Certain aspects of Epicurus’ thought were revived during the Renaissance and early modern periods, when reaction against scholastic neo-Aristotelianism led thinkers to turn to mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena. Only one's own pleasure is intrinsically valuable, but the limit of pleasure is freedom from bodily distress and (especially) peace of mind, and the way to acquire peace of mind is by limiting your desires. Because Epicurus wishes to banish the fear of the gods, he insists that occurrences like earthquakes and lightning can be explained entirely in atomic terms and are not due to the will of the gods. Other things–such as colors, time, and justice–are ultimately explicable as attributes of bodies. If the number of atoms were limited, then the ‘density’ of atoms in any region would effectively be zero, and there would be no macroscopic bodies, as there evidently are. Against Aristotle, Epicurus argues that the universe is unlimited in size. The mind must be a body, thinks Epicurus, because of its ability to interact with the body. Thomas Jefferson to William Short, October 31, 1819. Only bodies can interact with other bodies, so the mind must be a body. He argued that we should only proportion belief to empirical evidence and logic, and he propounded the scientific view of atomism, according to which all facts in the macroscopic world are caused by the configuration of atoms or indivisible elements in the microscopic world. This explains vision. A person chooses his or her actions on the basis of how much pleasure and pain the actions will foresee-able cause. These images, or “eidola,” fly through the air and bang into one’s eyes, from which one learns about the properties of the objects that threw off these eidola. In fact, he argues that it does not matter if you do not find pleasure in life right all the time because, “no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.”, Furthermore, he argues that if you live by his definition of a good life, then death should not matter, and you should not worry about it. Epicurus' ethics is a form of ascetic egoistic hedonism. Epicurus did acknowledge that desires for good food and fine wine were natural. Epicurus was a voluminous writer, but almost none of his own work survives. In his article, ‘Morality Is Based on God’s Laws’, Robert Mortimer gives a detailed theological glimpse into the basis of morality found in the Christian scripture known as the Bible.He begins by defining the Christian religion as “a revelation of the nature of God” (Mortimer, 1). Epicurus is also against the intrinsic teleology of philosophers like Aristotle. Lucretius was an Epicurean who wrote De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), a six-book poem expounding Epicurus’ metaphysics. These are properties of macroscopic bodies, but the possession of these properties by macroscopic bodies are explicable in terms of the properties of and relations amongst the individual atoms that make up bodies. founded one of the most famous and influential philosophical schools of antiquity. . He distinguishes between two different types of pleasure: ‘moving’ pleasures and ‘static’ pleasures. According to Epicurus, pleasure is an inherent good in our nature, and we are destined to seek pleasure. Epicurus’ ethics is a form of egoistic hedonism; i.e., he says that the only thing that is intrinsically valuable is one’s own pleasure; anything else that has value is valuable merely as a means to securing pleasure for oneself. Additionally, the second type of desire is groundless pleasure which we do not necessarily need to survive. Or who decides whether the actions of an individual are lawful or unlawful? These desires are not natural to human beings, but inculcated by society and by false beliefs about what we need; e.g., believing that having power will bring us security from others. Instead, one should calculate what is in one’s long-term self-interest, and forgo what will bring pleasure in the short-term if doing so will ultimately lead to greater pleasure in the long-term. As Lucretius puts it, they would ‘fall downward, like drops of rain, through the deep void.’ The second reason for thinking that atoms swerve is that a random atomic motion is needed to preserve human freedom and ‘break the bonds of fate,’ as Lucretius says. What does Glaucon try to show with his thought experiments of the ‘ring of Gyges’ and the perfectly just and unjust men? Because of this, Epicurus denies that there is any intermediate state between pleasure and pain. In Principal Doctrines, he writes that if you live with happiness and pleasure, then you will have a healthy soul. Similarly, in. Epicurus says that all sensations give us information about the world, but that sensation itself is never in error, since sensation is a purely passive, mechanical reception of images and the like by sense-organs, and the senses themselves do not make judgments ‘that’ the world is this way or that. As Epicurus puts it, “If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don’t give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.” By eliminating the pain caused by unfulfilled desires, and the anxiety that occurs because of the fear that one’s desires will not be fulfilled in the future, the wise Epicurean attains tranquility, and thus happiness. Letter to Menoeceus: Epicurus. The atoms are eternal, but the mind made up of these atoms is not, just as other compound bodies cease to exist when the atoms that make them up disperse. Epicurus says that there are three criteria of truth: sensations, ‘preconceptions,’ and feelings. After Epicurus’ death, Epicureanism continued to flourish as a philosophical movement. Community 4. Epicurus’ hedonism was widely denounced in the ancient world as undermining traditional morality. Epicurus thinks that these desires should be eliminated. Also, there must be basic and unchangeable building blocks of matter in order to explain the regularities in nature. Yet, breaking with his predecessor Democritus, he considered the universe indeterminate. But he actually dismissed such desires as entirely unnecessary. There are many different editions of Lucretius’ masterpiece, an extended exposition of Epicurus’ metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and natural science. According to Epicurus, for people to live a happy life, they must be free from fear, and must not experience any aspects of pain. As for science, Epicurus was concerned only with the practical end in view. There is static pleasure and moving pleasure (Fish 48). Epicurus thinks that this fear is often based upon anxiety about having an unpleasant afterlife; this anxiety, he thinks, should be dispelled once one realizes that death is annihilation, because the mind is a group of atoms that disperses upon death. Why is it better to be just than unjust, according to Socrates? The first is that Epicurus thinks that atoms have weight. Epicurus’ mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena are supposed to displace explanations that appeal to the will of the gods. According to Gilligan, as compared to that of men, women's moral orientations are more concerned with rights and autonomy At the highest level of morality in Gilligan's theory of female ethics is the value of Because of this, some scholars have thought that in this area, at least, Epicurus abandons his egoistic hedonism and advocates altruism toward friends. Cicero was an adherent of the skeptical academy, who wrote a series of works setting forth the major philosophical systems of his day, including Epicureanism. That way, I can find pleasure and live by Epicurus’s definition of a good life. Epicurus says that, although you need feelings like hunger and thirst to survive, when you are freed from these discomforts, then you feel pleasure and, therefore, are happy. Justice exists only where there are such agreements. Email: see web page ©2020 Maegan Hanlon - Powered by WordPress & Alpha Forte. Nonetheless, its deadliness for us is still a real property of the cyanide, albeit a relational one. Epicurus also thought skepticism was untenable, and that we could gain knowledge of the world relying upon the senses. However, he modifies Democritus’ atomism in at least three important ways. That is, in Letters to Menoeceus he writes that humans feel pleasure when they fulfill two different types of desire. Epicurus is a salutary reminder for positive psychologists that Aristotle is not the only game in town when it comes to virtue ethics. Ancient critics thought the Epicurean gods were a thin smoke-screen to hide Epicurus’ atheism, and difficulties with a literal interpretation of Epicurus’ sayings on the nature of the gods (for instance, it appears inconsistent with Epicurus’ atomic theory to hold that any compound body, even a god, could be immortal) have led some scholars to conjecture that Epicurus’ ‘gods’ are thought-constructs, and exist only in human minds as idealizations, i.e., the gods exist, but only as projections of what the most blessed life would be. epicurus / moral theory / philosophy / pleasure /, Your email address will not be published. The Canon: sensations, preconceptions, and feelings. First, because bodies move, there must be empty space for them to move in, and Epicurus calls this empty space ‘void.’ Second, the ordinary bodies that we see are compound bodies–that is, bodies which are made up of further bodies, which is shown by the fact that they can be broken down into smaller pieces. It also includes the Principal Doctrines, 40 sayings which deal mainly with ethical matters. The Kantians and other liberals did not understand that morality cannot be understood in a power-political vacuum, that there is more to Man than simply the observance of laws derived in accordance with reason. The soul, which is composed of the atoms of four fun- damental elements, remains distributed throughout the body. In, , he writes that if you live with happiness and pleasure, then you will have a healthy soul. Epicurus consistently maintains that friendship is valuable because it is one of the greatest means of attaining pleasure. Epicurus distinguishes between three types of desires: natural and necessary desires, natural but non-necessary desires, and “vain and empty” desires. Since what is useful can vary from place to place and time to time, what laws are just can likewise vary. Epicurus writes that, “for this reason we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a happy life.”. Epicurus rejected the existence of Platonic forms and an immaterial soul, and he said that the gods have no influence on our lives. The first type of desire is natural desire which rids the body of unpleasant feelings such as hunger and thirst. , his stoic moral theory talks about living live with virtue and happiness. This book deals with Epicurean and Stoic theories of what the mind is. 1. Thus, Epicurus’s views on pleasure are the basis for entire moral and ethical theory. I also actively try to fulfill my natural hunger and thirst desires by drinking a lot of water and eating my favorite foods. Epicurus values friendship highly and praises it in quite extravagant terms. Other senses are analyzed in similar terms; e.g., the soothing action of smooth atoms on the tongue causes the sensation of sweetness. His argument can be set out as follows: Epicurus adds that if death causes you no pain when you’re dead, it’s foolish to allow the fear of it to cause you pain now. Epicurus says that the mind cannot be something incorporeal, as Plato thinks, since the only thing that is not a body is void, which is simply empty space and cannot act or be acted upon. The real key to human happiness, on his view, didn’t involve the pursuit of luxury or excessive sensual pleasures. This weekend I finished reading H.L. Epicureanism is commonly regarded as the refined satisfaction of physical desires. (from 3). Epicurus is one of the major philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the three centuries following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. Therefore, death is not bad for the dead. 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