Epicurus — "Justice is a contract of utility entered into to prevent men from harming or bei…"
Justice is a contract of utility entered into to prevent men from harming or being harmed by one another.
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More from Epicurus
"The time when we are best able to enjoy ourselves is when we have least need of enjoyment."
"If you wish to make Pythocles rich, do not give him more money; diminish his desires."
"The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When that point is attained, pleasure does not further increase, but only varies in kind."
"The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool."
"Remember that you were born with two ears and one tongue, so that you may listen more and speak less."
About Epicurus (341-270 BCE)
Greek philosopher who founded the Garden school in Athens, whose materialist atomism and pleasure-as-tranquility ethics shaped Hellenistic thought. Closely associated with Lucretius (Roman successor whose De Rerum Natura preserved Epicurean physics). For an intellectual contrast, see the Stoics (Zeno, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius), the Hellenistic ethical school of discipline-of-acceptance — Stoic 'live according to nature' and Epicurean 'pleasure and absence of pain' framed every ancient ethical decision — every Roman of Cicero's era was implicitly choosing one path or the other. The Stoic-Epicurean rivalry was the central philosophical debate of the Hellenistic and Roman world for 400 years.
The standard scholarly entry points to Epicurus's work: A.A. Long (UC Berkeley, Classics) — Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics (1974); Tim O'Keefe (Georgia State University, ancient philosophy) — Epicureanism (2010); David Sedley (Cambridge, Classics) — Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (1998). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Epicurus.