Politics 213 (W, IT) Prof. Basu EPICURUS 341-271 BCE

Socrates: 470-399 BCE

Plato 428-348 BCE

Aristotle 384-322 B.C.

Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE)

Epicurus 341-271 BCE

“Alexander began his war against Persia in the spring of 334 BC by crossing the Hellespont (modern Dardanelles) with an army of 35,000 Macedonians and 7,600 Greeks. He threw his spear from his ship to the coast and it stuck in the ground. He stepped onto the shore, pulled his weapon from the soil, and declared that the whole of Asia would be won by the spear. His chief officers, all Macedonians, included Antigonus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus.” From

http://faq.macedonia.org/history/alexander.the.great.html

4 Schools of Political Philosophy

1. Early ethical philosophies in the Socratic Tradition – doglike independence

a. Cynics – Antisthenes of Cynosarges (444-368BCE)

b. Cyrenaics – Aristippus of Cyrene (435-366BCE)

2. Stoicism – 300BCE-200AD – political cosmopolitanism

a. Early

b. Middle

c. Late – Seneca (4BCE-65AD) and Epictetus (50-120AD), Marcus Aurelius (121-180AD)

3. Epicureanism - ?

4. Skepticism and Eclecticism – political pragmatism

a. Early – some sophists

b. Cicero (106-43BCE), Plutarch

Epicurus

from

http://www.epicurus.info/picindex1.html

Democritus (460-370BCE)

Athens:

Epicurus' Garden in Athens was closed by the Christian Emperor Justinian in  529 C.E. , over 1476 years ago,

and was re-founded in Athens in  2005 C.E.

Ancient Epicurean Texts . . .

Epicurus (341–270 B.C.)

Principal Doctrines | Vatican Sayings | Letter to Menoeceus | Letter to Herodotus | Letter to Pythocles | Letter to Idomeneus | Last Will

Diogenes Laertius (early 200s A.D., biographer of Epicurus)

Lives of Eminent Philosophers, book X

Lucretius (99–55 B.C., Epicurean poet)

De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Cicero (106–43 B.C., critic who recorded Epicurean monologues)

De Finibus (On Ends, selection) | De Natura Deorum (On the Nature of the Gods, selection)

Horace (65–8 B.C., poet)

Ode "Carpe Diem" | Ode "Otium" | Letter to Tibullus

Lucian (120–190 A.D., satirist)

Alexander the Oracle-Monger | Zeus Rants

Cornelius Nepos (100–25 B.C., biographer)

De Latinis Historicis - Atticus

Plutarch (early 100s A.D., Platonist critic)

Adversus Colotem (Against Colotes, selection)

Lactantius (early 300s A.D., Christian critic)

The Divine Institutes (selection) | On the Anger of God (selection)

Raphael and the School of Athens

Renaissance

Seventeeth Century

Gassendi takes Epicurus’s physics via Lucretius seriously at the expense of Scholasticism and Aristotelianism

Thomas Hobbes

Modern Epicureans?

http://www.molloy.edu/academic/philosophy/sophia/ancient_lit/happiness/epicureanism_jefferson.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume01/

General Purpose Sites:

http://www.epicurus.info/etexts/ier.html

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/epicur.htm

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/

http://www.molloy.edu/academic/philosophy/sophia/ancient_lit/happiness/epicureanism1.htm