Epicurus — "The greatest good is the knowledge of the nature of things."
The greatest good is the knowledge of the nature of things.
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More from Epicurus
"The truly wise man is he who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has."
"I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know."
"The pleasure of the stomach is the root and source of all good."
"Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when old grow weary of studying it. For no one is either too early or too late for the health of the soul."
"The wise man, when he is in danger, laughs at the danger."
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.
Details
Letter to Herodotus (though often summarized as such, precise phrasing can vary)
Date: c. 300 BCE
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