Epicurus

Epicurus (Greek: Ἐπίκουρος Epikouros, "ally" or "comrade"), also known as Epicurus of Samos, (341 BC, born Samos, died in Athens 271/270 BC ) He was The highlights of his doctrine are rational hedonism and atomism. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly Aristotle and the Cynics, he turned against Platonism and established his own school in Athens, known as the "Garden" ( kêpos ; hortus ), where he allowed the entry of women, prostitutes, and slaves. to school.It is said that he wrote more than 300 works on various subjects, but the vast majority of these writings have been lost. Only three letters written by him, the Letter to Herodotus, Pytocles, and Menoeceus ; and two collections of citations, the Capital Maxims and the Vatican Sentences, have survived intact.

Like Aristotle, Epicurus was an empiricist, meaning that he believed that the senses are the only reliable source of knowledge about the world. Repeated sensory experiences can be used to form concepts ( prolepsis ) about the world that can provide the basis for philosophy.He derived much of his physics and cosmology from the atomistic philosopher Democritus. He taught that the universe is infinite and eternal, where all matter is made up of tiny invisible particles called atoms. He spoke out against fate, necessity, and the recurring Greek sense of fatalism. Nature, according to Epicurus, is governed by necessity and chance, understanding this as the absence of causality due to deviation ( parénklisis) produced by the fall of atoms in a vacuum, thus allowing humans to possess free will as the foundation of ethics in a deterministic universe.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was the pursuit of happiness ( eudaimonia ), characterized by the absence of disturbance in the soul ( ataraxia ) and pain in the body ( apone).). His hedonistic ethic considers seeking pleasure and avoiding pain the purpose of human life; always in a rational way to avoid excesses, as these cause subsequent suffering. The pleasures of the spirit are superior to those of the body, and both must be intelligently satisfied, trying to reach a state of physical and spiritual well-being. He criticized both the debauchery and the renunciation of the pleasures of the flesh, and argued that a middle ground should be sought and that carnal pleasures should be satisfied, as long as they did not bring pain in the future. He stated that religious myths make people's lives bitter, and they should not be feared because they did not care about our vicissitudes.He advocated that people could follow the philosophy better if they lived a simple and self-sufficient life surrounded by friends.

Another important contribution of Epicurus was his philosophy regarding death, and complementing his thinking about happiness, Epicurus sought to reduce fear regarding it, and help find our happiness. His thought was that there is no need to fear death, since it consists of the lack of sensation, so it makes no sense to be scared by something that we will never feel. At the same time, he explained that as long as we exist, death will not be present, and when it is present, we will not exist, which means that we will never be in a direct relationship with our death, thus concluding with the idea that there is no need to fear death. something that will not be present as long as we exist in this world.

Although most of his work has been lost, we are well acquainted with his teachings through De rerum natura,of the Latin poet Lucretius (a tribute to Epicurus and a comprehensive exposition of his ideas), as well as through his letters collected by Diogenes Laertius and fragments rescued by other philosophers such as Philodemus of Gadara, Diogenes of Enoanda, Sextus Empiricus, Seneca and Cicero. Epicureanism reached the height of its popularity during the last years of the Roman Republic. It became extinct in late antiquity, subject to the hostility of early Christianity. Throughout the Middle Ages, Epicurus was popularly remembered, albeit inaccurately, as a patron of drunkards, prostitutes, and gluttons. His teachings gradually became more widely known in the fifteenth century, but did not become acceptable until the seventeenth century with figures such as Walter Charleton and Robert Boyle. His influence grew considerably during and after the Enlightenment,

Biography

Family

Epicurus, the second of four sons in a poor family, was born in 341 BC. C. in one of the Greek Sporades islands, Samos, where the Athenians had established a clergy and where his father, Neocles, a school teacher who was probably helped by Epicurus, had settled as a colonist thanks to a help He inherited Athenian citizenship from his father, despite being born on Samos. His mother, Cheréstrata, was a fortune teller. He also had three brothers: Neocles, Chaeredemus, and Aristobulus.

Training

Epicurus already had a great critical spirit and a great desire for knowledge from a young age, and it is likely that, not wanting to accept exclusively the traditional teachings of the schools, he dedicated himself to reading different philosophers. Thus, he began to study philosophy at an early age. Early and at the age of fourteen, he was a student of a man named Pamphilus (a disciple of Plato), who lived on the island and from whom Epicurus learned the foundations of Platonic idealism, which he would later consider a fraud and reject in his philosophy.

In the year 323 a. At the age of eighteen, he went to Athens to do his military service. After completing his military service, he returned to his family in 321 BC. C., although on this occasion he went to the city of Colophon. There they had moved after a political amnesty decree came into force the previous year, thanks to which the exiles were able to recover their lands in Samos; therefore, the settlers, like the family of Epicurus, had to abandon them.

He remained in that city for a decade, until 311 BC. There he studied with Nausíphanes, an atomist philosopher who was a disciple of Democritus and Pyrrho, with whom he had a decisive relationship in his formation, despite the fact that Epicurus subsequently directed harsh criticism and insults at him.

Teaching

After those years of formation, a magisterial stage began, establishing in the year 311 a. His first school of philosophy was in the city of Mytilene, on Lesbos. Epicurus's opposition to Platonism, the dominant philosophy in higher education, formed a large part of his thinking. However, this school was short-lived, because he had to abandon it due to rivalries with the Aristotelians of the city. Although the exact reasons for these rivalries are unknown, that confrontation could well have been one of the first anti-Epicurean reactions, although it must be taken into account that the character of Epicurus's youth may also be far removed from his later meekness.

