Posts by Cassius

J.Tycherne tells us -

Quote

Hi Cassius,

Thanks very much for your tentative approval of my account. I'm just getting started learning about Epicurus and am very interested to learn more. I started by reading Diogenes Laertius' Book X on Epicurus, and found myself very much interested in Epicurean thought, particularly his letter to Menoikeus. I can read Greek, but am self-taught so am no scholar. I found myself frustrated by the Loeb translation of this letter, so was searching for other English translations, and stumbled upon your site. I've already found a translation uploaded by one of the other users here, which I plan to get into presently.

j.tycherne

Welcome j.tycherne

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Please say "Hello" by introducing yourself, tell us what prompted your interest in Epicureanism and which particular aspects of Epicureanism most interest you, and/or post a question.

This forum is the place for students of Epicurus to coordinate their studies and work together to promote the philosophy of Epicurus. Please remember that all posting here is subject to our Community Standards and associated Terms of Use. Please be sure to read that document to understand our ground rules.

Please understand that the leaders of this forum are well aware that many fans of Epicurus may have sincerely-held views of what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with the purposes and standards of this forum. This forum is dedicated exclusively to the study and support of people who are committed to classical Epicurean views. As a result, this forum is not for people who seek to mix and match Epicurean views with positions that are inherently inconsistent with the core teachings of Epicurus.

All of us who are here have arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies, and we do not demand of others what we were not able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is very different from most other philosophies, and it takes time to understand how deep those differences really are. That's why we have membership levels here at the forum which allow for new participants to discuss and develop their own learning, but it's also why we have standards that will lead in some cases to arguments being limited, and even participants being removed, when the purposes of the community require it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, or committed to unlimited free speech, or devoted to any other form of organization other than the pursuit of truth and happy living through pleasure as explained in the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

One way you can be assured of your time here will be productive is to tell us a little about yourself and your background in reading Epicurean texts. It would also be helpful if you could tell us how you found this forum, and any particular areas of interest that you already have.

You can also check out our Getting Started page for ideas on how to use this website.

We have found over the years that there are a number of key texts and references which most all serious students of Epicurus will want to read and evaluate for themselves. Those include the following.

"Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt

The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.

"On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"

"Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky

The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."

Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section

Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section

The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation

A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright

Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus

Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)

"The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.

It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.

And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.

(If you have any questions regarding the usage of the forum or finding info, please post any questions in this thread).

Welcome to the forum!

Thanks Joshua I will incorporate that!

Quote from DaveT

My thinking was that a scholarly debate read in an academic journal, might raise the misstated issues by Pigliucci to professionals in the field. Any one of those who may better understand Epicurus though your forceful review of Pigliucci becomes a force multiplier so to speak toward your goal of clearing up misconceptions of Epicurean foundations.

Unfortunately my experience tells me to expect just the opposite as to who the "professionals in the field" can be expected to say is misguided. Although I am no Academic myself, it's my observation that Pigliucci's position is in fact the majority position of the vast majority of philosphic professionals.

This feeds back into our earlier discussion of "experts" and when to defer to them. I have to go with my reading of the sources and the commentators as to what makes sense to me after reviewing the best material available.

I'll be pleased if there are any Academics who would weigh in to agree with my position, but I don't expect it. If there were such writers out there already, we wouldn't be almost alone in the positions that have been taken on this forum on the best interpretation of Epicurus, and Pigliucci's positions would not be so prevalent.

This is an ongoing journey, and no one here should be under the false impression that they can refute Pigliucci's position by numbers of testimonials. For the present at least, anyone whose priority is to be in the mainstream of Academic scholarship likely isn't going to feel at home at EpicureanFriends.com.

Quote from DaveT

I wish you and he could engage in a scholarly journal on issues he asserted and your response.

It's an interesting question. I am not opposed to doing that at some point, and in fact I expect to do more interviews/discussions as we've done on the podcast in the past, but I need to think through exactly if and when debating with someone committed to an opposing position is worth the time.

If I were promoting myself as a guru or writing a book I wanted to sell or wanted to become a "personality" then that would clearly be the thing to do. However that is not my goal: my goal is the successful restoration of an Epicurean "camp" (to use that terminology here), and that isn't necessarily best accomplished by engaging in personality debates or trying to build my own personal "brand." I don't admit that anything we do here is anything other than correct Epicurean philosophy, so it would only detract to allow it to appear to be a "Cassius Amicus" innovation.

in fact I am remembering lately what Francis Wright had to say in A Few Days In Athens about how in-person arguments rarely produce anything good as a result.

As Martin and I and others observed over at Facebook, there is an unlimited supply of Stoics who love nothing better than arguing about detailed points of logic. The truth is that basic issues of the nature of the universe and our perspective on this world as sufficient for us, rather than focusing on a transcendent "true world" need no sophisticated analysis. The respective positions are unbridgeable and the main question is how to get the world to people who are open to the Epicurean side.

As you yourself indicated in an earlier post, engaging in debates where we have no reasonable expectations of coming to agreement with the other side. For the present I am thinking that the best thing i can do for the project is to continue to focus on the podcast and producing new content of our own. So I'm still thinking but those are my current thoughts.

We have a lot of projects going on here and those will probably continue to be my primary focus.

Quote from Don

I see you don't allow comments on Substack.

I may change that but have not thought it through.

Thank you Tau Phi.

Many of our EpicureanFriends participants arrived here after traveling through Stoicism - myself included. Many open-minded people read the Stoic materials and it's probably a good means of exposure for us to at least occasionally engage at appropriate times.

I have avoided skirmishing with the committed Stoics in the past, but I think we need at least a couple of articles setting out the ultimate points for those who are new to the study. The articles that are specifically anti-Epicurean and relatively high-profile - such as this one by Pigliucci on Substack - probably deserve individual attention.

In the future where specifically anti-Epicurean articles appear, i want to at least consider publishing a public response. I try to monitor the internet for new articles, but this one got past me for almost a month. As people see articles that deserve attention I will appreciate it if they will let me know by public thread or private message.

I will update this thread but it will provide for the main place for discussion of this article.

Blog Article

Not A Bunker But A Camp: A Response To "The Garden or the Forum" - An Epicurean response to Massimo Pigliucci's March 3, 2026. article on Epicurus, the Stoics, and political engagement

This article is viewable also on Substack.

