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Epicurus

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On the Coordinates: 3.5 Value Theory · 6.1 Philosophy of Religion · 6.20 Philosophy of Death

Ἐπίκουρος

Also known as Epikouros

341 – 270 BCE · Samos, Mytilene, Lampsacus, Athens

Traditions: Greek & Roman

Schools: Epicureanism

In brief

Epicurus (341–270 BCE) was a Greek philosopher who founded a school in Athens known as the Garden. He held that everything is made of tiny indivisible bodies, atoms, moving through empty space, and that the soul is made of atoms too and does not survive death. He built an ethics on this picture. Pleasure is the only thing good in itself, but the best pleasure is a calm state: no pain in the body and no disturbance in the mind. Most fear, he argued, comes from false beliefs about the gods and about death, and philosophy is the cure. His school lasted for centuries and returned to European thought in the early modern period.

In depth Last reviewed

Connections

Places
Athens taught
Tradition
Greek & RomanEpicureanism
Influences
6 sourced relationships
Conversations
From the Book corner: Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, and the rule that nothing comes from nothing

Life

Epicurus was born in 341 BCE, seven years after Plato’s death. His parents were Neocles and Chaerestrata, and he was an Athenian citizen, but he grew up on the island of Samos, where Athenians had been given land. He came to Athens at eighteen, in 323 BCE. After the death of Alexander the Great that year, the Athenians were expelled from Samos, and Epicurus joined his father at Colophon on the coast of Asia Minor. There he studied with Nausiphanes, a follower of the atomist Democritus. About ten years later he began to teach and gather followers, first at Mytilene on Lesbos and then at Lampsacus. In 307/306 BCE he returned to Athens and bought a property whose garden gave the school its name. He lived and taught there for the rest of his life. He died in 270 BCE, aged about seventy; the IEP says the cause was kidney stones. His will provided for the children of friends and named a successor to lead the school. Opponents spread slanders about him, but Diogenes Laertius, our main ancient biographer, defends him as a man of extraordinarily humane character. Almost all of his many writings are lost. What survives comes mainly from Book 10 of Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Philosophers, from charred papyri found at Herculaneum, and from later followers and critics.

Problems

  • What the world is ultimately made of
  • Whether the senses can be trusted as a guide to truth
  • What a good human life consists in
  • Whether death is something to fear
  • Whether the gods care about human affairs
  • Where justice comes from

Core ideas

Atoms, void and the swerve

Epicurus took over from Democritus the view that there are only two basic things: atoms (from the Greek for ‘uncuttable’) and void, or empty space. Ordinary objects, from stones to human minds, are temporary clusters of atoms. The universe is unlimited, with infinitely many atoms, though only a limited number of atomic shapes. He held that atoms have weight, so that they tend to move downward; ancient reports present this as a change from Democritus, though the evidence on Democritus is mixed. He also added a tiny, random sideways movement, the ‘swerve’. Our evidence for it comes mainly from Lucretius and Cicero. The swerve explains how atoms first collide, and seems meant to leave room for actions not fixed in advance by earlier atomic motions. Critics, ancient and modern, ask how a random jolt could make an action free rather than merely unpredictable.

Knowledge from the senses

Epicurus was an empiricist: he held that knowledge rests on experience, and he argued against the sceptics, who doubted that we can know anything. His lost work the Canon (a ‘measuring rule’) named three tests of truth: sensations; preconceptions, which are basic concepts built up from repeated experience; and feelings of pleasure and pain. Sensation itself, he held, cannot be wrong, because it adds no opinion. Error comes later, when the mind draws a bad inference. If a square tower looks round from far away, the image really is round; the mistake is to believe the tower is. Claims about things we cannot see, such as atoms, are tested by whether experience contradicts them. Critics ask whether calling every sensation true just moves the problem of error somewhere else.

