“Have those people gone mad who spread such tales about Epicurus?” - wrote the ancient Greek historian of philosophy. In fact, the idea of Epicureanism as permissiveness is a myth. Even St. Gregory the Theologian defended Epicurus as a chaste and decent person, and the Monk John of Damascus actually duplicates in his writings some provisions of the Greek philosopher... What was the philosophy of pleasure of Epicurus?
Barbarians are people too!
Philosophers of the Hellenistic era set themselves, first of all, ethical questions, of which the main one is about happiness.
Together with Epicurus, we are entering the period of Hellenistic philosophy that arose after the wars of conquest of Alexander the Great. The tasks set by the philosophers of this era are somewhat different than before: the Greek suddenly discovers that the world is actually huge. Previously, he lived in his cozy Greek world, sometimes faced with raids, and understood that the Greeks are people, and the rest are destined for the Greeks as slaves. These are the words of Aristotle: "the barbarian and the slave are by nature identical concepts." The rest of the peoples, according to the Greeks, cannot think freely, they have no philosophy - therefore they are not full-fledged people. And in the era of Hellenism, the Greeks suddenly discover the opposite: it turns out that the barbarians also have a culture, religion and science. And the other side of this discovery: the world is huge, and a person feels like a grain of sand in it. But in any case, a person wants to be happy, and therefore the tasks that the philosophers of the Hellenistic era set for themselves are, first of all, ethical tasks. Ontology, epistemology fade into the background, they are no longer interesting in themselves, but as a means to resolve the issues of good and evil - and above all.
These schools include the three most famous schools of the Hellenistic period: the schools of Epicurus, the Stoics, and the Skeptics.
Epicurus: overcoming fears
Biography of Epicurus is simple. He was born on the island of Samos, came to Athens little known at the age of about 35 and settled there. Since he was not an Athenian, he could not settle in Athens itself. So he bought himself a garden in the suburbs and set up his school in this garden. It is no coincidence that the school of Epicurus is often referred to simply by the word "Garden". Above its gates, Epicurus hung the words: “Guest, you will feel good here. Here pleasure is the highest good. We will talk about what pleasure is in the understanding of Epicurus a little later.
His philosophy has one goal: to make a person happy. That's what philosophy is for! “Let no one in his youth put off the study of philosophy, and in old age do not tire of the study of philosophy,” writes Epicurus. “Whoever says that it is too early or too late to engage in philosophy is like someone who says that it is too early or too late to be happy.”
Why is a person unhappy? Because he's afraid of everything! After all, says Epicurus, there are three kinds of fear: fear of nature, fear of the gods, and fear of death.
Fear of nature is solved through the study of physics: Epicurus, like Democritus, is sure that everything consists of atoms and emptiness, and therefore all natural phenomena are explained using atomic theory. A person is afraid of the incomprehensible, and when he knows that everything is caused by collisions of atoms, he is calmer.
Epicurus decides the fear of the gods in the following way. Who are the gods? The gods are creatures, firstly, immortal, and secondly, blissful. In our world, everything is destroyed, so immortal beings cannot live here - they live somewhere outside our world, and since there are many worlds - between these worlds. If they appeared in our world, they would become mortals - that's why they don't appear. And at the same time, the gods are blessed, and therefore we are not interesting to them. A person can only be afraid of someone who needs something from him. The gods have everything, and they don't need people. So our ideas about the gods, writes Epicurus, are completely wrong: there is no need to be afraid of the gods.
We never encounter death, because when we are alive, there is no death, and when it comes, then we will not be.
What about death? Death is also not to be feared. First, the soul also consists of atoms, and after death the atoms of the soul scatter in space. And secondly, we never encounter death, because when we are alive, there is no death, and when it comes, then we will not be! You can only be afraid of what you encounter.
Happiness is pleasure
The issue with fears is resolved, and Epicurus goes further and develops the positive aspect of his philosophy: it is not enough not to be afraid, this will only save us from misfortunes - we must strive for true happiness. Obviously, a person strives for pleasure, therefore, for him, happiness is pleasure. Therefore, you need to figure out which pleasures should be pursued and which ones should be avoided. “It is impossible to live happily without living intelligently,” Epicurus quite rightly remarks.
And what are the pleasures? The philosopher points out the existence of three types of pleasures:
- natural and necessary
- natural and unnecessary
- unnatural and unnecessary.
As a natural and necessary pleasure, Epicurus gives the following examples. When a person is thirsty, he needs to drink water, and this will be natural for him. When a person is hungry, he needs to eat; for this, simple food, say bread, is quite enough.
Epicurus calls a luxurious table natural and unnecessary pleasures. Let's say I'm thirsty - they give me water. I say: “Can I have kvass?” Drinking kvass is natural, but not necessary. You can also use plain water. You can get by with a simple piece of bread or porridge, a luxurious table is not necessary in order to satisfy your hunger.
Epicurus calls wreaths and honorary statues, that is, glory, an example of unnatural and unnecessary pleasures. Glory is completely unnatural for a person, does not correspond to his nature and is not a necessity for his life.
Why are people unhappy? Because they seek unnatural and unnecessary pleasures!
So why are people unhappy? Because they seek unnatural and unnecessary pleasures! “I am unknown, I have no fame” or “My table is not so chic, not so diverse,” they say. And if you want to be constantly in a state of blissful, happy spirit, then you should try to make do with only natural and necessary pleasures. It turns out - an elementary call to asceticism!
But how to understand the phrase on the gates of the Epicurean Garden: “Guest, you will feel good here. Here pleasure is the highest good. Imagine: a hot summer, a dusty road, a guest goes to Athens, is tired, hungry, thirsty, enters the Garden - one of Epicurus's friends meets him, offers him a cup of water and a bowl of plain porridge on the water, saying: “Be satisfied, quench your thirst and you will feel an inexplicable pleasure.” And it's a real pleasure.
Where did the myth come from?
The myth of the Epicureans as playboys is a monument to our sinful nature
And where did the myth about the Epicureans as chanters of peace, laziness and sensual pleasures come from? This myth is rather a monument to our sinful nature. Imagine: a person sees the words: "Here pleasure is the highest good." And what is pleasure in his understanding? These are booze, getters, a luxurious table. “Oh, no, no, I won’t go there,” this man thinks, and when he arrives in Athens, he says: “I was passing by the Garden of Epicurus - a nightmare is happening there, horror, debauchery, drunkenness!” And in Athens, indeed, the rumor is spreading that unbridled pleasure reigns in this place. Epicurus himself is said to vomit several times a day from overeating. Although, as the Greek historian of philosophy Diogenes Laertes honestly notes in his book “On the Life, Teachings and Sayings of Famous Philosophers”, “everyone who writes such things is nothing but crazy.”
