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.
Life
Very little is known with certainty about Epicurus' life, due to the lack of any evidence from his lifetime. Rather, we must rely on the reports of others, writing usually several hundred years after his death. In particular, the biography by Diogenes Laertius in the last book of his [Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers]], written most likely in the first half of the third century CE, provides most of what is supposed to be true about Epicurus' life.
According to that account, Epicurus was born in Athens to Neocles and Chaerestrate, two otherwise unknown Athenians. He was raised on the island of Samos as one of the Athenian colonists sent there after Athens seized the island from the Persian Empire. He returned to Athens when he was 18, but left again when his father was expelled, along with the other Athenians, from Samos by Perdiccas and joined him in Colophon where he began to attract followers. He finally returned to Athens in the archonship of Anaxicrates (307-6 BCE).
There Epicurus founded his garden and gathered followers until his death.
Works
Teachings
See main page: Epicureanism