Epicurus

**Epicurus** (Samos, 341 BC – Athens, 270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher. He started a school of philosophy called Epicureanism.

## Life

As a boy he studied philosophy under the Platonist teacher Pamphilus for about four years. At the age of 18 he went to Athens for his two-year term of military service. Epicurus never married and had no children, so far as we know.

## Teachings

Epicurus helped in the development of science and the scientific method because he said that nothing should be believed except what we can test through direct observation and logical deduction. His ideas about nature and physics hinted at scientific concepts developed in modern times.

## Works

Epicurus' only surviving complete works are three letters, which can be found in book X of Diogenes Laertius' _Lives of Eminent Philosophers_, and two groups of quotes: the _Principal Doctrines_, reported as well in Diogenes' book X, and the _Vatican Sayings_, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library.

Many pieces of his thirty-seven volume treatise _On Nature_ have been found in the burnt papyrus fragments at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.

## Further reading

- Bailey C. (1928) _The Greek Atomists and Epicurus_, Oxford.
- Bakalis Nikolaos (2005) _Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments_, Trafford Publishing,
- Digireads.com _The Works of Epicurus_, January 2004.
- Eugene O’ Connor _The Essential Epicurus_, Prometheus Books, New York 1993.
- Edelstein _Epicureanism, Two Collections of Fragments and Studies_ Garland Publ. March 1987
- Farrington, Benjamin.  _Science and Politics in the Ancient World_, 2nd ed.  New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965.  A Marxist interpretation of Epicurus, the Epicurean movement, and its opponents.
- Gottlieb, Anthony.  _The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance_.  London: Penguin, 2001.
- Inwood, Brad, tr. _The Epicurus Reader_, Hackett Publishing Co, March 1994.
- Oates Whitney Jenning, _The Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius_, Random House, 9th printing 1940.
- Panicha, George A. _Epicurus_, Twayne Publishers, 1967
- Prometheus Books, _Epicurus Fragments_, August 1992.
- Russel M. Geer Letters, _Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings_, Bobbs-Merrill Co, January 1964.
- _Diogenes of Oinoanda. The Epicurean Inscription_, edited with Introduction, Translation and Notes by Martin Ferguson Smith, Bibliopolis, Naples 1993.

## Other websites

- Epicurus.info  – Epicurean Philosophy Online: features classical e-texts & photos of Epicurean artifacts.
- Epicurus.net  – Epicurus and Epicurean Philosophy
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Entry for "Epicurus"
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Entry for "Epicurus"
- Epicurus & Lucretius – Small article by "P. Dionysius Mus"
- _The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature_ – Karl Marx’s doctoral thesis.
- "Epicurus on Happiness"  – A documentary about the philosophy of Epicurus.
- Principal Doctrines
- Vatican Sayings
- The Garden of Epicurus – useful summary of the teachings of Epicurus
- Letters
    - Letter to Herodotus
    - Letter to Pythocles
    - Letter to Menoeceus

## Infobox (philosopher)

- **name**: Epicurus
- **image**: Epicurus bust2.jpg
- **caption**: Roman marble bust of Epicurus
- **region**: Western philosophy
- **era**: Ancient philosophy
- **birth date**: February 341 BC
- **birth place**: Samos
- **death date**: 270 BC
- **death place**: Classical Athens, Athens
- **school tradition**: Epicureanism, atomism, materialism, hedonism
- **main interests**: Physics, ethics, epistemology
- **influences**: Democritus, Pyrrho
- **influenced**: Seneca the Younger, Hermarchus, Lucretius, Thomas Hobbes, Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, Kant, Jeremy Bentham, Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Michel Onfray, Onfray, Hadrian, Metrodorus of Lampsacus (the younger), Metrodorus, David Hume, Philodemus, Amafinius, Catius, Michel Foucault, Pierre Gassendi, Gassendi, Han Ryner
- **notable ideas**: Pleasure principle (psychology), Pleasure principle,
the "moving"/"static" pleasures distinction,
_ataraxia_, _aponia_, clinamen, atomic swerve