In fact, Epicurus led a completely opposite lifestyle. By the way, St. Gregory the Theologian also writes about this, defending him as a chaste and decent person: “Epicurus,” he says, “although he tried hard to prove that pleasure is a reward for the exploits of virtue and that pleasure is the end of all good things for a person, nevertheless so as not to give the thought that pleasure praises pleasure for some kind of pleasure, he behaved decently and chastely in order to reinforce his teaching with good morals ”(“ On Humility, Chastity and Temperance ”). And in the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, the Monk John of Damascus, in the paragraph “On Pleasures”, in fact, in the same way as Epicurus, classifies all types of pleasures: natural and necessary, natural and not necessary, unnatural and not necessary. True, St. John of Damascus gives other examples. Natural and necessary - simple food, simple drink; natural and not necessary - these are sexual copulations that are natural for a person by his nature, but not necessary - we know many monastics who live in virginity; unnatural and unnecessary, according to John of Damascus, is just luxury, drunkenness and so on. “Therefore,” concludes the great saint, “he who lives in harmony with God must take necessary and at the same time natural pleasures, and put natural and unnecessary pleasures in second place, allowing them at the right time, and in the right way, and in the right measure.” . The rest of the pleasures should definitely be avoided.
I don’t know whether Saint John of Damascus read Epicurus (at that time it was not customary to refer to the source) or whether he himself classified pleasures in this way, but his terminology and classification exactly correspond to those of Epicurus ...
Hellenism- a historical era that began with the conquests of Alexander the Great (334-323 BC) and ended with the consolidation of the world domination of the Roman Empire (30 BC). At this time, thanks to the impulse given by Aristotle, there is a rapid development of natural science in philosophy, and interest in nature returns. And ethics, already having the status of a philosophical science, is again looking for its place in the system of knowledge. It is important to consider 2 major currents of Hellenistic ethics: Epicureanism and Stoicism.
An outstanding thinker of the Hellenistic period was Epicurus(341-270 BC) - the founder of the doctrine, the purpose of which is to gain happiness. In Athens, he founded his own school, called the "Garden". Epicurus was a prolific writer - the author of 300 books. He owned 37 works "On Nature". The dominant role among the theoretical sources of the Epicurean doctrine is played by the atomistic system of Democritus.
In the section of philosophy, Epicurus singled out canons (the science of the principles of knowledge), physics and ethics, which he understood as the doctrine of what is preferred and avoided, about the way of life and the ultimate goal. For true pleasure, it is enough to be content with little. Pleasure must be preceded by philosophical reasoning about it. Following Aristotle, Epicurus considered prudence to be the main virtue, which allows you to know the measure in pleasure. In search of this measure, Epicurus comes to a rather complex dialectic of suffering and pleasure. A person is often forced to pay with suffering for pleasure. But it happens the other way around: suffering leads to true pleasures. In a sporting event, victory is achieved through painful training, but the pleasure of it is incomparable to anything. Epicurus urges to avoid pleasures that will be followed by troubles, and to accept sufferings that lead to pleasure. Epicurus is convinced that mental suffering is more serious than bodily.
Epicurus forms a classification of pleasures:
Natural and necessary (do not starve, do not freeze);
Natural, but not necessary (luxurious food, beautiful clothes, luxury items);
Unnatural and unnecessary (fame, envy, honor, ambition).
For a blissful life, the first pleasures are enough, the other 2 should be abandoned. The ultimate goal of such a life is peace of mind, equanimity, called "ataraxia". It consists of 3 components: the absence of suffering, the ability to control passions and the ability not to need anything. A person gains independence from the world, becomes a sage.
Epicurus was the first philosopher to identify the good and freedom. To be moral and happy means to be free not only from passions and desires, but also from the surrounding world, society. One of the most important principles: "Live unnoticed." Another "Live like a god among people", i.e. do not need anything, become self-sufficient. And yet it is necessary to overcome the last enemy - fear. 3 main fears:
Before the gods. People imagined that they could become a victim of the wrath of God, like the heroes of Homer. To this, E. replies: "If God listened to the prayers of people, then soon all people would die, constantly wishing harm to each other."
Before necessity (fate).
Before death. In the doctrine of the soul, Epicurus defends materialistic views. According to Epicurus, the soul is not something incorporeal, but the structure of atoms, the finest matter scattered throughout the body. Hence the denial of the immortality of the soul. With the decomposition of the body, according to Epicurus, the soul also dissipates, so the fear of death is unfounded.
Epicurus paid great attention to concepts. He considered the clarity and accuracy of the concepts used to be the basis of any reasoning. General concepts are characterized by him as a generalization of experience accumulated by sensory knowledge.
Epicurus had a number of students, of whom the most prominent were Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Hermarchus of Mitylene.
In ancient Greek ethics, there was a doctrine that did not share the position of eudemonism. This is about stoicism- a philosophical doctrine that became for a long time the dominant moral doctrine in the Roman Empire.
The birth of the school is associated with the name of Zeno from Kitiya (333-262 BC) - a student of the Cynic Crates of Theban. She was based in Athens. The name comes from the word "standing" ("portico" - a gallery formed by parallel rows of columns). Cleanthes and Chrysippus were his chief followers. In addition to the Ancient Stoya, 2 late stages of this current are distinguished: the Middle Stoya and the Late.
The ancient Stoics divided all philosophy into physics, logic and ethics, thereby separating nature, thinking and life into separate realities, although they are closely related to each other. The ethics of the Stoics are based on 2 statements: "Live according to nature" and "Live according to reason." Unlike Epicurus, there is no place for chance in the Stoic picture of the world. But to be controlled by the force of necessity (destiny) is a great honor for a person. Man is a part of rational nature, to live according to its laws is to live according to reason, but not human, but cosmic.
To live according to reason is to live according to virtue. The Stoics reject the Epicureans' claim that it is natural for us to seek pleasure. It is only a consequence of the events of the external world; we must first understand how we live, and then decide what place pleasures will occupy in it. They argued that the true good does not come down to pleasure and even ignores it.
A single Logos reigns in the Cosmos, represented as Fire. The realm of the Logos is the realm of necessity, and man is subject to the influence of this necessity in the same way as all living things on earth. In contrast to all things in nature, man has one privilege: the freedom of an internal relationship to fate. It is in this that the possibility of being virtuous lies. We can't change anything in this world; all events occur according to the law of necessity, we can only accept them as reasonable or unreasonable. The relationship can be either positive or negative. Our goal is to be imperturbable in relation to everything that happens and steadfastly withstand all the blows of fate. Thus, the Stoics elevate all the blows of fate to the status of the main motive of our life.
The Stoics divide the whole world into 3 parts: good, evil and indifference. Good - the virtues, by which they meant wisdom, courage, prudence and justice. Evil is the opposite of virtues vices, passions: desire, fear, pleasure, sorrow. The sphere of the indifferent is the objects and the state of the external world and ourselves, which do not depend on our will - health, wealth, fame and even life. Virtue concerns only what depends on us, i.e. inner state of our soul.
The Stoics see in the sulfur of the indifferent things preferable (life, health, beauty, fame, leisure, homeland) and non-preferred (illness, death, misfortune). Possession of preferred things allows a person to live according to nature, to preserve himself.
The Stoics divide human actions into 2 types. 1 - appropriate, representing reasonable, generally accepted actions, consistent with the impulse of nature and aimed at self-preservation. They have nothing to do with virtue, because cannot be a matter of conscious choice. To do so naturally means that there is no merit in it. Only proper, obligatory actions lead to virtue, their performance is in our will.
The virtue of an act determines only one correct motive. It is expressed in a special relation to surrounding events, accessible only to a special person - a sage. This attitude is denoted by the word "apathy" (dispassion). The sage accepts all occurring events as reasonable, arising from the natural order of things. The stoic attitude to the world is to accept it as it is, understanding that everything that happens must take place according to the law of the cosmic mind. Apathy is not a complete absence of passions, but the ability to manage them. Epicurus taught to live far from public life, and the Stoics, on the contrary, the sage should lead an active civic activity.
