Epicureanism

“ With this was connected the feeling, increasing with his advance to manhood, of a poetic beauty in mere clearness of thought, the actually aesthetic charm of a cold austerity of mind; as if the kinship of that to the clearness of physical light were something more than a figure of speech. Of all those various religious fantasies, as so many forms of enthusiasm, he could well appreciate the picturesque; that was made easy by his natural Epicureanism, already prompting him to conceive of himself as but the passive spectator of the world around him. ”

“ Epicureanism generally was content to affirm that whatever we effectively feel in consciousness is real; in which sense they allow reality to the fancies of the insane, the dreams of a sleeper, and those feelings by which we imagine the existence of beings of perfect blessedness and endless life. Similarly, just because fear, hope and remembrance add to the intensity of consciousness, the Epicurean can hold that bodily pain and pleasure is a less durable and important thing than pain and pleasure of mind. Whatever we feel to affect us does affect us, and is therefore real. ”

“ The test of true pleasure, according to Epicurus, is the removal and absorption of all that gives pain; it implies freedom from pain of body and from trouble of mind. The happiness of the Epicurean was, it might almost seem, a grave and solemn pleasure—a quiet unobtrusive ease of heart, but not exuberance and excitement. The sage of Epicureanism is a rational and reflective seeker for happiness, who balances the claims of each pleasure against the evils that may possibly ensue, and treads the path of enjoyment cautiously. Prudence is, therefore, the only real guide to happiness ”

“ And while we recognize it as among the most interesting among spiritual triumphs, we are persuaded that the absence of its spirit, or its decline, is usually followed by a low state of society. Epicureanism is its antagonistic principle, and is as destructive as the other is conservative. The moment men are unwilling to sacrifice themselves to a great cause, they virtually say that temporal and worldly interests are to be preferred to the spiritual and the future. The language of the Epicurean is intensely egotistic. ”

“ When we remember that the writer of this book was one of the most formidable and unflinching opponents of Epicureanism in all the ancient world, it must be owned that it would be impossible to find a grander example of that noble love of truth, that sublime and scrupulous justice to opponents, which was the pre-eminent glory of ancient philosophers, and which, after the destruction of philosophy, was for many centuries almost unknown in the world. ”

“ Epicureanism made a natural appeal to men in a time like the last century and a half of the Republic, when the ancient confidence in the state religion was gone, when the simplicity of the earlier centuries had been replaced by a more elaborate method of living, made possible through the rapid increase of wealth, and when in every department of Roman life rapid changes were taking place. ”

“ Epicurus had many followers in Greece, and his doctrines were eagerly embraced by many among the Romans during the corrupt period of the Roman empire. Many of these disciples carried the doctrines of their master to an excess that he himself would have been the first to condemn. Allowing full indulgence to every appetite and passion, their whole philosophy was expressed in the proverb, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." No pure or exalted life could be nourished in the unwholesome atmosphere of such a philosophy. Epicureanism never produced a single great character. ”

“ Epicureanism had, indeed, spread widely in the Empire,197 but it proved little more than a principle of disintegration or an apology for vice, or at best the religion of tranquil and indifferent natures animated by no strong moral enthusiasm. ”

“ The purest type of Epicureanism may have refined a few of the better sort, but the prevailing influence, doubtless, undermined society. The god of the reason was allied with the god of the sense, and the maniac soul of the lying prophet entered the schools. ”

“ He thought, too, that the degree of civilisation reached by any country might be estimated from observation of the degree of singularity possible in the inhabitants of that country.
Though very temperate in his habits of life, he professed Epicureanism, perhaps lightly rather than from conviction. But he condemned Epicurus, affirming that in his time and nation there was much more pleasure to be obtained from the pursuit of glory and virtue, than from idleness, indifference, and sensuality, which things were considered by that philosopher to represent the greatest good of life. ”

“ Epicureanism was founded by Epicurus, who was born of an Athenian family in the Island of Samos about 342 B.C. Stoicism originated with Zeno, a native of Cittium in Cyprus, born about the year 340 B.C.
The original design of the system of Epicurus was 230to found a commonwealth of happiness and goodness in opposition to the purely intellectual aristocracy of Plato and Aristotle. Men were beginning to tire of speculation and dialectics, and to long for a philosophy built upon human feeling and sensibility. ”

“ Epicureanism numbered among its disciples, not only men of approved virtue, but not a few, like Pliny the Younger, of a more active type of virtue than Epicurus would have deemed consistent with pleasure. ”

“ They afford relief to the strained attention, and suggest the close and permanent human interest involved in what is apparently special, abstract, and remote. There is no necessary connexion between the atomic theory of philosophy, and that view of the end and objects of life which Lucretius derived from Epicurus. Although the moral attitude of Epicurus was, in some respects, anticipated by Democritus, Epicureanism really started from independent sources, viz. from the later development of the ethical teaching of Socrates, and from the personal circumstances and disposition of Epicurus. ”

“ Give him a strong, consistent, and elevating religion and he would be normally a pious man. Stoicism supplied him with a standard which was in keeping with such tendencies. About Epicureanism there was nothing heroic or elevating.
Put briefly, and therefore crudely, the Epicurean doctrine was that happiness is the end of life. What men seek, and have a right to seek, is the most pleasant existence. Our conduct should secure for us as much real pleasure as possible. Now at first sight this looks like what it was opprobriously called by its enemies, "the philosophy of the pig-sty." ”

“ The avoidance of mental pain and physical suffering, as well as the cultivation of all pleasurable emotions, were to be the leading features of every Epicurean programme. In the beginning, Epicureanism inculcated principles of virtue as a means of happiness. ”