Pleasure as the absence of pain

For Epicurus, pleasure is the only thing good in itself, and he thought each person aims at their own pleasure. But he did not praise feasting or luxury. He distinguished ‘moving’ pleasures, which come from satisfying a lack, as when a thirsty person drinks, from ‘static’ pleasure, the settled state of having no unmet need. The static kind is the best. The goal of life is freedom from bodily pain and from mental disturbance (ataraxia, ‘tranquillity’). To reach it, he sorted desires into three groups: natural and necessary (food, shelter), natural but not necessary (fine food), and empty (wealth, fame). Satisfy the first, enjoy the second when they come, and drop the third. The Cyrenaics and Cicero objected that a state without pain is neutral, not pleasant at all.

Death is nothing to us

Because the soul is made of fine atoms that scatter when the body dies, Epicurus held that death is simply the end of the person. There is no afterlife and so no punishment to fear. In the Letter to Menoeceus he argues that death is ‘nothing to us’: while we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, we no longer exist. So death is bad neither for the living nor for the dead. Fear of death is therefore an empty fear, and removing it removes a major source of anxiety. A related ‘symmetry’ argument, developed by Lucretius, says we do not regret the time before we were born, so we should not dread the time after we die. Critics reply that death can still be bad because it deprives us of goods we would otherwise have had.

Gods who do not interfere

Epicurus did not deny that gods exist. He held that we know of them through images that reach our minds, and that they are perfectly happy beings. A perfectly happy being has no troubles, so the gods neither reward nor punish humans and do not run the world. Prayer, on his view, is not asking for favours but taking in the image of divine calm as a model for one’s own life. He even encouraged taking part in ordinary religious festivals. This view removes the fear of divine anger. The IEP counts him among the earliest philosophers known to have raised the problem of evil: why there is suffering if the gods are both good and powerful. Ancient critics called his theology atheism in disguise, and modern scholars still argue about whether his gods are real beings or ideals constructed by the mind.

Justice and friendship

Epicurus gave a story of how society began. Humans at first lived alone, then formed families, learned to use fire, developed language, and made agreements for mutual safety. Justice, he said, is nothing in itself: it is an agreement among people neither to harm nor to be harmed. A law is just only so long as it is useful to those who share it. A wise person keeps such agreements because breaking them brings the fear of being caught, which destroys tranquillity. Friendship he valued very highly, as one of the greatest sources of pleasure and security, and he held that a wise person would die for a friend rather than betray him. The open question, already debated among later Epicureans, is whether friendship valued for its usefulness can become valued for its own sake.

Works

  • On Nature (Peri phuseos) date uncertainHis main work, a lecture series in 37 papyrus rolls; parts survive in charred papyri from a villa library at Herculaneum.
  • Canon date uncertainHis main work on knowledge, setting out the tests of truth; lost, and known only from later reports.
  • Letter to Herodotus date uncertainA summary of his physics: atoms, void, the soul and perception. Preserved in Diogenes Laertius, Book 10.
  • Letter to Pythocles date uncertainOn astronomy and weather, offering several possible natural causes for each event. Some scholars doubt it is by Epicurus; the SEP judges the attribution adequately supported.
  • Letter to Menoeceus date uncertainA short summary of his ethics, including the argument that death is nothing to us. Preserved in Diogenes Laertius.
  • Principal Doctrines (Kuriai Doxai) date uncertainForty short maxims meant to be memorised, preserved in Diogenes Laertius.
  • Vatican Sayings collection of uncertain dateA further collection of maxims, partly overlapping the Principal Doctrines.

Influences and relationships

6 sourced relationships. Open one to read why, and the source.

Shaped or answered Epicurus 3

Epicurus shaped or answered 3

  • CriticisedAristotle384 – 322 BCE

    He reworked atomism in answer to Aristotle’s objections to indivisible magnitudes, and rejected Aristotle’s view that nature acts for ends, preferring mechanical explanations.

