ABSTRACT
It is tempting to portray Epicureanism as the most straightforward, perhaps even simplistic, of the major dogmatic philosophical schools of the Hellenistic age. Starting from an atomic physics, according to which ‘the totality of things is bodies and void’ (Hdt 39 (LS 5A)),1 Epicurus proposes a resolutely empiricist epistemology, secured on the claim that every appearance (and not merely every perception) is true, maintains a materialist psychology and espouses hedonism in ethics. Indeed, it is perhaps not too far-fetched to see in Epicurus’ work an attempt to return to the natural philosophy of the pre-Socratics, and especially that of his atomist predecessor Democritus. However, even if there is some truth in this, the natural philosophy we find in him is much more sophisticated than any produced before the work of Plato and Aristotle. Epicurus certainly eschews dialectic and rejects the central role given to definition in the acquisition of epistêmê, understanding, but he nevertheless builds on the sophisticated empiricism we find in Aristotle. Again, whilst he returns to an earlier tradition of natural philosophy in denying the place accorded to teleological explanation by Plato and Aristotle, unlike his predecessors he is duly aware of the need to meet the challenge posed by those who deny that natural change and the development of natural substances can be properly explained without the use of such explanation. Moreover, whilst Epicurus is at pains to reject natural teleology, he seems not to renounce formal as well as final causes: we find no attack on Aristotle’s contention that one must distinguish a substance from its material constitution. Most importantly, perhaps, Epicurus is concerned to provide the kind of systematic ethical theory which was simply unknown before the Republic and the ethical writings of Aristotle.
