Epicurus — "We should not believe in fate, but in our own free will."
We should not believe in fate, but in our own free will.
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More from Epicurus
"The wise man is happy even when he is being tortured."
"The limit of quantity in pleasures is the removal of all that is painful. Wherever and whenever this is present, pleasure is no longer increased, but has reached its stationary maximum."
"The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd."
"To be happy, we must take care of our bodies and our souls."
"It is not possible for one to rid himself of his fears about the most important matters if he does not understand the nature of the whole, but is still in doubt about some of the things that are said …"
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 Menoeceus (referencing the rejection of determinism)
Date: c. 300 BCE
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