Why You Should Choose Epicurus To Be Your Guide - Introduction

What This Book Contains

Every philosophy offers itself as a guide to life. It tells you how to know what is true, what kind of world you live in, and what you should aim at. This book argues that Epicurus is the best guide of all, because he is the leader in the fight for happiness in this world and this life.

The book begins with the positive case. The first chapter, The Case for Epicurus, sets out what Epicurus taught about knowledge, nature and the goal of life, and what he meant by “pleasure,” a word he used far more widely than his critics allow. The second chapter, The Questions at Issue, sets his answers to eight basic questions beside the answers of the seven traditions that have most often been set against him.

The main part of the book then examines those seven traditions one by one, in the order in which they entered Western thought:

1. Against The Platonists: Socrates and Plato, the founders of the view that the world we see is a shadow of a higher, eternal world, and that the world was made by a divine craftsman.
2. Against The Aristotelians: Plato’s pupil Aristotle, who kept Plato’s purposes in nature while removing the craftsman, and whose system later became the backbone of medieval theology.
3. Against The Stoics: Zeno, Chrysippus, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the great rivals of the Epicureans in the ancient world, who taught a world filled with a providential god.
4. Against The Skeptics: Pyrrho, the Skeptic Academy and Sextus Empiricus, who taught that nothing can be known and that the wise man suspends judgement and follows custom.
5. Against The Abrahamists: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in the words of their scriptures and authorities, which made the creator god, providence and the judgment after death articles of faith.
6. Against The Humanists: from Boethius and the Renaissance through Kant, Comte and Feuerbach to the modern Humanists, who kept much of the Christian morality after letting go of the Christian God.
7. Against The Buddhists: the Buddha’s teaching that life is suffering and desire its cause, in the words of the early Buddhist scriptures, which reached the West last and is now the tradition most often confused with Epicurus.

Five of these are the traditions that, more than any others, have obscured or corrupted the teaching of Epicurus: Platonism, Stoicism, Skepticism, supernatural religion and Humanism. Aristotle is given a chapter of his own because, although he belongs in the Platonist tradition, he built the most complete system of it and is often mistaken for an ally of Epicurus. Buddhism arose far from Greece and owes nothing to Plato, but it is given the last chapter because it has become, in our own time, the tradition most often confused with the teaching of Epicurus.

Each of the seven chapters follows the same plan. It begins with why the tradition matters to Epicureans and with the historical record of its quarrel with Epicurus. It then takes the three divisions of Epicurean philosophy in turn: the Canon, or how we know the truth; Physics, or the nature of things; and Ethics, or how to live. In each, the tradition is stated in the words of its own leading writers, and the Epicurean response follows. Each chapter closes with the places where the tradition, in spite of itself, helps the Epicurean case, with its later influence, and with a list of the most important passages.

The chapters quote their sources at length, and the quotations link to the full texts on EpicurusToday.com, where the reader can check the wording and read the context. A final chapter draws the results together and returns to the choice with which the book begins.

How to Read This Book

Readers who already know Epicurus may go straight to the traditions that interest them, because each chapter can be read on its own. But readers new to Epicurus should start with the first two chapters, since every later chapter measures its tradition against them. Read in order, the chapters show how one view of the world, first set out by Socrates and Plato, passed from school to school and from philosophy into religion and back again, and how Epicurus answered it at every stage. The final chapter traces that line and sets out what the survey shows.

The quotations come from published translations, most of them old enough to be freely available. Links in the chapters go to the full texts on EpicurusToday.com, where the translator of every work is named and every quotation can be checked against its context and, in most cases, against an image of the printed page.