"First published in the United States of America as The philisophy of Epicurus: letters, doctrines, and parallel passages from Lucretius."--T.p, verso.

On-line English translation of this summary of Epicurus' ethics.

Epicurus, born at Samos, Greece, in 341 BC, and died at Athens in 270 BC, founded a school of philosophy in the ancient world which has little to do with the meanings that surround the word "Epicureanism" today and more to do with living a mindful, simple life, maximizing simple pleasures and minimizing pain, such as the irrational fear of death--"Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are (...) not." Epicurus did not believe that humans would be punished for their sins after death, and stressed the search for lasting pleasures during the life we have, such as tranquility, friendship, and philosophical inquiry. What is good is what is pleasurable and what is bad is what is painful. Epicurus was a prolific author, but very few of his writings have come down to us. Included in this collection, edited and translated by George K. Strodach, are a collection of observations that were preserved by the biographer of ancient philosophers, Diogenes Laertius, and three important letters. (shrink)

In addition to the commonly cited quotations of Epicurus found among the Principal Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings, many others have been passed down to us from a variety of classical sources. This popular arrangement of 87 fragments follows the outline set forth by C. Bailey's 1926 collection—each translation is a consensus of several different editions.

On-line English translation of Epicurus' last will, as preserved in Diogenes Laertius.

On-line English translation of Epicurus' Letter to Herodotus, his summary of his physics.

On-line English translation of these 40 short statements of doctrine, mostly concerning ethics.

On-line English translation of Epicurus' summary of his explanations for celestial and meteorological phenomena.

On-line English translation of this collection of short Epicurean sayings, mainly on ethics.

A best-seller in Europe following its original publication in 1993, this littel book takes on a big subject, offering enduring guidelines from the Greek philosopher Epicurus for achieving lasting happiness. In a letter to his friend Menoecceus, Epicurus gives sound advice on increasing life's pleasures, not through hedonistic pursuits, as commonly assumed, but through intelligence, morality, and decency. Based on a new translation of Epicurus to Menoecceus and complete with the original Greek text, Letter on Happiness expounds (...) upon basic philosophical inquiries concerning pleasure, longevity, death, and desire that are as relevant today as they were in ancient Greece, all in a compact, attractive package that makes a thoughtful gift for any occasion. (shrink)

On-line English translation of Epicurus' Letter to Idomeneus, a short letter he composed while dying.

Pros Menoikea, epistolē gia tēn eutychia -- Epistolē pros Hērodoto -- Epistolē pros Pythoklē.

Diogenous Laertiou Epikourou vios -- Epistolē pros Menoikea -- Kyriai doxai -- Epikourou prosphōnēsis -- Apospasmata apo chamena erga -- Apospasmata epistolōn -- Apospasmata kai martyries.

Written primarily in Greek, 1922/1996 edition.

"Epistola a Memeceo, Maximas capitales, Sentencias vaticanas, fragmentos y testimonios; texto griego y traduccion": p. [87]-161.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction The ancient biography of Epicurus The extant letters Ancient collections of maxims Doxographical reports The testimony of Cicero The testimony of Lucretius The polemic of Plutarch Short fragments and testimonia from known works: * From On Nature * From the Puzzles * From On the Goal * From the Symposium * From Against Theophrastus * Fragments of Epicurus' letters Short fragments and testimonia from uncertain works: * Logic and epistemology * Physics and theology * (...) Ethics Index. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I argue that there is no evidence that Epicurus dealt with the kind of free-will problem he is traditionally associated with; i.e. that he discussed free choice or moral responsibility grounded on free choice, or that the "swerve" was involved in decision processes. Rather, for Epicurus, actions are fully determined by the agent's mental disposition at the outset of the action. Moral responsibility presupposes not free choice but that the person is unforced and causally responsible for the (...) action. This requires the agent's ability to influence causally, on the basis of their beliefs, the development of their behavioral dispositions. The "swerve" was intended to explain the non-necessity of agency without undermining Epicurus' atomistic explanation of the order in the universe, viz. by making the mental dispositions of adults non-necessary. (shrink)

Epicurus strongly discouraged sex, marriage, and the rearing of children. This paper looks at some of the primary evidence for these claims, clears up a translation of one passage, and emends another passage. (The emendation has been accepted into Dorandi's new edition of Diogenes Laertius).

