Overview
Epicurus (341–270 BCE) founded the Garden school in Athens, teaching atomist physics and a therapy of desire aimed at ataraxia. He admitted women and slaves as students and wrote extensively; most works are lost, leaving letters and maxims plus Lucretius’s later poem. Handbook dates: 341–270 BCE. He opposed both superstitious fear and political ambition’s turmoil.
Main ideas
Pleasure is the beginning and end of the blessed life—chiefly absence of bodily pain and mental disturbance, not endless luxury. Natural and necessary desires are few; empty desires breed anxiety. Death is nothing to us: when we are, death is not; when death is, we are not. Gods exist as blissful models but do not govern or punish. Atoms and void explain nature without teleology. Friendship is the greatest instrument of happiness.
Major works
- Letter to Menoeceus
- Letter to Herodotus
- Principal Doctrines
- Vatican Sayings
Legacy
Epicureanism spread across the Hellenistic and Roman worlds and revived in early modernity via Lucretius. Therapeutic ethics and secularism claim him. Caricatures of gluttony miss his austere hedonism.
Themes in this archive
Life (2) · Desire (2) · Death (1)