Posts by Charles

Welcome!

Welcome @moldovanyi!

While doing some research I came across a Meetup group that was set up to be an Epicurean Garden. They're based in Sydney, Australia and organized by two people. I've already submitted an application and sent a few welcoming and introductory messages to its head organizer.

https://www.meetup.com/Sydney-Epicurus-Philosophy-Garden/

What we're about

The purpose of this Group is to explore the philosophy of Epicurus through discussion and the enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life such as friendship, as originally espoused by Epicurus who lived in ancient Athens in the 4th century BCE.

The idea for this Group arises from the desire to achieve happiness in life by applying the four basic tenets that Epicurus espoused. According to D S Hutchinson from the University of Toronto writing in the introduction to "The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia: "The fundamental obstacle to happiness, says Epicurus, is anxiety.

No matter how rich or famous you are, you won't be happy if you're anxious to be richer or more famous. No matter how good your health is, you won't be happy if you're anxious about getting sick. You can't be happy in this life if you're worried about the next life.

You can't be happy as a human being if you're worried about being punished or victimized by powerful divine beings. But you can be happy if you believe in the four basic truths of Epicureanism: there are no divine beings which threaten us; there is no next life; what we actually need is easy to get; what makes us suffer is easy to put up with. This is the so-called 'four-part cure', the Epicurean remedy for the epidemic sickness of human anxiety; as a later Epicurean puts it, 'Don't fear god, don't worry about death; what's good is easy to get, and what's terrible is easy to endure.'

See: Philodemus of Gadara, from a work whose title is uncertain, preserved in Herculaneum Papyrus 1005, column W, lines 10-14. ( http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/ier.html )

Join this Group if you are interested in learning about the Philosophy of Epicurus and applying such elements of his philosophy as appeal to you in your life to obtain happiness and contentment.

The aim is to come together on a regular basis in simple but convivial surroundings such as a garden setting to discuss, learn and enjoy.

At our first meeting is was decided that we should meet on the second (now third) Wednesday each month at 7pm at a central location that is easy to travel to. The idea of sharing a simple meal was considered essential - to this end contributions in kind of food, wine or a nominal monetary contribution are welcome.

Charles Batteux's Defense of Epicureanism from 1758 titled: La morale d'Épicure tirée de ses propres écrits

Haven't found a proper pdf or even a translation online, but a photocopied text can be found here.

https://www.persee.fr/issue/dhs_0070-6760_2003_num_35_1

https://www.persee.fr/doc/dhs_0070-6760_2003_num_35_1_2587 (English synopsis of each article)

Eighteenth Century, n° 35, 2003. The Epicureanism of the Enlightenment, under the direction of Anne Deneys-Tunney and Pierre-François Moreau.

I. Special issue: The Epicureanism of the Enlightenment

- Presentation. New faces of Epicureanism
Pierre-François Moreau & Anne Deneys-Tunney

- Sources -

- The Philologies of Epicureanism
Emmanual Bury

- Epicurus and the atom system in the Critical History of Philosophy
Henry Deneys

- Sciences -

- Of a "discreet" Epicureanism. For a Lucretian reading of the Interviews on the plurality of worlds by Fontenelle
Christophe Martin

- The Atomism in Philosophical Thoughts. Diderot between Gassendi and Buffon

Garhardt Stenger

- Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy, Volney: Human Science and Epicureanism
Mariana Saad

- Morals -

- Between moral Epicureanism and aesthetic judgment: the critical variations of Saint-Evremond on the expression of passions in the theater
Jean-Charles Darmon

- Epicureanism according to Shaftesbury: febrifuge and imposture
Françoise Badelon

- Arouet, Epicurean poet. The voices of Epicureanism in youth poetry by Voltaire
Nicholas Cronk

- La Mettrie: an ethics of inconstancy, a metaphysics of tenderness
Francine Markovits

- Writings -

- Epicurean reminiscences in the wanderings of the heart and spirit of Crébillon
Jean Salem

- Marivaux and the thought of pleasure (References La Mettrie and Epicurus)
Anne Deneys-Tunney

- Violent Models and Sensations in the Genesis of Sade's work
Caroline Warman

- Casanova as Epicurus' Pupil
Branko Aleksic

- Annex: The Ethics of Epicurus, taken from his own writings by Abbot Charles Batteaux (Branko Aleksic's extension of Batteux's "La morale d'Épicure tirée de ses propres écrits"

- Epicurean practice and theory: the case of the obscene novel
Jean Mainil

- Controversies -

- Materialism and Epicureanism in England at the beginning of the 18th century
Ann Thomson (Who also translated a number of La Mettrie's works)

- The abolition of the Garden: the status of the philosopher as a hidden man in the Treaty of the three impostors. The Questioning of an Epicurean Tradition.
Abraham Anderson

- Anti-Epicureanism (Recall La Mettrie's System d' Epicure: "I call upon you modern anti-epicureans!")
Syviane Albertan-Coppola

EPICUREISM or EPICURISM, noun. m. ( History of Philosophy .) The Elean sect gave birth to the Epicurean sect . Never has philosophy been less heard and more slandered than that of Epicurus . This philosopher was accused of atheism, although he admitted the existence of the gods, that he frequented the temples, and that he had no reluctance to prostrate himself to the feet of the altars. He was regarded as the apologist for debauchery, he whose life was a continual practice of all the virtues, and especially of temperance. The prejudice was so general that it must be admitted, to the shame of the Stoics who did everything to spread it, that the Epicureans were very honest people who had the worst reputation. But so that we can make an enlightened judgment of the doctrine of Epicurus , we will introduce this very philosopher, surrounded by his disciples, & dictating his lessons to them in the shade of the trees he had planted. It is therefore he who will speak in the rest of this article; & we hope that the reader is fair enough to remember this. The only thing we will allow ourselves is to throw some of the most immediate consequences that we can deduce from its principles.

Philosophy in general . Man was born to think & to act, & Philosophy is made to regulate the understanding & the will of man: everything that deviates from this goal is frivolous. Happiness is acquired by the exercise of reason, the practice of virtue, & the moderate use of pleasures; which supposes the health of the body and the soul. If the most important knowledge is what to avoid & do, the young man cannot give himself up too early to the study of Philosophy, & the old man give it up too late. I distinguish between my disciples three kinds of characters: there are men, like me, that no obstacle repels, & who advance alone & in a movement of their own, towards truth, virtue & Bliss ; men, such as Metrodorus, who need an example that encourages them; & others, such as Hermaque, who must be subjected to a kind of violence. I love them & value them all. Oh, my friends! is there anything older than the truth? was not truth before all Philosophers? The philosopher will therefore despise all authority & will march straight to the truth, dismissing all the vain ghosts who will present themselves on his path, & the irony of Socrates & the voluptuousness of Epicurus . Why do the people remain plunged into error? is that he takes names for evidence. Make principles for yourself; may they be few in number, but fruitful in consequence. Let us not neglect the study of nature, but let us apply ourselves particularly to the science of manners. Of what use would be us the deep knowledge of the beings which are outside us, if we could, without this knowledge, dissipate the fear, obviate the pain, & satisfy our needs? The use of dialectics pushed to excess, degenerates into the art of sowing thorns all Sciences: I hate this art. True Logic can be reduced to few rules. In Nature there are only things & our ideas; & consequently there are only two kinds of truths, some of existence, others of induction. The truths of existence belong to the senses; those of induction, to reason. Rush is the main source of our mistakes. I will never tire of telling you, wait . Without the proper use of the senses, there are no ideas or preconceptions; & without preconceptions, there is neither opinion nor doubt. Far from being able to work in search of the truth, we are not even able to make signs. Multiply the preconceptions by assiduous use of your senses; study the precise value of the signs which others have instituted, & carefully determine the value of those which you will institute. If you resolve to speak, prefer the simplest & most common expressions, or fear that you will not be heard, & lose the time to interpret yourself. When you listen, try to feel the full force of the words. It is by a habitual exercise of these principles that you will be able to discern effortlessly the true, the false, the obscure & the ambiguous. But it is not enough that you know how to put truth in your reasoning, it is also necessary that you know how to put wisdom in your actions. In general, when the pleasure will not cause any pain in its continuation, do not swing to kiss it; if the pain it will cause is less than it, embrace it again: even embrace the pain which you will promise yourself great pleasure. You will not calculate badly when you abandon yourself to a pleasure that will cause you too much pain, or that will deprive you of greater pleasure.

