The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia

by Epicurus, Brad Inwood, Lloyd P. Gerson

Contents include:

An Introduction, The ancient biography of Epicurus, The extant letters, Ancient collections of maxims, Doxographical reports, The testimony of Cicero, The testimony of Lucretius, & The polemic of Plutarch.

Short fragments and testimonia from known works: From On Nature, From the Puzzles, From On the Goal, From the Symposium, From Against Theophrastus, & Fragments of Epicurus’ letters.

Short fragments and testimonia from uncertain works: Logic and epistemology, Physics and theology, Ethics.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Classics, Ancient History, Ancient, Classical Studies

132 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 1994

About the author

Epicurus (Greek: Ἐπίκουρος, Epikouros, "upon youth"; Samos, 341 BCE – Athens, 270 BCE; 72 years) was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works. Much of what is known about Epicurean philosophy derives from later followers and commentators.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by aponia, the absence of pain and fear, and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of the body and the soul and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, both Athenian citizens, had immigrated to the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos about ten years before Epicurus' birth in February 341 BCE. As a boy he studied philosophy for four years under the Platonist teacher Pamphilus. At the age of 18 he went to Athens for his two-year term of military service. The playwright Menander served in the same age-class of the ephebes as Epicurus.

After the death of Alexander the Great, Perdiccas expelled the Athenian settlers on Samos to Colophon. After the completion of his military service, Epicurus joined his family there. He studied under Nausiphanes, who followed the teachings of Democritus. In 311/310 BC Epicurus taught in Mytilene but caused strife and was forced to leave. He then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens in 306 BC. There he founded The Garden, a school named for the garden he owned about halfway between the Stoa and the Academy that served as the school's meeting place.

Even though many of his teachings were heavily influenced by earlier thinkers, especially by Democritus, he differed in a significant way with Democritus on determinism. Epicurus would often deny this influence, denounce other philosophers as confused, and claim to be "self-taught".

Epicurus never married and had no known children. He suffered from kidney stones, to which he finally succumbed in 270 BCE at the age of 72, and despite the prolonged pain involved, he wrote to Idomeneus:

"I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the young man to me, and to philosophy."

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus

Reviews

[Christopher Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Epicurus proposed that right and wrong be defined in terms of what brings you "pleasure." He really meant lasting "happiness," not temporary "pleasure." This unfortunate word choice has forever tarnished his reputation, as he has become known as the philosopher of hedonism and self-indulgence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Epicurus actually advised against indulgence in temporary pleasures such as sex and feasting, which are ultimately unsustainable. Lasting pleasure comes from the security of a more temperate and realistic life. This philosophy has a lot in common with the "middle way" of Buddhism and the "Hakuna Matata" of Timon and Pumbaa. One achieves happiness by cultivating realistic expectations and emotional security (ataraxia).

The chief obstacle to happiness, according to Epicurus, is fear—especially fear of the gods, fear of death, and fear of pain. Epicurus's prescription for reducing these fears was to develop a more realistic view of each of these things. The god-beliefs of the various religions are obviously nonsense, so no need to worry about that. Dead people don't know, feel, or regret that they're dead—it doesn't hurt to be dead—so no reason to worry about that. Pain's a bit more difficult, but you can avoid a lot of pain just by living a temperate lifestyle, and there are ways of coping with it once it comes along, so no sense torturing yourself with worry in the meantime. Anyway, the idea is that once you correct your thinking on these issues, you'll be free to live a happy life.

Interestingly, this prescription for fear is very similar to modern Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which seeks to replace negative thoughts with realistic thoughts. If Epicurus could see the state of the field of psychology today, I think he'd feel vindicated and would be quick to adopt other forms of evidence-based clinical practice.

It's worth pointing out that Epicurus basically plagiarized his entire philosophy from Democritus, something his own contemporaries noticed and criticized him for. Democritus seems to have been the better philosopher, but Epicurus was a better popularizer, so he's the one who's gone down in history as the originator of these ideas. Credit where credit's due, Demmy.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I write this for you, not for the many; for we are for each other a sufficiently big audience.” (82)

We only have a scattering of extant letters and fragments now, but Epicurus was a productive and prolific philosopher. “His main treatise on natural philosophy ran to a staggering thirty-seven volumes.” (xii) Epicurus lived and breathed philosophy, running a school, sending letters, eating and talking with his friends. Because so little of his work survives, and because so much of what we know about him comes from interpreters and critics of Epicurus, it feels a little weird to talk about what he thought. Only about half of this text contains direct quotations from Epicurus. But his ethical system was simple enough that it can be captured in a few lines, like so:

“Pleasure is the starting-point and goal of living blessedly.” (30) This does not mean that every pleasure is to be pursued and every pain is to be avoided: some actions may bring us pleasure at first but later do us harm, either because the consequences are physically painful or because we live in fear of social judgement. Likewise, some things may be painful in the short-term but reap benefits later on. The pleasant life is brought about through sober calculation (31). The principle of this is prudence, “for prudence is the source of all the other virtues, teaching that it is impossible to live pleasantly without living prudently, honourably, and justly, and impossible to live prudently, honourably, and justly without living pleasantly.” Therefore, despite the modern connotations, Epicureanism is not a hedonism. It is, in fact, a reasoned calculation of gains and losses, keeping always in mind the social dimension of our actions. Egoists who feel uneasy having no justification at all for their actions may find a friend in Epicurus.

Epicurus is well aware that death looms large in the human mind. As the event horizon of all possibility, death threatens to drive us to irrational extremes, lead us into illusions and error, and compel us to look for meaning outside of the immediate contours of our lives. Hence Epicurus’ famous dictum: “Death is nothing to us.” (29) Transcendence is not an easy thing to shake, and this is not a mantra we can simply say to ourselves once and understand at once. We have to “get used to believing” it. Everyone knows intellectually that “when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist”, but it is another thing to believe it. But one who believes this finds there is nothing to fear, and nor is there anything to despise. The mortality of life becomes “a matter for contentment, not by adding a limitless time [to life] but by removing the longing for immortality.” Contrast this with the petty worries of modern immortalists, who spend their time hoping for an imagined future where their consciousnesses will frolic for ever in virtual worlds, even as they ignore the immanent joy of now.

Instead of developing the Buddhist contempt for life, Epicurus tells us: “The wise man neither rejects life nor fears death. For living does not offend him, nor does he believe not living to be something bad. And just as he does not unconditionally choose the largest amount of food but the most pleasant food, so he savours not the longest time but the most pleasant.” (29) And Epicurus condemns the one who says it would be better to have never been born as worse than simple-minded. After all, it is easy enough to kill yourself and be done with the whole sordid affair. I didn’t find this wholly convincing, smacking as it does of the contemporary anti-nihilist rebuke: “Well, if you think life is meaningless, why don’t you just kill yourself?” As Tolstoy noted in A Confession, one can be aware of the total worthlessness of life, know that suicide is the sensible thing to do, yet be too cowardly to end it. And that’s the problem: once we are here, we are here, and we cannot be unborn. It seems we are instinctively drawn to life’s pleasures and horrified at life’s brevity. Buddha noted that it was this quality of life, this sense of attachment to life despite its pains, that causes us to suffer. Withdrawal from all things is the only solution. In Epicurus’ work, this knowledge is defused but still apparent, as he tells us essentially to make do with the minimal amount of attachment for the sake of pleasure, and no more. Both do away with the false solution of unbridled hedonism, but we are left with a pertinent question: Buddha or Epicurus? Do we withdraw or make do? Of course, this isn’t a question with an answer. Each will know their own.

Epicurus’ physics generally only interests the modern reader as a point of curiosity, and even then Epicurean atomism is brought out more clearly and more vividly by Lucretius in On the Nature of the Universe than in the few surviving fragments collected together in this text. I don’t know if it’s due to corruption of the original source, the difficulty of translation, or simply that these fragments aren’t very well written, but I was left scratching my head in bewilderment while reading the Letter to Herodotus (which summarises Epicurean physics) in a way that I largely wasn’t when reading Lucretius. Cicero’s criticisms of atomism, especially the notion of the swerve, are amusing and powerful, though keep an eye out for his bizarre affirmation both of human free will and the utter iron-clad certainty of fate. One of the stranger squared circles in this book.

One could do worse than to memorise Epicurus’ maxims, but if you must only take one with you, I favour not Epicurus, but Philodemus, whose ‘four-part cure’ features as the exergue:

Don’t fear god,
Don’t worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure.

[Will Spohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read “De Rerum Naturae” by Lucretius made this an interesting read, seeing the connections between the two. Lucretius definitely makes the ideas more palatable, but they are both still interesting in their own respects. Like with Lucretius, I found their materialism to be the most interesting aspect of their philosophy, but the text also include critiques and polemics against the Epicureans, which was also of interest. It certainly showed how flawed but also how correct the Epicureans were about the world.

I found one quote particularly interesting: “One must not pretend to philosophize, but philosophize in reality. For we do not need the semblance of health but true health.” This reminded me of Marx’s 11th thesis in the “Theses on Feurbach,” that “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” I also found interesting a passage where Epicurus discusses justice. He says essentially that justice is linked to the “objective circumstances,” and that justice changes as the “objective circumstances” do. This seems to me similar to Marx’s idea of the base-superstructure. Basically, I can see how Epicurus’ materialism influenced later materialism.