This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of Epicurus's philosophy and then traces out some of its most important subsequent influences throughout the Western intellectual tradition. Such a detailed and comprehensive study of Epicureanism is especially timely given the tremendous current revival of interest in Epicurus and his rivals, the Stoics. The thirty-one contributions in this volume offer an unmatched resource for all those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicurus' powerful arguments about happiness, death, and (...) the nature of the material world and our place in it. At the same time, his arguments are carefully placed in the context of ancient and subsequent disputes, thus offering readers the opportunity of measuring Epicurean arguments against a wide range of opponents--from Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics, to Hegel and Nietzsche, and finally on to such important contemporary philosophers as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The School in the Garden Prehistory and the Rise of Cities The Locus Amoenus and the Origins of Agriculture Diogenes of Oinoanda and the Future Epicurean Golden Age Notes.

The role of Greek thought in the final days of the Roman republic is a topic that has garnered much attention in recent years. This volume of essays, commissioned specially from a distinguished international group of scholars, explores the role and influence of Greek philosophy, specifically Epicureanism, in the late republic. It focuses primarily (although not exclusively) on the works and views of Cicero, premier politician and Roman philosopher of the day, and Lucretius, foremost among the representatives and supporters of (...) Epicureanism at the time. Throughout the volume, the impact of such disparate reception on the part of these leading authors is explored in a way that illuminates the popularity as well as the controversy attached to the followers of Epicurus in Italy, ranging from ethical and political concerns to the understanding of scientific and celestial phenomena. (shrink)

Sextus Empiricus ascribes to Epicurus a curious account of truth and falsehood, according to which these characteristics belong to things in the world about which one speaks, not to what one says about them. I propose an interpretation that takes this account seriously and explains the connection between truth and existence that the Epicureans also seem to recognise. I then examine a second Epicurean account of truth and falsehood and show how it is related to the first.

ABSTRACT: Aesthetic disinterestedness is one of the central concepts in aesthetics, and Jerome Stolnitz, the most prominent theorist of disinterestedness in the 20th century, has claimed that (i) ancient thinkers engagement with this notion was cursory and undeveloped, and consequently, (ii) the emergence of disinterestedness in the 18th century marks the birth of aesthetics as a discipline. In this paper, I use the extant works of Epicurus to show that the ancient philosopher not only had similar concepts, but also (...) motivated them in careful and complex ways. I argue that, in the Epicurean theoretical framework, arts belong to the category of ‘merely natural’ desires, and this classification, combined with what we know of Epicurus’ rejection of art criticism, shows he had carefully worked out reasons supporting the idea that art ought to be approached terminally, rather than instrumentally. Finally, I compare the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness with Epicurus’ views on arts and argue that in many ways the latter are not inferior to the former, and therefore ought to belong to the history of aesthetics. (shrink)

Epicurus argued that the good life is the pleasurable life. He also argued that ‘death is nothing to us’. These claims appear in tension. For if pleasure is good, then it seems that death is bad when it deprives us of deeply enjoyable time alive. Here, I offer an Epicurean view of pleasure and the complete life which dissolves this tension. This view is, I contend, more appealing than critics of Epicureanism have allowed, in part because it assigns higher (...) value to pleasures that we produce by exercising our rational capacities and by establishing control over our lives. (shrink)

Using the Epicurean position on death as a starting point, this article re-examines the basic assumptions of philosophers regarding their views on whether death should be seen as a bad. It questions the positions of philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and Derek Parfit by applying Wittgenstein’s notion of grammar as developed by G. P. Baker and P. M. S. Hacker. While philosophers may characterize questions such as ‘What is the nature of death?’ and ‘Is death a bad?’ as metaphysical, I (...) propose that such questions can be better characterized as grammatical. The failure to understand the grammatical character of such questions creates the illusion that questions concerning the nature of death can be adequately tackled with reference to empirical or metaphysical ‘facts’. If the arguments in this article are substantiated, some philosophical puzzles about death can be dissolved. (shrink)

The engagement with Epicurus in the Epistulae morales is a multifaceted literary device essential to the fabric of that epistolary Bildungsroman. It characterizes a Letter Writer “Seneca” and contributes to the dramatic structure of the Epistulae morales as an introduction not just to Stoicism, but to philosophy itself. The Letter Writer develops into a serious philosopher and progresses from naïve endorsement to a more sophisticated account of Stoic thought. He draws increasingly sharper distinctions between his own views and Epicurean (...) tenets. There are two layers of reception: While the Letter Writer might be blissfully unaware of a theoretical problem, the author L. Annaeus understood Epicurus well enough to know exactly what he was doing when he cunningly manipulated Epicurean tenets and expressions in order to unfold an intellectual drama. (shrink)