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Plato as the Mainstream

Say the word “pleasure” in connection with Epicurus and many people picture the same narrow thing: If they have a positive outlook on pleasure, they think of a good meal, a warm bath, a moment of bodily comfort. If they have a negative outlook on pleasure, they think of conspicuous consumption, self-indulgence, and luxurious pampering. Rarely today is “pleasure” the first word associated with art, science, literature, exploration, or human achievement.

This bipolar…

Since pleasure involves intensity and completeness as well as duration, an unlimited lifespan could add nothing to a life that is already, in the relevant sense, complete.

Virtue is not a divine or absolute ideal but a set of tools for living well -- and good and evil are not abstractions, but consist in sensation itself.

Since Nature gives us only two feelings, whatever is not painful is in fact pleasurable -- making "Absence of Pain" and "Pleasure" exactly the same thing, and a pleasant life available to nearly everyone.

With no supernatural gods or absolute virtue to appeal to, Nature gives us only Pleasure and Pain by which to determine what to choose and what to avoid.

Happiness is the overall target across an entire life -- a life in which pleasure predominates over pain -- distinct from pleasure itself, which is the moment-to-moment guide used to reach it.

Plato's realm of perfect Forms, Aristotle's fixed essences, and claims of divine revelation each relocate truth away from the senses -- and each, for that reason, cannot be known to exist at all.

Neither the Stoic and Peripatetic reliance on formal logic, nor the Academic Skeptic's distrust of the senses, keeps faith with the only genuine standard of truth: sensation, anticipation, and feeling.

Epicurus identified three co-equal natural faculties -- sensation, anticipation, and feeling -- that together form the Canon, the measuring-rule against which every claim to truth must be tested.

Our senses report honestly and without opinion; truth and error arise only in the mind's interpretation, never in the faculties Nature gave us to perceive the world.

Radical Skepticism collapses under its own weight: anyone who claims 'nothing can be known' is claiming to know that very thing.

Epicurus identified Determinism as a demoralizing and self-contradictory falsehood, pointing out that our power over the ultimate choice in life proves we are not slaves to necessity.

Since consciousness cannot survive the body, death holds no punishment or reward to fear -- a realization that frees us to focus entirely on making the best use of the life we have.

Reasoning from Nature's own patterns, Epicurus concluded the universe contains blessed, deathless beings worthy of the name "gods" -- beings we have nothing to fear from.

Epicurus reasoned that the universe must be infinite in both atoms and space, eliminating any place "outside" or "over" it where supernatural forces could exist.

Epicurus deduced the existence of atoms from the observation that nothing arises from nothing and nothing is destroyed to nothing -- the starting point for rejecting all supernatural creation.

A transcription of a presentation by Joshua, drawing on his own background as a land surveyor to examine why Epicurus rejected geometry's first principles and refused to let its abstractions dictate ethical conclusions.

Epicurus advocated prudence (phronēsis) — practical wisdom in judging particular pleasures and pains — not the vague, borrowed idea of “moderation in all things.”

A transcription of Don Boozer's presentation showing that Epicurus's 'bread and water' was the ordinary, everyday diet of ancient Greeks -- not a punitive or ascetic deprivation, but nourishing barley bread and spring water.

A transcription of Don's research paper tracing the ancient textual and archaeological evidence for the location of Epicurus's Garden and house in Athens -- arguing it stood along one of the city's busiest roads, not hidden away.

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The Completeness Argument

One of the oldest objections to placing the highest good in anything other than virtue runs like this: the good must be complete — whole, finished, lacking nothing — and cannot be a process, a becoming, or anything that admits of growth or degree. A thing that is still developing toward some end is not yet that end; it is only on the way to it. Plato gives this argument its classic statement, distinguishing genesis (becoming, a process aimed at…

“Academic Questions” sounds like exactly what a modern reader expects from ancient philosophy: a dry, technical argument about definitions, conducted by men with nothing better to do, over a question no one outside a cla

“The removal of all pain is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures.” – Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 3 Centuries of commentators have treated this and similar statements as an invitation to make something other than plea

