Turinbaar
19th November 2012, 05:24
History is marked by many names of one sort or another. Some are men of power and riches, but still others transcended these limited and empty desires, and became students of the world and the mind. As Alexander the Great, one such name signifying the glory of kings, was conquering the world, another man, named Epicurus, was entering into a greater life journey to conquer the gods. His followers since his death have been a minority in philosophical circles, but they have been the forces that have moved and changed the very world beneath our feet, and we may still feel the earth shifting today as a result of his influence. They were impressed neither by the claims made by the powerful as to the cultish ideology of their authority, nor by the tales of the fearful that spoke of the forces of the world as if they were divine. Long have they been slandered as amoral hedonists, and ignorant pseudo-intellectuals by the ideology of the ruling class, and yet neither time nor tyranny has weathered the core of Epicurean philosophy, and it stands before us today as the grandfather of our modern humanist Enlightenment. The name Epicurus echoes across time, from the ancient halls of Rome, to the smoking towers of the modern industrial era, as a call to humanity to get off its knees and to seek the life of freedom and happiness, away from the blood stained horrors of religion, and to face death in truth.
Epicurus was born to Athenian colonists on the island of Samos, off the coast of Turkey in February of the year 341 B.C. His father was a schoolteacher who struggled against the poverty of his class. They were looked down upon by Athenians living within Athens and despised by the native populations and were forced to flee to a nearby city of Colophon on the coast. Epicurus was drafted into the Athenian army as fodder in the perennial wars between Greek city states, which would end upon their conquest by Alexander of Macedon, who would then go on to conquer the known world. The Hellenist Empire would bring many things taken from their Greek conquest as far as India, including the philosophy of Plato, who was student to Socrates, Aristotle, who taught Alexander philosophy, and Democritus, who crafted a theory of physics with atoms as the smallest and most basic units of material existence. As they did so, Epicurus would study these factions of thinking, and develop an entirely different conception of existence that would challenge and overthrow each of the others.
While studying at various schools like the Lyceum founded by Aristotle, and the one founded by Plato as well, under the instruction of the close disciples of the aforementioned, Epicurus found himself dissatisfied with their philosophies and moved on to study the atomist physics of Democritus under the guidance of a teacher named Nausiphanes of Teos. Eventually this ended too, and Epicurus went on to teach a unique theory of atomism, informed by the ideas of Democritus, but transcending their limitations. He would extend the conclusions drawn from the principle of his theory to serve as the basis for a philosophy of the good life. Democritus sent himself to the far corners of the world and eventually blotted out his own vision in a vain attempt to find the deeper truths of existence, while Epicurus traveled seldom, and only to visit friends, and upon his dying day he called his disciples to his school, which he called “The Garden,” and, with wineglass in hand, calmly told them, “Farewell my friends, the truths I taught hold fast. (Life of Epicurus)” The deep contrasts between them reach into their two interpretations of what seems to be the same philosophy.
Atomism posits the universe as being made up of bodies and the void. The smallest particles of matter are called atoms, and as material they are the direct negation of the nothingness of the void. In combination, they form the union of abstract and real possibility. As they move through the void as points of singularity (as passive body), they negate themselves as a straight line (as active form) signifying the void space in between the atom at one point in time and another. Democritus posited this act of falling as the first of two motions of atoms, the second being repulsion upon bodily collisions. His method of investigation differed greatly from Epicurus, who held that the senses were the herald of the truth (Letter to Herodotus) and that untruth arose from misinterpretation or denial of the senses, as oppose to Democritus who, as indicated before had positive distrust for his own senses.
Epicurus noticed that the Democritean theory does not account for how the atoms will ever actually reach each other to form reality if they were all simply falling down parallel to each other, and he was dissatisfied with references to supernatural and mystical explanations, and the belief by Democritus that such occurrences were written by “necessity” (another word for divine fate), so instead he posited a force from within, a universe encapsulated in microcosm, and an independent movement of declination with which the atoms could both come to meet one another as well as resist the forces of determinism that controlled their existence. This required the abstraction of the atom from itself and the establishing of a two-fold nature to the atom, one as general object, and the other individual essence, thus reproducing the greater universal union of real and abstract possibility within each individual particle. With this they may distinguish themselves not only against their direct negation, the void, but also against each other as an individual against the collectivity, and finally to transcend the limitations of their own materiality and, as the Roman poet Lucrecius would later write in his De Rerum Natura, “snap the bonds of fate,” and thus establish freedom as the basic universal principle. Oppositionists often misunderstood the significance of the third type of movement as yet another force acting upon the atom, rather than a positive expression of the atoms’ independence. The attainment of freedom as the universal struggle is the basis of what is called “the Epicurean Life,” as the proscription for a life, with pleasure, ataraxy, and self consciousness attained in the abolition of superstition, false desire, and the fear of death.
