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My personal philosophyMy personal philosophy,

My personal philosophy

My personal philosophy, meaning how I try to live my life rather than how I try to approach philosophical questions, is Epicureanism. As far as I can see, Epicurus was right on all the major particulars of his philosophy, even if some of his points have been expanded upon and some of his ideas about physics were naive. Alfred North Whitehead once said, "All of Western Philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato." In my view, however, you might as well have the correct answers in the main text, and save the historical antecedents for the footnotes. Actually, Epicurus was a student of some of Plato's followers (and Democritus's, where he got many of his ideas on atoms), and really did seem to live a life according to his philosophy. His students included women and slaves, and rather than setting his school in a public forum as did most of his contemporaries, he gathered his followers in the garden of his home. Unfortunately most of his writings were destroyed over time, and out of something like 300 manuscripts we only have three letters and a handful of short fragments, so much of what we know about his philosophy comes from (not always sympathetic) later sources, primarly Diogenes Laertius and Lucretius, who counted themselves Epicureans, and Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, who did not.
Epicurus's views in brief:

• Metaphysics: Materialist. The world is made of atoms flying through empty space, and that all natural phenomena are explainable in terms of this; Platonic forms and immaterials souls don't exist.


• Epistemology: Empiricist. Our senses and reason are largely trustworthy, and skepticism is unwarranted (if not self-contradictory).


• Ethics: Hedonist. The purpose of our actions is pleasure, which is properly understood as tranquility and freedom from pain and fear.


• Philosophy of Mind: Reductionist. Epicurus was probably the first philosopher to identify the mind with the brain.


• Philosophy of Religion: Atheist. Epicurus was definitely the first philosopher to formulate the "problem of pain", hence sometimes known as Epicurus's Riddle: If God is omnipotent and all-good, why is there evil in the world? Either he cares but cannot stop it, in which case he is impotent, or he can stop it but doesn't care, in which case he's not good, or both.

Posted by joshua at May 14, 2003 02:00 PM