The Writings of Epicurus Epicurus

Ancient Epicureanism

Epicureanism was extremely popular from the very beginning.[119][120][121] Diogenes Laërtius records that the number of Epicureans throughout the world exceeded the populations of entire cities.[121] Nonetheless, Epicurus was not universally admired and, within his own lifetime, he was vilified as an ignorant buffoon and egoistic sybarite.[63][122] He remained the most simultaneously admired and despised philosopher in the Mediterranean for the next nearly five centuries.[122] Epicureanism rapidly spread beyond the Greek mainland all across the Mediterranean world.[119] By the first century BC, it had established a strong foothold in Italy.[119] The Roman orator Cicero (106 – 43 BC), who deplored Epicurean ethics, lamented, "the Epicureans have taken Italy by storm."[119]

The overwhelming majority of surviving Greek and Roman sources are vehemently negative towards Epicureanism[123] and, according to Pamela Gordon, they routinely depict Epicurus himself as "monstrous or laughable".[123] Many Romans in particular took a negative view of Epicureanism, seeing its advocacy of the pursuit of voluptas ("pleasure") as contrary to the Roman ideal of virtus ("manly virtue").[124] The Romans therefore often stereotyped Epicurus and his followers as weak and effeminate.[125] Prominent critics of his philosophy include prominent authors such as the Roman Stoic Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65) and the Greek Middle Platonist Plutarch (c. 46 – c. 120), who both derided these stereotypes as immoral and disreputable.[121] Gordon characterizes anti-Epicurean rhetoric as so "heavy-handed" and misrepresentative of Epicurus's actual teachings that they sometimes come across as "comical".[126] In his De vita beata, Seneca states that the "sect of Epicurus... has a bad reputation, and yet it does not deserve it." and compares it to "a man in a dress: your chastity remains, your virility is unimpaired, your body has not submitted sexually, but in your hand is a tympanum."[127]

Epicureanism was a notoriously conservative philosophical school;[6][18][19] although Epicurus's later followers did expand on his philosophy, they dogmatically retained what he himself had originally taught without modifying it.[6][18][19] Epicureans and admirers of Epicureanism revered Epicurus himself as a great teacher of ethics, a savior, and even a god.[128] His image was worn on finger rings, portraits of him were displayed in living rooms, and wealthy followers venerated likenesses of him in marble sculpture.[129] His admirers revered his sayings as divine oracles, carried around copies of his writings, and cherished copies of his letters like the letters of an apostle.[129] On the twentieth day of every month, admirers of his teachings would perform a solemn ritual to honor his memory.[120] At the same time, opponents of his teachings denounced him with vehemence and persistence.[120]

However, in the first and second centuries AD, Epicureanism gradually began to decline as it failed to compete with Stoicism, which had an ethical system more in line with traditional Roman values.[130] Epicureanism also suffered decay in the wake of Christianity, which was also rapidly expanding throughout the Roman Empire.[131] Of all the Greek philosophical schools, Epicureanism was the one most at odds with the new Christian teachings, since Epicureans believed that the soul was mortal, denied the existence of an afterlife, denied that the divine had any active role in human life, and advocated pleasure as the foremost goal of human existence.[131] As such, Christian writers such as Justin Martyr (c. 100–c. 165 AD), Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133–c. 190), Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240), and Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215), Arnobius (died c. 330), and Lactantius (c. 250-c.325) all singled it out for the most vitriolic criticism.[131]

In spite of this, DeWitt argues that Epicureanism and Christianity share much common language, calling Epicureanism "the first missionary philosophy" and "the first world philosophy".[132] Both Epicureanism and Christianity placed strong emphasis on the importance of love and forgiveness[133] and early Christian portrayals of Jesus are often similar to Epicurean portrayals of Epicurus.[133] DeWitt argues that Epicureanism, in many ways, helped pave the way for the spread of Christianity by "helping to bridge the gap between Greek intellectualism and a religious way of life" and "shunt[ing] the emphasis from the political to the social virtues and offer[ing] what may be called a religion of humanity."[134]

Middle Ages

By the early fifth century AD, Epicureanism was virtually extinct.[131] The Christian Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) declared, "its ashes are so cold that not a single spark can be struck from them."[131] While the ideas of Plato and Aristotle could easily be adapted to suit a Christian worldview, the ideas of Epicurus were not nearly as easily amenable.[131] As such, while Plato and Aristotle enjoyed a privileged place in Christian philosophy throughout the Middle Ages, Epicurus was not held in such esteem.[131] Information about Epicurus's teachings was available, through Lucretius's On the Nature of Things, quotations of it found in medieval Latin grammars and florilegia, and encyclopedias, such as Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae (seventh century) and Hrabanus Maurus's De universo (ninth century),[131] but there is little evidence that these teachings were systematically studied or comprehended.[131]

