Epicurus,

Epicureanism

and

Epicureans

This term has two distinct, though cognate, meanings. In its popular sense, the

word stands for a refined and calculating selfishness, seeking not power or fame,

but the pleasures of sense, particularly of the palate, and those in company

rather than solitude. An epicure is one who is extremely choice and delicate in

his viands. In the other sense, Epicureanism signifies a philosophical system,

which includes a theory of conduct, of nature, and of mind.

HISTORY

Epicurus, from whom this system takes its name, was a Greek, born at Samos

341 B.C., who, in 307 B.C., founded a school at Athens, and died 270 B.C. The

Stoic School, diametrically opposite to this, was founded about the same time,

probably 310 B.C. Thus these two systems, having for their respective

watchwords Pleasure and Duty, sprang up within the first generation after

Aristotle (d. 322 B.C.), each of them holding a half-truth and by exaggeration

turning it into falsehood. The Epicurean School was rather a practical discipline

than a habit of speculation. The master laid down his principles dogmatically, as

if they must be evident as soon as stated, to any one not foolish. His disciples

were made to learn his maxims by heart; and they acquired a spirit of unity more

akin to that of a political party, or of a sect, than to the mere intellectual

agreement of a school of philosophers. About a century and a quarter after the

death of its founder, the system was introduced into Rome, and there, as well as

in its native country, it attracted in the course of time a number of adherents

such as moved the astonishment of Cicero. It had the fortune to be adopted by

the finest of didactic poets, Lucretius (91-51 B.C.), and was expounded by him in

a poem (De rerum naturâ) with a beauty of expression and a fervour of eloquence

worthy of a nobler theme. In the latter half of the second century, when Marcus

Aurelius was founding chairs of philosophy at Athens, that emperor, himself a

Stoic, recognized the Epicurean (together with his own, and the Platonic, and the

Aristotelic systems) as one of the four great philosophies to be established and

endowed on a footing of equality. In modern times Epicureanism has had many

theoretical as well as practical adherents. In the seventeenth century, when

Aristoteleanism and Scholasticism were assailed by the champions of the new

sciences, Gassendi (q.v.) selected Epicurus for his master; but he seems to

have been attracted chiefly by the physics, and to have aimed at reforming the

moral theory so as to make it tolerable to a Christian. The numerous editions of

the poem of Lucretius which the present age is producing may be taken to

indicate a sympathy with the philosophy expounded in it.

EPICUREAN ETHICS

Philosophy was described by Epicurus as "the art of making life happy", and he

says that "prudence is the noblest part of philosophy". His natural philosophy

and epistemology seem to have been adopted for the sake of his theory of life. It

is, therefore, proper that his ethics should first be explained. The purpose of life,

according to Epicurus, is personal happiness; and by happiness he means not

that state of well-being and perfection of which the consciousness is

accompanied by pleasure, but pleasure itself. Moreover, this pleasure is

sensuous, for it is such only as is attainable in this life. This pleasure is the

immediate purpose of every action. "Habituate yourself", he says,

to think that death is nothing to us; for all good and evil is in

feeling; now death is the privation of feeling. Hence, the right

knowledge that death is nothing to us makes us enjoy what there

is in this life, not adding to it an indefinite duration, but eradicating

the desire of immortality.

His idea of the pleasurable differs from that of the Cyrenaic School which

preceded him. The Cyrenaics looked to the momentary pleasures of gaiety and

excitement. The pleasure of Epicurus is a state, equably diffused, "the absence

of [bodily] pain and [mental] anxiety".

That which begets the pleasurable life is not [sensual indulgence]

but a sober reason which searches for the grounds of choosing and

rejecting, and which banishes those doctrines through which

mental trouble, for the most part, arises.

The wise man will accordingly desire "not the longest life, but the most

pleasurable". It is for the sake of this condition of permanent pleasure, or

tranquillity, that the virtues are desirable. "We cannot live pleasurably without

living prudently, gracefully, and justly; and we cannot live prudently gracefully,

and justly, without living pleasurably" in consequence; for "the virtues are by

nature united with a pleasurable life; and a pleasurable life cannot be separated

from these." The virtues, in short, are to be practiced not for their own sake, but

solely as a means of pleasure, "as medicine is used for the sake of health". In

accordance with this view, he says that "friendship is to be pursued by the wise

man only for its utility; but he will begin, as he sows the field in order to reap".

"The wise man will not take any part in public affairs"; moreover, "the wise man

will not marry and have children". But "the wise man will be humane to his

slaves". "He will not think all sinners to be equally bad, nor all philosophers to be

equally good." That is, apparently, he will not have any very exacting standard,

and will neither believe very much in human virtue, nor be very much surprised at

the discovery of human frailty. In this system, "prudence is the source of all

pleasure and of all virtue".

The defects of this theory of life are obvious. In the first place, as to the matter of

fact, experience shows that happiness is not best attained by directly seeking it.