Later he settled in Lampsaco, where he remained for four years in which he was very active. There he established a school again thanks to influential friends and got a circle of disciples and followers, among whom were Idomeneus, Metrodorus, Leontheus and his wife Themista, Colotes, Pytocles and Timocrates; Possibly also in Lámpsaco he knew Hermarco, who would end up succeeding him as head of the direction of the Garden.

The garden

In the year 306 a. C., at age 35, he returned to Athens, where he would remain until his death, to found his school of philosophy. He bought a house and a small piece of land near him, outside Athens, on the way to Piraeus; there he founded the Garden, his school. The Garden offered a quiet place, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, in which everything from talks and gatherings to meals and celebrations took place. It was, therefore, a place more intended for the intellectual retreat of a group of friends than a place for scientific research and higher paideía, unlike Plato's Academy or Aristotle's Lyceum. Seneca records an inscription on the Garden gate in Epistle XXI of the Letters to Lucilius: « Stranger, your time will be pleasant here. In this place the greatest good is pleasure.

People of all conditions and classes were admitted to the Garden, for which it became a cause of scandal. It included respectable people, but also people of dissolute life. Also women like Themista, heterosexual prostitutes like Leontion and slaves like Mus and Fedrión, which at that time was an unusual occurrence for a philosophical school.

Death

He was its teacher until his death in 270 BC, at the age of 71. Epicurus never married and had no known children. He left the direction of his school to Hermarchus of Mytilene, who claimed that his teacher, after being tormented by cruel pains for fourteen days, succumbed to a retention of urine caused by the evil of the stone. Despite suffering immense In pain, Epicurus is said to have remained cheerful and continued to teach to the end. In his will, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, he granted freedom to four of his slaves. In a deathbed letter from him, Epicurus entrusted the children of his late student Metrodorus to the care of Idomeneus, who had married Metrodorus's sister Batis.

According to Diskin Clay, Epicurus himself established the custom of celebrating his birthday annually with common meals as heros ktistes ("founding hero") of the Garden. He ordered in his will annual commemorative feasts for himself on the same date (10 Gamelion). Epicurean communities continued this tradition, referring to Epicurus as their "savior" (soter) and celebrating him as a hero. Epicurus's hero cult may have operated as a civil Garden religion. However, the clear evidence of an Epicurean hero cult, as well as the cult itself, seems buried under the weight of posthumous philosophical interpretation. the 20th of each month was for the epicurean Eikas, a public holiday in honor of his master and Metrodorus.

Construction

According to the work Lives, opinions and sentences of the most illustrious philosophers of the ancient Greek doxographer, Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus left more than 300 manuscripts at his death, including 37 treatises on physics and numerous works on love, justice, the gods and other topics.. According to Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus' major works include :

1. Of Nature (thirty-seven books)
2. Of atoms and the void
3. of love
4. Epitome of writings against physicists
5. Doubts against the Megarians
6. Select sentences
7. of the sects
8. Of the plants
9. Dolphin
10. Of the criterion or Canon
11. Queredemo or of the gods
12. Of Holiness or Hegesianax
13. of the lives
14. of just deeds
15. Neocles
16. A Temista
17. The Banquet (Symposium)
18. Eurylochus
19. A Metrodoro
20. of vision
21. From the angle of the atom
22. of touch
23. Of destiny
24. Opinions about the passions.
25. A Timócrates.
26. Forecasts
27. exhortations
28. of mental images
29. of fantasy
30. Aristobulus
31. Of the music
32. Of justice and the other virtues
33. Of gifts and grace
34. Polimedes
35. Timocrates (three books)
36. Metrodorus (five books)
37. Antidore (two books)
38. Opinions on diseases, addressed to Mitres
39. Callistolas
40. of the kingdom
41. Anamenes
42. epistles

Of all of them, only forty maxims of fundamentally ethical and epistemological content have been preserved, the so-called Capital Maxims ( Kyriai Doxai ); and three letters transcribed by Diogenes Laertius: the Letter to Herodotus (not the historian), which deals with epistemology and physical; the Letter to Pítocles, referring to cosmology, astronomy and meteorology; and the Letter to Menoeceus, which deals with ethics. In addition, the text of the Vatican Sentences ( Vatican Gnomologio ), discovered and published in 1888 by Karl Wotke, and which contains selected quotations from Epicurus, including some that already appeared in theMaximum Capitals.

Some brief fragments have been recovered by citations from other authors, including the treatise On Nature (Περὶ Φύσεως) by the epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara from the burned library in Herculaneum. Fragments of this work have also been preserved in the library of the epicurean Pisón (perhaps by Lucio Calpurnio Pisón Cesonino). Thanks to another epicurean, Diogenes of Enoanda (mid-2nd century AD), who had a monumental inscription engraved on the Lycian city of Enoanda other fragments were preserved including a letter from Epicurus to his mother. The doctrines of Epicurean philosophy were also preserved by Roman philosophers, such as the Epicurean poet Lucretius in De rerum natura and by Cicero in De natura deorum andOf the territories

In 1887, the German philologist Hermann Usener compiled in his work Epicurea the fragments and testimonies preserved by the authors of Antiquity with a critical section.

Philosophy

While for Plato and Aristotle philosophy is a continuous search for the truth and the knowledge of it brings righteousness in human conduct, for Epicurus philosophy is the practical art of life whose purpose is the healing of the human soul.«Let no one, being young, be late in philosophizing, nor, being old, tire of philosophizing. For it is not too early or too late for anyone when it comes to the health of the soul. The one who says that the hour of philosophizing has not yet come or that it has already passed is similar to the one who says that the hour of happiness is not coming or that it is no longer present»Epicurus,

Letter to Menoeceus (X, 122 )

While Stoicism had a long development, the Epicurean doctrines were fixed by their founder. Epicurus' philosophy consists of three parts: epistemology or canonical (criteriology), which deals with the criteria by which we come to distinguish the true of the false; physics, which studies nature; and ethics, which is the culmination of the system and to which the first two parts are subordinated.

