Epicurus

Life and School

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher, born in February 341 BC in the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos. His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and his father was an Athenian citizen. He grew up at the close of the Greek Classical Period: Plato had died seven years before his birth, and Epicurus was seven when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Persia. As a child he would have received a typical ancient Greek education, and he is known to have studied for about four years with Pamphilus, a Samian Platonist.

After the death of Alexander the Great, Perdiccas expelled the Athenian settlers on Samos to Colophon, on the coast of what is now Turkey. Epicurus joined his family there after completing his military service. He studied under Nausiphanes, who followed the teachings of Democritus. Around 311 BC, when Epicurus was about thirty, he began teaching in Mytilene. His teachings caused strife there, and he was forced to leave. He then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens around 306 BC, where he remained until his death in 270 BC.

In Athens, Epicurus founded The Garden, a school named for the garden he owned and used as its meeting place. It stood about halfway between two other schools of philosophy, the Stoa and the Academy. Epicurus and his followers were known for simple meals and wide-ranging philosophical discussion. He taught that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. The first generation of the Garden included Epicurus himself along with Metrodorus, Hermarchus, and Polyaneus, named by Philodemus of Gadara as four “guides” who helped establish its basic principles.

Ideas and Writings

Epicureanism taught that management of desire, the removal of unnecessary fears, friendship, and virtuous living led to a pleasant life and constant happiness, which Epicurus saw as the highest good. He taught that the gods exist but have no involvement in human affairs. Like Democritus, he claimed that all occurrences in nature come from tiny, invisible atoms moving and interacting in empty space. Yet he also departed from Democritus by proposing the atomic “swerve,” the idea that atoms may deviate from an expected course, allowing for human free will in an otherwise deterministic universe.

Epicurus was shaped by several currents of thought, even when he denied dependence on earlier philosophers and insisted he was “self-taught.” His opposition to Platonism formed a large part of his philosophy, and more than half of the forty Principal Doctrines are direct contradictions of Platonism. His teaching also shows links to Cynicism: he agreed with the Cynic search for honesty, but rejected insolence and vulgarity, teaching instead that honesty should be joined with courtesy and kindness. His writings suggest training in rhetoric, while his view of knowledge bears an unacknowledged debt to Aristotle’s reliance on nature and empirical evidence.

Epicurus is said to have written more than 300 works on many subjects, but most have been lost. What survives intact includes a few letters and the Principal Doctrines, along with fragments of other writings, including his major work On Nature. Much of what is known about his philosophy comes through later authors such as Lucretius and Diogenes of Oenoanda. Epicureanism reached its height in the late years of the Roman Republic, faded by late antiquity, and was long misremembered in the Middle Ages. Its teachings became more widely known in the fifteenth century, and in the seventeenth century Pierre Gassendi revived a modified version later promoted by writers including Walter Charleton and Robert Boyle. Its appeal is plain: Epicurus wrote about fear, desire, friendship, and the search for a steady happiness, concerns that remain close to ordinary life.