by Tim O'Keefe
In order to combat these superstitions, Epicurus sought to revive the atomist philosophy of Democritus, according to which the basic constituents of the world are indivisible bits of matter (atoms) moving about in empty space (void), with all else being the result of the interactions of these atoms. But in order to do this, Epicurus needed to combat not only popular religion but also philosophical rivals of Democritus, chief among them Plato. Plato was no friend of popular Olympian religion either: dialogues such as the Euthyphro and the Republic make it clear that he regarded as sacrilegious its conception of flawed deities. But otherwise, Plato and Epicurus are opposed on almost every important matter; as a first approximation, one will not go far wrong in viewing Epicurus as the anti-Plato. Plato minimizes the role of the senses in gaining knowledge, whereas Epicurus holds that all knowledge is grounded in sense-experience. In his dialogue the Timaeus, Plato puts forward a picture of the world as the product of a beneficent deity, and says that the workings of the world must be explained in terms of how they are for the best, whereas Epicurus holds everything to be the fortuitous result of atoms blindly bumping and grinding in the void. Plato believes in an immaterial soul and an afterlife, in which the virtuous are rewarded and the vicious punished, whereas for Epicurus the soul is a conglomeration of atoms that ceases to exist on the death of the body, so that there is nothing for us to fear in death.
Epicurus regarded Democritus as a great philosopher, but he was no slavish adherent of Democritus. Instead, Democritean atomism had internal problems, which Epicurus sought to overcome. Chief among these are its latent scepticism and fatalism. Democritus regards sensible properties such as sweetness and redness as not really present in material objects at all, which seems to make the reports of the senses systematically misleading. Democritus himself seems dubious of whether we can gain knowledge of the world, and later followers of his declare flatly that we know nothing. Epicurus regarded such scepticism as untenable, and he wishes to show that atomism is consistent with the reality of sensible qualities and the reliability of the senses. And if what is going to happen in the future has been set from time immemorial by the past positions and motions of the atoms that make up the universe, this would seem to render what will happen necessary, and make our attempts to affect the future pointless. Epicurus wanted to demonstrate that atomism would not have such disastrous fatalistic consequences for our agency. Epicurus also needed to show that the atomist ambition of explaining everything from the “bottom up”, in terms of the purposeless interactions of atoms in the void, was tenable. Plato’s pupil Aristotle (384–322 BCE) had raised serious objections against Democritus on precisely this point, objections that Epicurus needed to overcome.
In one sense, Epicureanism is an intensely individualistic philosophy. Once we cast off the corrupting influences of superstition and society, we can recognize that the only thing that is valuable in itself is one’s own pleasure. Anything else (including philosophy) is valuable only in so far as it helps one obtain pleasure for oneself. But at the same time, Epicureanism is a communal philosophy. Epicurus holds that the most pleasant life is a tranquil one, free of fear and need. We need the help of other people to attain this life. Wise individuals who recognize this can gather together and form communities in which they protect one another from the dangers of the outside world. Epicurus stresses the importance of friendship in attaining blessedness. Being part of a network of friends who can be trusted to help support one another in times of need is the greatest means for attaining tranquillity. Epicureanism is also an evangelical philosophy. Committed Epicureans thought that they had discovered a rational route to salvation, and they wished to spread the gospel of enlightened self-interest against the forces of superstition. Once again, Lucretius eloquently expresses this: the terrifying darkness that envelops our mind will be dispelled not by the rays of the sun, but only by a systematic account of the principles of nature (DAN I 146–8).
These aspects of Epicureanism are reflected in Epicurus’ biography. After he had devised his philosophical system, he set up Epicurean communities in Mytilene and Lampsacus, before going to Athens around 306 BCE. At that time, Athens was the centre of the philosophical world, housing the schools founded by Plato and Aristotle, the Academy and the Lyceum, as well as other philosophical descendants of Socrates, such as the Cynics, Cyrenaics and Megarians. There, Epicurus established the Garden, which was a combination of philosophical school and community in which the members tried to put into practice the principles of Epicurean living. The Garden was surprisingly egalitarian, letting in women and people of all social classes.
