Other cases involve for example him thinking that a proper appreciation of natural phenomena and natural processes-particularly understanding that they’re not directed by any divine agency or for any particular natural good-will allow you to stop fearing, or being concerned unnecessarily about, certain things that might happen around you in the world. Now, Epicurus thinks that certain direct ethical implications follow from that, for example, about how you should view the time after your death and so on. So for example, understanding that the world and everything in it is generated out of atoms moving around in a void: that leads you to believe correctly, says Epicurus, that you too are a combination of atoms that have come together at this particular point, but those atoms will disperse, and when they do, you will cease to be. We might come to some specific cases in which a particular understanding about the nature of the world generates an immediate ethical output. So is the idea that the metaphysics is the foundation for the ethics, so that you understand the way the world is and that allows you then to live well? Epicureanism became a universal kind of philosophical view on the world, the commitment to which was supposed to give you the truth about how the world is, how it works, and also to give you a recipe for living a good life as a human in that world. So, he had a view on natural philosophy he had a view on what he called ‘canonic’ or logic, which includes epistemology for us, and also on ethics and political philosophy. Epicurus had developed a systemic view on what were, by that time, pretty much agreed to be the standard areas of philosophical inquiry. People would gather there and talk philosophy. That was a piece of land that he owned that was called ‘The Garden’ because that’s what it was. It has its origins in a school that was founded in Athens by Epicurus, after whom the school is named. Philosophically, it’s the death of Aristotle: they died within a year of each other, so that lines up rather neatly. It’s usually dated to the death of Alexander the Great.
The Epicureans began as a school of philosophers in the Hellenistic period of Ancient Greece.
Foreign Policy & International Relationsīefore we get going on the books you’ve chosen, could you say something general about who the Epicureans were?.
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