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How to Be an Epicurean

My Summary

Highlights

And Lucretius’s Epicurean poem, On the Nature of Things, — location: 128

Three of Epicurus’s most famous (also his most infamous) teachings were: first, everything that exists, including the human mind, is composed of material atoms; second, if a God or gods exist, it or they did not create our world, and it or they do not care about humanity; and third, there is no life after death and no other world to go to. — location: 170

Unlike their main philosophical rivals, the Stoics, they did not believe the mind is all-powerful in the face of adversity or that we should strive to repress our emotions, griefs and passions. — location: 178

And unlike the other, more influential schools of ancient philosophy, especially the Platonic and the Aristotelian, the Epicureans welcomed women into the sect. — location: 179

The distinction between nature and convention helps to break down egocentrism and speciesism. — location: 190

Sentences have ‘emergent’ qualities that the letters and spaces composing them do not possess. They — location: 308

For the Epicureans, when I see a tree, a thin ‘film’ of coloured particles actually detaches itself from the tree and floats into my eyes. Objects, they supposed, were constantly emitting these films from their surfaces and so wearing away, while replenishing their substance by absorbing particles from the environment. — location: 315

In the ancient seas, some hundreds of millions of years after the formation of planet earth about 4.5 billion years ago, bombardment by lightning is thought to have produced organic molecules, including amino acids, which are composed of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen and which are the building blocks of proteins. — location: 387

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In either case, the first single-celled organisms emerged around 3.85 billion years ago. — location: 393

The Epicureans proposed that combinations of atoms taking the form of animals developed by chance or from atomic ‘seeds’ buried in the earth. Animals with features that favoured their survival, such as cunning, courage and speed, were able to persist longer than others that lacked these features — location: 406

But conversely, if you find Darwinism implausible, it is helpful to stop thinking of Darwin as suddenly and single-handedly coming up with a new and startling theory for which there is still no conclusive evidence. You can think of him instead as one of a long line of thinkers familiar with Epicurean philosophy who found the way over its major stumbling blocks where the theory of natural selection was concerned. — location: 451

One reviewer complained, for example, that there was nothing new in Darwin’s ‘speculative’ cosmogony. ‘It is at least as old,’ he said, ‘as Democritus and Epicurus, and has never been presented with more poetic beauty than by Lucretius.’ — location: 460

A good example is the class of dinosaurs that just happened to be inhabiting the earth 65 million years ago when it was hit ‘by chance’ – though fully in accord with the laws of physics – by an asteroid that wiped them all out. — location: 504

The fear is rather that if the Epicurean – Darwinian theory is true and intelligent design false, divinities and religious texts are not sources of moral authority, and eternal life is not the reward for faith. In that case, there is no reason to obey the Ten Commandments or all the moral ordinances of one’s own church. Moral anarchy, by which Creationists usually understand homosexuality, adultery, abortion and divorce, and the breakdown of the family and society, will result. — location: 517

In keeping with their sparse ontology of atoms and void, the ancient Epicureans declared the soul – the principle of movement, sensation, experience and thought in living beings – to be composed of a special sort of atom. ‘Soul atoms’, they proposed, were especially small, especially mobile and very lively. They pervaded the limbs of the human body, enabling us to think, feel and move. — location: 538

‘corpuscularian’ — location: 557

One of the most important insights to take away from Lucretian prehistory and its reworking is that the purpose of political authority is to reduce interpersonal violence and to make life secure for all. A — location: 762

second insight is that our political and legal systems have been shaped by chance discoveries and new technologies. — location: 763

A third is that while life under civilisation offers a range of marvellous goods and experiences, uncontrolled and concentrated wealth and ambition make exploitation, warfare and corruption inevitable. — location: 764

Plato: ‘Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.’ Aristotle: ‘Most pleasures are bad.’ Epictetus: ‘It is the nature of the wise to resist pleasure.’ Kant: ‘Whoever wants to be quite happy must remain indifferent towards pain and pleasure.’ — location: 801

We all seem to know intuitively that pleasure and danger are associated, and that sexual pleasure is the most dangerous of all pleasures, far exceeding in this regard the dangers of overindulgence in food, or drink, or too much enjoyment of art, music, dance and travel. In fact, these other activities are sometimes tainted by the association of other pleasures with sexual pleasure. — location: 811

self-regarding actions, i.e., actions that have little or no effect on anyone else but a noticeable effect on the self. — location: 818

