This Epicurean essay by José Américo Motta Pessanha is translated to English to provide context for The Garden of Afflictions, by Olavo de Carvalho, which refers to it a few times.

The Delights of the Garden

The Delights of the Garden

... at least once, I lived like the gods:

that is enough.

Hölderlin, To the Fates.¹

In the late 19th century, French archaeologists discovered in Enoanda, in Cappadocia (central Turkey), stones with curious inscriptions: a philosophical message engraved by a certain Diogenes in the 2nd century AD. In truth, the message that this citizen of Enoanda and professor in Rhodes sought to perpetuate on the wall of one of his city’s porticoes consists of fundamental theses of Epicurus' ethics, the Greek philosopher who had lived about five hundred years earlier (3rd century BC). This touching testimony of a disciple’s admiration for his master, the text inscribed on the walls seems to contain a letter that Epicurus had addressed to his mother, ² but which Diogenes considers immensely valuable for anyone, from any era. Thus, moved by love for humanity, Diogenes seeks to share the teachings of the master indiscriminately with anyone passing by the wall of Enoanda. He justifies it, in the initial part of the inscription:

If one person, or two, or three, or four, or as many as you wish, were in distress and I were called upon to help, I would do everything in my power to offer my best advice. Today, most people are sick, as if with an epidemic, due to false beliefs about the world, and the evil worsens because, by imitation, they transmit the evil to one another, like sheep. Moreover, it is only right to provide help to those who will come after us. They are ours too, even though they have not yet been born. Love for humanity compels us to help strangers who pass through here. Since the good message of the book has already been disseminated, I have decided to use this wall to publicly display the remedy for humanity.

Sick, humanity transformed into a herd needs treatment. The source of the evil, which spreads through the contagion of mimicry, is identified: false beliefs. What drives the healing action is the generous feeling of philia, which, beyond intrinsically supporting philosophy, overflows—as love of wisdom—into love for humanity. The action of the philosopher-physician or physician-philosopher—emphasized since Empedocles and Socrates/Plato—does not, however, in the Epicurean lineage, present any kind of restriction regarding the choice of the patient-disciple: everyone has the right to healing, without social, economic, or ethnic limitations. ³ Therefore, the widest publicity must be given to the treatment: the remedy is offered to anyone, to any passerby, even to foreigners, for its value and benefit are universal, beyond the contingencies of space and time. And its preservation in stone is precisely so that posterity—who “are ours” too—can benefit from it.

But, after all, what remedy is this, capable of freeing humanity from afflictions and torments? The remedy is the philosophical logos as the bearer of enlightening truth, the discourse as phármakon, as curative because it is the discursive reason that expels the darkness of superstitions, driving away the ills of the soul. ⁴ However, in the inscription of Enoanda, it appears in the form of tetraphármakon, the quadruple remedy composed of ingredients from the Principal Doctrines of Epicurus. ⁵ Here it is:

There is nothing to fear about the gods.

There is nothing to fear about death.

Happiness can be achieved.

Pain can be endured.

About two centuries before Diogenes of Enoanda attempted to perpetuate and disseminate Epicurus' ideas using the stones of a wall, another Epicurean, the Roman Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 97 BC - c. 55 BC), driven by the same admiration for the master, had already extolled his doctrine using the verses of a long and magnificent philosophical poem, a wall of words only: the De rerum natura [On the Nature of Things].

In the openings of the various books that make up the poem, Epicurus is repeatedly extolled as the glorious liberator of humanity, the discoverer of the truth that dispels the terrors of the soul, the god who brings salvific light. The philosopher-poet writes in the opening of Book V: “It was a god, a god, who first discovered the rule of existence that is now called wisdom, he who, by means of his art, brought our life, from such great waves and such great darkness, into a place so tranquil and in such clear light”. ⁶

In the opening of Book III, Lucretius clothes his uncontainable admiration with luxurious images:

O you who first, from such great darkness, could make such bright splendor emerge, enlightening us about the goods of life, to you I follow, o glory of the Greek people, and now place my feet on the signs left by you, not out of any desire to compete with you, but because out of love, I venture to imitate you. Indeed, how could the swallow contend with the swan, or what could the trembling-legged kids and the strong, vigorous horses do in the same race? You, o father, are the discoverer of truth; you offer me paternal lessons, and it is in your books that we, like bees gathering everything from flowering meadows, are likewise gathering the golden words, truly golden, the most worthy since time began. As soon as your doctrine, the work of a divine genius, begins to proclaim the nature of things, the terrors of the soul disperse, the walls of the world are removed, and I see how everything is done throughout the whole expanse. ⁷

It is evident: as much as the intellectual bond, philia strongly links disciples to the master—even those separated by time, like Diogenes of Enoanda and Lucretius—the affectionate, devoted, and grateful love. The master-disciple relationship appears in Epicureanism as a form of educational-eroticism that had already marked the same relationship between Pythagoreans and Socratics. Eros, the mediator, as shown in Plato’s Symposium, sponsors philosophical teaching, for truth is achieved through a double asceticism, theoretical and erotic. The master, therefore, is much more than a source of information and teachings: as one of the poles of the reversible binomial erastes/eromenos, he is the beloved example of a wise life to be followed and disseminated. ⁸ The disciple, even not intending to compete with him, does not give up imitating him. He wants to be what the swallow is to the swan, the kid to the horse, in the asymmetry that sustains the connection between copy and model. Furthermore, the philia that nourishes this relationship is based on love for truth and is the same that impels the transmission of doctrine since, if the dissemination of ideas is the propagation of liberating light, it also constitutes the expansion of a love plot that continues to grow throughout time, seeking to encompass men of all generations.

The dual nature of the Epicurean proposal—to combine enlightening reason and love for humanity, clear understanding of natural phenomena and the pursuit of earthly happiness, science and ethics—partially justifies its appearance of being a cult, the character of a brotherhood assumed by this philosophical current. However, it is a secular brotherhood, centered on the valorization of the human, not on the transcendence of the divine; a brotherhood of friends of truth attained through the senses and reason; a brotherhood that seeks salvation, yes, but through knowledge, not belief, through philosophy as clear and provable comprehension, not adherence to mystery, to intellectual and empirically unfathomable aspects. Therefore, the precept “you must serve philosophy in order to achieve true freedom” ⁹ is one of its fundamental prescriptions.

The radical humanism and the purpose of putting truth in the service of human happiness, the “enlightenment” nature that induces the combat of all forms of obscurantism and credulity, the salvationist project grounded in science, the defense of pleasure with a materialist basis make Epicureanism a model of thought capable of surviving and resurfacing, even partially, over the centuries. This vitality and these resurgences manifest themselves despite the fierce combat that, since Antiquity, they receive from adversaries — particularly Stoics and Christians. Indeed, Epicurean ideas reappear in Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), a critic of Descartes and one of the founders of modern materialism. At the beginning of Modernity, the mechanistic materialism of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) also harks back to Epicurus. Later, Lenin allies himself with Epicureanism in his polemic with Hegel. However, it is above all Marx — the young Marx — who most deeply immerses himself in the philosophy of the Greek master, reinterpreting it in the thesis with which he intends to obtain a dozent position in Bonn: Differences between the philosophies of nature in Democritus and Epicurus. ¹⁰

Initiated in 1839, the thesis is built with the theoretical instrument that Marx inherits from German classical philosophy and from Hegel. In fact, it is part of a more ambitious (and not completed) project: to discover, through the analysis of post-Aristotelian philosophical systems — Epicureanism, Stoicism, Skepticism —, the “subjective form”, the “character” of philosophy, which makes the same “profession of faith of Prometheus”, the patron of rebellion and human liberation “who occupies the first place among the saints and martyrs”. After all, this Promethean, libertarian nature reappears, at that moment, in the philosophy cultivated by the Doktorklub, the Doctors' Club of idealistic and liberal people that Marx, as a young left Hegelian, frequents in Berlin and whose program consists in realizing the synthesis between Hegelianism and liberalism, creating the ideals that allow, in German terms, to conclude the liberating task sketched in the Aufklärung and put into practice by the French Revolution. And it is precisely in Epicurus — “first theologian of the death of God” — that Marx will find the de-alienating fight against traditional ethics and religion, the same fight he encounters when reading, at the beginning of 1842, The Essence of Christianity, by his friend Feuerbach. Both in Epicurus and in Feuerbach, Marx faces a materialism that supports a libertarian philosophy, however, remaining within the limits of only inner freedom. To overcome it and forge theoretical weapons for liberating action at the social and political level will require the reformulation of materialism itself, it will require the construction of Marxism. But anyway, it seems clear: it is in the company of Epicurus that Marx exhausts the possibilities of one dimension of freedom and arrives at the frontier beyond which to continue means to create his own ideas. ¹¹

The Swan and the Swallow

Of the numerous works of Epicurus — Diogenes Laertius claims there were about three hundred titles — very little has been preserved. Three letters have come down to us — one to Pythocles, of dubious authenticity and dealing with celestial phenomena, another to Herodotus, on physics, and a third to Menoeceus, on ethics —, plus the so-called Principal Doctrines, forty sentences possibly extracted from various works. To this scant set were added, in 1888, the 81 sentences found in a manuscript from the Vatican Library, some of them, however, reproducing already known texts. Later, the remains of an Epicurean library, including extremely mutilated parts of Epicurus' work On Nature, were found in excavations at Herculaneum. And, completing the scarce legacy, the inscriptions on the wall of Oinoanda were discovered at the end of the last century. ¹² It is true that many quotes from Epicurus appear in the writings of ancient authors, such as Cicero, Plutarch or Clement of Alexandria. But these sources must be used with caution, as they are marked by the polemical and critical intention of adversaries of the Epicurean doctrine, committed to fighting it in the name of Stoicism, Eclecticism, or Christianity.