Physiology in general . What goal will we propose in the study of Physiology? if not to know the general causes of phenomena, so that delivered from all vain terrors, we abandon ourselves without remorse to our reasonable appetites; & that after having enjoyed life, we left it without regret. Nothing has been done with nothing. The Universe has always been, and always will be. There is only matter & le vuide; for we cannot imagine any adjoining being. Add to the notion of empty impenetrability, figure & gravity, & you will have the idea of matter. Separate from the idea of matter the same qualities, & you will have the notion of sight. Nature considered, apart from matter, gives the seen; the empty space gives the notion of the place; the place crossed gives the idea of region. What will we mean by space, if not the empty space considered as extended? The necessity of sight is demonstrated by itself; for without emptiness, where would bodies exist? where would they move? But what is the empty? is it a quality? is it a thing? It is not a quality. But if it is a thing, then it is a bodily thing? there is no doubt about it. This uniform, homogeneous, immense, eternal thing crosses all bodies without altering them, determines them, marks their limits, and contains them. The Universe is the aggregate of matter & of vacuum. The matter is infinite, the vuide is infinite: because if the vuide were infinite & the matter finished, nothing would retain the bodies & would not limit their differences: the percussions & the repercussions would cease; & the Universe, far from forming a whole, would be in no instant of the duration which will follow, but a heap of isolated bodies, lost in the vastness of space. If, on the contrary, the matter were infinite and the finite empty, there would be bodies which would not be in space, which is absurd. We will therefore not apply to the Universe any of these expressions by which we distinguish dimensions & we determine points in finite bodies. The Universe is motionless, because there is no space beyond it. It is immutable, because it is neither susceptible to increase nor decrease. It is eternal, since it has not started, & it will not end. However, beings move there, laws are executed, phenomena succeed one another. Between these phenomena, some occur, others last, and others pass, but these vicissitudes are relative to the parts, not to the whole. The only consequence that can be drawn from generations and destruction is that there are elements from which beings are generated, and in which they resolve. We cannot conceive of training or resolution without an idea of composition; & we do not have the idea of composition, without admitting simple, primitive & constituent particles. These are the particles that we will call atoms . The atom can neither divide, simplify, nor resolve; it is essentially unalterable & finite: whence it follows that in a finite compound, whatever it may be, there is no kind of infinity either in magnitude, in extent, or in number. Homogeneous, having regard to their solidity and their inalterability, atoms have specific qualities which differentiate them. These qualities bring out grandeur, figure, gravity, and all those which emanate from it, such as polite and angular. One should not put among the latter, hot, cold, & others similar; that would be to confuse immutable qualities with momentary effects. Although we assign to the atom all the dimensions of the sensitive body, it is however smaller than any imaginable portion of matter: it escapes our senses, the scope of which is the measure of the imaginable, either in smallness or in greatness. It is by the difference of atoms that most of the phenomena relating to sensations & passions will be explained. The diversity of figure being a necessary continuation of the diversity of magnitude, it would not be impossible that in all this Universe there was not a compound perfectly equal to another. Although there are atoms, some angular, others hooked, their points do not get blunt, their angles never break. I attribute gravity to them as an essential quality, because currently moving, or tending to move, it can only be as a consequence of an intrinsic force, which one can neither conceive nor call other than weighting . The atom has two main movements; a fall or weighting movement which prevails or which will prevail without the assistance of any foreign action; & the shock or the movement of reflection that it receives when meeting another. This last kind of movement is varied according to the infinite diversity of masses and directions. The first being an intrinsic energy of matter, it is this that we must look at as the curator of movement in Nature, and the eternal cause of compositions. The general direction of the atoms carried by the weighting movement is not parallel; it is a little convergent; it is to this convergence that we must relate the shocks, the coherences, the compositions of atoms, the formation of bodies, the order of the Universe with all its phenomena. But where does this convergence arise? of the original diversity of atoms, both in mass and in figure, & in weighting force. Such is the speed of an atom & the non-resistance of the seen, that if the atom was not stopped by any obstacle, it would travel the largest intelligible space in the smallest time. Indeed, what would delay it? What is vuide, with regard to movement? As soon as the combined atoms have formed a compound, they have in this compound, & the compound has in space different motions, different actions, both intrinsic and extrinsic, both in the distance and in the place. What is commonly called elements , comes from compounds of atoms; we can look at these compounds as principles, but not first. The atom is the primary cause by which everything is, and the raw material of which everything is. It is essentially active & by itself. This activity descends from the atom to the element, from the element to the compound, & varies according to all possible compositions. But any product activity or the local movement, or the trend. This is the universal principle of destruction & regeneration. The vicissitudes of the compounds are only modes of movement, and the consequences of the essential activity of the atoms which constitute them. How many times have we not attributed to imaginary causes, the effects of this activity which can, depending on the occurrences, carry the portions of a being to immense distances, or itself. to end in shock, in imperceptible translations? It is she who changes the soft into acid, the soft into hard, & c. And even, what is the destiny, if not the universality of the causes or specific activities of the atom, considered or solitary, or in composition with other atoms? The essential qualities known to atoms are not in great number; however, they are sufficient for the infinite variety of qualities of the compounds. From the more or less large separation of atoms, the dense, the rare, the opaque, the transparent are born: this is where the fluidity, liquidity, hardness, softness, volume, &vs. Where will we make the figure depend, if not on the component parts; & weight, if not intrinsic weighting force? however to speak with exactitude, there is nothing which is absolutely heavy or light. You have to make the same judgment of cold and hot. But what is time? It is in nature a series of events; & in our understanding, a notion which is the source of a thousand errors: We must make the same judgment of space. In nature, without body there is no space; without successive events, no time. Movement & rest are states whose notion is inseparable in us from those of space & time. There will be new productions in nature only as far as the diverse composition of the atoms admits. The uncreated & unalterable atom is the principle of all generation & of all corruption. It follows from its essential & intrinsic activity, that there is no compound which is eternal: however it would not be absolutely impossible that after our dissolution, there would not be a general combination of all the matter, which restored to the Universe the same aspect that it has, or at least a partial combination of the elements that constitute us, as a result of which we would be resurrected; but it would be without memory of the past. The memory goes out at the time of destruction. The world is only a small portion of the Universe, the limits of which the weakness of our senses has fixed; because the Universe is unlimited. Considered in relation to its parts & their reciprocal order, the world is one; he has no soul: he is therefore not a god; his training requires no intelligent and supreme cause. Why resort to such causes in Philosophy, when everything could be generated and can be explained by movement, matter, and sight? The world is the result of chance, not the execution of a design. The atoms have matured from all eternity. Considered in the general agitation from which beings were to hatch in time, this is what we have called chaos ; considered after natures were hatched, & the order introduced into this portion of space, as we see it, is what we called the world: it would be a prejudice to conceive otherwise origin of the earth, the sea, & the heavens. The combination of atoms first formed the general seeds; these seeds developed, and all the animals, without excluding man, were produced alone, isolated. When the seeds were used up, the land stopped producing them, and the species were perpetuated by different generation paths. Let us be careful not to relate to us the transactions of nature, things have been done, without there being any other cause than the universal chain of material beings which worked, either for our happiness or for our misfortune . Let us also leave there the geniuses and the demons; if they were, many things, or would not be, or would be otherwise. Those who imagined these natures were not philosophers, & those who saw them were only visionaries. But if the world has started, why should it not end? is it not a whole compound? is it not a finished compound? has the atom not retained its activity in this large compound, as well as in its smaller portion there? Is not this activity also a principle of alteration & destruction? What revolts our imagination are the false measures we have taken of the extent & time; we relate everything to the point of the space we occupy, & to the short instant of our duration. But to judge our world, it must be compared to the immensity of the Universe, & to the eternity of time: then would this globe have a thousand times more scope, will enter into general law, & we we will see that all accidents of the molecule are avoided. There is only immutable, unchanging, eternal, only the atom; the worlds will pass, the atom will remain as it is. There is nothing repugnant about the plurality of worlds. There may be worlds like the ours; there may be different. They must be considered as large vortices leaning against each other, which constrict smaller ones, & which together fill the infinite void. In the midst of the general movement which produced ours, this mass of atoms which we call Earth , occupied the center; other clusters went to form the sky and the stars which light it. Let us not be imposed on the fall of the bass: the bass has no common center; they fall parallel. Let us conclude the absurdity of the Antipodes. The Earth is not a spherical body; it is a large disc that the atmosphere holds suspended in space: the Earth has no soul; it is therefore not a divinity. It is to earthly exhalations, to sudden shocks, to the meeting of certain opposing elements, to the action of fire, that one must attribute his tremors. If the rivers do not increase the seas, it is because relatively to these volumes of water, to their immense reservoirs, & to the quantity of vapors which the Sun raises from their surface, the rivers are only weak flows. The waters of the sea spread throughout the land mass, water it, meet, gather, & come to rush again into the basins from which they were extravasated: it is in this circulation that they are stripped of their bitterness. The flooding of the Nile is caused by Etesian winds, which drown the sea at the mouths of this river, accumulate sand dams there, and make it flow back on itself. Mountains are as old as the earth. Plants have in common with animals, that they are born, nourish, grow, wither, & die: but it is not a soul which vivifies them; everything is executed in these beings by movement & interposition. In animals, each organ prepares a portion of seed, and transmits it to a common reservoir: hence this analogy proper to seminal molecules, which separates them, distributes them, each arranges them to form a part similar to that which has prepared, and all of them, to father a similar animal. No intelligence presides over this mechanism. Everything being executed as if it did not exist, why then should we suppose its action? The eyes were not made to see, nor the feet to walk: but the animal had feet, and it walked; eyes, & he saw. The human soul is bodily; those who assert the contrary do not get along, & speak without having any ideas. If it were incorporeal, as they claim, it could neither act nor suffer; its heterogeneity would make its action on the body impossible. To resort to some immaterial principle, in order to explain this action, it is not to resolve the difficulty, it is only to transport it to another object. If there were in nature some being who could change natures, the truth would be no more than an empty name: now for an immaterial being to be an instrument applicable to a body, it would be necessary to change the nature of one or the other. Let us beware, however, of confusing the soul with the rest of the animal substance. The soul is made up of atoms so united, so light, so mobile, that it can separate from the body without losing its weight appreciably. This network, despite its extreme subtlety, has several distinct qualities; it is aerial, igneous, mobile, & sensitive. Widespread throughout the body, it is the cause of passions, actions, movements, faculties, thoughts, and all other functions, whether spiritual or animal; it is he who feels, but he holds this power of the body. At the moment when the soul separates from the body, the sensibility vanishes, because it was the result of their union; the senses are only a diverse touch; there are constantly flowing from the very bodies, simulacra which are similar to them, and which strike our senses. The senses are common to humans & all animals. Reason can be exercised, even when the senses rest. I mean by spirit , the most untied portion of the soul. The spirit is diffused in all the substance of the soul, as the soul is diffused in all the substance of the body; he is united to him; it forms only one being with it; he produces his acts in almost indivisible moments; it has its seat in the heart indeed it is beyond that emanate joy, sadness, strength, pusillanimity, & c. The soul thinks, as the eye sees, by simulacra or idols; it is affected by two general feelings, pain and pleasure. Disturb the natural state of the body parts, & you will produce pain; restore body parts to their natural state, and you will hatch the pleasure. If these parts instead of oscillating could remain in rest, or we would stop feeling, or, fixed in a state of unalterable peace, we would experience perhaps the most voluptuous of all the situations. Pain & pleasure are born desire and aversion. The soul in general becomes exhausted & opens up to pleasure; it withers & barely tightens. To live is to experience these alternative movements. Passions vary according to the combination of atoms that make up the fabric of the soul. Idols come to strike meaning; sound awakens the imagination; the imagination excites the soul, and the soul makes the body move. If the body falls from weakness or fatigue, the overwhelmed or distracted soul succumbs to sleep. The state in which she is obsessed with wandering simulacra who torment her or who involuntarily amuse her, is what we will call insomnia or dream , according to the degree of consciousness which she has left of her state. Death is only the cessation of sensibility. The dissolved body, the soul is dissolved; his faculties are destroyed; she no longer thinks; it is not remembered; it neither suffers nor acts. Dissolution is not annihilation; it is only a separation of elementary particles. The soul was not before the body was formed, why would it be after its destruction? As there is no longer any sense after death, the soul is capable of neither pain nor pleasure. Far from us then the fable of the hells & the Elisha, & all these false stories whose superstition frightens the bad guys that it does not find enough punished by their very crimes, or rewards the good ones who are not enough rewarded by their own virtue. We conclude that the study of nature is not superfluous, since it leads man to knowledge which assures peace in his soul, which frees his mind from all vain terrors, which elevates it to the level gods, & who bring him back to the only real motives he has for fulfilling his duties The stars are heaps of fire. I compare the Sun to a spongy body, whose immense cavities are penetrated by an igneous matter, which soars in all directions. The celestial bodies have no soul: they are therefore not gods. Among these bodies, there are fixed and errans: these latter planets are called. Although they all seem spherical to us, they can be either cylinders, or cones, or discs, or arbitrary portions of a sphere; all these figures & many others do not dislike phenomena. Their movements are carried out, or as a consequence of a general revolution of the sky which carries them away, or of a translation which is proper to them & in which they cross the vast expanse of the heavens which is permeable to them. The Sun rises & sets, rising on the horizon & descending below, or lighting up in the east & going out in the west, consumed & reproduced daily. This star is the home of our world: it is from there that all heat spreads; it only takes a few sparks of this fire to ignite our whole atmosphere. The Moon & the planets can shine either from their own light, or from a light borrowed from the Sun; & the eclipses have for cause, or the momentary extinction of the eclipsed body, or the interposition of a body which eclipses it. If it happens to a planet to cross regions full of materials contrary to fire & to light, will it not go out? will it not be eclipsed? The clouds are either masses of air condensed by the action of the winds, or clusters of atoms which have gradually accumulated, or high vapors from the earth and the seas. The winds are either currents of atoms in the atmosphere, or perhaps impetuous breaths which escape from the earth and the waters, or even a portion of air set in motion by the action of the Sun. If igneous molecules unite, form a mass, and are pressed in a cloud, they will make every effort to escape from it, and the cloud will not open without lightning & without thunder. When the waters suspended in the atmosphere are scarce and scattered, they will fall as rain on the earth, or by their own weight, or by the agitation of the winds. The same phenomenon will take place when they form thick masses; if the heat comes to make them scarce, or the winds to disperse them. They fall in drops, meeting in their fall: these frozen drops or by the cold or by the wind, form hail. The same phenomenon will take place if some sudden heat resolves an icy cloud. When the Sun is in a particular opposition with a cloud, which it strikes with its rays, it forms the rainbow. The colors of the rainbow make an effect of this opposition, & of the humid air which produces them all, or which produces only one which diversifies according to the region it crosses, & the the way she moves there. When the earth has been drenched with long rains & heated by violent heat, the vapors which rise from it infect the air & spread death in the distance, & c.

