EPICUREANISM
Epicureanism Believes that the Duty of Man is to Seek
Happiness, and that Happiness Consists in Wisdom.
MORAL PHILOSOPHY.--Continuing to feel the strong impulse which it
had received from Socrates, philosophy was now for a long while to be
almost exclusively moral philosophy. Only it divided very sharply in two
directions. Antisthenes and Aristippus were both pupils of Socrates. From
Antisthenes came the Cynics; from Aristippus the philosophers of
pleasure. The Cynics gave birth to the Stoics, the philosophers of pleasure
to the Epicureans, and these two great schools practically divided all
antiquity between them. We will take the Epicureans first because,
chronologically, they slightly preceded the Stoics.
EPICURUS.--Epicurus, born at Athens a little after the death of
Plato, brought up at Samos by his parents who had been forced to expatriate
themselves owing to reverses of fortune, returned to Athens about 305 B.C.,
and there founded a school. Personally he was a true wise man, sober,
scrupulous, a despiser of pleasure, severe to himself, _in practice_ a
Stoic. As his general view of the universe, he taught approximately the
doctrine of Democritus: the world is composed of a multitude of atoms,
endowed with certain movements, which attach themselves to one another and
combine together, and there is nothing else in the world. Is there not a
first cause, a being who set all these atoms in motion--in short, a God?
Epicurus did not think so. Are there gods, as the vulgar believe? Epicurus
believed so; but he considered that the gods are brilliant, superior, happy
creatures, who do not trouble about this world, do not interfere with it,
and are even less occupied, were it possible, with mankind. Also they did
not create the world, for why should they have created it? From goodness,
said Plato; but there is so much evil in the world that if they created it
from goodness, they were mistaken and must be fools; and if they willingly
permitted evil, they are wicked; and therefore it is charitable towards
them to believe that they did not create it.
EPICUREAN MORALITY.--From the ethical point of view, Epicurus
certainly attaches himself to Aristippus; but with the difference that lies
between pleasure and happiness. Aristippus taught that the aim of life was
intelligent pleasure, Epicurus declared that the aim of life was
happiness. Now, does happiness consist in pleasures, or does it exclude
them? Epicurus was quite convinced that it excluded them. Like Lord
Beaconsfield, he would say, "Life would be almost bearable, were it not for
its pleasures." Happiness for Epicurus lay in "phlegm," as Philinte would
put it; it lay in the calm of the mind that has rendered itself
inaccessible to every emotion of passion, which is never irritated, never
moved, never annoyed, never desires, and never fears. Why, for instance,
should we dread death? So long as we fear it, it is not here; when it
arrives, we shall no longer fear it; then, why is it an evil?--But, during
life itself, how about sufferings?--We greatly increase our sufferings by
complaints and by self-commiseration. If we acted in the reverse way, if
when we were tortured by them we recalled past pleasures and thought of
pleasures to come, they would be infinitely mitigated.--But, of what
pleasures can a man speak who makes happiness consist in the exclusion of
pleasures? The pleasures of the wise man are the satisfaction he feels in
assuring himself of his own happiness. He finds pleasure when he controls a
passion in order to revert to calmness; he feels pleasure when he converses
with his friends about the nature of true happiness; he feels pleasure when
he has diverted a youth from passionate follies or from despair, and
brought him back to peace of mind, etc.--But what about sufferings after
death? They do not exist. There is no hell because there is no immortality
of the soul. The soul is as material as the body, and dies with it.
You will say, perhaps, that this very severe and austere morality more
nearly approaches to Stoicism than to the teaching of Aristippus. This is
so true that when Horace confessed with a smile that he returned to the
morality of pleasure, he did not say, as we should, "I feel that I am
becoming an Epicurean," he said, "I fall back on the precepts of
Aristippus;" and Seneca, a professed Stoic, cites Epicurus almost as often
as Zeno in his lessons. It may not be quite accurate to state, but there
would not be much exaggeration in affirming, that Epicureanism is a smiling
Stoicism and Stoicism a gloomy Epicureanism. In the current use of the word
we have changed the meaning of Epicurean to make it mean "addicted to
pleasure." The warning must be given that there is no more grievous error.
THE VOGUE OF EPICUREANISM.--Epicureanism had an immense vogue in
antiquity. The principal professors of it at Athens were Metrodorus,
Hermarchus, Polystratus, and Apollodorus. Penetrating to Italy Epicureanism
found its most brilliant representative in Lucretius, who of the system
made a poem--the admirable _De Natura Rerum_; there were also
Atticus, Horace, Pliny the younger, and many more. It even became a
political opinion: the Caesarians were Epicureans, the Republicans
Stoics. On the appearance of Christianity Epicureanism came into direct
opposition with it, and so did Stoicism also; but in a far less degree. In
modern times, as will be seen, Epicureanism has enjoyed a revival.