The Philosophy of Serenity. How Epicurean Teaching Helps to Live in the Modern World

• It will explain why the philosophy of Epicureanism has been misunderstood for centuries.

• It will show how understanding the world around us helps to eliminate worries and fears.

• It will convince that sometimes a pot of cheese is enough for happiness.

History has not been kind to the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus: few thinkers have been so misinterpreted by their descendants. For many centuries, Epicureans have been called gluttons, hedonists, people who love to live for their pleasure – all because the philosopher considered pleasure to be the highest good in life. But what did pleasure truly mean for Epicurus, who urged satisfaction with little and showed his students the path to spiritual tranquility? The book by English philosopher John Sellars truthfully and simply tells about the tetrapharmakos – Epicurean teaching that heals from worries and fears and is based on atomic theory.

Quotes

"One way to learn to appreciate pleasures is not to indulge in them, even when the opportunity arises. It turns out that a certain degree of asceticism does not harm life. This does not mean that we should always deny ourselves pleasures. On the contrary, we should moderate our consumption to truly appreciate excesses when they occur. The problem is not in the pleasures themselves but in the fact that they are taken for granted."

 "Understanding that the greatest joys in life are available to us entirely free through friends only strengthens our independence and freedom. When speaking of the pleasures brought by friendship, Epicurus even abandoned his restrained manner of speech and in a moment of special elevation wrote: 'Friendship dances around the universe, declaring to us all to awaken to glorify a happy life.' Of all the things that make for a happy life, he considered friendship the most important."

"God does not instill fear,

death does not instill dread,

good is easily attainable,

evil is easily endured."

 "Epicurus clearly considered meteorology to be an especially important subject, believing that it helps to approach a happy life. The science of celestial phenomena serves no other purpose than the tranquility of the spirit, he wrote. If we aspire to this, we need to understand what things really are, not to rely on assumptions or prejudices."

 "The main idea of this teaching is that many of our fears and worries stem from incomplete or false representations of how the world is organized. By studying nature, one understands that everything happening in the universe results from ordinary physical processes. There are no tragedies, no misfortunes, no punishments; there is only the movement of impassive matter, which in itself poses nothing terrifying."