65 Facts About Epicurus

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy.

Epicurus was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents.

Epicurus openly allowed women and slaves to join the school as a matter of policy.

Epicurus asserted that philosophy's purpose is to attain as well as to help others attain happy, tranquil lives characterized by ataraxia and aponia.

Epicurus advocated that people were best able to pursue philosophy by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends.

Epicurus taught that although the gods exist, they have no involvement in human affairs.

Epicurus taught that people should act ethically not because the gods punish or reward them for their actions but because, due to the power of guilt, amoral behavior would inevitably lead to remorse weighing on their consciences and as a result, they would be prevented from attaining ataraxia.

Epicurus was an empiricist, meaning he believed that only the senses are a reliable source of knowledge about the world.

Epicurus's influence grew considerably during and after the Enlightenment, profoundly impacting the ideas of major thinkers, including John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Jeremy Bentham, and Karl Marx.

Epicurus's parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and his father was an Athenian citizen.

Epicurus grew up during the final years of the Greek Classical Period.

Plato had died seven years before Epicurus was born and Epicurus was seven years old when Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont into Persia.

Epicurus studied under Nausiphanes, who followed the teachings of Democritus, and later those of Pyrrho, whose way of life Epicurus greatly admired.

Epicurus's teachings were heavily influenced by those of earlier philosophers, particularly Democritus.

Nonetheless, Epicurus differed from his predecessors on several key points of determinism and vehemently denied having been influenced by any previous philosophers, whom he denounced as "confused".

Epicurus agreed with the Cynics' quest for honesty, but rejected their "insolence and vulgarity", instead teaching that honesty must be coupled with courtesy and kindness.

Epicurus shared this view with his contemporary, the comic playwright Menander.

Epicurus's philosophy was consequently more universal in its outlook than those of his predecessors, since it took cognizance of non-Greek peoples as well as Greeks.

Epicurus's teachings caused strife in Mytilene and he was forced to leave.

Epicurus then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens in c 306 BC, where he remained until his death.

Epicurus's school was the first of the ancient Greek philosophical schools to admit women as a rule rather than an exception, and the biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius lists female students such as Leontion and Nikidion.

Epicurus ordained in his will annual memorial feasts for himself on the same date.

Epicurus was an ardent Empiricist; believing that the senses are the only reliable sources of information about the world.

Epicurus rejected the Platonic idea of "Reason" as a reliable source of knowledge about the world apart from the senses and was bitterly opposed to the Pyrrhonists and Academic Skeptics, who not only questioned the ability of the senses to provide accurate knowledge about the world, but whether it is even possible to know anything about the world at all.

Epicurus maintained that the senses never deceive humans, but that the senses can be misinterpreted.

Epicurus held that the purpose of all knowledge is to aid humans in attaining ataraxia.

Epicurus taught that knowledge is learned through experiences rather than innate and that the acceptance of the fundamental truth of the things a person perceives is essential to a person's moral and spiritual health.

Epicurus permitted that any and every statement that is not directly contrary to human perception has the possibility to be true.

Epicurus was a hedonist, meaning he taught that what is pleasurable is morally good and what is painful is morally evil.

Epicurus idiosyncratically defined "pleasure" as the absence of suffering and taught that all humans should seek to attain the state of ataraxia, meaning "untroubledness", a state in which the person is completely free from all pain or suffering.

Epicurus argued that most of the suffering which human beings experience is caused by the irrational fears of death, divine retribution, and punishment in the afterlife.

Furthermore, Epicurus taught that "it is not possible to live pleasurably without living sensibly and nobly and justly", because a person who engages in acts of dishonesty or injustice will be "loaded with troubles" on account of his own guilty conscience and will live in constant fear that his wrongdoings will be discovered by others.

Epicurus distinguished between two different types of pleasure: "moving" pleasures and "static" pleasures.

Epicurus' teachings were introduced into medical philosophy and practice by the Epicurean doctor Asclepiades of Bithynia, who was the first physician who introduced Greek medicine in Rome.

Epicurus advocated humane treatment of mental disorders, had insane persons freed from confinement and treated them with natural therapy, such as diet and massages.

Epicurus's teachings are surprisingly modern; therefore Asclepiades is considered to be a pioneer physician in psychotherapy, physical therapy and molecular medicine.

