Abstract

This small book presents a unified, sequential examination of a central theme in Epicurean philosophy: the nature of "irrational fears and desires." Their place in a distinctly practical philosophy, whose avowed intentions were the removal of fear and the cultivation of a securely arranged, pleasant, undisturbed life, must be examined. If security and static pleasures are the standards which the Epicurean sage recognizes as attainable in principle, what accounts for their absence from the lives of the masses? The first chapter, Psychology, demonstrates subtly yet clearly the circle trapping the mass of men. They have irrational, limitless desires which express themselves in avarice, ambition, and amor. Men form an image of Hades which magnifies these: "Greek myths concerning punishment in the underworld have most of them in common some perpetual activity doomed forever to frustration." The terror of such prospects is an entirely irrational fear, since death is not on par with natural perils: timor mortis is only syntactically similar to timor ignis. Yet this irrational fear leads men to try to stave off death by "restless and reckless acquisition of wealth and power." Irrational desires, having only simulacra for their objects, cannot be satisfied, thus becoming self-perpetuating. The fear of Hades, itself a projection of irrational fears, likewise cannot be overcome.