Epicurus: 'Pleasure Is the Beginning and End of the Good' — The Philosopher Who Dispelled Fear and Taught the Gentle Life

Key Takeaways

• Pleasure (hēdonē) as the criterion of the good: Epicurus held that pleasure is the beginning and end of the good. But this was not wanton self-indulgence; it was a philosophy that placed static pleasure — the absence of pain (ataraxia and aponia) — as the highest state.
• "Death is nothing to us": The soul too is an aggregate of atoms and disperses at death. Since there is no sensation after death, there is no basis for fearing it. This argument remains a central issue in contemporary philosophy of death.
• The Tetrapharmakos (the fourfold remedy): "God is not to be feared. Death is not to be worried about. The good is easy to attain. Suffering is easy to endure." These four prescriptions for dispelling life's fears resonate even with people living in today's stress-filled world.

Life and Historical Context

Epicurus was born around 342 BCE on the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea. His father Neocles was an Athenian citizen who had settled on Samos as a colonist (klērouchos), and Epicurus spent his boyhood there. His mother Chairestraté is said to have been a fortune-teller, and his aversion to superstition-laden folk religion may have taken root in this household environment. He is said to have begun taking an interest in philosophy around the age of fourteen and studied under Nausiphanes, a follower of Democritus (Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers X.14). His exposure to atomism here laid the groundwork for his later natural philosophy. However, Epicurus later criticised Nausiphanes harshly and styled himself "self-taught" (X.13). His rebellion against his teacher may have helped drive the construction of his own original system.

The era in which Epicurus lived was, like that of Zeno (the Stoic), a time of violent upheaval in the Hellenistic period. After the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE), the Wars of the Successors (the Diadochoi Wars) raged on and the autonomy of the polis was lost. The Classical age, when citizens could shape their destiny through politics, was over; the age of being at the mercy of vast kingdoms had arrived. When Epicurus travelled to Athens at the age of eighteen for military service, the colonists on Samos were expelled by order of the Macedonian general Perdiccas, and his family was scattered. In an age when political turmoil could uproot an individual's life, Epicurus's philosophy of "building happiness within oneself without relying on politics" was born out of pressing necessity.

Thereafter, he began teaching across Asia Minor — in Colophon, Mytilene, and Lampsacus — and around 307 BCE he returned to Athens and opened the Garden (Kēpos). This school was literally a house with a garden, a place where master and disciples lived communally and practised philosophy together. Among his principal disciples were his close companion Metrodorus (whom Epicurus called "a second self"), his successor Hermarchus, the intellectually gifted woman Leontion, and the freed slave Mys. That women and slaves were admitted was highly exceptional in the Athens of the time, and it drew slander. But for Epicurus, philosophy was "medicine for the soul," needed by all people regardless of status or sex.

Throughout his life Epicurus lived frugally and was deeply revered by his disciples. In his later years he suffered agonising pain from kidney stones, but in a letter reportedly written on his dying day he said: "the pains of the body are great, but against all of them is set the joy of the soul from the memory of our conversations together" (Diogenes Laërtius X.22). He practised his own philosophy to the very end — demonstrating with his own life that the spiritual bonds of friendship could triumph over bodily suffering. He died around 270 BCE, at the age of roughly seventy-two.

Mini-Timeline

• c. 342 BCE: Born on the island of Samos
• c. 328 BCE: Studies under Nausiphanes, a follower of Democritus
• 323 BCE: Alexander the Great dies. The Wars of the Successors begin
• 324/323 BCE: Travels to Athens for military service. Colonists on Samos are expelled
• c. 311–307 BCE: Teaching in Mytilene and Lampsacus
• c. 307 BCE: Opens the Garden (Kēpos) in Athens
• c. 270 BCE: Dies in Athens (aged c. 72)

What Did Epicurus Ask?

