Biography Of Epicurus – Free PDF Download

 EARLY LIFE

• Epicurus was born in the Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos in February 341 BC. His parents, Neocles and Chaerestrate, were both Athenian-born, and his father was an Athenian citizen.
• Epicurus grew up during the final years of the Greek Classical Period. As a child, Epicurus would have received a typical ancient Greek education.
• Epicurus is known to have studied under the instruction of a Samian Platonist named Pamphilus, probably for about four years.After the completion of his military service, Epicurus joined his family there.

 EARLY LIFE

• Epicurus came of age at a time when Greek intellectual horizons were vastly expanding due to the rise of the Hellenistic Kingdoms across the Near East.
• Epicurus’s teachings were heavily influenced by those of earlier philosophers, particularly Democritus. Epicurus’s Letter to Menoeceus, possibly an early work of his but, for his later works, he seems to have adopted the bald, intellectual style of the mathematician Euclid.
• Epicurus’s philosophy was consequently more universal in its outlook than those of his predecessors. During Epicurus’s lifetime, Platonism was the dominant philosophy in higher education.

TEACHER

• Epicurus’s opposition to Platonism formed a large part of his thought. Over half of the forty Principal Doctrines of Epicureanism are flat contradictions of Platonism.
• In around 311 BC, Epicurus, when he was around thirty years old, began teaching in Mytilene. Epicurus’s teachings caused strife in Mytilene and he was forced to leave.
• He then founded a school in Lampsacus before returning to Athens in c. 306 BC, where he remained until his death. There he founded The Garden, a school named for the garden he owned. • Epicurus never married and had no known children. He was most likely a vegetarian.

DEATH

• Epicurus died a slow and painful death in 270 BC at the age of seventy-two from a stone blockage of his urinary tract.
• Despite being in immense pain, Epicurus is said to have remained cheerful and to have continued to teach until the very end.
• Epicurus is said to have originally written over 300 works on various subjects, but the vast majority of these writings have been lost. Only three letters written by him—the Letters to Menoeceus, Pythocles, and Herodotus—and two collections of quotes—the Principle Doctrines and the Vatican Sayings—have survived.

 TEACHINGS

• Epicurus and his followers had a well-developed epistemology, which developed as a result of their rivalry with other philosophical schools.
• Epicurus wrote a treatise entitled Κανών, or Rule, in which he explained his methods of investigation and theory of knowledge.
• Epicurus was an ardent Empiricist believing that the senses are the only reliable sources of information about the world.He rejected the Platonic idea of “Reason” as a reliable source of knowledge about the world apart from the senses at all

TEACHINGS

• Epicurus was a hedonist, meaning he taught that what is pleasurable is morally good and what is painful is morally evil.
• Epicurus writes in his Letter to Herodotus that “nothing ever arises from the nonexistent”, indicating that all events therefore have causes, regardless of whether those causes are known or unknown.
• Epicurus showed little interest in participating in the politics of the day, since doing so leads to trouble. He instead advocated not drawing attention to oneself.

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