Epicurus was renowned for his kindness to his many friends, a fact acknowledged even by his detractors, such as Cicero. Epicurus died in 271 BCE, after suffering from kidney stones for fourteen days. In a letter he wrote shortly before he died, he claimed that his joy at recollecting his discussions with his friends helped counterbalance his terrible physical suffering. He made careful provisions in his will for the continuation of the Epicurean communities, which included setting dates for celebrations commemorating his birthday and other important Epicureans.
Epicureanism proved highly influential, with Epicurean communities springing up throughout the Greek-speaking world. Despite its popularity, Epicureanism also sparked great enmity. Its denial of divine providence was deemed impious, and its advice that one should “live hidden” and avoid entanglement in politics was thought to undermine public order. And even though Epicurus said that limiting one’s desires and living virtuously was the way to attain a pleasant life, Epicureanism was accused of undermining morality, and the Garden was allegedly the scene of debauched orgies.
With the rise of Christianity, Epicureanism went into decline. In the medieval period, the two primary sources of philosophical inspiration were Plato and Aristotle. The little attention that Epicurus received was usually in the service of criticizing atheistic materialism. However, Epicurean atomism was revived in the seventeenth century. The scientific revolution spurred a widespread reaction against the Aristotelian natural philosophy that had previously been dominant. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) and Robert Boyle (1627–91) both formulated versions of atomism explicitly based on Epicureanism, and they in turn had an influence on Isaac Newton (1643–1727). It is important to note that these thinkers tried to make their Epicurean atomism compatible with Christianity by restricting its application to the workings of the natural world, which does not include God, angels, the soul and the like.
Even many thinkers who were not atomists, such as René Descartes (1596–1650), had “mechanistic” natural philosophies that were, generally speaking, in sympathy with Epicureanism against Aristotelianism. Such thinkers rejected Epicurus’ contentions that absolutely empty space is necessary for motion, and that there are smallest units of matter. Nonetheless, like Epicurus, they thought that natural processes could be explained simply in terms of the mechanical interactions of bits of extended stuff, with no recourse to purposes in nature or to irreducible powers.1
Most of the empirical claims Epicurus made about the world – some fundamental to his system, others peripheral – hvae since been falsified. Atoms are not indivisible and do not naturally fall straight downwards at uniform velocity, the mind is not located in the chest, and the bitter taste of some foods is not a result of rough and barbed particles tearing at the tongue. So it is not surprising that the philosophical system of Epicureanism has no adherents today. Nonetheless, many parts of the basic Epicurean worldview, broadly construed, are still very much live options. Epicurus holds that we can and must rely on the senses to gain knowledge of the universe and, when we do so, we discover a world without purpose or plan, indifferent to our concerns. We also discover that, like all other things, we are entirely material beings, and that death is annihilation. But this knowledge is not disheartening; instead, it liberates us from the superstitious fears of the gods and of death, and allows us to concentrate on attaining happiness here and now. And if we are
wise, limiting our desires to what we really need and living in harmony with our friends, happiness is not difficult to attain. As the Epicurean Philodemus summarizes, in his “four-fold cure”, “Nothing to fear from god, nothing to worry about in death. Good is easy to obtain, and evil easy to endure” (Phld. Herculaneum papyrus 1005, 4.9–14, LS 25J).
Sources on Epicureanism
Scholars studying Kant have to work hard to understand and interpret Kant’s often difficult writing, but they have a complete corpus of Kant’s texts to work with. The project of trying to understand ancient philosophers is greatly complicated because we often have to work with sources that are not only obscure but fragmentary or unreliable. Among ancient philosophers, Epicurus occupies something of a middle ground when it comes to sources. Unlike Plato or Aristotle, we have fairly little of Epicurus’ own writings, and some of the later sources (such as Cicero and Plutarch) have to be handled with care. But we do have a non-trivial amount of Epicurus’ own writings, and the later sources (especially Lucretius and Cicero) often give quite extensive reports of the arguments in favour of Epicurean positions, which puts us in a better position to understand Epicurean philosophy than is the case for many ancient philosophers, such as the Cyrenaics and most of the Presocratics. Here are the major sources that will inform the subsequent account.
