Epicurean solutions for our burning problems – Prof. Hossenfelder’s views (5): Epicurus’s philosophy guides and cures
Prof. Malte Hossenfelder says that Epicurus reminds us what philosophy can and should do: the science to help us plan and conduct our lives.
Nowadays philosophy is hardly more than scientific speculation about linguistic phenomena. Even ethics consists mainly in the discussion of its own methods. In most forewords to philosophical books on ethics you can read that the author’s aim is to find ways how ethical norms could be established but no author even suggests that he could set up such norms of behavior.
On the contrary: Epicurus has given us practicable ethical norms – practiced by his followers unchanged for 800 years. He showed a practicable way how to live if you want to be happy and he did this in a simple language understandable for people with basic education.
At the same time Epicurus didn’t only teach and preach but he lived in accordance with his own teachings and so he became an inspiring role model for all those who decided to lead a happy life.
Epicurean philosophy applied in everyday life has been guiding and curing stressed, disoriented, suffering people for 2300 years now. It is easy to understand and simple to follow. It is compatible with science and its practice has such side effects as producing a major contribution to sustainabilty.
All you need is to take the decision: I want to be happy in tghis life because there is no other life ahead.
Epicurean solutions for our burning problems – Prof. Hossenfelder’s views (4): happiness here & now
Prof. Malte Hossenfelder reminds us that Epicurus promises happiness here and now and does not paint us utopian pictures about future bliss. Epicurean teaching is thus a very efficient antidote to all political or religious manipulation that requires people to sacrifice their present happiness for (their children’s) happiness in a future time or a different place (like “Heaven”).
Epicurus teaches us that happiness can be achieved by anybody any time: all we need to attain it is the right attitude which is the result of reasoning and reflection.
Epicurean solutions for our burning problems – Prof. Hossenfelder’s views (3): how science can produce more happiness
Malte Hossenfelder sees Epicurus’s topicality also in the Epicurean approach to science. For Epicurus science was a tool to achieve happiness directly through stress-FREEDOM: the role of science was to liberate the stressFREEDOM seekers from irrational fears and at the same time to furnish knowledge directly relevant to live a happy life.
We use science to subdue and overexploit nature, to produce unnecessary products and awake a sense of greed for these products in the belief that all this process will lead us finally indirectly to happiness.
Taking the direct way would be more efficient for us and more sustainable for nature’s resources. The Epicurean approach results in a faith in nature’s laws that work independently of our wishes and desires and therefore we needn’t care or worry about them, even if some of our theories prove to be false. “How could be a man disturbed by a failure, if he’s free from ambition and fears neither death nor pains?” states Hossenfelder.
Hossenfelder doesn’t say this but any Epicurean (and many others) would agree to it: science should primarily do the following:
- develop ways for producing more food with less effort
- develop more efficient medicines with less side effects
- develop better housing solutions for more people
and communicate its accomplishments in such a way that food-, health- and housing-specialists can apply the findings.
Epicurean solutions for our burning problems – Prof. Hossenfelder’s views (2): needs-based economy for more happiness
Malte Hossenfelder sees Epicurus’s topicality in the first place in the fact that the economy propagated by Epicurus and practiced by his followers for 800 years was a needs-based economy. Practicing it today would eliminate two of the major problems we are facing:
a.The overexploitation of natural resources:
b. The social tensions between rich and poor
to be continued
Epicurean solutions for our burning problems – Prof. Hossenfelder’s views (1)
Malte Hossenfelder is one of the few professional philosophers who had the courage to tackle and understand and explain convincingly Epicurus’s SUBdivision of necessary and natural desires (the “non-professional” - in the sense of amateur in the sense of making a living from something else – philosophers having tackled this successfully are Victor Kioulaphides and Tome Merle in the Epicurean Group on Yahoo).
Beyond a good understanding of Epicurus’s philosphy Hossenfelder expresses his conviction that the Epicureay Way of living has a high topicality for all of us today. He sees Epicurus’s topicality in the 21st century in five fields.
As his book on Epicurus (Epikur, Verlag C.H. Beck, 1998, München) is available only in German as far as I know, I will summarize here his recommendations.
- The role of needs-based economy in producing happiness
- The role of science in producing happiness
- The role of autarky in producing happiness
- The immediate and direct availability of happiness
- The role of philosophy in forming ethical norms and defining a lifestyle
I will shortly present each of these domains in the next days.
You may get more information in German on Professor Hossenfelder here:
http://www.uni-graz.at/malte.hossenfelder/site.php?show=1
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