Theology . After having posited as a principle that there is in nature only matter and sight, what shall we think of the gods? Will we abandon our philosophy to subjugate popular opinions, or will we say that the gods are bodily beings? Since they are gods, they are happy; they enjoy themselves in peace; nothing that happens below affects and troubles them; & it is sufficiently demonstrated by the phenomena of the physical world & of the moral world, that they had no part in the production of beings, & that they take no part in their conservation. It is nature itself that has put the notion of their existence in our soul. Who are the people so barbarous, who do not have some anticipated notion of the gods? will we oppose the general consent of men? will we raise our voice against the voice of nature? Nature does not lie; the existence of the gods would be proven even by our prejudices. So many phenomena, which have only been attributed to them because the nature of these beings & the cause of the phenomena were ignored; Are not so many other errors as many guarantees of general belief? If a man has been struck in sleep by some great simulacrum, and that he has remembered it when he woke up; he concluded that this idol necessarily had its model wandering in nature; the voices he may have heard, did not allow him to doubt that this model was of an intelligent nature; & the constancy of the appearance in different times & in the same form, that it was not immortal: but the being which is immortal, is unalterable, & the being which is unalterable, is perfectly happy, since it n 'acts on nothing, nothing on him, The existence of the gods was therefore & will therefore forever be a sterile existence, & for the very reason that it cannot be altered; for the principle of activity, which is the fruitful source of all destruction and of all reproduction, must be destroyed in these beings. We therefore have nothing to hope for or fear. What is divination? what are wonders? what are religions? If it were of some worship to the gods, it would be that of an admiration that one cannot refuse to all that offers us the attractive image of perfection & happiness. We are led to believe the gods of human form; it is that which all the nations allotted to them; it is the only one under which reason is exercised, and virtue practiced. If their substance were intangible, they would have no sense, no perception, no pleasure, no pain. Their body, however, is not like ours, it is only a similar combination of more subtle atoms; it is the same organization, but they are infinitely more perfect organs; it is a particular nature so untied, so tenuous, that no cause can neither reach it, nor alter it, nor unite with it, nor divide it, & that it can have no action. We ignore the places the gods inhabit: this world is not worthy of them, no doubt; they may well have taken refuge in the empty intervals that the adjoining worlds leave between them.

