Work record

On Happiness: Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines

Epicurus

Also known as: On Happiness · Letter to Menoeceus · Principal Doctrines · Sovran Maxims · Kyriai Doxai

c. 300 BC · Ancient · Philosophy · Ancient Greek (Attic)

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Abstract

Written: Composed c. 300 BC; preserved in Diogenes Laertius (3rd century AD); trans. 1925
Setting: Early Hellenistic Athens; Athens
Author: Epicurus; trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925)
Country: Athens (Greece)
Language: Ancient Greek (Attic)
Genre: Ethics
Form: A philosophical letter and forty maxims
Recommended: Grades 11–12 (Pagan materialism; denies providence and afterlife.)

What this is. The title is a modern label for a pair of short ethical texts by the founder of the Garden school. One is a letter to a young follower; the other is a list of forty maxims memorized by his disciples.

Argument. The letter teaches that the divine beings neither reward nor punish, that dying is the end of all sensation and so cannot harm us, and that true pleasure is calm of body and mind reached by limiting desire.

Maxims. The forty sayings restate these claims and add teaching on justice as a mutual agreement and on friendship as the surest support of a happy life.

Survival. The writings exist only because a later biographer copied them into his account of the philosophers.

For students. This is a clear pagan rival to Christian hope. Read it fairly and then compare it with Paul at Athens and 1 Corinthians 15.

Translation. The version used here is the 1925 Loeb text, public domain in the US. Students should be able to explain the difference between natural and vain desires, the claim that prudence is the root of every virtue, and the argument that one who is not, cannot suffer. They should also be ready to show where Christian teaching on the body, judgment and resurrection answers these claims.

Key figures

Epicurus: founder of the Garden school
Menoeceus: young follower addressed in the letter
Diogenes Laertius: biographer who preserved the texts
Robert Drew Hicks: translator

Summary

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. Both survive only because the third-century biographer Diogenes Laertius quoted them in full in Book X of his Lives of Eminent Philosophers. The translation is by Robert Drew Hicks, published in the Loeb Classical Library in 1925. The Letter to Menoeceus begins by urging that philosophy is for all ages, because no one is too young or too old for the health of the soul. Epicurus then lays out the 'fourfold remedy' that his followers memorized: the gods are blessed and immortal and do not trouble themselves with us, so we need not fear them; death is nothing to us, because where death is, we are not; the good is easy to obtain; and pain is easy to endure. He distinguishes natural and necessary desires from vain ones, and he insists that by pleasure he does not mean the pleasures of the profligate, but the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. Plain bread and water give the highest pleasure to the hungry, and prudence is the greatest good, from which all the virtues spring. The Principal Doctrines repeat and extend these themes, adding teaching on justice as a contract not to harm or be harmed, and on friendship as the greatest of the means to happiness. For classical Christian students the text is important as a clear statement of a pagan alternative to Christian hope. The early church saw Epicureans as atheists in practice, Paul debated them at Athens (Acts 17:18), and their denial of providence, judgment and resurrection directly opposes the Gospel. Yet Epicurus's teaching on simple living, friendship and the folly of greed offers points of contact. Students should read him carefully and charitably before answering him.

Virtues in this work

Temperance: Epicurus counsels moderate desires and simple living.
Friendship: He calls friendship the chief means to happiness.
Prudence: He names practical wisdom the greatest good.

Plot or Argument

Letter: Philosophy for all ages
Epicurus urges young and old alike to seek wisdom for the health of the soul.
Letter: The gods and death
The gods are blessed and do not intervene; death is the end of sensation and nothing to us.
Letter: Desires and pleasure
Desires are natural and necessary, natural only, or vain; pleasure means freedom from pain and disturbance, guided by prudence.
Principal Doctrines 1-20
Short maxims on the gods, death, pleasure, pain and the limits of desire.
Principal Doctrines 21-40
Maxims on security, friendship, justice as a compact, and law.