Few mortals can become a sage. According to Seneca, a sage is born once every 500 years. On the one hand, the sage strives for inner perfection, bliss, but on the other hand, bliss comes down to indifference to external events and one's own destiny. The happiness of the Stoic is freedom from everything that can make up the positive content of life.
Question number 13. Characteristic features of the ethical views of the Middle Ages
Medieval ethical reflection is an addition to ancient moral philosophy, primarily because the basis for the interpretation of morality in it is not reason, but religious faith. Any options for exercising the autocracy of faith (doubt about the possibilities of reason, the struggle against reason and its champions, the union of faith and reason in late scholasticism) assign a secondary role to reason both in the morality that has befallen the being and in the choice of an individual moral position.
In general, Christian ethics was characterized by the following features: the doctrine of supernatural origin and the inviolability of divine morality; the glorification of a just and all-seeing God; an attempt to surround with a theological halo such virtues as conscience, eternal retribution, grace; glorification of asceticism, hermitage, martyrdom; an attempt to replace bodily pleasures with spiritual ones, to declare the former "devilish"; humiliation of physical labor, which was declared God's punishment for the fall of people; the consecration of the powerless position of women in society and the family; declaring death as a blessing, illnesses and other troubles - "traces of God's grace." All this was mystified and presented on behalf of God.
The center of the Christian ethical concept is the idea of love for God. Love is understood as a universal principle of morality (the moral attitude towards one's neighbor stems from it); allows you to give morality a universal status; illuminates everything. From the idea of love for God, a new (unknown to antiquity) virtue is born - mercy, which implies forgiveness of offenses, readiness for compassion and active help to those who suffer. Against the background of the idea of love, the “golden rule” of morality gets its expression: “And so in everything, as you want people to do to you, so do you to them” (Mat. 7:12).
The omnipotence of religion finds various forms of expression in medieval philosophizing. Going to subjugate the morality of religion is most clearly reflected in the work of Augustine the Blessed (354 - 430).
Having raised the question whether the fate of a person depends on himself, on the moral meaning of his life, or is it determined by the willfulness of God, Augustine came to the conclusion that a person is weak, weighed down by hereditary sin, and nothing is impossible for God.
15. Epicurus and the Epicureans
Outstanding representatives of Epicureanism are Epicurus (341–270 BC) and Lucretius Carus (c. 99–55 BC). This philosophical direction belongs to the turn of the old and new eras. The Epicureans were interested in issues of dispensation, comfort of the individual in the complex historical context of that time.
Epicurus developed the ideas of atomism. According to Epicurus, only bodies in space exist in the universe. They are directly perceived by the senses, and the presence of empty space between bodies follows from the fact that otherwise movement would be impossible. Epicurus put forward an idea that differs sharply from the interpretation of atoms by Democritus. This is the idea of the "bending" of atoms, when the atoms move in a "coherent stream". According to Democritus, the world is formed as a result of the mutual "impact" and "bouncing" of atoms. But the mere gravity of the atoms contradicts the concept of Epicurus and does not allow explaining the independence of each atom: in this case, according to Lucretius, the atoms would fall, like raindrops, into an empty abyss. If we follow Democritus, the undivided dominance of necessity in the world of atoms, being consistently extended to the atoms of the soul, will make it impossible to admit the freedom of the will of man. Epicurus solves the problem this way: he endows atoms with the ability of spontaneous deflection, which he considers by analogy with the internal volitional act of a person. It turns out that “free will” is inherent in atoms, which determines the “indispensable deviation”. Therefore, atoms are able to describe different curves, begin to touch and touch each other, intertwine and unwind, resulting in the emergence of the world. This idea made it possible for Epicurus to avoid the idea of fatalism. Cicero is right in saying that Epicurus could not have avoided Doom otherwise than with the help of the theory of atomic spontaneity. Plutarch notes that the spontaneity of atomic deviation is what is a case. From this Epicurus draws the following conclusion: "There is no need for necessity!" Thus, Epicurus for the first time in the history of philosophical thought put forward the idea of the objectivity of chance.
According to Epicurus, life and death are equally not terrible for the sage: “As long as we exist, there is no death; when death is, we are no more.” Life is the greatest pleasure. Just the way it is, with a beginning and an end.
Describing the spiritual world of man, Epicurus recognized that he had a soul. He characterized it as follows: there is nothing finer or more reliable than this essence (soul), and it consists of the smallest and smoothest elements. The soul was conceived by Epicurus as the principle of the integrity of individual elements of the spiritual world of the individual: feelings, sensations, thoughts and will, as the principle of eternal and flawless existence.
Knowledge, according to Epicurus, begins with sensory experience, but the science of knowledge has its origin primarily in the analysis of words and the establishment of precise terminology, i.e., sensory experience acquired by a person must be comprehended and processed in the form of certain terminologically fixed semantic structures . In itself, sensory sensation, not raised to the level of thought, is not yet true knowledge. Without this, only sensory impressions will flash before us in a continuous stream, and this is just continuous fluidity.
The basic principle of Epicurean ethics is pleasure - the principle of hedonism. At the same time, the pleasures preached by the Epicureans are distinguished by an extremely noble, calm, balanced and often contemplative character.
The desire for pleasure is the original principle of choice or avoidance. According to Epicurus, if a person's senses are taken away, then nothing remains. Unlike those who preached the principle of "delight of the minute", and "there, what will be, that will be!" Epicurus wants constant, even and never-ending bliss. The pleasure of the sage "splashes in his soul like a calm sea on firm shores" of reliability. The limit of pleasure and bliss is to get rid of suffering! According to Epicurus, one cannot live pleasantly without living reasonably, morally and justly, and, conversely, one cannot live reasonably, morally and justly without living pleasantly!
Epicurus preached piety, worship of God: "the wise man must kneel before the gods." He wrote: “God is an immortal and blissful being, as the general idea of God was inscribed (in the mind of man), and does not ascribe to him anything alien to his immortality or inconsistent with his bliss; but imagines everything about God that can preserve his bliss, combined with immortality. Yes, gods exist: knowing them is an obvious fact. But they are not what the crowd imagines them to be, because the crowd does not always keep their idea of them.
Lucretius Carus, a Roman poet, philosopher and educator, one of the outstanding Epicureans, like Epicurus, does not deny the existence of gods, consisting of the finest atoms and residing in interworld spaces in blissful peace. In his poem “On the Nature of Things”, Lucretius gracefully, in a poetic form, depicts a light and subtle, always moving picture of the impact that atoms have on our consciousness through the expiration of special “eidols”, as a result of which sensations and all states of consciousness arise. It is very curious that the atoms in Lucretius are not quite the same as in Epicurus: they are not the limit of divisibility, but a kind of creative principles from which a specific thing is created with its entire structure, i.e. atoms are the material for nature, which presupposes some creative principle outside of them. There are no allusions to the self-activity of matter in the poem. Lucretius sees this creative principle either in the progenitor-Venus, or in the mistress-Earth, or in the creative nature - nature. A.F. Losev writes: “If we are talking about the natural-philosophical mythology of Lucretius and call it a kind of religion, then let the reader not get confused here in three pines: the natural-philosophical mythology of Lucretius ... has absolutely nothing in common with the traditional mythology that Lucretius refutes.”
