EPICUREANISM
=The Life of Epicurus= (341–270 B. C.). Epicurus was born in Samos
in Asia Minor. He was a school-teacher in Mitylene and Lampsacus,
and in 307 B. C. he established in Athens his Philosophical School,
in a garden within the walls on the road to the Academy (see map).
His School was thereafter called the Gardens. He claimed to have been
self-taught, and he probably did not have a thorough education. He
did, however, possess great personal charm and, as his doctrine made
few demands upon its disciples and expressed the refined and delicate
hedonism of the time, it spread very wide. His disciples held him in
great reverence, and long after his death the image of his personality
was a living influence with them. Indeed, it was the personal work of
Epicurus that was the supreme influence with the sect. His formulas
passed on from generation to generation and were called “Golden
Maxims.”[34] He wrote three hundred separate treatises, and in the
amount of his writings was exceeded in antiquity only by the Stoic,
Chrysippus. His great work, _On Nature_, consisted of thirty-seven
books. The other Schools joined in a bitter attack upon him, and in
modern times he has been called _Socrate doublé d’un Voltaire_. Since
neither polytheism nor Christianity had any reason for preserving his
writings, they have been almost entirely lost. Some have been found in
Herculaneum, and many more are thought to be still in that buried city.
The mother of Epicurus was a priestess, and her superstitions probably
set him against the superstitions of his age. His later acquaintance
with the philosophy of Democritus gave him a scientific basis for his
aggression against all religions.
=The Epicureans.= The Epicurean body was a guild or sect that
seemed to have been little affected by the vicissitudes of time.
The Epicureans proselyted vigorously, closely organized their
society, and extended it throughout Greece. It was a state within
a state. With a fixed constitution it was held together by itinerant
preaching, correspondence, and material assistance. It had an _esprit
de corps_, and like religious communities it brought together into one
organization the individuals that had been scattered by the breaking
up of political institutions. The School had special protection from
the Roman emperors and existed as late as the fourth century A. D.,
having outlived all the other systems. It had some famous literary
representatives,――Metrodorus, Colotes, Philodemus,――but especially
the Roman poet Lucretius, who popularized the doctrine for the Romans.
Amafinius introduced Epicureanism into Rome during the middle of the
second century B. C., and the teaching was received with great favor.
Its numerous disciples in all antiquity changed the doctrine only in
its unessentials. The charges of immorality and licentiousness are not
true of the teaching or of the practices of the founder or of the early
members of the School.
=Some Types of Hedonism,――Aristippus, Epicurus, and Rousseau.=
Epicureanism was not a philosophy of pleasure for people without ideals
or who were merely seeking indulgence. The question that Epicurus asked
was this: What enduring pleasure is possible to a man in these days
of turmoil? He tried to give a rational answer to those of his day who
wished to live and enjoy. His aim was to free man from responsibility
in his share of the world’s work and to provide for him a life of
serenity. The pleasure theory of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, was very
different. Aristippus, a voluptuary in a luxurious city, presented
a pleasure theory for the few who have fortunes. It is hardly more
than a grading of pleasures and the setting up of a criterion of their
selection. Epicurus goes deeper than that. His pleasure theory is for
the few, not because they are fortunate, but because they are wise; not
because they have fortunes to gratify their passions, but because they
are independent of all fortune. The Cyrenaic was a man of the world;
the Epicurean was in the world, but not of it.
There is a superficial resemblance between the teaching of Epicurus and
the message of Rousseau to the French people of the eighteenth century.
Both sought an ideal of enduring pleasure. Both would discard the
artificialities of society. But Rousseau was a political reformer and
attempted to find his ideal in a newly constructed society. Epicurus,
on the other hand, was no political reformer, but would find his ideal
in society as it existed. Rousseau appealed to the primitive feelings.
He felt “the call of the wild.” Epicurus appealed to the refined and
derivative feelings. He had no aggressive propaganda. He aimed at no
external reform. His ideal was peace, and not the sword.