Morals . Happiness is the end of life: it is the secret confession of the human heart; it is the obvious term of the very actions which distance it. He who kills himself regards death as good. It is not a question of reforming nature, but of directing its general slope. What can happen badly to man is to see happiness where he is not, or to see it where he is indeed, but to be mistaken about the means of obtaining it. What then will be the first step in our moral philosophy, if not to seek what constitutes true happiness? Let this important study be our current occupation. Since we want to be happy from this moment, let's not put off until tomorrow to know what happiness is. The madman always offers to live, and he never lives. It is only given to immortals to be supremely happy. A madness which we first have to guarantee ourselves is to forget that we are only men. Since we hope to never be as perfect as the gods we have offered ourselves as models, let us resolve not to be as happy. Because my eye does not pierce the immensity of spaces, will I disdain to open it on the objects that surround me? These objects will become an inexhaustible source of pleasure, if I know how to enjoy them or neglect them. Pain is always an evil, pleasure always a good: but there is no pure pleasure. The flowers grow on our feet, and we must at least bend down to pick them. However, oh voluptuousness! it is for you alone that we do everything we do; it is never you that we avoid, but the pain that accompanies you only too often. You warm our cold reason; it is from your energy that the firmness of the soul & the strength of the will are born; it is you who move us, who transport us, & when we pick up roses to form a bed for the young beauty who charmed us, & when braving the fury of tyrants, we enter head down & eyes closed in ardent bulls that she prepared. Voluptuousness takes all kinds of forms. It is therefore important to know the price of the objects under which it can appear to us, so that we are not uncertain when it is convenient for us to welcome or reject it, to live or to pass away. After the health of the soul, there is nothing more precious than the health of the body. If the health of the body is felt particularly in a few limbs, it is not general. If the soul goes excessively to the practice of a virtue, it is not entirely virtuous. The musician is not satisfied with tempering some of the strings of his lyre; it would be to wish for the concert of the society, that we imitate it, & that we do not leave, either to our virtues, or to our passions, to be either too loose or too tense, & to make a sound or too deaf or too sharp. If we make some case of our fellow men, we will find pleasure in fulfilling our duties, because it is a sure way of being considered. We will not despise the pleasures of the senses; but we will not do the insult to ourselves, to compare the honest with the sensual. How will he who is mistaken in choosing a state be happy? how to choose a state without knowing each other? & how to be satisfied in one's state, if we confuse the needs of nature, the appetites of passion, & the deviations of fantasy? You must have a goal in mind if you do not want to act on an adventure. It is not always impossible to seize the future. Everything must tend towards the practice of virtue, the preservation of liberty and life, and the contempt for death. As long as we are, death is nothing, and it is nothing again when we are no longer. We fear the gods only because we make them similar to men. What is the godless, if not the one who worships the gods of the people? If true piety consisted in prostrating oneself before any cut stone, there would be nothing more common: but as it consists in soundly judging the nature of the gods, it is a rare virtue. What is called natural law is only a symbol of general utility. General utility & common consent must be the two main rules of our actions. There is never any certainty that the crime remains ignored: the person who commits it is therefore a fool who plays a game where there is more to lose than to win. Friendship is one of the greatest goods of life, and decency, one of the greatest virtues of society. Be decent, because you are not animals, & you live in cities, & not in the depths of the forests, & c.

These are the fundamental points of the doctrine of Epicurus , the only one of all the ancient Philosophers who was able to reconcile his morality with what he could take for the true happiness of man, & his precepts with appetites & needs of nature; therefore he had and will always have a great number of disciples. We become Stoic, but we are born Epicurean .

Epicurus was Athenian, from the village of Gargette & from the tribe of Aegean. His father was called Neoclès , & his mother Chérestrata : their ancestors had not been without distinction; but destitution had debased their descendants. Since Neocles had nothing but a small field, which did not provide for his subsistence, he made himself schoolmaster; the good old Chérestrata, holding her son by the hand, went into the houses to make chandeliers, drive out the specters, lift the incantations; it was Epicurus who had taught him the formulas of expiation, and all the nonsense of this kind of superstition.