According to Losev, the independence of Lucretius as a philosopher is deeply revealed in an episode in the history of human culture, which is the main content of the fifth book of the poem. Having taken from the Epicurean tradition a negative assessment of those improvements in the material conditions of life, which, without ultimately increasing the amount of pleasure people receive, serve as a new object of money-grubbing, Lucretius concludes the fifth book not with the Epicurean morality of self-restraint, but with praise to the human mind, which masters the heights of knowledge and art.
In conclusion, it should be said that we are accustomed to interpret Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius and others only as materialists and atheists. Following the brilliant connoisseur of ancient philosophy and my close friend A.F. Losev, I adhere to the point of view according to which ancient philosophy did not know materialism in the European sense of the word at all. It suffices to point out already that both Epicurus and Lucretius most unambiguously acknowledge the existence of the gods.
7. How to be happy? (Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics, Cynics) In 334 BC. e. The Greek army led by Alexander the Great began a campaign to the East, which lasted nine years. In Greek, Greece is Hellas, and Greeks are Hellenes. They conquered
20. Epicurus Greek philosopher who lived in the 4th-3rd centuries. BC e. The vast majority of people believe that Epicurus was an unbridled hedonist who valued worldly pleasures above all else. In fact, this philosopher defended the idea that it was moderation in desires
Epicurus Saluting Herodotus
Epicurus From the vast creative heritage of Epicurus, separate fragments, sayings, as well as the full texts of three letters have come down to us, which contain a summary of the three parts of his philosophy - below is the text of the letter to Menekey containing the author's abstract
§ 17. How to be happy? (Epicureans, Stoics, Skeptics) In 334 BC. e. The Greek army led by Alexander the Great began a campaign to the East, which lasted nine years. In Greek, Greece is Hellas, Greeks are Hellenes. They conquered the East or
Epicurus and the Epicureans The Epicurean Hellenistic philosophical system moved even further away from idealism and was the expression of an extremely sober and positive way of thinking. In ethics, hedonism was proclaimed a school, in physics - materialism, in logic - sensationalism. theoretical
V. Epicurus As extensive, or even more extensive than Stoicism, was Epicurean philosophy, which is the direct opposite of Stoicism, for while the latter saw the truth in being as thinkable - in a universal concept - and firmly held on to this
Epicurus 341–270 BC e. Ancient Greek philosopher materialist, atheist. Whoever does not remember past happiness is already an old man today.* * *Everyone leaves life as if he had just entered. You
Epicurus Epicurus was the creator of one of the most significant moral teachings of antiquity and the founder of one of the main Athenian philosophical schools, which bears his name. He was the son of the Athenian Neocles and was born in 342 BC. on the island of Samos. We don't know much about his early life.
4. Epicureans and skeptics Due to the weak interest in the philosophical theories of the Epicureans and skeptics, who in the foreground were the questions of life and the morality of the inner freedom of the human spirit, the doctrine of matter and the body acquired from them, rather, only applied,
2. The Epicureans and the Skeptics The same, after all, must be said about the other two early Hellenistic schools, the Epicureans and the Skeptics. It is also impossible to find any doctrine of harmony among them. But everyone is imbued with a sense of inner human harmony.
2. Epicureans and skeptics As for the other two main trends of early Hellenism, that is, Epicureanism and skepticism, here, too, a new understanding of nature, in comparison with the classical period, undoubtedly affected. a) The Epicureans also proceeded from a certain principle
3. Epicureans and Skeptics Two other schools of early Hellenism are of great importance in the historical semantics of beauty. But with respect to these schools, science has accumulated many different prejudices, which we discuss in the relevant chapters of Volume V of our "History". criticism
7. Epicurus The concept of legal understanding, based on the concept of justice and law as a contract of general benefit for ensuring individual freedom and mutual security of people in social and political life, was developed in the era of Hellenism by Epicurus (341-270 BC).
15. Epicurus and the Epicureans The outstanding representatives of Epicureanism are Epicurus (341-270 BC) and Lucretius Carus (c. 99-55 BC). This philosophical direction belongs to the turn of the old and new eras. Epicureans were interested in issues of dispensation, comfort of the individual in a complex
Chapter XXVII. THE EPICUREANS The two great new schools of the Hellenistic period, the Stoics and the Epicureans, were founded at the same time. Their founders, Zeno and Epicurus, were born around the same time and settled in Athens, leading their respective sects at the same time on
Imagine your own funeral. How will everything be? Who will attend? Everything looks like you are still alive and watching the events. Perhaps from above, or perhaps from the mourners' seats. Some people believe that this is actually what happens: that even after death you will continue to exist, but already outside the physical body - in the form of a spirit that watches with curiosity the events taking place in the world. However, for those of us who do not believe in life after death, it is rather difficult to imagine our own funeral. Because every time we try to imagine what it would be like to be gone, in this case I mean the moment of goodbye, we admit that we see everything with our own eyes.
Regardless of whether or not a person is able to imagine his death, each of us is afraid of it - this is natural. Don't scoff. After all, if you are not afraid of death, then what is there to be afraid of at all? The fear of death is present even when the event itself is still very far away. This fear is rooted in instinct. And there is hardly a person in the world who would never think about it.
But the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) argued that the fear of death is a waste of time, since it is actually the result of a logical error. In his opinion, this is nothing more than a state of mind that must and can be overcome. After all, if you seriously think about it, there is nothing frightening in death, and when you finally put your thoughts in order, you will surely get much more pleasure from your existence here on this earth. The latter was very important for Epicurus. He believed that the task of philosophy is to make a person's life better and help him become happy. To some, such an interest in death may seem creepy, but for Epicurus, the denial of fear of this inevitable event was one of the ways to make earthly life more intense.
Epicurus was born on Samos, a fairly large island in the Aegean Sea. But he spent most of his life in Athens, where he was very famous and where he founded his own philosophical school. Its peculiarity was that women and slaves were allowed to study, and this is very unusual for that time. The snobs of Epicurus blamed it for this, and the followers idolized it. With his students, he worked in the garden next to his house. Actually, when they talk about the Garden (with a capital letter), then we are talking about the garden of Epicurus.
Like many other ancient philosophers (and some modern ones, such as Peter Singer, see chapter 40), Epicurus believed that philosophy should be practical, that is, it should change something in our lives for the better. Therefore, for those who joined his school, it was important not only to understand the essence of his philosophy, but also to translate its precepts into practice.
From Epicurus' point of view, the key to understanding the meaning of life is the fact that all people strive for pleasure and, more importantly, to avoid suffering as much as possible. Actually, this is the motivating reason for our behavior: if we remove suffering and pain from our lives, adding a handful of happiness, life will only get better from this. From this, according to Epicurus, it follows that the best life will be in simplicity, without enmity and malice, surrounded by beloved friends. Living such a life, a person will be able to satisfy most of his desires, and what he cannot get is not worth thinking about. Why dream of a mansion if you will never have the right amount of money to buy it? What is the point of postponing all your life for something that will still remain beyond your financial capabilities? Wouldn't it be better to live a simple, unsophisticated life? After all, if desires are unpretentious, then it is easy to satisfy them, and you will always have time to enjoy what is really important. Such was the formula for the personal happiness of Epicurus, and, it must be admitted, it is not without meaning.
