Introduction

This chapter starts with the interpretation of the relevant papyrus fragments, telling the story of Epicurus' conception of self-awareness, developed through one's internal affections. For Epicurus, self-awareness was a process that started at the cradle and continued through one's whole life. In the Letter to Menoeceus, an epitome of his ethics, he took such a developed, desiring agent for granted, and he concentrated, in arguing for his normative theory, on the classification of human desires. For Epicurus the only direct and objective ground for the evaluation of one's bodily and mental states was the person's pleasurable and painful bodily and mental affections. It is an important aspect of the Epicurean self that this 'I' or rather 'my self' has to be identical over time for the calculus to work. Epicurean methodology of ataraxia, which was a reflective conceptualization of one's desires. The chapter provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.