=The Epicurean Ideal.= _The central principle of Epicurus is that
pleasure is a good and pain an evil._ In this he was in agreement with
Aristippus, and from this position he never receded. He offered no
proof of this, but rested his central principle upon the conviction
that men pursue pleasure and avoid pain. He was convinced of the
biological fact. But he was not unobservant from the beginning that the
subject was complex. He saw that the individual has to make a selection
of pleasure and often has to choose pain for the sake of a greater
pleasure. Pleasure is the only good, but Epicurus asks further, What is
pleasure? He finds that he must give a content to pleasure and evaluate
the pleasures in the interests of pleasure itself. This was to Epicurus
no moral appraisal, but with reference to the pleasantest possible life.
Of the two qualities of pleasure _Epicurus valued its duration_ and
showed his advance over the Cyrenaics, who had valued its intensity.
It was on this account that the Epicureans disclaimed all relationship
with the Cyrenaics, the earlier school. The difference is certainly
a radical one between them: to Epicurus true pleasure is that which
endures; to Aristippus it is that which is most intense, however
fleeting. There is this to be said of the Cyrenaic theory: it could
be easily understood. Aristippus could tell exactly what he meant by
pleasure. It is this or that gratification of sense. It includes every
positive pleasure, and that which is intensest is best. One always
knows when he is enjoying, and in flitting from pleasure to pleasure
he knows when he is intensely enjoying. But the Cyrenaic presented no
ideal. While the Epicurean theory is more difficult to understand, it
is more mature and more profound because it presents a well-conceived
ideal. Indeed, the farther we follow Epicurus along this line of his
pursuit of the ideal of lasting pleasure, the more are we impressed
with his contribution to our knowledge of the nature of pleasure.
In this connection Epicurus shows his comprehensive grasp of the
subject in determining what are the lasting pleasures. Although he
was a materialist he regarded the pleasures of the mind as superior
to those of the body. The inner pleasures, the spiritual joys, the
control of the mind so that it could enjoy without indulgence――these
were to Epicurus the enduring pleasures. The pleasures of sense are
primary, for, in the last analysis, the mental life is a combination
of sensations, and sensations are only material motions; nevertheless
the secondary and derivative pleasures of the mind were superior,
according to Epicurus, because they had duration. This estimate of
the superiority of the mental pleasures was probably reinforced by two
other reasons: such pleasures were possessed by Epicurus; and such a
doctrine was in accord with the Greek æsthetic ideal of self-enjoyment
of the refined egoist.
The most permanent state of mind is called by Epicurus _independence of
the world_, on the one hand, and _emotionlessness_, on the other. These
are the positive and negative sides of one and the same thing――the
Epicurean ideal of pleasure. In ancient times the conception of
the “affections,” “passions,” or “emotions” included all states of
feeling and will in which man is dependent on the outer world. To be
emotionless is to be independent of the world. The Epicurean word is
_ataraxia_, which is variously translated as serenity, peace, repose,
imperturbability. Since man has no control over the world without
him, he must control its effects within himself. These effects are the
feelings and desires which are by nature only mental disturbances. In
mastering these he becomes independent of the world.
If one will scrutinize his life, he will find, according to Epicurus,
that his experiences form a stream of mental disturbances. These may
be divided into two classes,――desires and positive pleasures. Desires
are wants and want is pain. Pain is therefore exciting. Positive
pleasure presupposes desire and want, and such pleasure is also an
excitement,――the excitement that accompanies the removal of want. The
positive pleasures are not, therefore, the goal of independence of
the outer world. There is another kind of pleasure――the pleasure of
repose. Epicurus recognizes therefore both the pleasure of motion and
the pleasure of repose, but they do not have the same importance in
his system. Repose is the goal of all our experiences. It is a neutral
state, a state of freedom from bodily pain and mental excitement.
There is nothing higher than such a neutral state. We cannot advance
beyond it. If we seek new pleasures by gratifying new desires, we are
only returning to the old round of want, desire, and the pleasurable
excitement of removing the want. The pleasure of repose is the only
escape from this round of experiences. Emotionlessness is the maximum
pleasure――it is the repose in independence of the world. Any deviation
from it may vary but it will not increase our pleasure.
