Epicurus

Peter Adamson offers an accessible, humorous tour through a period of eight hundred years when some of the most influential of all schools of thought were formed. He introduces us to Cynics and Skeptics, Epicureans and Stoics, emperors and slaves, and traces the development of early Christian philosophy and of ancient science. A major theme of the book is in fact the competition between pagan and Christian philosophy in this period, and the Jewish tradition appears in the shape of Philo (...) of Alexandria. Ancient science is also considered, with chapters on ancient medicine and the interaction between philosophy and astronomy. Considerable attention is paid also to the wider historical context, for instance by looking at the ascetic movement in Christianity and how it drew on ideas from Hellenic philosophy. From the counter-cultural witticisms of Diogenes the Cynic to the subtle skepticism of Sextus Empiricus, from the irreverent atheism of the Epicureans to the ambitious metaphysical speculation of Neoplatonism, from the ethical teachings of Marcus Aurelius to the political philosophy of Augustine, the book gathers together all aspects of later ancient thought in an accessible and entertaining way. (shrink)

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)

Epikurs Philosophie ist Ausdruck seines Ringens um Orientierung. Es geht ihm nicht um ein abstraktes, theoretisches, auf Wahrheiten basierendes Lehrsystem, sondern um die Praxis eines gelingenden Lebens. Durch nüchterne Planung und Einsicht in die Abläufe der Natur will er Ängste vermeiden und eine sichere Orientierung auch im Umgang mit dem Ungewissen gewährleisten. Der Epikureismus lässt sich mit grundlegenden Begriffen und Konzepten der Philosophie der Orientierung deuten, darunter Vertrauen, Autorität, Plausibilität, Paradoxien, Orientierung in Routinen und Orientierung durch Achtung und Planung. -/- (...) In: Andrea Bertino / Ekaterina Poljakova / Andreas Rupschus / Benjamin Alberts (Hg.), Zur Philosophie der Orientierung, Berlin / Boston 2016, S. 33–48. (shrink)

Epicurus’ theory of what is good for a person is hedonistic: only pleasure has intrinsic value. Critics object that Epicurus is committed to advocating sensualist excess, since hedonism seems both to imply that more pleasure is always of some good for you, and to recommend even debauched, sensual kinds of pleasure. However, Epicurus can respond to this objection much like J. S. Mill responds to the objection that hedonism is a “doctrine worthy only of swine”. I argue that Epicurus’ hedonism (...) is a version of qualitative hedonism on which static pleasure is intrinsically superior to other kinds of pleasure. I also argue that Epicurus conceives of pleasure as a phenomenal or felt quality of experience, and that this is compatible with his troublesome claim that there is an upper limit to pleasure and wellbeing. (shrink)

Epicurus emphatically asserts the veracity of perception, including visual perception, yet most of the literature on Epicurus’ atomistic theory of vision pays scant attention to what Epicurus believed transpires outside the body that leads to it. The treatments by DeWitt, Everson, Hicks, and Rist are all very brief; Glidden focuses primarily on the processes occurring inside the perceiver; and while the discussions by Asmis and Bailey are more detailed, they hardly more than note in passing that the process is problematic.1 (...) In this paper I will critically examine Epicurus’ theory of vision, in particular his theory of the events occurring between perceived objects and the eye. I will argue that while certain common objections to Epicurus’ theory may be answerable, it nevertheless suffers from serious problems. These problems, in turn, occur on two levels. On the mechanical level, it demands that dissimilar atomic complexes behave in strikingly similar ways. And on the theoretical level, there is tension created by the need for the intermediary between objects and the observer to be both like objects and unlike them. (shrink)

Ancient ethical theories, based on the notions of virtue and happiness, have struck many as an attractive alternative to modern theories. But we cannot find out whether this is true until we understand ancient ethics--and to do this we need to examine the basic structure of ancient ethical theory, not just the details of one or two theories. In this book, Annas brings together the results of a wide-ranging study of ancient ethical philosophy and presents it in a way that (...) is easily accessible to anyone with an interest in ancient or modern ethics. She examines the fundamental notions of happiness and virtue, the role of nature in ethical justification and the relation between concern for self and concern for others. Her careful examination of the ancient debates and arguments shows that many widespread assumptions about ancient ethics are quite mistaken. Ancient ethical theories are not egoistic, and do not depend for their acceptance on metaphysical theories of a teleological kind. Most centrally, they are recognizably theories of morality, and the ancient disputes about the place of virtue in happiness can be seen as akin to modern disputes about the demands of morality. (shrink)

"Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind" is an elegant survey of Stoic and Epicurean ideas about the soul an introduction to two ancient schools whose belief in the soul's physicality offer compelling parallels to modern approaches in the ...

This essay looks at Nietzsche in relation to the Epicurean tradition. It focuses on his middle period writings of 1878 texts such as Human, all too Human, Dawn, and The Gay Science heroic-idyllic philosophizing’. At the same time, Nietzsche claims to understand Epicurus differently to everybody else. The essay explores the main figurations of Epicurus we find in his middle period and concludes by taking a critical look at his later and more ambivalent reception of Epicurus.