“ All that exists, says Epicurus, is corporeal (τὸ πᾶν ἐστι σῶμα) ; the intangible is non-existent, or empty space. If a thing exists it must be felt, and to be felt it must exert resistance. But not all things are intangible which our senses are not subtle enough to detect. We must indeed accept our feelings; but we must also believe much which is not directly testified by sensation, if only it serves to explain phenomena and does not contravene our sensations. The fundamental postulates of Epicureanism are atoms and the void (ἄτομα καὶ κενόν) . ”

“ It is all very well for a high-minded philosopher to avoid a pleasure in order to avoid its pain, and to realize that a pleasure of the mind is worth more than a pleasure of the body, but one cannot expect the ordinary pupil—the homme moyen sensuel—to comprehend this attitude with heartiness sufficient to put it into practice. It followed therefore that the Epicurean tended, not only to become lazy, but to become vicious, or to make light of vices. This was not indeed true Epicureanism, and Epicurus is not to blame for it ”

“ The de rerum natura is an exposition of Epicureanism, especially on its physical side; i. 54,
‘Nam tibi de summa caeli ratione deumque
disserere incipiam et rerum primordia pandam,’ etc.
The title is taken from Epicurus’ περὶ φύσεως, which Lucretius followed closely, as is evident from the account of the Epicurean philosophy in Diogenes Laertius, x., and from the fragments of Epicurean writers discovered at Herculaneum in 1752. He probably used as his model Empedocles’ poem περὶ φύσεως.
The object of the poem is to deliver men from the fear of death and of the gods; iii. ”

“ A striking kinship between them and certain Christian precepts has been frequently pointed out. Justice, fortitude, prudence, and temperance were the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism. Freedom from all passions and complete simplicity of life, resulting in perfect purity of manners, was its chief aim. But the fundamental principles of both Epicureanism and Stoicism were destructive of those spiritual elements which furnish complete and permanent nourishment to the soul. Stoicism was pantheism, and Epicureanism was materialism. ”

“ Epictetus, a celebrated Stoic philosopher of the 1st century, originally a slave; lived and taught at Rome, but after the expulsion of the philosophers retired to Nicopolis, in Epirus; was lame, and lived in poverty; his conversations were collected by Arrian, and his philosophy in a short manual under the Greek name of “Enchiridion of Epictetus,” written, as is alleged, in utter obliviousness of the fact that “the end of man is an action, not a thought.”
Epicureans, a sect of philosophers who derived their name from Epicurus, and who divided the empire of philosophy with the Stoics (q. v.) ”

“ And in their discourses concerning the soul and the gods, they hold that the soul perishes when it is separated from the body, and that the gods concern not themselves in our affairs. Thus the Epicureans reproach the other philosophers, that by their wisdom they bereave man of his life; whilst the others on the contrary accuse them of teaching men to live degenerately and like beasts.
Now these things are scattered here and there in the writings of Epicurus, and dispersed through all his philosophy. ”

“ Epicurus accepted the philosophy of Democritus concerning the nature of atoms and based his physics upon this theory. The Epicurean philosophy may be summed up in four canons:
" (1) Sense is never deceived; and therefore every sensation and every perception of an appearance is true. (2) Opinion follows upon sense and is superadded to sensation, and capable of truth or falsehood, (3) All opinion attested, or not contradicted by the evidence of sense, is true. (4) An opinion contradicted, or not attested by the evidence of sense, is false." ”

“ Philosophy.—The Epicurean philosophy is traditionally divided into the three branches of logic, physics and ethics. It is, however, only as a basis of facts and principles for his theory of life that logical and physical inquiries find a place at all. Epicurus himself had not apparently shared in any large or liberal culture, and his influence was certainly thrown on the side of those who depreciated purely scientific pursuits as one-sided and misleading. ”

“ Such are the opinions to which the name of Epicurus has been attached; but there were Epicureans ages before that philosopher was born, and Epicureans there will be in all time to come. They abound in our own days, ever characterized by the same features—an intense egoism in their social relations, superficiality in their philosophical views, if the term philosophical can be justly applied to intellects so narrow; they manifest an accordance often loud and particular with the religion of their country, while in their hearts and in their lives they are utter infidels. ”

“ By a thousand phenomena they force themselves into the world which surrounds us and our emotional life. Epicurus, who denied their power, saw in them at least immortal beings who possess in stainless perfection everything which in mortals is disfigured by errors, weaknesses, and afflictions. To him they are the intensified, reflected image of our own nature, and I think we can do nothing wiser than to cling to that, because it shows us to what heights of beauty and power, intellect, goodness, and purity we may attain. ”

“ While I numbered myself among the Epicureans, whose doctrine still possesses the greatest charm for me, I nevertheless shared the master's opinion that it is insulting the gods to suppose that they will disturb their blissful repose for the sake of us insignificant mortals. Now my mind and my experience rebel against holding to this view, yet I believe with Epicurus, and with you, that the eternal laws of Nature bow to neither divine nor human will. ”

“ Ask, "What, then, is God, and what is an external impression? And what is nature in the individual and nature in the universe?" You already have a lengthy statement. If Epicurus should come and say that the good ought to be in the flesh, again the explanation becomes lengthy, and you must be told what is the principal faculty within us, and what our substantial, and what our essential, nature is. Since it is not probable that the good of a snail lies in its shell, is it, then, probable that the good of man lies in his flesh? ”

“ In practical ethics the Epicureans did not differ much from the other systems of their time. They taught that happiness must be found in the avoidance of pain, and that inasmuch as some pleasures have painful results they were to be rejected, as some pains were to be accepted, for they were followed by pleasure; and they held that in self-control and choice lay the means by which man could attain to his goal, which was ἀταραξία, complete repose of the mind. So the Epicurean tried to reach an end similar to that of the Stoic, although his premises were somewhat different. ”