Massimo Pigliucci’s essay “The Garden Or The Forum: Epicurus, The Stoics, And The Duty To Engage” represents precisely the kind of Stoic-inflected reading of Epicurus that has dominated popular philosophy for decades and that has consistently produced a distorted portrait of true Epicurean philosophy. It is wrong about Epicurus at nearly every key point — not through mere carelessness, but through a pattern of misreading that is characteristic of…

Cassius

March 24, 2026 at 1:10 PM

Quote from Robert

Very interested to see how Philodemus approaches the topic of inference!

Robert much of the difficulty comes from the loss of the first part of the book, meaning that what we have left starts in the middle and appears to be stating non-Epicurean views. Rather than presenting his own opinions Philodemus is giving a survey of opposing views (if I recall) so it's not clear - at least for a beginner - what Philodemus is advocating himself without a lot of work.

The two best aids I have found are the appendix to the DeLacy translation and Sedley's work "On Signs."

If you have any inclination to help outline this and contribute toward unwinding it before we get to it in he podcast I am sure Joshua would appreciate it as much as I would.

Thank you Martin. It will be helpful for us to dig further into Kant and clarify why he is such a lightning-rod for dispute. This should prove to be a very useful thread.

So just so I am clear - because you've apparently read a lot more Kant than I have:

Would a Kantian take the position that it is not true that there are no supernatural gods, not true that there is no life after death, and not true that pleasure is the guide of life?

M.Dango tells us -

Quote

Hello friends!

I am a 37 year old software engineer based in London, UK, and a philosophy newbie who has been challenging conventional ideas for ways of living throughout my life. Recent reading on the topics of philosophy, epistemology, and hedonism has led me to the fascinating ideas of Epicurus. The value of friendship especially struck a chord with me, and reading through the Team Epicurus decision tree, I see strong alignment with my own beliefs.

I am excited to read through the book "Living for Pleasure" imminently!

Welcome m.dango !

There is one last step to complete your registration:

All new registrants must post a response to this message here in this welcome thread (we do this in order to minimize spam registrations).

You must post your response within 24 hours, or your account will be subject to deletion.

Please say "Hello" by introducing yourself, tell us what prompted your interest in Epicureanism and which particular aspects of Epicureanism most interest you, and/or post a question.

This forum is the place for students of Epicurus to coordinate their studies and work together to promote the philosophy of Epicurus. Please remember that all posting here is subject to our Community Standards and associated Terms of Use. Please be sure to read that document to understand our ground rules.

Please understand that the leaders of this forum are well aware that many fans of Epicurus may have sincerely-held views of what Epicurus taught that are incompatible with the purposes and standards of this forum. This forum is dedicated exclusively to the study and support of people who are committed to classical Epicurean views. As a result, this forum is not for people who seek to mix and match Epicurean views with positions that are inherently inconsistent with the core teachings of Epicurus.

All of us who are here have arrived at our respect for Epicurus after long journeys through other philosophies, and we do not demand of others what we were not able to do ourselves. Epicurean philosophy is very different from most other philosophies, and it takes time to understand how deep those differences really are. That's why we have membership levels here at the forum which allow for new participants to discuss and develop their own learning, but it's also why we have standards that will lead in some cases to arguments being limited, and even participants being removed, when the purposes of the community require it. Epicurean philosophy is not inherently democratic, or committed to unlimited free speech, or devoted to any other form of organization other than the pursuit of truth and happy living through pleasure as explained in the principles of Epicurean philosophy.

One way you can be assured of your time here will be productive is to tell us a little about yourself and your background in reading Epicurean texts. It would also be helpful if you could tell us how you found this forum, and any particular areas of interest that you already have.

You can also check out our Getting Started page for ideas on how to use this website.

We have found over the years that there are a number of key texts and references which most all serious students of Epicurus will want to read and evaluate for themselves. Those include the following.

"Epicurus and His Philosophy" by Norman DeWitt

The Biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius. This includes the surviving letters of Epicurus, including those to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus.

"On The Nature of Things" - by Lucretius (a poetic abridgement of Epicurus' "On Nature"

"Epicurus on Pleasure" - By Boris Nikolsky

The chapters on Epicurus in Gosling and Taylor's "The Greeks On Pleasure."

Cicero's "On Ends" - Torquatus Section

Cicero's "On The Nature of the Gods" - Velleius Section

The Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda - Martin Ferguson Smith translation

A Few Days In Athens" - Frances Wright

Lucian Core Texts on Epicurus: (1) Alexander the Oracle-Monger, (2) Hermotimus

Philodemus "On Methods of Inference" (De Lacy version, including his appendix on relationship of Epicurean canon to Aristotle and other Greeks)

"The Greeks on Pleasure" -Gosling & Taylor Sections on Epicurus, especially the section on katastematic and kinetic pleasure which explains why ultimately this distinction was not of great significance to Epicurus.

It is by no means essential or required that you have read these texts before participating in the forum, but your understanding of Epicurus will be much enhanced the more of these you have read. Feel free to join in on one or more of our conversation threads under various topics found throughout the forum, where you can to ask questions or to add in any of your insights as you study the Epicurean philosophy.

And time has also indicated to us that if you can find the time to read one book which will best explain classical Epicurean philosophy, as opposed to most modern "eclectic" interpretations of Epicurus, that book is Norman DeWitt's Epicurus And His Philosophy.

(If you have any questions regarding the usage of the forum or finding info, please post any questions in this thread).

Welcome to the forum!

I decided it would be interesting to do some research on what famous modern philosopher might be closest to Epicurus in core philosophic views. I generated a draft of the following using AI and then edited the entire document in way that I understand myself to be correct given my "generalist" understanding of Nietzsche.

I feel sure that an expert on Nietzsche would quibble with some particulars but I also feel sure that in general the following is correct, and is useful in pointing out important parallels that over time should be explored further. As I write this I am unaware of any major "modern" philosopher whose core views on the problems with philosophers who (1) seek a "true world" beyond the senses and (2) seek to universalize morality based on logic and reason alone, rather than grounding it in the feelings given us by nature.

