The EpicureanFriends Guide To Epicurus
Welcome!
Welcome to the EpicureanFriends Guide to the philosophy of Epicurus. Epicurus teaches that the goal of life is Pleasure. Sounds simple, but in order to understand what this means, we must understand the Principles behind the Practices that Epicurus identified as crucial for pleasant living. In this guide we will give you the tools to get started on the straightest possible path toward that goal.
Why Study Epicurus?
We study Epicurus so we can find answers to many of the most important issues in life. For example:
- What is the nature of the universe? Was it created by a god? Did it come into existence "by accident?" Does it operate like a billiard ball with everything happening mechanically and totally predictably?
- What happens to us when we die? Do we have immortal souls? Do our souls go to heaven to be rewarded or to hell to be punished after we are dead?
- How do we know the difference between "right" and "wrong?" Does a god tell us? Is there some kind of other dimension where right and wrong have been established for us? Does reason or logic tell us the answers?
- Does human life have a goal? If so, what is it? Is the goal of life to be a "good" person, or to be "virtuous?" Or is it the proper goal of life to try to be happy? If so, what does "happiness" really mean?
- How can we overcome anxiety and fear about these questions? Should we just take the position that they are no answers and that we should stop trying to figure them out? Or is there a way forward toward determining answers about which we can be confident?
How Can This Guide Help?
Through years of discussion on the EpicureanFriends forum we have identified many recurring questions that people have when they begin to study Epicurus. Even in his own time, some detractors accused Epicurus of being too sensusal in his approach to life, while others accused Epicurus of being too ascetic. Today, some people still associate the word Epicurean with devotion to fine food and drink, but more than anything else Epicurus has become identified with "tranquility," a word that can many many different things to different people.
So that you can sort these issues out for yourself, this guide will point you to the original texts that will allow you to see that both extreme interpretations are wrong. Further, these texts will show why Epicurus pointed to "Pleasure," rather than tranqility or any other word, as best way to express philosophically the highest good. By the end of this guide we hope you will begin to understand what Epicurus meant when he said, "I know not how I can conceive the good, if I withdraw the pleasures of taste and withdraw the pleasures of love and those of hearing and sight."
Epicurus was not the only advocate of the pleasant life in the ancient world, and another thing we hope to do in this guide is to show how Epicurus' approach to pleasure differed from that of other schools. For example, the most reliable writer about Epicurus, Diogenes Laertius, recorded:
"Epicurus differs from the Cyrenaics about pleasure. For they do not admit static pleasure, but only that which consists in motion. But Epicurus admits both kinds both in the soul and in the body, as he says in the work on Choice and Avoidance and in the book on The Ends of Life and in the first book On Lives and in the letter to his friends in Mytilene. Similarly, Diogenes in the 17th book of Miscellanies and Metrodorus in the Timocrates speak thus: ‘Pleasure can be thought of both as consisting in motion and as static.’ And Epicurus in the work on Choice speaks as follows: ‘Freedom from trouble in the mind and from pain in the body are static pleasures, but joy and exultation are considered as active pleasures involving motion."
Warning: those who come to the study of Epicurus expecting a psychiatrist dispensing tranqilizers may at first be disappointed and even shaken by what they read. The worldview set out by Epicurus rejects major aspects of modern belief systems which many find comfortable. Epicurus rejects the existence of supernatural gods, the possibility of life after death, the view that events are pre-determined, and the views of the radical skeptics that knowledge is impossible. Many of these positions some people re unwilling to entertain, much less to adopt.
Therefore as we bring you this Guide to Epicurus, we won'twaste your time. Right from the beginning we will explain the fundamentals on which Epicurus' advice for living is based. Not everyone will agree with what they read, but if you do not acquaint yourself to what Epicurus really taught you will have no way to judge what to adopt and what to reject. If you don't come to share Epicurus' view of the world, you won't likely accept his view of howto live, so to be fair to both yourself and to Epicurus, the place to start is with the the Principles on which Epicurean Practices are based.
Practicality Comes First
Before we get started, however, don't get the idea that Epicurus was an ivory-tower intellectual. Nothing could be further from the truth, as no philosopher in history has been more rigorous in making sure his ideas are practical. Epicurus himself wrote:
"Vain is the word of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind." -Usener Fragment 221
Where Do I Start?
Epiurean philosophy is not difficult, but truly understanding it requires that you free yourself from orthodoxies and reliance on authorities and commentators. Ultimately there is no substitute for reading the surviving texts yourself, especially Lucretius, for in the original texts you will see that issues that the Epicureans themselves stressed. But before you tackle any of the letters of Epicurus, much less the much lengthy poetry of Lucretius, we will acquaint you with what you can expect so you can recognize what you will encounter each step along the path.
"If you know this, it only takes a very little trouble to learn the rest: The lessons one by one brighten each other, and no dark night will keep you, pathless and astray, from ultimate vision and light, all things illumined in each other's radiance." -from Lucretius, On The Nature of Things, Book One (Humphries)
The Ancient Epicureans traditionally divided the philosophy into three parts, which we will follow here: "Physics," which we call The Way Things Are, "Canonics," which we call The Way We Know, and "Ethics," which we call The Way To Live.
Fasten your seatbelts, and let's start with the major Principles. As with the rest of this guide, don't get hung up on precise wording at this stage. Most of this guide is paraphrased to make the point more understandble, but in each case we will link you to where you can find the same point in the original texts. We'll start with a basic list of princoples below, and in order to get more details, citations, and full quotes, you can open up the menu (to the left of this page) and follow the respective sections - "The Way Things Are," "The Way We Know," and "The Way We Live."