Epicurus's question was straightforward: What do human beings fear? And are those fears justified? According to him, there are four fundamental fears that afflict humanity — fear of the gods, fear of death, anxiety about being unable to attain the good, and fear of suffering. Epicurus held that philosophy's role is to demonstrate that all four fears are irrational and to remove them.

Whereas earlier philosophy asked "what is the good?" in the abstract, Epicurus started from bodily sensation. Infants and animals, without being taught, seek pleasure and avoid pain. This is the natural criterion of good and evil — a radically empirical starting point that differs fundamentally from Plato's locating the basis of the good in an eternal, unchanging "Form of the Good," and from Aristotle's identifying happiness with the excellent exercise of a capacity peculiar to humans. The task of philosophy is not to discover the ultimate principle of the universe but to remove concrete suffering — Epicurus held consistently to this practical stance. It has a structure strikingly similar to that of modern psychotherapy, which aims to "identify the causes of anxiety and correct cognition."

Core Theories

1. The Threefold Division of Philosophy — The Canon, Physics, and Ethics

Like the Stoics, Epicurus divided philosophy into three parts, but in place of logic he put "the Canon" (kanonikē). The Canon is, in a word, the discipline that asks "what criteria can we trust to distinguish truth from falsehood?" Epicurus's answer was clear — there are three criteria of truth. First, sensation (aisthēsis): what we see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and touch with our hands does not lie. Second, preconception (prolēpsis): a concept naturally formed from repeated experience — for example, the image that comes to mind when you hear the word "horse." Third, feeling (pathos): the sensations of pleasure and pain tell us what to pursue and what to avoid. In short, it is the concrete experience of embodied human beings, not abstract reasoning, that forms the foundation of knowledge — this was Epicurus's position.

The bold claim that sensation is always true is accompanied by a distinctive epistemology. Thin films of atoms — eidōla (images) — are constantly streaming off the surfaces of objects, flying through space, and reaching the sense organs (Letter to Herodotus 46–50). When these films reach the eye, sight occurs; when they reach other organs, other sensations arise. Sensation itself is the mechanical result of contact and does not lie. When a distant tower looks round, this is not an error of sensation but a consequence of the film's edges being worn away in transit; error arises only when we add the judgement "it must be round." This approach is a thoroughgoing empiricism, and in some respects anticipates the British empiricists (Locke, Hume).

Let us now clarify the relationship among the three branches. For Epicurus, physics was not an end in itself but a tool for removing fear, and the final goal was always ethics — that is, the question "how should we live well?" If celestial phenomena can be explained naturally, the fear of divine wrath vanishes. If the soul is made of atoms, the fear of posthumous punishment vanishes. By analogy, just as a doctor identifies the cause of a disease not for the sake of knowledge but for the sake of a cure, physics exists for the cure of the soul. The Canon teaches us the correct method of judgement, physics uses that method to uncover the causes of fear, and ethics points the way to a life free of fear — the three branches are organically connected in this way.

2. Atomism — Atoms, Void, and the Swerve

Epicurus inherited Democritus's atomism and held that everything in the world consists of indivisible particles (atomon) and void (kenon) (Letter to Herodotus 38–44). Atoms are eternal, neither generated nor destroyed. They have shape, size, and weight, but secondary qualities such as colour and taste arise from the arrangement and motion of atoms. This view is strikingly close to modern physics, which explains "colour" as the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation and "taste" as the structure of molecules.

Furthermore, Epicurus maintained that the universe is infinite and that the number of atoms is infinite. Therefore worlds (kosmoi) are not one but innumerable, continuously coming into being and perishing (Letter to Herodotus 45). Our world is not special; it is merely one corner of an infinite universe — an idea structurally similar to the multiverse hypothesis in modern cosmology.