Canonical

Epicurus wrote a treatise entitled Κανών, or Canon, in which he explained his methods of investigation and theory of knowledge. This work has been lost, so Epicurean epistemology had to be reconstructed from fragments and quotes from other authors. The canonical is not the study of logic or dialectics, but the criteria that help us distinguish what is true and what is false. The purpose of all knowledge for Epicurus is to help humans achieve ataraxia."[I]nce one reaches any point of contradiction with the evidence of the senses, it will be impossible to possess perfect tranquility and happiness"Epicurus,

Letter to Pytocles (96)

Epicurus was a sensualist materialist. Knowledge is based on sensations, which are always true, since their source is objective reality outside of man's consciousness and independently of it. He criticized the skepticism of Democritus. For Epicurus, it is impossible to live as a skeptic, since by doubting everything, one would have no reason to engage in any action at all. Furthermore, claiming not to know something is a kind of knowledge, which implies a contradiction. Because of this, Epicurus believed that experience is the only reliable source of information about the outside world and the skeptic would have no right to use concepts such as "knowledge". " and "truth" since these concepts are derived from the senses, which a skeptic doubts.

Theory of knowledge

As in Aristotle, Epicurus's epistemology is empiricist. Sensation is the basis of all knowledge and occurs when the perfections that bodies give off reach our senses. The senses are, instead of the Platonic idea of ​​"reason", the only reliable source of information and knowledge about the world, since what they derive from is in correspondence with those same things, being necessary that what produces pleasure is pleasant and vice versa.

The senses collect the images (from the Greek: τύποι « týpoi ») or simulacra (from the Greek: εἴδωλα « eídola »; and Latin: simulacra ) that the bodies give off. These eidola are formed by very subtle atoms and are transmitted as effluvia that they penetrate the sensory organ and produce the impression. All sensations, such as sight, smell or hearing, were based on these particles.Although the atoms that were emitted did not have the qualities that the senses perceived, the way in which they were emitted caused the observer to experience those sensations; for example, red particles were not themselves red but were emitted in such a way as to cause the viewer to experience the color red. Thus, Epicurus states that sensible perceptions are true and do not deceive us, since they correspond to the immediate atomic reality.

Epicurus holds that error arises when judgments about things are formed ( hypolepsis ) before they can be verified and corrected through more additional sensory information. For example, if someone sees a tower from afar that appears to be round, and as they approach the tower they see that it is actually square, they would realize that their initial judgment was wrong, and they can correct their error. been distorted in some way. In order not to make erroneous judgments about perceivable things, and instead verify one's judgment, Epicureans believed that it was necessary to gain "clear vision" ( enargeia) than perceivable upon closer examination.

Epicurus proposed three criteria of truth :

• Sensations ( aisthêsis ) , are the seat of all knowledge, and originate when the atoms that give off the bodies reach our senses.
• The anticipations ( prolepsis ), are sensations that are recorded in the memory after receiving them numerous times and serve to predict future sensations.
• Affections ( pathê ) : are perceptions of pleasure and pain. They are analogous to sensations in that they are a means of perception, but they perceive our internal state as opposed to external things. According to Diogenes Laertius, feelings are how we determine our actions. If something is pleasurable, we seek that thing, and if something is painful, we avoid it. The importance of affections lies in the direct influence they have on the ethical theory of pleasure ( hedoné ).

These criteria formed the method by which the Epicureans thought we obtain knowledge. Diogenes Laertius mentions a fourth criterion called "fantastic accessions of the mind" ( phantastikai epibolai tês dianoias ) as imaginative projections of the understanding by which we can conceive or infer the existence of elements on things that we cannot perceive directly even if they are not captured by the senses, such as atoms and gods.

All these aspects, however, are just the principles that govern our way of knowing reality. The result of its application leads us to conclude the conception of nature detailed in physics, the second part of Epicurean philosophy. Sensations govern the truth of propositions (and not the other way around). The sage "solves the most important and difficult things with his own judgment and reflection". Therefore, logic (previously called dialectics) is pushed aside as "superfluous".

Language theory

For Epicurus there is a relationship between knowledge and language. He follows a gradual evolutionary naturalistic theory of language. This is not a human invention, but a product of man's environment and his physical constitution. The meaning of a word is, therefore, a "natural" meaning, but this meaning is covered by the uses that men give it. To go back to the first meaning is to go back to preconceived ideas, and thus to turn to the source of human knowledge (as opposed to dialectics)."From which [it follows that] at the beginning the names were not generated by convention, but that the natures of men, suffering from particular passions and apprehending particular images according to each [one of the] peoples, emitted in a particular way the air arranged by each one of the passions and images, so that the difference [of languages] would come into existence according to the places [of seating] of the peoples. And then the particularities [of each language] were established in common according to each people so that the indications would be less ambiguous for [the speakers] among themselves and be indicated in a more concise way.”Epicurus,

Letter to Herodotus (75-76 )

Physical

Like Democritus, Epicurus was an atomist. According to his physics, all of reality is made up of two fundamental elements: atoms, indivisible matter with shape, extension and weight; and the void, which is nothing but the space in which those atoms move. Epicurus : '

1. The material is incredible.
2. Matter is indestructible.
3. The universe is made up of solid bodies and emptiness.
4. Solid bodies are compound or simple.
5. The multitude of atoms is infinite.
6. The void is infinite in extent.
7. Atoms are always in motion.
8. The speed of atomic motion is uniform.
9. Motion is linear in space, vibratory in compounds.
10. Atoms are capable of slightly deviating at any point in space or time.
11. Atoms are characterized by three qualities, weight, shape and size.
12. The number of different forms is not infinite, simply innumerable.

