Epicurus

From Philosopedia.org

Epicurus (341—270 B.C.E.)

Epicurus “taught that there are no deities who intervened in human affairs and that mortal man has no existence after death,” Corliss Lamont wrote.

Angelo Juffras points out that Epicurus did not deny there were gods; he denied that any such gods control events, particularly astronomical occurrences. Nor, as found in Aphorisms, could gods affect human affairs:

• Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. . . . If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. . . . If, as they say, God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?

His emphasis upon denying an afterlife helped remove human anxiety about any fear of divine judgment and eternal punishment, thereby denying the very basis of the popular Greek religion of that day but not offending the prejudices of the Athenians. The Romans Lucretius and [Diogenes were among his many followers, and his influence lasted 700 years in the form of a creedal following.

During the French Revolution, Maréchal cited Epicurus as being one of the greatest atheists of all time. Epicurus taught in a community of thinkers which he called the Garden, one which included some women and at least one slave. (A Buffalo wag agrees that no garden should be without these.)

Bertrand Russell describes Epicurus’s distaste for Nausiphanes, apparently a follower of Democritus and whom he described derisively as The Mollusc.

Also, Epicurus failed to acknowledge the extent of his indebtedness to Democritus], as well as to Leucippus. In fact, “he asserted that there was no such philosopher - meaning, no doubt, not that there was no such man, but that the man [Leucippus] was not a philosopher.”

Although 300 of Epicurus’s works were lost, Russell holds that Lucretius hews closest to Epicurus’s viewpoints. Pleasure and tranquillity, Epicurus felt, were good:

• The beginning and the root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; even wisdom and culture must be referred to this. The pleasure of the mind is the contemplation of pleasures of the body. By contemplating pleasure rather than pain, we can achieve virtue through prudence in the pursuit of such pleasure. Rather than active (dynamic) pleasures, we should pursue passive (static) ones. The former consist in the attainment of a desired end accompanied by pain; the latter consist in a state of equilibrium, which results as Russell has described it as “the kind of state of affairs that would be desired if it were absent.” Passive pleasure does not depend upon pain as a stimulus to desire. It is as if it is more pleasant to be in the state of just having eaten moderately rather than in the state of having a voracious desire to eat. Therefore, it is the absence of pain, rather than the presence of pleasure, which really is the wise man’s goal. As for social pleasures, the safest is friendship. Or, as Russell describes the Epicurean outlook, “Eat little, for fear of indigestion; drink little, for fear of next morning; eschew politics and love and all violently passionate activities; do not give hostages to fortune by marrying and having children; in your mental life, teach yourself to contemplate pleasures rather than pains. Physical pain is certainly a great evil, but if severe, it is brief, and if prolonged, it can be endured by means of mental discipline and the habit of thinking of happy things in spite of it. Above all, live so as to avoid fear.”

Russell’s view is quite different from Epictetus’s summary of Epicurus:

• This is the life of which you pronounced yourself worthy: eating, drinking, copulation, evacuation, and snoring.

Epicurus of Samos held that two of the greatest sources of fear were religion and the dread of death, which were connected, since religion encouraged the view that the dead are unhappy. He therefore sought a metaphysic which would prove that the gods do not interfere in human affairs, and that the soul perishes with the body.” In his own words, Epicurus stated, “the supreme purpose of philosophy should be to introduce tranquillity and happiness into human life.”

Augustine, however, called his views “a philosophy of swine.”

Dante’s Inferno estimates that more than a thousand followers of Epicurus, “who make the soul die with the body,” are in Hell. Among them, he specifies Emperor Frederick II, the Guelph Cavalcante Cavalcanti, Ottavio Cardinal Ubaldini (who died in 1273), the Ghibelline noble Farinita (Manente degli Uberti, chief of the Florentine Ghibellines, who was a wise and valiant leader who died in 1264. In 1283 Salmone da Lucca, an Inquisitor, condemned him, his wife, his sons, and his grandsons as heretics. His bones were then thrown away, his property confiscated, and his goods were sold).

J. C. A. Gaskin, in Varieties of Unbelief from Epicurus to Sartre (1989), defined Epicureanism as a

• complete (and the original) humanistic-materialistic philosophy whose particular stance with regard to gods is to acknowledge that inactive, uncreating gods exist as part of the material universe. However, these inactive gods have no care for us nor we any duty to or dependence on them.

In God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens mentions that to this day the Orthodox Jewish curse word for a heretic or apostate is apikoros, meaning "follower of Epicurus."

When Epicurus died, his school - the Garden - memorialized him with a monthly feast.

(See entries for Ancient Humanism; for his mistress, Leontium; and for Philodemus.)

{BDF; CE; CL; ER; EU, Angelo Juffras and Aram Vartanian; HNS2; JM; JMR; JMRH; RE; TYD}