This is why the poem On the Nature of Things (De rerum natura), by Lucretius, acquires so much importance for the recovery of Epicurean doctrines. Indeed, it would be very difficult to reconstruct the ideas of Epicurus — the swan — if we did not have the mediation that his Latin disciple — the swallow — performs, without pretending to be equal to the Greek master, rather following, with passionate fidelity, the footprints that outline the course of his thought. ¹³

Contrary to what one might suppose, Epicurean hedonism — which, in the philosophical songs of the swan and in the poetic flights of the swallow, proclaims pleasure as the purpose of human life — is a doctrine defended by men who have every reason to give up on happiness and yet affirm: “We call pleasure the principle and end of a happy life.” ¹⁴ Epicurus and Lucretius live difficult lives in challenging times.

Epicurus was born in 341 BC, in Samos or Athens, but undoubtedly from an Athenian family. His father was a modest schoolteacher, and his mother was a kind of herbalist, whom the boy sometimes accompanied when she practiced her function. Thus, from an early age, Epicurus could see how people are generally dominated by fears and superstitions. At the age of fourteen, he was sent to Teos, where he began to attend the lessons of Nausiphanes, a disciple of the atomist Democritus of Abdera. The cosmos with all its beings was then presented to him as resulting from atoms that have been moving eternally in infinite void and that agglomerate according to strictly mechanical laws, without the intervention of any purpose. Poor, a migrant, and with extremely fragile health, from 322 BC, Epicurus lives in various cities of Asia Minor while developing his philosophy: “less a system of thought than a system of life.” ¹⁵ Finally, in 306 BC, he goes to Athens, where he founds his philosophical school, the Garden, actually a fraternity or community that admits women and slaves among its members.

Historians show: Epicurus first buys a house, then, at some distance, acquires a garden. From the House, books, pamphlets, and letters abundantly emanate, while in the Garden (Kepos), disciples are accommodated who will later spread the doctrine everywhere, constantly nourished, doctrinally, by new texts and frequent correspondence. Cicero, an enemy of Epicureanism, intentionally distorts the facts by saying that it is “a garden of pleasure where the disciples languish in refined delights.” In reality, the Kepos is not precisely a park (paradeisos), but a vegetable garden, useful for the frugal sustenance of those who gather there, in friendly communion with the master and entirely removed from the concerns and disturbances of the polis. ¹⁶

After a life marked by asceticism, serenity, and sweetness, despite the painful disease — renal calculus — that never gives him respite, Epicurus dies in 271 BC. Diogenes Laertius describes his death as follows: “Feeling that he was dying, he had himself placed in a bronze bathtub filled with hot water and asked for a cup of pure wine, which he drank. Having exhorted his disciples to remember his teachings, he breathed his last.” ¹⁷

Shortly before, Epicurus had written to some disciples, announcing that he was about to die. This is what is read in this excerpt from the Letter to Idomeneus:

I write to you on this happy day of my life when I feel close to death. The malady continues its course in my bladder and stomach and loses none of its severity. But despite all this, I have joy in my heart as I recall our conversations. Take care of Metrodorus' children: I believe I can count on you due to your long-standing devotion to me and to philosophy. ¹⁸

The scene described by Diogenes Laertius inevitably brings to mind another death scene, the death of another swan: Socrates, as described in Plato’s Phaedo. ¹⁹ Both, Epicurus and Socrates, die serenely, as examples of wise deaths or wisdom until death. Both drink before dying: Socrates, the hemlock that poisons him, and Epicurus, the pure wine that offers him the last sensation of pleasure. Socrates remains calm because, while waiting for the final moment, he weaves arguments that broaden the horizons of expectation and transform it into the rationalization of hope for the survival of the soul.²⁰ Epicurus remains undisturbed until the end precisely because he is certain that death does not concern him; when it arrives, it does not find him: his body and soul made of atoms return to the play of corpuscles that move in the void eternally. As he bids farewell to this life, Socrates seems to greet the god of health (Asclepius), the patron of the victory of life (of the soul) over the death (of the body). Epicurus, with wine, salutes not the future life, only probable, but this earthly life that ends, valued for the joys and pleasures savored therein.

Diogenes Laertius' text contains another important piece of information: Epicurus’s last words were an exhortation to his disciples to “remember” his teachings. Memory indeed plays a decisive role in Epicurean ethics, as suggested in the philosopher’s last letter, in which he declares that he maintains joy in his heart despite the torments imposed by the disease. And this joy, he explains, comes “from remembering” the conversations with Idomeneus.

In another sense, memory is also fundamental in Epicureanism: as the maintenance of acquired wisdom and inner freedom. This maintenance depends on the constant process of reviving memories: memories of “lessons,” recalling “conversations,” in other words, the maintenance of a permanent flow of words that carry the truth about the “nature of things” and sustain the wise and undisturbed life. Isn’t this precisely why the Garden presents itself as a kind of “publishing enterprise,” ²¹ constantly producing books and letters? Isn’t it for the same reason that Diogenes of Oinoanda seeks to perpetuate in stone Epicurus’s basic teachings so that they remain “remembered” and available to men of all races and generations?

The acquisition and diffusion of Epicurean wisdom are sustained, indeed, by the philia that binds the disciples into a society of friends, strongly linking them to the master and uniting them all to the same doctrine. But this network of friendship requires a network of words constantly remembered and communicated: love for humanity and the process of liberation and the conquest of wise serenity are constructed in the weaves of language that incessantly craft the luminous discourse of truth. Entirely human work, without interference from anything beyond the human, this discourse of reason supported by sensory experience is woven on the loom of time: rescuing the past — recalling lessons and dialogues — and weaving the future. Isn’t this why, before dying, in his final letter, Epicurus combines the pleasurable memories of past conversations with concern for the future of Metrodorus' children? And why Diogenes of Oinoanda “preserves the words” of the master, a legacy of the past, for posterity — “who are also ours”?

If Epicurus' life is marked by the pursuit of serenity amidst personal adversities, his time is no less tumultuous. His Greece is no longer the Greece of the Hellenic period, which had developed as a collection of independent city-states (Polis), united by a common sense of Hellenism against the “barbarians,” but fiercely protective of their autonomy and peculiarities, each worshipping their respective protective deities, experiencing different political regimes and social organizations, composing a mosaic characterized by a constant tension between the forces of union and separation, which some of its thinkers attributed to the very dynamics of the cosmos. ²² Epicurus' Greece is different: it belongs to the Hellenistic period, inserted, since the defeat of Chaeronea, in the Macedonian Empire. First Philip, then his son Alexander (later the Romans) put an end to the political and cultural experience of Classical Greece, marked by a sense of freedom manifested in various forms, but notably highlighted by the invention of democracy. Macedonian domination imposes a completely different framework: the city-states no longer decide their destinies, becoming part of a vast empire where power is centralized, and where various subjugated peoples with different traditions, ways of life, thought, and religion coexist. Consequently, cultural boundaries loosen: under the Macedonian rule, Greeks and “barbarians,” Hellenes, and Orientals are forced into closer contact, influencing each other more intensely. Thus, a new civilization emerges - the Hellenistic civilization - which will last for about three centuries, from Alexander’s death to the Roman conquest. During this period, in an empire stretching from Iran to Carthage, from Egypt to Italy, Hellenistic heritage spreads. Alexander is not only “the creator of a territorially large State,” but also “the great responsible for the Hellenization of the ancient world.” ²³ Conversely, the “era of free cities” gives way to that of monarchies. ²⁴ When Alexander dies in 323 BC - the year when Epicurus goes to Athens - the political and cultural landscape of the Mediterranean and part of Asia is completely transformed. It takes about half a century for the new political organization to be established. However, by 321 BC, the three great Hellenistic kingdoms that will endure until the Roman conquest are already established: Macedonia-Greece (under the Antigonids), Asia (under the Seleucids), and Egypt (under the Ptolemies).

Historians show: to try to introduce some unifying principle into the extreme diversity that characterizes its subjects, these monarchies become personal, patriarchal, and paternalistic. At the level of royalty, there is a coalescence between the political and the personal; the king’s collaborators are at the same time servants of the State and domestic servants, linked to the royal household. Symptomatically, legislation loses the character of the ancient laws of Greek cities - the nomoi, which in the democratic regime were established by citizens in joint decisions - and becomes composed of personal decisions (of the sovereign), while isolated acts that are communicated, through letters or specific instructions, to guide the actions of local administrations, in a satrapic style. ²⁵ Unsupported by the rationalization inherent in the arguments confronted in an Assembly of free citizens but emanating from above, as a transcendent decision impervious to criticism and alternative appraisal, laws emerge as fate or as an expression of a superior, universal, inscrutable, and irrefutable Reason. Not based on the principle of isegoria - the right to political use of speech (in the agora) - typical of the democratic experience, laws assume a monological character and, at the same time, personal, authoritative, and casuistic.