Epicurus was born in the third year of the hundred and ninth Olympiad, the seventh day of the month of Gamilion. He had three brothers, Neoclès, Charideme & Aristobule: Plutarch cites them as models of the rarest fraternal tenderness. Epicurus remained in Teos until the age of eighteen: he then went to Athens with the little supply of knowledge which he had made in his father's school; but his stay was not long. Alexander dies; Perdiccas sorry Attica, & Epicure is forced to wander from Athens to Colophone, to Mytilene, & to Lampsaque. Popular unrest interrupted his studies; but did not prevent his progress. Men of genius, such as Epicurus , lose little time; their activity throws itself on everything; they observe & learn without being aware of it; & these lights, acquired almost effortlessly, are all the more estimable as they relate to more general objects. While the Naturalist has his eye applied to the end of the instrument which magnifies a particular object, he does not enjoy the general spectacle of nature which surrounds him. So it is with the philosopher; he does not enter the world scene until he leaves his cabinet; & it is there that he collects these germs of knowledge which remain long ignored in the depths of his soul, because it is not a deep & determined meditation, but accidental glances that he owes them: precious germs, which develop sooner or later for the happiness of mankind.

Epicurus was thirty-seven years old when he reappeared in Athens: he was disciple of the Platonic Pamphile, whose visions he despised supremely: he could not suffer the perpetual fallacies of Pyrrhon: he left the school of the Pythagorean Nausiphanes, dissatisfied with the numbers & metempsychosis. He knew too well the nature of man and his strength, to accommodate the severity of Stoicism. He busied himself with leafing through the works of Anaxagoras, Archelauls, Metrodore & Democritus; he attached himself particularly to the latter's philosophy, and he made it the foundations of his own.

The Platonists occupy the academy, the Peripatheticians the Lyceum, the Cynics the cynosarge, the Stoics the portico; Epicurus established his school in a delightful garden, from which he bought the ground, and which he had planted for this use. It was he who taught the Athenians to transport the spectacle of the countryside to their city walls. He was forty-four years old when Athens, besieged by Demetrius, was sorry for the famine: Epicurus , resolved to live or die with his friends, distributed them beans every day, which he shared with them . We went to its gardens from all parts of Greece, Egypt and Asia: we were attracted by its lights and its virtues, but above all by the conformity of its principles with the feelings of nature. All the philosophers of his time seemed to have conspired against the pleasures of the senses & against voluptuousness: Epicurus took up the defense; & the Athenian youth, deceived by the word voluptuousness , ran to hear it. He spared the weakness of his listeners; he put as much skill into retaining them as he had used to attract them; he only gradually developed his principles for them. The lessons were given at the table or at the promenade; it was either in the shade of the woods, or on the softness of the beds, that he inspired them with enthusiasm for virtue, temperance, frugality, love for the public good, firmness of soul, the reasonable taste for pleasure, and the contempt for life. His school, obscure in the beginnings, ends up being one of the most brilliant and the most numerous.

Epicure vêcut dans la celibat: the concerns which followed marriage seemed to him incompatible with the assiduous exercise of philosophy; moreover, he wanted the philosopher's wife to be wise, rich and beautiful. He occupied himself with studying, writing & teaching: he had composed more than three hundred different treatises; we have none left. He did not make enough of the elegance to which the Athenians were so sensitive; he was content to be true, clear & deep. He was cherished by the great, admired by his rivals, & adored by his disciples: he received in his gardens several famous women, Leontium, mistress of Metrodore; Themist, wife of Leontius; Philenides, one of the most honest women of Athens; Nécidie, Erotie, Hédie, Marmarie, Bodie, Phédrie, & c. His fellow citizens, the men of the world most inclined to gossip, and the most shady superstition, accused him neither of debauchery nor of impiety.

The ferocious Stoics overwhelmed him with insults; he abandoned his person to them, defended his dogmas with force, and endeavored to demonstrate the vanity of their system. He ruined his health by dint of work: in the last times of his life he could neither support a garment, nor get out of his bed, nor suffer. light, or see fire. He urinated blood; his bladder was gradually closed by the growths of a stone: however he wrote to one of his friends that the spectacle of his past life suspended his pains.

When he felt his end approaching, he called his disciples; he bequeathed his gardens to them; he assured the state of several children without fortune, of which he had become the tutor; he frees his slaves; he ordered his funeral, & died aged seventy-two years, the second year of the one hundred and twenty-seventh Olympiad. He was universally missed: the republic ordered him a monument; & a certain Theotimus, convinced that he had composed infamous letters, addressed to some of the women who frequented his gardens, was condemned to lose his life.

Epicurean philosophy was continuously taught. from its institution until the time of Augustus; she made the greatest progress in Rome. The sect was composed there of the majority of men of letters & statesmen; Lucrece sang epicureanism , Celse professed it under Adrien, Pliny the Naturalist under Tiberius: the names of Lucien & Diogene Laerce are still famous among the Epicureans .

Epicureanism had, with the decline of the Roman Empire, the fate of all knowledge, it did not emerge from an oversight of more than a thousand years until the beginning of the seventeenth century: the discredit of plastic forms put the atoms in honor. Magnene, from Luxeu in Burgundy, published his democritus reviviscens , a mediocre work, in which the author always takes his reveries for the feelings of Democritus & Epicurus . To Magnene succeeded Pierre Gassendi, one of the men who do most honor to Philosophy & to the nation: he was born in the month of January of the year 1592, in Chantersier, a small village in Provence, a league from Digne , where he made his humanities. He had soft mores, sound judgment, & deep knowledge: he was versed in Astronomy, ancient & modern Philosophy, Metaphysics, languages, history, antiquities; his learning was almost universal. It could have been said of him that never had a philosopher been a better humanist, nor a humanist so good a philosopher: his writings are not without approval; he is clear in his reasoning, & right in his ideas. He was among us the restorer of the philosophy of Epicurus: his life was full of troubles; unceasingly he attacked & was attacked: but he was not less attentive in his arguments, either with Fludd, or with Lord Herbert, or with Descartes, to put honesty than reason on his side.

Gassendi had for disciples or for sectarians, several men who immortalized themselves, Chapelle, Moliere, Bernier, the abbot of Chaulieu, the grand-prior of Vendôme, the marquis de la Fare, the knight of Bouillon, the marshal of Catinat, & several other extraordinary men, who, by a contrast of pleasant and sublime qualities, united in them heroism with softness, the taste for virtue with that of pleasure, the political qualities with literary talents, & who formed among us different schools of moral epicureanism which we will talk about.

The oldest and the first of these schools where the ethics of Epicurus have been practiced and professed, was rue des Tournelles, in the house of Ninon Lenclos; it is there that this extraordinary woman collected all that the court and the city had of polite, enlightened & voluptuous men; we saw Madame Scarron there; the Countess de la Suze, famous for her elegies; the Countess of Olonne, so boasted by her rare beauty & the number of her friends, Saint-Evremont, who professed since epicureanism in London, where he had for disciples the famous Count of Grammont, the poet Waller, & Madame de Mazarin; the Duchess of Bouillon Mancini, who was since of the Temple school; des Yvetaux, ( see Arcadiens ), M. de Gourville, Madame de la Fayette, M. le Duc de la Rochefoucault, & several others, who had formed at the Hotel de Rambouillet a school of Platonism, which they abandoned to go increase society & listen to the lessons of the Epicurean .

