ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 15: EPICUREANISM
- similar ethics and epistemology to the Stoics
- main goal is apatheia, tranquility
Epicurious:
- the Garden school founder (Athens), communal life
- the master healing all members of the community psychologically
- more worship (thus dogma is perserved) and centralization than stoics
His Philosophy:
- a form of therapy (no anxiety, worry)
- unfounded beliefs worry us, philosophy makes us realize they’re indeed false
3 criteria of knowledge: perception, anticipation, passion/affection
- the criteria are always true, we simply judge them wrong
[Stoics recognize only individuals, no categories] - SENSE PERCEPTION: only shows us truth (white), but falsity emerges in predication (ugly white, etc.)
- even dreams are real, just not solid bodies [stoics also think all things we perceive are real]
- ANTICIPATION: like memory, what we may predict of an object
- reason modifies what we expect of sense-perception
- AFFECTION: pleasure/pain, based on your own conformity with the atoma of a given thing
- this is how we can orient ourselves in life
- Pleasure orients you in life, what is good for you and what isn’t
- with these 3 criteria no essences are needed to understand the world
Reason:
- still needed
- empiricism builds greater anticipatory models
- analogy can help us discover/infer things like atoms
Atoms and Void:
- democretian, only atoms and void exist, no causal explanation
- atoms tend towards aggregation with similar atoms
- atoms have 3 properties: Shape, Weight, Magnitude
- void, space and place depending on the amount of occupation by bodies
Infinite Worlds:
- our world isn’t special
- its order is merely chance
- machine with a typewriter example
[stoics believed in an ordered cosmos, so for them the world had meaning, while for the epicurians there was none outside of convention]
Gods:
- uncaring
- also atoms, anthropomorphic, happy
- tranquil, affect nothing, similar to the unmoved mover
Soul:
- thin and hot atoms, maybe rational-irrational dualism
Ethics:
- none of this is purely theoretical, the goal is a happy life
- philosophy’s goal is making everyone happy
- fulfilling your nature is what makes you happy
- you should become like the Gods: utterly tranquil
- no hedonism
- all about getting used to having less, only that which you need
- then you won’t feel the pain of desire or separation
Two Kinds of Pleasure:
- Kinetic: something that moves you
- Katastematic: what we should seek, tranquility, desire-satisfaction
Death is only painful in its anticipation
[us and death are never together, never meet]
- death is simply disaggregation of your atoms
Free will is possible; the atoms are deterministic, but reason gives us freedom