Epicurus born on Samos 341 to 270 BC
x Epicurus Born on Samos. Describes himself as self taught.
Saw most educa on 3 2 as indoctrina on: too 1 constrained to the master’s way of thinking.
Put him at odds with most other philosophers of his me. Epicurus modifed Democritus’ atomism • Gave atoms weight (source of downward mo on) • Added swerve: random devia on from predicted mo on • Developed the idea of emergence: atoms do not possess proper es but these proper es develop in structures composed of many atoms. Platonists and Aristotelians
• Taught in big publically supported ins tu ons: geometry, dialec cs and rhetoric. • Epicurus rejected these schools as sources of indoctrina on. • Rejected Plato’s theory of forms (geometry) which postulated a perfect and eternal world. But studied and appreciated his contemporary, Euclid’s, geometry. Plato’s rhetoric and dialec cs
• In Plato’s dialogues Socrates plays down his knowledge of the world and asks ques ons in the end leading his interlocutors to his posi on. • Epicurus cri cized this ironic perspec ve as basically dishonest: Socrates was hiding his expert skills as a debater. Plato’s dialec cs and epistemology
• Reason as the arbiter of truth • Sensa ons are misleading • Phenomena (appearances) decep ve • Ideas are real and eternal
Reason as the charioteer with horses represen ng appe tes and spirit www.epicurus.info
• An excellent web source of informa on on Epicurus. • Includes all of the extant wri ngs of Epicurus as well as wri ngs about him and his philosophy.
8th Principal Doctrine
• No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but some pleasures are only obtainable at the cost of excessive troubles. Epicurus and Democritus
• Karl Marx 1841. The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, with an Appendix. Published 1902.
• Understood Epicurus’ embrace of dialec cal thinking which later formed a centerpiece for Marxist analysis of human affairs. Swerve. Emergence
• Democritus: sensa ons are misleading. E.g. a sweet drink may taste bi er to a sick man. • Epicurus: sensa ons are not inthemselves misleading though our interpreta on of them is. Atoms are not sweet or of a certain colour. These proper es only emerge through their interac on to produce more complex structures AND our percep on of such structures. Epicurus’ Epistemology
• We never sense the object in itself but rather we sense the object as it dies away. • Sensa ons are not decep ve; all are equally valid. We are deceived instead by our interpreta ons of sensa ons. • We apprehend the world through “prolepsis” (preconcep on), which is compared/modified with the object perceived.
Epicurus and Plato
• Plato believed in “a priori” knowledge which he thought came from our past lives. • Epicurus’ concept of prolepsis involves a preconcep on built through our individual lives. We learn and modify our concep ons according to perceived nature. This leads us to truth.
Epicurus at odds with Aristotle
• Rejected teleology: e.g. Aristotle: woodpecker has a well developed bill to allow it to find grubs and insects in wood and under bark. • Epicurus: because woodpeckers use their bills to search for insects in wood, those that have survived have well developed bills (cf Empidocles) God and Gods
• Aristotle iden fied 40 or more unmoved movers (endowed with circular mo on) in the skies • Epicurus: Gods are perfect and fully sated beings and therefore have no interest in humans. They are irrelevant to human affairs.
On the nature of the mind and soul
• Aristotle: the soul is a dis