Atoms and the void

He wrote in his Letter to Herodotus that "that nothing comes from the non-entity, since everything would come from everything" ; indicating that all events have causes, regardless of whether those causes are known or not, since from what Otherwise, there would be no need for plant-specific seeds and anything could be generated from any form of material, and such things have never been observed. Similarly, he also writes that nothing ever passes into nothing, because that into which things would dissipate would be non-existent (see: Principle of Sufficient Reason). Therefore he states that:"The totality of things was always as it is now and will remain the same because there is nothing in it that can be changed, insofar as there is nothing outside the totality that can interfere and effect a change. " Like Democritus before him, Epicurus taught that all matter is composed of extremely minute particles called "atoms" (Greek: ἄτομος; meaning "indivisible"). The vacuum is the place where there are no atoms that allows the movement of If there were no vacuum, "bodies would have nowhere to be or through which to move". Postulating a principle of inertia, atoms always move through a vacuum without resistance with equal speed, regardless of their weight or form.In response to Aristotle's objections against Democritus, Epicurus believes that the shape of the atom is made up of physically and theoretically indivisible "least parts". In response to another Aristotle objection, Epicurus gives atoms an innate tendency to move "down" under its own weight in an infinite universe with no global orientation.

Epicurus and his followers believed that atoms and the void are infinite and therefore the universe is limitless. The different things in the world are the product of different combinations of atoms. The human being, in the same way, is nothing but a compound of atoms. Even the soul is made up of a special type of atoms, more subtle than those that make up the body. Epicurus' understanding of the mind-body relationship was entirely physicalist. Because of this, when the body dies, the soul dies with it. Epicurus can be considered one of the first philosophers to propose a theory of identity in philosophy of mind.

Chance and freedom

Democritus' atomistic conception was later criticized by Aristotle when he pointed out that atoms could never come together if they moved only vertically. Epicurus modified the atomistic philosophy in important respects, for he does not accept the determinism that atomism entailed in its original form. Therefore, he introduces an element of chance in the movement of atoms, a deviation that occurs in their fall into the void (Greek: parénklisis ; Latin: clinamen ).This reformulation is one of the most important innovations, since the "turn" of the atoms for Epicurus allows a deviation of the chain of causes and effects against the determinism of Democritus, to make room for autonomous agency, with which the freedom is assured.

Epicurus was the first to assert free will as a result of fundamental indeterminism in the motion of atoms. This has led some philosophers to think that, for Epicurus, free will was directly caused by chance. In his De rerum natura, the Epicurean poet Lucretius seems to suggest this in the best-known passage on Epicurus' position. Epicurus probably did not assume that we could hold our actions morally responsible if they were purely random.

It seems that Epicurus rather needed the turn just to break the causal chains at some point before our voluntary actions, so that our will can proceed wherever pleasure takes us and just where our mind takes us. Aristotle said that some things "depend on us" ( eph'hemin ). Epicurus agreed, saying that it is to these latter things that praise and blame are naturally attached.“Well, who do you esteem higher […]? That he makes fun of what some introduce as the despot of everything, destiny, saying that some things arise from necessity, others from chance, and others from ourselves, since he sees that necessity is irresponsible, that chance is unstable, while what depends on us has no other master, and that naturally accompanies censorship or its opposite»Epicurus,

Letter to Menoeceus (133-134 )

Both thinkers have been ridiculed for the idea of ​​"free will" in random atomic motion, but a number of interpretations have been proposed. Susanne Bobzien argues that for Epicurus, actions are completely determined by the mental disposition of the individual. agent and moral responsibility arises if the person is not forced and is causally responsible for the action. On the other hand, Tim O'Keefe has argued that Epicurus were not libertarian, but rather compatibilist. Alternatively, it has been proposed that the Epicureans were they were concerned not with freedom but with control over our character development.

Cosmology

With respect to the totality of reality, Epicurus affirms that it, like the atoms that form it, is eternal. There is no origin from chaos or an initial moment. The world is therefore the effect of mechanical causes, and there is no reason to postulate any teleology. As we read in the Letter to Herodotus : "the universe was always as it is now and always will be as it is, for there is nothing to change towards." Epicurus held that time is discontinuous like motion. His contemporaries believed that the universe was limitless with an unlimited number of atoms and an infinite amount of vacuum.As a result of this belief, Epicurus and his followers believed that the Earth was not the center of the cosmos and also that there must be infinite worlds within the universe. Epicureans believed that events in the natural world can have multiple explanations ( pleonachos tropes ) that are equally possible and probable. It is believed that he held the flat shape of the Earth, as Democritus did, and that the heavenly bodies were as small as they looked, unlike Democritus.

Ethic

Ethics, as has already been said, is the culmination of Epicurus's philosophical system: bringing happiness to those who study and practice it. Since happiness is the goal of every human being, philosophy is of interest to any person, regardless of their characteristics (age, social status, etc.). Like Aristippus, Epicurus' ethics is a hedonistic ethic, where what is pleasant is morally good and what is painful is morally bad. While Aristippus made bodily pleasure the purpose of life, Epicurus focused on calm and tranquility based on autonomy or autarky ; the tranquility of the mood of the soul or ataraxia ; and absence of body pain or apony.

