Thomas Jefferson

“Thomas Jefferson” demonstrates that Jefferson combined elements of Epicureanism with components of Stoicism and Christianity to form a unique philosophy. Jefferson derived from the Stoics and from Cicero the belief in an innate moral sense. Like these forebears, Jefferson envisioned the moral sense as a mere instinct for good that required training (reason acting on experience) to develop into full-blown virtue, rather than as a collection of Platonic innate ideas. Christianity furnished him with the concepts of a creator, a resurrection, and an afterlife. It also provided a system of ethics based on positive benevolence. He preferred the warmth and benevolence of Christianity to the cold obligations of classical philosophy, which centered on the mere avoidance of injury to oneself and others. Epicureanism provided other essential features of Jefferson’s philosophy, such as a materialist metaphysics and consequent rejection of miracles. Although Jefferson’s Epicureanism did not lead him to reject the doctrine of divine providence commonly held in his day, it contributed greatly to his belief that God worked solely through natural causes to achieve his ends. The Epicurean emphasis on the role played by reason (logic) acting on experience in uncovering truth and its concept of free will also influenced the Virginian.

Death

This article explicates Epicurus’s ambiguous declaration that “death is nothing to us,” discusses its philosophical implications, and answers the most common recent philosophical objections to the view. One barrier to appreciating Epicurus’s view has been lack of understanding what he meant, and the author clarifies Epicurus’s idea using Epicurean texts. Since Epicurus used his view to undermine death anxiety, the author discusses fear of death and how Epicurean thinking treats it. The paper discusses flaws in recent philosophical objections against Epicurus’s view, that it ignores what death deprives people of, that it is incompatible with the wrongness of killing, and that it does not permit certain comparative value judgments about life and death. Since the view has implications for the death penalty, the author discusses those, and urges that Epicurean philosophy of death can profitably illuminate contemporary thinking.

Voluntary Action and Responsibility

The chapter discusses Epicurus’s notions of voluntary action, moral responsibility, and the swerve of atoms. I examine the ancient evidence first, including Epicurus’s Letter to Herodotus, Letter to Menoeceus, and On Nature Book 25, and Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.216–93. I argue that the evidence, especially the Lucretius passage, favors the interpretation that Epicurus believed the swerve of atoms plays a role in every voluntary action of living creatures. But I also take seriously the views of scholars who disagree with this position. Indeed, viewed from one perspective, the lack of scholarly consensus on the role of the swerve in Epicurus’s analysis of voluntary action and moral responsibility provides strong justification for thinking that the precise role that the swerve played is irrecoverable from the ancient evidence available to us. Viewed from another perspective, however, the lack of scholarly consensus, combined with the plausibility of a number of different views about the role the swerve may have played in Epicurus’s system, points to a solution of a different kind. Rather than maintaining that the swerve played a single role in Epicurean psychology, it may be more productive to suppose that it could have played a number of roles. Once Epicurus posited the swerve, he seems to have used it in a number of aspects of his psychology and account of voluntary action and moral responsibility.

Philodemus and the Herculaneum Papyri

The article is divided into three parts: in the first part the most important phases of Philodemus of Gadara’s life are reconstructed through his works and his epigrams: his cultural trip to Alexandria; his educational stay in Athens, where he joined the Epicurean philosophy, by attending Zeno Sidonius’s lectures; his transfer to Rome, where he embarked on the difficult undertaking of popularizing the Philosophy of the Garden; his meeting and his relationship with Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, who was his most important patronus; the place where he lived, his presence in the Villa dei Papiri with the group of Augustan intellectuals including Lucius Varius Rufus, Quinctilius Varus, Plotius Tucca, and Vergil, whom Philodemus addressed in certain books of the work On Vices and Their Opposite Virtues, sharing reflections on ethical topics, developed in the important treatise. The second part is devoted to the Villa dei Papiri: when it was built, who lived there, how it was furnished. The third part outlines the contents of the works of Philodemus recovered from papyri in the Villa and it reaches three relevant conclusions: he collected most of the Greek books in the Villa; he was, at least to a certain extent, an original philosophical writer; and he did not address his teaching to a small circle of learned men associated with the Villa.

Epicurus in Nineteenth-Century Germany

Epicurus marks a unique point of convergence for three unlikely bedfellows in the nineteenth century: Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. Each sees a different “Epicurus” in this fourth-century successor to Democritus, the fifth-century co-founder of atomism. Each renders Epicurus and his materialism into a symptom of modernity’s engagement with antiquity, a role that atomism increasingly played from the Enlightenment onwards. Fresh readings of each of these philosophers contribute to a better understanding of their ways of construing the history of ideas, and in particular their bold reinterpretations of Epicurus himself, in addition to correcting a number of misconceptions surrounding their individual readings of Epicurus, be this in Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy and his Science of Logic, Marx’s dissertation, or Nietzsche’s sprawling corpus of published and unpublished writings.

