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Epicurus and the Modern Mind
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12119 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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12 / 1987 |
8,409 Words |
| Author
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Sharon David Rives
Sharon Davis Rives is professor of philosophy at the
University of Texas at El Paso. |
Few people would express surprise or even disagreement upon hearing that the International Epicurean Circle of London declared recently that the Scottish national dish, haggis, is the "most horrible" culinary concoction in existence in the twentieth century. A greater number of people appear perplexed when informed that Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who lends his name to our adjective, lived a life of strict abstention from the delights of the body. In his own day Epicurus and his followers were known as "the water-drinkers," a rather disparaging name for one living in Greece in the third century B.C., when the common drink was not water but wine. Only on occasion did the Epicureans drink wine, and it was watered down in the Greek fashion. Bread and water were Epicurus' daily staples and once in a while "a little potted cheese…for a sumptuous feast," as he once wrote to a friend. As for erotic pleasure, Epicurus had written that "sexual intercourse has never done a man good, and he is lucky if it had not harmed him." Epicurus himself never married but was devoted to his parents and brothers and the close circle of students who came to be his friends. He serenely, even cheerfully, suffered through two weeks of physical agony before his death from renal calculus at the age of seventy-one in 270 B.C. and would roll over in his grave, no doubt, at our praises of "epicurean delights" or our admiration for the "epicure." While Epicurus was alive, his philosophy was subject to the same misinterpretation as today, but at that time his thought was the subject of accusation, not misguided praise.
Epicurus spent his boyhood on the island of Samos, an Athenian colony. In 323 B.C., the year Alexander the Great died and a year before Alexander's great tutor Aristotle died, Epicurus returned to Athens to register as a citizen and
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