NIETZSCHE AS A PARALLEL VOICE — THE “TRUE WORLD” AND THE ATTACK ON SECULARIZED CHRISTIANITY

1 Why Nietzsche Is Relevant to Understanding Epicurus

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) is not an Epicurean, and significant differences exist between them — most notably on the role of suffering, which Nietzsche valued in ways Epicurus would not. Nevertheless Nietzsche is the single most useful modern parallel for understanding what Epicurus was fighting against, because Nietzsche identified and attacked the same philosophical enemies with the same fundamental diagnosis: that an entire tradition of Western philosophy from Socrates onward had been built on a life-denying lie.

Nietzsche himself recognized the kinship. He wrote admiringly of Epicurus on multiple occasions, describing him as one of the few philosophers who had genuinely faced the question of how to live and answered it affirmatively. Anyone seeking to understand the tone and urgency of the Epicurean philosophical project — why it was not merely an academic debate but a battle for the soul of human civilization — will find Nietzsche’s work indispensable.

2 The “True World” — Nietzsche’s Diagnosis in Twilight of the Idols

In Twilight of the Idols (1888), Nietzsche includes a section titled “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable” — a six-step history of one of the most consequential philosophical errors in Western thought. The section is short enough to summarize fully, because it maps almost perfectly onto the Epicurean critique:

Step 1 — Plato: The “true world” is attainable for the wise philosopher. It is the realm of ideal Forms, accessible through reason to the virtuous person. This world we live in — the sensory world — is the apparent world, a pale and deceptive shadow.

Step 2 — Early Christianity: The “true world” is no longer attainable now, but is promised to the virtuous after death. The transcendent realm becomes Heaven. The sensory world is not merely inferior but actively corrupt and sinful.

Step 3 — Kant: The “true world” is no longer promised or attained, but is posited as a regulative ideal — a “thing in itself” (Ding an sich) that lies permanently beyond the reach of human experience but which reason tells us must exist. We cannot know it, but we must act as if it grounds our moral obligations.

Step 4 — Positivism: The “true world” is an unattained and unattainable idea and therefore useless. It is abolished as a concept — but the shadow remains, because the “apparent world” has been defined in opposition to it for so long that it too loses its footing.

Step 5 — Nietzsche himself: The “true world” is abolished. With it, the “apparent world” is also abolished — because the distinction was always false. There is only the world: the world of becoming, of the senses, of life.

Step 6: “The true world — we have abolished it. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one.” — Noon; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.

This six-step history is the story of the error that Epicurus first identified and attacked. Plato invented the “true world.” Christianity colonized it. Kant rehabilitated it in secular philosophical dress. Nietzsche finally named it as a fable and declared it finished.

Epicurus reached this conclusion over two thousand years before Nietzsche — and reached it not through despair or nihilism but through the affirmative discovery that this world, understood through the senses and reason, is sufficient for a life of genuine happiness.

3 Kant’s “Dignity of Man” as Secularized Christianity

Nietzsche’s attack on Kant is essential context for understanding why the Epicurean critique of Platonism and Stoicism is still urgently relevant today. The dominant modern ethical tradition — particularly in its Kantian form — perpetuates precisely the error Epicurus identified, now stripped of explicit theological language but retaining the same structure.

Kant’s ethical system rests on the categorical imperative: the claim that reason alone, operating without reference to pleasure, pain, desire, or consequence, can generate universal and absolute moral obligations binding on all rational beings at all times and places. The foundation of this system is the concept of the dignity of rational humanity — the idea that human beings as rational agents possess an intrinsic, unconditional worth that must never be treated merely as a means to an end.

Nietzsche’s devastating observation — with which Epicurus would have agreed — is that this is Christianity with the theological vocabulary removed. Consider the structural parallels:

• In Christian theology: God grounds absolute universal moral law, accessible through divine revelation, binding on all humans regardless of circumstance.
• In Kant: Reason grounds absolute universal moral law, accessible through pure rational reflection, binding on all rational beings regardless of circumstance.

The move is identical in both cases: a source of absolute universal obligation is posited that transcends sensory experience, individual circumstance, and the natural guidance of pleasure and pain. Whether that source is called “God’s will” or “the moral law of pure reason” or “the dignity of humanity,” the Epicurean response is the same: there is no such source. Nature, speaking through pleasure and pain, is the only guide we have and the only one we need. Justice is not a universal absolute — it is a contextual compact. The “good” is not an absolute form — it is what actually produces pleasurable living for real human beings in real circumstances.

Nietzsche makes this point with characteristic force: Kant’s ethics is an attempt to preserve the authority of the Christian moral framework after the theological foundation for it has collapsed. It is the shadow of God projected onto Reason. Epicurus, writing centuries before Christianity, had already dismantled the philosophical architecture on which this move depends.

4 Anti-Humanism: The Universe Is Not About Us

A third area of convergence between Nietzsche and Epicurus, and one that is easily overlooked, is their shared rejection of what might be called cosmic humanism — the idea that the universe has a human-directed purpose, that human reason holds a privileged position in the natural order, or that there exist universal moral norms grounded in “human nature” or “human dignity” as such.

Epicurus was explicit and early on this point:

• The universe was not made for humans. Lucretius devotes extensive argument in De Rerum Natura to demonstrating that the world, with all its hostility, indifference, and waste, cannot possibly be the product of benevolent design for humanity’s benefit.
• Human reason is not a divine faculty with special access to higher truth. It is a natural capacity, evolved (in modern terms) for survival, dependent on the senses, and fallible.
• There are no universal moral norms grounded in “human nature” that apply to all people at all times and places. Justice is a compact, varying by circumstance.
• Humans are part of nature — animals among animals — subject to the same atomic processes as everything else.

Nietzsche pressed this further in his attack on what he called the “ascetic ideal” — the whole constellation of values, including Platonism, Christianity, and Kantian moralism, that seeks to elevate the human above nature, to treat suffering as meaningful, to treat instinct and pleasure as base, and to locate human worth in something other than actual living. Against this he posed the will to power — not domination of others, but the affirmative self-overcoming of a life-embracing creature. Epicurus would not have used this language, but the underlying rejection of life-denial is the same.

Both thinkers agree on the essential point: philosophy that begins by denigrating the sensory world, promising access to a higher truth, and demanding that we sacrifice present pleasure for abstract universal obligation — whether in the name of God, the Forms, Reason, or the Categorical Imperative — is philosophy in the service of life-denial. It is, in the end, the enemy of happiness.

