Greece & Rome · 306 BCE – 3rd c. CE
Epicureanism
The goal of life is pleasure understood as tranquillity: freedom from bodily pain and mental fear, reached through simple living, friendship and a true understanding of nature.
How can we live free from fear and pain?
After Alexander’s death the Greek world was ruled by vast, unstable kingdoms, and citizens had little control over public life. Around 306 BCE Epicurus founded a community, the Garden, outside Athens, open to women and slaves, offering a therapy for anxiety built on Democritus’ atomism.
Everything, including the soul, is atoms that disperse at death, so “death is nothing to us”: where death is, we are not. The gods, if they exist, do not meddle in the world, so there is nothing to fear from them either. Remove these fears and limit desires to the natural and necessary, and what remains is ataraxia, a stable and deep pleasure.
- Pleasure, as absence of pain and fear, is the good.
- Death is nothing to us.
- Friendship is among the greatest goods.
Lucretius’ poem preserved it for the Renaissance, where its rediscovery fed early modern science and secular ethics; utilitarianism inherits its view that pleasure and pain are what matter.
Thinkers
341–270 BCEEpicurusFounder of the Garden, a philosophical community near Athensc. 99–55 BCELucretiusRoman poet who set Epicurus’ philosophy in verseKey texts
Where it came from
Grew out ofAtomismEpicurus adopted Democritus’ atoms and void; later sources, chiefly Lucretius and Cicero, add that he gave atoms a slight “swerve” to make room for free choice.
What it led to
Carried on bySocial contract theoryEpicurus had called justice a pact neither to harm nor be harmed; the contract theorists likewise explained law as an agreement serving each person’s interest.Carried on by
UtilitarianismLike Epicurus, utilitarians take pleasure and freedom from pain as the only things good in themselves, but they count everyone’s happiness, not just one’s own.
Its answers to the big questions
EthicsHow should one live?Seek quiet pleasure: freedom from pain and fear, simple needs and good friends.On the record
Epicurus added a slight “swerve” of atoms to make room for free choice.
The swerve is not described in Epicurus’ surviving letters; it is known chiefly from Lucretius and Cicero, who attribute it to him. Scholars generally accept it as Epicurean doctrine, but its exact form is unclear.