Epicureanism

Tim O'Keefe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317492559
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

The Epicurean school of philosophy was one of the dominant philosophies of the Hellenistic period. Founded by Epicurus of Samos (century 341-270 BCE) it was characterized by an empiricist epistemology and a hedonistic ethics. This new introduction to Epicurus offers readers clear exposition of the central tenets of Epicurus' philosophy, with particular stress placed on those features that have enduring philosophical interest and where parallels can be drawn with debates in contemporary analytic philosophy. Part 1 of the book examines the fundamentals of Epicurus' metaphysics, including atoms and the void, emergent and sensible properties, cosmology, mechanistic biology, the nature and functioning of the mind, death, and freedom of action. Part 2 explores Epicurus' epistemology, including his arguments against scepticism and his ideas on sensations, preconceptions and feelings. The final part deals with Epicurus' ethics, exploring his arguments for hedonism, his distinctive conceptions of types of pleasure and desire, his belief in virtue, his notions of justice, friendship and his theology. O'Keefe provides extended exegesis of the arguments supporting Epicurus' positions, indicating their strengths and weaknesses, while showing the connections between the various parts of his philosophy and how Epicureanism hangs together as a whole.

ONE

Introduction: the life of Epicurus and the history of Epicureanism

Epicurus was born in 341 BCE in the Athenian colony of Samos, an island in the Mediterranean Sea near present-day Turkey. He began practising philosophy early, at the age of either twelve or fourteen, according to different reports. This interest was apparently spurred because of contempt for his schoolteachers. He wanted to understand what Hesiod meant when he claimed in the Theogony that first of all Chaos came into being, and from Chaos sprang Earth, Eros, Darkness and Night. When they were unable to interpret these lines for him, he turned to philosophy.

Epicurus said he was self-taught, but this claim is usually not taken seriously. The details of his early philosophical education are unclear, but he is said to have studied with Pamphilus, a follower of Plato (c.429–347 BCE), and (in a more reliable report) under Nausiphanes, a follower of Democritus (c.460–370 BCE), one of the inventors of atomism.

Even in the sketchy story above, we can discern many of the formative influences on Epicureanism. One of the main themes of Epicurus’ philosophy is its resolute stand against the sort of destructive and retrograde superstition represented by Hesiod’s theogony. Hesiod begins with a mythological account of the spawning of the universe from Chaos, and ends up with the triumph of the Olympian deities over their Titanic forebears. And with their triumph, these jealous beings, with superhuman powers and subhuman characters, are free to use us as pawns in their petty squabbles.

Epicurus lived in a time of great intellectual ferment, when the hold of traditional Greek religion, as promulgated in Hesiod and Homer, was weakened but not yet shattered. The first Greek philosophers (nowadays called the “Presocratics”) proposed that phenomena such as earthquakes could be explained naturalistically, instead of being seen as the will of the gods. For instance, Anaximenes said that earthquakes were the result of the earth cracking as it dried out. This was rightfully seen as threatening by traditionalists. The philosopher Anaxagoras was reportedly banished from Athens for impiety because he said that the sun was a hot stone (instead of the chariot of Apollo), and Socrates was executed in 399 BCE in part because he denied the gods of the city. Plato’s Apology and the unflattering portrayal of Socrates in Aristophanes’ play The Clouds make it clear that one of the reasons people thought this of him is that he was (wrongly) viewed by some people as one of the “natural philosophers” who sought to replace the gods with elements such as air. And even in Epicurus’ lifetime, Aristotle was indicted for impiety (although the charges were politically motivated) and fled Athens in 323 BCE (DL V 5–6).

One of the main sources of human unhappiness, according to Epicurus, is the fear fostered by such superstitious accounts of natural phenomena. In order to combat this fear, we must banish the meddling gods of popular religion by providing rational, naturalistic explanations in place of superstitious ones. This theme is given its strongest expression near the start of Lucretius’ massive and magnificent poem On the Nature of Things, which sets forth Epicurean physics. Lucretius says that human beings were grovelling and crushed under the weight of superstition. But then Epicurus travelled through the measureless universe and discovered what could be and what could not, and with this knowledge trampled superstition underfoot and lifted us to the heavens (DRN I 62–79).