5 Summary: What Nietzsche Confirms About Epicurus

The following are key parallels between Nietzsche and Epicurus:

• The senses are reliable. Both reject the Platonic/Kantian tradition’s demotion of sensory experience to “mere appearance.” Nietzsche writes in Twilight of the Idols: “The senses do not lie. What we make of their testimony, that alone introduces lies.”
• The “true world” is a fable. The entire tradition of positing a higher, truer reality behind the sensory world — from Plato’s Forms to Kant’s thing-in-itself — is a philosophical error with real human costs.
• Universal absolute moral law is a fiction. Whether grounded in God, Reason, or Human Dignity, the claim that there exist binding universal obligations discoverable through pure thought, independent of pleasure, pain, and circumstance, is the philosophical heir of the same error.
• Stoicism is a symptom, not a cure. The Stoic counsel to suppress desire, accept fate, and regard pleasure with suspicion is life-denial dressed as wisdom.
• Life is to be affirmed, not transcended. The goal of philosophy is not to escape this world but to live in it as fully and happily as possible.

Nietzsche celebrated struggle, suffering, and the overcoming of great obstacles as desirable and even beautiful. This parallels the Epicurean view that pain is to be chosen when the choice will allow pleasure to predominate. Nietzsche had contempt for what might be called “piggish” comfort-seeking, but this too can be reconciled with Epicurus when it is remembered that Epicurean pleasure is not limited to physical stimulation, and that we can find even greater pleasure in mental and other actions which we find more satisfying. In the end, whether viewed through Epicurus or Nietzsche, suffering is not to be engaged in for itself, but because it leads to maximizing pleasure when pleasure is properly understood.

These week we will continue around section 1:265 of Lucretius and explore further the implications of the invisibility of atoms and how we can have confidence in something that is not visible.

EpicureanFriends Side-By-Side Lucretius

Multi-column side-by-side Lucretius text comparison tool featuring Munro, Bailey, Dunster, and Condensed editions.

handbook.epicureanfriends.com

Welcome to Episode 326 of Lucretius Today. This is a podcast dedicated to the poet Lucretius, who wrote "On The Nature of Things," the most complete presentation of Epicurean philosophy left to us from the ancient world. Each week we walk you through the Epicurean texts, and we discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. If you find the Epicurean worldview attractive, we invite you to join us in the study of Epicurus at EpicureanFriends.com, where we discuss this and all of our podcast episodes.
   
This week we start are continuing our series reviewing Cicero's "Academic Questions" from an Epicurean perspective. We are focusing first on what is referred to as Book One, which provides an overview of the issues that split Plato's Academy and gives us an overview of the philosophical issues being dealt with at the time of Epicurus. This week will will continue in Section 7

Our text will come from
Cicero - Academic Questions - Yonge We'll likely stick with Yonge primarily, but we'll also refer to the Rackam translation here:

• Cicero On Nature Of Gods Academica Loeb Rackham : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Episode 325 of the Lucretius Today Podcast is now available. This week our episode is entitled: "The False Platonic Division Of The Universe Into A Force Which Causes And That Which Is Acted Upon."

This podcast will be released either tonight or first thing in the morning.

One comment while editing is that as we go forward we'll try to focus in on what is meant by "efficient cause" in this text. The word cause tends to get lots of modifiers on it in general conversation, such as "ultimate cause," or - in the legal world - "proximate cause" or "legal cause."

As with the title assigned to this episode, the major issue seems to be the Platonic division of nature into "that which acts" and "that which is acted upon." The implication and danger is that "that which acts" gets endowed with some kind of superior or supernatural or divine nature, such as is implied in discussing a "Prime Mover."

We'll dig further into that but you might want to keep it in mind while listening.

Introduction

A correct understanding of Epicurus' views as to desire and doubt is essential to grasping his philosophy as a whole. These should be considered together because it is thought by some that Epicurus held all doubt and all desire to be undesirable. We will examine first desire and then doubt, following up with a comparison of how in each case some are desirable and some are undesirable for a life of happiness based on pleasure.

Part I: The Classification of Desires

The Three Divisions

Among the most clear and authoritative presentations of Epicurus's doctrine of desire comes to us through Torquatus in Cicero's On Ends, Book One, Chapter XIII. There, Torquatus articulates the essential principle:

Quote

"Nothing could be more useful or more conducive to well-being than Epicurus's doctrine as to the different classes of the desires. One kind he classified as both natural and necessary, a second as natural without being necessary, and a third as neither natural nor necessary; the principle of classification being that the necessary desires are gratified with little trouble or expense; the natural desires also require but little, since nature's own riches, which suffice to content her, are both easily procured and limited in amount; but for the imaginary desires no bound or limit can be discovered."

This tripartite schema—natural and necessary, natural but not necessary, and neither natural nor necessary—is the foundation of Epicurean desire theory. But the crucial and often overlooked point is that the classification is not primarily a moral command ("pursue these, avoid those"), but rather an analytical instrument. Its purpose is to give us clarity about the nature, cost, and potential for satisfaction that attaches to different types of desire, so that we can make wise and informed choices.

Natural and Necessary Desires

Desires that are both natural and necessary are those whose fulfillment removes genuine pain and whose neglect causes real harm. The desire for food when hungry, for shelter from cold and rain, for basic companionship, for freedom from physical suffering—these are desires grounded in our constitution as living beings. They are natural because they arise from what we genuinely are, not from social conditioning or arbitrary convention; and they are necessary because life cannot go well, and in some cases cannot continue, without their satisfaction. Crucially, as Torquatus notes, these desires are satisfied with "little trouble or expense." Nature has arranged it so that what we truly need is, by and large, accessible. A drink of water, a nourishing meal, a warm cloak, the company of a friend— in most situations these are not luxuries but within reach of nearly anyone who reflects clearly.

Natural but Not Necessary Desires

The second category—natural but not necessary—covers desires that arise from our nature but whose specific fulfillment is not required for well-being. The desire for pleasant food, for sexual gratification, for aesthetic enjoyment, for variety and richness in experience—these are genuine desires rooted in human nature and entirely appropriate. They are natural in that they are not fantasies invented by culture or social pressure; but generally they are not necessary in that the specific objects of these desires can be varied, and their absence does not cause the deep pain that the absence of food or shelter would cause. One may desire a particular delicacy, but the desire for nourishment can be met by simpler means. These desires can be pursued when circumstances allow for their pursuit to produce in the end more pleasure than pain.