The question ‘How prudent should I be in this case?’ is one that the Epicurean of today thinks should always be investigated empirically, even if the decision, in the end, depends on your preferences. — location: 834

The reflective Epicurean will consider honestly what purchases have really brought pleasure and which ones were not worth the effort or the outlay. Think of the ones you don’t regret: perhaps you really do love your yoghurt foot wash, or your new beige sofa, or your fancy chronometer. Think of the purchases you do regret: the exercise machine you never use, the designer sheets that now look just like ordinary sheets. Has your great big car brought you the happiness you hoped for? Did the wild party weekend at the resort leave you with fond memories of the wonderful time you had? Does your heart lift when you open your bureau drawer and see that glittery pair of socks? If so, it was money well spent. And take some time to reflect on whether housework and handyperson activities bring you joy or the reverse. While — location: 922

Psychologists have discovered and commented on the ‘hedonistic paradox’, the ‘hedonic treadmill’ and the ‘hedonic set point’. — location: 929

Set-point theory tells us that people’s subjective happiness level is basically set for life and that the needle budges only temporarily in response to gratifying events, such as winning a prize or getting a raise, before falling back to wherever it was. — location: 936

If set-point theory were the whole truth, therapy would be 100 per cent useless; no one could really be made happier and the entire profession ought to hang its head in shame at extracting money on an ongoing basis from vulnerable and incurable patients. — location: 949

We are often told that we should ignore petty annoyances. The Epicurean takes the opposite view. That hangnail is bothering you? Go snip it off right now. — location: 970

Although impermanence is a feature of all complex objects and relations for the Epicurean, we have a sense of how long particular things ought to last, as I will explain in Chapter 8 (here). When — location: 1041

Prudence does not, however, urge us to forego friendship on the grounds that we may someday be subject to a loss. We live among many fragile and semi-fragile things, and friendship is only one of them. — location: 1043

Philosophical ethics has a good deal to say about the difference between real needs and desires on the one hand, and desires induced by manipulation on the other. It urges us to discriminate between fleeting pleasures and more durable pleasures, and to think hard and courageously about the management of personal risk. But philosophical ethics has another important goal: to explore the question of how to treat other people and why we ought to treat them that way; how it is right or just or fair to treat them. — location: 1075

As the beneficiary of prudence is not my present self but a future self, the beneficiary of my moral action is not myself at all but another person or another set of people entirely. — location: 1104

why, you fool, do you not retire from the feast of life like a satisfied guest? — location: 1387

The Epicurean position involves three main ideas: death is not to be feared; being dead is not unpleasant or painful; and death is the end – there is no afterlife. — location: 1407

might seem that the Epicureans give too little weight to the instinctual fear of death. While denying that death is a kind of sleep, they encourage us to think of it as like sleep, a welcome release from exhaustion and overstimulation or boredom. — location: 1481

The Epicurean objection to this argument is that suicide is usually both imprudent and immoral. — location: 1565

India, where atomism is also believed to have started before spreading to Greece, — location: 1684

If objects, people and landscapes were illusions, created by our illusory brains, it would be unsound to regard the senses as the basis of our knowledge. — location: 1686

The ancient Stoics, who first used the concept of a natural right, derived the notion of a right of self-defence from the observation that all animals try to remain alive and to defend themselves. — location: 1759

It had to be supported and enforced by human law, but the right, they thought, existed before the laws designed to uphold — location: 1761

As the Epicurean sees matters, rights exist only by convention and are not found in nature. — location: 1766

But rights are causally powerless and can’t make anything happen. Only human decisions to ‘stick up for one’s rights’, — location: 1771

A fourth category, in addition to atoms, natural things and conventional things, implicit in Epicurean theory is that of the imaginary. — location: 1782

According to our best theories, however, they do not exist. Here are some examples of Unthings: ghosts, angels, unicorns, sorcery, phlogiston, lucky numbers. — location: 1784

the Epicurean will be alert to the difference between the real causal powers of invisible things and the actual powerlessness of things whose effects, if any, are really just the effects of her own mind. — location: 1850

Some philosophers have argued that truth can only be found in areas of human knowledge that don’t depend on the use of our senses, or on our personal memories and reading habits, and that don’t engage our personal emotions. This leaves, at best, mathematics and logic. — location: 1936

In general, claims that do not depend on first-hand experience, or on reliable testimony, should not be believed. This position is known as empiricism and was adopted by many later philosophers. — location: 1955

experience is the touchstone of truth — location: 2040

The consensus is that the earth is getting warmer because of the emission of invisible particles of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from industry and transportation. — location: 2210

Technically all greenhouse gases.

