Why You Should Choose Epicurus To Be Your Guide - Introduction

What This Book Contains

Every philosophy offers itself as a guide to life. It tells you how to know what is true, what kind of world you live in, and what you should aim at. This book compares the guidance of Epicurus with the guidance of the seven traditions that have most often been set against him, and it argues that Epicurus is the better guide.

The seven traditions are taken in the order in which they entered Western thought:

1. Against The Platonists: Socrates and Plato, the founders of the view that the world we see is a shadow of a higher, eternal world, and that the world was made by a divine craftsman.
2. Against The Aristotelians: Plato’s pupil Aristotle, who kept Plato’s purposes in nature while removing the craftsman, and whose system later became the backbone of medieval theology.
3. Against The Stoics: Zeno, Chrysippus, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the great rivals of the Epicureans in the ancient world, who taught a world filled with a providential god.
4. Against The Skeptics: Pyrrho, the Skeptic Academy and Sextus Empiricus, who taught that nothing can be known and that the wise man suspends judgement and follows custom.
5. Against The Abrahamists: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in the words of their scriptures and authorities, which made the creator god, providence and the judgment after death articles of faith.
6. Against The Humanists: from Boethius and the Renaissance through Kant, Comte and Feuerbach to the modern Humanists, who kept much of the Christian morality after letting go of the Christian God.
7. Against The Buddhists: the Buddha’s teaching that life is suffering and desire its cause, in the words of the early Buddhist scriptures, which reached the West last and is now the tradition most often confused with Epicurus.

Five of these are the traditions that, more than any others, have obscured or corrupted the teaching of Epicurus: Platonism, Stoicism, Skepticism, supernatural religion and Humanism. Aristotle is given a chapter of his own because, although he belongs in the Platonist tradition, he built the most complete system of it and is often mistaken for an ally of Epicurus. Buddhism arose far from Greece and owes nothing to Plato, but it is given the last chapter because it has become, in our own time, the tradition most often confused with the teaching of Epicurus.

Each chapter follows the same plan. It begins with why the tradition matters to Epicureans and with the historical record of its quarrel with Epicurus. It then takes the three divisions of Epicurean philosophy in turn: the Canon, or how we know the truth; Physics, or the nature of things; and Ethics, or how to live. In each, the tradition is stated in the words of its own leading writers, and the Epicurean response follows. Each chapter closes with the places where the tradition, in spite of itself, helps the Epicurean case, with its later influence, and with a list of the most important passages.

The chapters quote their sources at length, and the quotations link to the full texts on EpicurusToday.com, where the reader can check the wording and read the context. A final chapter draws the results together.

Before the opponents speak, this introduction sets out briefly what Epicurus taught on each of the questions the book covers, and how each of the seven traditions answered the same questions.

Epicurus in Brief

The Canon: How We Know

Epicurus held that we have three standards of truth that nature gives us: the senses, the anticipations (the general ideas that we form from repeated experience), and the feelings of pleasure and pain. “In The Canon Epicurus says that the tests of truth are the sensations and concepts and the feelings” (DL X.31).

Nothing stands above these standards. “Nor is there anything which can refute the sensations … nor again can reason, for all reason is dependent upon sensations” (DL X.32). Every sensation truly reports what strikes the sense organ. Error lies in the opinion we add to it, and opinion is tested by further evidence. “If you fight against all sensations, you will have no standard by which to judge even those of them which you say are false” (PD 23).

What cannot be seen is not closed to us, but we reach it only by reasoning from what is seen. “We must keep all our investigations in accord with our sensations … in order that we may have indications whereby we may judge both the problem of sense perception and the unseen” (DL X.38). In this way Epicurus reasoned from the fact of motion to the existence of the void, and from the qualities of bodies to the atoms.

Physics: The Nature of Things

“First of all, that nothing is created out of that which does not exist: for if it were, everything would be created out of everything with no need of seeds” (DL X.38). Nor does anything pass into nothing. “The universe always was such as it is now, and always will be the same” (X.39).

The universe is made of atoms and void, and it is infinite. Because the atoms are infinite in number, “there are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours” (DL X.45). Each world comes to be from the motions of the atoms and passes away again. No god made our world, and none governs it.

The gods exist, but they are not what the many believe. “The blessed and immortal nature knows no trouble itself nor causes trouble to any other, so that it is never constrained by anger or favour” (PD 1). “The impious man is not he who popularly denies the gods of the many, but he who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many” (DL X.123).