Neither Natural Nor Necessary: Empty Desires

The third category is the most dangerous. Desires that are neither natural nor necessary are those Epicurus described as empty (kenai). These include the desires for unlimited wealth, for unlimited political power, for immortal fame, or for an inexhaustible parade of novel pleasures. What makes these desires empty is not that they are at first glance unlikely to be satisfied—it is that, by their very definition and inner logic, they are unlimited and thus cannot be satisfied. They are not grounded in nature's real needs; they are generated by false opinion and by social comparison, always promising a satisfaction that perpetually recedes and literally cannot be obtained.

A Critical Clarification: Epicurus Did Not Forbid Pursuit Beyond the Necessary

Here a vital clarification must be made, one that is frequently missed: Epicurus did not command that we only pursue natural and necessary desires. The classification is not a prescriptive law but a tool for understanding the risks and costs of what we pursue. If a person of means and leisure wishes to enjoy fine wine, elaborate cuisine, or beautiful art, Epicurus does not condemn this. What he warns against is allowing the pursuit of such things in an unlimited amount such as to enslave us—to make our happiness dependent upon them. The wise Epicurean uses this classification to navigate life with open eyes and to judge the likely results of the actions that are open to us, not to build a new cage of prohibitions.

The True Meaning of "Bad" Desires

A desire is bad in the Epicurean sense not simply because it fails to be satisfied on a given occasion. All of us experience unfulfilled desires from time to time, and this is a normal part of life. A desire becomes bad—genuinely harmful to flourishing—when it is empty: that is, when it is structured so that satisfaction is permanently impossible, when no amount of its object could ever suffice, and when its pursuit necessarily generates anxiety, envy, and dissatisfaction rather than genuine pleasure. The desire for enough food is natural and good; the desire for a quantity of wealth that by definition can never feel sufficient is empty and bad. The badness lies not in the desire being unfulfilled on one occasion, but in the fact that the desire is constitutionally incapable of fulfillment, and pursuing it is therefore not a path to pleasure but a path to chronic suffering.

Part II: Good and Bad Doubts

Epicurus and the Canonics of Knowledge

Epicurus was not only a philosopher of pleasure and desire; he was a remarkably careful thinker about the nature and limits of knowledge. Two of his Principal Doctrines speak directly to the question of what we can and cannot know with certainty. Principal Doctrine 23 states that if one disputes the testimony of all the senses, one will have no standard by which to judge anything; Principal Doctrine 24 extends this by noting that if we reject without distinction every clear perception, we eliminate the criterion by which we could correct any error at all.

Taken together, these doctrines establish a crucial Epicurean principle: there are things we can determine with certainty. In this category are primarily those things that we directly perceive and feel, but also those which we cannot perceive directly but of which we are persuaded by indirect evidence, such as the existence of invisible but indivisible particles as the natural basis of the universe. In the second category there are things we cannot determine with certainty, particularly the ultimate nature of distant or hidden phenomena about which we have insufficient evidence to choose from among various possibilities that are supported by direct evidence. Prudence requires that we know which is which, and that we refuse to treat uncertain matters with the false confidence that belongs only to the certain.

The Acceptability of Multiple Explanations

This epistemological humility has a direct practical implication that Epicurus stated with clarity. In his writings on natural philosophy, particularly in his Letter to Pythocles, Epicurus repeatedly allows that certain astronomical and meteorological phenomena may have multiple equally valid explanations. When the evidence is compatible with more than one account, it is not only permissible but intellectually required to hold all of them open rather than arbitrarily selecting one. Dogmatic certainty where certainty is not warranted is itself a form of error—an affront to the mind's commitment to truth.

On this position it is essential to be clear. Epicurus was not advocating for radical skepticism or for the view that nothing can be known. He was drawing a precise distinction: some questions have answers that can be determined by sensation and reason, and for these, confident assertion is appropriate and in fact necessary for a happy life. Other questions outrun our evidence, and for these, acknowledging multiple possibilities is the honest and philosophically correct response.

Good Doubts: The Courage to Challenge False Ideas

If there is a form of doubt that Epicurus celebrated, it was the active doubt that challenges false beliefs—particularly those that cause unnecessary fear and distress. The fear of the gods, the terror of death, the superstitious belief in divine punishment, the dread of a cosmos governed by arbitrary fate—all of these were, for Epicurus, false opinions responsible for enormous human suffering. To doubt these ideas, to challenge them with reason and evidence, to subject them to philosophical examination and reject them when found wanting: this was not merely intellectually praiseworthy but therapeutically essential. The entire project of Epicurean philosophy is in one sense an exercise in purposeful doubt—doubt directed against false beliefs that imprison human happiness.

A good doubt in the Epicurean sense, then, is one that challenges false ideas, opens space for accurate understanding, and thereby removes unnecessary suffering. Such doubt is active, reasoned, and courageous. Epicurus himself lived this principle, writing extensively against the prevailing religious fears of his time, against the belief in an afterlife of punishment, and against the view that the gods intervene capriciously in human affairs.

Bad Doubts: Corrosive Uncertainty and Paralysis

Not all doubt is liberating, however. A bad doubt in the Epicurean framework is one that refuses to acknowledge what can in fact be determined with confidence, that treats certain knowledge as if it were uncertain, or that spirals into an anxiety-producing paralysis incapable of any resolution. If a person refuses to trust the testimony of their own senses—if they doubt that they feel pleasure when they feel pleasure, or pain when they feel pain—they have severed the very thread by which they could correct error. This kind of corrosive, excessive doubt is not philosophical honesty but a form of confusion that undermines the foundations of knowledge and judgment.

Similarly, a bad doubt is one that becomes a source of ongoing existential anxiety rather than a productive spur to inquiry. Epicurus was clear that tranquility of mind is desirable. Doubt that perpetually disturbs the mind without moving toward resolution, that treats every question as insoluble and every judgment as arbitrary, is not philosophical virtue but a failure of nerve. The Epicurean wise person doubts when doubt is appropriate, asserts when assertion is warranted, and knows the difference.