The philosophy of Epicurus can be seen as a form of therapy. His goal was to cure his students of mental pain, to show them that pain, even physical pain, can be dealt with by thinking about past pleasures. Yes, about the past. According to Epicurus, pleasures are good because they have the effect of delayed action: you get pleasure now - and you get it in the future when you remember pleasant moments. Epicurus himself, being near death, wrote to his friend that he was distracted from sad thoughts, recalling their past conversations.
You have probably noticed that what is described is different from the meaning that is customary to put in the word "Epicurean". The epithet "Epicurean" is usually awarded to a person who values luxury above all else, loves to eat deliciously and does nothing but indulge in various sensual pleasures all day long. But no, the tastes of Epicurus himself were much simpler. He put moderation at the forefront, because constantly indulging one's own desires awakens thirst and ultimately leads to dissatisfaction. A life in which you always want more will not bring you happiness, and therefore it should be avoided. Epicurus and his students preferred bread and water to exotic foods and drinks. After all, if you get into the habit of drinking expensive wines, then you will surely want something even more refined, and you will fall into the trap of unsatisfied desires. An excellent idea, but spiteful critics claimed that Epicurus and his students spent days on end in endless feasts and orgies, indulging in gluttony and voluptuousness. The rumor has survived the centuries, and we distort the meaning of the word "Epicurean". It is unlikely that the students of Epicurus were doing something that went against the philosophy of their teacher, and there were always idle speculations.
What cannot be taken away from Epicurus is that he was a prolific writer. According to information that has come down to us, he is the author of more than three hundred books. But the trouble is, none of them survived. Most of what we know about him we know from the writings of his followers. They memorized the treatises of Epicurus by heart and outlined his speeches. The records were discovered during excavations in Herculaneum, a city that, like Pompeii, was buried under a layer of ash after the eruption of Vesuvius. Another important source of information about the philosophy of Epicurus is the work of the Roman poet-philosopher Titus Lucretius Cara called "On the Nature of Things". Although it was written two hundred years after the death of Epicurus, the key points of his teaching are clearly and accessible in it, and even in poetic form!
Let us return to the question with which our story about Epicurus began: why we should not be afraid of death. One of the reasons is the fact that we won't feel it. After all, death is not something that will happen to you. When it comes, you will be gone. In the 20th century, another famous philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his book Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, echoing Epicurus, would say that death is not one of the events of life. The essence of the concept is as follows: an event is what we experience, while death excludes the possibility of experiencing, it is not something that we are able to consciously perceive.
Epicurus believed that most of us make a logical error when we think about our own death. We think that even after death, some part of us will feel everything that happens to our body. However, this assumption is based on a false idea of what we really are. We are nothing more than flesh and blood. From the point of view of Epicurus, everything in the world, including ourselves, consists of atoms (of course, his idea of atoms was somewhat different from the views of modern scientists). When we die, our bodies disintegrate into individual atoms, and we cease to exist as self-conscious individuals. Even if someone after your death "reconstructs" your body again, and then breathes life into it, then it will no longer be you, despite the fact that the body will look exactly the same. You will not feel the same as before, because nothing can bring you back to life. Death is the cessation of the existence of a person as a person.
To get rid of the fear of death, Epicurus also advised to think about the perception of the past and the future. We worry about the second, but are indifferent to the first. In order to understand this idea, let's take the moment of your birth as a starting point. It was preceded by trillions of years, which you hardly remember. Indeed, why should we be concerned about a time when we were not there yet? But if this is so, then why should we care about the time after our death, when we will no longer be? As Epicurus rightly pointed out, we are biased in this regard: we are not particularly concerned about the time before our birth, but we are concerned about the time after our death. And in vain. According to Epicurus, both periods are equivalent, and if so, if in relation to a person one period is no different from the other, then there is no point in us being afraid of death.
Some people are afraid to end up in hell after death (the ancient Greeks also had a hell - Tartarus). Epicurus considered such fears unfounded. He believed that the gods did not care about people. They, the gods, exist independently of us and do not interfere in the affairs of this world, so there is no reason to worry in this regard.
With these arguments, Epicurus sought to cure his listeners of the fear of death. If they convinced you, then you should feel like a mountain has been lifted from your shoulders. The whole philosophy here can be summed up in a single phrase:
When you are, there is no death,
when death is, you are not.
If you, following Epicurus, believe that you are just a collection of atoms and there is no punishment after death, then his arguments may well convince you that there is no point in fearing death. True, you may fear that death precedes. This process can be quite painful, and there is no shame in being afraid of it. But remember what Epicurus said? Happy memories will help you ease the pain.
However, if you believe that in addition to the body there is also a soul that will continue to exist after the death of the body, then Epicurus's arguments are unlikely to convince you. Then you will definitely be able to imagine your own existence even after your heart stops beating.
The Epicureans were not the only ones who saw philosophy as a form of consolation. Many Greek and Roman philosophers were looking for the same thing. This was especially the case with the Stoics, who are known for teaching to dispassionately perceive any blows of fate.
The thinker Epicurus (342-270 BC) was the founder of one of the most famous philosophical schools of the ancient world. Epicureanism saw the main goal of philosophy in teaching a person a happy life, because everything else is unimportant.
* Epicurus's theory of knowledge - briefly:
In the theory of knowledge, Epicurus called for trust in sensory perceptions, since we still have no other criterion for truth. He believed that the criticism of sensationalism by skeptics is of purely theoretical interest, but in practice it is completely fruitless. The main conclusion to which Epicurus brings the listener with these arguments is that there is nothing supersensible. Even if it were, we would not be able to perceive it, since nothing but feelings is given to us. This conclusion is very important for the theory of Epicurus: it is from here that her materialism and atheism follow.
* the physics of Epicurus, his atomism - briefly:
In physics, Epicurus is an ardent supporter of the Democritus idea of atoms. In his opinion, it is entirely confirmed by sensory experience, because the mixing of different environments that constantly occurs before our eyes cannot be explained without the assumption that they consist of the smallest particles. At the same time, atoms cannot be divisible to infinity (Democritus' term "Atom" in literal translation means "indivisible"), because then matter would be scattered in the void, and there would be no bodies at all.
But in the details of his atomism, Epicurus deviates greatly from the original teachings of Leucippus and Democritus. These two philosophers recognized the initial movement of atoms in a void, and Epicurus reduces such movement solely to a downward fall, which, according to his idea, is an eternal property of matter (antiquity did not know anything about the law of attraction generated by the mass of bodies. Democritus, in contrast to this , believed that in infinity there is neither top nor bottom.In addition, Epicurus, unlike Democritus, argues that atoms in their fall make a minimal spontaneous (spontaneous) deviation from a straight line - as if the atom had some free will. Otherwise, all bodies would constantly sink down in the same unchanged form, and it would be impossible to explain the collisions of atoms and the formation of more and more new masses from them.At this point, Epicurus deviates from the strict mechanical determinism of the early atomists.He passionately rebels against their strict mechanism, saying that such an approach is worse than any false belief in gods: they can still be softened by prayers, and mechanistic physics - an inexorable tyrant dooming a person to complete slavery.