Standing in opposition to Epicurus were the Titans of elder philosophies, such as Plato and Aristotle, as well as newer schools such as the Stoics. Plato’s philosophy held that the heavenly bodies were in perfect harmony of motion and were therefore divine in nature. Aristotle’s conception of Time reduced history to a passive series of numbered dates, in which unrelated things happened in a linear sequence. Both of their conceptions of the heavens were reasoned from the belief in the divine perfection of the mind, and thereby gave away the fact that they were merely worshiping their own minds projected upwards to the sky. Stoic philosophy was developed by thinkers like Epictitus, who was a slave, and suffered from the same sort of mysticism that attempted to reconcile actual conditions of life with providential determinism, which ironically appealed to the ruling classmen of slave empires like Cicero and Marcus Aurelias of Rome.
Epicurus posited against Plato’s divine heaven the meteors, whose nature as irregular objects, terrifying to humanity for so long in history, is impossible to reconcile with the supreme stillness of a divine being, for movement is brought out of fear or want and gods do not suffer these things, and are not the object of higher forces that can make them move. Epicurus absolutely rejected the idea of divine intervention or interest in the mortal world on this basis. Against the stale and empty conception of Aristotelian time, Epicurus teaches that time is “change posited as change,” which, after accepted as active reality manifest in the shifting universal composition of atoms, applies directly to things like the change of one note to another along a progression of time in a piece of music, and in this way takes account for the direct relation of one point in time and another. As the Roman Stoics were mocking Epicureanism and calling for it’s censorship, as well as increasing bondage over the lives of the imperial subjects, Lucrecius wrote in his one surviving poem, which is a dedication to and vindication of Epicureanism, “there is within the human breast something that can fight against this force and resist it (De Rerum Natura pg. 279-280),” an allusion to the same spirit of independence against determinism residing within the basic particles of the universe itself.
The fall of the Roman Empire was accompanied by the rise of Christianity, and a new conception of reality was put forth, which, rather than attempting to explain real conditions with either mysticism or science, instead rejected material existence outright, as a vulgar and sinful distraction from the perfection of the divinity that created and arbitrates it. This registered in everything of the European Dark Ages, from the art, devoid of scientific perspective, anatomy or emotional expression, to its social attitudes, thoroughly obsessed with hellfire and damnation. In this new atmosphere, the schools of philosophy across the decaying Roman world were closed down, including The Garden, and the works were heavily censored. It would not be until later in the Renaissance that Epicurean philosophy would re-emerge onto the European scene to do battle with a newly synthesized Christian Neo-Platonism and begin to shape the landscape of thought which would found the modern world.
The most well known of all of the artists from the Renaissance era is Leonardo Da Vinci, whose Mona Lisa is an image that is universally recognized and endlessly studied. His other great contribution to history is his famous notebooks, in which he designed weapons of war far beyond the military horizon of the time, as well as mused on philosophy and the science of painting and vision. References to De Rerum Natura can be found in these notebooks (Da Vinci literary works pg. 450), as well as designs for a macro-scale model of an atom, digital replicas of which can be found on the internet. There is also evidence in his attitude towards religion that Epicureanism had an affect on his view of the world. In a series of anecdotes, Da Vinci tells the story of a clergyman who waltzed into a painter’s studio and began sprinkling holy water onto the drying canvases as a blessing, telling the painter that the righteous are rewarded by the Lord and reap a hundred fold in the here after what they sew for their deeds in life, and as he pranced out the door at the bottom of the stairs, a shower of water fell from above where the painter leaned out of the window and proclaimed that the cleric had reaped what he had sewn for ruining his paintings. Like Epicurus, Da Vinci distrusted the tales of the pious and sought clarity of vision instead.
The Renaissance in Europe would spark innovation in all fields, especially navigation, and soon a new world had been declared open for the taking and within a few centuries their stood on the edges of the northern continent a new country made up of a union of former colonies calling themselves the United States of America. The architect of their declaration against the British Empire was a man named Thomas Jefferson, who in a letter to William Short declared, “I am an Epicurean,” and then went on to explain how sound and just were the doctrines of Epicurean philosophy. He then hinted at a project, later to be known as “The Jefferson Bible,” which would consist of removing any and all verses in the Old and New Testaments that are offensive to reason or morality, thereby leaving the reader with an exceedingly slim revision of the sacred texts. This book was gifted to incoming congressman and is still available for free from some Unitarian churches. Criticism of the excesses of religion was not a mere attitude, it was embodied in law, first as a Statute on Religious Freedom, in Virginia, and later as a part of the first and most important amendment in the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.