Epicurus and Epicureanism in Rabbinic Literature, Maimonides, and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

Although the authors of the Tannaitic and Amoraitic literature were unaware of the philosophical doctrines of Epicurus, they were aware of the attitudes and behavior of members of the Epicurean sect and offered a valuable account of the interaction of Epicureans with rabbinic figures. Actual knowledge of Epicurus’s doctrines appears first in Islamic Spain and reaches its most developed form in the discussions of Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah and the Guide of the Perplexed. In the MT, Maimonides reworks the Talmudic material in light of his knowledge of the philosophical opinions of Epicurus. In the Guide he suggests that Kalām theology can be understood as a religious form of Epicureanism, and this is one of his reasons for opposing the Kalām. Maimonides believes that Aristotle has disproved Epicurus, but his arguments on this point contain weaknesses. Finally, Rabbi Nachman of Breslev seems to have had some knowledge of the theories of Epicurus, since he associates Epicurus, for the first time in Jewish literature, with the so-called empty space or void discussed in the Kabbala. He grants more validity to Epicurean theories than did previous writers, merging Epicurean physics with a Kabbalistic theory of divine creation by means of retraction.

Horace and Vergil

This article focuses on the ethical subtext that permeates the poetry of Horace and Vergil throughout the various genres in which they composed their works. For these major Augustan poets, Epicurean thought provided a common framework for “conversations” (both overt and latent) on issues in contemporary moral philosophy, such as the proper limits to be followed by mortals in the pursuit of pleasures and the fulfillment of desires. A paramount subject in these conversations is the question of the cognitive preconditions for achieving felicity and a tranquil life (eudaimonia, ataraxia).

Lucretius

This chapter explores distinctive features of Lucretius’s presentation of Epicureanism, particularly his use of verse and the interplay between the poem’s overt concern with physics and its underlying ethical message. The De rerum natura—it is argued—seeks constantly to bring out the ethical corollaries of Epicurus’s physical theory (emphasizing, for example, the harmful consequences of belief in vengeful deities; the self-destructive behaviours, on both the individual and the social level, that stem ultimately from the fear of death; and the futility of uncontrolled desire). While adhering closely to the writings of Epicurus himself, and showing little interest either in subsequent developments within the school or in contemporary inter-school polemics, the poem does, arguably, seek in various ways to adapt the arguments of the founder to the purview of its Late Republican audience. The chapter briefly considers the extent to which Lucretius adapted, or redeployed, arguments originally directed at Platonic/Academic targets as weapons against contemporary Stoicism, and notes other areas—particularly religion and human-animal relationships—where the poet can be seen to give his own distinctive slant to Epicurus’s teachings. Lucretius’s justification for his highly unorthodox use of poetic form is examined in detail, and the chapter concludes with the suggestion that the De rerum natura self-consciously pits Epicureanism against Roman aristocratic ideology, both through its highly original analysis of contemporary political competition and social breakdown, and—more subtly—through its employment of “social metaphor” and depiction of atomic interaction as a microcosm of human society.

Plutarch

Plutarch, a priest at Delphi and an enthusiastic adherent of “divine” Plato, found himself diametrically opposed to Epicurus’s teachings, yet granted considerable space to discussions of his propositions. He devoted a considerable number of his writings entirely to discussions of Epicurean doctrines. In these texts, he points out significant discrepancies between the theory and practice of Epicurean teachings. He discusses Epicurus’s deistic theology, criticizes Epicurus’s seemingly apolitical stance and in one treatise discusses a work by the Epicurean Colotes, who posited that it is impossible to live according to the precepts of other philosophers. Other works touch on Epicurean subjects, but are known only by title. All of this indicates that Plutarch engaged deeply with the entire breadth of Epicurean doctrine. After all, even those of Plutarch’s writings that do not deal directly or exclusively with the subject do frequently bring up Epicurean teachings and, more often than not, refute them. In doing so, Plutarch was apparently less concerned with a systematic refutation of Epicurus. Rather, it seems that Plutarch used Epicurus as a welcome foil to highlight his own, Platonist positions and to justify and underline his loyalty to Plato’s teachings. But his writings testify to the importance of Epicurean teachings at his time.

Language

The paper reassesses the evidence on the Epicurean analysis of language, which so far has received two kinds of interpretation. One is the “extensionalist” view, which supposes that the Epicureans developed a theory of meaning. The other consists in the “intensionalist” reading, which on the contrary suggests that these philosophers embrace a philosophy of linguistic behavior, where words express things without the medium of signification. The paper will argue that the former interpretation is more plausible, while focusing especially on the following topics: the relationship between words and reality, the natural origin of language, the theory of preconceptions, the ethical aim of Epicurean linguistic analysis as a whole (i.e. the search for the evident meanings of terms, which allow us to make inquiries that lead humans to well-being). At the same time, the paper will reconstruct how the Epicurean linguistic doctrine developed through time, from Epicurus to Diogenianus. This investigation will show that Epicureans did not simply repeat the basic teachings of their master, but improved them and changed some details, without however abandoning its main points. The only possible exception might be Lucretius’ study of poetry, which in his perspective consists precisely in abandoning the proper meanings of words and adopting a beautiful language which in part deliberately conveys falsehood/deception.