Epicurus writes in his Letter to Herodotus that "nothing ever arises from the nonexistent", indicating that all events therefore have causes, regardless of whether those causes are known or unknown.

For Epicurus and his followers, the existence of atoms was a matter of empirical observation; Epicurus's devoted follower, the Roman poet Lucretius, cites the gradual wearing down of rings from being worn, statues from being kissed, stones from being dripped on by water, and roads from being walked on in On the Nature of Things as evidence for the existence of atoms as tiny, imperceptible particles.

Also like Democritus, Epicurus was a materialist who taught that the only things that exist are atoms and void.

Epicurus taught that the motion of atoms is constant, eternal, and without beginning or end.

Epicurus held that there are two kinds of motion: the motion of atoms and the motion of visible objects.

Epicurus was first to assert human freedom as a result of the fundamental indeterminism in the motion of atoms.

Epicurus agreed, and said it is to these last things that praise and blame naturally attach.

For Epicurus, the "swerve" of the atoms simply defeated determinism to leave room for autonomous agency.

Epicurus did not mean that people can see the gods as physical objects, but rather that they can see visions of the gods sent from the remote regions of interstellar space in which they actually reside.

Epicurus rejected the conventional Greek view of the gods as anthropomorphic beings who walked the earth like ordinary people, fathered illegitimate offspring with mortals, and pursued personal feuds.

In line with these teachings, Epicurus adamantly rejected the idea that deities were involved in human affairs in any way.

Epicurus maintained that the gods are so utterly perfect and removed from the world that they are incapable of listening to prayers or supplications or doing virtually anything aside from contemplating their own perfections.

Epicurus himself criticizes popular religion in both his Letter to Menoeceus and his Letter to Herodotus, but in a restrained and moderate tone.

Later Epicureans mainly followed the same ideas as Epicurus, believing in the existence of the gods, but emphatically rejecting the idea of divine providence.

The Epicurean paradox or riddle of Epicurus or Epicurus' trilemma is a version of the problem of evil.

Epicurus promoted an innovative theory of justice as a social contract.

Justice, Epicurus said, is an agreement neither to harm nor be harmed, and we need to have such a contract in order to enjoy fully the benefits of living together in a well-ordered society.

Epicurus discouraged participation in politics, as doing so leads to perturbation and status seeking.

The only surviving complete works by Epicurus are three relatively lengthy letters, which are quoted in their entirety in Book X of Diogenes Laertius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, and two groups of quotes: the Principal Doctrines, which are likewise preserved through quotation by Diogenes Laertius, and the Vatican Sayings, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library that was first discovered in 1888.

Nonetheless, Epicurus was not universally admired and, within his own lifetime, he was vilified as an ignorant buffoon and egoistic sybarite.

Epicurus remained the most simultaneously admired and despised philosopher in the Mediterranean for the next nearly five centuries.

Epicurus's image was worn on finger rings, portraits of him were displayed in living rooms, and wealthy followers venerated likenesses of him in marble sculpture.

Epicurus's admirers revered his sayings as divine oracles, carried around copies of his writings, and cherished copies of his letters like the letters of an apostle.

Information about Epicurus's teachings was available, through Lucretius's On the Nature of Things, quotations of it found in medieval Latin grammars and florilegia, and encyclopedias, such as Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae and Hrabanus Maurus's De universo, but there is little evidence that these teachings were systematically studied or comprehended.

The discovery of this manuscript was met with immense excitement, because scholars were eager to analyze and study the teachings of classical philosophers and this previously-forgotten text contained the most comprehensive account of Epicurus's teachings known in Latin.

Epicurus left Syntagma philosophicum, a synthesis of Epicurean doctrines, unfinished at the time of his death in 1655.

Gassendi's version of Epicurus's teachings became popular among some members of English scientific circles.

Epicurus's teachings were made respectable in England by the natural philosopher Walter Charleton, whose first Epicurean work, The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature, advanced Epicureanism as a "new" atomism.

The German philosopher Karl Marx, whose ideas are the basis of Marxism, was profoundly influenced as a young man by the teachings of Epicurus and his doctoral thesis was a Hegelian dialectical analysis of the differences between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus.