Epicurus — "The study of nature creates men who are not only free from fear, but also from v…"
The study of nature creates men who are not only free from fear, but also from vanity.
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More from Epicurus
"The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terro…"
"The wise man is not afraid of death; indeed, he welcomes it as a release from the bondage of the body."
"Since it is not possible to get rid of the fear of death without knowledge of the universe, we cannot enjoy unmixed pleasure."
"Against all things it is possible to provide security, but as against death we all live in an unwalled city."
"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."
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.