On the other hand, the loss of political freedom leads to the suppression of the libertarian process expressed in certain currents of ideas and subtly challenges the institutions of the City, even during the democratic regime. In fact, the freedom provided by democracy was a privilege of a few: the “citizens,” adult, free men born in the polis. Women, foreigners, and slaves were deprived of citizenship rights, based on the principles of isegoria and isonomia (equality before the law). Consequently, in Pericles' Athens, the majority of the population was prevented from participating in the discussions and decisions of the Assembly. Indeed, some had the freedom to interfere in political affairs and to engage in scientific and philosophical investigations thanks to the slavery of many. While this situation is metaphysically legitimized by Aristotle - who considers it in line with the hierarchy of beings and, therefore, natural and indispensable - other thinkers criticize it, recognizing in it a sign of inversion or Fall that demands correction. Hesiod had described his time as the result of decadence: a time of injustice, where brothers steal from each other with the connivance of venal judges, the hard age of iron, very different from the lost golden age. ²⁶ But it is mainly within the Pythagorean current, starting from the 6th century BC, that the fallen state of man, both animically and cosmologically, is clearly affirmed. By transforming religious premises from Orphism into a scientific-philosophical doctrine of a mathematical nature, Pythagoreanism explains the current situation of man - and society - as a result of the loss of original altitude: the falling-star soul imprisons itself in the earthly dimension and exists as a dissonance in relation to the harmony of the cosmos. To recover the stellar situation of origin and reintegrate into the harmony of the Whole - becoming kosmios, endowed with order and beauty - consists, for man, of following the path of purification and return that goes through various reincarnations. Therefore, no situation is definitive for the ascending soul. “Once, I was a boy, a girl, a shrub, a little bird, and, leaping from the sea, a dumb fish,” reveals Empedocles, ²⁷ the philosopher-physician-poet, democratic leader of Agrigento. Who could add to the list of his experiences throughout the multiple metempsychoses: I was a slave and a free man. As institutions are also transient, so is the situation of man in the cosmos. Everything that exists in the earthly dimension is immersed in the movement directed towards the recovery of the original situation: in the future, the Origin. The very isonomia that should govern the polis, making it democratic, actually introduces into the social and political plane the principle that governs the behavior of the roots of the cosmos: Water, Air, Earth, and Fire, eternally moved by Philia and Neikos (Love and Strife, Friendship and Discord). ²⁸

In this lineage of libertarian thought that challenges the fixedness of political institutions and the positions of men in society, stands the Socratism of the Cynics and Plato himself. The return to the heights, to the celestial homeland, depends on the soul’s resumption of its wings when it advances by constructing ascensional languages (mathematics, music, and, above all, this metamathematics and “higher music”: philosophy), as Plato shows not only in myths but also in his theoretic-erotic dialectic of vertical nature. ²⁹ And isn’t it in the name of the transcendence of model essences and especially the Just-in-itself (rightness and justice) that the empirical level is judged and the polis, even the democratic one, rejected by Plato: because of the distance that separates it from the ideal polis? Indeed, the critical Plato of the democracy of his time, disillusioned with all the political regimes experimented by Greece, defends a new type of aristocracy - that of the spirit - which questions both equality and inequality established within the democratic polis: not all men are equal from the origin differentiation manifested by their souls, nor is the existing inequality legitimate since a slave, like the one in Meno, may prove to be intellectually - animically - superior to his master. ³⁰ In fact, in the ascent of Return, driven by Socratic maieutics or Platonic dialectic, the master/slave relationship can be reversed, as the configuration of the factual, which is mutable and historical, is gradually replaced by the (re)ordering that expresses essential order; as the structures - of the soul and the City - fruit of the Fall, give way to (re)organization based on perfect proportion and Just Measure, simultaneously Sun and Good. ³¹

The attempt to implant cosmic isonomia in the polis leads Empedocles to political action, to the struggle for the democratization of Agrigento, as well as to the effort for inner democratization, by introducing the principle of isonomia in the process of knowledge. In the same Pythagorean line, Plato conceives philosophy as the ascent of the soul to essences - eternal and incorporeal paradigms of what exists in the empirical plane - but also as the search for the foundations for just political action, which makes Syracuse an indispensable complement to the investigations of the Academy in Athens. In both, philosophizing is a path to salvation of the soul and the polis. The wise person is one who liberates himself from illusions but, as a result - as a philosopher-pedagogue, a physician of souls - becomes the liberator of those who remain prisoners in the cave of deceit and simulacra; but also, in parallel, the one who interferes in the direction of the City as a philosopher-politician. Personal salvation and salvation of the polis are two faces of the same path of Return, of the same libertarian mission: Ethics and Politics intertwine and complement each other.

The time of Epicurus dissolves this bond.

If political decisions and laws emanate, ready and unquestionable, from Philip or Alexander for the entire empire, in public life one must merely obey: neither is the City the master of its destiny anymore, nor can the citizen decide on its course. And, as decisions are determined by the whim of the emperor or his local representative, there arises, as an expression of the feeling of fate that befalls everyone, the cult of Chance: prayers are directed to Tyche, to Fortune.³² It is also no longer possible to aspire to libertarian changes. The day after the battle of Chaeronea, Philip imposes on the Greeks the League of Hellenes, of which he becomes the leader, establishing: “the liberation of slaves is forever prohibited”.³³

Paul Nizan dramatically summarizes the socio-political panorama:

The accumulation of wealth at one pole of society does not prevent general impoverishment. No time is more tragic than the time of Epicurus (...) Unhappiness settles among the Greeks, disorder and anguish increase every day [...] Blood, fires, murders, lootings: Epicurean world.³⁴

Economic misery, political misery. And widespread insecurity and fear: fear of denunciation, of exile, of poverty, of death. Surprisingly, it is within such adversity that Epicurus constructs and disseminates his philosophy centered on pleasure, serenity, and joy. A historian writes:

What makes the originality and greatness of his doctrine is that, in a time of miseries and struggles when the Diadochi are fighting for the legacy of Alexander, and coming from a poor and solitary man, suffering from a painful bladder disease since youth that never leaves him, he calmly affirms that man is made to be happy, that he carries this happiness within himself, and that philosophy is not preparation for death but a search for joy.³⁵

If historical and objective conditions prevent freedom from being achieved in the social and political realm, then there remains the entire inner, subjective world to be liberated from the illusions and beliefs that torment and enslave the soul. And if happiness can no longer come from participating in a collective project to seek goodness and justice, it does not prevent one from seeking personal, intimate happiness. The wise person is now not the one who, as in Plato’s time, must steer the ship of the City, but the one who completely disconnects from the tumults and hardships of political life, to build spiritual serenity and freely navigate their inner self. “Live unnoticed,” Epicurus advises.³⁶ Happiness or politics, that is the choice. The tranquility of the spirit — the supreme delight — lies only in the seclusion of the Garden, among friends who are also friends of wisdom, away from the torments of the polis and the crowd. Achieving the good is an exclusively ethical endeavor, not political. It is futile to seek collective salvation for society, as Pythagoreans and Plato dreamed: salvation is personal and inner, requiring as a first condition to distance oneself from the turbulence of the City. It is necessary, therefore, to counter the long tradition and show, as Epicurus indicates and Lucretius develops, that social life is not a natural, intrinsic condition of humans: it is a mere convention. Thus, it can be replaced by a life in accordance with true human nature, whose vocation is pleasure and joy.

Little is known about Lucretius, the Roman swallow willing to follow the steps and reproduce the song of the Greek swan. He was born around 97 BC and died around 55 BC. According to a tradition — suspected because it was widely spread by adversaries of Epicureanism — he goes mad and commits suicide. However, it is known with certainty that the poem De rerum natura was only edited after his death, by a distinguished editor: Cicero.

If life was brief and perhaps marked by illness and a tragic end, his time, like that of Epicurus, was troubled. He refers to it as a “terrible time for the country,” when it is difficult for him to calmly carry out his work, to write his work.³⁷ Indeed, Lucrèce’s Rome is shaken by violent episodes: the aristocratic dictatorship of Sulla, the dictatorship of Pompey, Spartacus' rebellion — crushed by Crassus and Pompey — various wars, Catiline’s conspiracy, Caesar’s rise to power, social conflicts pitting slaves against masters, nobles against knights.³⁸

All these adversities cannot keep the disciple of Epicurus from being certain that man, relying on an understanding of the facts of nature, can avoid pain and fear, needing very little to be happy. He writes:

O poor human minds, O blind hearts! Through what darkness and dangers the short time of life passes! Does anyone not feel what nature proclaims loudly, that the body should be without pain and the mind should enjoy itself, free from fear and worry, with a pleasant feeling?