Pleasure and happiness

Epicurus considered that happiness is the ultimate goal of life and that it consists in living in continuous pleasure ( hedoné ), which he defined as the absence of pain. This point of his doctrine has often been the subject of misunderstandings, qualifying such a theory as life as a "doctrine worthy of pigs", because Epicurus does not refer to the pleasures of the immoderate, but to find ourselves free from suffering of the body and disturbance of the soul.“And since it is the first and connatural good, therefore we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we omit many pleasures, when from these a greater annoyance arises for us; and we consider many pains preferable to pleasures, when a greater pleasure follows for us after having long been subjected to such pains. All pleasure, then, because it has a nature appropriate [to ours], is a good; although not all pleasure has to be chosen; so also all pain is an evil, but not all [pain] is by nature always to be avoided»Epicurus,

Letter to Menoeceus (129 )

Epicurus made a careful categorization of pleasures and pains in virtue of the benefits they produce. First, he pointed out the existence of three types of desires :“Of the appetites, some are

natural and necessary ; others

natural and not necessary, and others

neither natural nor necessary, but moved. Epicurus regards as

natural and necessary those who dissolve afflictions, like that of drink in thirst; by

natural and not necessary to those that only vary the delight, but do not remove the affliction, as are the splendid and sumptuous meals; and for

not natural or necessary he has v.gr. to the crowns and erection of statues.”Epicurus,

Capital Maxims, XXIX

Diogenes Laertius notes that, unlike the Cyrenaics, Epicurus distinguished between the pleasures of the soul or at rest ( katastematikén ) from the pleasures of the body or in motion (en kinései ): tranquility and the joy and rejoicing are seen in action according to the movement. The pleasures of the body, although he considers them to be the most important, deep down his proposal is the renunciation of these pleasures. The pleasures of the soul are superior to the pleasure of the body, since the body is valid in the present moment but is ephemeral and temporary, while those of the soul are more lasting and can mitigate the pain of the body.

Epicurus says that "every pleasure is a good to the extent that it has nature as its companion." Vain pleasures are not good, because in the long run they will bring pain and are not only more difficult to obtain, but also easier to lose. He concludes as fundamental pleasures the absence of disturbance in the soul ( ataraxia ) and the absence of physical pain ( apone ), since these are stable pleasures; instead, "joy ( khára ) and enjoyment ( euphrosíne ) are seen according to the movement in their activity ( katà kínesin energeía )".

He also speaks of the importance of having a virtue to choose from and the esteem in terms of the pleasures it can produce, since it is preferable "to be unlucky by reasoning well than lucky by reasoning badly". Virtues are such as simplicity, moderation, temperance, joy, etc. For Epicurus, "the virtues are connatural with pleasant living and pleasant living is inseparable from them." The most important virtue is prudence ( phronesis ) because it allows us to discern pleasures that allow us to approach a happy life.

Epicurus also thanked nature "for having made the necessary things easy to acquire, and those that are difficult to acquire unnecessary." Epicurus lived austerely, eating a simple diet of bread, cheese, olives and drinking an occasional glass of wine. A full private life, surrounded by friendships and moderate pleasures with the least possible pain and tranquility in the soul, brings happiness.

The four cures

Philodemus of Gadara distilled the first four doctrines of the Epicurean Highest Capitals collected in a papyrus at Herculaneum called the "Four Remedies" or the Tetrapharmaceutical, which are :"Fear not the gods, fear not death, pleasure is easy to obtain and pain is easy to avoid."

Tetrafármaco

The fight against the fears that grip the human being is a fundamental part of the Epicurean philosophy. He argued that most of the suffering experienced by human beings is caused by irrational fears of death, divine retribution, and punishment in the afterlife. In his Letter from him to Menoeceus, Epicurus explains that people seek wealth and power because of these fears, believing that having prestige or political influence will save them from death. However, he maintains that death is the end of existence, that the terrifying stories of punishment in the afterlife are ridiculous superstitions.Although Epicurus was not an atheist, he understood that the gods were beings too far from us, humans, and did not care about our vicissitudes, so there was no point in fearing them. On the contrary, the gods should be a model of virtue and excellence to imitate, since according to the philosopher they live in mutual harmony.

As for the fear of death, he considered it meaningless, since upon death, the atoms of the soul separate and as "all good and all evil is in sensation" and "death is deprivation of sensation", then " death is nothing in relation to us", because while we live it has not arrived and when it arrived we are no longer. suffer in vain." The Roman poet Lucretius offered another argument against the fear of death, called the "argument from symmetry", in which he argues that it is not fearful to suffer an infinite non-existence in the future after death since it was not fearful when suffering a death. non-existence by an infinite past before birth.

Finally, it also makes no sense to fear a painful future, since: “<it is neither completely ours> nor completely not ours, so that we do not wait for it with total certainty as if it had to be, nor despair of it as if it were not. It had to be at all." Contrary to ethical pessimism, Epicurus's theory holds that natural pleasures, which keep us away from pain, are easy to obtain and, consequently, what causes pain can be kept away by focusing on pleasure.“Pain in the flesh does not linger continuously, but the most acute lasts the shortest time, and the one that only slightly surpasses the pleasantness of the flesh does not persist for many days. And long-standing illnesses offer the flesh a greater quantity of pleasure than pain."Epicurus,

Capital Maxims, IV

Diogenes of Enoanda, for his part, ignores the Four Remedies and in an inscription he commissioned in the Enoanda square to promote philosophy, argues that the three roots of all evil are fear of the gods, fear of death, and endless desires or the inability to understand the natural limits of desires.

Love and friendship

Epicurus had a dubious opinion on the pleasure of sex and marriage, it is disputed whether he rejected or accepted it in certain cases. Philodemus claimed that the Epicureans did not respect marital fidelity. happy life instead of vague political utopias. One of the Highest Capitals says :"Injustice is not in itself an evil, but because of the fear of suspicion that it will not go unnoticed by those established as punishers of such acts."Epicurus,

Maxims Capitals, XXVII

Epicurean friendship is a natural relationship based on mutual love and indispensable for personal identity, which reveals the Epicurean friend as another self. The theme of friendship is a paradoxical theme in Epicurus. Like Aristotle, Epicurus considers the sage to be self-sufficient, self-sufficiency and self-sufficiency to be a great good. The wise man must maintain independence from him and, however, Epicurus considers that friendship is not for the wise a simple means but a good in itself. On the other hand according to Bernard Frischer, the notion of the Epicurean school as an association of friends is consistent with Epicurean theory.