Epicurus himself
Unsurprisingly, Christians by and large were inimical to Epicurus, and even though he was a voluminous author (DL X 27–8), few of his writings survived the Middle Ages. Diogenes Laertius (fl. c. 3rd century CE) wrote a ten-book summary of the lives and doctrines of many Greek philosophers. This work has to be used cautiously, as Diogenes copies from various sources accounts of philosophers’ doctrines and snippets of gossip about their lives with little regard for their accuracy. But Diogenes Laertius is nonetheless one of our best sources on Epicureanism, largely because the last book of his work, which deals with Epicurus, includes three letters Epicurus himself wrote: the Letter to Herodotus, which summarizes his metaphysics and physics; the Letter to Pythocles, which gives explanations of celestial and meteorological phenomena; and the Letter to Menoeceus, which summarizes his ethics. All three letters are valuable starting-points for understanding Epicurus, but all are only digests of major points, so many details and supporting argumentation are left out. Diogenes also preserves the Principal Doctrines: forty of Epicurus’ sayings that deal mostly with ethical matters. The Vatican Sayingsis a collection of quotations from Epicurus and his followers, some of which overlap the Principal Doctrines, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library.
An Epicurean villa in the town of Herculaneum was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The villas library was unearthed in the eighteenth century and work continues today in unrolling, deciphering, translating and interpreting the carbonized scrolls, which include portions of Epicurus’ magnum opus, On Nature. Unfortunately, the texts are largely in terrible shape.
Later Epicureans
I have already mentioned the Roman poet Lucretius (c.94–55 BCE), whose six-book poem De Rerum Natura (On the nature of things) is our best source for Epicurus’ metaphysics and physics: his arguments for the existence of atoms and void, and how to account for all other phenomena in atomistic terms. We know basically nothing about his life; a much later report that he was driven mad by a love potion and composed On the Nature of Things during lucid intervals is not credible. We also have considerable (although often fragmentary) remains of the work of Philodemus, an Epicurean philosopher of the first century BCE, which were uncovered in the Herculaneum villa. Near the end of his life, Diogenes of Oinoanda (second century CE) had extensive summaries of Epicurean teachings inscribed on portico walls in the city of Oinoanda (in modern-day central Turkey) in order to spread Epicurus’ healing message to his fellow citizens, foreigners and future generations. The remains of this inscription were discovered in 1884.2
Other Epicureans are known to us only through the works of other, non-Epicurean philosophers. Colotes (fl c.310–260 BCE) was a younger compatriot of Epicurus who wrote the polemic That it is Impossible Even to Live According to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers, spurring the spirited rejoinder Against Colotes by the Platonist philosopher and biographer Plutarch (c.50–120 CE). Hermarchus succeeded Epicurus as head of the Garden, and his account of the origin of justice and the reasons why we have no obligations of justice towards animals is quoted extensively by Porphyry (third-century CE Platonist and pupil of Plotinus) in On Abstinence from Animal Food, Porphyry’s brief for vegetarianism.
