Abstract
Epicurus may have adopted most of Democritus’ physics, yet he avoids calling the void “nonbeing”, as Leucippus and Democritus did. He seems to have given up the ancient atomists’ meontology, since he holds that the void is but full being, which he calls “intangible nature”. Moreover, contrary to Aristotle and the Stoics, Epicurus considers fictions, time, the possible, the false, the “sayable” as complete beings and not as relative nonbeings, placed somewhere between complete existence and nothingness. Epicurus’attitude towards death suggests the same refusal to accept relative nonbeings. According to him, death must be totally excluded from life and, accordingly, should not be lived as a diminished life or as afterlife. The separation between being and nonbeing in Epicurus’ philosophy is as strict and sharp as in Parmenides’ontology. I think that this peculiarity contributed to a great extent to ensure the stability and the persuasive force of his system.
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