Epicurus – מילון אנגלי-אנגלי
Epicurus
n.
(341-270 B.C.) ancient Greek philosopher and founder of Epicureanism
Epicurus
Epicurus ( or ; , "ally, comrade"; 341–270 BC) was an
ancient Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called
Epicureanism. Only a few fragments and letters of Epicurus's 300 written works remain. Much of what is known about Epicurean philosophy derives from later followers and commentators.
Epicurus
Noun
1. Greek philosopher who believed that the world is a random combination of atoms and that pleasure is the highest good (341-270 BC)
(hypernym) philosopher
Epicurean Philosophy
Epicurean Philosophy School founded by Epicurus (b. 341 BC), an atomist philosopher popularly associated with later travesties of his teachings. His actual teachings and way of living prove that his chief aim and good was happiness rather than pleasure; for he taught and practiced abstemiousness of living. In this he reacted to the travestied forms of Platonism which existed in his time, moving away from a barren idealism towards a concrete practicality, trying to substitute realities for empty abstractions, both in philosophy and ethics. For this reason he lays the chief stress on ethics, to the comparative neglect of logic and philosophy.
In philosophy he taught atoms and a void as the cosmic fundamentals; but his atoms were not the material particles of later European science, but the living monads or intelligent souls of the older Atomists. He did not attempt to represent the universe under the form of physical matter, but merely insisted upon the substantial nature of all being and life in protest against the impractical idealism which had reduced significant values to unrealities.
Again, Epicurus based everything on sensation in order to bring people back to actual experience, as opposed to vain outlooking speculation, as a solid foundation for an ethic. He was not an atheist in the modern sense, for he explicitly says that there are gods, but not the gods of the anthropomorphic religionists. In the same way, he did not teach a selfish individualism, but that the way to final freedom is within oneself; and when he depreciates the State and sundry social or political theories, he was merely opposing the futile abstractions then prevalent under these names.