In order to combat these superstitions, Epicurus sought to revive the atomist philosophy of Democritus, according to which the basic constituents of the world are indivisible bits of matter (atoms) moving about in empty space (void), with all else being the result of the interactions of these atoms. But in order to do this, Epicurus needed to combat not only popular religion but also philosophical rivals of Democritus, chief among them Plato. Plato was no friend of popular Olympian religion either: dialogues such as the Euthyphro and the Republic make it clear that he regarded as sacrilegious its conception of flawed deities. But otherwise, Plato and Epicurus are opposed on almost every important matter; as a first approximation, one will not go far wrong in viewing Epicurus as the anti-Plato. Plato minimizes the role of the senses in gaining knowledge, whereas Epicurus holds that all knowledge is grounded in sense-experience. In his dialogue the Timaeus, Plato puts forward a picture of the world as the product of a beneficent deity, and says that the workings of the world must be explained in terms of how they are for the best, whereas Epicurus holds everything to be the fortuitous result of atoms blindly bumping and grinding in the void. Plato believes in an immaterial soul and an afterlife, in which the virtuous are rewarded and the vicious punished, whereas for Epicurus the soul is a conglomeration of atoms that ceases to exist on the death of the body, so that there is nothing for us to fear in death.

Epicurus regarded Democritus as a great philosopher, but he was no slavish adherent of Democritus. Instead, Democritean atomism had internal problems, which Epicurus sought to overcome. Chief among these are its latent scepticism and fatalism. Democritus regards sensible properties such as sweetness and redness as not really present in material objects at all, which seems to make the reports of the senses systematically misleading. Democritus himself seems dubious of whether we can gain knowledge of the world, and later followers of his declare flatly that we know nothing. Epicurus regarded such scepticism as untenable, and he wishes to show that atomism is consistent with the reality of sensible qualities and the reliability of the senses. And if what is going to happen in the future has been set from time immemorial by the past positions and motions of the atoms that make up the universe, this would seem to render what will happen necessary, and make our attempts to affect the future pointless. Epicurus wanted to demonstrate that atomism would not have such disastrous fatalistic consequences for our agency. Epicurus also needed to show that the atomist ambition of explaining everything from the “bottom up”, in terms of the purposeless interactions of atoms in the void, was tenable. Plato’s pupil Aristotle (384–322 BCE) had raised serious objections against Democritus on precisely this point, objections that Epicurus needed to overcome.

In one sense, Epicureanism is an intensely individualistic philosophy. Once we cast off the corrupting influences of superstition and society, we can recognize that the only thing that is valuable in itself is one’s own pleasure. Anything else (including philosophy) is valuable only in so far as it helps one obtain pleasure for oneself. But at the same time, Epicureanism is a communal philosophy. Epicurus holds that the most pleasant life is a tranquil one, free of fear and need. We need the help of other people to attain this life. Wise individuals who recognize this can gather together and form communities in which they protect one another from the dangers of the outside world. Epicurus stresses the importance of friendship in attaining blessedness. Being part of a network of friends who can be trusted to help support one another in times of need is the greatest means for attaining tranquillity. Epicureanism is also an evangelical philosophy. Committed Epicureans thought that they had discovered a rational route to salvation, and they wished to spread the gospel of enlightened self-interest against the forces of superstition. Once again, Lucretius eloquently expresses this: the terrifying darkness that envelops our mind will be dispelled not by the rays of the sun, but only by a systematic account of the principles of nature (DAN I 146–8).

These aspects of Epicureanism are reflected in Epicurus’ biography. After he had devised his philosophical system, he set up Epicurean communities in Mytilene and Lampsacus, before going to Athens around 306 BCE. At that time, Athens was the centre of the philosophical world, housing the schools founded by Plato and Aristotle, the Academy and the Lyceum, as well as other philosophical descendants of Socrates, such as the Cynics, Cyrenaics and Megarians. There, Epicurus established the Garden, which was a combination of philosophical school and community in which the members tried to put into practice the principles of Epicurean living. The Garden was surprisingly egalitarian, letting in women and people of all social classes.

Epicurus was renowned for his kindness to his many friends, a fact acknowledged even by his detractors, such as Cicero. Epicurus died in 271 BCE, after suffering from kidney stones for fourteen days. In a letter he wrote shortly before he died, he claimed that his joy at recollecting his discussions with his friends helped counterbalance his terrible physical suffering. He made careful provisions in his will for the continuation of the Epicurean communities, which included setting dates for celebrations commemorating his birthday and other important Epicureans.

Epicureanism proved highly influential, with Epicurean communities springing up throughout the Greek-speaking world. Despite its popularity, Epicureanism also sparked great enmity. Its denial of divine providence was deemed impious, and its advice that one should “live hidden” and avoid entanglement in politics was thought to undermine public order. And even though Epicurus said that limiting one’s desires and living virtuously was the way to attain a pleasant life, Epicureanism was accused of undermining morality, and the Garden was allegedly the scene of debauched orgies.

