Phillip Mitsis

This essay makes three connected claims. First, following the Stoics, Locke assigns a motivational and not merely justificatory role to the law of nature that features prominently in the earlier _Essays_. Second, the hedonism prominent in later editions of the _Essay_ has a justificatory and not merely motivational role, since, like ancient eudaimonists, Locke permits an objective ranking of certain pleasures and pains, and these operate within his theory as constituents of an objectively conceived human good, not merely as motivational sanctions. Third, the characteristic feature of rational agency, as developed in later editions of the _Essay_, is a capacity to evaluate and alter the strength of various pressing occurrent motives, through suspension and reflection, in the light of the rational authority and motivational power of moral law and individual happiness. The upshot is that Locke’s theory is better integrated than some have supposed, while drawing heavily on ancient precedents.

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE), though often despised for his materialism, hedonism, and denial of the immortality of the soul during many periods of history, has at the same time been a source of inspiration to figures as diverse as Vergil, Hobbes, Thomas Jefferson, and Bentham. This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of Epicurus's philosophy and then traces out some of its most important subsequent influences throughout the Western intellectual tradition. Such a detailed and comprehensive study of Epicureanism is especially timely given the tremendous current revival of interest in Epicurus and his rivals, the Stoics. The thirty-one contributions in this volume offer an unmatched resource for all those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicurus' powerful arguments about happiness, death, and the nature of the material world and our place in it. At the same time, his arguments are carefully placed in the context of ancient and subsequent disputes, thus offering readers the opportunity of measuring Epicurean arguments against a wide range of opponents--from Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics, to Hegel and Nietzsche, and finally on to such important contemporary philosophers as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams. The volume offers separate and detailed discussions of two fascinating and ongoing sources of Epicurean arguments, the Herculaneum papyri and the inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda. Our understanding of Epicureanism is continually being enriched by these new sources of evidence and the contributors to this volume have been able to make use of them in presenting the most current understanding of Epicurus's own views. By the same token, the second half of the volume is devoted to the extraordinary influence of Epicurean doctrines, often either neglected or misunderstood, in literature, political thinking, scientific innovation, personal conceptions of freedom and happiness, and in philosophy generally. Taken together, the contributions in this volume offer the most comprehensive and detailed account of Epicurus and Epicureanism available in English.

This study examines various inconsistencies in Epicurus' ethical theory and attempts to trace them to a common source, namely, his claim that eudaimonia is entirely up to us and invulnerable to outside intrusions. The first chapter discusses his hedonism and shows the effect of this claim on his conception of pleasure. In attempting to equate ataraxia, a pleasant state entirely up to us, with eudaimonia, Epicurus fails to capture central intuitions which locate happiness in states and activities not always in our own control. The second chapter shows how this claim underlies his theory of responsibility and describes his attempt to accommodate it in the framework of his physical theories. Various indeterminist theories of action and character needlessly have been attributed to Epicurus. We need to ascribe indeterminism to his theory only at the microscopic level of explanation, since he thinks that macroscopic explanations are not strictly reducible to explanations at the micro-level. ;Two subsequent chapters describe Epicurus' attempt to account for other-regarding features of morality. Epicurus endorses a Socratic view of the virtues. He argues that all the virtues are species of knowledge and infallibly secure ataraxia. Surprisingly, he attempts to give a contractual defense of justice. It seems, however, that an agent has reasons for being just which are independent of the contract. Moreover, if eudaimonia is entirely up to us and invulnerable to outside interference, there would be few compelling reasons for contracting with others. Similar difficulties arise in his account of friendship. Epicurus concedes that friendship is choiceworthy for itself regardless of instrumental benefit. He also argues that friendship requires valuing others for their own sakes. This is inconsistent with the claims of his hedonism. If happiness is entirely up to us and friendship is an external good not always in our control, Epicurus should weaken his commitment to friendship. By refusing to do so, he is forced into an inconsistency. ;These inconsistencies in Epicurus' thought are of historical interest, in that we see a hedonist attempting to return to Socratic conceptions of happiness and rational agency. Of philosophical interest is Epicurus' inability to give a plausible account of happiness without valuing states and activities not entirely subject to our own control

In 1976, Fred Miller published a brief, but highly original, paper entitled “Epicurus on the Art of Dying.” This was shortly after Thomas Nagel’s well-known 1970 paper which attempted to counter Epicurus’s claim that death does us no harm, and somewhat before ancient philosophers and their philosophical colleagues started turning Epicurus’s death arguments into a major growth industry. I argue that if Epicurean scholars had taken Miller’s arguments to heart it would have saved them going down a lot of blind alleys in what is now the almost 50 years since the paper appeared. Using elements taken from his arguments, I elaborate them in the light of subsequent scholarship in order to show why a series of leading contemporary interpretations of Epicurean claims about death are deeply inadequate and why Epicurus’s view is not just a clever puzzle, but, as Miller argued, a position with considerable, even attractive, argumentative resources.

Discusses the symmetry argument in Lucretius and defends the Epicurean claim against objections by Nagel and Parfit. Concludes that while the argument is vulnerable to the objection (found in Nabokov) that treating our past and future non-existence symmetrically leaves open the possiblity of increasing our anxieties rather than eliminating them, it remains rational, on Epicurean grounds, not do to so. In the context of Lucretius's overall argument in DRN 3, it bolsters the claim that we do not have a bias toward the future when we talk about states we do not experience.

This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of Epicurus's philosophy and then traces out some of its most important subsequent influences throughout the Western intellectual tradition. Such a detailed and comprehensive study of Epicureanism is especially timely given the tremendous current revival of interest in Epicurus and his rivals, the Stoics. The thirty-one contributions in this volume offer an unmatched resource for all those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicurus' powerful arguments about happiness, death, and the nature of the material world and our place in it. At the same time, his arguments are carefully placed in the context of ancient and subsequent disputes, thus offering readers the opportunity of measuring Epicurean arguments against a wide range of opponents--from Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics, to Hegel and Nietzsche, and finally on to such important contemporary philosophers as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams