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Available
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Publication
Rīga : Liepnieks & Rītups, 2007.
Description
For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by peace and freedom from fear, the absence of pain, and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods neither reward nor punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms. Although much of Epicurus'written work has been lost, the remaining principle doctrines and his letters featured in this book provide an insight into the Epicurean school of thought, which was originally based in the garden of his house and thus called The Garden.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member Devil_llama
A small collection of Epicurus's work. Very little remains of this prolific author, but these letters and fragments do a good job of laying out his philosophy. At times it is startling how modern it sounds, reminding us that our ancestors were often thinking about the same things we are, and smart
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enough to figure a lot of things out, even if they were unable to establish proof without the modern scientific apparatus. Many of the things he got wrong at least made sense based on his observations. Show Less
LibraryThing member JVioland
An ancient philosopher who has been greatly misunderstood throughout history. If you lack the belief in a god, his philosophy is based on: good is what brings pleasure and avoids pain - but not what is recognized as being self-indulgent. Some pleasures work against you, some pains are beneficial.
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Much modern philosophy builds upon this foundation. Show Less
LibraryThing member pieterpad
Essential.
LibraryThing member madepercy
I found this book quite perplexing. I expected a hedonistic discussion of the life of reading, conversation, and communal living. Instead, I was learning about atomic theory and the atomic "swerve" (a way to explain randomness in the universe and the subsequent collision of atoms), the logic of the
10. If the things that produce the debauchee's pleasures dissolved the mind's fears regarding the heavenly bodies, death, and pain and also told us how to limit our desires, we would never have any reason to find fault with such people, because they would be glutting themselves with every sort of pleasure and never suffer any physical or mental pain, which is the real evil.
11. We would have no need for natural science unless we were worried by apprehensiveness regarding the heavenly bodies, by anxiety about the meaning of death, and also by our failure to understand the limitations of pain and desire.
12. It is impossible to get rid of our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe and are apprehensive about some of the theological accounts. Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without natural science.
For Epicurus, pleasure is the opposite of pain, rather than the charges of "high living" and debauchery laid by competing philosophies and later, Christianity. To be sure, "moral good" is pleasure, and "moral evil" is pain, but not in the way one might contemporarily view hedonism. Extrapolating from his understanding of atomic theory, Epicurus (p. 58) relates that: Moral acts involve deliberate "choices" of possible concrete pleasures and "aversions", e.e., the deliberate avoidance of prospective pain. An act is moral if in the long run, all things considered, it produces in the agent a surplus of pleasure over pain; otherwise it is immoral. Our choices, desires, and aversions play a prominent role in Stoic philosophy, too. So too, are our impressions, and Epicurus outlines his theology thus: The gods do indeed exist, since our knowledge of them is a matter of clear and distinct perception. However, Epicurus warned against anthropomorphising the gods or Gods, and that the gods did not control nature. Rather, their role was ethical, and the gods were abstract (p. 41): psychological projections of what every good Epicurean wanted himself to be... Thus a relapse into "the old-time religion" of a god-controlled universe has very serious consequences: It cuts the worshipper off from the gods' images - that is, alienates him from the divine communion - and it plunges the naive believer once more into the ancient fears that Epicurus seeks to allay: namely, that the gods will avenge themselves on wicked men by causing natural disasters, political upheavals, and finally the torments of death and hell. For the Roman poet, Lucretius: True religion is rather the power to contemplate nature with a mind set at peace. Nevertheless, Epicurus was keen to attack other philosophies and religions, so it is not surprising that he got some of his own back! When I was schooled in snippets of Greek philosophy, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the godhead "gang of three" (see De Bono), and the Presocratics and others were treated as the great pretenders. Yet Epicurus, too, was asking those two great questions: How to live and what to believe (see Murray in my previous article), and his atomic theory addressed the second question in order to address the first. God exists, but, like the atomic swerve, free will exists otherwise there would be no need for ethics, for our behaviour would be pre-determined. According to Strodach's Introduction, the Epicurean materialism (which was morphed or "garbled" into "eat, drink, and be merry") was "so unpalatable" to the ancient and medieval worlds that Epicurus' atomic theory was lost until the 17th Century (uncovered by "the Jesuit priest Pierre Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes", see p. 76). And so I find myself in agreement with Daniel Klein (see Foreword): For a moment, the twenty-first-century mind might recoil at the idea of a self-anointed pundit proclaiming to his students - and to us - exactly how to live. But I, for one, read on for the simple reason that I suspect Epicurus may, in fact, have gotten it right.