Little is needed, naturally, as far as the body is concerned: everything that suppresses pain can at the same time provide numerous delights. And yet, nature itself does not demand anything more delightful: if in our home, we do not have golden statues of young people holding lighted lamps in their right hand to provide light for night feasts, if the house does not shine with silver or glitter with gold, if lyres do not resound in the lacquered and gilded halls, the bodies do not need great goods as long as they lie on soft grass, near a flowing river, in the shade of a tall tree, especially when the weather smiles and the season adorns the green herbs with flowers. And fiery fevers do not leave the body more quickly when one is agitated on embroidered rugs and on red purple than when one has to lie on a plebeian cloth.³⁹

In the midst of adverse circumstances — as Epicurus and Lucretius teach and exemplify — it is possible to achieve serene and stable happiness. The path that leads to this goal is the cultivation of philosophy, not as erudition but as medicine for the soul, valued for its healing effects: "Just as medicine is of no benefit at all if it does not free the body from its ills, so also is philosophy if it does not free the soul from its passions."⁴⁰

The starting point of this philosophical therapy is the replacement of terrifying beliefs with a correct understanding of the nature of things and, in particular, the nature of man himself. Thus, the ethics that points to serene pleasure as the supreme good is sustained by true knowledge, by the science of nature: "One cannot dispel the fear of the most important matters if one does not know the nature of the universe and is concerned with the mythical tales. Therefore, without the knowledge of nature, it is impossible to achieve pure pleasures."⁴¹

The Knowledge That Liberates

Taking medicine as a model, philosophy, for Epicurus and his followers, has nothing to do with mere instruction: it is valuable for its effects and is essentially a healing and liberating activity. This philosophy is built on three levels: logic, physics, and ethics. Logic and physics are to ethics what hygiene and medicine are to health: they are means to achieve the desired goal. ⁴²

In this sense, Epicureanism understands logic very differently from the “wise” logic of Aristotle. It is, more properly, a critique of knowledge, aiming to determine criteria of evidence that allow the separation of true from false, eliminate erroneous opinions, and find secure foundations for a certain way of life: a serene and happy life.

The starting point of this logic—called Canonics—is the identification of the sources of any knowledge or idea. Epicurus distinguishes two sources: representative sensation, producing images that populate the phantasia, and emotional sensation, pleasure, and pain. Sensation is, therefore, the basic canon, the fundamental criterion for all knowledge: all judgments constructed by reason must be validated—or not—by sensation, which confirms or denies them.

A second canon is used to distinguish true from false: anticipation or preconception (prolépsis). It is the general idea that the mind forms based on past sensations. Thus, when hearing the word “flower,” one knows what it is, even if the referred object is not present or not currently apprehended sensually. Although prolépsis always refers back to sensation, it allows knowledge to be constituted without the immediacy of the object. It ensures a type of truth that, despite being based on sensation, can be established on a purely intelligible and abstract level, “regarding what is invisible to us.” ⁴³ This change in cognitive level is essential for the construction of the atomistic physics adopted and developed by Epicurus, as a systematically organized knowledge with permanent and universal validity, a rationally structured episteme, not a mere collection of empirical and episodic records. Epicurus clarifies: “Sensation must serve us to proceed, reasoning, to the induction of truths that are not accessible to the senses.” ⁴⁴

In other words: the criterion of anticipation allows legitimate knowledge to transcend what is immediately sensible and purely phenomenal, enabling rational constructions, provided, of course, they are not refuted by sensations. The non-sensible—the atom—can thus be affirmed as the foundation of everything we perceive. However, prolépsis also introduces time and memory in sustaining scientific knowledge, as its mechanism implies the tacit retrieval of past experiences. Time and memory underlie the rationality of physics, while also being essential ingredients for the support of the way of life advocated by Epicureanism.

Epicurus' physics is based on the atomistic conception of Leucippus and Democritus. The fundamental principle of this physics, returning to a characteristic thesis of Hellenic cosmogonies, is the eternity of matter. “Nothing comes from nothing,” affirms Epicurus. ⁴⁵ And Lucretius glosses: “Indeed, if it were possible to be born from nothing, everything could arise from everything.” ⁴⁶ The creation from nothing, unacceptable for strictly rational investigation, introduces irrationality at the origin of being. This primordial irrationality emerges as a dark and unfathomable background, preventing a fully rational understanding of the world. It gives rise to the realm of the unpredictable and uncontrollable, as the poet-philosopher shows:

Men might arise from the sea, the scaly breed burst forth from the earth, birds might fall from the sky; flocks, other animals, and every kind of wild beast would occupy, given the chance of origin, the tilled lands and the deserts. Trees would not always have the same fruits; they would change from one time to another, and all of them might produce any fruit. In fact, if there were no generating elements in anything, how could each being have its determinate mother? ⁴⁷

Eternal matter, the matrix of everything, is formed by innumerable atoms, resistant, invisible, and indivisible corpuscles (divisible only mathematically, not physically), moving in infinite space. Body and space, the corporeal and the incorporeal—⁴⁸ the extension that resists moving within the extension that offers no resistance—these are the components of all things. “If space, which is called void, place, and intangible nature did not exist, bodies would have nowhere to be or move,” justifies Epicurus. ⁴⁹

In Democritus' atomism, atoms vary in size—always below the threshold of sensible perception—shape, position, and arrangement (when grouped), but they are devoid of qualities, which only appear as derived or secondary qualities in the bodies they constitute. Epicurus agrees. Democritus states that atoms are eternally in motion. Epicurus also agrees. However, Democritus considers that, originally, in a “first” situation (not necessarily realized but postulated as a fundamental logical situation), the eternal and continuous motion of atoms takes place in any direction—since in infinite void, there is no preferred or predetermined direction—like dust seen in a beam of light. These multidirectional movements can eventually cause collisions between atoms (when the resultant motion acquires a direction determined by the type of impact) and eventually result in engagements that, if not undone by new collisions, can start the formation of an atomic aggregate. This is the eventual beginning of a world, among the infinite possible worlds that can be generated simultaneously or successively but which, later—always due to strictly physical-mechanical factors—can be disintegrated, leaving the fundamental and eternal elements, the plural physis: atoms moving in infinite void. This cosmogonic process without télos, without finalism, without governing and intentional principle—opposed to what should be, for Plato’s Socrates, the cosmogonic role of Anaxagoras' Noús—⁵⁰ is a construction without an architect, the materialistic and perennial genesis of worlds, carried out without the interference of any arbitrary or inscrutable design, and therefore, without mystery: within the realm of human intelligibility. Epicurus adopts it but fundamentally alters it, introducing two decisive concepts that make his hedonistic ethics supported by physics: the concepts of weight and deviation.

In addition to size, resistance, shape, and position, atoms, according to Epicurus, possess weight. Marx perceives the importance of this innovation: the atom becomes, in the Epicurean version, a singularity, “a point of gravity represented as a singular existence.” ⁵¹ Weight becomes the foundation of singularity and individuation. However, it raises a problem to be resolved on the physical level itself. Atoms, endowed with weight, “fall” vertically in the void, in parallel trajectories that do not allow collisions and consequently do not enable the eventual emergence of worlds. Despite being rational, this cosmogonic model “originally” does not explain what sensations attest: the existence of things, the realization of the world we perceive. This realization demonstrates a posteriori that there have been collisions and engagements of atoms. In other words, that “first” situation must be minimally altered, only enough for possibility to transform into the actuality of the world. Therefore, it is necessary to admit that, at some point, an atom deviates from its vertical trajectory—mechanical fate—and that is sufficient to cause collisions and lead to the formation of atomic conglomerates. This deviation (clinamen) is thus described by Lucretius:

When the bodies are carried straight down through the void and from above by their own weight, they deviate slightly from their path, in uncertain heights and uncertain places, only as much as is enough to say that their motion has changed. If they could not deviate, they would all fall through the boundless space always from above downwards, and there would be no possibility of collision or shock between the elements; in that case, nature would never have created anything. ⁵²

Nevertheless, nature did create, which means the clinamen is an indispensable condition for the generation of the world that our senses attest. This implies that the transition from the possible to the real requires a deviation—minimal—from the mechanical laws; left alone, they establish a rational scenario where the world is only an abstract possibility; the actualization of this world depends on introducing, into this scenario, a minimal alteration, so that the possibility of any world becomes the reality of this particular world. Epicureanism thus offers its version of the universal/singular relationship, abstract/concrete: effective singularity occurs as a deviation (minimal) from the rational model that supports it. Like Plato, this model allows the intelligibility of the physical world; unlike Plato, the model is not the essential and permanent reality; it is a “preliminary” condition for the intelligibility of the corporeal reality organized into the world.

If the weight of atoms supports individuation, the clinamen justifies the actualization of perceived things. But it also explains the possibility for man to reorient his inner life, deviating from painful sensations to embrace pleasure. Freedom—to be happy even in adversity—implies deviation, the refusal of fate. Thus, Epicurean physics seeks to explain the mechanisms of the world and also human mechanisms, accounting for the actual existence of the world and human freedom, justifying ethical norms. By correcting the foundations of Democritus' physics, Epicurus makes possible what remains a paradox in his predecessor, basing ethical normativity, which always presupposes freedom (to direct life this way and not that way, to live this way and not that way), on a deterministic physics. ⁵³ The clinamen introduces into deterministic mechanicism the space for the process of inner liberation, which Epicurean ethics prescribes: freedom is deviant, introducing a new direction from the inflexible straightness of fate.

