Epicurus

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism, a highly influential school of philosophy. He was born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents who had gone there as settlers. He studied under Nausiphanes, a follower of Democritus, and later under Pamphilus, a disciple of Plato. He taught in Mytilene and Lampsacus before moving to Athens in 306 BC, where he established his own school, known as "the Garden", in a property that he bought. He attracted many followers, including women and slaves, who lived together in a communal setting. He wrote over 300 works on various subjects, such as ethics, epistemology, physics, and theology, but only a few fragments and letters have survived. Epicurus taught that the goal of life is to attain happiness, which he defined as a state of peace and freedom from fear and pain. He argued that pleasure is the highest good and that it can be achieved by living a simple and moderate life, avoiding excesses and harmful desires. He also advocated friendship as one of the greatest sources of pleasure and security. He rejected the idea of divine intervention or fate, and maintained that human beings have free will and are responsible for their own actions. He also denied the existence of an afterlife or any form of punishment or reward after death. He claimed that death is nothing to us, since it is the end of both the body and the soul, and therefore should not be feared. Epicurus was one of the first philosophers to develop a systematic natural philosophy based on atomism. He accepted the idea that everything is composed of indivisible and eternal atoms that move in empty space, but he modified it by introducing the concept of "swerve", a slight deviation in the motion of atoms that allows for the possibility of change and human agency. He also proposed a pluralistic cosmology, in which there are infinite worlds that are created and destroyed by natural causes. He argued that the gods exist, but they are not concerned with human affairs or morality. They live in a state of bliss in the intermundia, the spaces between the worlds. Epicurus's philosophy was very influential in his own time and later periods. His school survived until the 4th century AD, when it was suppressed by Christianity. His teachings were preserved by his followers, such as Metrodorus, Hermarchus, Colotes, Philodemus, and Lucretius, who wrote an epic poem called De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) that expounded Epicurean doctrine. His philosophy also influenced many other thinkers, such as Cicero, Seneca, Horace, Virgil, Montaigne, Hobbes, Gassendi, Hume, Bentham, Marx, Nietzsche, and Russell.