Book reviews - Epicurus, The Art of Happiness

★★★★

One of the idle pleasures with which I wile away the time during the summer holidays is imagining what lost texts of antiquity I would rescue if I had a time machine and the power to do so. The first one is obvious: the complete poetry of Sappho, in nine books; the next choice is more difficult. At around a similar level I’d place Heraclitus’s On Nature, the missing plays in the Aeschylean tetralogy dedicated to Prometheus, some of the tragedies of Agathon, the Deeds of Alexander by Callisthenes, and some complete and extensive philosophy books by Protagoras, Leucippus, Democritus… and Epicurus. Very little of this has survived to the present day; concerning the last figure, the bulk of the remaining texts¹ are translated and interpreted in The Art of Happiness (Penguin Classics edition, translated by George K. Strodach).

By word of its author, the translation is meant to be quite accessible, and is intended for undergraduates who want to acquaint themselves with the core of Epicurus’s thought. Most people associate Epicurus with sensual pleasure and indulgent living (a criticism that started in Antiquity and was perpetuated by Christianity), but as this book shows, his philosophy is something altogether more subtle, rigorous, and humane: one could describe it as a guide to attaining a life of tranquility and freedom from fear.

The volume is framed by two essays. Daniel Klein’s foreword is lively and accessible, situating Epicurus in third-century BCE Athens, a city saturated with philosophical discussion. He evokes the contrast between the grand academies of Plato and Aristotle and the more egalitarian, almost rustic atmosphere of Epicurus’s Garden, a place where women, slaves, and non-experts gathered around a philosopher who taught that true happiness requires neither wealth nor high status, only bread, water, friendship, and philosophical clarity. Klein calls Epicurus a kind of ancient self-help guru, but emphasizes that his guidance had real substance. Epicurus taught that most human misery stems from irrational fears: of divine punishment, of death, of endless desire, and that through a better understanding of nature, those fears can be dispelled.

The second, by Strodach, is much lengthier, and acts as such a good summary of the texts to be translated as to almost make unnecessary reading them. He corrects common misconceptions about Epicurus (as a hedonist or atheist) and argues that Epicureanism deserves renewed attention, not only for its ethical teachings but also for its proto-scientific worldview. Epicurus was a materialist who adapted and popularized the atomic theory of Democritus, arguing that everything is made of atoms and void. All phenomena (life, sensation, thought…) arise from the motion and organization of atoms. Even the soul, for Epicurus, is a configuration of fine atoms that disbands at death, meaning that death is simply the end of sensation and not something to be feared. This conviction lies at the heart of Epicurus’s ethics: by realizing that the gods do not interfere in human affairs² and that death is nothing to us, we can unshackle ourselves from anxiety and pursue a life of measured pleasure and calm reflection (ataraxia), achieved not through wealth, power, or public life, but by withdrawing from worldly affairs and cultivating simple pleasures, friendship, and self-sufficiency. And he urged his followers to avoid politics and ambition, seeing them as sources of anxiety, and to live quietly among like-minded companions, free from fear and unnecessary desire.

Strodach takes readers through the major components of Epicurean physics and epistemology, showing how closely tied they are to the ethical aim of ataraxia (peace of mind). Epicurus’s materialism isn't cold or mechanical but therapeutic. He introduces the concept of the “swerve” as a spontaneous, unpredictable deviation in atomic motion to explain how human freedom can exist in a deterministic universe. Though this concept is metaphysically dubious, its purpose is clear: it tries to preserve the idea of moral responsibility and voluntary action, which are essential to Epicurus’s practical ethics.

Equally important is Epicurus’s theory of knowledge. He is a radical empiricist, insisting that all knowledge begins with the senses and that perceptions are never false - only our interpretations of them may be in error. This becomes a central point in his polemic against the Skeptics, who denied the possibility of certain knowledge, and against the Platonists, who posited an invisible realm of ideal Forms. For Epicurus, knowledge must serve human happiness by clearing up confusion and helping us to align our lives with nature. He privileges three “canons” or criteria of truth: sensations, feelings (pleasure and pain), and basic preconceptions. These allow us to test claims about the world and to identify which desires are natural and necessary (like food and friendship) and which are empty or vain (like luxury, fame, or immortality). Epicurus also held that any natural explanation consistent with sensory evidence and not disproven should be treated as true - a somewhat weird logic meant less for science than for calming fear by excluding divine causes, and that allows him, for example, to posit multiple causes for celestial phenomena and to reject there (as he doesn’t for this-wordly stuff) the principle of unicausality. Another curious idea of his is that objects emit atomic “films” that strike our senses, producing perception; since these impressions are mechanically caused, all sensation is true, and error comes only from false beliefs we attach to them. This would justify, for example, the existence of the Gods, but they are divinities very different in essence from those of classical Greek religion, completely detached from mortals, non acting in the cosmos, and just serving as idealized models of what the good life might be like.

The translated texts themselves are the heart of the book. Strodach presents the three major surviving letters: to Herodotus, to Pythocles, and to Menoeceus (all contained in the biography of Epicurus by Diogenes Laertius). Each is clear and concise, and together they offer a coherent overview of the Epicurean system. Strodach complements these texts with selections from Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, which serve as poetic parallels to Epicurus’s prose. Lucretius’s verses often clarify and elevate the same philosophical doctrines, and their inclusion enriches the book’s literary and intellectual texture. The volume also includes the Principal Doctrines and Vatican Sayings, which are brief, aphoristic distillations of Epicurean teachings. Throughout them, Epicurus’s practical advice adopts an air of modern cognitive therapy: don’t fear what cannot harm you, recognize that misfortune is often bearable, and avoid self-imposed torment.

I learned a lot about Epicurean thought in this volume, and I recommend it to anyone who’s interested. The translation is accessible and fresh. The ideas of Epicurus are interesting, but a bit of a mixed bag (as you’d assume of a thinker who has to rely on pure rational speculation), with lots of very current and lucid insights but also with a non trivial degree of rather silly ideas. Some would castigate his ethics as too minimalistic and self-centered, and Americans, probably, as very unambitious. It is traditional to castigate Hellenistic philosophies for acting as quasi-salvific religions that attempted to give peace to men in a tumultuous age of war and conflict, and perhaps there is some truth to these views.

One last note to comment the style and quirks of George K. Strodach, particularly in the introduction. This book was composed in the sixties, and it shows. The author speaks just like you’d imagine a slightly liberal philosophy professor of that times would sound like: he quite unashamedly pushes forward his own opinions of the rightness or wrongness of Epicureanism directly and boldly, enjoys sneering and making fun of Christianity in a Dawkins-kind of way every chance he gets, has liberal values but can still be a tad prudish and, stylistically, shows an old-fashioned, classical rhetorical flavor. None of this detracts from the enjoyment of the book (rather, the contrary) or from the clarity of the exposition.

1. There is hope yet that modern technology and luck might rescue big chunks and perhaps even whole books from the Villa dei Papyri in Herculaneum, which we know houses a collection of carbonized scrolls from the library of a Roman-era Epicurean philosopher called Philodemus of Gadara. Fingers crossed!

2. A common trait of Epicureanism is its hostility to ‘popular religion’, with its (for Epicurus) mistaken view of the Gods, of the fictional punishments and rewards of the Afterlife and of the superstition of believing they influence meteorological phenomena or are themselves the sun, moon and stars.