How to Be an Epicurean summary

The ancient Epicureans believed that, long ago, atoms happened to form many animals – far more than exist today. But only some survived: the ones that had the most useful features, like speed or intelligence. In other words, there was no divine force behind the creation of the natural world around us – a belief that was widely ridiculed for centuries.

Charles Darwin’s work was ridiculed, too, back in the nineteenth century. In fact, his theory of natural selection was frequently compared to the doctrines of Lucretius. Yet these days Darwin’s ideas are widely accepted, and Lucretius’s work sounds remarkably like a precursor to it.

What should you do with your life? For Epicurus, this question is about choice and avoidance. Put simply, we should choose pleasure and avoid pain. Our desire to do that is natural – and nature, for Epicurus, is the most important force of all.

Too much pleasure can end up having the opposite effect, though – just think of a hangover. That’s why Epicurus’s advice is to act prudently – with an awareness of how much pleasure and pain your actions will cause in the long term, as well as right now. And that gets pretty complicated.

The Epicureans’ ancient rivals, the Stoics, had some dark views about passion – they likened it to a disease. But for an Epicurean, passion should be embraced. And besides, even if passion is like a disease, aren’t diseases part of nature? Surely they’re inevitable from time to time.

It’s true that romantic love comes with its share of problems. Both Epicurus and the especially passionate Lucretius recognized that love causes pain as well as pleasure. Just think of how agonizing it can be to feel uncertainty about whether someone loves you back – or jealousy about them loving someone else!

Rocks are heavy. Fire is hot. Water is liquid. These are all characteristics we’d normally ascribe to the things in question. Lucretius called them properties – rocks have the property of heaviness, he’d say. Properties are natural; they’re part of a thing’s essential nature – the set of characteristics that make it what it is.

But what about a person being enslaved or free? Poor or rich? Lucretius didn’t think of these in the same way. He called them accidents – things that might change, without affecting something’s essential nature.

One consequence of Epicurean Atomism is that we can never see what’s truly going on – atoms are simply too small. All we can see is the blur that all those millions of tiny particles make in aggregate after they’ve come together to form larger things.

What’s more, we’re all in possession of our own set of senses, plus our unique past experiences. So we all see slightly different things when we look at the world.

Take an empirical approach toward religious beliefs, and they start to look unlikely. The author even suggests we have a moral responsibility to disagree with the claim that there’s a god or gods watching over us all, sorting everything out.

Not all aspects of religion are at odds with Epicurean values, though. Some religious communities do charity work, and many religious teachings encourage good morals. However, there’s a superstitious aspect to religion that doesn’t fit with the rational Epicurean perspective.