Greek Philosophy: Epicureanism
Understanding one of the Hellenistic Age's most popular belief systems.
Everyone has heard of Plato and Aristotle. But few have heard of Epicurus, a Greek philosopher from the 3rd century BC. His groundbreaking ideas about physics and pleasure once dominated the Greco-Roman world, and they continue to inspire people even today.
Hedonism
Epicurus’ philosophy derived from a Socratic school of hedonism known as the Cyrenaics. The school derives its name from Cyrene, in North Africa. Its main teacher was a Greek philosopher named Aristippus. Socrates had taught the principle of “know thyself.” He felt that introspection could achieve spiritual and intellectual enlightenment. After Socrates, later schools of Greek philosophy adopted different understandings of self-knowledge and virtue. The Cyrenaics sharply departed from Socrates’ ethics. Socrates had defined the good life as an existence of rationality and virtue. But the Cyrenaics equated goodness with physical pleasure. As such, they promoted the unfettered pursuit of individual gratification. The Cyrenaics encouraged an extreme and highly individualistic form of hedonism. To them, what mattered was the intensity and immediacy of one’s personal pleasure. For Socrates, the goal of reason was to discover higher metaphysical and spiritual truths. But the Cyrenaics regarded rationality in a more instrumental way, as a means of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. For the Cyrenaics, goodness was equated with pleasure, and evil with pain. As materialists, they understood good and evil in purely physical and sensual terms. They rejected any concept of universal value, regarding all pleasures and pains as largely subjective. While the Cyrenaics endorsed hedonism, they warned against the excesses of impulsivity, which can lead to pain. Hegesius was another leading figure in the Cyrenaic school. Although he promoted hedonism, he took a more negative approach. He taught that pleasure consisted of the absence of pain, rather than any positive sensations. His pessimistic philosophy was so extreme, that it encouraged suicide as a means of relieving all pain. Epicurus avoided this extreme, but he was certainly influenced by this form of negative hedonism. Inspired by the ideas of the Cyrenaics, Epicurus taught his own version of hedonism in the 3rd century BC. Those Greek ideas were later systemized by the Romans two centuries later. In the 1st century BC, a Roman poet named Lucretius wrote The Nature of Things. This masterpiece of Latin poetry expressed the philosophy of Epicureanism, including its mechanistic physics and cosmology, as well as materialistic theories of sensation, ethics, and perception.
Ethics
The Epicureans regarded ataraxia, or “peace of mind,” as the primary purpose of life. Epicurus himself suffered from stomach ulcers, which may have influenced his ideas about temperance and moderation. Epicureanism distinguishes between higher and lower pleasures. Higher pleasures include the joys of friendship, education, temperance, and living in a just society. They are distinct from the lower pleasures, such as the positive sensations of food or sex. These higher goods are more intrinsically pleasurable. The Epicureans favored the higher pleasures over the lower ones.
Metaphysics
The Epicureans sought to ground their hedonistic ethics in the metaphysical materialism of an earlier Greek philosopher named Democritus. Democritus was the first thinker of the Western tradition to postulate the existence of atoms. He suggested the universe was made of atoms, which blindly clash together to produce the world’s order and structure. In the 16th century, many European thinkers of the Scientific Revolution were attracted by the atomism of the ancient Greeks. This was influential in the development of modern science. The ancient atomists believed in an eternal uncreated material universe. In Latin, this was expressed by the phrase ex nihilo nihilism fit, which means “out of nothing, nothing comes.” This concept was not new. It can be found in the earlier Greek philosophers of the Pre-Socratic Era, as well as Plato and Aristotle. Based on their metaphysical materialism, the Epicureans sought to explain human perception in purely physical terms. They rejected the immortality of the soul. They saw the mind as functions of a physical body, which did not survive death. The Epicureans distinguished between primary and secondary qualities of perception. Primary qualities were those exhibited by the atoms, while secondary qualities were those perceived by subjective human consciousness. This distinction was very influential on Western theories of mind, including that of John Locke in the 17th century.
The swerve
Epicurus proposed a theory of ethics, but he ran into a problem. He had to reconcile his belief in a deterministic physical universe with the concept of human freedom. So the Epicureans proposed a concept known as the swerve. According to this view, atoms move in blind motion, but they sometimes swerve unpredictably. Because of this indeterminacy and unpredictability, human behavior is not fatalistically predetermined. As a result, there is free will. Epicurus’ defense of free will deviated from the uncompromising determinism of earlier atomist thinkers, such as Democritus and Leucippus.
Society
In order to live a pleasurably life, the Epicureans emphasized the need for society. They defined justice as a mutual agreement not to harm other people, in exchange for protection and security. As such, the Epicureans saw justice as a man-made construction. They denied the existence of any absolute or metaphysical concept of justice. These ancient Epicurean ideas anticipated the social contract theories of early modern European thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes. Like the Epicureans, Hobbes understood justice in the terms of physiological pleasures and pains.
Atheism
The Epicureans were essentially atheists. In so far as they spoke of any gods, they understood deities to be purely material beings. They rejected any concept of an afterlife. Lucretius wrote his epic poem with the express purpose of alleviating the fears associated with punishment by the gods after death. Unlike Plato or Aristotle, Epicurus understood human psychology in purely materialistic terms. He had no concept of a soul or afterlife. He understood the mind as being composed of atoms, which simply decompose after death.