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)

By means of a comprehensive and penetrating examination of the main elements of Epicurean ethics, Phillip Mitsis forces us to reevaluate this widely misunderstood figure in the history of philosophy.

This chapter begins with an Epicurean account of freedom of choice, which illustrates some of the larger contours of Plato's ethical aims in the context of his materialism. It also serves as a salient point of departure for gauging the overall plausibility of his general project of ‘naturalizing reason’, to use a contemporary slogan Epicurus might well have endorsed. The discussions then turn to Epicurus's claims about death and pleasure.

In 1976, Fred Miller published a brief, but highly original, paper entitled “Epicurus on the Art of Dying.” This was shortly after Thomas Nagel’s well-known 1970 paper which attempted to counter Epicurus’s claim that death does us no harm, and somewhat before ancient philosophers and their philosophical colleagues started turning Epicurus’s death arguments into a major growth industry. I argue that if Epicurean scholars had taken Miller’s arguments to heart it would have saved them going down a lot of blind (...) alleys in what is now the almost 50 years since the paper appeared. Using elements taken from his arguments, I elaborate them in the light of subsequent scholarship in order to show why a series of leading contemporary interpretations of Epicurean claims about death are deeply inadequate and why Epicurus’s view is not just a clever puzzle, but, as Miller argued, a position with considerable, even attractive, argumentative resources. (shrink)

The almost 300 articles contain not only historical accounts but also some indication of the state of present day study in classical philosophy.

This latest volume of BACAP Proceedings contains some innovative research by international scholars on Plato, Aristotle, and Sophocles. It covers such themes as Plato on the philosopher ruler, and Aristotle on essence and necessity in science. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introductions Stoic Approach to Philosophy: Importance of Systematicity Stoic Sources Stoic Ethics Stoic Psychology and Physics Stoic Logic Conclusion Notes References and Recommended Reading.