Sarah Barclay - H-03
Epicurus was a man born on the island of Samos in Greece to Athenian parents. Plato had died 7 years before Epicurus was born and Platonism was the popular philosophy at the time. Alexander the Great crossed into Persia by the time Epicurus was 7 (to put things into perspective) and when Alexander the Great died, Perdiccas, a general in Alexander the Great’s army, made the Athenian settlers on Samos leave and go to what is now on the coast of Turkey.
Epicurus was a man born on the island of Samos in Greece to Athenian parents. Plato had died 7 years before Epicurus was born and Platonism was the popular philosophy at the time. Alexander the Great crossed into Persia by the time Epicurus was 7 (to put things into perspective) and when Alexander the Great died, Perdiccas, a general in Alexander the Great’s army, made the Athenian settlers on Samos leave and go to what is now on the coast of Turkey.
Epicurus,
being a part of those Athenians, went to Turkey, and he studied under
Nausiphanes. Nausiphanes followed the teachings of Democritus and it’s widely
believed that Epicurus’s own philosophy was heavily influenced by Democritus,
along with other philosophers, although some say Epicurus denied having been
influenced by any philosophers and instead was self-taught.
But what
was Epicurus’ philosophy?
Epicurus,
like Democritus, was an atomist. He believed in the existence of atoms and
thought the only things to really exist were atoms and the void. He thought
that nothing comes from nothing and that atoms had no beginning. They have
always been here. Along with these beliefs, he believed that the universe has always
existed. It had no beginning, has no end, and will always exist. As well as
this, Epicurus goes against Aristotle’s idea of the universe. Epicurus said
that the universe is infinite, that should the universe have a limit as
Aristotle said, there would be a point in the universe that we could reach,
stick our hand out, and reach what would become the new edge of the universe.
Epicurus
was also very prominent with his thoughts on death. While most philosophers at
the time imagined death to be painful and many of them feared dying, Epicurus
was the opposite. He imagined death to be more painless than people thought and
that it shouldn’t be feared. And he had reasons for this.
According
to Epicurus, our minds are a part of our bodies, and when our bodies are
destroyed in death, the mind is as well. With our minds gone, we’re not going
to be around to understand what happens after our death to either us or those
around us.
He
believed that once we die, we’re dead. We await no punishment or reward from
God or gods by how we acted when we were living. We simply stop existing. It
was that simple for Epicurus. I think the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
says it best, “For Epicurus, the gods function mainly
as ethical ideals, whose lives we can strive to emulate, but whose wrath we
need not fear.”
He thought
that instead of fearing the gods’ wrath in death, we should focus on life,
specifically how we live our lives. Epicurus thought we should live our best
lives, living the happiest we can before we inevitably die.
However, Epicurus’
definition of being happy in life differs from ours. He lived a very simple
life. He wore modest clothes, didn’t eat extravagant foods, and lived in a
fairly small house (although it’s thought by some that he lived in a large
house with many of his friends. Either way, he didn’t have a lot of his own
space.)
And while
to us, that doesn’t meet our expectations of living the happiest as possible,
Epicurus had a method to his madness. He believed that we should have a
realistic approach to living our lives. We should have attainable goals in our
lives as to not be disappointed when we don’t reach them. Like I said in my
presentation, it’s easier to live a happier life (according to Epicurus) if we
say one of our goals is to read that book that’s on our to-do list than wish
for a longer life, more power, more money, etc. If you live your life doing
things you know you can one day achieve, you’ll be far happier than living a
life where you worked so hard for one goal and dying before reaching it. If you
live like the latter, you have a chance of missing out on what a happy life
could be.
In the words of Hannah Montana - "Life's what you make it, so let's make it rock"
I will
leave you on one note/question as I rewatched the Epicurus episode of MerlĂ
(highly recommend watching, each episode focuses on a different philosopher and
applies their teachings to the episode’s plot).
As I watched, MerlĂ, the philosophy
teacher, posed a question:
If you had to choose one, and only one, to be happy,
what would it be: friends or money? How long do you think you could last before
‘needing’ the other? What’s the upside or downside to having only one of these
and is it possible to live with that?
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