[B. Rule · Rating 5 out of 5]

This opens with the tetrapharmakos like a punch in the face: four claims that fly in the face of received wisdom but once accepted, offer a cure for the human condition. It's bitter medicine indeed though: Epicurus may be the most radical and proto-modern of ancient philosophers, as he's willing to throw out interventionist gods, the immortal soul, and pretty much all creature comforts on the way to contentment. You'll own nothing but a barley-cake and some water, and you'll like it! Maybe a pot of cheese if you're lucky, as if the world would ever just hand you cheese.

Even the pursuit of virtue gets short shrift. You can pursue it if you like, but nothing in Epicurus's philosophical anthropology makes it a constitutive part of human flourishing. About the best justification he gives for it is that a guilty conscience might trouble your ataraxia. Same with political participation: there's no affirmative duty to do it in a universe composed purely of atoms and the void. Kind of funny then that this philosopher often denigrated as immoral seemed in fact to be one of the most friendly, cheerful people around, and his focus on friendship translated into philosophical communities that sound much more pleasant than the horrors that often arise from utopian social experiments (they didn't even make you give up your property!). Funnier still that his eponym promises gluttonous decadence when austerity was the program. Epicurus's definition of pleasure as the mere absence of pain is likely to leave the gourmand unsatisfied. Further, Epicurus declares that pleasure cannot be increased beyond pain's absence, only varied, rendering even more futile the hedonist's pursuit of increasingly baroque delights.

It's easy to see why Epicurus is attractive to modern scientifically-minded thinkers (and anathema to early Christians). His philosophy is probably the most consistently naturalistic account going. I do wonder if his epistemology reintroduces a transcendent subject though. He situates sense-perception outside the physical elements, which preserves its infallibility (one can have false opinions but not false sense-impressions). Even if the soul is transient and inseparable from the body, it does seem like there's something additive beyond atoms and extension to make the thing hang together.

Regardless, this slim volume is not just food for thought but a banquet of riches concealed in simple fare. Epicurus's radical approach blows open the idea of an ordered cosmos, upends the great chain of being in favor of an egalitarian ethic (what chance agglomeration of atoms can be better than another?), and sets the stage for the later triumph of the scientific method. His insistence that we can only list possible causes for meteorological phenomena opens the way for a naturalistic skepticism that prescinds from metaphysical foundations. Further, his doctrine of the atomic swerve seems to me to prefigure the probabilistic nature of reality uncovered by quantum indeterminacy. The possibilities of other, possibly infinite, worlds fires the imagination (as it did for people like Kant, not to mention current multiversal physics models).

The translations here are lucid and the collection of Epicurean material, exhaustive. It's a very slim volume but it gives great insight into how Epicurus was received in the ancient world, even as most of his corpus is lost to time. Highly recommended, especially if, like me, much of your secondhand knowledge comes from reading Stoics slagging him off. He's a much deeper, optimistic, and maybe scary thinker than many of his critics acknowledge.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson have done an excellent job editing and translating this volume. Very helpfully arranged. I cared less for the introduction by D. S. Hutchinson, who seemed very enthusiastic about modern applications of Epicureanism ("But you can be happy if you believe in the four basic truths of Epicureanism: there are no divine beings which threaten us; there is no next life; what we actually need is easy to get; what makes us suffer is easy to put up with."). Cicero would perhaps tell him—using words he used to comment on the Epicureans—"What an amazing audacity and what a wretched ignorance of logic!"

[saron · Rating 5 out of 5]

rewired my brain

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book, succint and insightful. I expected, perhaps, a little more out of it than what I got (which is to say, more Epicurus than what has derived from Epicurus), but I do understand the limitatations of the material in existence.

A good starting point for anyone who knows little about he who was one of the brilliant philosophers of Mankind. Overall insufficient for the reader looking something beyond the prosaic introductory.

[Valdemar Gomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great insights on epistemology and quite important studies on the atoms (physics in general) although always failing in some basic concepts that modern technology fucked him over.
Jurisprudencial foresight is quite good but fucks it all over with guilt and punishment.
All over a cool philosopher with some contradiction but ethically sound.

[Franz · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ancient hedonist, empiricist, and materialist somehow came pretty close to describing reality the way a modern physicist might while encouraging a way of life focused mainly on avoiding pain and nurturing friendships. His extant writings are few, but they are easy to follow and understand--assuming a good translation. In some ways, he is surprisingly contemporary.