All that exists is made of atoms, void, and motion. So is the human soul. Composed of lighter and subtler atoms, it inhabits the house of the body. Death is simply the disintegration of this atomic ensemble, nothing more. Hence, there is no reason to fear it. In truth, when it comes, we are no longer; it does not concern us. Epicurus teaches: “Get used to thinking that death means nothing to us, since everything good and bad is experienced through sensation, and death is the privation of sensation.” ⁵⁴

He further states: “It is foolish to fear death, not because it troubles us when it arrives but because it troubles us when we anticipate it; what does not disturb us when present, disturbs us unnecessarily in prospect.” ⁵⁵

Lucretius explains the Epicurean concept of death, which does not affect our sensibility like everything that happens beyond the span of our existence. We exist in a determined time that never coincides with the time of our death:

Death, therefore, is nothing to us and does not concern us in any way, for the substance of the soul is mortal. And just as we feel no pain concerning the time that passed when the Carthaginians flocked from all sides to battle, when the universe, shaken by the tumultuous uproar of war, trembled with horror under the high vaults of heaven, and in all men, there was anxious doubt as to which of the two would win dominion over the land and the sea, so also, when we no longer exist, when there is a separation of body and soul, whose union constitutes our individuality, to us, who will no longer exist, nothing will be able to happen nor impress our sensibility, even if the earth merges with the sea and the sea with the sky. ⁵⁶

The fear of death, therefore, arises from misguided expectations, based on ignorance of what really happens in the world, according to the nature of things and men. This nature (physis) is composed solely of atoms perpetually moving in infinite void: the only permanent reality and the source of innumerable ephemeral atomic constructions—like man, his body, his soul. Only nature (physis) and the gods are immortal. ⁵⁷

However, the gods are also made of atoms, special atoms. They are anthropomorphic, as affirmed by religious tradition and confirmed by all appearances to mortals, both in dreams and wakefulness. ⁵⁸ The Epicurean theology even includes a precise description of the physical nature of the divine beings, distinguishing male and female gods according to popular representations. ⁵⁹ Although corporeal—albeit of tenuous corporeality, asserted by analogy to the corporeality of things—these gods cannot be perceived by the senses, only by the spirit. This is explained by the Epicurean doctrine of simulacra: from all bodies emanate subtle effluences, despite being corporeal, atomic films that detach and wander in space, reproducing the objects from which they originate; the simulacra reach our senses, thus creating the phenomenon of vision. In the case of the gods, the special nature of the atoms that compose them allows their simulacra to be apprehended only by the differentiated atoms that also constitute our spirit. ⁶⁰ Nevertheless, even in this case, it is a sensation. Moreover, it is a sensation conceived in strict materialism, attributing bodily and objective existence to the image, objectifying it. ⁶¹

Despite being corporeal, the gods are immortal. This apparent contradiction between theology and the fundamentals of physics dissolves as divine immortality is understood not as a passive state or static quality but as the result of a continuous renewal process. In other words, immortality is not a tribute that the gods possess once and for all, but an incessantly and eternally earned state through continuous self-creation. ⁶²

The immortals live in the intermundia, where there are no storms, where everything is peace and perfect pleasure. They have no needs. They do not require sleep and live in eternal and blissful wakefulness. Serene, they do not know effort or fatigue. And with immense pleasure, they interact with each other, conversing like sages: in a language that must be Greek or similar to Greek since wisdom is Greek. ⁶³ Thus, they form a fellowship of immortal sages, sustaining bliss through wise conversation: a model of life to be imitated by humans. And what is decisive for Epicurean ethics: the gods remain eternally immersed in the enjoyment of shared and perfect wisdom, accompanied by the certainty that such happiness will never end. They are distant from our troubled world, entirely indifferent to the conflicts and sufferings of human life. Therefore, if there is no reason to fear them, it is of no use to flatter them with offerings and promises. Non-providential gods, immersed in eternal blissful pleasure, can and should be worshipped and honored, but in a purely spiritual manner. One should pray to the gods not because they are angry or to obtain favors but simply because they exist as superior beings characterized by excellence and a perfect, exemplary life. ⁶⁴ Above all: the gods of Epicureanism do not inspire fear or anxiety; Epicurean piety is a path of appeasement, a way to achieve serenity of mind, a tranquilizing remedy. In this regard, Epicurus coincides with Plato: true wisdom is defined as the imitation of the gods. In their fleeting life, mortals can attain attributes typical of immortality. This is what Epicurus promises in his letter to Menoeceus: “He who meditates on the maxims of Epicurean philosophy will live like a god among men and will have nothing mortal, for he will possess the goods of the immortals.” ⁶⁵

Unlike Socrates in Phaedo, it’s not about feeding the hope in the immortality of the soul. It’s about achieving in this life qualities that only the immortals possess permanently: to have here and for now the goods that immortality confers on the gods in the eternally quiet elsewhere of the interworlds, ⁶⁶ to taste in this brief life the delights that the immortals enjoy forever.

The consequence of the theological conception of Epicureanism is the denunciation of the harms caused by religion, which precisely instills in men the fear of the gods. Because it is based on erroneous beliefs about the nature of the divine — especially those propagated by traditional myths —, religion becomes a source of torment and disturbance. Epicurus, on the contrary, seeks to free souls from these unfounded terrors; he fights superstitions, including — like Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 570 - 528 BC) — the belief in divination, which becomes widespread in the Hellenistic period. The source of all these misunderstandings, the Epicureans believe, is that religions arise from the false approximation between the appearances of the gods to men and the terrifying natural phenomena. ⁶⁷ In fact, they do not think — as the Stoics do — that nature works for the good of men: it is not a mother, but a stepmother to humanity. Lucretius describes at length the struggles of men who, using ingenuity, overcome the obstacles that nature offers them, to make life bearable. But, innocent, the gods have nothing to do with this. Neither final causes that would predetermine the creation of the cosmos, nor benevolent providence, nor threat looming over humanity, the gods provide the — distant — example of pleasurable wisdom sustained by serene conversations, without responsibility for our hardships and miseries. Epicurus reasons:

God either wants to prevent evils and cannot, or he can and does not want to, or neither wants nor can, or wants and can. If he wants and cannot, he is impotent: which is impossible in God. If he can and does not want to, he is envious: which, likewise, is contrary to God. If he neither wants nor can, he is envious and impotent: therefore, he is not even God. If he can and wants to, which is the only thing compatible with God, then where do the existence of evils come from? Why doesn’t he prevent them? ⁶⁸

Answering Epicurus' question is to try to establish the difficult relationship between infinite divine goodness, and the existence of evils that afflict men. It is, for example, the arduous intellectual endeavor undertaken by Saint Augustine, who seeks to reconcile, based on the theological premises of Christianity, divine goodness and providence with the existence of error, evil, sin, and human suffering.

The Happy Life

Epicurean ethics are essentially hedonistic. According to Epicurus, pleasure is called the principle and end of a happy life. Indeed, we know that it is the primary good, an innate good, and that all our choices and refusals derive from it, valuing every good according to the effect it produces.⁶⁹

However, Epicurean hedonism, while considering all pleasure as bodily, does not legitimize any kind of pleasure. It is necessary to distinguish true, stable pleasure from pleasures that result in pain or arise from deficiencies, moving between dissatisfactions. The first type is the pleasure of tranquility (in Latin, voluptas in stabilitate), different from the pleasure of movement (voluptas in motu), which the Cyrenaics consider as the ultimate good sought by humans. An example of pleasure in movement is feeling thirsty and quenching it, having any deficiency and satisfying it (until a new deficiency arises). The pleasure in repose, which is the goal of the Epicurean, does not consist in satisfying a need: it is rather about eliminating the need, achieving the absence of pain, indolentia. This pleasure is not merely a negation of pain or an emotional void: its positivity is complete, free from any sorrow, deficiency, or need. Therefore, the pleasure prescribed by Epicureanism opposes the unrestrained and anxious pursuit of goods. In reality, very little is needed to be happy: "The possession of wealth, the abundance of possessions, or the attainment of positions or power do not produce happiness and bliss; they are produced by the absence of pain, moderation in desires, and a state of mind that remains within the limits set by nature."⁷⁰

Pleasure, but pleasure with measure and a sense of limit. Epicurean hedonism combines pleasure and serenity:

When we say that pleasure is the end, we do not refer to the pleasures of the intemperate or those produced by sensuality, as certain ignorant people believe, who disagree with us or do not understand us, but rather to the pleasure of being free from bodily suffering and mental disturbances.⁷¹

The pinnacle of this type of pleasure is the attainment of an undisturbed mind (ataraxia). But it can only be achieved through discerning the diversity of desires, as not all desires should be satisfied. Indeed: "Some desires are natural and necessary; others are natural and unnecessary; others are neither natural nor necessary but arise solely from empty opinions."⁷²

Managing desires to stay “within the limits set by nature” — this is the path that leads to serene happiness. To satisfy only natural and necessary desires means introducing wisdom based on prudence and the calculation or measure of pleasures into the root of actions and the source of choices, replacing instinctive impulsiveness.⁷³ This rational control of emotions aligns human existence with the nature of things as revealed by physics and prevents one from following the direction pointed by desires that do not express a natural necessity but rather constitute the imposition of the social environment in its apparent progress.

