Epicurean View Research Articles

Epicurean view on the validity of sensation: On the contextual reading of the content of the perception

Scholars have argued that we have good reason to defend the Epicurean view of the validity of sensation on the basis of a contextual reading of the content of perception. More specifically, it has been suggested that we can respond to skeptical challenges by acknowledging the contextual character of perceptual content and by linking its truth to the conditions under which it occurs. By examining these proposals, we identify some sources of concern and point out the limitations in providing an adequate framework for the Epicurean idea that the senses are capable of providing the ultimate criteria of truth. In particular, we argue that we should be wary of a contextual reading of perceptual content, not only because this is not a viable model for reliably distinguishing truth from falsity, but also because it is not adequately supported by the available textual evidence of Epicurean empiricist epistemology. Finally, we point out further problems for the Epicurean viewpoint by drawing on some later considerations in the history of the philosophy of perception.

Epicurus and Grief

Distress and guilt are common aspects of grief. For many, especially those experiencing complicated grief, guilt can often feel overwhelming and be prolonged. Those grieving are often subject to thoughts of the form “If only X” or “I should have done Y.” Fueling these thoughts is the belief that, somehow, a loved one has been harmed by death. Some who are grieving, often experience the thought that they are disappointing those who have passed or, even, harming the memory of those they love. These feelings have little logical support if, as Epicurus suggests, the dead can’t be harmed, and death is not a misfortune to the dead. In this article I will outline the Epicurean view on death with the expectation that it may be useful in philosophical counseling for those experiencing anguish as a part of the process.

Straightening the Uterus with Epicurus

Abstract Despite Lucretius’ observations about fertility and marriage at the end of book 4, the Epicurean view on procreation is to a great extent still uncharted territory, due to the shortage of textual evidence other than Lucretius. An important, but often neglected source of information can be found in the few remaining columns of the, unfortunately rather badly preserved, Herculaneum papyrus PHerc. 908/1390, conventionally known as the treatise On Procreation. This paper aims to draw attention to the Gynecological treatise of Soranus of Ephesus as a hitherto unnoticed textual parallel for col. 6-7 of our papyrus. Additionally, I will use these columns to shed some light on the background for Lucretius’ observations in DRN 4.1263-1277, where he discusses the importance of adopting the proper coital position during intercourse.

CICERO AGAINST CASSIUS ON PLEASURE AND VIRTUE: A COMPLICATED PASSAGE FROMDE FINIBVS(1.25)

In the first two books ofDe finibus(=Fin.), Cicero deals with the Epicurean view of the final goal of life. This philosophical discussion, which is preceded by a rhetorical proem that stands on itself, is framed as a dialogue between Torquatus, who defends the Epicurean position, Cicero, who attacks it, and Triarius, who confines himself to a few critical interventions. If philosophy starts in wonder, according to the celebrated passage from Plato'sTheaetetus(155d), the company meets this criterion admirably well, for the actual discussion starts with Torquatus’ surprise about Cicero's aversion to the Epicurean view (Fin.1.13). He even suggests that this aversion has nothing to do with a fundamental disapproval of Epicurus’ doctrines but that it should rather be sought in stylistic concerns.

Epicureanism and Skepticism about Practical Reason

AbstractEpicureans believe that death cannot harm the one who dies because they hold theexistence condition, which states that a subject is able to be harmed only while they exist. I show that on one reading of this condition death can, in fact, make the deceased worse off because it is satisfied by the deprivation account of death’s badness. I argue that the most plausible Epicurean view holds theanti-modal existence condition, according to which no merely possible state of affairs can be good or bad relative to the subject who dies. I go on to show how this condition, as well as any other condition that denies the deprivation account, results in skepticism about practical reason. Thus, the Epicurean faces a dilemma. Either our practical reasoning is hopelessly mistaken or death can make us worse off. Given that our practical reasoning seems at least mildly reliable, we should conclude that death can make us worse off.

