I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions.
And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus, in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the young man to me, and to philosophy. Through enough training of the mind, you will be able to achieve such vividness of imagination that you can relive these experiences and that happiness.
Frankl writes that one of the few things that was able to give him a feeling of happiness was conjuring up an image of his beloved wife, and engaging in imaginary conversation with her.
I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. He begins with a claim familiar from Plato and Aristotle : that we all desire happiness as an end in itself, and all other things are desired as a means for producing happiness.
But what is happiness? Epicurus gives a straightforward definition, influenced by Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates and founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy:. It is the starting point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.
Epicurus then claims that there are two self-imposed beliefs that do the most to make our lives unhappy or full of pain.
They are first, the belief that we will be punished by the gods for our bad actions, and second, that death is something to be feared. Both of these beliefs produce fear and anxiety, and are completely unnecessary since they are based on fictions. While the gods do indeed exist, being perfect and eternal they do not directly concern themselves with human affairs. As such, we have no need to fear any punishment from them, nor do we need to spend time in laborious acts of pious worship.
As for death, he points out that once sentient experience comes to an end there will be no sensation of pain. As such, the fear of death is completely groundless. Epicurus makes an important distinction between necessary and unnecessary desires.
Necessary desires are those which are necessary to produce happiness, such as desiring to get rid of bodily pain, or desiring a state of inner tranquility.
In order to get rid of this pain-pleasure-pain cycle, we need to cultivate a mindset in which there is no pain. Thus the aim is not the positive pursuit of pleasure, as it was for Aristippus. Epicurus notes further that we need wisdom to see which pleasures are really pleasurable, and which pains are necessary to produce pleasure.
As noted above , Epicurus maintains that such sensible qualities are real qualities of bodies. All of our knowledge ultimately comes from the senses, thinks Epicurus, and we can trust the senses, when properly used. Sensations give us information about the external world, and we can test the judgments based upon sensations against further sensations; e. Instead, error enters in when we make judgments about the world based upon the information received through the senses.
Epicurus thinks that, in order to make judgments about the world, or even to start any inquiry whatsoever, we must already be in possession of certain basic concepts, which stand in need of no further proof or definition, on pain of entering into an infinite regress. This concern is similar to the Paradox of Inquiry explored by Plato in the Meno, that one must already know about something in order to be able to inquire about it.
Further ideas are formed by processes of analogy or similarity or by compounding these basic concepts. Thus, all ideas are ultimately formed on the basis of sense-experience. At least three separate anti-skeptical arguments are given by Epicureans:. Epicurus says that it is impossible to live as a skeptic. If a person really were to believe that he knows nothing, then he would have no reason to engage in one course of action instead of another. Thus, the consistent skeptic would engage in no action whatsoever, and would die.
If a skeptic claims that nothing can be known, then one should ask whether he knows that nothing can be known. However, Epicurus has a sophisticated and idiosyncratic view of the nature of pleasure, which leads him to recommend a virtuous, moderately ascetic life as the best means to securing pleasure.
However, he disagrees with Aristotle by identifying happiness with pleasure. Epicurus gives two reasons for this. Everything we do, claims Epicurus, we do for the sake ultimately of gaining pleasure for ourselves.
This is supposedly confirmed by observing the behavior of infants, who, it is claimed, instinctively pursue pleasure and shun pain. This is also true of adults, thinks Epicurus, but in adults it is more difficult to see that this is true, since adults have much more complicated beliefs about what will bring them pleasure. But the Epicureans did spend a great deal of energy trying to make plausible the contention that all activity, even apparently self-sacrificing activity or activity done solely for the sake of virtue or what is noble, is in fact directed toward obtaining pleasure for oneself.
One immediately perceives that pleasure is good and that pain is bad, in the same way that one immediately perceives that fire is hot; no further argument is needed to show the goodness of pleasure or the badness of pain.
Although all pleasures are good and all pains evil, Epicurus says that not all pleasures are choiceworthy or all pains to be avoided. Because of this, Epicurus denies that there is any intermediate state between pleasure and pain. When one has unfulfilled desires, this is painful, and when one no longer has unfulfilled desires, this steady state is the most pleasurable of all, not merely some intermediate state between pleasure and pain.
