epicurus and aristotle

Where the two split is in how they believe we attain happiness. Following my comments on the thought of Kant and Epicurus, I would like to look again at the question asked by a reader : “Do you agree with Epicurus that happiness can be seen purely in terms of pleasure, or whether Aristotle and Kant were right about goodness being more about virtue”. Happiness: Aristotle and Epicurus Both Aristotle and Epicurus tried to find the key to happiness. Like Aristotle, I believe that perceiving with our senses is the highest degree in reality. Epicurus was born around 341 B.C.E., seven years after Plato's death, and grew up in the Athenian colony of Samos, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. Of course there are many sharp differences as well. In a broad sense, Aristotle and Epicurus touched on similar points when discussing, A Character Analysis Of Okonkwo's Things Fall Apart, Critical Analysis Of Symphonie Fantastique. Although Epicurus disagreed with Plato about the value of pleasure, he fully agreed with him on this point. Aristotle on Happiness Since the earliest days of Western thought philosophers have concerned themselves with the nature of happiness. Scholars typically divide Plato's works into three periods: the early, middle, and late periods. Influenced by Democritus, Aristippus, Pyrrho, and possibly the Cynics, he turned against the Platonismof his day and established his own school, known as "the Garden", in Athens. Reality is a plenum, he held, a complete fullness; there can be no such thing as a vacuous region, or the void of atomism. . “Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his attitude towards Persia was unabashedly ethnocentric. He thought that happiness depended on acquiring a moral character, including courage, generosity, justice, friendship and good citizenship, all of which involved striking a “mean” between too much and too little. Aristotle calls it a “… complete sort of friendship between people who are good and alike in virtue …” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1156b07-08). For Aristotle, happiness, in its simples terms, “a happy man, Aristotle would say, is the man who has everything he really needs. To be sure, this is a discouraging sentence: “They thought . “slave,” “woman,” “poor” “noble” etc.. For Aristotle, our pleasures come through fulfilling human functions well and this can be provided by doing virtuous acts. He also agrees with Aristotle that happiness is the highest good. By the time Epicurus was born in 341 BCE on the Aegean island of Samos, popular philosophy was shifting emphasis from metaphysics (determining the nature of the universe) to personal ethics.It was a change that was prompted by Socrates some hundred years beforehand. Nor do you have to be an old man to be happy. As for Aristotle, he viewed happiness as the best good and the ultimate good and claims that happiness, always in parallel with each other. Epicureanism - Epicureanism - Criticism and evaluation: In the first half of the 17th century, at a time when Gassendi was reviving atomistic Epicureanism, René Descartes, often called the founder of modern philosophy, offered arguments that tended to undercut atomism. Epicurus and his followers were also not the first Greeks to argue that pleasure is the highest good. I will now comment on Aristotle: Epicurus may well have derived some of his philosophy from Aristotle (he was 21years old when Aristotle died). He is usually credited with inventingatomism. This has been a major topic of debate over the centuries, starting with the ideas put forward by Aristotle and Epicurus, both great Greek Philosophers of the Classical Age of Athens. Aristotle tells us that the most important factor in the effort to achieve happiness is to have a good moral character — what he calls “complete virtue.”  Epicurus, on the other hand, was the born humanist. Through these philosophers, various ideologies on happiness gets to be distinctly conceivable for one to distinguish and recognize the difference between what people think or feel happiness is and what the true state of happiness is. Plato - Dualism (2 types of things exist: forms, souls) Goal: purification of the soul by living a life of intellect so that it will detach from the body in death Epicurus- Monism (1 type of things exist: materialistic things) Virtue is taken for granted by Epicurus and is not a condition of happiness. That is, happiness depends on the cultivation of individual virtues, including physical as well as mental well-being. You don’t even have to be wise or outstandingly intelligent – just a straightforward, decent guy, who is looked up to and admired ( and can tell some funny jokes). No one would voluntarily live without friends, but there were different kinds of friendship, the highest is one that is based on virtue. Some people look upon Epicurus as a libertarian; I believe he represented a form of humanist counter-culture. Thank you for your question. However to me, Aristotle and Epicurus have been the most interesting philosophers to me personally so far. He may have written as copiously as Aristotle. That is why Aristotle says that the happy man wants for nothing.” (Adler 4). In a broad sense, Aristotle and Epicurus touched on similar points when discussing happiness. If Epicurus and the Stoics converge in their attitude that philosophy is a way of life, they diverge in the further specification on what a happy life consists in. But what is happiness? The influence is clearly shown in his philosophy, and the similarities are striking. The theories of Aristotle and Epicurus could be said to have influenced how people identify the term 'leisure' and the activities that they included. So I would vote for Epicurus and his take on life. Sobegins the account by Diogenes Laertius (10.1). He argued that virtue is achieved by maintaining the Mean, which is the balance between two excesses. Heraclides, amongothers, in his epitome of Sotion, says that he was raised in Samos,since the Athenians were given parcels of land there, but came toAthens when he was eighteen, when Xenocrates was head of the Academyand Aristotle was still in Chalcis” (where he died in 322). . The first philosopher that I agreed with when reading Sophie’s World was Europe’s first biologist Aristotle. None of the ancient philosophers seemed interested in marriage. Secondly, working for yourself instead of others, getting a sense of helping people out of your work, Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Boethius, Augustine, and Aquinas connected on writing about the phenomenon of human happiness. This problem has been solved! Still, I draw hope regarding such human blindnesses in categorizing human beings. Thus, when one tries to define and establish the subjective truth about happiness in the 21st century, there is a great influx of ways to attack such a notion, especially in the justification of life and how to pursue it in the ideologies of Epicureanism and Stoicism. Required fields are marked *. While we have lost most of Epicurus’ treatises on ethics and happiness, his basic ideas are very clearly outlined in his justly famous Letter to Menoeceus. They both believed in happiness as the ultimate end and purpose of human existence, and both believed in the crucial importance of friendship. Knowledge 2. Leucippus (5th c. BCE) is the earliest figure whose commitment toatomism is well attested. On the other hand, he did praise the friendship and companionship that husband and wife can have in old age. Observing modern day politics it is hard to argue with him. He did so without describing how he, or anyone else, could tell ahead of time. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle said happiness is the value and reason for every good thing, so happiness is deserving of respect. Aristotle believed in God, while Epicurus believed that there might well be gods on Mount Olympus, but they didn’t involve themselves in the lives of mere human beings. (Price, 2008, Pg. BCE Stoic philosopher) reported thatancient Greek atomism can be traced back to a figure known as Moschusor Mochus of Sidon, who lived at the time of the Trojan wars. Epicurus notoriously claimed that essentially only pleasure (Gr. At this time in Athens, cultural life was dominated by the Academy of Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle, both of which had passed into the hands of successors. He begins with a claim familiar from Plato and Aristotle: that we all desire happiness as an end in itself, and all other things are desired as a means for producing happiness. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. A virtuous friendship is one that is most enjoyable since it combines pleasure and virtue together, thus fulfilling our emotional and intellectual natures. For him, the pleasure was to be obtained through things such as: 1. Aristotle believed in God, while Epicurus believed that there might well be gods on Mount Olympus, but they didn’t involve themselves in the lives of mere human beings. Epicurus, believed that pleasure was paramount in life. 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