Epicurus(Greece - 341-269 B.C.)
A great Greek philosopher who gain great notoriety shortly after the death of Alexander the Great and the Greek revolt. At age 18 he joined the military... and at age 32 he started one of several great schools and many followers, known as
Epicureans. Many of his teachings revolved around the importance of friends and living a happy life. He was also a scientific philopher and is well known for his theories on the existance of atoms, how they move and react to other atoms; along with theories on societies need for a God to preseve order and the psychology of math & computations.
After the official approval of Christianity by Constantine, Epicureanism suffered a significant decline. Epicurus' theory of gods unconcerned with human affairs clashed strongly with the Judeo-Christian God and made the philosophies irreconcilable. For instance, Lactantius criticizes Epicurus at several points throughout his Divine Institutes. The school never really came back from this decline, except through the resurge of atomism among scientists in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
His Teachings:Epicurus' teachings represented a departure from the other major Greek thinkers of his period, and before, but was nevertheless founded on many of the same principles as Democritus.
He admitted women and slaves into his school, emphasized the senses in his epistemology, and was one of the first Greeks to break from the god-fearing and god-worshipping tradition common at the time, even while affirming that religious activities are useful as a way to contemplate the gods and to use them as an example of the pleasant life. The fear of God helped man maintain a more peaceful society through shame.
He is best known for advocating the pursuit of or indulgence in pleasure with a guilt-free attitude as a necessary moral good. He did not advocate over-indulgence, however, saying that the greatest pleasure is merely the absence of pain. All other pleasures are simply variation. There are connections to the philosophies of Ayn Rand and Osho as well as Zen.
The most known Epicurian verse, which epitomizes the Epicurian philosophy, is lathe biōsas λάθε βιώσας (Plutarchus De latenter vivendo 1128c; Flavius Philostratus Vita Apollonii 8.28.12), meaning "live secretly", "get through life without drawing attention to yourself", i. e. live without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, enjoying little things like food, the company of friends etc.
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LegacyElements of Epicurean philosophy have resonated and resurfaced in various diverse thinkers and movements throughout Western intellectual history. The Epicurean paradox is a famous argument against the existence of God.
Epicurus discussed a human being's natural right to "life, liberty, and safety."
This was later picked up by the democratic thinkers of the French Revolution, and others, like John Locke, who wrote that people had a right to "life, liberty, and property."
This triad was carried forward into the American freedom movement and Declaration of Independence, by American founding father, Thomas Jefferson, as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Principle Doctrines / Quotes* Let us live while we are alive.
* Friendship goes dancing round the world, announcing to all of us to wake up to happiness
* Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.
* The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity
* We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience of pleasure as the criterion of every good thing.
* Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
* No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.
* It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and honorably and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and honorably and justly without living pleasantly.
*Those animals which are incapable of making binding agreements with one another not to inflict nor suffer harm are without either justice or injustice; and likewise for those peoples who either could not or would not form binding agreements not to inflict nor suffer harm.
* Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefulness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another.
Links:Epicurus.net - all of his published works available on the netStanford Review of Epicurius' teachings of science, sociology and psychologySocietas Via Romana - Epicurus & LucriciousEpicurus - WikiquotesEpicurus - Wikipedia Entry
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