The Words You’ve Seen a Thousand Times, and What It Actually Says You have almost certainly seen this sentence before, even if you’ve never read a word of it: “Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit,

The Current Establishment View - Which It Is the Editorial Policy Of EpicureanFriends.com to Reject With only a few notable exceptions, practically every modern account of Epicurean ethics repeats the same claim: Epicuru

“I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, of sex, of sound, and the pleasures of beautiful form.” – Epicurus, in Diogenes Laertius, Book X Introduction Epicurus declared pleasure to be the

The Letter of Epicurus to His Mother Diogenes of Oinoanda (fr. 125–126) – Free rendering Mother, concerning everything that troubles you, I want you to form clear and confident thoughts. The images we see in dreams - esp

“For this reason we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life.” — Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus Is The “Emphasis” In Epicurean Philosophy On Relief From Pain? In a separate article I have made the case that

“For this reason we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we retu

Epicurus had important things to say about happiness, pleasure, fear, and anxiety. But before the modern world reduced him to the status of a street-corner therapist, his most important contributions to human advancement

Intelligent Design Introduction: A Very Old Argument The intelligent design argument is one of the oldest and most persistent claims in the history of human thought. In its simplest form it says: the world we observe is

Against the Geometers Introduction: Two Inscriptions Over Two Doors Over the entrance to Plato’s Academy in Athens, tradition records an inscription: “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.” The words were more than

A friendly but direct word to young people searching for solid ground and thinking they might find it in the old but newly trendy Catholic Church Something is stirring among young people in the West, and it deserves to b

An Epicurean account of knowledge, nature, and the ground of reality An Epicurean Perspective On Reality One of the deepest and most consequential divisions in the history of philosophy runs not between optimism and pess

There are as many opinions about happiness as there are people. Everyone has their own idea of what happiness is or should be. Some say that we should look to religion for happiness. Others say that there are no hard and

The Continuing Vitality of Epicurean Physics Introduction: A Story About the Sun That Is Really About Everything In a recent scholarly essay, T.H.M. Gellar-Goad takes up one of the most ridiculed positions in the history

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Throughout history, philosophers, priests, and political authorities have promoted ideas about life, reality, and human nature that sound profound but are in fact deeply mistaken — and whose effect, whether intended or not, is to make ordinary people feel guilty, fearful, and dependent on outside authorities for guidance. These ideas spread from generation to generation the way a virus spreads through a population: not because they are true, but because they are…

An Epicurean response to Massimo Pigliucci’s March 3, 2026. article on Epicurus, the Stoics, and political engagement Massimo Pigliucci’s essay “The Garden Or The Forum: Epicurus, The Stoics, And The Duty To Engage” repr

E.S. XXXVI (36) The life of Epicurus, when compared with that of other philosophers, seems almost legendary thanks to the calmness and self-sufficiency that distinguished him. ----- In Mytilene, where once philosophical

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his work The Antichrist , denounces Paul as the inventor of Christianity and an enemy of Rome’s grandeur. But perhaps Nietzsche himself misunderstood what Paul truly fought against. Rome may have

An Analysis of a Father’s Death Sentence Against His Own Son - Torquatus and the Roman Recasting of Epicurean Philosophy. Titus Manlius Torquatus, as portrayed in Cicero’s De Finibus , appears as a defender of Epicurean

Between night and day lie twilight and dawn - moments that belong neither to light nor to darkness, yet honor both as complementary shades of our natural, tangible, and shared reality. These moments transcend - or rather

This work was authored by George Kaplanis, a retired notary and founding member of the Group for the Analysis and Experiential Application of Epicurean Philosophy Today ( http://www.epicuros21.gr ) The work is structured

PD 40: “As many as possess the power to procure complete immunity from their neighbours, these also live most pleasantly with one another, since they have the most certain pledge of security, and after they have enjoyed

https://youtu.be/ZYUt4TFBRMU 1. Introduction: The Epicurean Paradigm Shift In Book Two of his work On The Ends of Good And Evil, the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero wrote in regard to Epicurus' view of Pleasure th

This page presents a summary of Classical Epicurean Philosophy . For additional citations to Epicurean texts, click here.