Animals and vegetarianism

The Epicureans have a certain tendency to establish continuities between animals and human beings. Epicurus criticized Aristotelian anthropocentrism, although he does not reject the human primacy over animals, and affirms that all living beings are endowed with sensitivity and seek pleasure like men who deal with to avoid pain. Unlike the Platonists, their respect for animal life is based on sensory motives and not purely religious or philosophical. Most likely he was a vegetarian. At least according to the testimony of the Platonist Porphyry, he urged his disciples to respect animals and to eat a meatless diet.

Policy

In contrast to the Stoics, the Epicureans showed little interest in participating in the politics of the day, as doing so creates problems. Epicurus held that thus politics and philosophy are irreconcilable, and that the philosopher must reject the political in favor of the contemplative life. Instead, he advocated the abandonment of the polis by a community of friends. This principle is summed up in the phrase láthê biōsas (λάθε βιώσας), meaning "live in the dark", "live life without attracting attention". ", that is, he lives without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, he enjoys little things like the company of friends."We must liberate ourselves from the prison of habitual and political affairs."Epicurus,

Vatican Sentences, 58

Plutarco said it was right to live in secret.

Justice

The reflection on the rational foundation of justice is a constant in ancient Greek philosophy. Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno of Citium believed in the existence of a universal idea of ​​justice (wisdom, prudence, natural law), principles that Epicurus denied. Epicurus had a theory of justice based on the convention of a social contract:"Justice was not from the beginning something by itself, but a certain pact about not doing or suffering harm that emerged in the relationships of one and the other in certain places and occasions."Epicurus,

Capital Maxims, XXXIII"Injustice is not in itself an evil, but because of the fear of suspicion that it will not go unnoticed by those established as punishers of such acts."Epicurus,

Capital Maxims, XXXIV

Laws that are helpful in promoting happiness are just, but laws that are not helpful are not.

Theology

His Letter to Menoeceus, is a summary of his own moral and theological teachings. Epicurus conceived of the gods as anthropomorphically composed of more enduring atoms and argued that the gods are knowable by the mind. Some subsist in material individuality, others in the similarity of form, produced by the continuous flow of similar simulacra that constitute the same object; they are anthropomorphic.“For, certainly, the gods exist: in fact, the knowledge about them is evident. But they are not as <the> vulgar estimates them; because he does not preserve as is what he knows about them. And he who rejects the gods of the common people is not impious, but he who imputes the opinions of the common people to the gods. For the statements of the common people about the gods are not preconceptions, but false suppositions."Epicurus,

Letter to Menoeceus (123-124 )

The gods are not to be feared, because they are perfect and therefore happy and would not harm people. According to George K. Strodach, Epicurus could easily have dispensed with the gods altogether without greatly altering his materialistic view. of the world, but the gods still play an important role in Epicurus' theology as the paragon of moral virtue. Epicurus understood that the supreme happiness, which resides in God, admits of no increase; while the human receives increase and decrease of pleasures. His Letter from him to Menoeceus ends by stating that with his teachings one will live "as a god among men"."For what does it profit God," says Epicurus, "being happy and needing nothing, that man adore him? Or, if he so honored the man who made the world for him, who endowed him with wisdom, who made him the lord of living beings and who loved him as his son, why did he make him mortal and frail? Why did he leave the one he loved in the midst of all the evils, when the opportune thing would have been to make man happy, as near and close to God as he was, and eternal, as God himself is, for whose adoration and contemplation he has been modeling ?Lactantius,

Divine Institutions, VII, 7

Epicurus Paradox

In the philosophy of religion, the attempt to reconcile the existence of suffering with an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent deity is called the "problem of evil." Lactantius attributes Epicurus the following trilemma :«God, he says, wishes to eliminate evils and cannot; o He is able, and he is not willing; Either He is neither willing nor able, or He is willing and able. If he is willing and unable, he is weak, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and not willing, He is envious, that he is equally at odds with God; if he is neither willing nor able, he is envious and weak at the same time, and therefore he is not God; If He is willing and able, which alone is appropriate to God, from what source are the evils? Or why doesn't he remove them?Lactancio,

On the Wrath of God, 13, 20-21

In the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), the Scottish philosopher David Hume puts it this way :"The old questions of Epicurus have not yet been answered: He (God) is willing to prevent evil, but cannot? then he is powerless. He can, but he's not willing? so he is malevolent. Is he able and willing? So where does bad come from?

No extant writing of Epicurus contains this argument. However, the vast majority of Epicurus's writings have been lost, and some form of this argument may have been found in his lost treatise On the Gods, which Diogenes Laertius describes as one of his greatest works. If Epicurus really made any form of this argument, it would not have been an argument against the existence of deities, but rather an argument against divine providence. According to the Greek philosopher, the gods resided in interworlds ( metakosmia ) or spaces existing among the stars, and they do not care at all about the destiny of men or interfere in the government of the universe; the sage, therefore, should honor them.​

Legacy

Antiquity

Epicureanism was very popular from the start. Diogenes Laertius records that the number of Epicureans exceeded the populations of entire cities. He remained the most admired and despised philosopher in the Mediterranean for the next five centuries. However, Epicurus did not he was universally admired and, during his lifetime, vilified as an ignorant buffoon and self-serving epicure. He called Plato's disciples "flatterers of Dionysius", Aristotle he called "a loser, because having wasted all his assets, he had to give himself to the military, and even to sell medicines". He went so far as to describe the Cyrenaics as "enemies of Greece" and the skeptics as "ignorant" and "illiterate".