But Epicurus made a decisive modification to Democritus. In Democritus's atomism, everything lay within an inexorable chain of cause and effect, leaving no room for freedom. If all atomic motions are determined from the very beginning, then human thought and choice are nothing more than physical necessity. Choosing a good action or avoiding evil becomes meaningless, and ethics itself collapses. To resolve this dilemma, Epicurus introduced the concept of the "swerve" (parenklisis; in Latin, clinamen). Atoms, as they fall downward, swerve ever so slightly at indeterminate times and places (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura II.216–293). This minute deviation causes atoms to collide and combine, producing the diversity of the world. And crucially, this "deviation" from necessity at the atomic level opens up space for the human will not to be wholly chained by causation — so Epicurus reasoned. It is intriguing that this idea is structurally similar to the indeterminacy of subatomic particles revealed by twentieth-century quantum mechanics. Of course Epicurus had no knowledge of modern physics, but the concern to "open a gap for freedom in a deterministic world" is shared across the ages.

3. The Materialism of the Soul — "Death Is Nothing to Us"

The soul (psychē) too is an aggregate of atoms. Extremely fine and smooth atoms pervade the entire body, making sensation and thought possible. The crucial point here is that the soul is not a supernatural substance separate from the body; it is made of matter (atoms) through and through. Death is the disintegration of the body, and with it the atoms of the soul scatter in all directions. Once scattered, there is no sensation and therefore no pain. This means, in turn, that the punishments of the underworld described in ancient folk belief — Tantalus's eternal hunger, with food forever just out of reach, and Sisyphus's penalty of rolling a boulder to the summit only to have it roll back down again — are all baseless myths. There is no "self" left in the afterlife to receive punishment.

From here Epicurus's famous argument follows: "Death is nothing to us; for when we exist, death has not yet come, and when death has come, we no longer exist" (Letter to Menoeceus 125). As long as we are alive, we cannot experience death; and once we are dead, there is no subject to experience anything — therefore there is no reason to fear death.

This argument is also called the "Symmetry Argument." Lucretius articulated it clearly as a kind of thought experiment: consider the infinite time before you were born — you did not exist. You did not exist in 500 BCE, and no one finds that terrifying. Non-existence after death is exactly the same (De Rerum Natura III.830–842). Past non-existence and future non-existence are structurally symmetrical — mirror images of each other — so it is irrational to fear only one of them.

4. The Gods — They Exist but Do Not Intervene

Epicurus was not an atheist. The gods exist, but they dwell in the spaces between worlds (metakosmia) and live in perfect bliss. A perfectly happy being feels neither anger nor favour — and therefore the gods do not intervene in human affairs (Principal Doctrines [Kyriai Doxai] I). The logic runs as follows: if the gods are truly perfectly happy, they cannot feel anger. Anger is an expression of dissatisfaction, and a perfectly satisfied being has no dissatisfaction. This means that thunder is not divine wrath but a natural phenomenon, and earthquakes and plagues are not divine punishment. Why is this reassuring? The ancients lived in fear of the gods' capricious anger. When a storm came, they were gripped by the anxiety: "Have I done something wrong?" But if natural phenomena have nothing to do with divine will, that anxiety vanishes. The gods are to be admired as models of ideal happiness, but never feared — this was Epicurus's position. In modern terms, "a natural disaster is not someone's punishment" — a recognition that is also a premise of natural science.

5. The Theory of Pleasure — Static and Kinetic Pleasure

Epicurus divided pleasure into two kinds. One is "kinetic pleasure" (kinētikē hēdonē) — the active sensation of delight in the act of eating, in savouring delicious food, and so on. The other is "static pleasure" (katastēmatikē hēdonē) — a stable state in which pain has been removed. The latter is what Epicurus held to be supreme.

Let us illustrate the distinction with an everyday example. The pleasant sensation of drinking water when you are parched — that is kinetic pleasure. The tranquil state when your thirst has been fully quenched and you no longer desire anything — that is static pleasure. No matter how lavish the feast after your hunger is satisfied, the total quantity of pleasure does not increase — because the removal of pain is the summit of pleasure (Principal Doctrines III). From this standpoint, a sharp critique of the endless pursuit of desire follows naturally.

Epicurus further classified desires into three kinds: (1) Natural and necessary desires (food, water, shelter, clothing) — these are easily satisfied. (2) Natural but unnecessary desires (gourmet food, a particular sexual partner) — harmless if not pursued to excess. (3) Vain desires (fame, power, immortality) — these have no basis in nature and never lead to satisfaction, so they should be abandoned (Letter to Menoeceus 127–128). Obsessing over the number of "likes" on social media would be, for Epicurus, a textbook case of pursuing "vain desires."

6. Virtue and Pleasure — An Inseparable Relationship

Epicurus did not reject virtue. On the contrary, he regarded virtue as the only means to pleasure. "It is impossible to live pleasantly without living prudently (phronēsis). Nor is it possible to live prudently without living pleasantly" (Letter to Menoeceus 132). While the Stoics held that "virtue itself is good and one is happy with virtue even without pleasure," Epicurus held that "virtue is a tool for pleasure, and without pleasure there is no good." The starting points are diametrically opposed. Yet, interestingly, when it comes to practical guidance for life, both arrive at strikingly similar conclusions. The reason is that a dissolute life brings regret and declining health — that is, pain — later on. If one coolly calculates how to maximise pleasure, one ends up concluding that the most pleasant life is one lived with the virtues of temperance, justice, courage, and prudence. "Virtue for virtue's sake" and "virtue for pleasure's sake" differ in their reasoning, but the way of life they recommend converges — a fascinating phenomenon in the study of ethics.

7. The Tetrapharmakos — The Fourfold Remedy for the Soul

The practical core of Epicurean philosophy is distilled in the tetrapharmakos (the fourfold remedy). "Tetra" means four and "pharmakon" means medicine — literally "a prescription of four drugs." The name derives from later Epicureans (such as the writings of Philodemus), but the substance corresponds to the first four propositions of the Principal Doctrines. (1) God is not to be feared (KD I) — because God is perfectly happy and has no reason to punish humans. (2) Death is not to be worried about (KD II) — because there is no subject to experience it. (3) The good is easy to attain (KD III) — because the necessary pleasures can be obtained through simple means. (4) Suffering is easy to endure (KD IV) — because intense pain is brief, and prolonged pain is not intense. If one truly understands these four propositions to the point where they become second nature, all of life's fundamental anxieties are dispelled — philosophy is indeed "medicine for the soul."

8. Friendship (Philia) — An Indispensable Condition for a Happy Life

"Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship" (Principal Doctrines XXVII). Why would a hedonist place such supreme value on friendship? Because human beings are creatures who find it difficult to escape anxiety on their own. The very sense of security that comes from having trustworthy friends who will help in times of difficulty produces tranquillity of mind — which is to say, the highest pleasure. According to Epicurus, friendship begins in mutual advantage, but as it deepens it becomes an end lovable in itself (Vatican Sayings 23). Life in the Garden was precisely a place where this ideal was put into daily practice. While the Stoics proclaimed a cosmopolitanism embracing all humanity, Epicurus found happiness in a small community of close friends. When modern happiness research shows that "close personal relationships are the single greatest predictor of happiness" (as in the Harvard longitudinal study), Epicurus's insight is empirically vindicated.

9. "Live Unknown" and the Theory of Justice

"Live unknown" (lathe biōsas) — this Epicurean motto directly contradicted the common assumption in ancient Greece that political participation was a civic duty. It means: live quietly, out of the public eye. Why? Because politics stimulates the desire for power and honour — the "vain desires" discussed earlier — creates enemies, invites jealousy, and destroys tranquillity of mind at its root.

However, Epicurus did not reject social order. Justice, he said, is "a compact not to harm or be harmed" (Principal Doctrines XXXI–XXXIII) — a social contract for the sake of security. In other words, justice is not an eternal law handed down from heaven but a practical agreement among human beings: "it is better for all of us not to hurt each other, so let us agree not to." Consequently, if circumstances and conditions change, the content of justice can change too. This way of thinking can be seen as a precursor of the modern social contract theories developed by Hobbes and Locke in the seventeenth century — the idea that "people create the state and its laws by agreement."

Guide to Key Texts

• Epicurus is said to have written some 300 volumes (Diogenes Laërtius X.26), but almost all have been lost. The major surviving texts are as follows.
• Letter to Herodotus — A summary of physics (atomism, cosmology, epistemology). The best introduction to Epicurean physics.
• Letter to Pythocles — Natural explanations of meteorological phenomena. Shows that thunder and earthquakes are not the work of gods.
• Letter to Menoeceus — A summary of ethics. A concise masterpiece covering the theory of pleasure, the overcoming of death, and the classification of desires. If you are going to read just one text by Epicurus, this letter is the best choice.
• Principal Doctrines (Kyriai Doxai) — A summary of doctrine in 40 propositions. Covers ethics, epistemology, and political philosophy.
• Vatican Sayings (Gnomologium Vaticanum) — A collection of maxims discovered in the Vatican Library in 1888. Partially overlapping with the Principal Doctrines but containing unique aphorisms.
• Lucretius, De Rerum Natura — A Roman-era masterpiece that presented Epicurean philosophy as a grand epic poem. The most important source for reconstructing Epicurus's lost atomism.
• The Herculaneum Papyri — A large trove of Epicurean texts excavated from a villa (the "Villa of the Papyri") buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. These include works of Philodemus and fragments of Epicurus's On Nature, and decipherment is ongoing.

Major Criticisms and Controversies

1. The Stoics — Pleasure is not the good: The Stoics maintained that "pleasure is merely a by-product of natural activity, and the good lies in virtue alone." Their criticism was that if pleasure is made the criterion of the good, humans become indistinguishable from animals. But Epicurus's "pleasure" was the removal of pain — the exact opposite of self-indulgence. This misunderstanding — equating "Epicurean" with hedonistic self-indulgence — has been repeated from antiquity to the present day. The English word "epicurean" meaning "gourmet" or "bon vivant" is precisely the product of this misunderstanding.

2. Christian Criticism: Medieval Christianity regarded Epicurus as the greatest heretic. Epicurean philosophy, which denied the immortality of the soul and rejected divine providence, was fundamentally opposed to Christian doctrine. Dante placed the followers of Epicurus in the sixth circle of Hell in the Inferno (Canto X). Ironically, however, the Church's suppression only ensured that Epicurus's name was inscribed in history all the more firmly.

3. Objections to the Symmetry Argument: Against the argument that "death is nothing," the modern philosopher Thomas Nagel presented the "deprivation account" (Nagel, "Death," 1970). The gist of the deprivation account is this: it is true that a dead person feels no pain. But the badness of death lies not in the pain it causes but in the fact that it robs us of the goods we would have enjoyed had we gone on living — conversations with friends, new experiences, the joy of growth. Death is bad not as a "felt harm" but as a "lost possibility." Furthermore, there is the question of whether pre-natal and post-mortem non-existence are truly symmetrical. One's birth cannot be brought earlier (a person born in a different era would be a different person), but one's death can in principle be postponed. This asymmetry, some argue, explains why death is bad (Parfit, 1984). This debate continues actively today.

4. Criticism of "Live Unknown": The stance of withdrawing from politics has been criticised since antiquity as an abdication of social responsibility. Plutarch argues against it head-on in his essay "Is 'Live Unknown' Right?" Is it ethically permissible to prioritise personal tranquillity while ignoring social injustice? This question is still relevant today.

5. Doubts about the "Swerve": The criticism that random atomic swerving cannot explain human "free will" has been repeated since antiquity (Cicero, De Fato). The core of the criticism is this: free will means "choosing for oneself," but atoms swerving randomly is mere "chance," not "choice." Escaping a world where everything is determined only to fall into a world of pure chance does not yield freedom. This problem — is there room for freedom between "determinism" and "chance"? — remains unsolved in the contemporary debate over free will.

Influence and Legacy

Predecessors: Democritus's atomism provided the foundation for Epicurean physics. The hedonism of the Cyrenaic school (Aristippus) was also an influence, though Epicurus differed fundamentally in privileging static over kinetic pleasure. Whereas Aristippus taught "maximise the pleasure of the moment," Epicurus urged "arrive at a stable state free of suffering."

The Roman World: Lucretius (1st century BCE) transformed Epicurean philosophy into a grand epic poem in De Rerum Natura. Horace called himself "a pig from Epicurus's garden" (Epistles I.4.16), and Epicureanism was widely embraced among the Roman upper classes.

Renaissance and Rediscovery: In 1417, the humanist Poggio Bracciolini discovered a manuscript of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura in a monastery, an event that had a decisive impact on the revival of naturalism in the Renaissance. Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve vividly depicts the significance of this rediscovery.

Modern Science: In the seventeenth century, Gassendi revived Epicurean atomism and opened the way to the corpuscular theory of modern science. Newton's mechanics also has aspects that presuppose an Epicurean-Lucretian worldview.

Utilitarianism: Bentham's "greatest happiness of the greatest number" stands in the Epicurean tradition insofar as it makes pleasure the criterion of the good. However, whereas Bentham sought to maximise the pleasure of society as a whole, Epicurus's concern was the individual's tranquillity of mind. J. S. Mill's recognition of qualitative differences among pleasures is closer to Epicurus's emphasis on static pleasure.

Marx: The young Marx discussed the difference between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus in his doctoral dissertation (1841) and found in Epicurus's "swerve" the principle of human freedom. Epicurus's stance — materialist yet championing freedom — was an important influence on Marx's intellectual formation.

Connections to the Present

First, the philosophy of death. Epicurus's argument that "death is nothing to us" remains a central issue in contemporary analytic philosophy. Nagel's "deprivation account," Shelly Kagan's Yale lectures DEATH, and many other philosophical discussions of death take Epicurus as their starting point.

Second, a critique of consumer society. Epicurus's framework for classifying desires as "natural and necessary," "natural but unnecessary," and "vain" can serve as a sharp critical tool against a modern society that fuels endless consumption. The Epicurean insight that "what is necessary is small and easy to obtain" resonates with the philosophy of minimalism.

Third, the possibility of secular ethics. Epicurus's attempt to construct an ethical system without presupposing divine intervention is an important precedent for the contemporary secularism that seeks a moral foundation independent of religion.

Fourth, well-being research. The "sustained happiness" emphasised by modern positive psychology is strikingly congenial to Epicurus's theory of static pleasure, in that it values calm contentment over stimulating highs. The phenomenon of the "hedonic treadmill" is also relevant here. Even after a pay rise or buying a new house, people quickly adapt to the new state, new desires arise, and happiness returns to its former level — as if running on a treadmill. This illustrates the limits of kinetic pleasure and vindicates Epicurus's analysis, which favoured calm satisfaction over the pursuit of stimulation.

Questions for the Reader

• Does Epicurus's argument that "death is nothing to us" alleviate your fear of death? Or is it an argument that is missing something?
• In today's consumer society, which of your desires are "natural and necessary" and which are "vain"? Is Epicurus's classification valid?
• Is the advice to "live unknown" an abdication of social responsibility, or a wise choice to protect one's mental health?

References

• (Primary): Diogenes Laërtius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book 10 — contains Epicurus's three letters and the Principal Doctrines.
• (Primary / English): Inwood, Brad & Gerson, L.P. The Epicurus Reader. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
• (Survey): Long, A.A. Hellenistic Philosophy. 2nd ed. London: Duckworth, 1986 — a standard survey treating Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Scepticism.
• (Research): Warren, James. Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 — comprehensive coverage of ancient and modern debate on the death argument.
• (General): Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: Norton, 2011 — the story of Lucretius's rediscovery.
• (Web): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Epicurus" (David Konstan, first published 2005, substantive revision 2018). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/