Enargeia became a technical term –to which Cicero coined the neologism evidentia for its translation– in the Hellenistic Epistemology, so it seems, beginning from Epicurus. In his analysis of the perceptive evidence he developed a relevant reformulation of the nature of perceiving and the Aristotelian typology of sensibilia which bases the truth of perception on the autonomy and opacity of each one of the senses in relation to the rest of the senses and other faculties such as memory or reason. (...) Sextus Empiricus objected to this type of approach that every perceptive act entails synthesis, in which memory or reason get involved, and requires the affection, which comes between perception and object, and makes the perceptive evidence another case of inference through signs. The basic reflexivity mode which was designated as synaisthesis in Late Antiquity seems to have been put forward against the second objection of Sextus Empiricus. (shrink)

This paper argues that although Epicureans will never marry for love, they may find it therapeutic to marry for sex: Epicureans may marry in order to limit anxiety about securing a sexual partner if they are prone to such anxiety and if they believe their prospective partner will satisfy them sexually. The paper shows that Epicureans believe that the process of obtaining sex can be a major source of anxiety, that it is acceptable for the sage to marry under certain (...) circumstances, and that the desire for sex alone is free of the groundless assumptions that fuel love. Epicureans would therefore approve of marrying to alleviate sexual anxiety. (shrink)

In this modestly expanded edition of his 1973 book, Some Aspects of Epicurean Psychology , David Konstan attempts to flesh out the Epicurean explanation of the causes of unhappiness: “empty beliefs” —most importantly, the groundless fear of death—and the irrational desires that fuel and are fueled by them. Konstan’s central argument, preserved from the earlier edition, is deceptively simple: empty beliefs, according to Epicureans, are in large part the product of a symbolic association—a “linguistic confusion”—of the afterlife with certain real-life (...) human ills, such as poverty and obscurity.In the first chapter, which is new to this edition, Konstan calls on psychology to flesh out the Epicurean understanding of empty fears and irrational desires—ancient psychology, that is: a science of the soul. Konstan’s reading of the relation between sensation , the passions of pleasure and pain, and belief in Epicurean doctrine is unorthodox but thorough. Rather than mapping pathē onto either the soul as a whole or the body, Konstan assigns. (shrink)

Epicurus is one of the first social contract theorists, holding that justice is an agreement neither to harm nor be harmed. He also says that living justly is necessary and sufficient for living pleasantly, which is the Epicurean goal. Some say that there are two accounts of justice in Epicurus -- one as a personal virtue, the other as a virtue of institutions. I argue that the personal virtue derives from compliance with just social institutions, and so we need to (...) attribute only one account of justice to Epicurus. I show how this interpretation makes sense of claims about justice by Epicurus and his followers, including Hermarchus, Lucretius, and Diogenes of Oinoanda. (shrink)

The Epicureans argued that death was nothing to us and that we should not fear death, and this thesis takes up these arguments as they appear in our fullest extant source, the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. After an initial look at the general Epicurean theory of emotions, the thesis narrows in on the fears of death. Lucretius starts from a popular dichotomy concerning death: death is either the utter destruction of the person who dies, or the person survives in (...) some form. Each belief has its own fear. On the one side, people fear complete annihilation, and on the other side, people fear the possibility of an eternal afterlife of suffering and punishment. In response to these fears, Lucretius argues for two key claims: first, that there is no post-mortem survival and, second, that non-survival is not harmful. Lucretius defends the first claim by arguing that death destroys the compound of soul and body which makes up a person. Since the person does not survive death, there is no possibility of an afterlife of never-ending torture. To support his second claim, Lucretius argues that there can be no harm without someone to suffer the harm. Since death is the utter destruction of the person who dies, that person is not left for death to harm. Thus, non-survival is no harm to the person who dies. It is unreasonable to fear what will not happen or what will not be bad. Thus, Lucretius shows that two central fears of death--the fear of Hades and the fear of annihilation--are unreasonable. People should not fear Hades, since there is no such afterlife of eternal torture. Nor should they fear non-survival, since annihilation is not the harm it appears to be. Because Hades is not real and annihilation is not bad, death is nothing to us in either case. (shrink)

O'Keefe's contention that Epicurus devised the atomic swerve to counter a threat to the efficacy of reason posed by the thesis that the future is fixed regardless of what we do, is not supported by the evidence he adduces. Epicurus' own words in On nature XXV, and testimony from Lucretius and Cicero, tell far more strongly in favour of the traditional view, that Epicurus' concerns were causal determinism and its threat to moral responsiblity for our actions and characters.

As is well known, Epicurus and his followers held that the universe was infinite and f that its two primary components, void and atoms, were each infinite. The void was infinite in extension, the atoms were infinite in number and their total was infinite also in extension. The chief Epicurean proofs of these infinities are found in Epicurus, Ad Herod. 41–2, and in Lucretius 1.951–1020. As far as I can see, both the commentators to these works and writers on Epicurean (...) physics in general have neglected to take into account some material pertinent to these proofs, material found in Aristotle and especially in his commentators Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Simplicius, and Philoponus. In this article I wish to compare this neglected information with the proofs of infinity found in Epicurus and Lucretius and to discuss their authorship. (shrink)

As is well known, Epicurus and his followers held that the universe was infinite and f that its two primary components, void and atoms, were each infinite. The void was infinite in extension, the atoms were infinite in number and their total was infinite also in extension. The chief Epicurean proofs of these infinities are found in Epicurus, Ad Herod. 41–2, and in Lucretius 1.951–1020. As far as I can see, both the commentators to these works and writers on Epicurean (...) physics in general have neglected to take into account some material pertinent to these proofs, material found in Aristotle and especially in his commentators Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Simplicius, and Philoponus. In this article I wish to compare this neglected information with the proofs of infinity found in Epicurus and Lucretius and to discuss their authorship. (shrink)