With the rise of Christianity, Epicureanism went into decline. In the medieval period, the two primary sources of philosophical inspiration were Plato and Aristotle. The little attention that Epicurus received was usually in the service of criticizing atheistic materialism. However, Epicurean atomism was revived in the seventeenth century. The scientific revolution spurred a widespread reaction against the Aristotelian natural philosophy that had previously been dominant. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) and Robert Boyle (1627–91) both formulated versions of atomism explicitly based on Epicureanism, and they in turn had an influence on Isaac Newton (1643–1727). It is important to note that these thinkers tried to make their Epicurean atomism compatible with Christianity by restricting its application to the workings of the natural world, which does not include God, angels, the soul and the like.

Even many thinkers who were not atomists, such as René Descartes (1596–1650), had “mechanistic” natural philosophies that were, generally speaking, in sympathy with Epicureanism against Aristotelianism. Such thinkers rejected Epicurus’ contentions that absolutely empty space is necessary for motion, and that there are smallest units of matter. Nonetheless, like Epicurus, they thought that natural processes could be explained simply in terms of the mechanical interactions of bits of extended stuff, with no recourse to purposes in nature or to irreducible powers.¹

Most of the empirical claims Epicurus made about the world – some fundamental to his system, others peripheral – hvae since been falsified. Atoms are not indivisible and do not naturally fall straight downwards at uniform velocity, the mind is not located in the chest, and the bitter taste of some foods is not a result of rough and barbed particles tearing at the tongue. So it is not surprising that the philosophical system of Epicureanism has no adherents today. Nonetheless, many parts of the basic Epicurean worldview, broadly construed, are still very much live options. Epicurus holds that we can and must rely on the senses to gain knowledge of the universe and, when we do so, we discover a world without purpose or plan, indifferent to our concerns. We also discover that, like all other things, we are entirely material beings, and that death is annihilation. But this knowledge is not disheartening; instead, it liberates us from the superstitious fears of the gods and of death, and allows us to concentrate on attaining happiness here and now. And if we are wise, limiting our desires to what we really need and living in harmony with our friends, happiness is not difficult to attain. As the Epicurean Philodemus summarizes, in his “four-fold cure”, “Nothing to fear from god, nothing to worry about in death. Good is easy to obtain, and evil easy to endure” (Phld. Herculaneum papyrus 1005, 4.9–14, LS 25J).

Sources on Epicureanism

Scholars studying Kant have to work hard to understand and interpret Kant’s often difficult writing, but they have a complete corpus of Kant’s texts to work with. The project of trying to understand ancient philosophers is greatly complicated because we often have to work with sources that are not only obscure but fragmentary or unreliable. Among ancient philosophers, Epicurus occupies something of a middle ground when it comes to sources. Unlike Plato or Aristotle, we have fairly little of Epicurus’ own writings, and some of the later sources (such as Cicero and Plutarch) have to be handled with care. But we do have a non-trivial amount of Epicurus’ own writings, and the later sources (especially Lucretius and Cicero) often give quite extensive reports of the arguments in favour of Epicurean positions, which puts us in a better position to understand Epicurean philosophy than is the case for many ancient philosophers, such as the Cyrenaics and most of the Presocratics. Here are the major sources that will inform the subsequent account.

Epicurus himself

Unsurprisingly, Christians by and large were inimical to Epicurus, and even though he was a voluminous author (DL X 27–8), few of his writings survived the Middle Ages. Diogenes Laertius (fl. c. 3rd century CE) wrote a ten-book summary of the lives and doctrines of many Greek philosophers. This work has to be used cautiously, as Diogenes copies from various sources accounts of philosophers’ doctrines and snippets of gossip about their lives with little regard for their accuracy. But Diogenes Laertius is nonetheless one of our best sources on Epicureanism, largely because the last book of his work, which deals with Epicurus, includes three letters Epicurus himself wrote: the Letter to Herodotus, which summarizes his metaphysics and physics; the Letter to Pythocles, which gives explanations of celestial and meteorological phenomena; and the Letter to Menoeceus, which summarizes his ethics. All three letters are valuable starting-points for understanding Epicurus, but all are only digests of major points, so many details and supporting argumentation are left out. Diogenes also preserves the Principal Doctrines: forty of Epicurus’ sayings that deal mostly with ethical matters. The Vatican Sayingsis a collection of quotations from Epicurus and his followers, some of which overlap the Principal Doctrines, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library.

An Epicurean villa in the town of Herculaneum was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The villas library was unearthed in the eighteenth century and work continues today in unrolling, deciphering, translating and interpreting the carbonized scrolls, which include portions of Epicurus’ magnum opus, On Nature. Unfortunately, the texts are largely in terrible shape.

Later Epicureans

I have alr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Sources and abbreviations
• Chronology
• 1. Introduction: the life of Epicurus and the history of Epicureanism
• I. Metaphysics and physics: introduction and overview
• II. Epistemology: introduction and overview
• III. Ethics: introduction and overview
• Glossary of terms
• Notes
• Further reading
• Bibliography
• Index