During the Middle Ages, Epicurus was remembered by the educated as a philosopher,[131] but he frequently appeared in popular culture as a gatekeeper to the Garden of Delights, the "proprietor of the kitchen, the tavern, and the brothel."[131] He appears in this guise in Martianus Capella's Marriage of Mercury and Philology (fifth century), John of Salisbury's Policraticus (1159), John Gower's Mirour de l'Omme, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.[131] Epicurus and his followers appear in Dante Alighieri's Inferno in the Sixth Circle of Hell, where they are imprisoned in flaming coffins for having believed that the soul dies with the body.[131]

Renaissance

In 1417, a manuscript-hunter named Poggio Bracciolini discovered a copy of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things in a monastery near Lake Constance.[131] The discovery of this manuscript was met with immense excitement, because scholars were eager to analyze and study the teachings of classical philosophers and this previously-forgotten text contained the most comprehensive account of Epicurus's teachings known in Latin.[131] The first scholarly dissertation on Epicurus, De voluptate (On Pleasure) by the Italian Humanist and Catholic priest Lorenzo Valla was published in 1431.[131] Valla made no mention of Lucretius or his poem.[131] Instead, he presented the treatise as a discussion on the nature of the highest good between an Epicurean, a Stoic, and a Christian.[131] Valla's dialogue ultimately rejects Epicureanism,[131] but, by presenting an Epicurean as a member of the dispute, Valla lent Epicureanism credibility as a philosophy that deserved to be taken seriously.[131]

None of the Quattrocento Humanists ever clearly endorsed Epicureanism,[131] but scholars such as Francesco Zabarella (1360–1417), Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481), Cristoforo Landino (1424–1498), and Leonardo Bruni (c. 1370–1444) did give Epicureanism a fairer analysis than it had traditionally received and provided a less overtly hostile assessment of Epicurus himself.[131] Nonetheless, "Epicureanism" remained a pejorative, synonymous with extreme egoistic pleasure-seeking, rather than a name of a philosophical school.[131] This reputation discouraged orthodox Christian scholars from taking what others might regard as an inappropriately keen interest in Epicurean teachings.[131] Epicureanism did not take hold in Italy, France, or England until the seventeenth century.[137] Even the liberal religious skeptics who might have been expected to take an interest in Epicureanism evidently did not;[137] Étienne Dolet (1509–1546) only mentions Epicurus once in all his writings and François Rabelais (between 1483 and 1494–1553) never mentions him at all.[138] Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) is the exception to this trend, quoting a full 450 lines of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things in his Essays.[138] His interest in Lucretius, however, seems to have been primarily literary and he is ambiguous about his feelings on Lucretius's Epicurean worldview.[138] During the Protestant Reformation, the label "Epicurean" was bandied back and forth as an insult between Protestants and Catholics.[138]

Revival

In the seventeenth century, the French Catholic priest and scholar Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655) sought to dislodge Aristotelianism from its position of the highest dogma by presenting Epicureanism as a better and more rational alternative.[138] In 1647, Gassendi published his book De vita et moribus Epicuri (The Life and Morals of Epicurus), a passionate defense of Epicureanism.[138] In 1649, he published a commentary on Diogenes Laërtius's Life of Epicurus.[138] He left Syntagma philosophicum (Philosophical Compendium), a synthesis of Epicurean doctrines, unfinished at the time of his death in 1655.[138] It was finally published in 1658, after undergoing revision by his editors.[138] Gassendi modified Epicurus's teachings to make them palatable for a Christian audience.[138] For instance, he argued that atoms were not eternal, uncreated, and infinite in number, instead contending that an extremely large but finite number of atoms were created by God at creation.[138]

As a result of Gassendi's modifications, his books were never censored by the Catholic Church.[138] They came to exert profound influence on later writings about Epicurus.[138] Gassendi's version of Epicurus's teachings became popular among some members of English scientific circles.[138] For these scholars, however, Epicurean atomism was merely a starting point for their own idiosyncratic adaptations of it.[138] To orthodox thinkers, Epicureanism was still regarded as immoral and heretical.[138] For instance, Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681), the first translator of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things into English, railed against Epicurus as "a lunatic dog" who formulated "ridiculous, impious, execrable doctrines".[138]