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sun, moon,stars, and weather, and the need to be ever-vigilant to ignore the popular gods and to rely on empirical evidence rather than determinism (fate) and mythology to comprehend the otherwise unknown. The letters to Herodotus and Pythocles were all about such concepts, with only the letter to Menoeceus even touching upon the concept of happiness. I was surprised by the depth of the logos of Epicurean thought, and the loftiness of its ideals when compared to Stoic philosophy. Physics was originally known as natural philosophy, and out Epicurus' understanding of the universe (based on the ideas of others and not just his own, of course), led to an anti-religious philosophy. Yet God is not absent in Epicurean thought. In the "Leading Doctrines" (pp. 174-5), Epicurus explains: 10. If the things that produce the debauchee's pleasures dissolved the mind's fears regarding the heavenly bodies, death, and pain and also told us how to limit our desires, we would never have any reason to find fault with such people, because they would be glutting themselves with every sort of pleasure and never suffer any physical or mental pain, which is the real evil.
11. We would have no need for natural science unless we were worried by apprehensiveness regarding the heavenly bodies, by anxiety about the meaning of death, and also by our failure to understand the limitations of pain and desire.
12. It is impossible to get rid of our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe and are apprehensive about some of the theological accounts. Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without natural science.
For Epicurus, pleasure is the opposite of pain, rather than the charges of "high living" and debauchery laid by competing philosophies and later, Christianity. To be sure, "moral good" is pleasure, and "moral evil" is pain, but not in the way one might contemporarily view hedonism. Extrapolating from his understanding of atomic theory, Epicurus (p. 58) relates that: Moral acts involve deliberate "choices" of possible concrete pleasures and "aversions", e.e., the deliberate avoidance of prospective pain. An act is moral if in the long run, all things considered, it produces in the agent a surplus of pleasure over pain; otherwise it is immoral. Our choices, desires, and aversions play a prominent role in Stoic philosophy, too. So too, are our impressions, and Epicurus outlines his theology thus: The gods do indeed exist, since our knowledge of them is a matter of clear and distinct perception. However, Epicurus warned against anthropomorphising the gods or Gods, and that the gods did not control nature. Rather, their role was ethical, and the gods were abstract (p. 41): psychological projections of what every good Epicurean wanted himself to be... Thus a relapse into "the old-time religion" of a god-controlled universe has very serious consequences: It cuts the worshipper off from the gods' images - that is, alienates him from the divine communion - and it plunges the naive believer once more into the ancient fears that Epicurus seeks to allay: namely, that the gods will avenge themselves on wicked men by causing natural disasters, political upheavals, and finally the torments of death and hell. For the Roman poet, Lucretius: True religion is rather the power to contemplate nature with a mind set at peace. Nevertheless, Epicurus was keen to attack other philosophies and religions, so it is not surprising that he got some of his own back! When I was schooled in snippets of Greek philosophy, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the godhead "gang of three" (see De Bono), and the Presocratics and others were treated as the great pretenders. Yet Epicurus, too, was asking those two great questions: How to live and what to believe (see Murray in my previous article), and his atomic theory addressed the second question in order to address the first. God exists, but, like the atomic swerve, free will exists otherwise there would be no need for ethics, for our behaviour would be pre-determined. According to Strodach's Introduction, the Epicurean materialism (which was morphed or "garbled" into "eat, drink, and be merry") was "so unpalatable" to the ancient and medieval worlds that Epicurus' atomic theory was lost until the 17th Century (uncovered by "the Jesuit priest Pierre Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes", see p. 76). And so I find myself in agreement with Daniel Klein (see Foreword): For a moment, the twenty-first-century mind might recoil at the idea of a self-anointed pundit proclaiming to his students - and to us - exactly how to live. But I, for one, read on for the simple reason that I suspect Epicurus may, in fact, have gotten it right.
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LibraryThing member Treebeard_404
A terrible translation in that O'Connor's sentence structures are so opaque, I had to rewrite them in my mind in order to make sense of them. Also, I'm not sure in what sense the works collected here represent the "essence" of Epicuris' thought. if you are curious about Epicuris'philosophy, there
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are better books to be found. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
Greek (Ancient)
Original publication date
1993
Physical description
xvi, 401 p.; 23 cm
Pages
xvi; 401
ISBN
9789984960944
Local notes
Ad fontes