Epicurus

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Western philosophy
Ancient philosophy
Epicurus Louvre.jpg

Name

Έπίκουρος Epikouros

Birth

341 BCE

Death

270 BCE

School/tradition

Epicureanism

Main interests

Atomism, Hedonism

Influences

Democritus, Pyrrho

Influenced

Hermarchus, Lucretius, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Michel Onfray, Hadrian, Metrodorus of Lampsacus (the younger), Philodemus, Amafinius, Catius, Michel Foucault

Epicurus (Greek Έπίκουρος) (341 BCE, Samos – 270 BCE, Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.

Contents

[change] Biography

As a boy he studied philosophy under the Platonist teacher Pamphilus for about four years. At the age of 18 he went to Athens for his two-year term of military service. Epicurus never married and had no known children.

[change] Teachings

Main article: Epicureanism

Epicurus helped in the development of science and the scientific method because of his insistence that nothing should be believed except that which was tested through direct observation and logical deduction. Many of his ideas about nature and physics presaged important scientific concepts of our time.

[change] Works

Epicurus' only surviving complete works are three letters, which are to be found in book X of Diogenes Laertius' Lives of Eminent Philosophers, and two groups of quotes: the Principal Doctrines, reported as well in Diogenes' book X, and the Vatican Sayings, preserved in a manuscript from the Vatican Library.

Many pieces of his thirty-seven volume treatise On Nature have been found in the burnt papyrus fragments at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum.

[change] References

[change] Further reading

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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • Bailey C. (1928) The Greek Atomists and Epicurus, Oxford.
  • Bakalis Nikolaos (2005) Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing, ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
  • Digireads.com The Works of Epicurus, January 2004.
  • Eugene O’ Connor The Essential Epicurus, Prometheus Books, New York 1993.
  • Edelstein Epicureanism, Two Collections of Fragments and Studies Garland Publ. March 1987
  • Farrington, Benjamin. Science and Politics in the Ancient World, 2nd ed. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965. A Marxist interpretation of Epicurus, the Epicurean movement, and its opponents.
  • Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. London: Penguin, 2001. ISBN 0-14-025274-6
  • Inwood, Brad, tr. The Epicurus Reader, Hackett Publishing Co, March 1994.
  • Oates Whitney Jenning, The Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius, Random House, 9th printing 1940.
  • Panicha, George A. Epicurus, Twayne Publishers, 1967
  • Prometheus Books, Epicurus Fragments, August 1992.
  • Russel M. Geer Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican Sayings, Bobbs-Merrill Co, January 1964.
  • Diogenes of Oinoanda. The Epicurean Inscription, edited with Introduction, Translation and Notes by Martin Ferguson Smith, Bibliopolis, Naples 1993.

[change] Other websites

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