The soul is “a body of fine particles distributed throughout the whole structure” (DL X.63), and it is scattered when the body dies. “Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us” (PD 2).

The purpose of this physics is to free us from fear. “If we were not troubled by our suspicions of the phenomena of the sky and about death, fearing that it concerns us, and also by our failure to grasp the limits of pains and desires, we should have no need of natural science” (PD 11). “A man cannot dispel his fear about the most important matters if he does not know what is the nature of the universe but suspects the truth of some mythical story. So that without natural science it is not possible to attain our pleasures unalloyed” (PD 12).

Ethics: How to Live

Nature has given every living thing a guide from birth, the feelings of pleasure and pain. “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 return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good” (DL X.129). Pleasure is the goal of life, and Epicurus admitted pleasure of every kind, “both kinds both in the soul and in the body,” the pleasures of rest and the pleasures of motion (DL X.136).

Pleasures are chosen by measuring them against each other and against the pains they bring. “By a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgment on all these matters” (DL X.130). Desires are of three kinds: “some are natural (and necessary, some natural) but not necessary, and others neither natural nor necessary, but due to idle imagination” (PD 29). The pleasant life is not a life of drinking bouts and luxury but of “sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions, to which are due the greatest disturbance of the spirit” (DL X.132).

Virtue is not the goal but the means. “Virtue is preferred for the sake of pleasure, and not for its own sake, just as the doctor’s art is employed for the sake of health” (DL X.138). Yet “it is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently and honorably and justly” (X.132). Justice is not a heavenly form or a divine command but “a pledge of mutual advantage to restrain men from harming one another and save them from being harmed” (PD 31). And “of all the things which wisdom acquires to produce the blessedness of the complete life, far the greatest is the possession of friendship” (PD 27).

The man who lives by these teachings, Epicurus promised, “shall live like a god among men” (DL X.135).

The Questions at Issue

The seven chapters argue against seven traditions, but the same questions come up again and again. Here is how each tradition answered them.

1. What Is the Standard of Truth?

• Epicurus: the senses, the anticipations and the feelings. Reason works from them and is tested by them.
• Platonists: the mind alone, knowing the eternal Forms. The senses deceive, and learning is the soul’s recollection of what it knew before birth.
• Aristotelians: the senses begin knowledge, but true knowledge is of universal forms grasped by the intellect, and demonstration from first principles outranks the evidence of the senses.
• Stoics: the “comprehensive” impression, which the sage alone can recognize. Some impressions are false, and the good is judged by reason, not by feeling.
• Skeptics: nothing. Every appearance can be opposed by an equal appearance, and the wise man suspends judgement.
• Abrahamists: revelation, received by faith. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
• Humanists: reason and conscience, with a “sacred” dignity of man and a duty that reason commands but feeling cannot establish.
• Buddhists: insight reached in meditation. The senses and every sensation are “on fire,” and the disciple conceives an aversion for them.

2. Where Did the World Come From?

• Epicurus: it was not made. The universe is eternal and infinite, and our world is one of countless worlds formed by the motions of atoms.
• Platonists: a good divine craftsman made the world, the only world, as a living creature with a soul, on the pattern of an eternal Form.
• Aristotelians: the world is eternal and unique, and everything in it moves toward ends, set in motion by an unmoved mover who is pure thought.
• Stoics: the world is a living, rational god, made and governed by divine reason, and it will be burned up and made again in an endless cycle.
• Skeptics: we cannot know, and so we follow the opinions of our city.
• Abrahamists: God created it out of nothing by his word.
• Humanists: they rarely say. Many accept the scientific account of the world while keeping a view of man’s place in it that depends on the older one.
• Buddhists: the Buddha refused to say whether the world is eternal or not, because such questions “profit not.”

3. Do the Gods Govern the World?

• Epicurus: no. The gods are blessed and immortal, and they neither cause trouble nor suffer it.
• Platonists: yes. The gods care for men, and the man who denies it must be re-educated or punished under the law of impiety.
• Aristotelians: Aristotle’s god does not govern by command, but he is the supreme cause on which “the heavens and the world of nature” depend.
• Stoics: yes. Providence governs every part of the world for the sake of gods and men, and reveals the future through divination.
• Skeptics: we cannot know, but “following the ordinary view” we reverence the gods and ascribe to them foreknowledge.
• Abrahamists: yes. Not a sparrow falls without the will of God, and the denial of providence is the mark of the heretic.
• Humanists: the old providence is replaced by Humanity or Progress, which give the individual his duties.
• Buddhists: there is no creator, but the law of karma rewards and punishes every deed, in this life or the next.