Nothing Comes From Nothing Or Goes To Nothing Supernaturally

Working solely with the science available two thousand years ago, Epicurus observed that nothing ever arises from nothing, and nothing is ever completely destroyed to nothing. From this Epicurus deduced the existence of atoms - elemental particles moving through empty space from which over time all things are made…

The Uncertainty of Science and the Certainty of Faith By Dimitris Altas, cardiologist and member of the Analysis and Experiential Application Team of Epicurean Philosophy Today What is knowledge, and what is faith? One m

"Epicurean Philosophy and the Deception of Modern Globalist Ideologues", by Elli Pensa When you write a book and reference Epicurean philosophy as if it were nothing more than…“stones, bricks, wood, and tiles—(these) are

For over two hundred years, obscurity has surrounded the identity of the anonymous translator of one of the first readable prose editions of Lucretius in the English language. In this article, Joshua tracks down the evidence and concludes that it points in one direction.

It is interesting to think about what Lucretius had in mind in Book One of “On The Nature of Things” when he spoke about Epicurus "yearning to be the first to burst through the close-set bolts upon the gates of nature." What kind of gates was he talking about? Who bolted them? How do those gates keep us from Nature?

I can't be sure which gates Lucretius had in mind, but I can suggest one "gate" that is particularly in need of bursting, as it stands directly in the way of a better understanding…

In Episode 166 the Lucretius Today podcasters interviewed Dr. David Glidden, professor emeritus from the University of California - Riverside, about his articles "Epicurean Prolepsis" and "Epicurean Thinking.

In Episode 197 of the Lucretius Today Podcast, on October 19, 2023, we were privileged to speak with Dr. Marcelo Boeri, co-author with Javier Aoiz of Theory and Practice In Epicurean Political Philosophy - Security, Justice, and Tranquility.

In Episodes 156 and 157, the Lucretius Today podcasters interviewed Dr. Emily Austin, author of 2022's "Living For Pleasure."

Here is a listing of ten key steps of Epicurean reasoning. There is nothing magic about this grouping but it's an effort to combine a manageable set of key points with important citations supporting them: \n The best lif

Several conversations lately have led me to want to produce a new article on what I would contend are some of the most important take-aways from the teachings of Epicurus. These are the points with which I would start if

Below is the Wikipedia introduction to Epicurus as of 02/06/20. I will highlight in red, and add a footnote to each statement which I contend is in serious need of correction or amplification. Epicurus ( Ancient Greek :

Haris Dimitriadis is author of “ The Pleasant Life – The Philosophy of Epicurus .” Born in Greece, Haris studied Mathematics at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki as well as Economics at the London School of Eco

As much as Epicurus advised against devoting life to politics, it appears that the politicians cannot return the favor and leave Epicurus alone. On both left and right, partisans of every cause except that of Epicurus hi

From Diogenes Laertius, Book 10 (The Biography of Epicurus), we read something that may lead us again to revisit the matter of the apparent chronic ill health of Epicurus, and how the great philosopher confronted and dea

Inspired by the considerations on the Epicurean friendship of Phillp Mithis in the book "The Ethical Theory of Epicurus - The pleasures of Invulnerability," I want to summarize the thought of Epicurus on friendship, tryi

Bailey, Epicurean Fragment 87 . "We must say how best a man will maintain the natural end of life, and how no one will willingly at first aim at public office." \n Lucretius Book 3 : And while men driven on by an unreal

JC: Hi Cassius. I'm sorry to badger you about this again, but I'm still trying to get my head around the pleasure principle. From my reading, all scholars agree that Epicurus divides pleasure into kinetic and katastemati

Read about the Core Aspects of the Epicurean Philosophy emphasized here at EpicureanFriends by clicking the link: Core Aspects of the Epicurean Philosophy . For a "compare and contrast version of the same viewpoint, the

