Epicurus

Epicurus (Greek: Ἐπίκουρος) (341 BCE – 270 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of Epicureanism, one of the several schools of philosophy from the Hellenistic period. He was a prolific author, though very few of his works have survived to the modern day and all but a few fragments have come from excerpts in other, later authors. During his life his school had a sizable following at The Garden, an estate he purchased in Athens halfway between the Stoa and the Academy.

His philosophy was characterized by a focus on attaining ἀταραξία (ataraxia, calmness or a lack of anxiety). To reach this state, he exhorted his followers to not fear the gods or death and to remember that what is good is easy to get and what is bad is easy to endure. Epicurus strengthened his ethical arguments by relying on his materialist, atomist physics, following in the footsteps of the early atomists Democritus and Leucippus. Relying on consequences of this physics he developed an epistemology he called the κανών (canon, ruler or measure), as it provides a method for measuring the validity of a sense perception.

Teachings

See main page: Epicureanism