Happy Twentieth!
“Strangers, here you will do well to linger . . .
. . . Here, our highest good is pleasure”
- Inscription above the gate of Ho Kepos, according to Seneca the Younger
Central panel from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch
The events that Epicurus’ original Ho Kepos endowment was intended to celebrate were specifed in his will as follows:
The birthday of Epicurus, on the tenth day of Gamelion (seventh month of the Attic calendar of ancient Greece, coinciding with the modern month of February) in each year.
The twentieth day of each month, known as “Aikas” (Greek εἰκάς from εἴκοσῐ eíkosi, "twenty").
The day in Poseideon which commemorates the brothers of Epicurus.
The day in Metageitnion which commemorates Polyaenus.
Epicurus was an ancient advocate for personal choice, individual responsibility and opportunities for all. For some, adopting his system of philosophy - learning to be content with a simple life - provides space for the necessary intellectual and creative freedoms that give strength to inner convictions, plus serenity and calmness to express them. Epicurus also recognised the value - provided, in part, by the invention of civilisation - of a safe and peaceful retreat for thought and reflection, away from hectic daily living and dangers of the natural world.
“Even now the earth is full to overflowing with their like, full of dread terrors in the woods and the forests, and on the mountain slopes: but the places where those terrors are we have it in our power, for the most part, to avoid.”
- Lucretius, “De rerum natura”, Book V, lines 35-38.
Epicurus has been greatly admired by many followers and there is good reason to celebrate his insights, even to this day. He favoured naturalistic explanations over theological ones; and, although he did not discount the possibility of gods existing, he did not believe that they could have any control over the agency or destiny of humans. Epicurean ethics are summaried most simply by the “Tetrapharmakos”:
Don't fear god
Don't worry about death
What is good is easy to get
What is terrible is easy to endure
The Tetrapharmakos might be considered as an ancient precursor of the existential philosophy which developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the years surrounding WW2 when societies around the world were suffering from the terror and anxiety of catastrophic war. Such insights, arising from times of stress and upheaval, have aided many people in discovering peace and contentment.
Although many of Epicurus’ teachings may be considered dogmatic (he was worshiped as a sage by his followers and ridiculed by his opponents), that dogmatism differed profoundly from religious dogmatism because it was grounded in a naturalistic conception of the world. In contrast to Plato and Aristotle, both of whom relied on metaphysics and logic to invent ethical systems (which also required them to invent artificial constructs for an ‘ideal’ form of political organisation), Epicurus’ ethics were intimately connected to his observations of nature. Thus, he had no need for any belief in divine intervention, as described by this excerpt from the Roman poet Lucretius:
The philosopher and poet Lucretius pointing up at the revolving globe of Chance in the sky. Engraving by M. Burghers, ca. 1682
"When man's life before man's eyes lay foully prostrate on the ground, crushed beneath the burden of religion, which showed its face from the region of the skies, glowering o'er mortals with aspect dire, it was a man of Greece who for the first time dared to look with a mortal's eyes, and was the first man with courage enough to set himself against false belief. Him nor talk about the gods nor thunderbolts checked, nor the skies with their threatening roar; they merely served the more deeply to fire his soul, so that he was keen, as pioneer, to break asunder the closures of nature, to open her tightly-jointed gates. Therefore, the fervid force of his soul won the fray; he went out beyond, yes, far beyond, the flaming walls of the world and he traversed the whole illimitable vast, by the powers of his mind and his heart. He returned victor, to tell us what can come to be, what cannot, in what way each thing has limits put into its powers and its boundary stone deep set. So religion, in its turn, thrust under man's feet, is trampled on by man; Epicurus' victory makes us coequal with the skies."
- Lucretius “De rerum natura”, Book I, 62-79.
Diogenes Laërtius reports that Epicurus wrote around 300 treatises, but only a few of his original writings still exist. One of the most interesting is Letter to Menoceus, concerning ethics, which includes the following advice to his friend:
“Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed toward attaining it.”
“Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the person who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer. But in the world, at one time people shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise person does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as people choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words are foolishness, for those who hear believe him not.”
Whilst often maligned, Epicureanism experienced a gradual revival from the Italian Renaissance into the Age of Enlightenment, in parallel with developments in scientific and political thinking. Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), one of the founders of the USA, 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."
The Society of Friends of Epicurus facilitates an active online community, led by modern-day Epicureans Hiram Crespo, Alan Reyes and Marcus Cramer, “to promote and reconstitute the teaching mission and traditions of the Epicurean Garden, in order to ensure the cultural and intellectual continuity of this tradition for the happiness of present and future generations”.
