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A Recap of the Big Picture

1. Conclusion - A Recap of the Big Picture

Thank you for your time and participation in this course.  If you are still with us, you should now have a basic understanding of the most important conclusions that Epicurus taught to his students.  You are now in a position to know whether you wish to forward with your study of Epicurus, or whether you prefer some other path.  Our topic in this session will be to summarize what you have learned and to answer any questions you may have about the material we have covered.

Here again, is the Fundamental Outline of Key Conclusions of Epicurean Philosophy with which we began:

  1. The Universe Operates on Natural Principles And There Are No Supernatural Gods
    1. Gods Are Never Observed to Create Something From Nothing Or Destroy Anything to Nothing
    2. The Universe Operates Through Natural Processes Based On Combinations Of Matter And Void
    3. The Universe As A Whole Is Eternal And Was Never Created From Nothing – as Epicurus himself put it:

      “The totality of things was always such as it is now, and always will be, since there is nothing into which it changes, and since beside the totality there is nothing which could pass into it and produce the change.”

      Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus 39
    4. The Universe Is Infinite In Size And There Are No "Gods" Outside Of it
    5. True Gods Would Be Self-Sufficient And Would Not Meddle In the Affairs Of Men
  2. There Is No Life After Death
    1. All Things In The Universe Which Come Together Eventually Break Apart
    2. The Soul Is Born With The Body And Cannot Survive Without It
    3. Death Is The End of All Sensation, And There Is No Consciousness Without Sensation – in Epicurus's own words:

      “Death is nothing to us. For what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.”

      Principal Doctrine 2
    4. There Is After Death No Heaven or Hell For Reward or Punishment
    5. Life Is Short And Therefore Our Time Is Too Precious To Waste
  3. The Guide of Life is Pleasure
    1. Pleasure, Along With Pain, Is A Feeling, One Of The Three Standards Of Truth
    2. Pleasure and Pain Include All Types of Physical And Mental Experiences
    3. The Mental Pleasures And Pains Are Frequently More Intense Than The Physical
    4. Feelings Of Pleasure Are Desirable And Serve As The Guide of Life – or as Lucretius calls it,

      “Divine pleasure, the guide of life.”

      Lucretius, De Rerum Natura II.172
    5. Pain Is To Be Avoided But Is Accepted For The Sake of Greater Pleasure Or Lesser Pain
    6. Nature gives us exactly two feelings, pleasure and pain, with no third, neutral feeling standing between them. This is why freedom from pain is not some separate, lesser condition waiting for pleasure to arrive – it is pleasure, actually and fully present, because pain and pleasure between them leave no third possibility unaccounted for.
  4. The Goal of Life Is Happiness
    1. Happiness Is a Life In Which Pleasure Predominates Over Pain
    2. If We Have Happiness We Have All We Need; If We Lack Happiness We Do Everything To Gain It
    3. There Is No Absolute Virtue, Piety, Reason, Or Justice To Serve As the Goal of Life
    4. Virtue, Piety, Reason and Justice Are Valuable Only Insofar As They Bring Happiness
    5. All Actions Are To Be Judged According To Whether They Bring Happiness
    6. As the Epicurean Diogenes of Oinoanda put it, carving his words into a public wall for any passerby to read:

      “I affirm now and always, with a great shout to all Greeks and foreigners, pleasure is the end of the best lifestyle, while the virtues... are in no way the end, but the means to the end.”

      Diogenes of Oinoanda, Fragment 32
    7. Pleasure and happiness are not two different things related as means to end. They are the same thing, described at two different scales: pleasure is what we experience moment by moment, and happiness is the name for what a whole life adds up to when pleasure predominates over pain across it. Pursuing pleasure correctly, understood this way, is not a step on the way to some further goal called happiness – it is already the pursuit of happiness itself.
  5. The Standards of Truth Are the Senses, The Anticipations, and the Feelings, Assisted By Reason
    1. He Who Argues That Nothing Can Be Known Contradicts His Own Argument
    2. Reasoning Is Based On The Senses And Is Not Valid Without Them
    3. The Sensations Are Without Reason, Incapable of Memory, And Do Not Inject Error Through Opinion
    4. The Reality Of Separate Sensations Is the Guarantee of The Truth Of Our Senses
    5. Not Only Reason, But Life Itself, Fails Unless We Have the Courage To Trust The Senses