After the Big Three (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle), philosophy fell to pieces for 2000 years or so. It took Descartes to pep it up again.
While most philosophers try to come up with a few guiding rules to govern our actions, Epicurus came up with 40. More is not better. More is worse. Epicurus’ doctrines are a mad jumble of clearly contradictory ideas.
Still, I like him. I like Epicurus because I can quote him to my wife when we go shopping. I ask her whenever she wants to buy something crappy: “Is this natural and necessary, natural and unnecessary, or neither natural nor necessary?” Of course, it gets me nowhere, but as she never studied philosophy, she does not know that marriage is merely a contract for mutual benefit (Epicurus again), and I get to feel good for a while about my win in the precooked bacon aisle.
Anyway, Epicurus was the last of the Ancient Greek philosophers. He studied Plato as a young man, experimented as a Lesbosian in his early 30s, and finally moved to Athens, where he lived until his death.
He started a commune in Athens. People made fun of him, apparently, but they still came by quite a bit—no surprise, if you since ‘The Garden’ was the only school to admit women and had a saying on the front door: “Stranger, stay as long as you like. Pleasure is our highest good.”
Epicurus was an atomist. He believed that the universe is composed of only two things: atoms and void.
Epicurus died because he couldn’t pee. He wasn’t upset about it, though.
