Peter Kirkwood asked 3 questions regarding Epicureanism and Stoicism on the Facebook discussion forum of the Epicurus page. I quote his questions with my answers:
1.Is Epicureanism, in fact, a closed system, and if it is, is this to its disadvantage?
My answer: Yes, it is a closed system of dogmatic philosophy and lifestyle and I see no disadvantage in this. Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy stated that the Epicureans “served a useful purpose by their protest against the increasing devotion of the later pagans to magic, astrology, and divination; but they remained, like their founder, dogmatic, limited, and without genuine interest in anything outside individual happiness. They learnt by heart the creed of Epicurus, and added nothing to it throughout the centuries during which the school survived.”
If you find a philosophy leading to happiness why should you change it or look further?
2.Further, to what extent do you think it is possible to disagree with historical Epicurean teaching and yet still realistically consider yourself “an Epicurean”?
My answer:I believe that if you accept and follow Epicurus’s core ethical teachings and practice them in your daily life you may call yourself an Epicurean, even if you disregard his physics and theology.
3.If you identify as an Epicurean, why do you do so in preference to, say, identifying as a Stoic, given that both traditions have effective techniques for achieving ataraxia/apatheia?
My answers:
Ataraxia does NOT equal apatheia – but this would be a topic for a new discussion.
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius borrowed generously from Epicurus and some of the psychagogical techniques and educational exercises of both schools were very similar, as pointed out by Hadot, Rabbow and others.
Besides the few similarities and the many important and very pertinent differences enumerated above by Bob we should also keep in mind that
- Stoicism changed a lot from Zeno’s materialism to Marcus Aurelius’s quasi-platonism
- Stoics never managed to make their determinism consistent with their belief in beneficent providence.
- Stoics never had anything like the Epicurean school-communities
- Stoics actively participated in power games whereas with Epicureans it was the exception
- Stoics always preached reason, virtue, and duty but seldom walked their own talk
- Stoicism was the philosophy of Greek aristocrats and Roman patricians whereas the followers of Epicurus were mostly higher middle class with no political ambitions.
In DeWitt’s words:” Epicureanism presented two fronts to the world, the one as repellent as the other was attractive. Its discouragement of the political career was repellent to the ambitious, its denial of divine providence to pious orthodoxy, and its hedonism to timorous respectability. Its candor, charity, courtesy, and friendliness were attractive to multitudes of the honest and unambitious folk.” (Epicurus and His Philosophy)
BR shows deep understanding of Epicuranism and Epicurus as a philosopher in his “History of Western Philosophy”.
Yet in “The Conquest of Happiness” – a wonderful litlle book of Epicurean inspiration – he ignores Epicurus almost totally. (He does NOT disparage him, though, as Epicurus did Nausiphanes.)
Does anybody have a clue why the basically Epicurean Russell ignored Epicurus in this work?
Bertrand Russell shows deep understanding of Epicuranism and Epicurus as a philosopher in his “History of Western Philosophy”.
Yet in “The Conquest of Happiness” – a wonderful litlle book of Epicurean inspiration – he ignores Epicurus almost totally. (He does NOT disparage him, though, as Epicurus did Nausiphanes.)
Does anybody have a clue why the basically Epicurean Russell ignored Epicurus in this work?
This is the question I have just ported on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=14290&uid=86711477873#!/topic.php?uid=86711477873&topic=14290
Unwittingly Epicurean
My hypothesis is that people are born as Epicureans but then they are re-educated. So we are all of us unwittingly Epicureans – basicaslly.
But there is a group of people who know exactly who Epicurus was or Epicureanism was and is, and yet they either somehow “forget” to mention this like Bertrand Russell in “The Conquest of Happiness “
And then there are those who misunderstand and or misrepresent the essence of Epicureanism, but their work is another scientific support of Epicureanism, like Daniel Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness”.
My hypothesis is that people are born as Epicureans but then they are re-educated. So we are all of us unwittingly Epicureans – basically.
But there is are people who know exactly who Epicurus was or Epicureanism was and is, and yet they somehow “forget” to mention this like Bertrand Russell in “The Conquest of Happiness “
And then there are those who misunderstand and or misrepresent the essence of Epicureanism, but their work is another scientific support of Epicureanism, like Daniel Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness”.
I will call all them all simply “unwittingly Epicurean” and will go on scrolling their names with my claims.
Scientists never tire of churning out ever “newer” findings about happiness, like e.g.
“5 Reliable Findings from Happiness Research”
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/04/10/5-reliable-findings-from-happiness-research/
This is the comment I made on their site:
The students who started attending Epicurus’s school-communities 2300 years ago and kept on building their lives on practicing his teachings uninterrupted for over 800 years would have smiled heartily at the “newness” of the never-ending row of “evidence” in support of opinions that used to be are self-evident for them. Although Epicureans have never referred to the achievability of happiness in percental terms, they knew and know that we can change some things (basically our attitude) and we cannot change other things. They knew that human relationships were the alpha and the omega of happiness and therefore they cultivated friendship in their communities and their couple relationships. And they knew what Scattycat stressed in his comment and what Democritus propagated before Epicurus:
“At one and the same time we must philosophize, laugh, and manage our household and other business.”
I was used to see the management and self-improvement bookshelves in bookstores and libraries flooded by titles with the word “leadership” in them but now the omnipresent catchword has slopped over to inundate other areas as well.
I have taken a few books home from the local library on adolescent psychology and character education and was surprised to see that the obsession with the concept of “leadership” has already reached the shores of parenting, too. The author - otherwise a knowledgeable expert – just could not get out of the mythical circle of the label “leadership”. Looking into the details of how we should educate our teens to “become leaders of valued community activities” it turned out that behind the catchword “leadership” the author hid such useful notions as the skills of organization and time management, responsibility and considerateness.
Now, if everybody is a “leader”, who will be the followers?
The infatuation with “leadership” has blessed humanity with an endless row of Alexanders (greater or smaller), Napoleons, Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins who all founded huge empires that lasted from 3 to 30 years.
The cultivation of the “skills”, “virtues”, “attitudes” of sheer practice of followership has produced, on the contrary, billions of “average” (a negative catchword for the arithmetically uneducated) decent, reasonable and rational individuals over thousands of years across different cultures. The cult of inconspicuous happiness had few preachers (Lao-Tze, Buddha, Epicurus) and its “success” has never become overly visible. And justifiably so: fame is seldom an ingredient of happiness – if ever.
The silently smiling masses simply “followed” their normal and “average” instincts in the pursuit of happiness, contained in the teachings of the above mentioned preachers. Billions of them. Thousands of years.
Tags: Alexander, average, Buddha, Epicurus, followership, Hitler, Lao-tze, leadership, Mussolini, Napoleon, Stalin
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