Lessons

The fear of death
Epicurus argues death is nothing to us. Christians answer that death is an enemy defeated by Christ.
- What is Epicurus's argument?
- How does 1 Corinthians 15 answer it?
Related across the library
- The Last Days of Socrates, Lesson: Facing death
  Facing death. The Phaedo presents philosophy as rehearsal for dying and portrays a death without fear. It has shaped Western ideals of the good death for millennia.
- Jude the Obscure, Part Sixth, Ch. X–XI
  Jude's final illness after the rainy journey to Marygreen, Vilbert's return at his bedside, and his death alone during the college festivities.
- Essays, Essay II, Of Death
  Fear of death compared to children's fear of the dark; the deathbed's groans and convulsions; passions that overcome the fear of dying; death as natural as birth.
- Because I could not stop for Death, Lesson: Death as a courteous caller
  Death as a courteous caller. Dickinson strips death of terror by giving it manners: Death stops kindly, drives slowly, and earns the speaker's trust by his civility. The calm is part of the meaning, since a frightening subject is met with composure rather than panic.
- The Metaphysical Poets, Lesson: Confronting death
  Confronting death. Donne defies death, Herbert accepts it, Vaughan longs for it, and Marvell uses it to urge love. The poems offer a range of seventeenth-century attitudes to mortality.
Simple living
Epicurus teaches that natural desires are easily satisfied and vain desires are endless.
- Which desires does Epicurus call vain?
- How does 1 Timothy 6:6-8 compare?
Related across the library
- Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Lesson: The fact of suffering weighs against confident claims about providence
  The fact of suffering weighs against confident claims about providence. Parts 10 and 11 argue that even if evil is compatible with a good God, the world as we find it does not support inferring one. Hume moves the problem of evil from logic to evidence.
- A Confession, Lesson: For the Christian reader
  For the Christian reader. A Confession can be read beside Ecclesiastes and Augustine's Confessions: like the Preacher, Tolstoy finds all things under the sun to be vanity, and like Augustine he finds rest only in God. Readers should also know that Tolstoy later rejected the divinity of Christ, the creeds and the sacraments of the church; his story of returning to faith is genuine, but it does not end in orthodox belief, and the book invites careful, charitable discernment.
- Saint Joan, Full Text
  she had been old enough to know the effect she was producing on the men whom she humiliated by being right when they were wrong and had learned to flatter and manage them she might have lived as long as Queen Elizabeth But she was too young and rustical and inexperienced to have any such arts When she was thwarted by men whom she thought fools she made no secret of her opinion of them or her impatience with their folly and she was na ve enough to expect them to be obliged to her for setting them right and keepin...
- Essays, High Admiral Of England
  shall continually gather knowledge But let his questions not be troublesome for that is fit for a poser And let him be sure to leave other men their turns to speak Nay if there be any that would reign and take up all the time let him find means to take them off and to bring others on as musicians use to do with those that dance too long galliards If you dissemble sometimes your knowledge of that you are thought to know you shall be thought another time to know that you know not Speech of a man's self ought to be...
- Essays: First Series (Self-Reliance and Other Essays), II. Self-Reliance, section on travel
  The traveller arrives in Naples and finds the sad self he fled; restlessness is called a symptom of a deeper unsoundness.
Friendship
He calls friendship the most important means to happiness.
- Why does Epicurus prize friendship?
- How is Christian friendship different?
Related across the library
- On the Nature of the Universe, Book 6, plague of Athens
  The poem ends with fever, thirst, sores, despair, contagion-like care and burial breakdown.
- Sts. Roch and Sebastian: Plague Saints, Roch at Aquapendente and Piacenza
  Roch tends plague victims and then contracts plague himself, making the healer's exposure central to the legend.
- The Plague, Lesson: The plague within
  The plague within. Tarrou tells Rieux that everyone carries a kind of plague, the readiness to consent to the death of others, and that he has resolved to take the side of the victims. His confession links the epidemic to capital punishment and political violence.
- Frog and Toad Are Friends, Lesson: A friend notices sadness
  A friend notices sadness. When Toad says the time for mail is a sad time for him, Frog does not tell him to cheer up. He goes home, writes a letter, and comes back to sit and wait with him. Friendship here means seeing a friend's small sorrow and doing something about it.
- Essays: First Series (Self-Reliance and Other Essays), Lesson: Friendship as truth and tenderness
  Friendship as truth and tenderness. In Friendship Emerson describes a friend as one with whom we can think aloud and stop performing. He sets a high bar: friendship needs equals who can bear the truth from one another. The essay honours a classical ideal of friendship rooted in virtue rather than usefulness.

Context

Epicurus taught in Athens in the decades after Alexander the Great, when the city-state was declining and philosophies of personal tranquility flourished.

Composition

The texts survive in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book X (3rd century AD). Hicks's Loeb translation (1925) is public domain in the US.

Reception

Epicureanism spread through the Roman world, notably through Lucretius; it was attacked by Stoics and Christians and revived in the early modern period.

Virtue Ethics Death / Mortality Friendship Faith / Religion Justice Law Doubt Meaning

Comparisons

Meditations
Marcus Aurelius offers the Stoic rival to Epicurean ethics.
The Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle's account of happiness as virtuous activity.
The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius answers the problem of happiness in Christian terms.
Letters from a Stoic
Seneca, a Stoic, often quotes Epicurus approvingly.

Quotes

“It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly.”

— Epicurus, On Happiness: Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines, Principal Doctrines 5, trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925).Quote card

The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Questions 20-38: Redemption in Christ
of God became man by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her yet without sin Q23 What offices doth Christ execute as our Redeemer A23 Christ as our Redeemer executeth the offices of a prophet of a priest and of a king both in his estate of humiliation and exaltation Q24 How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet A24 Christ executeth the office of a prophet in revealing to us by his word and Spirit the w...
The Princess and the Goblin, Full Text
third he came rushing from the garden to the other two before the house in such an agitation that they declared--for it was their turn now--that the band of his helmet was cracking under his chin with the rising of his hair inside it Running with him into that part of the garden which I have already described they saw a score of creatures to not one of which they could give a name and not one of which was like another hideous and ludicrous at once gambolling on the lawn in the moonlight The supernatural or rathe...
A Model of Christian Charity, Summary
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A Bear Called Paddington, Lesson: Good manners and good intentions
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Euthydemus, Full Text
enumeration the greatest good of all is omitted What is that Good fortune But what need is there of good fortune when we have wisdom already in every art and business are not the wise also the fortunate This is admitted And again the possession of goods is not enough there must also be a right use of them which can only be given by knowledge in themselves they are neither good nor evil--knowledge and wisdom are the only good and ignorance and folly the only evil The conclusion is that we must get wisdom But can...

“Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.”

— Epicurus, On Happiness: Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines, Principal Doctrines 27, trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925).Quote card

Obergefell v. Hodges, Full Text
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Eugene Onegin, Canto the Second
Habit was given us in distress By Heaven in lieu of happiness. The narrator describes how Tatiana's mother came to accept her marriage.
Generation of Animals, Full Text
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Obergefell v. Hodges, Full Text
marriage has transformed strangers into relatives binding families and societies together Confucius taught that marriage lies at the foundation of government Li Chi Book of Rites C Chai W Chai eds J Legge transl This wisdom was echoed centuries later and half a world away by Cicero who wrote The first bond of society is marriage next children and then the family See De Officiis W Miller transl There are untold references to the beauty of marriage in religious and philosophical texts spanning time cultures and fa...
The Ramayana, Full Text
eyes Peerless for warlike enterprise Canto LII Vasishtha s Feast Right glad was Vi v mitra when He saw the prince of saintly men Low at his feet the hero bent And did obeisance reverent The king was welcomed in and shown A seat beside the hermit s own Who offered him when resting there Fruit in due course and woodland fare And Vi v mitra noblest king Received Va ish ha s welcoming Turned to his host and prayed him tell That he and all with him were well Va ish ha to the king replied That all was well on every si...

“Accustom thyself to believe that death is nothing to us,”

— Epicurus, On Happiness: Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines, Letter to Menoeceus, trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925).Quote card

Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2
For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings Overwhelmed by news of desertion, Richard abandons action for elegy and imagines Death as a jester holding court inside the hollow crown.
On the Incarnation of the Word, §22. But why did He not withdraw His body from the Jews, and so guard its immortality? (1) It became
own nature but by reason of the Word that was come to dwell in it it was placed out of the reach of corruption And so it was that two marvels came to pass at once that the death of all was accomplished in the Lord's body and that death and corruption were wholly done away by reason of the Word that was united with it For there was need of death and death must needs be suffered on behalf of all that the debt owing from all might be paid Whence as I said before the Word since it was not possible for Him to die as...
Troilus and Cressida, Act V, Scene X
Hector is dead; there is no more to say Troilus brings news of Hector's death to the Trojan army.
The Metaphysical Poets, Lesson: Confronting death
Confronting death. Donne defies death, Herbert accepts it, Vaughan longs for it, and Marvell uses it to urge love. The poems offer a range of seventeenth-century attitudes to mortality.
Farewell to Baseball ("The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth"), Closing
I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. The final sentence of the speech, balancing the illness against his blessings.

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The fourfold remedy.
The definition of pleasure.
The argument about death.
The role of friendship.

Key terms and names

Ataraxia: Freedom from mental disturbance, the Epicurean goal.
Atomism: The view that everything consists of atoms and void.
Prudence: Practical wisdom, which Epicurus calls the greatest good.
The Garden: Epicurus's school in Athens.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension What does Epicurus mean by pleasure?
Comprehension Why does he say death is nothing to us?
Interpretation How does Epicurus classify desires?
Interpretation Why is friendship central?
Interpretation Why did early Christians oppose Epicureanism?
Big Question What is happiness, and how is it found?

Faith Connections

Acts 17:18 (Scripture)
Epicurean philosophers encountered Paul at Athens.
1 Corinthians 15:32 (Scripture)
If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink; Paul names the logic of life without resurrection.
Augustine, City of God VIII (Church Fathers)
Augustine judges Epicureans as placing the good in the body.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Happiness is freedom from pain and fear, achieved by moderating desire, understanding nature, and cultivating friendship.

Rhetorical device: syllogism. Death is nothing to us: good and evil require sensation; death is loss of sensation; therefore death is neither good nor evil.

Debate: Resolved: that Epicurus's argument removes the fear of death.

Memory Work

Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.
Principal Doctrines 27, trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925). A memorable statement on friendship.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Compare Epicurus's and Paul's views of death.

Comparison with Meditations: Compare Epicurean and Stoic paths to tranquility.

Medical Lens

Epicurus presented philosophy as medicine for the soul; his teaching on pain and the fear of death is a classic early form of therapeutic philosophy.

Philosophy AS Therapy Pain Death Dying

Letter to Menoeceus
The fourfold remedy against fear of gods and death.
Philosophy AS Therapy Death Dying
Principal Doctrines 4
Continuous pain does not last long in the flesh.
Pain

Creative Prompts

Dialogue
Write a dialogue between Epicurus and Paul at the Areopagus.
Essay
Evaluate Epicurus's argument that death is nothing to us.
Classroom
Sort a list of desires into Epicurus's three categories.