After these first epicureans , Bernier, Chapelle & Moliere disciples of Gassendi, transferred the school of Epicure from rue des Tournelles to Auteuil: Bachaumont, Baron de Blot, whose songs are so rare & so sought after, & Desbarreaux, who was the master of Madame Deshouilleres in the art of poetry & voluptuousness, mainly illustrated the school of Auteuil.

The school of Neuilly succeeded that of Auteuil: it was held, during the short time it lasted, by Chapelle & MM. Sonnings; but scarcely was it instituted than it melted into the school of Anet & du Temple.

What famous names are offered to us in this last one! Chapelle & his disciple Chaulieu, M. de Vendôme, Madame de Bouillon, the Chevalier de Bouillon, the Marquis de la Fare, Rousseau, MM. Sonnings, Father Courtin, Campistron, Palaprat, Baron de Breteuil, father of the illustrious Marquise du Châtelet; the President of Mesmes, President Ferrand, the Marquis de Dangeau, the Duke of Nevers, M. de Catinat, the Comte de Fiesque, the Duke of Foix or de Randan, M. de Périgny, Renier, a friendly guest, who sang & was accompanied by the lute, M. de Lasseré, the duke of the Feuillade, & c. this school is the same as that of St. Maur or Madame la Duchesse.

The school of Seaux gathered all that remained of these sectarians of luxury, elegance, politeness, philosophy, virtues, letters & pleasure, & it also had Cardinal de Polignac, who frequented more out of taste for the disciples of Epicurus , than for the doctrine of their master, Hamilton, St Aulaire, Father Gênet, Malesieu, La Motte, M. de Fontenelle, M. de Voltaire, several academicians, & some women famous by their spirit; whence we see that in any place and in any time whatsoever, the Epicurean sect has never had more splendor than in France, and especially during the last century. See Brucker, Gassendi, Lucrece , & c.

Just a side note the author has also written other books in his series of "The Way of X". The bias or inclination he holds is rather obvious.

They consist of:

"Exploring the Way of Lao Tzu"

"Exploring the Way of Epictetus"

"Exploring the Way of Jesus"

"The Way of the Stoic Epictetus"

"Exploring the Way of the Buddha"

"The Way of Sophia"

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00…vapi_tkin_p1_i0

One of the Epicurean books on my shelf I've been meaning to notch in this forum list for a long time now. It's very faithful in reciting source material, especially Laertius and Usener's "Epicurea", with plenty of original greek text under each page. However, it's very messy and some translations can be spotty, like the usage of "space" instead of "void", while also veering a little too close to the tranquil interpretation and choosing "happiness" over "pleasure".

Cassius I have an archive of some 3d printed material. I'll post the links here since the attachment option has such a small cap.

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/epic…e24091256d3af57 (Neck and head of Epicurus - best model by far)

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-epicurus-25611 (Bust of Metrodorus despite title saying its Epicurus)

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-prin…-epicurus-34291 (Head of Epicurus - with busted nose)

https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/free…d-model/1006704 (Double Herm of Epicurus & Metrodorus)

https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-prin…-london-uk-6093 (Another head of Epicurus)

https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/ar…re-paris-france (Bust of Metrodorus)

http://www.digitalsculpture.org/archive/epicur…reconstructions (A blog detailing the process of reconstructing statues of Epicurus digitally)

https://www.shapeways.com/product/R2YGLS…dant-1-5-inches (I can't find the model but this is worth mention, a pendant with the "stocky" but recognizable head of Epicurus with the quote on the opposite side: "Sic fac omnia tamquam spectet Epicurus", or 'Do all things as if Epicurus were watching!')

My copies of the 3 volumes of Aline and Valcour arrived at the same time, likely due to covid-19 interrupting Amazon's schedule.

It opens up with a line from Lucretius, in Book 3

"Just as children in the night tremble & fear everything,
so we in the light sometimes fear
what is no more to be feared than the things
children shudder at in the dark
and imagine will come true. This terror,
this darkness of the mind's eye must be scattered,
not by the rays of the sun & glistening shafts of daylight,
but by a dispassionate view of the inner laws of Nature."

A while ago A_Gardner and I had the idea of writing out a short and thorough guidebook for Epicureans and non-Epicureans to learn from, and after much slugging I finally made some progress and before the heavy writing actually begins, I'd like to get a second opinion on the outline to see if whats covered provides a good summation while being prepared in an efficient order that makes sense for the reader (ie physics before ethics, since ethics is based off of physics).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1S8…dit?usp=sharing

Upon completion it will be free to download and share as multiple formats of file types.

Edit: This is just an outline of what's to come, and we're hoping to write about 100-175 pages to keep it short (maybe even lower), we're completely open to criticism so feel free to voice and objection or concern or your own suggestion.

I've been fine, work has been slow because of the virus but I've been lurking here each day and reading a ton of material and teaching others about Epicurus in various group chats and DMs online.

Marquis de Sade; "Aline and Valcour"; 1793.

Supposedly the island paradise of Tamoé is heavily inspired and based off of Lucretius. Worth noting its not overtly explicit like much of his work. 4th volume has yet to be translated as opposed to the first 3 volumess translated for the first time in 2019.

Welcome Dernga

If I'm not mistaken, they, meaning the words katastematic and kinetic show up in fragmentary form penned by Epicurus, the first compiled source I can think of is Epicurea (1887) http://www.attalus.org/translate/epicurus.html

However, the concept definitely has some grounding, as "static pleasures" are given their own paragraph in Laertius. We can reason that this is merely a departure from the Cyrenaic tradition and conception of pleasure and the writing serves to distinct the two philosophies, not to encapsulate and reduce all of Epicurus' ideas of pleasure dyanamics (moving vs static).

Whether or not the K / K Issue is strictly contemporary for us or not, I'm not sure of, but it definitely seems that way as throughout history Epicurus was more or less seen as the "lord of vice" or "master of pleasures" which leads to the modern definition of "Epicurean" or "Epicurious" and its relation to being a gourmand of culinary arts, as opposed to the bread and water depiction.

One critique or reservation that I've noticed fairly consistently, both an attack on Hedonism in general and also towards Epicurean(ism) Philosophy, are the positions we take on morality. This often shows up phrased as such: "How do I know if I'm doing the right thing?" or "Are actions taken in the name of pleasure always good?", the latter used to strawman pleasure ethics as a whole, when extrapolated to say such things as “Well a murderer takes pleasure in killing” and so on.

But it got me thinking, since we stress that there is no proper and objective *good* in the sense of morals (Religiously sanctioned, etc.), ideals/forms (Platonic), behaviors or mannerisms (asceticism/stoic indifference), or even certain instances like Kant's Categorical Imperatives, the list goes on, while also maintaining that pleasure is one such case of these "goods" or the sole or highest “good”. We also know that attempting to distinguish certain hierarchies or elevations of pleasure results in a circular measuring game of sophistry as established in Plato's Philebus, hence why we focus solely on pleasure and not katastematic pleasure over kinetic or vice versa (what I call the bread & water fallacy).

So when it comes to pleasure and the desires of people and their conquest in fulfilling that goal, where does morality fit? Clearly we wouldn't agree with the Charvakan maxim "Let a man feed on ghee even if he runs into debt" as such an action would be far from prudent, and has financial liabilities that are potentially very painful and pleasure-inhibiting. Nor would we endorse La Mettrie eating himself to death or the directly-inspired Marquis de Sade torturing his maids despite these actions done in the name of pleasure.

