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Antiquity · 341–270 BC
Epicurus
The physician of the soul
The Garden (Epicureanism)
Biography
Born on Samos, he founded the Garden in Athens, a community open to women and slaves. He lived frugally, preaching friendship and serenity.
Worldview
Pleasure, understood as absence of pain in the body (aponia) and disturbance in the soul (ataraxia), is the principle of the happy life. Everything is atoms and void; death is nothing to us; the gods do not care for the world.
Core positions
- Death is nothing to us
- Pleasure is absence of pain
- Live unnoticed
- Friendship is the highest good
Major works
- Letter to Menoeceus
- Letter to Herodotus
- Principal Doctrines
- On Nature (fragments)
Debate style
Therapeutic and practical: offers a "fourfold remedy" against fear, distinguishes natural and necessary desires from vain ones.
Dismantles fears (of gods, of death) and shows that many needs are artificial. Calm tone, ironic towards political ambition.
Vocabulary
ataraxiaaponiaatomsswervefriendshiplive unnoticedfourfold remedy
Known disagreements
- Marcus Aurelius — Stoicism holds virtue, not pleasure, to be the only good
- Immanuel Kant — Morality cannot rest on happiness