Epicurean Dreams

AbstractMost ancient philosophers accept that dreams have prophetic powers enabling humans to relate somehow to a world beyond their own. The only philosophers known to make a clean and explicit break with that tradition are the Epicureans, beginning with Epicurus himself and reaching his last eminent follower, Diogenes of Oinoanda. They openly reject the idea that dreams mediate between the divine and the human realms, or between the world of the living and the world of the dead. They demystify the phenomenon of dreaming by explaining sleeping and dreaming in terms of their materialistic physical theory. Importantly, they examine dreams and their content from different perspectives and explore their relevance to our lives. The general aim of this paper is to offer a synthetic account of the Epicurean view about dreaming and dreams, advance certain new hypotheses that seem worthy of consideration, and show how Epicurus and his followers integrate dream theory into their philosophy as a whole.

VIII—Epicurus on Pleasure, a Complete Life, and Death: A Defence

Epicurus argued that the good life is the pleasurable life. He also argued that “death is nothing to us”. These claims appear in tension. For, if pleasure is good, then it seems that death is bad when it deprives us of deeply enjoyable time alive. Here, I offer an Epicurean view of pleasure and the complete life which dissolves this tension. This view is, I contend, more appealing than critics of Epicureanism have allowed, in part because it assigns higher value to pleasures that we produce by exercising our rational capacities and by establishing control over our lives.

에피쿠로스의 죽음관에 대한 비판적 고찰

본 연구의 목적은 죽음에 대한 두려움을 무가치한 것으로 평가한 에피쿠로스의 죽음관을 비판적으로 검토하는 것이다. 이러한 목적에 따라서 본 논문에서는 에피쿠로스의 입장이 지닌 한계를 당대의 시대적 상황과 당시 사람들의 정서, 그리고 데모크리토스로부터 이어진 유물론적 전통의 계승에서 찾고, 이와 관련한 에피쿠로스의 입장을 감각적 쾌락과 고통을 중심으로 정리하고자 하였다. 또한 에피쿠로스의 죽음관의 특징을 신에 대한 두려움과 죽음의 고통에 대한 두려움의 제거로 구분하여, 이러한 두 가지 두려움의 제거를 목적으로 하는 에피쿠로스의 논의를 검토하였다. 다만, 해당 부분에 대해서는 에피쿠로스를 찬양하고 그의 주장을 해설한 루크레티우스의 정리를 함께 보충․검토하였다. 이러한 과정을 통해 본 논문에서는 에피쿠로스의 죽음관이 지닌 의문점을 죽음에 대한 주관주의적 해석이 지닌 문제, 감각과 무관한 해악의 발생 가능성 문제, 인생의 시간을 영원한 시간과 비교하는 문제 등 세 가지 관점에서 비판적으로 검토하고자 하였다.

Epicurus on Pleasure, a Complete Life, and Death: A Defence

Epicurus argued that the good life is the pleasurable life. He also argued that ‘death is nothing to us’. These claims appear in tension. For if pleasure is good, then it seems that death is bad when it deprives us of deeply enjoyable time alive. Here, I offer an Epicurean view of pleasure and the complete life which dissolves this tension. This view is, I contend, more appealing than critics of Epicureanism have allowed, in part because it assigns higher value to pleasures that we produce by exercising our rational capacities and by establishing control over our lives.

A dilemma for Epicureanism

Perhaps death’s badness is an illusion. Epicureans think so and argue that agents cannot be harmed by death when they’re alive (because death hasn’t happened yet) nor when they’re dead (because they do not exist by the time death comes). I argue that each version of Epicureanism faces a fatal dilemma: it is either committed to a demonstrably false view about the relationship between self-regarding reasons and well-being or it is involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism. I first provide principled reason to think that any viable view about the badness of death must allow that agents have self-regarding reason to avoid (or seek) death if doing so would increase their total well-being. I then show that Epicurean views which do not preserve this link are subject to reductio arguments and so should be rejected. After that, I show that the Epicurean views which accommodate this desideratum are involved in a merely verbal dispute with deprivationism.

The Epicureans on Human Nature and its Social and Political Consequences

Based on certain passages in Colotes, Hermarchus, and Horace, the Epicureans may be thought to defend a social contract theory that is roughly Hobbesian. According to such a view, human life without the social contract is solitary and brutish. This paper argues that such a reading is mistaken. It offers a systematic analysis of Lucretius’s culture story in On the Nature of Things v as well as the Epicurean passages that at first sight seem to contradict the Lucretian account. The conclusion of such an analysis is not only that all extant evidence is internally consistent, but also that Epicurean social contract theory relies on a ‘dynamic’ conception of human nature: On the Epicurean view, agents have very different psychological motivations when coming together to form societies and when coming together to form political and legal states.