Epicurus's teachings were made respectable in England by the natural philosopher Walter Charleton (1619–1707), whose first Epicurean work, The Darkness of Atheism Dispelled by the Light of Nature (1652), advanced Epicureanism as a "new" atomism.[138] His next work Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charletoniana, or a Fabrick of Science Natural, upon a Hypothesis of Atoms, Founded by Epicurus, Repaired by Petrus Gassendus, and Augmented by Walter Charleton (1654) emphasized this idea.[138] These works, together with Charleton's Epicurus's Morals (1658), provided the English public with readily available descriptions of Epicurus's philosophy and assured orthodox Christians that Epicureanism was no threat to their beliefs.[138] The Royal Society, chartered in 1662, advanced Epicurean atomism.[139] One of the most prolific defenders of atomism was the chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691), who argued for it in publications such as The Origins of Forms and Qualities (1666), Experiments, Notes, etc. about the Mechanical Origin and Production of Divers Particular Qualities (1675), and Of the Excellency and Grounds of the Mechanical Hypothesis (1674).[139] By the end of the seventeenth century, Epicurean atomism was widely accepted by members of the English scientific community as the best model for explaining the physical world,[140] but it had been modified so greatly that Epicurus was no longer seen as its original parent.[140]

Enlightenment and after

The Anglican bishop Joseph Butler's anti-Epicurean polemics in his Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel (1726) and Analogy of Religion (1736) set the tune for what most orthodox Christians believed about Epicureanism for the remainder of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[140] Nonetheless, there are a few indications from this time period of Epicurus's improving reputation.[140] Epicureanism was beginning to lose its associations with indiscriminate and insatiable gluttony, which had been characteristic of its reputation ever since antiquity.[140] Instead, the word "epicure" began to refer to a person with extremely refined taste in food.[140][141] Examples of this usage include "Epicurean cooks / sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite" from William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (Act II. scene i; c. 1607)[141] and "such an epicure was Potiphar—to please his tooth and pamper his flesh with delicacies" from William Whately's Prototypes (1646).[140]

Around the same time, the Epicurean injunction to "live in obscurity" was beginning to gain popularity as well.[140] In 1685, Sir William Temple (1628–1699) abandoned a promising career as a diplomat and instead retired to his garden, devoting himself to writing essays on Epicurus's moral teachings.[140] That same year, John Dryden translated the celebrated lines from Book II of Lucretius's On the Nature of Things: "'Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore / The rowling ship, and hear the Tempest roar."[140] Meanwhile, John Locke (1632–1704) adapted Gassendi's modified version of Epicurus's epistemology, which became highly influential on English empiricism.[140] Many thinkers with sympathies towards the Enlightenment endorsed Epicureanism as an admirable moral philosophy.[140] Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, declared in 1819, "I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us."[140]

The German philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883), whose ideas are the basis of Marxism, was profoundly influenced as a young man by the teachings of Epicurus[142][143] and his doctoral thesis was a Hegelian dialectical analysis of the differences between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus.[144] Marx viewed Democritus as a rationalist skeptic, whose epistemology was inherently contradictory, but saw Epicurus as a dogmatic empiricist, whose worldview is internally consistent and practically applicable.[145] The British poet Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) praised "the sober majesties / of settled, sweet, Epicurean life" in his 1868 poem "Lucretius".[140] Epicurus's ethical teachings also had an indirect impact on the philosophy of Utilitarianism in England during the nineteenth century.[140] Soviet politician Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) lauded Epicurus by stating: "He was the greatest philosopher of all time. He was the one who recommended practicing virtue to derive the greatest joy from life".[146]

Friedrich Nietzsche once noted: "Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former – although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity."[147]

Academic interest in Epicurus and other Hellenistic philosophers increased over the course of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with an unprecedented number of monographs, articles, abstracts, and conference papers being published on the subject.[140] The texts from the library of Philodemus of Gadara in the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, first discovered between 1750 and 1765, are being deciphered, translated, and published by scholars part of the Philodemus Translation Project, funded by the United States National Endowment for the Humanities, and part of the Centro per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi in Naples.[140] Epicurus's popular appeal among non-scholars is difficult to gauge,[140] but it seems to be relatively comparable to the appeal of more traditionally popular ancient Greek philosophical subjects such as Stoicism, Aristotle, and Plato.[148]