Epicurus also distinguishes between physical and mental pleasures and pains. Physical pleasures and pains concern only the present, whereas mental pleasures and pains also encompass the past fond memories of past pleasure or regret over past pain or mistakes and the future confidence or fear about what will occur.
The greatest destroyer of happiness, thinks Epicurus, is anxiety about the future, especially fear of the gods and fear of death. Because of the close connection of pleasure with desire-satisfaction, Epicurus devotes a considerable part of his ethics to analyzing different kinds of desires. If pleasure results from getting what you want desire-satisfaction and pain from not getting what you want desire-frustration , then there are two strategies you can pursue with respect to any given desire: you can either strive to fulfill the desire, or you can try to eliminate the desire.
For the most part Epicurus advocates the second strategy, that of paring your desires down to a minimum core, which are then easily satisfied. Examples of natural and necessary desires include the desires for food, shelter, and the like. Furthermore, they are necessary for life, and they are naturally limited: that is, if one is hungry, it only takes a limited amount of food to fill the stomach, after which the desire is satisfied. Epicurus says that one should try to fulfill these desires.
Vain desires include desires for power, wealth, fame, and the like. They are difficult to satisfy, in part because they have no natural limit. If one desires wealth or power, no matter how much one gets, it is always possible to get more, and the more one gets, the more one wants. These desires are not natural to human beings, but inculcated by society and by false beliefs about what we need; e. Epicurus thinks that these desires should be eliminated.
An example of a natural but non-necessary desire is the desire for luxury food. Although food is needed for survival, one does not need a particular type of food to survive. Thus, despite his hedonism, Epicurus advocates a surprisingly ascetic way of life. Epicurus, however, insists that courage, moderation, and the other virtues are needed in order to attain happiness.
However, the virtues for Epicurus are all purely instrumental goods—that is, they are valuable solely for the sake of the happiness that they can bring oneself, not for their own sake. In this, Epicurus goes against the majority of Greek ethical theorists, such as the Stoics , who identify happiness with virtue, and Aristotle , who identifies happiness with a life of virtuous activity.
Epicurus thinks that natural science and philosophy itself also are instrumental goods. Natural science is needed in order to give mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena and thus dispel the fear of the gods, while philosophy helps to show us the natural limits of our desires and to dispel the fear of death. Epicurus is one of the first philosophers to give a well-developed contractarian theory of justice. Justice exists only where there are such agreements.
Like the virtues, justice is valued entirely on instrumental grounds, because of its utility for each of the members of society. Epicurus says that the main reason not to be unjust is that one will be punished if one gets caught, and that even if one does not get caught, the fear of being caught will still cause pain.
However, he adds that the fear of punishment is needed mainly to keep fools in line, who otherwise would kill, steal, etc. The Epicurean wise man recognizes the usefulness of the laws, and since he does not desire great wealth, luxury goods, political power, or the like, he sees that he has no reason to engage in the conduct prohibited by the laws in any case.
Thus, a prohibition of murder would be just, but antimiscegenation laws would not. Since what is useful can vary from place to place and time to time, what laws are just can likewise vary. Epicurus values friendship highly and praises it in quite extravagant terms.
Because of this, some scholars have thought that in this area, at least, Epicurus abandons his egoistic hedonism and advocates altruism toward friends. This is not clear, however. Epicurus consistently maintains that friendship is valuable because it is one of the greatest means of attaining pleasure. Friends, he says, are able to provide one another the greatest security, whereas a life without friends is solitary and beset with perils. In order for there to be friendship, Epicurus says, there must be trust between friends, and friends have to treat each other as well as they treat themselves.
The communities of Epicureans can be seen as embodying these ideals, and these are ideals that ultimately promote ataraxia. One of the greatest fears that Epicurus tries to combat is the fear of death. Epicurus thinks that this fear is often based upon anxiety about having an unpleasant afterlife; this anxiety, he thinks, should be dispelled once one realizes that death is annihilation, because the mind is a group of atoms that disperses upon death.