This ideal of Epicurus looks very much like the Cynic doctrine of
absence of wants as constituting virtue and happiness. But Epicurus
is far from renouncing pleasure. He is no ascetic. On the contrary,
the repose of the Epicurean will be the greater in proportion to
the compass of his needs that are satisfied. But he needs insight
into any given situation to tell him what positive pleasures should
be encouraged. Epicurus thus distinguishes three kinds of wants
and their attendant positive pleasures: (1) wants natural and
indispensable――without the satisfaction of which we cannot exist;
(2) wants artificial and dispensable, which ought always to be
disregarded; (3) wants natural and dispensable――the great mass of wants
which lie between the two other classes. Insight is necessary to decide
about this third class. In case of necessity they can be renounced, but
since they give happiness, the Wise Man will seek to satisfy them as
far as possible.
There are three steps leading to Epicurean happiness: (1) the desire or
the pain of unsatisfied craving; (2) the positive pleasure that removes
the pain of unsatisfied desire; (3) ataraxia, the repose of the soul or
true happiness.
=The Place of Virtue in Epicureanism.= Epicurus agreed with the
strictest Greek moralists that virtue and happiness go together. His
opponents had to testify to the beneficial effects of his teaching
upon the character of his disciples. Yet his conception of the place
of virtue in life is in direct conflict with Stoicism. He felt that the
Stoic conception of virtue for its own sake is an ideal so imaginary
that it lacks all incentive to action. Pleasure, on the other hand,
seemed to him to be a concrete and real object. It can be given a
definite content. Virtue had for Epicurus a value only as a means to
happiness. Moreover, virtue by itself is not necessarily accompanied
by happiness, but only when it is employed as a condition to happiness.
Thus wisdom may be employed to gain the pleasure of liberation from
the fear of the gods; self-control may be employed in order to get the
maximum of happiness.
=The Epicurean Wise Man.= To what classes of people could this
Epicurean ideal appeal? Is it an ideal possible only to the favorites
of fortune, wealth, and rank? As presented by Epicurus it was not
conditioned by external circumstances of any sort and its aim was to
transcend all conditions. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the theory
was restricted to those who had the desire to adopt it. On the whole,
the unreflecting common people of that time were not as a matter of
fact influenced by the Epicurean philosophy. The proof of this is the
ease with which it was degraded into a simple pleasure theory without
an ideal. Epicureanism as presented by its author was not an excuse for
the voluptuary or the prodigal, although it was easily corrupted into
that. It was, however, a philosophy of the individual. The individual
must rely upon his own common sense as to what among the particular
satisfactions will give him independence of the world. Sometimes
repose is attained by the satisfaction of all wants; sometimes the
satisfactions needed are few because the wants are few. True pleasure
is possible to all reflective souls. “When you come,” says Seneca,
“to the gardens where the words are inscribed: Friend, here it will be
well for you to abide; here pleasure is the highest good;――there will
meet you the keeper of the place, a hospitable kindly man who will set
before you a dish of barley porridge and plenty of water and say, Have
you not been well entertained? These gardens do not provoke hunger,
but quench it; they do not cause a greater thirst by the drinks they
afford.... In this pleasure I have grown old.” Man can use much, but he
does not need much. Even life itself under extreme circumstances is not
necessary. The pleasures to be sought are the permanent and gentle. In
one place Epicurus says with a somewhat forced sentiment that the Wise
Man on the rack will smile in the midst of torture and say, “How sweet!”
The Wise Man accepts the established order and accommodates himself to
it. He is not like the Stoic Wise Man, indifferent to all pleasures,
but he is nevertheless independent of them. He is superior to the
world, a king and a god. Accidents cannot disturb him, for his virtuous
happiness lies within himself. He cannot control the world without, but
he can control the world within himself. He can be happy with few or
many satisfactions, and he is master over the world if he is master of
the effects of the world upon himself. To rest unmoved in one’s inner
self――that is the Epicurean ideal of the Wise Man. In contrast to the
Cyrenaic happiness, the Epicurean happiness seems passive; in contrast
to the Stoic happiness it is satisfaction.
