Author

Epicurus

341-270 BC · Greek philosopher who founded the Garden school and taught that happiness is freedom from pain and fear

Short biography: Epicurus in Great Lives

About Epicurus

Epicurus (341-270 BC) was a Greek philosopher born on Samos to Athenian parents. He founded a school in Athens around 306 BC, known as the Garden, where friends lived simply together. He taught that the goal of life is pleasure, understood as freedom from bodily pain and mental disturbance (ataraxia), reached through moderate desires, friendship and knowledge of nature. Following Democritus, he held that everything consists of atoms and void, that the gods do not intervene in the world, and that death is the end of sensation. Most of his many writings are lost; three letters and the Principal Doctrines survive in Diogenes Laertius.

Notable works

On this site

On Happiness: Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines

Epicurus

c. 300 BC · Ancient · Philosophy

On Happiness is the modern title commonly given to a short collection of Epicurus's ethical writings. Epicurus himself wrote no work with that name; the library edition gathers the two texts usually printed under it: the Letter to Menoeceus, in which he summarizes his teaching on the good life for a young follower, and the Principal Doctrines, or Sovran Maxims, forty short sayings that served as a catechism for his school.

medium medical relevanceVirtue EthicsDeath / MortalityFriendship