Letters and Principal Doctrines

The main writings of Epicurus to survive complete, preserved because Diogenes Laërtius copied them into his Lives. The Letter to Herodotus summarises his physics: nothing comes from nothing, the universe is made of atoms moving in an infinite void, and we perceive things through thin films that flow from their surfaces. The Letter to Pythocles, whose authorship has been doubted, explains weather and the heavens, allowing several natural explanations so long as the gods are kept out. The Letter to Menoeceus sets out his ethics: the gods are blessed and unconcerned with us, death is nothing to us because where death is we are not, and pleasure is the goal of life. But pleasure means the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the mind, reached by simple living, prudence and friendship, not by luxury. The forty Principal Doctrines condense the system into short maxims, including an account of justice as an agreement neither to harm nor be harmed.

In a few pages it offers a complete philosophy for living without fear of death or the gods, and it corrects the popular image of Epicureanism as indulgence.