The American Revolution shocked the order of a world ruled by monarchical empires, and inspired multiple upheavals in emulation, such as in France, Haiti and South America. It also brought intense contradiction, such as the idea of an Empire of Liberty built up by the reality of slave labor and stolen land. In this new world, movements began to emerge that analyzed the development of history and the dynamics of class struggle, and rejected the mere declaration of liberty as being the realization of the idea, positing instead a struggle for the establishing of such a reality against those who would use the idea of freedom itself against its own coming to be. The most brilliant among those thinkers was Karl Marx, whose Doctoral Dissertation is a study of Epicurean atomism, and hails him as, “the greatest representative of Greek Enlightenment,” and whose socialist theory of historical development posited that a global union of self-conscious individuals would transcend the determination over their bodies and minds imposed on them by Capital, the State, and Religion, in a revolution which would establish a humanist world that did not require these things for its own existence.
Not since Epicurus himself was there a man who was derided and slandered more than Marx by his ideological antagonists, but his theories have endured and outlasted multiple declarations of their irrelevance by reactionary forces down the years, and that is because they maintain the same principles and consistency as those laid down by his philosophical forefather. Even throughout an era in which Communism appeared as a global tyranny, the most insightful, and absolute condemnations of its betrayals to principle were issued from Marxists, and many paid with their lives, but their words have since been vindicated by history.
As one reads through the names of great figures across the ages, and recounts what they did to earn their place in modern memory, one sees the face of death starring back. There are those who dealt in death like gold, others who concocted ways of avoiding it, and others still who claimed to know what it was like once it had fully taken hold, and what type was desirable and what was not. Very few have thought of it as literally nothing, and of no consequence to us, but that is the doctrine of Epicurus. In his The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud claims that religion shall never disappear so long as humanity fears death, which would mean that humanity as a whole has really yet to make its first historical step forward. Out of that fear has sprung every god and supernatural force that ever haunted the human mind, and it is this fear which Epicurus sought to abolish and in so doing he has claimed victory over the divine and set us level with the heavens and for this shall be remembered in honor for all time.
Bibliography
Da Vinci, Leonardo, The Literary Works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Volume 2, edited by Jean Paul Richter, Irma Anne Richter, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 188, Fleet Street, London, 1883 page 450
Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, http://www.epicurus.net/en/herodotus.html
Jefferson, Thomas, Letter to William Short, 1819, http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_short.html
Marx, Karl, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature., http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm
Titus, Lucrecius Carus, De Rerum Natura, http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/10949.ch01.pdf
The Life of Epicurus, http://www.epicurus.net/en/history.html#A
Epicurus was born to Athenian colonists on the island of Samos, off the coast of Turkey in February of the year 341 B.C. His father was a schoolteacher who struggled against the poverty of his class. They were looked down upon by Athenians living within Athens and despised by the native populations and were forced to flee to a nearby city of Colophon on the coast. Epicurus was drafted into the Athenian army as fodder in the perennial wars between Greek city states, which would end upon their conquest by Alexander of Macedon, who would then go on to conquer the known world. The Hellenist Empire would bring many things taken from their Greek conquest as far as India, including the philosophy of Plato, who was student to Socrates, Aristotle, who taught Alexander philosophy, and Democritus, who crafted a theory of physics with atoms as the smallest and most basic units of material existence. As they did so, Epicurus would study these factions of thinking, and develop an entirely different conception of existence that would challenge and overthrow each of the others.
While studying at various schools like the Lyceum founded by Aristotle, and the one founded by Plato as well, under the instruction of the close disciples of the aforementioned, Epicurus found himself dissatisfied with their philosophies and moved on to study the atomist physics of Democritus under the guidance of a teacher named Nausiphanes of Teos. Eventually this ended too, and Epicurus went on to teach a unique theory of atomism, informed by the ideas of Democritus, but transcending their limitations. He would extend the conclusions drawn from the principle of his theory to serve as the basis for a philosophy of the good life. Democritus sent himself to the far corners of the world and eventually blotted out his own vision in a vain attempt to find the deeper truths of existence, while Epicurus traveled seldom, and only to visit friends, and upon his dying day he called his disciples to his school, which he called “The Garden,” and, with wineglass in hand, calmly told them, “Farewell my friends, the truths I taught hold fast. (Life of Epicurus)” The deep contrasts between them reach into their two interpretations of what seems to be the same philosophy.
