Epicurean Philosophy - The Big Picture

1. Session One

Welcome to the first session of this Introduction to Epicurean Philosophy.  We are going to begin by explaining some of the most important conclusions that Epicurus taught to his students, so that as we go forward with the history and details of the Epicurean School, you will more easily see how those details fit into the big picture.  

Lecture by Cassius:

Before we go further, it is worth hearing how the poet Lucretius himself described what Epicurus accomplished, in the opening lines of his poem on Epicurean philosophy:

Let's start out by briefly noting that most of the works of Epicurus in the ancient world have not survived to us today.  Almost all of the material we are going to discussi in this course is easily available on the internet from one of these four major sources, listed here in the order of their reliability:

1.  Book Ten of the Lives and Doctrines of the Major Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius.  This book contains most of what we know about the life of Epicurus, his three basic letters about his philosophy, and a list of his major doctrines.  This is the primary source of information about Epicurus, and it is easy for you to find a copy and read it yourself in English.  Tackling this without a background to give you the big picture can be very difficult, however, and one purpose of this course is to show you the forest before examining the many trees that you will find in Diogenes Laertius.
2. The Poem De Rerum Natura by Lucretius. Epicurus wrote a long book entitled "On Nature" which is now lost to the modern world.  In about 50 BC, however, a Roman by the name of Titus Lucretius Carus took "On Nature" and rewrote much of its material into the form of a poem.  This poem contains extensive information about Epicurean Physics and other aspects of the philosophy, but like Diogenes Laertius, it is very dense with details and allusions to Greek and Roman history and religion, and it is very difficult to get a lot out of reading the poem before you have a general understanding of the topics you will encounter.
3. The great Epicurean inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda. In the 2nd century AD, a wealthy Epicurean named Diogenes had the core teachings of the philosophy carved into a huge stone wall in the public square of his home city of Oinoanda, in what is now Turkey, so that any passerby could read them and be helped toward a good life. Large sections of this wall have been recovered and translated, and it stands as a major, direct source for Epicurean physics and ethics in its own right – not a secondhand report, but Epicurean doctrine stated by a convinced Epicurean for the general public.
4. The Works of Cicero, including "On Ends" and "On the Nature of the Gods."  These works contain a great deal of information about Epicurean ethics and views of divinity, but a major concern in reading Cicero is that he was a strong enemy of Epicurus, and his own arguments against the philosophy are hostile and not a reliable statement of what Epicureans actually believed. It is important, however, to distinguish Cicero's own voice from the voice he gives to his Epicurean characters: Torquatus, who presents the Epicurean position on ethics in "On Ends," and Velleius, who presents the Epicurean position on the gods in "On the Nature of the Gods," are both reliable statements of Epicurean doctrine, even though they appear inside a work whose author was working against that doctrine. You must frequently read between the lines to understand how the Epicureans themselves thought, as opposed to how the enemies of Epicurus tried to portray them.

Other fragments of Epicurean works remain, especially works by Philodemus, a later Epicurean, but these are generally in fragmentary form and must be read with great care – treat a clearly preserved statement from Philodemus as authoritative, but treat any reconstruction of a damaged or missing passage with real caution.

After you have attended this course you will be in a much better position to approach the original texts and understand how they fit into the big picture of Epicurean philosophy.

One more thing before we begin, about the order in which this outline proceeds. Epicurus organized his philosophy into three connected parts: first, how do we know anything at all (Canonics); second, what is actually true about the universe we live in (Physics); and third, given that knowledge and those facts, how should we live (Ethics). These are not three independent subjects to be studied in any order you like. Canonics comes first because you cannot even begin discussing what exists or how to live until you have settled what counts as a reliable basis for knowing anything. And Physics comes before Ethics because the conclusions about how to live only make sense once you know what kind of universe you are actually living in – that there are no supernatural gods to fear or appease, that this life is the only one you get, and that nature itself, not any god or abstract ideal, is what you must consult to find your standard for living well. Ethics answers the question of how to live, but Physics is what earns Epicurus the right to answer it the way he does.

And so we will begin with an outline of the major points taught by Epicurus.

(Listen to lecture above for discussion of each point.)

A Fundamental Outline of Key Conclusions of Epicurean Philosophy:

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. True Gods Would Be Self-Sufficient And Would Not Meddle In the Affairs Of Men
3. The Universe Operates Through Natural Processes, and Life Exists on Other Worlds Throughout the Universe
4. 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
5. The Universe Is Infinite In Size And There Are No "Gods" Outside Of it
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

2. Session One A

This is the section on perspectives