Brief: The feelings are only two, pleasure and pain—there is no third state such as neutral, and there are no “fancy pleasures” which are different from regular pleasures. Because there is no neutral, reducing pain in life is only possible if there is a corresponding increase in pleasure. The extent of pleasure can be maximized by making sure to attend to all parts of one’s body, including the brain. Happiness is comprised of a pleasurable life. The capacity for pain is a valuable warning system and should not be disabled except in unusual conditions. The experience of pain is to be avoided except when it is chosen for the sake of greater pleasure/ lesser pain over the lifespan. Humans have many shared responses of pain or pleasure to specific experiences, and they also have individual variations. The standard of pleasure in one’s life must be one’s own subjective feelings, not a generic advice. There are many pitfalls to avoid if one desires a happy, pleasure-filled life, such as a false belief in a neutral state, practices which attempt to disable the normal capacity to feel pleasure and pain, and failure to consider the long-term pains and pleasures resulting from actions. In discussing pain and pleasure, Epicureans stick to real life situations, not hypothetical philosophical puzzles.

Epicurean Philosophy or Epicureanism? \n In\na recent conversation to the Garden of Thessaloniki, a question was raised\nwhether the Epicureans could participate as a party to the political scene of\nthe Country. The fri

The canon of Epicurus in everyday life.

Elli Pensa has translated for us the following article by a Greek student of Epicurus, Dimitris Liarmakopoulos.

WE AND THE STOICS TODAY, or “To Those from the Stoa” \n by Dimitris Liarmakopoulos, member of the Epicurean Garden in Thessaloniki 27.11.2015 A proposition about Stoicism on an Epicurean website causes at least reasonabl

\n \n Epicurean Philosophy, Modern Science, and Life \n \n Source for the following article: Technion - Israel Institute of Technology \n \n A live conversation between Christos Yapijakis , geneticist and philosopher, Na

\n Epicurean Influences On The Enlightenment \n by Dimitris Altas, Cardiologist, member of the epicurean team epicuros21, Thessaloniki, Hellas. In 1453 the Ottomans conquered Constantinople by abolishing the Eastern Roma

\n \n \n The Epicurean Viewpoint \n \n by George Kaplanis founding member of the Epicurean Garden in Thessaloniki Now I ask you: what is the “Epicurean Viewpoint”? - It is the view that we gain from looking through the C

A Neighbor And His Dog I have a story to tell you about a neighbor and his dog, but first I would like to share with you some thoughts on Epicurean Doctrine 40: “As many as possess the power to procure complete security

\n \n A Five Star Presentation of Epicurean Philosophy \n I think it's important that we begin to present Epicurean philosophy through podcasts and other audio-video means, so as a test I put together this basic Youtube

\n \n Understanding Epicurus takes considerable effort, but not because the doctrines are difficult - they're not! The problem is that Epicurean philosophy has been heavily criticized for more than two thousand years, an

The following is a summary of citations relevant to the understanding of the pursuit of pleasure in Epicurean philosophy.

Top Problematic Attitude and “Life Premise” Issues Made Worse By Stoicism and Cured by Epicurean Philosophy Cassius Amicus 01-31-2017 With the assistance of input from the Facebook group, I have been working on a list of

You Have Been Deceived! \n You have been deceived. If you are hearing these words in the early years of the twenty-first century, then you have already wasted much of your life dealing with nonsense. If you are surrounde

"When the Gospel of Minimalism Collides With Daily Life" New York Times: ".... But those who have tried the minimalist way have found that it’s not always as satisfying as design websites and tiny-house blogs insist. For

Epicurean Basics ( Discussion of the Article At the Epicurus Facebook Page ) Epicurean philosophy is best known for its advocacy of “Pleasure” as the guide to life. Epicurus taught that Nature endows humans (and all anim

06/21/17 - The following is excerpted from two posts on the Facebook Group : I continue to believe that formulations of ataraxia that imply that passivity (all we have to do is suppress pain) is sufficient are overly bro