A Hellenistic school of philosophy founded by Epicurus in Athens around 307 BCE, teaching that pleasure, understood as the absence of bodily pain and mental disturbance rather than indulgence, is the highest good, and that a life of simple pleasures, close friendship and freedom from needless fear, especially fear of the gods and of death, is the surest route to it. Epicureanism held that the universe consists entirely of atoms moving through void, a physics adopted from Democritus, and used that physics to argue that the soul dissolves at death and that the gods, if they exist, are indifferent to human affairs. It stood as a direct rival to Stoicism for the rest of antiquity, the two schools disagreeing sharply over whether pleasure or virtue alone is the good, and over whether the world is governed by providential reason or by the chance collisions of atoms.
Facts
End YearBy the late third century CE the school had all but disappeared, displaced by the growing dominance of Neoplatonism, Peripateticism and Christianity. RegionAthens, later the Roman Empire 2 Connections
Rejected Here
Epicureanism and Stoicism were rival Hellenistic schools that disagreed sharply over whether pleasure or virtue alone is the good, and over whether the world is governed by providential reason or by the chance collisions of atoms.
Founded By
In Branch
Sources
1. Epicureanism (Wikipedia)
WikipediaDecline section
By the late third century CE, however, there was little trace of its existence.
Lead, founding sentence
Epicureanism, less commonly Epicurism, is a school of philosophy founded in 307 BCE and based upon the teachings of Epicurus, an ancient Greek philosopher.
View the Source 2. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
s.v. EpicureanismQuote, s.v. Epicureanism
Epicurus developed an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics, empiricist epistemology, and hedonistic ethics.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.