only a few letters and other fragments have survived.
For the Australian rock group, see Epicure (band).Epicurus (Epikouros or Ἐπίκουρος in Greek) (341 BC, Samos – 270 BC, Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of thought in Hellenistic Philosophy.
Biography
Epicurus was born into an Athenian émigré family; The playwright Menander served in the same age-class of the ephebes as Epicurus.
He joined his father in Colophon after the Athenian settlers at Samos were expelled by Perdiccas after Alexander the Great died (c. In the archonship of Anaxicrates (307 BCE-306 BCE), he returned to Athens where he formed The Garden, a school named for the garden he owned about halfway between the Stoa and the Academy that served as the school's meeting place.
Epicurus died in the second year of the 127th Olympiad, in the archonship of Pytharatus, at the age of 72. He reportedly suffered from kidney stones, and despite the prolonged pain involved, he is reported as saying in a letter to Idomeneus:
"We have written this letter to you on a happy day to us, which is also the last day of our life.
The School
Epicurus' school had a small but devoted following in his lifetime.
The school's popularity grew and it became, along with Stoicism and Skepticism, one of the three dominant schools of Hellenistic Philosophy, lasting strongly through the later Roman Empire.
A library, dubbed the Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum, owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, was preserved by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, and was found to contain a large number of works by Philodemus, a late Hellenistic Epicurean, and Epicurus himself, attesting to the school's enduring popularity.
After the official approval of Christianity by Constantine, Epicureanism was repressed. Epicurus' theory that the gods were unconcerned with human affairs had always clashed strongly with the Judeo-Christian God, and the philosophies were essentially irreconcilable. Lactantius criticizes Epicurus at several points throughout his Divine Institutes.
Teachings
Epicurus' teachings represented a departure from the other major Greek thinkers of his period, and before, but was nevertheless founded on many of the same principles as Democritus.
He admitted women and slaves into his school, and was one of the first Greeks to break from the god-fearing and god-worshipping tradition common at the time, even while affirming that religious activities are useful as a way to contemplate the gods and to use them as an example of the pleasant life. Epicurus participated in the activities of traditional Greek religion, but taught that one should avoid holding false opinions about the gods. The gods are immortal and blessed and men who ascribe any additional qualities that are alien to immortality and blessedness are, according to Epicurus, impious. The gods do not punish the bad and reward the good as the common man believes. The opinion of the crowd is, Epicurus claims, that the gods "send great evils to the wicked and great blessings to the righteous who model themselves after the gods.", when in reality the gods do not concern themselves at all with human beings.
Epicurus' philosophy is based on the theory that all good and bad derive from the sensations of pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain were ultimately, for Epicurus, the basis for the moral distinction between good and bad. Although Epicurus was commonly misunderstood to advocate the rampant pursuit of pleasure, what he was really after was the absence of pain (both physical and mental, i.e., anxiety) - a state of satiation and tranquility that was free of the fear of death and the retribution of the gods.
Epicurus explicitly warned against overindulgence because it often leads to pain. For instance, in what might be described as a "hangover" theory, Epicurus warned against pursuing love too ardently.
Epicurus also believed (in contradistinction to Aristotle) that death was not to be feared. Therefore, as Epicurus famously said, "death is nothing to us.",when we exist death is not, and when death exists we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain.
In his epistemology he emphasized the senses, and his Prinicple of Multiple Explanations is an early contribution to the philosophy of science: if several theories are consistent with the observed data, retain them all. Just as if you were to see the lifeless corpse of a man lying far away, it would be fitting to state all the causes of death in order that the single cause of this death may be stated. For you would not be able to establish conclusively that he died by the sword or of cold or of illness or perhaps by poison, but we know that there is something of this kind that happened to him." (Lucretius)
In contrast to the Stoics, Epicureans showed little interest in participating in the politics of the day, since doing so leads to trouble.
The most well-known Epicurean verse, which epitomizes his philosophy, is lathe biōsas λάθε βιώσας (Plutarchus De latenter vivendo 1128c;
Legacy
Elements of Epicurean philosophy have resonated and resurfaced in various diverse thinkers and movements throughout Western intellectual history. The Epicurean paradox is a famous argument against the existence of an all-powerful and providential God. The paradox is quoted as this:
"God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful -- which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?"--Epicurus (from "The Epicurus Reader", translated and edited by Brad Inwood and L.P. 97)
Epicurus did not, however, deny the existence of Gods, but he did not think of them along the lines that lead to this paradox, but rather as blissful and immortal beings inhabiting the metakosmia, empty spaces between worlds in the vastness of infinite space.
Epicurus was one of the first thinkers to develop the notion of justice as a social contract.
This was later picked up by the democratic thinkers of the French Revolution, and others, like John Locke, who wrote that people had a right to "life, liberty, and property."
This triad was carried forward into the American freedom movement and Declaration of Independence, by American founding father, Thomas Jefferson, as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Karl Marx's doctoral thesis was on "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature."
Epicurus was also a significant source of inspiration and interest for Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche cites his affinities to Epicurus in a number of his works, including The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, and his private letters to Peter Gast.
In a purposefully unfavourable expression, Epicurus is titled in Modern Greek idiom as the so-called "Dark Philosopher".
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