If death is bad, for whom is it bad? His argument can be set out as follows:. Although they held the gods to be immortal and indestructible how this might work in a materialist universe remains unclear , human pleasure might nevertheless equal divine, since pleasure, Epicurus maintained KD 19 , is not augmented by duration compare the idea of perfect health, which is not more perfect for lasting longer ; the catastematic pleasure experienced by a human being completely free of mental distress and with no bodily pain to disturb him or her is at the absolute top of the scale.
Nor is such pleasure difficult to achieve: it is a mark precisely of those desires that are neither natural nor necessary that they are hard to satisfy. Aristotle atomism: ancient continuity and infinitesimals contractarianism Cyrenaics Democritus friendship hedonism Lucretius physicalism.
Sources 2. Life 3. Physical Theory 4. Psychology and Ethics 5. Social Theory 6. Psychology and Ethics Having established the physical basis of the world, Epicurus proceeds to explain the nature of the soul this, at least, is the order in which Lucretius sets things out. The Epicurean Life Epicurus placed an extremely high value on friendship or love: philia.
Bibliography Editions, translations, commentaries Annas, Julia ed. Arrighetti, Graziano, Epicuro Opere , 2 nd edition, Turin: Einaudi. Best edition available, with Italian translation. Arrighetti, Graziano and Marcello Gigante, Bailey, Cyril B.
Best edition in English. Bollack, Jean ed. Il pensiero del piacere: Epicuro, testi morali, commentari , Genoa: La Quercia. Delattre, Daniel and Jackie Pigeaud eds. Les epicuriens , Paris: Gallimard. Very rich collection of texts in translation. Hessler, Jan Erik, Epikur: Brief an Menoikeus , Basil. Best commentary on this epistle. Inwood, Brad and L. Gerson, Translation of principal sources. The Epicurean part is also published separately.
Konstan, David trans. Laursen, Simon, Leone, Giuliana, Splendid edition with major introduction on simulacra and related questions. Long, A. Excellent collection of sources, with Greek text in volume 2, arranged by topic.
Millot, C. Obbink, Dirk, Philodemus De pietate , Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sedley, David, Smith, Martin Ferguson ed. Stern, Jacob trans. Taylor, C. Usener, Hermann, Leipzig: Teubner. Most complete collection of fragments. Verde, Francesco, Epicuro Epistola a Erodoto.
Rome: Carocci. The best edition of this fundamental work. Good chapters on Epicurean epistemology, physics, psychology, and ethics. Dated but still useful. Clay, Diskin, Gigandet, Alain and Pierre-Marie Morel eds. Giovacchini, J. Gordon, Pamela, Hossenfelder, Malte, Epikur , Munich: Beck. Jones, Howard, The Epicurean Tradition , London: Routledge.
Durham: Acumen. Highly readable and philosophically engaging introduction. Pesce, Domenico, Saggio su Epicuro , Bari: Laterza. Rist, John, A good survey. Epicuro , Rome: Carocci. Warren, James ed. Wilson, Catherine, Physics Cambiano, Giuseppe, Furley, David, Still fundamental. Giannantoni, Gabriele, Inwood, Brad, Konstan, David, Souffrin eds.
Vrin, pp. Masi, Francesca Guadalupe and Stefano Maso eds. Epicurus on Eidola. Morel, Pierre-Marie, Universitaires de France. Psychology Armstrong, David, Gordon and David B. Suits eds. Armstrong, David, Fitzgerald ed.
Diano, Carlo, [—42]. Scritti Epicurei , Florence: Leo S. This is an updated version of D. Brill, Ethics Annas, Julia, Excellent overview. Alberti, Antonina, Barigazzi, A. Cooper, J. Die epikureische Ethik , Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Purinton, Jeffrey S. Pleasure Annas, Julia, Cooper, John M. Gosling, J. Taylor, Nikolsky, Boris, Wolfsdorf, David, Death Alberti, Antonina, Lesses, Glenn, Mitsis, Phillip, Rosenbaum, S.
Warren, James, Epistemology Asmis, Elizabeth, Everson, Stephen, Die epikureische Erkenntnistheorie , Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Konstan, David, a. Lee, Edward N. Machamer and R. Turnbull eds. Manuwald, A.
0コメント