Hello,
I’m a bit interested in knowing where Epicurean Philosophy falls in the more general classifications that exist in philosophy. My desire is to be able to perhaps later expand my exploration of philosophy further from epicurean philosophy while being able to stick to the same “camp”, so to speak. The reason for this is that so far what I’ve read I’m liking, so I’m trying to somewhat approximate to the essence of it, so as to be able to find relations to later philosophers that are in the same camp but perhaps not explicitly Epicurean, since, from what I read in Dewitt’s synoptic view, the influence of Epicurus has passed-on rather unacknowledged. I’m no philosopher nor I’m knowledgeable in the history of the subject so I’m throwing punches in the dark here; please bear that in mind as you read.
So... from a reddit post that seemed somewhat serious I gathered the following:
1. When it comes to ontology, there is a spectrum (I’m not assuming this is the whole spectrum) where you could put materialism on one side and idealism on the other. Assuming this is true, would you say Epicureanism falls within materialism and “Platonism” (does such a thing as Platonism exist? Would it be Stoicism instead?) falls within idealism?
2. When it comes to epistemology, there would be a spectrum where empiricism would be on one side and rationalism in the other. (The difference of the two, according the the author of the post, is that the former uses “a posteriori” justifications and the latter uses “a priori” justifications). This is more confusing for me, because I’d think that regarding to knowledge of ethics Epicureanism is empiric, but when it comes to physics knowledge, it seems to me that they were using quite a bit of this “rationalism”. So... where would you say Epicureanism falls within this “epistemological spectrum” (assuming that this is even a thing).
I ignore if there are others classifications that could be used for the different segments of a philosophical system, but if there are, please expand.
Thanks in advance!