05/23/07
Erik Anderson, the man behind Epicurus.info (you didn't think it was Epicurus himself, did you? — he's dead), has started a Wiki about Epicureanism. I stopped by today, and went to the epitome of Epicureanism, the Tetrapharmikon:
Don't fear god,
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get, and
What is terrible is easy to endure.
I'm new to the site, so I hesitate to polytheize (nice word, huh?) the translation. The fourfold cure, in my memory, goes like this:
Do not fear the gods;
Do not fear death;
Good things are easy to get;
Suffering, easy to endure.
My take on Epicureanism can be seen by my renovation of the cure:
There are no fearsome deities;
Death is not worth fearing, either, though death is real cessation and not mere illusion;
Do not fear boredom, or leap to distraction, for there are always important things to learn, beautiful things to experience, and valuable acts to perform;
To fear suffering is to scuttle the best salve to pain before the pain arrives.
Of course, there's a fifth fear that Epicurus himself fell for: the fear of disappointment, the fear of failure. This led him to overreact, to flee from some complexities that are best neither fought nor flown from.
That, in fact, is my main response to Epicureanism: the four fears must be fought, but so also must this fifth fear. The simple life is not the whole of the philosophical life. Some complexities are worth striving for. Since all things fail in the end, and all things die or come to destruction, it does not therefore follow that all things must be avoided. Quietism is not the answer. Even living inconspicuously may not be the answer (after all, Epicurus did not quite manage it). The answer is cautious engagement, and sometimes confident resistance.
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