[Joe Sabet · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started out with an engaging overview by a zealous scholar, but this ended too shortly. The pieces of writing here and there left over millennia are not a smooth read at times, but the editor did a good job including just about everything creditable left of his work. Too bad much was lost. The physics writings were not appealing to me, so that may taint my review. But in my opinion Epicurean philosophy has been studied and practiced over time because it is so practical, empowering and factual - the ethical part of the philosophy it seems to me. The physics and meteorological parts just seemed like primitive hogwash, ie early attempts at scientific reasoning. I guess I was misinformed thinking this book would answer most of my questions, but it does succeed in at least presenting the evidence of his work.

[Sinan Öner]

Epicurus was "a life philosopher" of the Ancient Greece. Epicurus' "materialism", Epicurus' "hedonism", Epicurus' "dialectics" are the sources of modern philosophical study. Epicurus' writings explain Epicurus' thoughts and impressions about the social life in his age. Epicurus was the reader of Platon, Aristoteles and Herakleitos, Epicurus' "atomism" in his physical understanding source from Democritus in a tradition. Epicurus' ethics is one of the source of modern ethics. For Epicurus, the happiness will be possible in a society which form a social peace, a social contract and a social friendship.

[Amarunta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always fond of picking up Hackett Classics book, because their book formats and editors usually do a very good job of making whatever book you're reading at the time more accessible and more interesting. The Epicurus Reader in this sense is no different than the rest of the Hackett Classics and it's also exactly what I was looking for in order to receive some sort of overview of Epicureanism. This is the go-to book for it, in my opinion.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

i wish more of his original writing survived. epicureanism makes me want to become gratitude granola girl. also this quote is lovely: “desires that are necessary bring about a feeling of pain when unfulfilled” (from the maxims). what desire does this for me??

[Gregory Klug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Epicurus rebuts some of Plato’s absurdities, such as the idea that pleasure is despicable; but also fails to embrace Plato’s insights, such as the idea that injustice is wrong even if the perpetrator is virtually guaranteed to escape detection. Throughout this collection of ancient texts and fragments of texts, there’s a lot of disputation about ancient physics, the nature of the gods, etc. that will be relevant only to specialists interested in the history of ideas, rather than practical guidance on how to live well as a 21st century human. The best summary of Epicurus’ ethical thought in his own words is the letter to Menoeceus, pg 28-31 in this volume.

[Benjamin Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

φinally, some good φucking φilosophy. after plato and aristotle, it’s wonderful to encounter an empiricist and a practical approach to ethics which does not resort to an imagined and seemingly completely circular invocation of purity. not to mention the humility to admit the limits of knowledge.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good.

[Andrew Roxby · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s not much left of Epicurus, but what is left is collected here, ably translated and endlessly thought provoking.

[Nilab]

assigned: [pp. 28-36, Letter to Menoeceus, Principle Doctrine]

[sam torres]

Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines

[Connor Von teichman. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the intro and was confused by the rest. Maybe I need to learn more Philosophy but was confused with the older texts

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone leaves life as though he had just been born.

[Blythe Hardy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved these. So interesting and a different type of take on a type is stoicism in a way.

[munazza · Rating 3 out of 5]

directed studies: the man who translated this literally taught ds last year and I wish we had him as a lecturer bc then I might’ve understood this more

[S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Epicurus's determining criterion for "good" vs. "bad" is whether something causes anxiety or not.
But in considering which actions will cause anxiety or won't one is filled with uncertainty and anxiety is created in trying to prevent the production of anxiety.

These are the sort of puzzles which Epicureanism produces when squeezed a little; needless to say I am not very impressed by his hedonic ethics. His physics is interesting but his atomism makes no damn sense. Likewise we are left to conclude that we should trust wholeheartedly our sense-data and the sun must be the same size that it appears.

Moreover Epicurus's consideration of the gods is simply an assertion. Maybe there is an argument somewhere in On Nature that has been lost but here his conclusions just stand as groundless assumptions. The same can be said of his consideration of death: it is nothing to be feared insofar as it is the cessation of sense-data and so is nothing. But how are we to know this? Perhaps our sense-data is stripped from us but we are still left in a horrible depression, rage, or aporia for eternity.

[Mark]

I wish the binding were better on this paperback-- feels flimsy-- but the translation is the smoothest-reading of the three I've encountered and it's tops for completeness. Make this one your first stop for Epicurus.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Epicurus is amazing. He got maligned by his enemies; his philosophy is not about partying and drinking up all the time. This is a really quick and eye-opening read. Highly recommended.

[LaMarx · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like him. I especially adore when he talks about friendship :)

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Epicurus is remarkably cheerful.