Their Differences.
| The Stoics. | The Epicureans. | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Universal law is supreme. | The individual is supreme. |
| 2. | Man is a thinking being. | Man is a feeling being. |
| 3. | Independence is obtained by suppressing the personal feelings. | Independence is obtained by idealizing the feelings through serenity. |
| 4. | The Stoics were religious, | The Epicureans were anti-religious, |
| yet both schools accepted the popular gods. | ||
| 5. | The world is a moral order. | The world is a mechanical order. |
| 6. | The universal determines the individual. | The universal is the result of the functioning of the individual. |
| 7. | The world is the expression of an immanent reason. | The world is the combination of atoms. |
CHAPTER X
EPICUREANISM
The Life of Epicurus (341–270 B. C.). Epicurus was born in Samos in Asia Minor. He was a school-teacher in Mitylene and Lampsacus, and in 307 B. C. he established in Athens his Philosophical School, in a garden within the walls on the road to the Academy (see [map]). His School was thereafter called the Gardens. He claimed to have been self-taught, and he probably did not have a thorough education. He did, however, possess great personal charm and, as his doctrine made few demands upon its disciples and expressed the refined and delicate hedonism of the time, it spread very wide. His disciples held him in great reverence, and long after his death the image of his personality was a living influence with them. Indeed, it was the personal work of Epicurus that was the supreme influence with the sect.His formulas passed on from generation to generation and were called “Golden Maxims.”[34] He wrote three hundred separate treatises, and in the amount of his writings was exceeded in antiquity only by the Stoic, Chrysippus. His great work, On Nature, consisted of thirty-seven books. The other Schools joined in a bitter attack upon him, and in modern times he has been called Socrate doublé d’un Voltaire. Since neither polytheism nor Christianity had any reason forpreserving his writings, they have been almost entirely lost. Some have been found in Herculaneum, and many more are thought to be still in that buried city. The mother of Epicurus was a priestess, and her superstitions probably set him against the superstitions of his age. His later acquaintance with the philosophy of Democritus gave him a scientific basis for his aggression against all religions.
The Epicureans. The Epicurean body was a guild or sect that seemed to have been little affected by the vicissitudes of time. The Epicureans proselyted vigorously, closely organized their society, and extended it throughout Greece. It was a state within a state. With a fixed constitution it was held together by itinerant preaching, correspondence, and material assistance. It had an esprit de corps, and like religious communities it brought together into one organization the individuals that had been scattered by the breaking up of political institutions. The School had special protection from the Roman emperors and existed as late as the fourth century A. D., having outlived all the other systems. It had some famous literary representatives,—Metrodorus, Colotes, Philodemus,—but especially the Roman poet Lucretius, who popularized the doctrine for the Romans. Amafinius introduced Epicureanism into Rome during the middle of the second century B. C., and the teaching was received with great favor. Its numerous disciples in all antiquity changed the doctrine only in its unessentials. The charges of immorality and licentiousness are not true of the teaching or of the practices of the founder or of the early members of the School.
Some Types of Hedonism,—Aristippus, Epicurus,and Rousseau. Epicureanism was not a philosophy of pleasure for people without ideals or who were merely seeking indulgence. The question that Epicurus asked was this: What enduring pleasure is possible to a man in these days of turmoil? He tried to give a rational answer to those of his day who wished to live and enjoy. His aim was to free man from responsibility in his share of the world’s work and to provide for him a life of serenity. The pleasure theory of Aristippus, the Cyrenaic, was very different. Aristippus, a voluptuary in a luxurious city, presented a pleasure theory for the few who have fortunes. It is hardly more than a grading of pleasures and the setting up of a criterion of their selection. Epicurus goes deeper than that. His pleasure theory is for the few, not because they are fortunate, but because they are wise; not because they have fortunes to gratify their passions, but because they are independent of all fortune. The Cyrenaic was a man of the world; the Epicurean was in the world, but not of it.
There is a superficial resemblance between the teaching of Epicurus and the message of Rousseau to the French people of the eighteenth century. Both sought an ideal of enduring pleasure. Both would discard the artificialities of society. But Rousseau was a political reformer and attempted to find his ideal in a newly constructed society. Epicurus, on the other hand, was no political reformer, but would find his ideal in society as it existed. Rousseau appealed to the primitive feelings. He felt “the call of the wild.” Epicurus appealed to the refined and derivative feelings. He had no aggressive propaganda. He aimed at no external reform. His ideal was peace, and not the sword.
The Epicurean Ideal. The central principle of Epicurus is that pleasure is a good and pain an evil. In this he was in agreement with Aristippus, and from this position he never receded. He offered no proof of this, but rested his central principle upon the conviction that men pursue pleasure and avoid pain. He was convinced of the biological fact. But he was not unobservant from the beginning that the subject was complex. He saw that the individual has to make a selection of pleasure and often has to choose pain for the sake of a greater pleasure. Pleasure is the only good, but Epicurus asks further, What is pleasure? He finds that he must give a content to pleasure and evaluate the pleasures in the interests of pleasure itself. This was to Epicurus no moral appraisal, but with reference to the pleasantest possible life.
Of the two qualities of pleasure Epicurus valued its duration and showed his advance over the Cyrenaics, who had valued its intensity. It was on this account that the Epicureans disclaimed all relationship with the Cyrenaics, the earlier school. The difference is certainly a radical one between them: to Epicurus true pleasure is that which endures; to Aristippus it is that which is most intense, however fleeting. There is this to be said of the Cyrenaic theory: it could be easily understood. Aristippus could tell exactly what he meant by pleasure. It is this or that gratification of sense. It includes every positive pleasure, and that which is intensest is best. One always knows when he is enjoying, and in flitting from pleasure to pleasure he knows when he is intensely enjoying. But the Cyrenaic presented no ideal. While the Epicurean theory is more difficult to understand, it is more mature and more profoundbecause it presents a well-conceived ideal. Indeed, the farther we follow Epicurus along this line of his pursuit of the ideal of lasting pleasure, the more are we impressed with his contribution to our knowledge of the nature of pleasure.