EPICUREANISM.
The Epicurean school arose at Athens, almost contemporaneously with the
Porch, though perhaps a little earlier than this. Epicurus, its founder,
was born 342 B.C., six years after the death of Plato. Of his youth and
education little is known. In his thirty-sixth year he opened a
philosophical school at Athens, over which he presided till his death,
271 B.C. His disciples and adherents formed a social league, in which
they were united by the closest band of friendship, illustrating the
general condition of things in Greece after the time of Alexander, when
the social took the place of the decaying poetical life. Epicurus
himself compared his society to the Pythagorean fraternity, although the
community of goods, which forms an element in the latter, Epicurus
excludes, affirming that true friends can confide in one another. The
moral conduct of Epicurus has been repeatedly assailed but, according to
the testimony of the most reliable witnesses, his life was blameless in
every respect, and his personal character was estimable and amiable.
Moreover, it cannot be doubted that much of that, which is told by some,
of the offensive voluptuousness of the Epicurean band, should be
regarded as calumny. Epicurus was a voluminous writer, surpassing, in
this respect, even Aristotle, and exceeded by Chrysippus alone. To the
loss of his greater works he has himself contributed, by his practice of
composing summaries of his system, which he recommended his disciples to
commit to memory. These summaries have been for the most part preserved.
The end which Epicurus proposed to himself in science is distinctly
revealed in his definition of philosophy. He calls it an activity which,
by means of conceptions and arguments, procures the happiness of life.
Its end is, therefore, with him essentially a practical one, and on this
account the object of his whole system is to produce a scheme of morals
which should teach us how we might inevitably attain a happy life. It is
true that the Epicureans adopted the usual division of philosophy into
logic, which they called canonics, physics, and ethics; but they
confined logic to the doctrine of the criterion of truth, and considered
it only as an instrument and introduction to physics, while they only
treated of physics as existing wholly for ethics, and being necessary in
order to free men from superstitious fear, and deliver them from the
power of fables and mythical fancies concerning nature, which might
hinder the attainment of happiness. We have therefore in Epicureanism
the three old parts of philosophy, but in a reversed order, since logic
and physics here stand as the handmaids of ethics. We shall confine
ourselves in our exposition to the latter, since the Epicurean canonics
and physics offer little scientific interest, and since the physics
especially is not only very incomplete and without any internal
connection, but rests entirely upon the atomic theory of Democritus.
Epicurus, like Aristotle and the other philosophers of his day, placed
the highest good in happiness, or a happy life. More closely he makes
pleasure to be the principal constituent of happiness, and even calls it
the highest good. But Epicurus goes on to give a more accurate
determination of pleasure, and in this he differs essentially from his
predecessors, the Cyrenians. (_cf._ § XIII. 3.)
1. While with Aristippus the pleasure of the moment is made the end of
human efforts, Epicurus directs men to strive after a system of
pleasures which should insure an abiding course of happiness for the
whole life. _True_ pleasure is thus the object to be considered and
weighed. Many a pleasure should be despised because it will result in
pain, and many a pain should be rejoiced in because it would lead to a
greater pleasure.
2. Since the sage will seek after the highest good, not simply for the
present but for his whole life, he will hold the pleasures and pains of
the soul, which like memory and hope stretch over the past and the
future, in greater esteem than those of the body, which relate only to
the present moment. The pleasure of the soul consists in the untroubled
tranquillity of the sage, who rests secure in the feeling of his inner
worth and his exaltation above the strokes of destiny. Thus Epicurus,
would say that it is better to be miserable but rational than to be
happy and irrational, and that the wise man might be happy though in
torture. He would even affirm, like a true follower of Aristotle, that
pleasure and happiness were most closely connected with virtue, that
virtue is in fact inseparable from true pleasure, and that there can be
no agreeable life without virtue, and no virtue without an agreeable
life.
3. While other Hedonists would regard the most positive and intense
feeling of pleasure as the highest good, Epicurus, on the other hand,
fixed his eye on a happiness which should be abiding and for the whole
life. He would not seek the most exquisite enjoyments in order to attain
to a happy life, but he rather recommends one to be satisfied with
little, and to practise sobriety and temperance of life. He guards
himself against such a false application of his doctrine as would imply
that the pleasure of the debauchee were the highest good, and boasts
that with a little barley-bread and water he would rival Zeus in
happiness. He even expresses an aversion for all costly pleasures, not,
however, in themselves, but because of the evil consequences which they
entail. True, the Epicurean sage need not therefore live as a Cynic. He
will enjoy himself where he can without harm, and will even seek to
acquire means to live with dignity and ease. But though all these
enjoyments of life may properly belong to the sage, yet he _can_ deprive
himself of them without misery—though he _ought_ not to do so—since he
enjoys the truest and most essential pleasure in the calmness of his
soul and the tranquillity of his heart. In opposition to the positive
pleasure of some Hedonists, the theory of Epicurus expends itself in
negative conceptions, representing that freedom from pain is pleasure,
and that hence the activity of the sage should be prominently directed
to avoid that which is disagreeable. All that man does, says Epicurus,
is that he may neither suffer nor apprehend pain, and in another place
he remarks, that not to live is far from being an evil. Hence death, for
which men have the greatest terror, the wise man does not fear. For
while we live, death is not, and when death is, we are not; when it is
present we feel it not, for it is the end of all feeling, and that,
which by its presence cannot affect our happiness, ought not, when
thought of as a future, to trouble us. Here Epicurus must bear the
censure urged against him by the ancients, that he does not recognize
any positive end of life, and that the object after which his sage
should strive is a mere passionless state.
The crown of Epicurus’s view of the universe is his doctrine of the
gods, where he has carried over his ideal of happiness. To the gods
belong a human form, though without any fixed body or human wants. In
the void space they lead an undisturbed and changeless life, whose
happiness is incapable of increase. From the blessedness of the gods he
inferred that they had nothing to do with the management of our affairs,
for blessedness is repose, and on this account the gods neither take
trouble to themselves nor cause it to others. It may indeed be said that
these inactive gods of Epicurus, these indestructible and yet not fixed
forms, these bodies which are not bodies, have but an ill connection
with his general system, in which there is in fact no point to which his
doctrine of the gods can be fitly joined—but a strict scientific
connection is hardly the merit of this whole philosophy.