Holding Open Questions Honestly

A final and important note: Epicurus did not demand that we always arrive at definitive answers. On questions where the evidence genuinely does not decide between competing accounts—as in many questions about the precise mechanisms of natural phenomena—the correct response is neither false certainty nor despairing agnosticism, but a disciplined openness. This is a form of intellectual integrity, not a failure of knowledge.

Conclusion

What emerges from a careful examination of Epicurus's thought on desires and doubts is a coherent and persuasive picture. The key in both cases is the distinction between what is grounded in reality—what corresponds to genuine nature, genuine evidence, genuine need—and what is empty, either because it is structured by false opinion to be insatiable, or because it mistakenly claims or avoids claiming certainty where the evidence supports one or the other. A good desire is one that is rooted in real human nature, capable of real satisfaction, and pursued without enslaving the soul to an unreachable goal; a bad desire is one that is constitutionally incapable of fulfillment. A good doubt is one that challenges false beliefs or honestly acknowledges genuine uncertainty; a bad doubt is one that corrodes the confidence we legitimately have, or generates anxiety without resolution. Epicurus's philosophy is focused on clarity: clarity about what we want, clarity about what we know, and clarity in understanding the difference.

Summary Table - Good and Bad Desires and Doubts

This thread and its timing was prompted in part by the following post which I saw recently on Twitter/X. I am not posting to approve or disapprove of the writer of the post or the person whose death is being referenced - Ari Larijani, an Iranian military leader. This thread should not be diverted into an assessment of Larijani, the situation in the Middle East, or any other political theme.

But the post is relevant because I was shocked to see that Larijani was apparently a strong admirer of Kant and his categorical imperative. The post states that Larijani authored multiple works on Kant’s philosophy. For those who in opposition to Muller don't like Larijani, I am not trying to imply that Kant should be viewed negatively on a "guilt by association" basis. I post this not to comment on Larijani but to provide a stark example of how Kantian idealism is being explicitly incorporated in consideration of key practical events in the world today.

Quote

Blunt @Shinamuller 12h

As an avid reader of Immanuel Kant during my teenage years, I disciplined myself morally in ways that external chaos could never achieve. Kant’s categorical imperative became my inner compass: act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. This pure reason-based ethics grounded me, turning personal turmoil into a commitment to principles that transcend circumstances.

The loss of Ali Larijani, a true Kantian thinker who authored multiple works on Kant’s philosophy, including explorations of mathematical method, metaphysics, and synthetic a priori judgments in his thought, feels profoundly personal to me. Here was a man who confronted what he saw as a materialist, genocidal empire on high moral ground, much like Kant’s insistence on treating humanity always as an end in itself, never merely as a means. His death is not just a political event; it is a blow to that rare fusion of philosophical rigor and principled action.

The United States, through its Rewards for Justice program, placed a bounty of up to $10 million on Larijani’s head (along with other senior Iranian officials, including Mojtaba Khamenei) just days before his reported killing in an Israeli strike. This act reduces a human being, regardless of political role, to a price tag, a means to an end in geopolitical maneuvering. If this practice were to become a universal principle, no head of state would ever be safe again. Imagine Donald Trump, or any leader, subject to the same logic: bounties issued by adversaries, turning political opposition into licensed assassination markets. The world would descend into a state where dignity evaporates, reason is subordinated to power, and perpetual insecurity reigns, precisely the antithesis of Kant’s vision of a kingdom of ends, where rational beings coexist under laws they give themselves. Larijani, this committed Kantian (Syed Kantian, as some might say), left a piercing question for the Muslim world in his final public message before his martyrdom: Which side are you on? He framed the confrontation as one between America/Israel on one side and Muslim Iran/forces of resistance on the other, urging Islamic nations to unite rather than remain silent or complicit. He emphasized that true security, progress, and independence come not from narrow nationalism but from solidarity across the Ummah, echoing a bloc-like unity similar to the European Union.

Today’s EU stands, in many ways, on Kant’s anti-nationalist philosophy. Kant viewed nationalism as outdated, a relic of particularism that must yield to cosmopolitan right and perpetual peace through federations of free states. Larijani, in his last message, similarly rejected narrow nationalism for Iran or the Muslim world, advocating instead for a collective strength akin to a supranational bloc that could guarantee dignity and autonomy for all, much like Kant’s ideal of a federation transcending sovereign rivalries. I am in no position to write a full obituary for him yet; the shock is still too raw, the grief too immediate. But I will write one, in time. For now, this is simply an acknowledgment: a Kantian light has dimmed, yet the imperative he lived by, and that he helped instill in me, remains undimmed. We must will a world where such principles prevail, not bounties and eliminations.

Also, in preparing the initial post, I ran AI searches to validate the key points being made. This is a discussion forum and discussion of the points made in the first post are welcome. The issues revolve around the following points, in this case analyzed by Grok:

Outline Of Areas Of Difference Between Epicurus and Kantian Modern Idealism

Core Goal of Life / Highest Good

• Epicurus (Hedonist / Egoistic eudaimonism):
  The ultimate goal is happiness (eudaimonia), defined as a pleasant, undisturbed life. Pleasure is the highest intrinsic good; pain the only intrinsic evil. He prioritizes stable, long-term pleasures — freedom from bodily pain (aponia) and mental disturbance (ataraxia) — through moderation, satisfying natural/necessary desires, friendship, and simple living over luxury or excess.
• Kant (Deontological rationalism):
  The highest good (in terms of moral worth) is a good will — acting purely from duty for duty's sake, independent of inclinations, pleasure, or consequences. Happiness has value but no moral worth unless it flows from virtue/moral action. The good life is one guided by autonomous reason following the moral law.

Basis of Morality

• Epicurus:
  Morality is instrumental/prudential. Rules like justice, honesty, and non-harm promote personal (and communal) pleasure/minimization of pain reliably. There's no absolute, categorical duty detached from consequences — ethical behavior is wise self-interest in a social contract that benefits everyone involved.
• Kant:
  Morality is absolute, a priori, and derived from pure reason via the Categorical Imperative:
  • Act only on maxims you can will as universal laws.
  • Treat rational beings always as ends in themselves, never merely as means.
    Empirical factors (pleasure/pain, consequences) play no role in determining rightness — only reason does.