Lucrèce insists: the simplicity of primitive life is superior to that resulting from civilization. Advocating a thesis later taken up by the conception of Rousseau’s “savage” and other 18th-century writers' “natural man,” he shows that the man of the first era of humanity is an instinctive sage who remains within the limits demanded by nature.⁷⁴ The path proposed by Epicurean ethics is precisely the recovery of this original condition: not a return to the stars, but a life in accordance with the nature of things and of man himself. Thus, contrary to the progress of civilization, which simply seeks to overcome the difficulties imposed by nature but does not signify progression towards a happier life, the progress indicated by Epicureanism is of an ethical nature: it consists, against the tide of social progress, in an ethical “regression,” towards the reconquest of natural, original simplicity. This regression is achieved through the restraint of desires, as repeatedly prescribed by Epicurus in his maxims:

When you are troubled by your troubles, you forget about nature: you impose infinite desires and fears on yourself; To whom little is not enough, nothing is enough; If you want to enrich Píthoclês, do not add wealth to him: reduce his desires.⁷⁵

The wise Epicurean is, therefore, an ascetic who uses rational understanding of the world and life to control their own desires. In doing so, they introduce moderation and measurement into their emotional life, creating their own aesthetics of existence through wise and restrained use of pleasures⁷⁶. By doing so, they distance themselves from the human herd that, as Diogenes of Oenoanda points out, follows, contaminated by imitation, the insatiable pursuit of goods imposed by “progress,” a source of constant anxiety. For:

Whoever obeys nature and not vain opinions is sufficient unto himself in every circumstance. Indeed, for what is sufficient by nature, every acquisition is wealth, but, in comparison with the infinite desires, even the greatest wealth is poverty.⁷⁷

The ascetic and frugal life of the Brotherhood of the Garden and other Epicurean communities that spread throughout the Greco-Roman world seeks, precisely, away from the tumultuous public life, the serenity resulting from the satisfaction of natural and necessary desires: the delight lies in the quality, not the quantity, of acquired goods and satisfied desires.

This ethics — which is an strictly internal “politics” of administration and rational containment of desires — leads, inevitably, to a revaluation of time: the present, the past, and the future. The present is where one is, where one lives, exists, and feels the sensations experienced, where one is happy or not. Therefore, it is necessary to defend it against the anxieties that can arise from the expectation of the future. Epicurus warns:

You should not corrupt the present good with the desire for what you do not have: instead, you should also consider that what you now possess was once among your desires.

Whoever feels less need for tomorrow prepares more joyfully for tomorrow.

The life of the fool is ungrateful, constantly agitated, and always directed towards the future.⁷⁸

Thus, it is foolish to spoil the present good with torment related to what is yet to come. On the contrary, it is great wisdom to use the future and the past to obtain, in the present, pleasure and serenity. Indeed, the present is not always good and pleasurable, as Epicurus and Lucretius know well. But even in this case, one can free oneself from the apparent inevitability of suffering: one can evoke pleasant images from the past and, in doing so, ward off the painful sensations offered by the present; one can also subjectively divert oneself towards the future, expecting to experience pleasurable sensations again, similar to those already experienced. The clinamen resurfaces, subjectively, as a mechanism of image replacement, controlled by energetic and disciplined will. Freedom — entirely internal, where we can be fully masters and never slaves — thus consists in breaking the determinism inherent in any objective situation and, in a deviant manner, creating space for the exercise of autarchy. The inner diversion is initiated through self-suggestion, which, in fact, constitutes self-control of the imagery constructed from sensations. In other words: the specificity and autonomy of the subjective plane, where internal freedom is rooted, result from the deviation from the determination that governs the nature of things.

Therefore, Epicurean ethics faces two possible situations: the body may be in good condition, but the soul is troubled; or the body may be in poor condition, but the soul is healthy and strong. In the first case, the recommended phármakon consists of correcting false opinions and suppressing the fears they cause (the most analyzed and widespread Epicurean therapy). In the second case, Epicureanism prescribes a different type of remedy: the annihilation of physical pain through the reorientation of mental representations, through the play of images. In this case, taking refuge in the well-managed inner world allows the elimination of painful physical sensations by recalling pleasurable images from the past or anticipating positive images of the future. The two therapies complement each other: not suffering in the body, not having a troubled soul — this is the Epicurean formula for happiness.⁷⁹

Epicurus insists: all pleasure is bodily — even past and future pleasure. The wisdom lies, therefore, in opposing bodily pleasures and in making sure that, in the case of a painful present, it is neutralized by memory or hope, under the assumption that an image — retrieved from the past or anticipated from the future — can be stronger than a sensation.⁸⁰

As a mortal being, man constructs his freedom in time, in the time of this life that must be transformed into a time of happiness. Counting only on temporality, he must extract from it the ingredients for the potion of serene joy: the pleasurable sensations of the present and the images of the past or future time (if the present is adverse). Epicureanism indeed considers that beyond the immediate world, captured by sensations, there is also another level of reality — equally bodily, but more subtle — available to man: their collection of images, their archive of memories — corporeal simulacra of sensations — which they can use for their happiness. This duality of planes suggests Plato’s distinction between sensible and intelligible, but it is entirely different. In Plato, the intelligible plane consists of incorporeal ideas or forms, to which the soul can return through ascent and recollection, which has nothing to do with recovering the past, in the horizontal axis of history, but rather a return to the atemporality of the Aion, the eternal forever. In Epicureanism, the return is subjective remembrance, in the axis of the temporality of lived sensibility, without ever losing the link with the corporeal.⁸¹

From all of this emerges the value attributed by Epicurean ethics to time, to the accumulation of experiences, to the past, to memory and, consequently, to old age.

First of all, it is necessary to reverse the common valuation: if living focused on the future is often a source of anxiety and often harms the enjoyment of conquered and present goods, the past does not represent an empty no-longer, the absence of lost good, but rather a treasure trove of real and always recoverable goods. This is what Epicurus shows in the letter he wrote shortly before his death and sums up in this admirable maxim: “Heal misfortunes with the grateful memory of lost good and with the conviction that it is impossible to make everything that has already happened cease to exist”.⁸²

The past good is never lost: memory takes care of keeping it alive and making it, with all its strength, present again. The diversion in time, towards the past (memory) or the future (hope), allows for joy amidst adversity, serenity in torture, the inner freedom that no despot can suppress — insist Epicurus and Lucretius, who lived troubled lives and times. After all, isn’t free destiny an entirely intimate construction, a deviant inner trajectory stolen from fatalism?

This is why the elderly, endowed with a great wealth of memories, have, according to Epicurus, more ability to achieve serene happiness:

It is not the young who should be considered happy and enviable. The young in the prime of youth is unstable and is swept in all directions by fortune; on the contrary, the old man has anchored in old age as in a safe harbor and the goods that he once hoped for full of anxiety and doubt he now possesses girded with firm and grateful memory. ⁸³

The Epicurean technique of conquering inner autarchy and mastering images, sensations, and desires, however, requires suitable living conditions. Neither immersion in the whirlwind of the city and the crowd, nor total isolation, but living in a group of friends who are also friends of wisdom. Hence: the Garden and its delights. Without the religious connotation that characterizes the ancient Pythagorean brotherhoods, the Garden can be seen as the first society of friends, a lucid community engaged in a common task: to seek ataraxia, peace of mind. ⁸⁴ If in Aristotle the philia remains linked to the aristocracy and to men who have the condition to devote themselves to leisure and speculative life, in the Garden of Epicurus the right to happiness is open to all, even those excluded from the rights of citizenship by Athenian democracy: women, foreigners, slaves. In Epicureanism, philia is universalized and expands in time, towards the posterity, “who are also ours”, as Diogenes of Oenoanda reminds us. It sustains Epicurean humanism and is the supreme delight: “Of all the things that wisdom offers for the happiness of a lifetime, the greatest is the acquisition of friendship”. ⁸⁵

Friendship is beneficial in itself. Although it doesn’t alter suffering nor can it prevent death, it helps to endure them. And more: such a great good can even include pain, without ceasing to be a good, as Epicurus reveals, in one of the Vatican sayings, where he says: the wise suffer less when being tortured than when a friend is subjected to torture.

But philia is also an indispensable tool for the internal ethical craftsmanship, because the presence of a friend helps the search and maintenance of wisdom, which he also pursues. Jean-Claude Fraisse comments:

Friendship helps the wise man, under the gaze of the wise man, to enjoy his own existence. It helps to dissociate the torments of the body and the peace of mind — the key to a happy life. Finally, it provides that unique pleasure of philosophical discussion, a pleasure that, unlike all others, knows no pain. Being unable to prevent what is the mark of our finitude, it helps us not to give in to dreams of infinity, which only increase our misery, and to find, in the instantaneousness of pleasure and in the extension of instantaneous pleasures to the totality of life through the play of memory or rational anticipation, this purity of joy that resembles that of the gods. ⁸⁶

Epicurean philia: neither a political nor religious bond. But a condition for the construction — if there is no collective salvation — of free subjectivity, unalienated, invulnerable to the despotism of irrational desires, false opinions, and unfounded fears, unreachable by the tyrannies of the world. Unlike Platonic eros, it does not feed desires for immortality and eternity, dreams of infinity, but rather keeps the wise, “under the gaze of the wise”, in the merely human, in the temporal dimension, in the finitude of life: our moira, our lot, our province, our limited destiny. Unlike Aristotelian philia, its purpose is not to ensure the continuity of contemplative activity for the small group of those privileged by leisure, but to allow resistance to the external nature, stepmother, without adhering to its apparent order. Its foundation is the science of nature, but nature as physis, as the nature of things, as invisible yet rational organization.

