> There has been a large amount of scholarly controversy over the precise nature of the motivations at play in the Epicurean accounts of justice and friendship, and whether any form of altruism or other-concern is compatible with Epicurean hedonist ethics. This paper addresses this tension between self- and other-concern from a novel angle, by examining the motivations behind Epicurean educational practice. What emerges is a rather complex motivational picture that reaffirms the Epicureans' philosophical commitment to egoism but at the same time shows it to be more nuanced and sensitive than one might expect given their theoretical postulates and the reaction of ancient critics such as Cicero.
> Unlike mainstream Cyrenaics, the Annicereans deny that friendship is chosen only because of its usefulness. Instead, the wise person cares for her friend and endures pains for him because of her goodwill and love. Nonetheless, the Annicereans maintain that your own pleasure is the telos and that a friend’s happiness isn’t intrinsically choiceworthy. Their position appears internally inconsistent or to attribute doublethink to the wise person. But we can avoid these problems. We have good textual grounds to attribute to the Annicereans a doctrine of “non-hedonic habits,” which allows them to abandon psychological hedonism while still maintaining hedonism regarding well-being.
> This is a shorter version of an essay entitled 'When Wisdom Assumes Bodily Form' that will appear in Manuel Dries (ed.), Nietzsche on Embodied Mind (Walter de Gruyter, 2017). Please do not cite without permission.
> This chapter focuses on the ways in which Marx and Nietzsche illuminate the character of an Epicurean enlightenment. I am especially interested in Nietzsche's insight into wisdom assuming a bodily form in Epicurus. I first deal with Marx before moving onto Nietzsche. I highlight the similarities as well as the differences between them. I show that for both of them Epicurus is an important figure in the history of philosophy on account of his doctrine of liberation from religious fear and superstition: his philosophy is one of practical freedom. I further show that for Marx Epicurus's teaching contains an incendiary political dimension, whereas for Nietzsche the significance of Epicurus is that he is an ethical reformer. Of the two readings Marx's is perhaps the most philosophically perspicacious. Nietzsche's appropriation of Epicurus by contrast is more poetic and lyrical, centred on the needs of an ethical reformation and it adopts the model of social withdrawal offered by the 'garden'. The contrast with Marx enables me to show the extent to which Nietzsche is primarily an ethicist and not a political thinker, at least as far as his middle writings are concerned.
> Epicurus is strongly committed to psychological and ethical egoism and hedonism. However, these commitments do not square easily with many of the claims made by Epicureans about friendship: for instance, that the wise man will sometimes die for his friend, that the wise man will love his friend as much as himself, feel exactly the same toward his friend as toward himself, and exert himself as much for his friend's pleasure as for his own, and that every friendship is worth choosing for its own sake. These claims have led some scholars to assert that Epicurus inconsistently affirms that friendship has an altruistic element. I argue that the Epicurean claims about friendship can be reconciled with egoism and hedonism in psychology and ethics. Friendship is valuable because having friends provides one with security more effectively than any other means, and having confidence that one will be secure in the future either is identical to ataraxia, or the grounds on which one has it.
> Epicurus (341-270 BC) was, with Plato and Aristotle, one of the three great philosophers of the ancient world. He developed an integrated system of ethics and natural philosophy that, he claimed and many accepted, showed everyone the way to a life of the greatest happiness. The school that he founded remained open for 798 years after his death. While it lost place during the last 200 of these years, his philosophy held until then a wide and often decisive hold on the ancient mind.
> The revival of Epicureanism in the 17th century coincided with the growth of scientific rationalism and classical liberalism. There can be no doubt these facts are connected. It may, indeed, be argued that the first was a leading cause of the second two, and that we are now living in a world shaped, in every worthwhile sense, by the ideas of Epicurus.
> I don't think the term Meaningful has any meaning at all.
I see what you mean and I mostly agree. But let's look at it in a different way: we cannot control all circumstances, but we can control ourselves to a degree, that is, the way we react to and deal with the circumstances. We are quite a bit into Stoicism here, but even as an Epicurean I think that there are Stoic teachings and techniques which can be quite helpful indeed.
Victor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning is certainly a book everybody should read at least once, but one certainly should not forget that suffering in a concentration camp was a tremendously extreme situation which different people deal with completely differently. I feel that using the word meaning in the context of concentration camps is rather obscene, too. However, in this case it is a survivor using it. Other survivors differ in what they have written about their suffering, many survivors feel ashamed or even guilty. These are personal stories of survivors and we who have never been in extreme situations like that (and hopefully never will) shall take them as such respectfully. [edit: But I think we shouldn't overinterpret them.]
> This essay aims to shows that both Nietzsche and Kant have a concern with self-cultivation and the flourishing of the self. It highlights the Epicurean dimension of the ideas of both thinkers, no doubt much to the surprise of many readers of the history of modern philosophy since the reading goes against the grain of how both Kant and Nietzsche are typically portrayed, with Kant often associated with a Stoic tradition and Nietzsche associated with a virtue ethicist tradition running from Aristotle to Hume. For both Kant and Nietzsche self-cultivation and an ethics of self-care are to be practiced in a spirit of cheerfulness and equanimity. This essay is forthcoming in M. Dennis & S. Werkhoven (eds.), Ethical Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge, 2018).
