Epicurean School of Ancient Greek Philosophy Texts

The Garden, a school Epicurus established at Athens in 307 BCE, gave its name to the philosophy taught there. Epicurus (341–270 BCE) set the goal of life as εὐδαιμονία, happiness or flourishing, which he spelled out as ἀταραξία, freedom from disturbance, and ἀπονία, the absence of bodily pain. Such happiness comes through knowledge and the moderation of desires.

All knowledge begins, on this account, with the senses, which are held to be infallible. Perceptions and the feelings of pleasure and pain serve as the standards for judging what is true and what is worth choosing; nothing is believed on authority that runs against what is felt.

The underlying physics is atomistic. The universe consists of atoms (ἄτομα, uncuttables) and void, and everything that happens results from their movement and collision. Epicurus took this framework from Democritus but added a slight, uncaused swerve (παρέγκλισις) in atomic motion, so that contingency and human choice have room in a world of moving particles.

The gods exist as perfectly tranquil beings composed of fine atoms, dwelling in the spaces between worlds and taking no interest in human affairs or the workings of the cosmos. The ψυχή is likewise material, a tissue of fine atoms, and it disperses at death; death therefore is nothing to us, since no punishment or survival follows it.

Ethical teaching centres on the management of desires, sorted into natural and necessary ones (food, shelter), natural but unnecessary ones (luxurious food), and vain and empty ones (fame, power). The wise person satisfies only the first sort, which are easily met, and prizes the quiet pleasures of tranquillity and friendship over the intense pleasures of stimulation. Among the later carriers of the school were Lucretius (c. 99–c. 55 BCE), whose poem <cite>On the Nature of Things</cite> is a primary source for its doctrine; Philodemus (c. 110–c. 30 BCE), whose writings were buried in the library at Herculaneum; and Zeno of Sidon (c. 150–c. 75 BCE), head of the school in Athens and teacher of Philodemus. Communities flourished in the Hellenistic and Roman periods at Athens, Rhodes, and Alexandria, where the school stood as a major rival to Stoicism, until its influence waned in the late Roman Empire under the rise of Neoplatonism and Christianity, which opposed its materialist cosmology and its claim that the gods do not govern events.