    Source: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Epicurus

    Aristotle’s relationships

  • InfluencedLucretiusc. 99 – 55 BCE

    Lucretius’s Latin poem On the Nature of Things sets out Epicurus’s physics and psychology in six books; the SEP describes it as faithful to Epicurean doctrine, with some simplifications.

    Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Epicurus

    Lucretius’s relationships

  • InfluencedPierre Gassendino profile yet

    In the seventeenth century Gassendi made reviving Epicurus his largest project, translating Diogenes Laertius’s Book 10 with a commentary (1649) and adapting Epicurean atomism and ethics to Christian doctrine, while rejecting the swerve.

    Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · stated on the profile of Epicurus

Reception

The Garden outlived its founder by centuries. Later Epicureans, including Philodemus, whose library survived in charred rolls at Herculaneum, and Diogenes of Oenoanda, who had Epicurean teachings carved on a wall in Asia Minor, kept the doctrine alive. In Rome, Lucretius turned it into poetry, while Cicero and Plutarch attacked it, and Epicureanism competed with Stoicism for followers. It declined with the rise of Christianity, and ‘Epicurean’ came to mean a mere pleasure-seeker. Lucretius’s poem was rediscovered in 1417, and Diogenes Laertius was translated into Latin. Epicurean ideas then played a part in the scientific revolution and in early modern social contract theories, partly through Gassendi’s Christianised atomism. His argument that death is nothing to us is still debated in philosophy of death today.

Disputed interpretations

What does the swerve do?

The swerve is reported mainly by Lucretius and Cicero, not in Epicurus’s surviving letters. Scholars disagree on how it works and whether it was meant to explain free action, or only how atoms first collide. Some think a swerve happens in each free choice; others think it only breaks the chain of fixed causes in a general way.

Are Epicurus’s gods real?

Epicurus says the gods exist and are blessed. But ancient critics thought this was atheism in disguise, and some modern scholars take the gods to be ideals that our minds construct, while others take them to be real beings. The SEP points to Konstan and Sedley for contrasting readings. The question is still open.

Is the absence of pain really a pleasure?

Epicurus held that the calm state of having no pain or disturbance is the highest pleasure. The Cyrenaics, a rival school of hedonists, and later Cicero replied that such a state is neutral, neither pleasant nor painful. How exactly Epicurus distinguished moving from static pleasure is still discussed.

Primary texts

Sources

Scholarly sources and reference works, free to read online.

Guides

In the Book corner

  • Letters and Principal Doctrines late 4th–early 3rd century BCE · Beginner
    The main writings of Epicurus to survive complete, preserved because Diogenes Laërtius copied them into his Lives. The Letter to Herodotus summarises…

In the conversation

On the Atlas

  • Athens taught here, 307–270 BCE

See on the Atlas Who else was alive then?

Cite this page

Written and kept up to date by the Coordinates of Thought editors. Each statement was checked against the sources listed above before publishing; this page is not peer-reviewed. Last updated 27 October 2026. How to cite this site.

APA (7th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. (2026, October 27). Epicurus. Coordinates of Thought. Retrieved [date accessed], from https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/epicurus/

MLA (9th edition)

“Epicurus.” Coordinates of Thought, 27 Oct. 2026, coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/epicurus/. Accessed [date accessed].

Chicago (17th edition)

Coordinates of Thought Editors. “Epicurus.” Coordinates of Thought. Last modified October 27, 2026. https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/epicurus/.

BibTeX

@misc{cot-epicurus-2026,
  author       = {{Coordinates of Thought Editors}},
  title        = {Epicurus},
  howpublished = {Coordinates of Thought},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = oct,
  url          = {https://coordinatesofthought.com/thinker/epicurus/},
  note         = {Last updated 27 October 2026}
}

RIS

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Where next

  1. On the Atlas · where they taughtAthensSee the place, century by century, and who else was there.
  2. In the conversationFrom the Book corner: Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, and the rule that nothing comes from nothing

Tradition: Greek & Roman philosophyThinkers A–Z