Ancient Greek Philosopher, Founder of the Epicurean School
Epicurus (341–270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who founded the "Garden" school in Athens, holding that the pursuit of "pleasure" is the highest end of life — but the "pleasure" he meant was not indulgent sensual gratification, but the state of tranquility of mind (ataraxia) attained through moderating desire and freeing oneself from pain and fear (above all the fear of death and of divine punishment). He inherited and developed Democritus’s atomism, holding that all things are composed of atoms moving in the void, the soul itself being a material existence composed of fine atoms, so that at death the atoms disperse and sensation ceases with them, and therefore "death is nothing to us" — a materialist view of death meant to fundamentally dissolve people’s irrational fear of it, one of the rare systems in ancient philosophy that settles the meaning of life from a thoroughly physicalist stance.
Epicurus offered a far-reaching argument: "When we exist, death is not yet present; when death is present, we no longer exist. Therefore death is nothing to the living or to the dead." He sought by this logic to dissolve the fear of death entirely, and the argument is still a classic repeatedly cited and tested in philosophical discussion of whether "death is a bad thing."
Epicurus bought a garden outside Athens as a place of teaching, admitting members of every class, women and slaves included, to take part equally in philosophical discussion — a fairly rare move in the Athenian society of the time, reflecting too that the philosophical life he advocated leaned more toward the spiritual practice of friendship and a simple community than toward mere speculation.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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