The idea of Epicureans
Introduction
Firstly, let me briefly introduce who is Epicurus: A major philosopher of the Hellenistic period, he is a great philosopher, and he that views worries as unnecessary and unnatural desires. if we can avoid those desire, he believes that all worries will be eliminated. For him a good life is to avoid all the suffer, pain and torture, if we can perfectly avoided, than is the ideal of life. He largely relied upon Democritus for his materialistic and atomistic theory of nature. However, he does modify Democritus’ metaphysics because of its skeptical and deterministic implications. Epicurus founded his physics based upon Democritus but discovered that Democritus had no distinguishing ethical doctrine and, therefore, had to formulate his own objective ethics. Epicurus went on to formulate a self-centered moral philosophy in which the individual person is the realm of moral enterprise.
About Death
Secondly, the point of fear of death pretty interesting and convincing, and pretty famous. He made two arguments to against fear of death, first one is No subject of harm. In the text, he said “Death is nothing to us, when we are, death is not come, when death come, we are not. ” I think this point is really persuasive for me, we fear of death because that mentally and physically hurt, but in fact, when we are alive, death are not going to come,S but if we died, which means death came, and our body were not feel the pain, because our body is made of atoms, plus, when we died we lose all the senses of feelings, and we are not pratically feel what pain of death feels like.
Another of his point also famous and convincing, which known as “symmetry” argument, “being death is the same as being born”, which means “I had been dead for billions and billions of year before I was born”. There is no any awareness before you born, so you are not going to feel anything else, all the things were void, so just don’t be afraid of death, they were not going to be any hurts or pain of die. Our attitude towards life and death should also be symmetrical between the two time boundaries of our existence.
About Happiness
“Epicurus believes that the more we can limit our pleasures and desires, especially to those that are the most necessary and most natural, the more likely we are to attain sustainable pleasure and happiness.”
Where does Happiness come from? Desire. Epicurus divides pleasures and desires into natural and necessary and natural but unnecessary. He argues that the more we limit our pleasures and desires, especially those that are most necessary and natural, the more likely we are to achieve sustainable pleasures and happiness. The inner and outer conditions each person needs to survive are part of Epicurus’ view of nature and the necessary pleasures or desires. Some things are necessary for one to get rid of distractions and personal life itself. According to Epicurus, happiness is objective because it arises from the satisfaction of natural and necessary desires.
That is what Epicurus believe, many people lived in this world were not happy, the reason of that is afraid of death, it is too terrible for them, because death will kill everything. I asked some of my friends, most of them told me they afraid to lose everything. I totally agree with that, but in contrast, what do you really own? Sooner or later, your possessions will run out, your children will start new families, and your friends will have other friends. Although these things are suitable for you to have a connection with, it can’t be said that you completely own them. Everything will be out of your control. Just like what Epicurus said, “the purpose of our life is happiness”
The difference between Epicureans and Stoicism
Epicureans and Stoicism represent two different schools but founded at same time. Stoicism is the unfeeling, emotionless brute instead of Epicurean as the pleasure-loving, self-indulgent hedonist. They both appealed that we should avoid excessive pleasure and desires. But Epicureans did not advocate for excessive self-indulgence the way we may think they did, and Stoicism were not unfeeling and reject emotions. The Stoicisms were concerned with moral behavior and living according to nature, while the Epicureans were concerned with avoiding pain and seeking natural and necessary pleasure.
Reference:
https://dailystoic.com/epicureanism-stoicism/