=The Epicurean Wise Man in Society.= Nevertheless the Wise Man is
only a spectator of the world. He does not enter the world’s work nor
does he enlist as a soldier to fight its moral battles. His individual
independence gives a peculiar character to his social relations.
He will have no ties on account of their complications. Moreover,
his inner world offers him no compensation for his loss of social
relationship, except that the good within is strong and the evil weak.
He looks upon political government as a matter of selfish convenience.
He is opposed to civic life, and therefore a supporter of absolute
government. He refuses the responsibility of marriage, but accepts
friendship as the only worthy social relationship, and only because
friendship is of mutual advantage. Friendship means intellectual
intercourse, compassion, and forgiveness. While there were many famous
Epicurean friendships, one must admit that the Epicurean took an unfair
advantage of the state. His happiness presupposed a highly developed
civilization of refined tastes and noble sentiments. He is a parasite
upon the community and appropriates the labor of others. The Epicurean
ideal offers much to the individual, but nothing to society as a means
of spiritual productivity.
=The Great Obstacles to Happiness.= To universalize pleasure, however
paradoxical it may seem, is to set up an individualism. It is to
abandon all the claims of the society of other beings upon us. The
logic of any pleasure theory is anarchism. But Epicurus is no anarchist,
for anarchism would be too disturbing to repose. Epicurus stopped far
short of interfering with political conditions. His teaching did not
have as its end a logical theory, but a practical accomplishment. He
therefore accommodated his theory to the practical circumstances of his
time. He pointed out that in the seething times of the third century
B. C. the individual could be happy if he banished from his world two
obstacles. These were religion and culture.
To Epicurus the sorrow in man’s heart and the evil in his practices
are mainly due to religion. The chief source of the wretchedness of
the world is to be found in the crushing fears of religious belief.
Epicurus has in mind the exaggerated ceremonies and mystical beliefs of
the Orient, where his mother had been a priestess. From this memory he
was reacting. Religion pollutes men’s fancies, clouds the future with
superstitious fears, and puts repose and happiness beyond our reach. In
the first place, religion carries with it the fear of death. In modern
times the idea of life after death is an added consolation. In the time
of Epicurus death meant the giving up of the present life for a dim,
sunless region of flitting shades bordering on the edge of Tartarus. No
philosophical mind can be happy, according to Epicurus, if it contains
the religious conception of death and the future life. Again, religion
conceives the world of nature as created and operated by the gods. It
is forever explaining nature-phenomena as miraculous and supernatural.
The tranquil mind must believe in a nature world that is separated from
miraculous intervention, and freed from oversight. The world must be
a dependable world. Lastly, religion conceives of the gods as always
busying themselves with the affairs of men. Men must secure their favor
and avert their wrath by constant offerings. The religious man wastes
his time and consumes his peace in the fear that the gods are not
propitiated. The Epicurean seeks to build up the life of the individual.
He seeks a tranquillity that is independent of everything. Religious
belief with its interfering gods would thwart his ideal. Hence the
chief concern of the Epicurean was to banish from life every conception
of divine government. The gods exist, but they live quite apart from
men. Their dwelling is in inter-stellar space amid the numberless
worlds. They have nothing to do with the events of this world,
but are only glorified actualizations of the philosophic ideal of
soul-satisfying peace. The more the teleological conception of nature
became the common ground of the Academy, the Lyceum, and the Porch, the
more did the Epicureans isolate themselves by opposing the conception.