Epicurus's successor in the direction of the Garden was Hermarchus of Mytilene, and Polystratus. Other epicureans contemporary to both were Metrodoro and Colotes. Among the Epicureans of the second century a. C., must be mentioned Demetrius of Lacon, of whose works some fragments remain, and Apollodorus, who wrote more than 400 books. His disciple Zeno of Sidon also wrote many works, and his successor was Phaedrus. Philodemus of Gadara in the Herculaneum papyri, which comprise numerous Epicurean works. Patro was the leader of the school until 51 BC

The teachings of Epicurus were introduced into medical philosophy and practice by the Epicurean physician Asclepiades of Bithynia, who was the first physician to introduce Greek medicine to Rome. Asclepiades presented the sympathetic, pleasant and painless treatment of the patients. He advocated humane treatment of people with mental disorders and the use of natural therapies, such as diet and massage. Epicureanism had already been introduced to Rome, in the 2nd century BC. The first person to spread his doctrines in Latin prose was a certain Amafinio. Followers of Epicurus's teachings in Ancient Rome included the poets Horace, whose famous statement Carpe Diem ("seize the day") illustrates his philosophy and in his Letter to Tibullus ( Ep.I 4, 16) confiesa orgulloso de ser Epicurus de herd pig (“un cerdo de la piara de Epicurus”) ;

Epicurus' devoted follower, the Roman poet Lucretius, in his poem De rerum natura stated that popular religious practices not only fail to inculcate virtue, but result in "crimes both wicked and impious", citing the mythical sacrifice of Iphigenia as an example.. This myth as an example of the evils of popular religion, in contrast to the healthier theology advocated by Epicurus. He also argues that divine creation and providence are illogical, not because the gods do not exist, but because these notions are incompatible with Epicurean principles of the indestructibility and bliss of the gods.

Many Romans took a negative view of Epicureanism, seeing its defense of the pursuit of voluptas ("pleasure") as contrary to the Roman ideal of virtus ("male virtue"). Therefore, his followers were often stereotyped as weak and effeminate. Prominent critics of his philosophy include such authors as Cicero and the Stoic Seneca and the Greek Neoplatonist Plutarch. In De finibus, Cicero reproduces a conversation debating what is the ultimate good with his friends Lucius Manlius Torquatus and Gaio Valerio Triario, who defend the ethical teachings of Epicurus, which Cicero criticizes.The later skeptical philosopher Sextus Empiricus rejected the teachings of the Epicureans specifically because he regarded them as theological "dogmaticists". Diogenes Laertius praised Epicurus: "he was an excellent man in every respect". The skeptical writer Lucian of Samosata supported time in Epicureanism to ridicule superstition, religious practices and belief in the paranormal. He left this commendation to Epicurus:What blessings that book creates for its readers, and what peace, tranquility, and freedom it engenders in them, freeing them as it does from terrors, apparitions, and portents, from vain hopes and extravagant longings, developing in them intelligence and truth, and truly purifying their understanding., not with torches, scallions and other nonsense, but with direct thinking, truthfulness and frankness.

In the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, Epicureanism went into decline, as it could not compete with Stoicism, which had an ethical system more in line with traditional Roman values. Epicureanism was the one that most clashed with the Christians, since they believed that the soul was mortal, denied the existence of a life after death and denied that the divine had any active role in human life. Despite this, DeWitt argues that Epicureanism, in many ways, helped pave the way for the spread of Christianity by its heavy emphasis on the importance of love, forgiveness, and early Christian depictions of Jesus are often similar to depictions of Epicurus.

Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, Epicurus was known through Cicero and the polemics of the Church Fathers. Epicurean followers such as Diogenes of Oenoanda carved Epicurus works on a porch and Diogenianus, whose polemic fragments against Chrysippus are found in the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea. Between the 4th and 5th centuries, Epicurus was mentioned by Palladas. By the early 5th century, Epicureanism was virtually extinct. The father of the Christian church, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) declared: "its ashes are so cold that not a single spark can be drawn from them." While the ideas of Plato and Aristotle could easily be adapted to a Christian worldview, the ideas of Epicurus were not as easy to understand and he was not held in such high esteem.

During the Middle Ages, Epicurus was remembered by scholars as a philosopher, but he frequently appeared in popular culture as the gatekeeper of the Garden of Earthly Delights, the "owner of the kitchen, the tavern, and the brothel". He appears in Geoffrey Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales and Dante's Inferno in the Sixth Circle of Hell, imprisoned in coffins of fire for believing that the soul dies with the body.

Renaissance

In 1417, Poggio Bracciolini discovered a copy of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things in a monastery near Lake Constance. The discovery of this manuscript was met with immense excitement, for scholars were eager to analyze and study the teachings of the classical philosophers and this previously forgotten text contained the most complete account of Epicurus's teachings known in Latin. The first scholarly dissertation on Epicurus ethics, De voluptate (On Pleasure) by the Italian humanist and Catholic priest Lorenzo Valla, was published in 1431. Valla lent credence to Epicureanism as a philosophy worth taking seriously by maintaining that the true good is pleasure and not virtue.

The Quattrocento Humanists did not clearly endorse Epicureanism but scholars such as Francesco Zabarella (1360–1417), Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481), Cristoforo Landino (1424–1498), and Leonardo Bruni ( c. 1370–1444) gave Epicureanism a fairer analysis than he had traditionally received and provided a less openly hostile assessment of Epicurus himself. Nonetheless, "Epicureanism" remained a pejorative.

Modern age

In the 16th century, in terms of attitude and direction of thought, the first two great epicureans were Michel de Montaigne in France and Francesco Guicciardini in Italy.