4. What Happens at Death?

• Epicurus: the soul is scattered, and death is nothing to us.
• Platonists: the soul is immortal, existed before birth, and will be judged.
• Aristotelians: the soul is the form of the body and perishes with it, but the active intellect is “immortal and eternal.”
• Stoics: the soul survives for a time, or until the burning of the world, and is then reabsorbed into the whole.
• Skeptics: we cannot know.
• Abrahamists: the soul survives, or the body will be raised, and every man will be judged and sent to everlasting life or everlasting punishment.
• Humanists: most deny the afterlife, but many keep the moral weight that belief in it once carried.
• Buddhists: there is no self, yet there is rebirth, to hell or to heaven, until desire is extinguished.

5. Does Nature Act for a Purpose?

• Epicurus: no. “Nothing was born in the body that we might use it, but that which is born begets itself a use.” The order of nature comes from the nature of the atoms and from the survival of what works.
• Platonists: yes. Everything was designed by the craftsman for the best.
• Aristotelians: yes. “Nature makes nothing in vain,” and plants exist for animals and animals for men.
• Stoics: yes. The world was made for gods and men, down to the pig whose soul serves as salt.
• Skeptics: we cannot know.
• Abrahamists: yes. The invisible things of God are “clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”
• Humanists: many deny cosmic purpose but give man a purpose and a dignity that only a purposeful world could supply.
• Buddhists: nature is not designed, but it is ordered by karma, a moral law that weighs every deed.

6. What Is the Goal of Life?

• Epicurus: pleasure, judged by the feeling of pleasure itself.
• Platonists: virtue and the knowledge of the Good, and “to become like God.” The life of pleasure is the life of “a leaky jar.”
• Aristotelians: happiness as the activity of virtue, and above all contemplation. The man who makes pleasure his goal chooses “a life suitable to beasts.”
• Stoics: virtue, the only good. Pleasure is “the good of cattle.”
• Skeptics: quietude, which comes when the search for truth is given up.
• Abrahamists: obedience to God and the reward of the world to come. The love of pleasure is a vice of the last days.
• Humanists: the perfection of man, the good of Humanity, and duty for duty’s sake. Pleasure is at best a by-product.
• Buddhists: Nirvana, the extinction of craving. Life and birth are suffering, desire is their cause, and “From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear.”

7. What Is Virtue For?

• Epicurus: virtue is the means to the pleasant life, as medicine is the means to health.
• Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics: virtue is chosen for its own sake. For the Stoics it is the only good.
• Skeptics: virtue is good only “by belief,” and the Skeptic follows the customs of his country.
• Abrahamists: virtue is obedience to God’s law, rewarded and punished after death.
• Humanists: virtue is the fulfilment of duty and of human dignity, owed regardless of its consequences.
• Buddhists: virtue is the path to the end of desire and of rebirth.

8. What Are Justice and Law?

• Epicurus: justice is a compact for mutual advantage, and a law that does not serve that advantage “no longer has the essential nature of justice.”
• Platonists: justice is a Form, known to the philosopher-kings, who may lie to the citizens for their good.
• Aristotelians: justice is in part natural, and some men are slaves by nature.
• Stoics: justice is the law of the world-city, written by the reason that governs all things.
• Skeptics: whatever the laws and customs of one’s country require.
• Abrahamists: the law revealed by God.
• Humanists: the rights and duties that follow from the dignity of man, binding on every rational being.
• Buddhists: the law of karma, built into nature: “Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, not if we enter into the clefts of the mountains, is there known a spot in the whole world where a man might be freed from an evil deed” (Dhammapada 127).

How to Read This Book

Each chapter can be read on its own. Read in order, they show how one view of the world, first set out by Socrates and Plato, passed from school to school and from philosophy into religion and back again, and how Epicurus answered it at every stage. The final chapter traces that line and sets out what the survey shows.

The quotations come from published translations, most of them old enough to be freely available. Links in the chapters go to the full texts on EpicurusToday.com, where the translator of every work is named and every quotation can be checked against its context and, in most cases, against an image of the printed page.