Role of Pleasure & Desire

• Epicurus: Pleasure is the starting point, criterion, and end of ethics. Manage desires rationally: pursue natural/necessary ones, enjoy natural/non-necessary ones moderately, avoid vain ones.
• Kant: Inclinations (including desire for pleasure) are heteronomous and can undermine moral motivation. Actions done for pleasure or inclination lack moral value. True morality requires acting from respect for the law despite inclinations.

Differences / Incompatibility (fundamental and deep):

• They are largely incompatible at the core level. Epicurus is consequentialist/hedonist (morality serves happiness as the sole intrinsic good), while Kant is strictly deontological (morality is independent of happiness; happiness can even follow virtue but never grounds it).
• Kant explicitly critiques Epicurean ethics as "self-love" or "selfishness" because it makes morality hypothetical/conditional on empirical pleasure — something he sees as incapable of producing truly universal, necessary moral laws.
• Epicurus would view Kant's duty-based system as unnecessarily austere and disconnected from human nature (why ignore pleasure/pain when they're the natural guides?).
• No hybrid is straightforward: You can't fully merge them without undermining one or the other. A "Kantian Epicurean" might try to argue that duty aligns with long-term happiness, but that risks reducing Kant to hypothetical imperatives (which he rejects). Conversely, making Epicurean pleasure secondary to duty would betray Epicurus's hedonism.
• In essence: Epicurus asks, "What rationally maximizes a pleasant, secure life?" Kant asks, "What does pure reason demand of any rational being?" They point in different directions — one naturalistic and empirical, the other rationalist and absolute — so their views are mostly incompatible, though with intriguing points of overlap in promoting rational tranquility and ethical consistency.

Introductory Note

This post is intended to provide an introduction to the issues that exist between Epicurus and modern idealism. For ease of reference it also incorporates discussion of Nietzsche's analysis of Kant, which has substantial similarities to the viewpoint of Epicurus. Nietzsche was not an Epicurean. He had sharp criticisms of what he thought was Epicurus’ "retreat into the garden." In my view Nietzsche was wrong to consider this to be a "retreat." The more appropriate analogy would be that Epicurus erected a "fortress" where he could bring together his students and develop and teach a philosophy that rejected the dominant viewpoints of the day. Yet on at least two crucial issues Nietzshe clearly stood on the same side of history as Epicurus: both affirm the reality and value of sensory experience, and both mount vigorous objections to philosophies that treat an invisible, super-sensory realm as the true foundation of knowledge and morality.

Nietzsche made both positive and negative remarks about Epicurus, but in important ways both center their viewpoints on defense of this world as revealed to us by Nature as against claims of otherworldliness. For example, in Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche traces the entire history of Western philosophy — from Plato through Kant — as a series of moves designed to depreciate this world in favor of another. Epicurus represents, for Nietzsche, the healthier ancient counter-tradition: pleasure-affirming, this-worldly, and against the building of systems based entirely on logic. Against this shared backdrop, we can contrast Epicurean views against Kant and the school of German Idealism he inaugurated.

The Fundamentals of Modern (German) Idealism

Modern idealism emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as the dominant philosophical movement in Europe, springing from the work of Immanuel Kant and carried forward by Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Its central and defining claim is that the structure of reality as we experience it is not simply "out there" waiting to be passively received, but is actively shaped — in part or in whole — by the mind.

For Kant, this meant that the human mind imposes fundamental categories (such as causality, substance, and unity) and pure forms of intuition (space and time) onto raw sensory input. What we perceive is therefore always already processed through these mental filters. The world as it appears to us — the phenomenal realm — is knowable, but the world as it is in itself independent of all perception — the noumenal realm, or Ding an sich (“thing-in-itself”) — forever exceeds our cognitive grasp.

Kant called this reorientation the "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy: just as Copernicus moved the sun rather than the earth to the center of the solar system, Kant moved the knowing subject to the center of the epistemological universe.

Later idealists radicalised this move. Hegel dissolved Kant’s “thing-in-itself” altogether, arguing in the Phenomenology of Spirit that reality just is the self-unfolding of rational Spirit (Geist) through history. The material world is not merely conditioned by mind but is a manifestation of it.

Kant’s Categorical Imperative and Other Key Views

Kant’s ethical philosophy is inseparable from his metaphysics. Because genuine freedom — the kind required for moral responsibility — cannot be located in the phenomenal, causally determined world, it allegedly must be ascribed to the self as a “noumenal” being. Humans can self-legislate because they are citizens of an intelligible realm beyond nature.

From this foundation Kant derived his idea of the Categorical Imperative: what Kant alleges is the supreme principle of morality that commands unconditionally, without reference to desire, pleasure, or consequences. In its most famous formulation: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Notice what this excludes. The “good” will, for Kant, has nothing to do with the agent’s happiness or sensory satisfaction. A generous act performed because it produces pleasure is, in Kant’s strict view, morally worthless. Only duty — rational duty, legislated by pure practical reason — carries genuine moral weight.

This yields a vision of the moral agent as a purely rational being straining against natural inclination. Pleasure is, at best, morally neutral; at worst, it tempts us away from duty. Kant further distinguished the highest good (summum bonum), a synthesis of virtue and happiness. Kant alleged crucially that happiness enters only as a consequence merited by virtue, never as its foundation. The architecture of Kantian ethics is resolutely top-down: pure reason commands; the senses obey or are ignored.

The Deep Kinship Between Kant and Platonic Idealism

The structural similarities between Kant’s system and Plato’s philosophy are profound, and not accidental. Kant himself acknowledged Plato’s influence, writing in the Critique of Pure Reason that Plato rightly saw that our faculties of knowledge reach beyond the empirical. Both thinkers cleave the universe into two levels: for Plato, the sensible world of fleeting appearances versus the eternal realm of Forms; for Kant, the phenomenal world of spatiotemporal experience versus the noumenal realm of things-in-themselves.

Both distrust the senses as ultimate arbiters of truth. For Plato, the eyes and ears deliver only shifting, contradictory opinion (doxa); genuine knowledge (episteme) requires ascent to the intelligible. For Kant, the senses supply the raw material of experience, but the cognitive work is done by the understanding’s a priori concepts — and the deepest moral and metaphysical truths lie beyond the reach of sensory evidence altogether. Both philosophies thereby assign decisive importance to an unseen, non-empirical domain as the ultimate ground of value and knowledge.