Atomism posits the universe as being made up of bodies and the void. The smallest particles of matter are called atoms, and as material they are the direct negation of the nothingness of the void. In combination, they form the union of abstract and real possibility. As they move through the void as points of singularity (as passive body), they negate themselves as a straight line (as active form) signifying the void space in between the atom at one point in time and another. Democritus posited this act of falling as the first of two motions of atoms, the second being repulsion upon bodily collisions. His method of investigation differed greatly from Epicurus, who held that the senses were the herald of the truth (Letter to Herodotus) and that untruth arose from misinterpretation or denial of the senses, as oppose to Democritus who, as indicated before had positive distrust for his own senses.
Epicurus noticed that the Democritean theory does not account for how the atoms will ever actually reach each other to form reality if they were all simply falling down parallel to each other, and he was dissatisfied with references to supernatural and mystical explanations, and the belief by Democritus that such occurrences were written by “necessity” (another word for divine fate), so instead he posited a force from within, a universe encapsulated in microcosm, and an independent movement of declination with which the atoms could both come to meet one another as well as resist the forces of determinism that controlled their existence. This required the abstraction of the atom from itself and the establishing of a two-fold nature to the atom, one as general object, and the other individual essence, thus reproducing the greater universal union of real and abstract possibility within each individual particle. With this they may distinguish themselves not only against their direct negation, the void, but also against each other as an individual against the collectivity, and finally to transcend the limitations of their own materiality and, as the Roman poet Lucrecius would later write in his De Rerum Natura, “snap the bonds of fate,” and thus establish freedom as the basic universal principle. Oppositionists often misunderstood the significance of the third type of movement as yet another force acting upon the atom, rather than a positive expression of the atoms’ independence. The attainment of freedom as the universal struggle is the basis of what is called “the Epicurean Life,” as the proscription for a life, with pleasure, ataraxy, and self consciousness attained in the abolition of superstition, false desire, and the fear of death.
Standing in opposition to Epicurus were the Titans of elder philosophies, such as Plato and Aristotle, as well as newer schools such as the Stoics. Plato’s philosophy held that the heavenly bodies were in perfect harmony of motion and were therefore divine in nature. Aristotle’s conception of Time reduced history to a passive series of numbered dates, in which unrelated things happened in a linear sequence. Both of their conceptions of the heavens were reasoned from the belief in the divine perfection of the mind, and thereby gave away the fact that they were merely worshiping their own minds projected upwards to the sky. Stoic philosophy was developed by thinkers like Epictitus, who was a slave, and suffered from the same sort of mysticism that attempted to reconcile actual conditions of life with providential determinism, which ironically appealed to the ruling classmen of slave empires like Cicero and Marcus Aurelias of Rome.
Epicurus posited against Plato’s divine heaven the meteors, whose nature as irregular objects, terrifying to humanity for so long in history, is impossible to reconcile with the supreme stillness of a divine being, for movement is brought out of fear or want and gods do not suffer these things, and are not the object of higher forces that can make them move. Epicurus absolutely rejected the idea of divine intervention or interest in the mortal world on this basis. Against the stale and empty conception of Aristotelian time, Epicurus teaches that time is “change posited as change,” which, after accepted as active reality manifest in the shifting universal composition of atoms, applies directly to things like the change of one note to another along a progression of time in a piece of music, and in this way takes account for the direct relation of one point in time and another. As the Roman Stoics were mocking Epicureanism and calling for it’s censorship, as well as increasing bondage over the lives of the imperial subjects, Lucrecius wrote in his one surviving poem, which is a dedication to and vindication of Epicureanism, “there is within the human breast something that can fight against this force and resist it (De Rerum Natura pg. 279-280),” an allusion to the same spirit of independence against determinism residing within the basic particles of the universe itself.
The fall of the Roman Empire was accompanied by the rise of Christianity, and a new conception of reality was put forth, which, rather than attempting to explain real conditions with either mysticism or science, instead rejected material existence outright, as a vulgar and sinful distraction from the perfection of the divinity that created and arbitrates it. This registered in everything of the European Dark Ages, from the art, devoid of scientific perspective, anatomy or emotional expression, to its social attitudes, thoroughly obsessed with hellfire and damnation. In this new atmosphere, the schools of philosophy across the decaying Roman world were closed down, including The Garden, and the works were heavily censored. It would not be until later in the Renaissance that Epicurean philosophy would re-emerge onto the European scene to do battle with a newly synthesized Christian Neo-Platonism and begin to shape the landscape of thought which would found the modern world.