Epicurean philia: imitation, during the short life, of the bond that sustains the bliss of the gods. Of the conversational gods, dialoguing, supremely serene wise men in a perpetual brotherhood. And since eternity is filled with the wisdom of the immortals, the temporality of men is always conducive to philosophizing, to the love of wisdom that imitates and pays homage to divine wisdom. This is why it is always time for philosophy, teaches Epicurus:

One should never postpone philosophizing when one is young, nor tire of doing so when one is old, for no one is ever too immature or too mature to secure the health of the soul. And the one who says that the time for philosophizing has not yet come or has already passed is like the one who says that the time to be happy has not yet come or has already passed. ⁸⁷

Friedrich Hölderlin, Poems, trans. and introd. by José Paulo Paes, Companhia das Leiras. São Paulo. 1991, p. 87.↩
G. Rodis-Lewis, Épicure et son école, Paris, Gallimard, 1975, pp. 32-3.↩
The question of the criterion for choosing the disciple is one of the central points of divergence between sophists and Socratics. Socrates, guided by his inner daimon, refuses to engage in dialogue with certain people who are not in a condition to give birth to themselves through the search for the meaning of the words in their own discourse; but, on the other hand, considering his “midwifery” work a mission given to him by the god of Delphi, he does not charge anything to practice the maieutics aimed at self-knowledge. When defending himself before the Assembly of heliasts, who judge and ultimately condemn him to death—as described by Plato in the Apology or Defense of Socrates—the philosopher-physician-midwife shows that this missionary task has a high political significance and that this is how he contributes to the good of the polis (rather than participating in the discussions of the assemblies). By carrying it out, Socrates does not take into account the prejudices prevailing at the time, which manifest themselves in the democratic regime itself. Thus, as Plato recounts in the Meno, he even shows that a slave, properly guided by maieutics, is capable of solving mathematical problems that involve cutting-edge issues at the time (equivalence of areas involving mathematical irrationals—in this case, the square root of 8), revealing understanding and mental agility that surpass those of his master. The result of Socrates' teaching action is not only psychic and pedagogical; it is also political. It contains the denunciation of prejudice that, even in democracy, lowers slaves (just like women and foreigners), denying them the right of citizenship (a prejudice that Aristotle will reinforce later by stating that the slave is devoid of noetic soul, precisely the one that allows knowledge of ends and ultimate meanings). The religious foundation of Socratic maieutics, unfolding Pythagorean premises (the actual world and the current situation of man as resulting from error and inversion that need to be corrected by the Return and the restoration of the order de jure that does not coincide with the situation de facto), justifies a revolutionary teaching action, which appears as subversive of political institutions since it can invert the master/slave relationship itself. On the other hand, although desacralizing the teaching action and placing it at the level of paid work (which has often been interpreted as “progress”), the sophists, by charging fees—which seems abominable to Socrates/Plato—benefit only those who can pay for their teachings and ultimately give more power to those who are already economically empowered (through persuasive and charming use of language, the great instrument of political power in Athenian democracy). By opening the space of philosophical exercise and teaching to slaves, women, and foreigners, Epicureanism broadens, in a new historical context, the demolition of prejudices and the liberating action expressed by Socrates in the Meno (which had already inspired the Cynics), but now on strictly humanistic and non-religious grounds.↩
The word phármakon—which means both “poison” and its antidote, “remedy”—appears as a central theme in Plato’s Dialogues, often associated with the discussion about the difference between sophistic rhetoric and philosophical rhetoric (the latter, as Socrates says in the Phaedrus, seeking to persuade the gods themselves). While the word would be used by the sophists for the pleasure conferred on the audience, flattered in a territory governed by pleasantness, the philosophical phármakon is a therapeutic discourse that is not always immediately pleasurable. It develops under the principle of the good, not the pleasant, is governed by a sense of posology, and is based on a metretic (art of measurement) that ultimately aims at the just-in-itself. It does not necessarily seek to please the listener, interlocutor, or disciple but to lead them to heal themselves. In this sense, for Plato, the opposition between philosopher and sophist reproduces the opposition between remedy and poison, doctor and charlatan.↩
P. Nizan, Les matérialistes de 1’Antiquité, Paris, François Maspero, 1965, p. 47.↩
Tito Lucrécio Caro, On the Nature of Things, trans. Agostinho da Silva; in Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, São Paulo, Abril Cultural, 1980, p. 97, col. Os P ensadores.↩
Ibid., p. 6.3.↩
M. Foucault, “The Use of Pleasure”, in The History of Sexuality. Rio de Janeiro, Graal, 1984, vol. II; J. A. Motta Pessanha, “Plato: The Many Faces of Love”, in The Senses of Passion, various authors, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1987.↩
Epicurus, Anthology of Texts, trans. Agostinho da Silva; in Epicurus, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, São Paulo, Abril Cultural, 1980, p. 13, col. Os P ensadores.↩
K. Marx, Differences between the philosophies of nature in Democritus and Epicurus, translated by Edson Bini and Armandina Venâncio, São Paulo, Global, 1979.↩
A. Cornu, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Paris, puf, 1955, Vol. I, pp. 154 ss.; J. M. Gabaude, The young Marx and ancient materialism, Toulouse, Éditions Privat, 1970; F. Markovits, Marx in the Garden of Epicurus, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1974; J. A. Motta Pessanha, “Marx and the Greek atomists”, in Karl Marx, Differences between the philosophies of nature in Democritus and Epicurus, São Paulo, Global, 1979.↩
J. Brun, Epicureanism, Paris, puk, 1959, pp. 6-7.↩
On Lucretius and his version of Epicurus' ideas, besides the general works on Epicureanism, the following are particularly important: P. Boyancé, Lucretius, his life, his work, Paris, puf, 1964; M. Conche, Lucretius and Experience, Paris, Éditions Seghers, 1967; G. Cogniot, “Lucretius, his work and his philosophy”, Introduction to the edition of On the Nature of Things, Paris, Éditions Sociales, 1954; A. J. Capelletti, Lucretius: Philosophy as Liberation, Caracas, Monte Avila Editores, 1987.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 17.↩
A.-J. Festugière, Épicure et ses dieux, Paris, PUF, 1946, p. 28.↩
B. Farrington, A doutrina de Epicuro, Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1968, pp. 26-7.↩
Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book X, 15, 16.↩
P. Nizan, op. cit., p. 11.↩
Plato, Phaedo, 84e-85b, in Plato, trans. Jorge Paleikat and João Cruz Costa, São Paulo, Abril Cultural, 1978, col. Os pensadores.↩
J. A. Motta Pessanha, “A água e o mel,” in O desejo, various authors, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1990.↩
N. W. DoWitt, Epicurus and his philosophy, University of Minnesota, 1954, cited in B. Farrington, op. cit., p. 27.↩
This is particularly the case of Empedocles of Agrigento (5th century BC), leader of the democratic movement in his city, who explains the constitution of the current cosmos by the contrary and complementary actions of two principles on the four roots (Water, Air, Earth, and Fire) of all things. The moving principles, Philia and Neikos (Love and Strife), are responsible for the joining and separation of the roots. The double movement of joining-separation establishes an inherent tension in the cosmos and explains the existence of different beings, all subject to the two simultaneous and eternal impulses that, divergent, tend “aclichronically” towards the One and the Multiple. F. M. Cornford (From religion to philosophy, New York, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1957) shows that the model underlying Empedocles' cosmogony and cosmology is inspired by the play of social and political forces, not constituting, as is sometimes claimed, the anticipation of a mechanistic model.↩
P. Petit, La civilisation hellénistique, Paris, puf, 1962, p. 5.↩
Ibid, p. 8.↩
Ibid, pp. 9-10.↩
Hesiod, Les travaux et les jours [The works and days], 109-202 (myth of the races), Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1951, pp. 90-3.↩
Empedocles of Agrigento, “Purifications,” 117; see The Presocratics, São Paulo, Abril Cultural, 1973, p. 242, col. Os Pensadores.↩
For Empedocles, the four roots - Water, Air, Earth, and Fire - and the two driving principles - Philia and Neikos - are equal, “all are equal and of the same nature” (Empedocles of Agrigento, “On nature,” 25, op. cit., p. 230). None precedes the others or is more fundamental than the others; the plural physis constitutes a kind of assembly governed by isonomia.↩
The ascending dialectic is one of the aspects of Plato’s dialectic, predominant in the first phase of Platonic construction. It takes the “method of geometers” as a model, establishing ascensional links between the conditioned and the conditioning: between hypotheses that are linked and that ultimately pursue the non-hypothetical, the unconditioned. From the theoretical point of view, this results in the hypothesis of the existence of ideas, eternal and incorporeal paradigms imperfectly copied by sensible and corporeal things (this hypothesis is in turn supported by other hypotheses, such as the immortality of the soul, reminiscence, etc.). From the erotic point of view (The Symposium), it represents the search for absolute beauty, through a trajectory that starts from beautiful bodies and progressively moves towards objects of increasing full and stable beauty (like beautiful crafts); this is an operation commanded by Eros, an insatiable and cunning mediator who weaves the succession of ascending links. The ascending impetus of Platonic dialectic is complemented by the descending aspect of dialectic, which mainly prevails in the final phase of Platonism (e.g., The Sophist, Philebus). Then, it is not about affirming the existence of eternal paradigms and, above them, of the Good or the One, but about establishing the essential links between the ideas and between these and things, in a descent that starts from the “highest genera” and logically and ontologically returns to the level of concrete and singular objects.↩
