Epicurus (341–270 Bce)

Epicurus(341–270 Bce)

Epicurus was born on Samos to parents who were Athenian citizens. Evidence about his philosophical debts and development must be sifted from conflicting reports arising out of the agonistic context of ancient Greek philosophical rivalry and invective. While rivals charge him with merely plagiarizing his atomism from Democritus and hedonism from the Cyrenaics, his advocates praise his singular originality, probably encouraged in this by Epicurus himself. Like Parmenides, René Descartes, and other seminal figures in philosophy, Epicurus presented himself as a solitary herald of truth, creating his system de novo because of the inadequacy of his predecessors and teachers. Modern scholarship tends to split the difference, seeing a variety of possible influences—Democritean atomism, Cyrenaic hedonism, Aristotelian eudaimonism, skeptic impeturbablilty—while fully recognizing that however much Epicurus worked within an existing framework, he is responsible for a succession of remarkably influential innovations.

Life and Sources

Epicurus spent most of his first thirty-five years in Asia Minor. There he began formulating his doctrines and collecting important adherents before embarking for Athens where he founded the Garden in 306 BCE. Alone among the major Athenian meeting places for philosophers (the Academy, Lyceum, and Stoa), it remained an authoritative center for the study and dissemination of its founder's teachings late into the Roman period—largely, no doubt, because it alone continued to flourish as an institution with endowed property, stable traditions of teaching and doctrine, and generations of faithful advocates.

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