The other obstacle to the imperturbability of the soul is culture. The
Stoics subordinated theory to practice but Epicurus went so far as to
deprecate all culture. It was the philosophical protest of an Oriental
against all for which Greece had stood. All knowledge is superfluous
which does not promote happiness. Knowledge may indirectly promote
happiness, and that is the best you can say of it. Epicurus therefore
despised the researches of the grammarians, the lore of history, the
science of mathematics, the theory of music, poetry, rhetoric, oratory,
logic. Although he set greater store by the intellectual than the
physical pleasures, he placed as little value on knowledge for its
own sake as upon virtue for its own sake. This teaching of Epicurus in
Athens betrays the change that had come over Athenian society. Plato,
who had been the impersonation of Athenian culture, had been dead not
more than thirty years.
=Epicurus’ Conception of the Physical World.――Qualified Atomism.= To
the cursory reader the science of physics seems to occupy a large place
in the philosophy of Epicurus, and its presence appears inconsistent
with his polemic against culture. Upon further reading one finds
that physics, too, should be merely a servant of the happiness of
the individual. We need knowledge of physics because the knowledge of
natural causes will free us from the fears attending religion. Physics
has no independent importance.
Epicurus undertook to support his doctrine of individualism by the
scientific theory of Democritus. The materialistic theory of the
great Abderite seems to loom large in the exposition of Epicurus.
But Epicurus was not interested in the science of physics――not even
in the physics of Democritus. He did not build his theory on the
teaching of Democritus, but on the contrary he used the Democritan
doctrine to support his theory of moral conduct. Epicurus needed a
well-authenticated theory. On account of the influence of Lucretius’
poem, Epicurus has been called in modern times the scientist of
antiquity. But his only contribution to science was that, finding the
atomism of Democritus ready at hand although unpopular, he made it
popular by adjusting it to his own purposes.
The Democritan conception that Being is matter consisting of
innumerable uncreated and indestructible atoms furnished Epicurus this
support for his moral atomism. He followed Democritus in his analysis
of psychological, physiological, and astronomical phenomena――all
are atoms in combinations. But he lacked scientific insight and the
Democritan doctrine was emasculated in his hands. The central and
fundamental principle of Democritus’ theory was the universal reign
of law. This the Stoics adopted and this Epicurus neglected. Epicurus
was impressed by the changes of the atoms in the Democritan theory; the
Stoics by the law of such change.
This appears in the teaching of Epicurus in two ways. The first
example is in his explanation of the origin of the cosmos. Democritus
had conceived that irregular motion was an inherent quality of the
atoms and that the universe was produced by their combinations in a
purely mechanical way. Epicurus conceived that the original movement of
the atoms was in a straight line from above downwards. This he called
the “rain of atoms.” To explain their intermingling he conceived them
to be endowed with volition by which they arbitrarily deviated from
the direct fall. Secondly, this physical theory of Epicurus would be
unimportant except that it afforded him a basis for his theory of the
individual as possessing free will. The doctrine of freedom of the will
had been since Aristotle a presupposition indispensable to the doctrine
of moral accountability among the Greeks. The Stoic doctrine of fate
is an exception. But determinism was opposed to Epicurus’ conception
of the Wise Man as an independent individual. The human will is
self-determined, and Epicurus even said that he preferred the illusions
of religion to a belief in our slavery to fate. He classed freedom
and chance together as uncaused occurrence, and out of the combination
built his conception of freedom. The uncaused functioning of the will
in man is the same as the causeless deviation of the atoms. Freedom
is the choice between different possibilities and is determined by no
cause. The Stoics alone among the philosophers of this time are the
forerunners of the study of physics.
Epicurus introduced the conception of volition of the atoms to
account for the origin of the cosmos. From that point he conceived the
world to develop in a mechanical way. Teleology in the nature world
was repugnant to him. By modifying the Democritan physics, he thus
succeeded in establishing the independence of the individual in the
social world and, on the other hand, removing the gods from interfering
in the physical world. This seemed to Epicurus to afford an absolute
deliverance from superstition. The important points of the physical
theory of Epicurus are these: (1) the freedom of the atoms in motion;
(2) and yet their mechanical development; (3) the atomic character of
the gods; (4) the scattering of the atoms of the soul at death, which
frees us from the fear of Hades.