Epicurus borrows from the first atomists and the doctrine of the soul, consisting of small, mobile atoms. Epicurus emphasizes that after death the soul dissipates, and there can be no post-mortem sensations. Epicurus, following the example of Democritus, explains sensory perceptions by atomic outflows coming from bodily objects.
* Epicurus' ideas about the gods - briefly:
The general confidence of all peoples about the existence of gods, according to Epicurus, indicates that there really are gods. But human judgments about the gods are false and perverse. In fact, these creatures live in the distant gaps between the worlds and are alienated from them. Free from fears and worries, they themselves do not cause them to anyone. Subject to neither passions nor anger, the gods are in blissful peace, not interfering in human and worldly affairs.
"The Common Certainty of All Nations" is a very weak proof of the existence of the gods. Epicurus himself could not fail to understand this. One cannot get rid of the impression that he himself did not recognize the existence of the gods at all, and all his reasoning about them is a deal with the official beliefs of the crowd, which the philosopher simply considered dangerous to openly offend. In one of the fragments, Epicurus says that if the gods existed, they would like and could exterminate evil in the world. If they do not want or cannot do this, then, being weak and evil, they cannot be considered gods.
* the ethical concept of Epicurus and his doctrine of happiness:
Physics, the theory of knowledge and the doctrine of the gods of Epicurus serve only as an official justification for the main part of his philosophy - ethics. Recognition of certainty behind feelings alone and the denial of any power leading the world should, according to Epicurus, free a person from the most pernicious delusions - faith in the supernatural and fear of death. There are no supernatural forces that we could be afraid of, and therefore nothing can interfere with a person in his natural goal - the pursuit of pleasure. Death does not need to be feared, because with it all sensations cease, and, therefore, it cannot bring us either good or bad. As long as we exist, there is no death; if death comes, we are gone. Natural feelings with immediate evidence convince us of the good of pleasure, and of the evil of suffering. Therefore, the true goal of man is to strive for the first and avoid the second. There is even no need to prove why it is necessary to strive for pleasure or avoid suffering: it is felt directly, like that fire burns, snow is white, honey is sweet. People voluntarily avoid pleasure only if it entails b? Lsh suffering - and agree to suffering only in the hope through it to get b? More pleasure or get rid of used? More suffering.
Hence, our goal is pleasure and deliverance from suffering. But how exactly should it be achieved? The philosophy of Epicurus is a development of the hedonism of the Cyrenian school. But Epicurus' understanding of pleasure is different from that of the founder of this school, the philosopher Aristippus. Aristippus taught to catch the pleasures of the moment, cherishing the present and not embarrassed by worries about the future. But, according to Epicurus (who converges with Plato here), only that pleasure is valuable which eliminates suffering. "We Need Pleasure where We Suffer from its Absence; Where We Have No Such Suffering, We Don't Need It." Fleeting pleasures, contrary to the opinion of Aristippus, cannot serve as the goal of life: the pursuit of them only disturbs the peace of the soul. "Sustainable Pleasure" (equivalent to the removal of suffering) seems to Epicurus a goal that is quite achievable with the help of intelligent life. The right path to "Sustainable Pleasure" is the conscious release from needs, fears and worries, the achievement of peace and tranquility of the soul. Sharply diverging in most positions from the teachings of the Cynics and Stoics, Epicurus eventually comes to the same ultimate life goal with them - "Equanimity" (ataraxia), he also calls for dominance over passions and fuss.
Philosophy frees us from the fear of death and the gods that poisons our lives. A true sage, Epicurus believes, is also able to get rid of the fear of suffering and disasters. Intense suffering either soon passes, or entails death. Suffering is either short-term or bearable - one who accustoms himself to this thought, says Epicurus, will gain courage and peace of mind. Human needs are divided into those that can be met and those that cannot be met without. Hunger and thirst cannot be quenched. But it is possible to do without the need, for example, for sexual life or seasoned food, and it is even easier to do without satisfying most other needs - luxury, self-interest, vanity. The pursuit of honors is the greatest folly. Hide, live in obscurity, "Live unnoticed" - this is the golden rule of Epicurus. We must be able to be content with only the essentials. False and unnatural needs are insatiable. All human misfortunes and sorrows flow from them and from unreasonable fears, and happiness is given by peace and contentment. All our concerns, Epicurus believes, should be aimed at maintaining mental and bodily health and equanimity of spirit, which is achieved by philosophical wisdom based on the voice of nature and renunciation of fuss. The voice of nature requires little: do not starve, do not thirst, do not freeze - and all this is not difficult to fulfill. All other pleasures can be abandoned. The ability to be content with little is a great blessing. The less we are content with, the less dependent on fate. Not drinking parties, not continuous revelry, not love pleasures or a magnificent table give birth to a pleasant life, but sober reasoning ... expelling those opinions that give rise to the greatest confusion of the soul.
Freeing us from fear and false opinions, philosophical wisdom, according to Epicurus, inspires us with courage, moderation and justice. People need mutual help and friendship, which give us great pleasure and are necessary in order to live safely. In the famous "Garden of Epicurus" (his philosophical school), people united in solidarity in the same ideal of life, raising spiritual pleasures over bodily ones. Despite his materialism and sensualism, Epicurus extols the dominance of the spirit over passions, for although there is nothing supersensible, the calmness and equanimity of the soul is also a special physical state. A philosopher can overcome bodily sorrows and sufferings, enduring them courageously and with imperturbable clarity. Even the Stoics did not express in such a decisive form the conviction of the impotence of suffering over the true sage. Although the teachings of Epicurus and the Stoics were considered opposite in meaning, the Epicurean ideal of the sage comes close to the Stoic. Behind the preacher of pleasure Epicurus hid a deep moralist, imbued with faith in the unity of virtue and happiness.
Epicureanism and Hedonism. Hedonism
1. Hedonism (from the Greek hedone - pleasure), an ethical position that affirms pleasure as the highest good and criterion of human behavior and reduces to it the whole variety of moral requirements. The desire for pleasure in G. is considered as the main driving principle of a person, embedded in him by nature and predetermining all his actions, which makes G. a kind of anthropological naturalism. As a normative principle, G. is opposed to asceticism.
In ancient Greece, one of the first representatives of G. in ethics was the founder of the Cyrenian school, Aristippus (beginning of the 4th century BC), who saw the highest good in the achievement of sensual pleasure. In a different way, G.'s ideas were developed by Epicurus and his followers (see Epicureanism), where they approached the principles of eudemonism, since the criterion of pleasure was the absence of suffering and a serene state of mind (ataraxia). Hedonistic motives become widespread in the Renaissance and then in the ethical theories of the Enlightenment. T. Hobbes, J. Locke, P. Gassendi, French materialists of the 18th century. in the struggle against the religious understanding of morality, they often resorted to a hedonistic interpretation of morality. The principle of G. received its most complete expression in the ethical theory of utilitarianism, which understands benefit as pleasure or the absence of suffering (I. Bentham, J. S. Mill). G.'s ideas are also shared by some contemporary bourgeois theorists—J. Santayana (USA), M. Schlick (Austria), D. Drake (USA), and others. an extremely simplified interpretation of the driving forces and motives of human behavior, gravitating towards relativism and individualism.
Humanism in the philosophy of the Renaissance. 16. Philosophical humanism of the Renaissance.