The ethical parallels are equally striking. Plato’s “Form of the Good” transcends the visible world and grounds all value; Kant’s pure reason issues moral laws that transcend nature. In both cases, right action is defined not by what feels pleasurable or produces happiness but by conformity to something higher, more rational, more permanent than the sensory flux of embodied life.

Epicurus: Embracing the Senses, Rejecting the Ideal

Epicurus would have found this entire picture deeply misguided. Writing in Athens in the late 4th century BCE, he built a philosophy founded frankly and unapologeticly on the senses, anticipations, and feelings of pleasure and pain. For Epicurus, the senses, anticipations, and feelings are the only reliable source of knowledge; they never lie in their immediate deliverances, even when our interpretations of them go wrong. There is no need to posit an invisible realm of Forms to explain why we know what we know. The world perceived through our senses is the world; the attempt to locate reality elsewhere is a flight from nature born of fear or vanity.

Epicurus rejected Platonic idealism on every front. The Forms are false and philosophically redundant: to explain why beautiful things are beautiful, we need only point to their material properties and the natural responses they produce in perceivers — not to a transcendent Form of Beauty.

Epicurus’ atomist materialism held that everything that exists is composed of atoms and void. The soul itself is material, dispersing at death, leaving no residue for a Platonic afterlife.

In ethics, the contrast is equally vivid. Where Plato subordinated bodily pleasure to the care of the soul and its conformity to the Good, Epicurus declared that "pleasure is the beginning and end of the blessed life." The best life according to Epicurus is rooted firmly in natural human experience, not in conformity to transcendent norms. Philosophy is medicine for the soul, but the ailments it cures — fear of death, fear of the gods, insatiable ambition — are identified empirically, by observing what actually causes human misery.

Nietzsche: Siding with the Senses Against Idealism and Stoicism

Nietzsche, writing two millennia later, diagnosed the same pathology in both Plato and Kant. In Twilight of the Idols (1889), his chapter “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable” is a devastating six-step narrative tracing the concept of a “true world” beyond the senses from Plato through Christianity through Kant, culminating in its eventual abolition. For Nietzsche, Kant’s noumenal realm is Platonism in disguise: another way of downgrading this world in favour of an inaccessible beyond.

Nietzsche’s specific critique of Kant’s ethics is equally pointed. He mocked the categorical imperative as mechanical and life-denying, arguing in Beyond Good and Evil that Kant’s insistence on universalisability ignores the vital particularity of individuals and situations. The very coldness of the Kantian moral demand — its indifference to what we desire, feel, and naturally are — struck Nietzsche as a symptom of the ascetic ideal: the self-lacerating wish to deny nature in favour of an abstract norm.

Against Stoicism — whose demand that we conform our will to the rational order of nature Nietzsche considered nearly as problematic — and against Platonic-Kantian idealism alike, Nietzsche championed what he called the “will to power” – driven by the feelings given by Nature, as the authentic sources of value. His concept of the Ubermensch (the Overman) is a figure who creates values out of the fullness of life rather than deferring to transcendent commands. Nietzsche explicitly commended Epicurus for recognizing that the goal of philosophy is relief from needless suffering and the cultivation of genuine pleasure — a goal achieved not by escaping the material world but by understanding it more honestly.

How Epicurus’ Rejection of Platonism Extends to Kantian Idealism

The argument structure that led Epicurus to reject Platonic idealism would, if extended forward in time, lead him to reject Kantian idealism with equal force. Consider the parallel moves:

First, Epicurus objected to Plato’s noumenal dualism — the claim that there is a higher realm (the Forms) that does the real explanatory and normative work, while the sensory world is demoted to mere appearance. Kant’s thing-in-itself performs the same structural function set out by Plato: it is an unseen, unknowable bedrock invoked precisely because the sensory world cannot, on Kant’s view, supply ultimate grounding on its own. Epicurus’ reply would be the same: the appeal to an inaccessible beyond is false – it is philosophically unnecessary and psychologically motivated by fear rather than evidence.

Second, Epicurus’ ethical naturalism — the view that pleasure and pain are our natural moral guides — directly contradicts Kant’s insistence that inclinations have no moral worth. For Kant, the very fact that an action feels rewarding is a reason to be suspicious of its moral purity. For Epicurus, the fact that it produces pleasure (including that of our friends) is precisely what recommends it. The Epicurean would view Kantian moral straining — duty for duty’s sake, regardless of consequences, regardless of feeling — as a kind of philosophical self-torture with no natural justification.

Third, both Plato’s and Kant’s systems require a self that, at its moral core, transcends the natural order: Plato finds this in an immortal rational soul, Kant finds it in a “noumenal agent.” Epicurus dissolved this duality entirely. The soul is material; death is the ending of sensation, not an supernatural reckoning. There is no noumenal self behind the empirical person. Epicurean psychology is fully continuous with Epicurean physics: one world, all the way down.

Summary: Fundamental Differences and the Superficiality of Apparent Similarities

One might object that Epicurus and Kant both prize reason, both seek human well-being, and both recommend a kind of philosophical self-cultivation. Are these not deep points of convergence? On reflection, they are superficial resemblances masking irreconcilable foundations.

The reason that Epicurus prizes is empirical, corrective, and therapeutic — reason that helps us think clearly about the evidence provided by the senses, anticipations, and feelings, and therefore what actually produces pleasure and avoids pain. The reason that Kant prizes is pure logical reasoning, which issues commands with no reference to sensory experience whatsoever. These are almost antithetical conceptions sharing only a name.

The well-being each seeks is equally divergent. Epicurean eudaimonia is constituted by pleasure widely understood to include all experience that is not painful — it is measured by what we feel. Kantian happiness enters the picture only as the appropriate reward for virtue in a teleological universe governed by moral law; it is never the criterion of right action. To confuse these two conceptions is precisely the error that Kant warned against in his distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives.

At the deepest level, the divide is metaphysical. Epicureanism and its Nietzschean echo are philosophies of this world: these bodies and this life are all we have and all we need. German Idealism and its Platonic ancestor are philosophies of otherworldliness: reality’s ultimate character, and morality’s ultimate authority, lie in a domain the senses cannot reach. No amount of terminological negotiation can bridge that gap. When Nietzsche declared that the “true world” had become a fable, he was — consciously or not — continuing with the project that Epicurus had begun twenty-two centuries earlier: the project of bringing defending this world against the claims of mysticism.