The Garden

Athens · founded c. 306 BCE

Epicureanism

Epicurus taught that the good life is a tranquil one. Pleasure is the aim, and he meant the lasting kind: a body free of pain, a mind free of disturbance.

The core ideas

Epicurus (341–270 BCE) bought a house with a garden in Athens and taught there to a mixed circle of friends, women and slaves included. His school was called the Garden. Almost all his own writing is lost. We have three letters and the Principal Doctrines, preserved by Diogenes Laertius, and a second collection, the Vatican Sayings, found in a Vatican manuscript in 1888. The Latin poem On the Nature of Things by Lucretius is the fullest surviving account of his thought.

Ataraxia
Freedom from mental disturbance. The main goal.
Aponia
Absence of bodily pain. The second goal.
Katastematic pleasure
The settled pleasure of having nothing lacking. Epicurus ranked it above the pleasure of satisfying a craving.

The fourfold remedy

Later Epicureans condensed the teaching into four lines, the tetrapharmakos.

  1. Do not fear the gods. They are not troubled by us, and do not trouble us.
  2. Do not worry about death. Where it is, we are not, and where we are, it is not.
  3. What is good is easy to get.
  4. What is terrible is easy to endure.

Sorting your desires

Epicurus split desires into three kinds. Natural and necessary ones (food, shelter, warmth, friends) are cheap to satisfy. Natural but unnecessary ones (a rich meal) are fine but optional. Empty ones (fame, great wealth) have no natural limit and cause most of our anxiety. Try the sorter.

Desire sorter

Would you suffer if you never had it?
Does it have a natural limit, where more adds nothing?

Friendship and the monthly feast

Epicurus held that of all the things wisdom provides for a happy life, friendship is the greatest. His followers met on the twentieth of every month, the Eikas, to share a simple meal and remember him. Many modern Epicureans keep the date.

Practices

The Twentieth supper

120 min

A monthly meal with friends in the spirit of the Eikas.

  1. Invite two or three friends on or near the 20th.
  2. Serve bread, olives, cheese, fruit and water or wine.
  3. Phones away. Talk about what each of you is grateful for.
  4. Raise a cup to Epicurus and to the friends who are absent.

Evening review of desires

10 min

Check which desires drove your day.

  1. List what you wanted today.
  2. Mark each one natural-necessary, natural-unnecessary or empty.
  3. Note one empty desire to drop tomorrow.

Premeditate small loss

5 min

Weaken fear by imagining losing something you have.

  1. Pick one ordinary good: your coffee, your bed, a friend.
  2. Imagine it gone for a day.
  3. When you return to it, taste it freshly.

Go deeper

Epicurus and Lucretius

The life of the founder, the poet who put his ideas into verse, and a reading list.

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The Principal Doctrines

Epicurus' forty key sayings, restated in plain modern English with short notes.

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Death and the gods

Why Epicureans said death is nothing to us and the gods are no cause for fear.

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Epicurean and Stoic

Two rival schools of the same era, compared point by point.

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Epicureanism today

Common misunderstandings, and how to hold a supper or reading group of your own.

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Where to read

Begin with the Letter to Menoeceus, which is about two pages. Then read Lucretius, Book III on death, and the Principal Doctrines. Any recent translation of Epicurus' surviving works will do.

Read the life of Epicurus, an introduction to Lucretius, and a full reading list.