For now, let's go with a series of major bullet points:
The Way Things Are
The Universe Operates on Natural Principles, Neither Chaotically Nor At The Will Of Supernatural Gods; There is No Fate And No Life After Death
The starting point of all reasoning about the universe, which we gather through observaton, is that nothing is ever created from that which does not exist, nor is anything ever destroyed to nothing, either at the command of gods of through any other cause.
Based on our observation that nothing comes to or goes to nothing, we conclude that the universe operates totally on natural processes which involve the movement of unchanging elemental particles (known to Epicurus as "atoms") through the void, and that everything - including all life itself - arises naturally.
We deduce from the patterns of evidence that we observe, evaluated reasonably, that truly perfect beings would be self-sufficient in all things, and that such beings would have no need to interfere in the affairs of mortals.
Although our world is constantly changing, the universe as a whole has existed eternally and will exist eternally.
The atoms are always in motion and have the ability to swerve at no fixed time and no fixed place, and from this arises the ability of intelligent beings to be free from absolutely deterministic Fate.
The universe as a whole is without boundaries, and thus there are no "gods" or anything else outside or above the universe or in any sort of non-natural other-worldliness.
Nature never creates only a single thing of a kind, and from the existence of life on Earth we deduce that there are other worlds throughout the universe where life exists.
All things which come together by the motion of atoms through void also eventually separate, which means that our souls are born with our bodies and cannot survive without it.
Death is the end of all sensation, and there is no experience of pain or pleasure or anything else after death, when sensation no longer exists.
The Way We Know
The Three Faculties Which Constitute Our Standard of Truth Are the Senses, The Anticipations, and the Feelings
About many important things knowledge is possible. It is absurd for radical skeptics to argue that nothing at all can be known, because he who argues that nothing can be known is making an argument that is self-contradictory.
The conclusions about which we are confident are those which are validated by evidence obtained through the primary faculties given us by Nature, which are (1) the five senses, (2) the feelings of pleasure and pain, and (3) the pattern-recognizing faculty called "anticipations" (from the Latin) or "prolepsis" (from the Greek).
These natural faculties are reliable sources of knowledge because they report to us honestly without adding any opinions of their own.
The phrase "All sensations are true" is correct from the prespective that the senses report "truly," in the sense of "honestly" without bias or prejudice.
If we lose the courage to trust our senses as the basis of our knowlegge, we lose our grasp not only on proper reasoning, but also our grasp on life itself.
Where the evidence provided by the senses, feelings, and anticipations is conflicting or insufficient to arrive at a single conclusion, it is appropriate to "wait" before accepting any conclusion as true, and where multiple conclusions are consistent with the evidence, it is appropriate to hold all of them as possibly true until evidence becomes available by which only one can be selected as true.
The Way We Live
The Guide of Life is Pleasure
Nature gives us nothing other than pleasure and pain as guides to determine what to choose and avoid, and so we conclude that all "good" and "evil" comes to us through sensation.
If we are alive and experience anything at all, that experience can be considered to be either pleasure or pain. There is no neutral or in-between feeling, because the experience of living without pain is pleasurable. While we can feel both pleasure and pain at the same time in different aspects of our experience, when we feel pleasure in that aspect of experience, we feel no pain in that aspect, and the reverse is true also. This means that the normal experiences of life where pain is not present are pleasurable, and thus that pleasure is the normal state of life and in most cases easy to obtain.
The most desirable life is that in which we are experiencing only pleasures without any accompaniment of pains. While pain is difficult to avoid, and must sometimes be chosen, pain is by nature generally either manageable, if of long duration, or brief, if of high intensity, and thus unmanageable and intense pain is not to be feared.
In a general sense we use the word "Pleasure" to describe what nature tells us to pursue and "Pain" to describe what nature tells us to avoid, but in the service of Pleasure we sometimes choose an immediate pain and avoid an immediate pleasure when the outcome of our choice will lead to greater pleasure as a result.
In the selection of pleasures we also do not necessarily select those which are longest lasting, but instead we select those that are the most pleasant.
No pleasure is intrinsically "bad" or "evil," but the desire for some pleasures produces more pain than pleasure, and such desires should be avoided.
While all pleasure is desirable and all pain is undesirable prudence in choosing and avoiding involves primarily asking the question: "What will happen to me if I pursue this course of action?"
It is also useful to ask whether the desire involves matters which are natural or necessary, with the principle of the distinction being that those things that are necessary are satisfied without much trouble or effort, since nature herself makes such wealth as will satisfy her both easy of access and moderate in amount, but as to those things that are neither necessary nor natural it is not possible to discover any boundary or limit.
In human life, pain is generally either manageable, if of long duration, or brief, if of high intensity, and thus unmanageable and intense pain is not to be feared.
Virtue is not an end in itself. Nature provides pleasure and pain as guides for choice and avoidance, but Nature does not provide absolute standards of goodness, virtue, piety, reason, or justice that apply to all people at all times and all places. Those things we think of as virtuous are good are choiceworthy only insofar as they contribute to bringing pleasure or avoiding pain.
There is no heaven or hell after death in which to experience reward or punishment. Life is short, and we should not put postpone pursuing pleasure while we can.
Because atoms can swerve, humans and other intelligent beings are not subject to complete determinism, and their lives are affected by their choices and avoidances. It would be better to commit the error of believing in a false religion than to commit the error of considering oneself to be a slave to hard determinism.
Implementation
The Next Step Is Up To You!
As mountain-ranging hounds smell out a lair, and animals covert, hidden under brush, once they are certain of its track, so you, all by yourself, in matters such as these, can see one thing from another, find your way to the dark burrows and bring truth to light. - from Lucretius, On The Nature of Things, Book One (Humphries)
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