Plato, Meno 82 a-86 c, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1963. In this passage, Socrates exercises maieutics with Meno’s slave, proposing him a mathematical question regarding the equivalence of areas, which leads to considering the irrationality of the square root of 8. Guided by Socrates' skillful questions, the slave ends up finding the solution to the problem, revealing intelligence that his master, Meno, had not shown in a previous discussion with Socrates on the question of virtue. Socrates intends, with this exercise, to demonstrate the doctrine of recollection: the soul would contain truths acquired in a previous, supraterranean existence when it contemplated the essences while following the procession of the gods (not all souls can adequately contemplate the ideas); these truths, dormant due to the soul’s connection to the body, can be awakened if an appropriate method is used (Socratic maieutics, the constructive phase of Socratic dialectic). But the maieutic exercise with the slave proves more: it demonstrates the injustice that can hide behind the master/slave relationship. The socio-political organization creates a situation that is only factual, not legal. In the name of justice, this situation can and should be corrected. Philosophical magistracy exists, even, to restore the just in the place usurped by the temporary injustice. Socratic subversion, with a Pythagorean background, thus has a strongly political connotation, not just a psychological and religious one. It is this repercussion on the established political order - indirectly denounced as unjust - that certainly justifies the later condemnation of the philosopher to death by the Assembly of heliasts. Isn’t this what Plato suggests in Meno, when, after the exercise of liberation and valorization of the slave, the character Anytus, one of Socrates' accusers, bursts onto the scene, furious?↩
Plato, The Republic (Book VI, final part), Complete Works, translation and notes by Léon Robin, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de La Pléiade, 1950, pp. 1091-1101.↩
P. Nizan, op. cit., p. 14.↩
Idem, ibidem, p. 13.↩
Idem, ibidem, p. 12.↩
P. Petit, op. cit., p. 101.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 19.↩
Tito Lucrèce Caro, op. cit., Book I, 39-40, p. 31.↩
P. Nizan, op. cit., p. 40.↩
Tito Lucrèce Caro, op. cit., Book II, 15-35, p.47.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 13.↩
Idem, ibidem, p. 13.↩
L. Robin, La pensée grecque et les origines de l’esprit scientifique. Paris, Éditions Albin Michel, 1948, pp. 388-390.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 14.↩
Ibid.↩
Ibid., p. 15.↩
Tito Lucretius Carus, op. cit., Book I, 160, p. 33.↩
Ibid., 161-8, p. 33.↩
As noted by J. Burnet (Early Greek philosophy, translated into French as L’aurore de la philosophie grecque, Paris, Payot, 1952), Greek philosophical thought initially developed by creating variations on the theme of corporeality. Even the Pythagoreans, in their arithmo-geometry, when asserting that there is an interval separating the discontinuous units that compose extension, consider that this interval is filled with the tenuous corporeality of pneuma, which permeates all things due to the respiration of the living cosmos. This creates a contradiction that Zenon of Elea’s aporias against the proponents of multiplicity and motion elucidate: a contradiction between the affirmation of the discontinuity of extension and the continuity of corporeality reintroduced through the nature of the interval. In fact, it is Eleatic philosophy that brings to light and, at the same time, exhausts the assumption common to various previous physical and cosmological doctrines, namely, that corporeality is the only category explaining the most varied beings and phenomena. The logical-ontological unity principle expressed by Parmenides—“what is, is; what is not, is not”—can thus be explicitly stated as: “what is (corporeal), is or exists; what is not (corporeal), is not, does not exist.” The significant contribution of atomism, already with Leucippus and Democritus, lies in making this principle more flexible by affirming the existence of the void. With the atomists, the principle can be reformulated as follows: “what is (corporeal), is or exists (as corporeal: the atoms); what is not (corporeal), also is or exists (as other, as incorporeal: the void).” Plato’s solution, opposed to the mechanistic view of atomistic physics, follows a different direction: it also affirms the existence of alterity as a necessary logical-ontological complement to the affirmation of “what is” (being, the same), but places in the incorporeality of ideas or essences the key to understanding the corporeal (sensible things) and even the ontological support of these physical objects (seen as imperfect copies of essences). Thus, in Plato, the incorporeal is not the void, the extension that offers no resistance and exists as space where atoms move; it is, on the contrary, the plenum, the essentially full, as it is the “world of ideas,” a hierarchized set of purely formal paradigms. This incorporeal plane is governed by purpose, represented, at its highest degree, by the One, which is also Beautiful and Good. Therefore, in the incorporeality of essences, there is a logical-ontological resistance, not physical, which allows, even, that justice, which must guide ethical and political action, is grounded in it. In Epicurus, the support of ethics is accomplished without surpassing the plane of corporeality: by introducing, within deterministic mechanicism, the clinamen.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 15.↩
Plato, Phaedo, 97d-99d (see Plato, São Paulo, Abril Cultural, 1978, coll. Os Pensadores).↩
J. A. Motta Pessanha, “Marx e os atomistas gregos,” in K. Marx, Diferença entre as filosofias da natureza em Demócrito e Epicuro, São Paulo, Global, 1979, pp. 7-8.↩
Tito Lucretius Carus, op. cit., Book II, 216-24, p. 50.↩
Democritus' attempt seems motivated by the need to combat the relativist proposal of his fellow countryman Protagoras, the great sophist of Abdera. (See V. Brochard, “Protágoras et Démocrite,” in Études de philosophie ancienne et de philosophie moderne, Paris, J. Vrin, 1954, p. 23.)↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 13.↩
Ibidem, pp. 13-14.↩
Titus Lucretius Carus, op. cit., Book III, 830-841, p. 73.↩
The emergence of the first scientific-philosophical theories in Greece, starting from the 6th century BC, changed the conception of the divine, questioning the anthropomorphic divine of the Homeric tradition that persisted in the official religion with political characteristics. For the philosophers, nature (physis) is divine, which, starting mainly from Xenophanes of Colophon, will lead to the explicit rejection of the characteristics attributed to the divine by traditional religion and popular mentality. (See, particularly, W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, Buenos Aires, Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1952.)↩
D. Babut, The Religion of Greek Philosophers, Paris, puf, 1974, pp. 149-50.↩
Ibidem, p. 159.↩
The doctrine of simulacra is developed by Lucretius in Book IV of On the Nature of Things. He describes them as “thin films torn from the surfaces of objects, which fly about in the air, and, going in our direction when we are awake, daze our minds exactly as in dreams, when we often see frightful shapes and images of those who have lost their light” (35-40, op. cit., p. 79). See particularly, G. Deleuze, “Lucretius and the Simulacrum,” an appendix to The Logic of Sense, trans. Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes, São Paulo, Perspective, 1982, p. 273 ff.↩
Objectifying the image is a common flaw pointed out by J.-P. Sartre in different conceptions of the image over the centuries. He writes: “This metaphysics consists of making the image a copy of the thing, existing in itself as a thing.” And he adds further on: “A good illustration of this naive objectification of images is provided by the Epicurean theory of simulacra” (Imagination, Paris, puf, 1956, pp. 4-5).↩
D. Babut, op. cit., pp. 162-3. It would be interesting to compare the Epicurean concept of the perpetual renewal of the gods with Descartes' concept of “continuous creation.”↩
Ibidem, p. 160.↩
Ibidem, p. 166.↩
Ibidem, p. 168.↩
The Socratic-Platonic elsewhere is of another nature and is linked to the conception of a soul that, inhabiting successive bodily dwellings, returns to the supra-terrestrial plane, as we sought to show in “Water and Honey” (The Desire. São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 1990).↩
D. Babut, op. cit., pp. 149-50.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 20.↩
Same source as above, p. 17.↩
Same source as above, p. 17.↩
Same source as above, p. 17. The combat against Cyrenaic hedonism is central in Epicurus’s thought, as he constantly seeks to highlight the difference between his hedonism directed towards achieving ataraxia and the followers of voluptas in motu. See, in particular, E. Bréhier, “Les cyrenaíques contre Épicure — remarques sur le Livre II du ‘De finibus bonorum’ de Cicéron” (In Études de philosophie antique, Paris, puf, 1855, pp. 179-84); G. Giannantoni, I cirenaici, Florence, Sansoni Editore, 1958.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 18.↩
L. Robin, “Sur la conception épicurienne du progrès,” in La pensée hellénique des origines à Épicure, Paris, puf, 1967, p. 531.↩
Same source as above, p. 530.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 18.↩
M. Foucault, op. cit.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 18.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 18.↩
V. Brochard, “La morale d’Épicure,” in Études de philosophie ancienne et de philosophie moderne, Paris, J. Vrin, 1954, p. 297.↩
Same source as above, p. 296.↩
In Plato (Philebus), all pleasure is of the soul; in Epicurus, on the contrary, even the pleasures of the soul are bodily (for example, the bodily sensations remembered or anticipated). Plato’s position is consistent with his conception of desire, associated with the question of pleasure and pain, as we have sought to clarify in “Water and Honey” (in The Desire).↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 19.↩
Idem, ibidem, p. 20.↩
J-C. Fraisse, Philia — The notion of friendship in ancient philosophy, Paris, Philosophical Bookstore J. Vrin, 1984, p. 288.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 20.↩
J.-C. Fraisse, op. cit., p. 305.↩
Epicurus, op. cit., p. 13.↩

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