Principle Doctrines by Epicurus (Part II)

Greetings Friends!

Welcome back to our series — Essays on the Art of Living! Throughout this series, we are sharing audio productions of famous essays. Today’s meditation is not necessarily an essay but is an important work. Here is Part II (Listen to Part I here) of what is known today as Principle Doctrines by the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

Workers in the Snow by Edvard Munch (1913)

The Epicurean Life

Epicurus placed an extremely high value on friendship (or love: philia). A saying with rather a more poetic flair than Epicurus’ custom runs: “Friendship goes dancing round the world, announcing to all of us to wake up to happiness.” Epicurus held that a wise man would feel the torture of a friend no less than his own and would die for a friend rather than betray him, for otherwise, his own life would be confounded. These are powerfully altruistic sentiments for a philosopher who posits as the unique goal in life happiness based on freedom from physical pain and mental anxiety. […]

Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epicurus/

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Principle Doctrines by Epicurus

Here is Part II (Listen to Part I here) of a work known today as Principle Doctrines (A Collection of Short Sayings) by the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

21. He who understands the limits of life knows how easy it is to procure enough to remove the pain of want and make the whole of life complete and perfect. Hence he has no longer any need of things which are not to be won save by labor and conflict.

22. We must take into account as the end all that really exists and all clear evidence of sense to which we refer our opinions; for otherwise everything will be full of uncertainty and confusion.

23. If you fight against all your sensations, you will have no standard to which to refer, and thus no means of judging even those judgments which you pronounce false.

24. If you reject absolutely any single sensation without stopping to discriminate with respect to that which awaits confirmation between matter of opinion and that which is already present, whether in sensation or in feelings or in any immediate perception of the mind, you will throw into confusion even the rest of your sensations by your groundless belief and so you will be rejecting the standard of truth altogether. If in your ideas based upon opinion you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not escape error, as you will be maintaining complete ambiguity whenever it is a case of judging between right and wrong opinion.

25. If you do not on every separate occasion refer each of your actions to the end prescribed by nature, but instead of this in the act of choice or avoidance swerve aside to some other end, your acts will not be consistent with your theories.

26. All such desires as lead to no pain when they remain ungratified are unnecessary, and the longing is easily got rid of, when the thing desired is difficult to procure or when the desires seem likely to produce harm.

27. Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends.