Epicurus was an Athenian philosopher who based his philosophy on perception, natural science, the liberation of the fear of gods and death, and the pleasure that comes from the absence of these anxieties.
Epicurus was an Athenian citizen but grew up on the island of Samos with his parents, Neocles and Chairestrate. When Alexander the Great died, and the Athenians were expelled from Samos, he joined his father in Colophon on the Asiatic Coast, where he studied under Nausiphanes of Teos, where he was influenced by Democritus’ theory atomism and his concept “undisturbedness” as a fundamental goal in life. It was also in Colophon where Epicurus gathered students and returned to Athens and later developed his philosophy. According to Apollodorus, …show more content…
Epicurus believed that the universe’s constituent elements were the atoms, indivisible and indestructible bodily substances, and the void which was the impalpable area in which the atoms move. Furthermore, Epicurus reasons that there are limitless atoms and limitless void; however, there are limited, although incomprehensible, varieties of shapes of these atoms. (The Essential Epicurus: Letter to Herodotus, pgs 21-22) This inquiry led to the idea that atoms do not change; they are permanent, everlasting and possess their own mass and configurations. Even those substances that form compounds, he claims, change their configurations by loss of matter, but still hold an inherent shape (ibid. Pg27). Epicurus’ inquiries on the atomic theory closely resembles that of Democritus’, who claimed that atoms possess no qualities and that compounds are thus conventional; although Epicurus agrees that all atoms possess no qualities, he opposes Democritus’ posit of the convention of compounds and instead claims that varieties of qualities emerge when the characterless atoms form compounds.(The polemic of Plutarch, Pg 71) … Moreover, he dismisses Democritus’ idea of the possibility of every size of an atom because that would introduce the possibility of the existence of large atoms, which would be visible to the naked eye, thus contradicting the proposal of the invisible nature of the atoms (Letter of Herodotus. Pg
Epicurus was an Athenian citizen but grew up on the island of Samos with his parents, Neocles and Chairestrate. When Alexander the Great died, and the Athenians were expelled from Samos, he joined his father in Colophon on the Asiatic Coast, where he studied under Nausiphanes of Teos, where he was influenced by Democritus’ theory atomism and his concept “undisturbedness” as a fundamental goal in life. It was also in Colophon where Epicurus gathered students and returned to Athens and later developed his philosophy. According to Apollodorus, …show more content…
Epicurus believed that the universe’s constituent elements were the atoms, indivisible and indestructible bodily substances, and the void which was the impalpable area in which the atoms move. Furthermore, Epicurus reasons that there are limitless atoms and limitless void; however, there are limited, although incomprehensible, varieties of shapes of these atoms. (The Essential Epicurus: Letter to Herodotus, pgs 21-22) This inquiry led to the idea that atoms do not change; they are permanent, everlasting and possess their own mass and configurations. Even those substances that form compounds, he claims, change their configurations by loss of matter, but still hold an inherent shape (ibid. Pg27). Epicurus’ inquiries on the atomic theory closely resembles that of Democritus’, who claimed that atoms possess no qualities and that compounds are thus conventional; although Epicurus agrees that all atoms possess no qualities, he opposes Democritus’ posit of the convention of compounds and instead claims that varieties of qualities emerge when the characterless atoms form compounds.(The polemic of Plutarch, Pg 71) … Moreover, he dismisses Democritus’ idea of the possibility of every size of an atom because that would introduce the possibility of the existence of large atoms, which would be visible to the naked eye, thus contradicting the proposal of the invisible nature of the atoms (Letter of Herodotus. Pg