In the 17th century, the French Catholic priest and scholar Pierre Gassendi (1592 - 1655) tried to dislodge Aristotelianism from its position of highest dogma by presenting Epicureanism as a better and more rational alternative. In 1647 Gassendi published his book De vita et moribus Epicuri ( The Life and Morals of Epicurus ), an impassioned defense of Epicureanism. Gassendi modified the teachings of Epicurus to make them acceptable to a Christian audience. For example, he argued that atoms were not eternal, uncreated, and infinite, but instead held that an extremely large but finite number of atoms were created by God at creation.Thomas Hobbes, a friend of Gassendi, took up the pleasure theory and interpreted it in a sense closer to the Cyrenaic doctrine.

The teachings of Epicurus were honored in England by the natural philosopher Walter Charleton (1619 - 1707), whose first epicurean work, The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature (1652), modified Epicureanism as a "new" atomism. The Royal Society, founded in 1662, advanced Epicurean atomism. One of the most prolific defenders of atomism was Robert Boyle. Francisco de Quevedo also defended the Greek philosopher by rehabilitating him as a Christian philosopher.

Illustration

Meanwhile, John Locke (1632 - 1704) adapted Gassendi's modified version of Epicurus's epistemology, which became highly influential in English empiricism. Many thinkers sympathetic to the Enlightenment supported Epicureanism as an admirable moral philosophy.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the European nation in which Epicureanism was most active was France. Among them are François de La Rochefoucauld, Charles de Saint-Évremonde, Julien de La Mettrie, Claude-Adrien Helvétius and the Baron de Holbach.

The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804) described Epicurus as "the most outstanding philosopher of sensibility". In addition, for Kant, Epicurus proceeded in his philosophy in a much more consistent way than other sensualist philosophers such as Locke or Aristotle.

American President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, declared in 1819: "I, too, am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (unimputed) doctrines of Epicurus to contain all that is rational in philosophy." which Greece and Rome have left us." Jefferson was the personal mentor of abolitionist and feminist Frances Wright, the author of the novel Several Days in Athens, which has been called the great Epicurean masterpiece in the English language, where Epicurus takes a fictional dialogue with the stoic Zeno of Citium.

Contemporary age

Epicurus' hedonism was the key basis for the ethical doctrines of utilitarianism espoused by Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873). Like Epicurus, Mill argued in Utilitarianism that ethics is art of living based on the calculation of pleasures, where virtue and happiness are mutually conjugated.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) understood the absence of the pain of epicurean aponia and ataraxia as a form of liberation of the "will to power". He also shared the Epicurean vision of death, since an evil presupposes existence to be experienced but death is complete non-existence and the absence of consciousness.

The German philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883), whose ideas are the basis of Marxism, was deeply influenced as a young man by the teachings of Epicurus and his doctoral thesis was a Hegelian dialectical analysis of the differences between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Democritus. Epicurus ( Difference between the philosophy of nature of Democritus and that of Epicurus ). Marx proposed that Epicurean ethics is related to physics and epistemology. Marx viewed Epicurus as a dogmatic empiricist, whose world view is internally consistent and practically applicable. Marx considered Epicurus "the greatest Greek educator", freethinker more formidable and combative against religion.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) was antagonistic to the fathers of Greek philosophy (Plato and Socrates), but considered Epicurus " one of the greatest men, the inventor of a heroic-idyllic way of philosophizing " and noted that:​So what is Europe? Greek culture grew from Thracian and Phoenician elements, Hellenism, the Philhellenism of the Romans, their World Empire, Christian, Christianity, bearer of ancient elements, from these elements scientific germs end up emerging, from Philhellenism it becomes a body philosophical: as far as science is believed Europe now goes. Romanity was eliminated, Christianity deflated. We have not gone beyond Epicurus; but his authority is infinitely more extended—Hellenization four times coarser and more superficial.Friedrich Nietzsche.

Human, All Too Human, 33 (9).

He also said of him :Epicurus has lived in all periods, and still lives, without the knowledge of those who called and still call themselves Epicureans, and without reputation among philosophers. He himself has forgotten his own name, that was the heaviest baggage he ever shed.Friedrich Nietzsche.

The wayfarer and his shadow Of him, 227.

In the 19th century, the interpretation of pleasure as a psychic principle of action was initiated by Gustav Theodor, the founder of psychophysics, and developed at the end of the century by Sigmund Freud at the psychoanalytic level of the unconscious. Nobel laureate in chemistry Ilya Prigogine he appreciated the defense of indeterminism in the Epicurean clinamen, being a precursor to Werner Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle.

Scholarly interest in Epicurus and other Hellenistic philosophers increased throughout the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with an unprecedented number of monographs, articles, abstracts, and conference papers being published on the subject. Texts from the library of Philodemus of Gadara in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, first discovered between 1750 and 1765, are being deciphered, translated and published by scholars who are part of the Philodemus Translation Project, funded by the National Fund for the Humanities of the United States, and part of the Centro per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi in Naples.Modern philosophers such as Jun Tsuji and Michel Onfray were greatly influenced by Epicurus. Onfray expressed that: "Without Epicurus there would have been no Renaissance, no Montaigne, no libertine thought of the seventeenth century, no Enlightenment philosophy, no French Revolution, no atheism, no philosophies of social liberation. Epicurus can constitute a powerful remedy against contemporary decadent fever. "

Epicurus's popular appeal among non-academics is difficult to measure, but it appears to be relatively comparable to the appeal of more traditionally popular ancient Greek philosophical topics such as Stoicism, Aristotle, and Plato. Anatole France wrote in 1895 a book entitled The Garden of Epicurus, where said author shows his philosophical positions. Cartoonist Sam Kieth illustrated two volumes of the graphic novel " Epicurus the Wise " with Epicurus as the protagonist. Today there are societies and groups of Epicureans in countries such as Greece, Italy and Australia.