Recent Updates From Across EpicureanFriends.com

The gathering held on the twentieth day of each month in memory of Epicurus and Metrodorus, which Epicurus provided for in his will. Epicurean communities continued the custom long after his death.

The property in Athens where Epicurus lived and taught with his friends, and by extension the name of his school. Epicurus left it to his followers in his will so that they could continue to study philosophy there.

Frank, caring criticism among friends, practised in the Epicurean schools as a means of mutual improvement. Philodemus wrote a treatise on it, On Frank Criticism.

A four-line summary of Epicurean teaching preserved by Philodemus: god presents no fears, death no worries, the good is easy to obtain, and the terrible is easy to endure. It condenses the first four Principal Doctrines. See True Divinity Is Incorruptible And Blessed and Death Is Nothing To Us.

A maxim attributed to Epicurus, known to us chiefly through Plutarch's attack on it. It counsels against seeking fame and political power for their own sake. It does not mean living in isolation: the Epicureans lived in communities of friends and wrote and taught openly. See Other Controversies.

For Epicurus there is no absolute justice. Justice is a compact of mutual advantage, made among people who live together, neither to harm one another nor to be harmed, and what counts as just changes with circumstances.

Self-sufficiency, which Epicurus calls a great good: not so that we always make do with little, but so that when we do not have much we can enjoy the little we have, since those who need luxury least enjoy it most.

Every choice and every avoidance, Epicurus says, is referred to pleasure and pain. Not every pleasure is to be chosen, nor every pain avoided: we weigh them against each other and judge by their consequences.

Epicurus divided desires into those that are natural and necessary, those that are natural but not necessary, and those that are "empty," arising from groundless opinion and impossible to satisfy. The classification is a tool for calculating which pleasures are worth their costs, not a rule limiting us to the natural and necessary desires alone.

Friendship, which Epicurus ranked first among the things wisdom provides for a blessed life. Friendship was central to the life of the Garden, and the Epicureans were famous for it.

Prudence or practical wisdom, which Epicurus calls the greatest good among the means to a pleasant life, more precious even than philosophy, and the source of all the other virtues.

Virtue, which for Epicurus is not absolute or an end in itself. The virtues are chosen because they bring about a pleasant life, and they are inseparable from it: it is impossible to live pleasantly without living prudently, honorably, and justly. See Virtue Is Not Absolute Or An End In Itself.

The end or goal of life: that for the sake of which everything else is chosen. For Epicurus the telos is pleasure, "the beginning and end of the blessed life." Cicero's On Ends is a debate among the schools about exactly this question.

Blessedness: the condition of the gods, untroubled and incorruptible, and the word Epicurus uses for the happiest human life. Principal Doctrine 1 opens with the "blessed and incorruptible" nature.

Happiness, the goal of life for nearly every ancient school. For Epicurus a happy life is a life in which pleasure predominates over pain. The noun does not appear in the Principal Doctrines; where the idea is meant, they speak of the "blessed" (makarios). See Happiness Is the Goal of Life.

A distinction reported by Diogenes Laertius between "stable-state" pleasures, such as freedom from pain and disturbance, and pleasures "in motion," such as joy and delight. Epicurus recognized both as pleasure. The modern claim that only katastematic pleasure counts, or that it is the highest pleasure, is not supported by the ancient texts and turns Epicurus' philosophy of pleasure into one of mere tranquility. See The Term "Pleasure" Is The Exact Equivalent Of "Absence of Pain" and Other Controversies.

Absence of pain. Epicurus, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius, says that "freedom from disturbance and absence of pain are static pleasures." Absence of pain is not a neutral state halfway between pleasure and pain: the removal of all pain is the limit of pleasure, so that wherever pain is absent, pleasure is present, in the mind as well as the body.

Freedom from disturbance of the mind. Epicurus counts it, together with absence of pain, among the "static" pleasures, and it is a real good. But it is not the goal itself, nor a separate state ranked above pleasure: pleasure is "the beginning and end of the blessed life," and freedom from disturbance is what the mind enjoys once pain and fear are removed.

Pain, the only thing bad in itself, as pleasure is the only thing good in itself. Epicurus taught that intense pain is brief and long-lasting pain is mild, so pain need not be feared.

Pleasure, which Epicurus called "the beginning and end of the blessed life." Pleasure is the standard by which every choice and avoidance is judged, and it includes every experience that is not painful, of body and of mind alike. See Pleasure Is the Guide and The Term "Pleasure" Is The Exact Equivalent Of "Absence of Pain".

Epicurus rejected the "fate of the natural philosophers" as worse than the myths about the gods. Some things happen by necessity, some by chance, and some depend on us, and it is the things that depend on us that praise and blame rightly attach to. See There Is No Necessity To Live Under the Control of Necessity.

The study of nature. Epicurus valued it not for its own sake but because it removes the fears, above all of the gods and of death, that stand between us and a pleasant life.

Events in the sky and upper air: eclipses, lightning, the motions of the heavenly bodies, and the like. Where the evidence allows more than one natural explanation, Epicurus accepted all that agree with what we observe, rather than insisting on one; the point of studying them is to free us from fear, and they must never be attributed to the gods.

The soul is a body made of very fine atoms, spread throughout the whole body, with its ruling part, the mind, seated in the chest. It can neither exist nor feel apart from the body, and when the body dies its atoms disperse. See Death Is Nothing To Us.

The principle of equal distribution, reported by the Epicurean spokesman Velleius in Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods: in an infinite universe, things of every kind are balanced by their counterparts, so that, for example, the mortal is balanced by the immortal.

Worlds, or ordered systems like our own. Because atoms and space are infinite, there are infinitely many worlds, some like ours and some unlike it, constantly forming and dissolving; Epicureans expected life elsewhere in the universe.

A minimal, unpredictable deviation of atoms from their straight path. Our main sources for it are Lucretius, who calls it the clinamen, and Cicero; the surviving letters of Epicurus do not mention it. The swerve explains how atoms come to collide at all, and it breaks the chain of necessity that would otherwise rule out free will. See There Is No Necessity To Live Under the Control of Necessity.

The totality of everything that exists. The universe as a whole is infinite in size and eternal: nothing exists outside it that could enter it or change it. See The Universe Is Infinite In Size And Eternal In Time.

Empty space. Void must exist, because without it bodies would have nowhere to be and nothing to move through. Together with atoms it makes up the whole of reality: there is no third kind of thing. See The Universe Operates Naturally Through Atoms and Space.

The indivisible bodies of which everything is made. Atoms are infinite in number, unchangeable, and eternal; they differ only in shape, size, and weight, and they are always in motion. Everything we perceive, including the soul, is a temporary combination of atoms moving through void. See The Universe Operates Naturally Through Atoms and Space.