The most well known of all of the artists from the Renaissance era is Leonardo Da Vinci, whose Mona Lisa is an image that is universally recognized and endlessly studied. His other great contribution to history is his famous notebooks, in which he designed weapons of war far beyond the military horizon of the time, as well as mused on philosophy and the science of painting and vision. References to De Rerum Natura can be found in these notebooks (Da Vinci literary works pg. 450), as well as designs for a macro-scale model of an atom, digital replicas of which can be found on the internet. There is also evidence in his attitude towards religion that Epicureanism had an affect on his view of the world. In a series of anecdotes, Da Vinci tells the story of a clergyman who waltzed into a painter’s studio and began sprinkling holy water onto the drying canvases as a blessing, telling the painter that the righteous are rewarded by the Lord and reap a hundred fold in the here after what they sew for their deeds in life, and as he pranced out the door at the bottom of the stairs, a shower of water fell from above where the painter leaned out of the window and proclaimed that the cleric had reaped what he had sewn for ruining his paintings. Like Epicurus, Da Vinci distrusted the tales of the pious and sought clarity of vision instead.
The Renaissance in Europe would spark innovation in all fields, especially navigation, and soon a new world had been declared open for the taking and within a few centuries their stood on the edges of the northern continent a new country made up of a union of former colonies calling themselves the United States of America. The architect of their declaration against the British Empire was a man named Thomas Jefferson, who in a letter to William Short declared, “I am an Epicurean,” and then went on to explain how sound and just were the doctrines of Epicurean philosophy. He then hinted at a project, later to be known as “The Jefferson Bible,” which would consist of removing any and all verses in the Old and New Testaments that are offensive to reason or morality, thereby leaving the reader with an exceedingly slim revision of the sacred texts. This book was gifted to incoming congressman and is still available for free from some Unitarian churches. Criticism of the excesses of religion was not a mere attitude, it was embodied in law, first as a Statute on Religious Freedom, in Virginia, and later as a part of the first and most important amendment in the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.
The American Revolution shocked the order of a world ruled by monarchical empires, and inspired multiple upheavals in emulation, such as in France, Haiti and South America. It also brought intense contradiction, such as the idea of an Empire of Liberty built up by the reality of slave labor and stolen land. In this new world, movements began to emerge that analyzed the development of history and the dynamics of class struggle, and rejected the mere declaration of liberty as being the realization of the idea, positing instead a struggle for the establishing of such a reality against those who would use the idea of freedom itself against its own coming to be. The most brilliant among those thinkers was Karl Marx, whose Doctoral Dissertation is a study of Epicurean atomism, and hails him as, “the greatest representative of Greek Enlightenment,” and whose socialist theory of historical development posited that a global union of self-conscious individuals would transcend the determination over their bodies and minds imposed on them by Capital, the State, and Religion, in a revolution which would establish a humanist world that did not require these things for its own existence.
Not since Epicurus himself was there a man who was derided and slandered more than Marx by his ideological antagonists, but his theories have endured and outlasted multiple declarations of their irrelevance by reactionary forces down the years, and that is because they maintain the same principles and consistency as those laid down by his philosophical forefather. Even throughout an era in which Communism appeared as a global tyranny, the most insightful, and absolute condemnations of its betrayals to principle were issued from Marxists, and many paid with their lives, but their words have since been vindicated by history.
As one reads through the names of great figures across the ages, and recounts what they did to earn their place in modern memory, one sees the face of death starring back. There are those who dealt in death like gold, others who concocted ways of avoiding it, and others still who claimed to know what it was like once it had fully taken hold, and what type was desirable and what was not. Very few have thought of it as literally nothing, and of no consequence to us, but that is the doctrine of Epicurus. In his The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud claims that religion shall never disappear so long as humanity fears death, which would mean that humanity as a whole has really yet to make its first historical step forward. Out of that fear has sprung every god and supernatural force that ever haunted the human mind, and it is this fear which Epicurus sought to abolish and in so doing he has claimed victory over the divine and set us level with the heavens and for this shall be remembered in honor for all time.
Bibliography
Da Vinci, Leonardo, The Literary Works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Volume 2, edited by Jean Paul Richter, Irma Anne Richter, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 188, Fleet Street, London, 1883 page 450
Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, http://www.epicurus.net/en/herodotus.html
Jefferson, Thomas, Letter to William Short, 1819, http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_short.html
Marx, Karl, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature., http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1841/dr-theses/index.htm
Titus, Lucrecius Carus, De Rerum Natura, http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/10949.ch01.pdf
The Life of Epicurus, http://www.epicurus.net/en/history.html#A