The Epicureans had a reputation for doctrinal conservatism, inspired by their reverence for Epicurus, so these Epicureans probably did not depart far from Epicurus’ thought. But they did not merely copy Epicurus. For one thing, they engaged in philosophical combat with new opponents that Epicurus did not target. Right around the time of Epicurus’ death, Arcesilaus assumed the head of Plato’s Academy and turned it in a sceptical direction, arguing that nothing can be known. Colotes makes the Academic Sceptics one of his primary foils when trying to show that anyone who casts doubt on the reliability of the senses thereby renders life impossible. Around 301 BCE, Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school, whose beliefs in a providential deity and in the intrinsic value of virtue were in sharp contrast to Epicurean doctrines. We have no record of Epicurus arguing against the Stoics, but Philodemus’ treatise on sign inference shows the Epicureans engaging in extended debate with contemporary Stoics on the basis for empirical generalizations, and Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods records their criticisms of Stoic theology. Secondly, there is some dissent within Epicureanism. For instance, Cicero records that some Epicureans thought – against the orthodox line – that friends come to love their friends for their own sake and that not all mental pleasures depend on bodily pleasures.
Non-Epicureans
Reports on Epicureanism are scattered across a huge range of authors, but two are worth special mention. The Roman statesman and philosophical enthusiast Cicero (106–43 BCE) counted himself an adherent of Plato’s sceptical Academy. During an enforced hiatus from Roman politics near the end of his life, he decided to serve his countrymen by composing treatises in Latin summarizing the views of the major philosophical schools on various topics, such as the existence and nature of the gods, fate and freedom, and happiness and the virtues. Usually Cicero composed these as dialogues, with the spokesmen of the various schools debating their positions; often he used the handbooks of the schools themselves (in Greek) as sources for his own productions. Despite Cicero’s antipathy to Epicurus, which can cause him to present the Epicurean positions unsympathetically, and his occasional misunderstandings of his sources, Cicero is indispensable.
Sextus Empiricus (c. second century CE) was a doctor and Pyrrhonian Sceptic. The Pyrrhonists took as their namesake Pyrrho (c.365–270 BCE), a compatriot of Epicurus famous for suspending judgement on all things (i.e. having no beliefs) and obtaining peace of mind as a result. But the Pyrrhonian movement was founded by Aenesidemus in the first century BCE, when he thought the sceptical Academy was insufficiently sceptical, and Sextus is our main source of information on it. One of the main Pyrrhonist procedures is to present arguments on various sides of some issue – for instance, the Stoic arguments in favour of divine providence and the Epicurean arguments against it – in such a way that the opposing arguments have “equal weight”, with the result that suspension of judgement follows; for example, you do not have a belief one way or the other about the existence of divine providence. Because of this sceptical practice, Sextus presents an impressive array of arguments by various philosophers, including the Epicureans.
There are numerous other sources of information on Epicureanism, of varying reliability, which either summarize parts of its doctrine or preserve short quotations from Epicurus.3 These sources, all together, allow us to piece together a reasonably complete picture of Epicurus’ philosophy. However, gaps and controversies remain.
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sp; PART I
Metaphysics and physics: introduction and overview
Epicurus divides philosophy into three parts: physics, “canonic” and ethics (DL X 29–30). Canonic deals with the standards used to judge what is the case (which in contemporary philosophy falls under the heading “epistemology”), and ethics with what to pursue, what to avoid and what the goal of human life is. These parts of the system will be explored later in the book.
Epicurean “physics” covers the entire theory of nature (phusis in Greek, from which “physics” is derived): what the basic constituents of the natural world are and how one explains the processes within it. So Epicurean “physics” covers much of the same ground as does contemporary physics, for example in its theorizing about the types of atomic motion and how atoms form larger bodies, and in its cosmology. However, it extends considerably further. Since it concerns change in the natural world as a whole, biological questions (such as how one explains the apparent functional organization of creatures’ organs) and psychological questions (such as how one accounts for vision) also fall under the purview of Epicurean “physics”. Furthermore, Epicurus thinks that the natural world is all that exists, so Epicurean “physics” is really a general theory of what exists and what its nature is. Thus, Epicurean “physics” addresses issues that many (although not all) philosophers would think are more properly metaphysical and not scientific: what the relationship of the mind to the body is and whether there is an afterlife; whether the gods exist and, if they do, what they are like; and whether only material things exist as such. So this section is entitled “metaphysics and physics”, although the Epicureans themselves would not have used this terminology.