In the Renaissance, philosophers again return to the “study of the human” (lat. studia humaniora), as opposed to the scholastic “study of the divine”, and therefore call themselves “humanists” (Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Pompanazzi, etc.). Philosophy in that era was imbued with the spirit of empiricism and naturalism (Nicholas of Cusa, Bernardino Telesio, Giordano Bruno) - respect for human feelings, trust in sensory experience and the need for scientific comprehension of nature. Social (utopian) theories are being developed (Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella), designed to provide a person with happiness in the state by legal means (Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean Bodin).
1) GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RENAISSANCE AGE.
The philosophy of the Renaissance (14-16 centuries) is the era of philosophy before the bourgeois revolutions. It is characterized by: the formation of capitalist production relations in the countries of Western Europe, the birth of new classes (the bourgeoisie and the proletarian). The freedom of bourgeois entrepreneurship is reflected not only in the economic, but also in the political, religious, scientific, technical, philosophical, and especially artistic. In the spiritual sphere, there is a process of liberation of culture from religious ideologies and church institutions. The collapse of the corporate system of the Middle Ages led to the fact that a person began to represent himself, to realize his own strength and talent. The new era is the revival of ancient culture: a way of life and a style of thinking. Renaissance philosophy is anthropocentric. Man, and not God, is given primary attention, although God is not completely rejected. The thinkers of this era are interested in the nature of man, his independence and creativity. A person is interpreted as a spiritualized person who, as it were, takes over the creative functions of God. He is not just a creator, but a creator and an artist at the same time. The favorite subject of Renaissance painting is the Virgin and Child.
The structure of philosophy according to Epicurus. Philosophy of Epicurus
Introduction
philosophy epicureanism spiritual atomist
Many philosophers of various historical periods were engaged in the search for happiness. One of them was the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus.
Epicurus is characteristic of the era when philosophy begins to be interested not so much in the world as in the fate of man in it, not so much in the mysteries of the cosmos, but in attempts to find out how, in the contradictions and storms of life, a person can find the calm, serenity that he so much needs and desires so much, equanimity and fearlessness. To know not for the sake of knowledge itself, but exactly as much as is necessary to preserve the bright serenity of the spirit - this is the goal and task of philosophy, according to Epicurus.
The Atomists and Cyrenaics were the main forerunners of the Epicureans. Atomistic materialism, borrowed from Leucippus and Democritus, undergoes a profound transformation in the philosophy of Epicurus, it loses the character of a purely theoretical philosophy, contemplative, only comprehending reality, and becomes a doctrine that enlightens a person, freeing him from oppressive fears and rebellious unrest and feelings. From Aristippus, Epicurus adopts hedonistic ethics, which he also undergoes significant changes. His ethical teaching is based on a reasonable human desire for happiness, which he understood as inner freedom, health of the body and serenity of the spirit.
The doctrine of Epicurus was developed by himself quite comprehensively and promulgated in its final form. She did not have the inclinations for her development, so the students could very little add to the ideas of the teacher. The only outstanding follower of Epicurus was the Roman philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus, who, in his poetic work On the Nature of Things, conveyed to us many of the thoughts of Epicurus.
Due to the extensibility and uncertainty, the teachings of Epicurus were very vulnerable and made it possible to use his ideas in order to justify any vices and virtues. So the voluptuary could see in the teachings of Epicurus an encouragement to his inclinations, and for a moderate person it provided a scientific justification for abstinence. It so happened that both in antiquity and in our days, the concept of "Epicureism" is usually used in a negative sense, meaning by it a special passion for sensual life and the desire to achieve personal good. Even though it is now proven that Epicurus himself led an impeccable and virtuous life, and insisted in his teaching on the need for moderation and abstinence, the prejudice against the Epicureans will apparently continue for a long time to come.
The philosophy of Epicurus was intended to alleviate the suffering of people “Empty are the words of that philosopher, which does not heal any suffering of a person. Just as medicine is useless if it does not drive out diseases from the body, so is philosophy if it does not drive out diseases of the soul.
In the modern world, there are quite a lot of people suffering, for various reasons, from the inability to enjoy life (“hedonia”). Representatives of various segments of the population are subject to such an ailment: from the disadvantaged to the well-to-do. Moreover, among the latter suffering from "hedonia" there are much more.
Perhaps knowledge of such a philosophical trend as "Epicureanism" would greatly facilitate the life of most people of our time.
Let us turn directly to the teachings of Epicurus in order to:
Determine the true views of Epicurus on the concept of happiness;
To reveal in it useful ideas for modern society.
1.Biography of Epicurus
Epicurus was born in 342 (341) BC, in Samos or Attica - not established. His parents were poor; his father taught grammar. According to Epicurus, he began to study philosophy very early, in the thirteenth year of his life. This should not seem strange, because it is at this age that many young men, especially those who are not devoid of talent, begin to really worry about the first serious questions. Speaking of the beginning of studies in philosophy, Epicurus, apparently, had in mind that time of his adolescence, when he puzzled his teacher with some question beyond his power. So, according to legend, when he heard the verse of Hesiod, which says that everything came from chaos, the young Epicurus asked: “Where did chaos come from?”. There was also a legend according to which the mother of Epicurus was a priestess-healer, about which Diogenes Laertes says: “They (apparently the Stoics) assure that he used to wander from house to house with his mother, who read cleansing prayers, and helped his father in teaching the basics of knowledge for a penny. If this legend is true, then it is likely that Epicurus at a very early age was imbued with superstitions with that hatred that later became such a bright, outstanding feature of his teaching. At the age of 18, about the time of Alexander's death, he went to Athens, apparently in order to establish citizenship, but while he was there, the Athenian settlers were expelled from Samos.
Eudemonism of Epicurus. THE ETHICAL TEACHINGS OF EPICURUS
(341 - 270 BC) - ancient Greek materialist philosopher, creator of the philosophy of happy individualism -
Epicurism (Epicureanism), on the basis of which Democritus developed eudemonism. Epicurus created in Athens a school of happy philosophy - "Garden
Epicurus" (c.307). On the gates of this school there was an advertising inscription: “Wanderer, you will be fine here; here the highest good is pleasure. Rejecting the supernatural origin of the moral feeling, Epicurus sees its source in man himself, in the natural desire inherent in man by nature to reach for pleasure and avoid suffering. Virtue is for Epicurus only a means to achieve bliss - the highest goal of moral life. Ethics of Epicurus
based on hedonism. However, emphasizing the sensual nature of pleasure, Epicurus gave preference not to fleeting, momentary carnal pleasures, but to those that cause a stable happy state. And such can only be spiritual forms of bliss. Higher
good is happiness, and according to Epicurus it is achieved by wisdom, which teaches us to live in accordance with nature comprehended by reason, peace of mind. Epicurus lived for 72 years and wrote about three hundred philosophical works: "On Love", "On the Purpose of Life", "On Right Conduct", etc.
Epicurus created the ethical doctrine of EVDEMONISM (from the Greek Eudaimonia - happiness). Epicurus believed that the solution to the ethical problem lies in the correct interpretation of happiness. Happy people are virtuous, they have neither need nor reason to quarrel among themselves - such is the logical core of the teachings of Epicurus. If Aristotle believed that happiness does not depend on a person, then Epicurus, on the contrary, believed that happiness is entirely in the power of a person.