Hobbes’s materialism and Epicurean mechanism

ABSTRACTHobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. ‘Matter in motion’ may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator god or teleology to explain it, comes up against monotheism and its insistence on the incoherence of an ordered world in the absence of a God and his purposes. The following questions were central to this debate: (1) Can we understand the universe as law-governed in the absence of a god? (2) If so, what room is there in a fully determined mechanical universe for human freedom? (3) If humans do enjoy freedom, does the same hold for other animals? (4) Is this freedom compatible with standard views of morality? (5) Is there an analogue between the material world as law-governed and human social order? (6) If so does it also obtain for other animals?

Epicurus on Bivalence and the Excluded Middle

Abstract:In several of his philosophical works, Cicero gives reports of the Epicurean views on bivalence and the excluded middle that are not always consistent. I attempt to establish a coherent account that fits the texts as well as possible and can reasonably be attributed to the Epicureans. I argue that they distinguish between a semantic and a syntactic version of the law of the excluded middle, and that whilst they reject bivalence and the semantic law for fear of certain fatalistic consequences, they endorse the syntactic law. Subsequently, I show that certain principles that they seem to endorse in the context of Cicero’s discussion of Chrysippus’ argument for fate, when modified by the addition of the atomic swerve, suggest that the Epicureans have in mind something like a supervaluationist model of truth at times, which has the desired results with respect to the three logical principles.

Epicurus and sense data

Epicurean epistemology, which gives perception full credibility as a key factor and an infallible source of receiving information regarding the external word, is completely dependable on materialist-atomistic view of natural science. As such, it is fundamental for a clear understanding of Epicurus' ethical ideas. This paper seeks to reconstruct his position and subsume it under one of the contemporary theories of perception, as an apologetic view on Epicurus and his, at first glance, rigid standpoints. Insistence on the truth of all perceptions is attempted to be alleviated and understood by modern perspective. Thus, classifying Epicurean views of perception as a certain form of indirect realism provides to the seemingly unacceptable Epicurus' theory of perception a shape which may be plausible and acceptable.

Avi Lifschitz. Language and Enlightenment: The Berlin Debates of the Eighteenth Century.

At the opening of his study on language debates in the German Enlightenment, Avi Lifschitz invokes a comment by Johann Gottfried Herder that language, “the grand assistant of man,” had “enabled human beings to forge their entire material culture, as well as their intellectual endeavors” (p. 1). Lifschitz's study seeks to explore the context for Herder's remark. His account is framed by two prize contests sponsored by the Berlin Academy of Sciences: the 1759 essay contest organized around the question, “What is the reciprocal influence of the Opinions of a People on the language, and of the Language on Opinion?”; and the 1771 contest on the origins of language. In between the two contests the author discusses everything from ancient Epicurean views on language to ideas about symbolic cognition in the eighteenth century, the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the foundation of the Berlin Academy, and the cultural position of Huguenot refugees in Berlin. The result is a somewhat uneven book, which places its often insightful and informative readings of key interventions in the language debate in an unfocused narrative that darts back and forth in time.

