Research Paper On Epicurus
Epicurus: Nature of Happiness and Pleasure
Epicurus (c. 341-271 BCE) was born on the island of Samos where his parents were also born and this made him an Athenian citizen. At the age of fourteen, Epicurus studied philosophy, because he was inspired by the stories that his teacher told him. Epicurus started to his studies in
Athens and then ended up in Colophone, where he started a school on the island of Lesbos, then to the Hellespont, and eventually returned to Athens in 207 BCE, where he established his famous “Garden” not far from the gates of Plato’s Academy. For Epicurus, life is most desirable when we avoid unnecessary desires and by having peace with all things even the simplest things and also by choosing pleasure like conversations …show more content…
In the first question Epicurus talks about human values and in his text he states that human beings need to have a healthy body and a calm soul so that you can have freedom from pain, which would lead you to have peace and you can rest. In saying this, the truest claim of pleasure, is getting rid of everything that causes you pain. He states that, “When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure.”
(Epicurus X. 128 pg 655). When someone reaches their happiest state, they find peace of mind.
Epicurus claims that we all desire happiness as an end in itself, and all other things are desired as a means for producing happiness. Epicurus’s principle doctrines, explains that you can have to have a blessed life, you must have security from harm of the other men. He states this in his sixth doctrine, “ 6. In order to obtain security from other men any means whatsoever of procuring this was an natural good.” (Epicurus X.141 pg 665) From this one doctrine, if you have to secure protection from man, then there is a state of natural good, and by then end you must attain happiness in the end.
But at the same time, who still questions what happiness is and is there a “good” …show more content…
Epicurus states, “For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly apprehended that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect”. (Epicurus X. 125 pg 651). This is because mentally, pain can reach further or behind in time and we contemplate the past an anticipate the future. Epicurus says that time is not something to be investigated, but it should be something that can be compared about. Also, he sees time as an accident of accidents. He states in Letter to Herodotus, “…we have only to reflect that we attach the attribute of time to days and nights and their parts, and likewise to feelings of pleasure and pain and to neutral states, to states of movement and states of rest, conceiving a peculiar accident of these to be this very characteristic which we express by the word time”
(Epicurus Letter to Herodotus X.73 pg 603). As a result of time being a measurement
Epicurus (c. 341-271 BCE) was born on the island of Samos where his parents were also born and this made him an Athenian citizen. At the age of fourteen, Epicurus studied philosophy, because he was inspired by the stories that his teacher told him. Epicurus started to his studies in
Athens and then ended up in Colophone, where he started a school on the island of Lesbos, then to the Hellespont, and eventually returned to Athens in 207 BCE, where he established his famous “Garden” not far from the gates of Plato’s Academy. For Epicurus, life is most desirable when we avoid unnecessary desires and by having peace with all things even the simplest things and also by choosing pleasure like conversations …show more content…
In the first question Epicurus talks about human values and in his text he states that human beings need to have a healthy body and a calm soul so that you can have freedom from pain, which would lead you to have peace and you can rest. In saying this, the truest claim of pleasure, is getting rid of everything that causes you pain. He states that, “When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure.”
(Epicurus X. 128 pg 655). When someone reaches their happiest state, they find peace of mind.
Epicurus claims that we all desire happiness as an end in itself, and all other things are desired as a means for producing happiness. Epicurus’s principle doctrines, explains that you can have to have a blessed life, you must have security from harm of the other men. He states this in his sixth doctrine, “ 6. In order to obtain security from other men any means whatsoever of procuring this was an natural good.” (Epicurus X.141 pg 665) From this one doctrine, if you have to secure protection from man, then there is a state of natural good, and by then end you must attain happiness in the end.
But at the same time, who still questions what happiness is and is there a “good” …show more content…
Epicurus states, “For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly apprehended that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect”. (Epicurus X. 125 pg 651). This is because mentally, pain can reach further or behind in time and we contemplate the past an anticipate the future. Epicurus says that time is not something to be investigated, but it should be something that can be compared about. Also, he sees time as an accident of accidents. He states in Letter to Herodotus, “…we have only to reflect that we attach the attribute of time to days and nights and their parts, and likewise to feelings of pleasure and pain and to neutral states, to states of movement and states of rest, conceiving a peculiar accident of these to be this very characteristic which we express by the word time”
(Epicurus Letter to Herodotus X.73 pg 603). As a result of time being a measurement