Sure we may always distance ourselves and say "No true Epicurean would engage in such dangerous pleasures!" and point to PD's 1, 17, 26, 29, 30 & VS 1, 20, 69, 70, 71 as well as many sections of L to M, namely the line:


"And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time." (Bailey, 41st line from bottom)

Whether or not we choose to label Epicurean Philosophy as hedonistic is another debate, but what is shared between Epicureans and Hedonists/Libertines/Utilitarian Ethics is both; our recognition of pleasure as *good* and choosing actions that result in pleasure for ourselves and sometimes our close ones if it benefits us. This is ultimately where the title of the thread becomes relevant as no matter what those who critique us & pleasure will group us in with other pleasure seekers or isolate us and then choose to attack, with issues of morality being a formidable argument according to the attacker's perception.

But what does everyone here think? How exactly do we hold each other accountable, including pleasure seekers who wouldn’t label themselves Epicurean and aren’t familiar with our concepts of frankness and justice, but otherwise share many of our values?

I have another paragraph written on this topic about consequentialist thinking and how it can transform itself into an ethical system for hedonists and Epicureans, that disregards morality as it’s conventionally recognized and utilized, but I’d like to hear some thoughts on this before I delve into it any further. I also recognize that this isn't really an "Epicurean" topic, but I feel that it's answers do encompass Epicurean Philosophy.

I received this volume of Will Durant's series yesterday from a coworker who majored in Philosophy (Nietzche/Marx/Schopenhauer), saying that I would like it, and almost immediately I flipped to the section that covered Epicurus. Well, it turns out that this is perhaps one of the worst biographies and summaries of the philosophy that I've read. I don't have time today to critique every single bit: but he gets his timeline wrong with Metrodorus, he mistakes Epicurus instead of Metrodorus as the husband/lover of Leontion, he calls Mys Epicurus' favorite pupil (it was Metrodorus), Epicurus did not live in "Stoic simplicity!" or eat only bread and water, as well as living only in "prudent privacy" when Durant later quotes Laertius saying Epicurus had many friends.

I'm not sure where Durant got his information about the people of Lampsacus raising him a fund as it's not cited, The Garden was not in the outskirts of Athens, it was between the Academy and later, the Stoa. It only later helps its case when Durant makes sure to mention the Epicurean Gods and praises Lucretius, not for the physics but for being a complete, extant source that outlines the philosophy, however, in the third from last paragraph Durant breaks form and explains his own problems with EP.


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Though he described for many ages the theorist who loses his life in the cobwebs of speculation, Polybius was wrong in supposing that moral problems had lost their lure for the Greek mind. It was precisely the ethical strain that in this period replaced the physical and the metaphysical as the dominant note in philosophy. Political problems were indeed in abeyance, for freedom of speech was harassed by the presence or memory of royal garrisons, and national liberty was implicitly understood to depend upon quiescence. The glory of the Athenian state had departed, and philosophy had to face what to Greece was an unprecedented divorce between politics and ethics. It had to find a way of life at once forgivable to philosophy and compatible with political impotence. Therefore it conceived its problem no longer as one of building a just state, but as that of forming the selfcontained and contented individual.

The ethical development now took two opposite directions. One followed the lead of Heracleitus, Socrates, Antisthenes, and Diogenes, and expanded the Cynic into the Stoic philosophy; the other stemmed from Democritus, leaned heavily on Aristippus, and drew out the Cyrenaic into the Epicurean creed. Both of these philosophical compensations for religious and political decay came from Asia: Stoicism from Semitic pantheism, fatalism, and resignation; Epicureanism from the pleasure-loving Greeks of the Asiatic coast.

Epicurus was born at Samos in 341. At twelve he fell in love with philosophy; at nineteen he went to Athens and spent a year at the Academy. Like Francis Bacon he preferred Democritus to Plato and Aristotle, and took from him many bricks for his own construction. From Aristippus he learned the wisdom of pleasure, and from Socrates the pleasure of wisdom; from Pyrrho he took the doctrine of tranquillity, and a ringing word for it—ataraxia. He must have watched with interest the career of his contemporary Theodoras of Cyrene, who preached an unmoralistic atheism so openly in Athens that the Assembly indicted him for impiety—a lesson that Epicurus did not forget. Then he returned to Asia and lectured on philosophy at Colophon, Mytilene, and Lampsacus. The Lampsacenes were so impressed with his ideas and his character that they felt qualms of selfishness in keeping him in so remote a city; they raised a fund of eighty minas ($4000), bought a house and garden on the outskirts of Athens, and presented it to Epicurus as his school and his home. In 306, aged thirty-five, Epicurus took up his residence there, and taught to the Athenians a philosophy that was Epicurean in name only. It was a sign of the growing freedom of women that he welcomed them to his lectures, even into the little community that lived about him. He made no distinctions of station or race; he accepted courtesans as well as matrons, slaves as well as freemen; his favorite pupil was his own slave, Mysis. The courtesan Leontium became his mistress as well as his pupil, and found him as jealous a mate as if he had secured her by due process of law. Under his influence she had one child and wrote several books, whose purity of style did not interfere with her morals.

For the rest Epicurus lived in Stoic simplicity and prudent privacy. His motto was lathe biosas—“live unobtrusively.” He took part dutifully in the religious ritual of the city, but kept his hands clear of politics, and his spirit free from the affairs of the world. He was content with water and a little wine, bread and a little cheese. His rivals and enemies charged that he gorged himself when he could, and became abstemious only when overeating had ruined his digestion. “But those who speak thus are all wrong,” Diogenes Laertius assures us; and he adds: “There are many witnesses of the unsurpassable kindness of the man to everybody—both his own country, which honored him with statues, and his friends, who were so numerous that they could not be contained in whole cities.” He was devoted to his parents, generous to his brothers, and gentle to his servants, who joined with him in philosophical studies. His pupils looked upon him, says Seneca, as a god among men; and after his death their motto was: “Live as though the eye of Epicurus were upon thee.”

Between his lessons and his loves he wrote three hundred books. The ashes of Herculaneum preserved for us some fragments of his central work, On Nature; Diogenes Laertius, the Plutarch of philosophy, handed down three of his letters, and late discoveries have added a few more. Above all, Lucredus enshrined the thought of Epicurus in the greatest of philosophical poems.

Perhaps already conscious that Alexander’s conquest was letting loose upon Greece a hundred mystic cults from the East, Epicurus begins with the arresting proposition that the aim of philosophy is to free men from fear—more than anything else, from the fear of gods. He dislikes religion because, he thinks, it thrives on ignorance, promotes it, and darkens life with the terror of celestial spies, relentless furies, and endless punishments. The gods exist, says Epicurus, and enjoy, in some far-off space among the stars, a serene and deathless life; but they are too sensible to bother with the affairs of so infinitesimal a species as mankind. The world is not designed, nor is it guided, by them; how could such divine Epicureans have created so middling a universe, so confused a scene of order and disorder, of beauty and suffering? If this disappoints you, Epicurus adds, console yourself with the thought that the gods are too remote to do you any more harm than good. They cannot watch you, they cannot judge you, they cannot plunge you into hell. As for evil gods, or demons, they are the unhappy fantasies of our dreams.

Having rejected religion, Epicurus goes on to reject metaphysics. We can know nothing of the suprasensual world; reason must confine itself to the experience of the senses, and must accept these as the final test of truth. All the problems that Locke and Leibnitz were to debate two thousand years later are here settled with one sentence: if knowledge does not come from the senses, where else can it come from? And if the senses are not the ultimate arbiter of fact, how can we find such a criterion in reason, whose data must be taken from the senses?