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The philosophy of Epicurus is concise and clear. Epicureanism
Another well-known direction in the philosophy of the Hellenistic era was Epicureanism. Its ancestor Epicurus (c. 342/341 - 270/271 BC) was born on the island of Samos. His teacher was one of the followers of Democritus - Navsifan. After five years of teaching philosophy in Colophon, Mytilene and Lampsacus, Epicurus moved to Athens, where he lived until the end of his life, leading the community of philosophers or the school, which was called the “Garden of Epicurus”.
The works of the thinker have come down to us incompletely in the form of several letters and a significant number of fragments from his works.
Epicurus understood philosophy as an activity that gives people, through reflection, a happy, suffering-free life. The goal of his philosophy is not to change the world, but to adapt to it.
The philosophy of Epicurus is divided into three parts
Chief among them is ethics, which teaches how to achieve happiness. The second part of philosophy is physics. It gives an idea of the natural world, frees from fear of it and serves as the basis for ethics. Both of these parts are based on the canon, a kind of theory of knowledge and methodology of science, which acts as the third part. According to Epicurus, knowledge is possible on the basis of sensations. Repetitive sensations, sinking deep into the human mind, form concepts. Epicurus regarded feelings as infallible, and deduced errors from wrong judgments.
In physics, Epicurus proceeded from the recognition of eternity and the uncreation of the world. He, following Democritus, adhered to the idea of the atomic structure of matter. He softened the Democritanian version of determinism. He needed this to justify the free will of man he allowed. The thinker put forward the idea that not everything in the world happens out of necessity, there is a place in it for chance. To understand the dialectic of necessity and chance is possible only by knowing them. Pointing to knowledge as a means of subordinating necessity to a rational acting person, Epicurus thereby pointed to the real way of rising above necessity, subordinating it to his own interests. This circumstance allowed the philosopher to consider a person in the world not as a puppet, but as a free creator of his actions, his destiny. In other words, in the knowledge of phenomena that occur due to necessity and chance, Epicurus sees the path to freedom.
The thinker was aware of the difficulties of cognition of the surrounding world, arising from the imperfection of the senses as a means of cognition. This forced him to look for a foundation, reliance on which would give correct knowledge about the world and ensure the realization of freedom. Epicurus saw such a basis in prudence, which he valued even above philosophy. The high assessment of prudence is explained by the fact that Epicurus considers it as a special quality that has been formed in a person on the basis of the development of philosophical knowledge by her. In this regard, he considers philosophy itself. For Epicurus, it is of value only to the extent that it meets the need for the formation of prudence in a person. Prudence as a human ability is formed in the course of education. It saves a person from boundless absurd passions and fear, which is an indispensable and first condition for gaining the ability to think happily and avoid misfortune. Epicurus believed that the achievement of happiness should involve the release of a person from the bonds of social activity, meaning participation in political activity. However, Epicurus's teaching about happiness, as an integral part of his ethics, is not limited to this. It is connected with the doctrine of ataraxia or serenity, which he considers as states identical to happiness. It should be noted that the understanding of ataraxia as a special state of a rational being, apparently, is the result of Epicurus's perception of the ideas of the Eastern sages. Evaluation of serenity as the ideal of human existence was widespread in conditions of social instability.
Video PHILOSOPHY - Epicurus
Philosophy of the Stoics. Tasks
The Stoics, whose philosophies, in unity with nature, set themselves the following tasks:
- Raise a person who has inner freedom and strength not to depend on external factors.
- To make a person strong spiritually so that he can resist the world Chaos.
- Teach people to live according to conscience.
- Cultivate tolerance for the faith of others and teach them to love them.
- Instill a sense of humor.
- Learn how to use school theory in practice.
Physics of Epicurus
According to the explanations given above, the ethics of Epicurus requires support in materialistic, independent of religion and mysticism, physics. Such physics turned out to be for him the atomistic materialism of Democritus, which he accepts with some important changes. In a letter to Herodotus, Epicurus accepts as initial two physical positions inaccessible to the senses:
- 1) "Nothing comes from the non-existent: if this were the case, then everything would come from everything, not in the least needing seeds. And vice versa, if the disappearing perished, passing into the non-existent, then all things would already be dead, since there would be nothing to which they would be allowed";
- 2) "The universe has always been as it is now, and always will be, because there is nothing into which it changes: for apart from the universe there is nothing that could enter into it and effect a change."
These premises were already accepted in ancient times by the Eleatics (Parmenides, Zeno and Melissus), as well as by those who wanted, based on the teachings of the Eleatics about eternal and unchanging being, to explain the diversity and movement in the world: Empedocles, Anaxagoras and atomistic materialists.
To explain the movement, Leucippus and Democritus accepted, along with bodily being, non-being, or emptiness. Epicurus also accepted this doctrine: he also claims that the universe consists of bodies and space, that is, emptiness. The existence of bodies is confirmed by sensations, the existence of emptiness - by the fact that without emptiness movement would be impossible, since objects would have nowhere to move. "The universe consists of bodies and space; that bodies exist, this is evidenced by the very feeling in all people, on the basis of which it is necessary to judge by thinking about the innermost, as I said before. And if there were not what we call emptiness, a place inaccessible touched by nature, then the bodies would not have where to be and what to move through, as they obviously move ... ".
Bodies have permanent (shape, size, weight) and transient properties.
Epicurus also follows Democritus in the teaching that bodies represent either compounds of bodies, or that from which their compounds are formed. “Among bodies, some are compounds, and others are what compounds are formed from. These latter are indivisible and immutable, if everything should not be destroyed into non-existence, but something should remain strong during the decomposition of compounds ... Thus, it is necessary that the first principles were indivisible bodily natures (substances) ... "Compounds are formed from very small indivisible," uncut "dense bodies, which differ not only, as in Democritus, in shape and size, but also in weight. Differences in weight between atoms are an important distinguishing feature of the atomistic physics of Epicurus and an anticipation of their characterization in the latest atomistic materialism.
Asserting the indivisibility of atoms, Epicurus, like Democritus, denied the infinite divisibility of bodies. It was the assumption of such divisibility that was the basis for the arguments put forward by the student of Parmenides, the Eleatus Zeno, against the existence of a multitude, against the divisibility of beings and against movement. At the same time, Epicurus admits minimal, or smallest, parts of atoms and thereby distinguishes the physical indivisibility of the atom from its mathematical indivisibility.
The essential characteristic of atoms is their motion. Atoms are forever moving through the void with the same speed for all. In this movement, some of the atoms are at a great distance from one another, while others are intertwined with each other and take on a tremulous, oscillating motion, "if they are brought into an inclined position by the interlacing or if they are covered by those that have the ability to intertwine." As for the nature of the movement itself, it differs, according to Epicurus, from the movement of atoms in Democritus. The physics of Democritus is strictly deterministic; the possibility of chance is denied in it. “People,” says Democritus, “invented the idol of chance” to cover up their helplessness in reasoning. On the contrary, the physics of Epicurus, in his opinion, should substantiate the possibility of free will and the imputation of people's actions. “Indeed,” Epicurus reasoned, “it would be better to follow the myth of the gods than to be a slave to the fate of physicists: the myth at least gives a hint of the hope of propitiating the gods by honoring them, and fate contains inexorability.”