> Thomas Jefferson
That Jefferson was an Epicurean is not as clear as many Epicureans believe: Mark Andrew Holowchak - Why Jefferson Was a Ciceronian Stoic, Not an Epicurean
> Focuses on the theories of the Epicureans and Cyrenaics in light of Plato's and Aristotle's criticisms of hedonism. Closes with a brief discussion of how the Pyrrhonian skeptical conception of the telos compares to the Epicureans'.
> This paper focuses on the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara (c. 110 BCE to c. 40 or 35 BCE), who lived and worked in Italy during the late Roman Republic. It examines the impact of his works, which were preserved by the first pyroclastic surge of Mount Vesuvius, on our understanding of Epicurean philosophy. Prior to their discovery in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum in the 18th century, knowledge of Epicurean philosophy came from a very small number of extant Epicurean texts or from overtly hostile sources such as Cicero and Plutarch. Extant Epicurean sources, which included the account of Epicurus in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers and Lucretius’ De rerum nature, did not provide a full picture of Epicurean doctrines, while hostile sources actively misrepresented the school’s views. Owing to their fragmentary state, many of Philodemus’ works were little studied until the 1970s when Marcello Gigante began the Centro internazionale per lo studio dei papiri ercolanesi (C.I.S.P.E.). Since then, new editions and new technologies have made these difficult texts more accessible. Material from Philodemus, who wrote on a wide range of topics including death, rhetoric, music, poetry, logic, theology, epistemology, the history of philosophy and ethics, has thus changed perceptions of Epicurean philosophy. They have also provided insight into how Epicureans dealt with the competing claims of philosophy and a Roman context.
> The paper deals with the question of the attribution to Epicurus of the classification of pleasures into ‘kinetic’ and ‘static’. This classification, usually regarded as authentic, confronts us with a number of problems and contradictions. Besides, it is only mentioned in a few sources that are not the most reliable. Following Gosling and Taylor, I believe that the authenticity of the classification may be called in question.
> The analysis of the ancient evidence concerning Epicurus’ concept of pleasure is made according to the following principle: first, I consider the sources that do not mention the distinction between ‘kinetic’ and ‘static’ pleasures, and only then do I compare them with the other group of texts which comprises reports by Cicero, Diogenes Laertius and Athenaeus. From the former group of texts there emerges a concept of pleasure as a single and not twofold notion, while such terms as ‘motion’ and ‘state’ describe not two different phenomena but only two characteristics of the same phenomenon. On the other hand, the reports comprising the latter group appear to derive from one and the same doxographical tradition, and to be connected with the classification of ethical docrines put forward by the Middle Academy and known as the divisio Carneadea. In conclusion, I argue that the idea of Epicurus’ classification of pleasures is based on a misinterpretation of Epicurus’ concept in Academic doxography, which tended to contrapose it to doctrines of other schools, above all to the Cyrenaics’ views.
I love analyzing contrasts between Hellenistic philosophies, I think they do differ somewhat in the “ethics vertical” but the end goal of both are pretty similar (avoid suffering) so the path from both might be slightly different but interesting none the least.
But aside from that ethics analysis, little is done today in contrasting their stances on physics and logic, which is where both philosophies completely drift in separate ways.
I personally take from both philosophies to construct my own.
There is a book that was recommended to me in this same sub by AA Long which I recommend vastly to understand similarities and differences. link
Certainly!
Epicureanism focuses on past, present, and future pleasures, mainly through the facility of the imagination. The Cyrenaics were 100% here-and-now advocates. There are pros and cons to both views.
The adaptability of Aristippus is a key difference indeed. Aristippus was known for finding himself in difficult situations like being a survivor of a shipwreck and having to make the most of his circumstances. Epicureanism focuses on avoiding adversarial situations.
A great book to educate yourself on the Cyrenaics is this handbook. Hiram C also reviewed it - https://www.amazon.com/Cyreniacs-Handbook-Material-Cyrenaic-Philosophy/dp/1519554079/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
I use this with my undergrad classes and find it's really straightforward. I tend to think looking at the primary sources is best:
OP always shop around, don't take the first price. I just found that book $80 less than your title price on Amazon!
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https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Handbook-Epicurus-Epicureanism-Handbooks/dp/0199744211
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Always Snoop around for a free pdf online too. There often isn't one, but it doesn't take that long and can save hundreds of dollars.
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I find that Buddhism,stoicism,cynicism, and Epicureanism play well together...different focuses, but not opposed.
In the book https://www.amazon.com/Road-Heaven-Encounters-Chinese-Hermits/dp/1582435235 my favorite quote from an old Taoist hermit is “the Buddhists probably meditate better than us, but I like the Tao- I use some things I’ve learned from monks”
I wish I knew. There was a good series of articles about Philodemus' works by the Society of Epicurus. There is the one on 'On music.'
Except... I now see that there is a huge French book called Les Epicuriens which brings together lots of Philodemus' work, and it's not too expensive...