Nevertheless the senses give us no certain knowledge of the external world; they catch not the objective thing itself, but only the tiny atoms thrown off by every part of its surface, and leaving upon our senses little replicas of its nature and form. If, therefore, we must have a theory of the world (and really it is not altogether necessary), we had better accept Democritus’ view that nothing exists, or can be known to us, or can even be imagined by us, except bodies and space; and that all bodies are composed of indivisible and unchangeable atoms. These atoms have no color, temperature, sound, taste, or smell; such qualities are created by the corpuscular radiations of objects upon our sense organs. But the atoms do differ in size, weight, and form; for only by this supposition can we account for the infinite variety of things. Epicurus would like to explain the operation of the atoms on purely mechanical principles; but as he is interested in ethics far more than in cosmology, and is anxious to preserve free will as the source of moral responsibility and the prop of personality, he abandons Democritus in mid-air, and supposes a kind of spontaneity in the atoms: they swerve a bit from the perpendicular as they fall through space, and so enter into the combinations that make the four elements, and through them the diversity of the objective scene. There are innumerable worlds, but it is unwise to interest ourselves in them. We may assume that the sun and the moon are about as large as they appear to be, and then we can give our time to the study of man.

Man is a completely natural product. Life probably began by spontaneous generation, and progressed without design through the natural selection of the fittest forms. Mind is only another kind of matter. The soul is a delicate material substance diffused throughout the body. It can feel or act only by means of the body, and dies with the body’s death. Despite all this we must accept the testimony of our immediate consciousness that the will is free; else we should be meaningless puppets on the stage of life. It is better to be a slave to the gods of the people than to the Fate of the philosophers.

The real function of philosophy, however, is not to explain the world, since the part can never explain the whole, but to guide us in our quest of happiness. “That which we have in view is not a set of systems and vain opinions, but much rather a life exempt from every kind of disquietude.” Over the entrance to the garden of Epicurus was the inviting legend: “Guest, thou shalt be happy here, for here happiness is esteemed the highest good.” Virtue, in this philosophy, is not an end in itself, it is only an indispensable means to a happy life. “It is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently, honorably, and justly; nor to live prudently, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly.” The only certain propositions in philosophy are that pleasure is good, and that pain is bad. Sensual pleasures are in themselves legitimate, and wisdom will find some room for them; since, however, they may have evil effects, they need such discriminating pursuit as only intelligence can give.

When, therefore, we say that pleasure is the chief good we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those that lie in sensual enjoyment. . . but we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and of the soul from disturbance. For it is not continued drinkings and revels, or the enjoyment of female society, or feasts of fish or other expensive foods, that make life pleasant, but such sober contemplation as examines the reasons for choice and avoidance, and puts to flight the vain opinions from which arises most of the confusion that troubles the soul.

In the end, then, understanding is not only the highest virtue, it is also the highest happiness, for it avails more than any other faculty in us to avoid pain and grief. Wisdom is the only liberator: it frees us from bondage to the passions, from fear of the gods, and from dread of death; it teaches us how to bear misfortune, and how to derive a deep and lasting pleasure from the simple goods of life and the quiet pleasures of the mind. Death is not so frightful when we view it intelligently; the suffering it involves may be briefer and slighter than that which we have borne time and again during our lives; it is our foolish fancies of what death may bring that lend to it so much of its terror. And consider how little is needed to a wise contentfresh air, the cheapest foods, a modest shelter, a bed, a few books, and a friend. “Everything natural is easily procured, and only the useless is costly.” We should not fret our lives out in realizing every desire that comes into our heads: “Desires may be ignored when our failure to accomplish them will not really cause us pain.” Even love, marriage, and parentage are unnecessary; they bring us fitful pleasures, but perennial grief. To accustom ourselves to plain living and simple ways is an almost certain road to health. The wise man does not burn with ambition or lust for fame; he does not envy the good fortune of his enemies, nor even of his friends; he avoids the fevered competition of the city and the turmoil of political strife; he seeks the calm of the countryside, and finds the surest and deepest happiness in tranquillity of body and mind. Because he controls his appetites, lives without pretense, and puts aside all fears, the natural “sweetness of life” (hedone) rewards him with the greatest of all goods, which is peace.

This is a likably honest creed. It is encouraging to find a philosopher who is not afraid of pleasure, and a logician who has a good word to say for the senses. There is no subtlety here, and no warm passion for understanding; on the contrary Epicureanism, despite its transmission of the atomic theory, marks a reaction from the brave curiosity that had created Greek science and philosophy. The profoundest defect of the system is its negativity: it thinks of pleasure as freedom from pain, and of wisdom as an escape from the hazards and fullness of life; it provides an excellent design for bachelorhood, but hardly for a society. Epicurus respected the state as a necessary evil, under whose protection he might live unmolested in his garden, but he appears to have cared little about national independence; indeed, his school seems to have preferred monarchy to democracy, as less inclined to persecute heresy—an arresting inversion of modern beliefs. Epicurus was ready to accept any government that offered no hindrance to the unobtrusive pursuit of wisdom and companionship. He dedicated to friendship the devotion that earlier generations had given to the state. “Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole life, by far the most important is friendship.” The friendships of the Epicureans were proverbial for their permanence; and the letters of the master abound in expressions of ardent affection. His disciples returned this feeling with Greek intensity. Young Colotes, on first hearing Epicurus speak, fell on his knees, wept, and hailed him as a god.

For thirty-six years Epicurus taught in his garden, preferring a school to a family. In the year 270 he was brought down with the stone. He bore the pains stoically, and on his deathbed found time to think of his friends. “I write to you on this happy day which is the last of my life. The obstruction of my bladder, and the internal pains, have reached the extreme point, but there is marshaled against them the delight of my mind in thinking over our talks together. Take care of Metrodorus’ children in a way worthy of your lifelong devotion to me and to philosophy.” He willed his property to the school, hoping “that all those who study philosophy may never be in want. . . so far as our power to prevent it may extend.”

He left behind him a long succession of disciples, so loyal to his memory that for centuries they refused to change a word of his teaching. His most famous pupil, Metrodorus of Lampsacus, had already shocked or amused Greece by reducing Epicureanism to the proposition that “all good things have reference to the belly”—meaning, perhaps, that all pleasure is physiological, and ultimately visceral. Chrysippus countered by calling the Gastrology of Archestratus “the metropolis of the Epicurean philosophy.” Popularly misunderstood, Epicureanism was publicly denounced and privately accepted in wide circles throughout Hellas. So many Hellenizing Jews adopted it that Apiköros was used by the rabbis as a synonym for apostate. In 173 or 155 two Epicurean philosophers were expelled from Rome on the ground that they were corrupting youth. A century later Cicero asked, “Why are there so many followers of Epicurus?” and Lucretius composed the fullest and finest extant exposition of the Epicurean system. The school had professed adherents until the reign of Constantine, some of them, by their lives, degrading the name of the master to mean “epicure,” others faithfully teaching the simple maxims into which he had once condensed his philosophy: “The gods are not to be feared; death cannot be felt; the good can be won; all that we dread can be conquered.”

Just updating the Discord invite links and cleaning out the rest, since the old one on here, Twitter, FB, is inactive after I deleted the redundant channel it was linked to.

https://discord.gg/96RJtYj

Quote from A_Gardner

I'll start off slowly at first, but we can link these pieces of content back to both these forums and your Discord server, if you're comfortable with that, as well as the various sites and projects of other members on here.

Sounds good

I have to use Instagram for work and I neglect my personal account, but Id be happy to help with any posts or images you would need, as well as telling others about it.