Epicureanism Flashcards
What is the goal of human life?
Happiness, resulting from absence of physical pain and mental disturbance
What are the elementary constituents of nature?
Atoms and empty space
What are the properties of atoms?
- atoms all move at the same velocity
- Collisions of atoms ensure there is direction down (gravity)
- number of kinds of atoms is large but not infinite
- limit on number of combinations of atoms
What are pros and cons of the idea that all atoms move at the same velocity?
- provokes questions as to how atoms can take over each other
- solves the issue of entropy, as if atoms never slow down then the universe can never halt
How do the epicureans rule out sense perception from sense perception?
- if things came into being from what is not, then everything would come into being from everything
- if that which disappears were destroyed into what is not, all things would have been destroyed, since that into which they were dissolved does not exist
- The totality of things has always been as it is now and always will be 2. There exists nothing in addition to the totality which could enter into it and produce a change
How do the epicureans argue by analogy the nature of the invisible?
- What is evident to our senses must be true on the microscopic level as well
- Void must exist, in turn, if bodies are able to move, as they are seen to do
- This motion is counterwitness to the non existence of the void - an indirect argument is required since one cannot perceive empty space
- Since bodies, being ‘full’, offer resistance and void, being empty, offers no resistance, they compliment each other and exhaust all the possibilities
- Hence it is impossible to conceive of anything besides these two principles, apart from from things that are accidents of them (unions of elementary bodies in the void)
How do the epicureans argue for an infinite universe and number of atoms?
- Since what is finite must have an edge, and an edge is conceived in reference to something beyond it.
- But the universe contains everything, so there is nothing outside it by which to conceive an edge
- Hence, it is infinite, and if the all is infinite, so is the void and the number of atoms as well, for otherwise atoms would be too widely dispersed ever to meet
- Therefore, the void and the number of atoms are infinite
Why is the number of kinds of atoms large but not infinite?
As if infinite the shapes would become so large as to be visible, which they aren’t
Why is the number of combinations of atoms limited?
They could create infinite sorts of things
How do the epicureans argue for an unlimited number of cosmos?
- Atoms which are unlimited, are carried to remote distances
- The atoms of the sort from which worlds come into being are not exhausted in the production of a finite number of worlds
- Therefore, there is no obstacle to the unlimited ness of worlds
How to epicureans understand colour and taste?
As secondary property which are explained as epiphenomena of atomic combinations
What are images for the epicureans?
The emission of infinitesimally thin laminas from objects, which maintain the relevant features of the source and directly stimulate the relevant sense organ
How do epicureans understand the soul?
- The soul is a body made up of fine parts distributed through the whole aggregate, resembling breath and heat
- Sense perception is caused by the soul, which is why when the soul departs at death, the body no longer has self perception.
- the soul does not have sense perception after the body’s death as it is scattered and loses its powers
- the part of the human soul that reasons is in the chest
What is the soul’s primary objective?
To maximise pleasure and minimise pain
How do epicureans understand pleasure?
Joy (Khara) is purely the negation of Odín
Happiness (eudaimonia) is a form of pleasure in its own right as it consists of kinetic pleasures of a non necessary kind ( eg not from replenishing itself via food, but from pleasant odours )