Climate change is a moral issue because it involves real harm. — location: 2228

While roughly half of the US population now follows the scientific consensus in accepting manmade global warming as fact and sees the need for changes to legislation and household habits, only about 20 per cent of recently surveyed people at all educational levels, from high-school graduates to those with postgraduate degrees, follows the scientific consensus in believing that humans evolved without any divine oversight of or input into the process. The other 80 per cent, including some scientists, believe that God created human beings in their present form or guided the process of evolution. — location: 2230

Around the beginning of the 19th century, the English jurist and philosopher Jeremy Bentham, declaring that ‘mankind is ruled by two masters, pleasure and pain’, — location: 2306

The major impact of Epicurean political philosophy was, however, through its development by three figures, each of whom was inspired to rethink the specific problems of his own society via the Lucretian history of humanity. The three philosophers I have in mind were: Thomas Hobbes, writing in the mid-17th century, who favoured a centralised government; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in the mid-18th century, who favoured community-based democracy; and Karl Marx in the mid-19th century, who favoured worker ownership of all corporations. Their ideas are well worth revisiting for their potential application to the problems of our era. — location: 2316

The tendency of modern nations towards the centralisation of power and the submission of individual nations to multinational authorities such as the UN and the European Court of Justice, and to multinational legislation, such as the Geneva Conventions, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Paris Agreement on climate change, are Hobbesian in inspiration, and are to be welcomed. — location: 2334

who do enjoy our work, most of the time, and who are able to enjoy a range of aesthetic and intellectual experiences, are extremely lucky. But we are a minority. — location: 2371

Although the Epicurean Garden does not provide a sustainable model for any economy, political will could move us in that direction. — location: 2374

the Epicurean maintains a generally sceptical stance towards rights and traditions. — location: 2389

According to a well-conducted study, for each instance of successful self-defence or justifiable homicide using a gun, there were twenty-two cases of assault or criminal homicide, unintentional homicide, suicide and attempted suicide using a gun. — location: 2396

When Plato recommended equal education and physical training for girls and boys, it was widely believed he was joking. — location: 2430

Aristotle held that virtue in a woman is entirely different from virtue in a man. For women, virtuous behaviour consisted in being quiet and obedient, while virtue in a man involved being courageous, truthful and generous. — location: 2431

These questions can be fruitfully explored by keeping in mind the Epicurean principles that convention is not to be confused with nature or necessity, that technological progress gave rise to new forms of oppression, and that relations between men and women should be both friendly and just. — location: 2444

First, he tells us that we should believe what the majority of mankind believes: namely, that there exists an immortal and blessed divinity. Then he comments that ‘the multitude’ have an entirely false idea of God. — location: 2515

The Epicurean always accords less credence to second-hand sources than to first-hand experience. — location: 2559

Before going on to consider what a world without religion might be like, let me take you through the four sources of belief in God or ‘the gods’ identified by the Epicureans. These are wonder, personal experience, fear and gratitude, and tradition and authority. — location: 2569

According to the Greek myth, the subject of a cycle of tragic plays by the 5th-century-BCE dramatist Euripides, Iphigenia’s father, Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae, offended the goddess Artemis by killing a sacred deer. — location: 2656

Lucretius’s view that religion is a powerful and dangerous instrument of social control that exploits human credulity needs to be taken seriously. — location: 2669

Assuming with the Epicureans that there is life elsewhere in the universe, indeed conscious, aware, so-called intelligent life, — location: 2874

When, like Lucretius in Book VI, you are feeling especially pessimistic about the state of the world, it helps to visit a museum to marvel at what human beings can do when they are not engaged in conquest or wealth-acquisition, but only using their minds, hands and eyes to create objects of beauty. — location: 2902

Epicurean philosophy might be said to be based on the notion of the limit. — location: 3005

natural limits to the lives of animals, people and material objects, to governments and to relationships. — location: 3006

Second, there are moral limits that we ought to observe and often fail to: limits on consumption, and on the domination and exploitation of other people and animals. — location: 3007

‘Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest good is pleasure.’ — location: 3011

Created by Niall Bell (niall@niallbell.com)