Epictetus on Fearing Death: Bugbear and Open Door Policy

Aristotle claims that the most fearsome thing is death (Nicomachean Ethics iii 6.1115a26). In contrast, Epicurus famously argued that death is nothing to us, and so nothing to fear (Letter to Menoeceus 124). The Stoics agreed with their Epicurean rivals that death is not to be feared, but they presented different reasons to support this judgment.1 Epicurus identified the goal of living with pleasure, especially freedom from pain and distress, and evil with pain and distress. Since no sensation at all, neither pleasant nor painful, is possible for the dead, he inferred that death is nothing. It is nothing for the dead, who no longer exist, and nothing for the living, who do not experience their own deaths as long as they live (Letter to Menoeceus 125). The Stoics rejected the Epicurean identification of good with pleasure and evil with pain. The Stoics maintained that life, death, strength, weakness, health, illness, wealth, poverty, beauty, ugliness, good reputation, infamy, pleasure, pain, and other such things are neither goods nor evils but rather indifferents (adiaphora, see Long and Sedley (LS) 1987, i 354-355 [58A-C]). Within this class of indifferents the Stoics grouped death with weakness, illness, poverty, ugliness, infamy, and pain, calling such things ‘dispreferred’ (apoproēgmena) indifferents. This means that although the threat of death in no way diminishes the happiness of the Stoic, it is natural and reasonable for him to choose to continue to live unless and until doing so conflicts with virtue, which is the only good.2 The Epicurean view of death as nothing to a person and the Stoic view of death as indifferent to one’s happiness therefore offer distinct rationales for not fearing death.3 I present the Stoic Epictetus’ arguments that no fears about death are warranted. If Epictetus can persuade his students to dispel all their fears of death, he will thereby have gone a long way toward liberating them from a host of other unreasonable worries that the uneducated typically regard as less scary than death. Consequently, debunking the fear of death is a vital pedagogical goal for Ancient Philosophy 34 (2014) ©Mathesis Publications 1

The Epicurean View of Death

The Epicurean view is that there is nothing bad about death, and we are wrong to loathe it. This paper distinguishes several different such views, and shows that while some of them really would undermine our loathing of death, others would not. It then argues that any version that did so could be at best vacuously true: If there is nothing bad about death, that can only be because there is nothing bad about anything.

Procreation and Parenthood: The Ethics of Bearing and Rearing Children * Edited by DAVID ARCHARD and DAVID BENATAR

Procreation and Parenthood deals with moral questions in relation to decisions about bringing children into existence and how to rear them. In their comprehensive introduction, David Benatar and David Archard provide a helpful overview of contemporary discussions of these two sorts of questions and explain how each chapter fits into the larger picture. In the following, I shall focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the part of the book that deals with procreation. In Chapter 2, Tim Bayne discusses the theoretical basis for so-called wrongful life cases and in particular three possible accounts thereof, namely the no-faults model, parity models and dual benchmark models (32). According to the no-faults model, it is incoherent to claim that being caused to exist can be harmful to the child. The two other models deny this. According to parity models, the level of welfare required for a life to be worth starting does not differ from the level required for a life to be worth continuing, whereas dual benchmark models require a higher level in the former case. Bayne critically discusses no-faults and dual benchmarks models and ends up defending a parity model. While I agree with his conclusion and many of his arguments, I nevertheless find a couple of them too swift. For example, I cannot see that no-faults theorists need to be committed to an Epicurean view of death (while they deny that existence can be better/worse than never existing, e.g. because the latter outcome does not include a welfare level, the badness of death can be assessed by comparing outcomes with different life lengths and indeed with different welfare levels; see e.g. McMahan 2002: Ch. 2).

Epicureans on kingship

Diogenes Laertius lists in his catalogue of Epicurus' works (10.28) a treatiseOn Kingship, which is unfortunately no longer extant. Owing to the Epicureans' antipathy to politics, such a work might be viewed with surprise and presumed to be virulently negative in outlook. Indeed, Plutarch reports that the Epicureans wrote on kingship only to ward people away from living in the company of kings (Adv. Col.1127a) and that they maintained that to be king oneself was a terrible mistake (Adv. Col.1125c-d). However, the scattered evidence that remains suggests the Epicurean views on kingship were both nuanced and sophisticated. In this paper I seek to reconstruct a viable account of the Epicurean position on kingship.

Harry Silverstein’s Four‐Dimensionalism and the Purported Evil of Death

In his article ‘The Evil of Death’ (henceforth: ED) Harry Silverstein argues that a proper refutation of the Epicurean view that death is not an evil requires the adoption of a particular revisionary ontology, which Silverstein, following Quine, calls ‘four‐dimensionalism’.1 In ‘The Evil of Death Revisited’ (henceforth: EDR) Silverstein reaffirms his earlier position and responds to several criticisms, including some targeted at his ontology. There remain, however, serious problems with Silverstein’s argument, and I shall highlight five major ones below. I conclude that Silverstein has not shown that an appeal to four‐dimensionalism facilitates a refutation of Epicurus, although a consideration of some of Silverstein’s points helps to indicate the limited scope of the Epicurean thesis.