The selfish are not more happy, but less so, than the unselfish. In the next place

the theory altogether destroys virtue as virtue, and eliminates the idea and

sentiment expressed by the words "ought", "duty", "right", and "wrong". Virtue,

indeed tends to produce the truest and, highest pleasure; all such pleasure, so

far as it depends upon ourselves, depends upon virtue. But he who practises

virtue for the sake of the pleasure alone is selfish, not virtuous, and he will never

enjoy the pleasure, because he has not the virtue. A similar observation may be

made upon the Epicurean theory of friendship. Friendship for the sake of

advantage is not true friendship in the proper sense of the word. External actions,

apart from affection, cannot constitute friendship; that affection no one can feel

merely because he judges it would be advantageous and pleasurable; in fact he

cannot know the pleasure until he first feels the affection. If we consider the

Epicurean condemnation of patriotism and of the family life, we must pronounce

a still severer censure. Such a view of life is the meanest form of selfishness

leading in general to vice. Epicurus, perhaps, was better than his theory; but the

theory itself, if it did not originate in coldness of heart and meanness of spirit,

was extremely well suited to encourage them. If sincerely embraced and

consistently carried out, it undermined all that was chivalrous and heroic, and

even all that was ordinarily virtuous. Fortitude and justice, as such, ceased to be

objects of admiration, and temperance sank into a mere matter of calculation.

Even prudence itself, dissociated from all moral quality became a mere balancing

between the pleasures of the present and of the future.

THEOLOGY

Epicurus said that "it was not impiety to deny the gods of the multitude, but it

was impiety to think of the gods as the multitude thought"; a sound principle, but

one which he wrongly applied, since he got rid of what was true as well as of

what was corrupt in the vulgar religion. Fear of the gods was an evil to be

eradicated, as incompatible with tranquillity. As to their nature, the gods are

immortal, but material, like every other being. He seems to have held that there

was one supreme being; but this god was not the creator, scarcely the orderer,

of the universe, the gods being only a part of the All. Nor is there a Providence,

for an interest in human affairs would be inconsistent with perfect happiness. In

short, the gods are magnified Epicurean philosophers.

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

The physics of Epicurus are in a General sense atomic. He claimed originality for

his theory, asserting that it began with his reflections upon a passage in Hesiod.

As he read in school that all things came from chaos, he asked, What is

chaos?--a question which his teacher could not answer. It is generally held,

however, that he really learned his atomism from the Democritean philosophy,

modifying it in one important respect; for he supposes that the atoms in falling

through empty space collide by virtue of a self-determining power, or rather an

indetermination owing to which ii is possible for them by chance to swerve a little

from the vertical direction.

BIOLOGY

In this Epicurus simply followed the view of Empedocles, that, first, all sorts of

living things and animals, well or ill organized, were evolved from the earth and

that those survived which were suited to preserve themselves and reproduce their

kind.

ANTHROPOLOGY

The anthropology of Lucretius may be supposed to have been derived, like his

physics and biology, from Epicurus. According to the Lucretian theory men were

originally savage; the primitive condition was one of mutual war; in this condition

men were like the wild beasts in strength and cunning; civil society was formed

under the pressure of the evils of anarchy. The reader recognizes here the ideas

indicated by the eighteenth-century phrases "state of nature" and "social

contract". The "golden age" is a dream.

LOGIC

The Epicurean logic is criterional. The test of truth practically is the pleasant and

the painful belief. Theoretically, their criterion is sensation. Sensation never is

deceptive; the error lies in our judgment. Dreams, the ravings of fever or lunacy,

the delirium of the drunkard are true in their own way. Besides sensation the

human mind has also notions, or anticipations (prolépseis), as when, seeing an

object at a distance, one wonders whether it is a man or a tree. These notions

are the results left by previous sensations. The notion does not appear to differ

from the internal sense of a brute, such as enables a dog, for example, to

welcome strangers belonging to the profession of his master, and to bark

furiously at a beggar that he has never seen before. The understanding, then,

does not differ essentially from the internal senses.

PSYCHOLOGY

The human soul is material and mortal, being composed of a finer kind of atoms,

resembling those of air or fire, but even more subtle. It is the bodily organism that

holds together the atoms composing the soul. Yet the human will is free. "Better

were it to accept all the legends of the gods, than to make ourselves slaves to

the fate of the natural philosophers." Fatalism, which to minds of a stoical

disposition seemed a source of strength, was to those of an Epicurean temper

simply a source of unpleasantness and helplessness. The freedom asserted by

the Epicureans is not rational freedom in the true sense of the word. It does not

consist in the power of choosing the right and the noble in preference to the

pleasant. It is little better than physical contingency, and may be described as

Casualism. The whole philosophy may well be described in a trenchant phrase of

Macaulay as "the silliest and meanest of all systems of natural and moral

philosophy".

M.J. Ryan

Transcribed by Rick McCarty

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume V

Nihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor

Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

The Catholic Encyclopedia: NewAdvent.org