Epicurus brief biography of marks

Epicurus was born on the island of Samos, an Athenian possession. As a teenager, he was taught philosophy by Pamphilus, a Platonist tutor, after which he engaged in two years of compulsory military service. He then rejoined his family, who had by then moved to Colophon, which is now part of Turkey. He continued his philosophical education, learning the works of Democritus and others.

He then taught briefly in Mytilene before some unspecified problem forced him to move to Lampsacus. Having founded a school here in BC, which he dubbed The Garden, he went back to Athens where he lived until his death. Epicurus believed that happiness was living in a state of continuous pleasure. These pleasures were natural and necessary such as basic physical needs, eating, shelter, security , natural and unnecessary conversations and arts , and unnatural and unnecessary fame, political power, or prestige.

He thought that the greatest obstacles to happiness were fear of dying , fear of the future , and fear of divine wrath , which could be removed if nature was known. Happiness was something that could be achieved when natural needs were satisfied and that was the absence of physical pain. I also thought that not all forms of pleasure led to happiness because sensual pleasures were not part of happiness.

He wrote more than manuscripts and 37 treatises on physics. His works were basically theming of love , justice and gods. Only three of his main letters have been saved:. For example: The object standing yonder is a horse or a cow. Before making this judgment, we must at some time or other have known by preconception the shape of a horse or a cow.

We should not have given anything a name, if we had not first learnt its form by way of preconception. It follows, then, that preconceptions are clear.

Epicurus brief biography of marks

The object of a judgment is derived from something previously clear, by reference to which we frame the proposition, e. They affirm that there are two states of feeling, pleasure and pain, which arise in every animate being, and that the one is favorable and the other hostile to that being, and by their means choice and avoidance are determined; and that there are two kinds of inquiry, the one concerned with things, the other with nothing but words.

So much, then, for his division and criterion in their main outline. But as to the conduct of life, what we ought to avoid and what to choose, he writes as follows. Before quoting his words, however, let me go into the views of Epicurus himself and his school concerning the wise man. There are three motives to injurious acts among men—hatred, envy, and contempt; and these the wise man overcomes by reason.

Moreover, he who has once become wise never more assumes the opposite habit, not even in semblance, if he can help it. He will be more susceptible of emotion than other men: that will be no hindrance to his wisdom. However, not every bodily constitution nor every nationality would permit a man to become wise. Even on the rack the wise man is happy.

He alone will feel gratitude towards friends, present and absent alike, and show it by word and deed. When on the rack, however, he will give vent to cries and groans. As regards women he will submit to the restrictions imposed by the law, as Diogenes says in his epitome of Epicurus' ethical doctrines. Nor will he punish his servants; rather he will pity them and make allowance on occasion for those who are of good character.

Epicureans do not suffer the wise man to fall in love; nor will he trouble himself about funeral rites; according to them love does not come by divine inspiration: so Diogenes in his twelfth book. The wise man will not make fine speeches. No one was ever the better for sexual indulgence, and it is well if he be not the worse. Nor, again, will the wise man marry and rear a family—so Epicurus says in the Problems and in the On Nature.

Occasionally he may marry owing to special circumstances in his life. Some too will turn aside from their purpose. Nor will he drivel, when drunken: so Epicurus says in the Symposium. Nor will he take part in politics, as is stated in the first book On Life ; nor will he make himself a tyrant; nor will he turn Cynic so the second book On Life tells us ; nor will he be a mendicant.

But even when he has lost his sight, he will not withdraw himself from life: this is stated in the same book. The wise man will also feel grief, according to Diogenes in the fifth book of his Epilecta. And be will take a suit into court. He will leave written words behind him, but will not compose panegyric. He will have regard to his property and to the future.

He will be fond of the country. He will be armed against fortune and will never give up a friend. Platonism was rooted very heavily in the philosophy of Plato and all its derivatives. Essentially, it was rooted in gaining an understanding of the realistic world you could see as well as drawing an understanding of the invisible that was not always so perceptible.

Stoicism was about the suppression of emotions. A philosophy rooted in the search for pleasure would be utterly removed from something as bland as stoicism. Epicurus promoted the social contract and believed that a good and just society was one in which people aspired to neither cause nor receive harm. Epicurus had suffered from kidney stones throughout much of his life.

This did cause him a great deal of pain and suffering. Eventually, he died from complications related to this issue after many years of suffering. In B. Art History U.