Wednesday, November 18, 2015
First Installment section 12, Epicurus
Epicurus was born on February 4th, 341 B.C. he had four siblings to which he was the second oldest. Epic
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
First Installment section 12, Epicurus
Epicurus was born on February 4th, 341 B.C. he had four siblings to which he was the second oldest. Epicurus’s parents were cleruchs and they were considered to be some of the poorest of the Athenian people. Many of the other residents of Athens thought them to be foreign invaders and looked down at them in disgust. In 322 B.C Epicurus’s family was forced to evacuate the city and this was not long after he was drafted into the Athenian army. Epicurus received a basic education and was exposed to Plato and Pamphilus’s teachings of philosophy. However, he also came in contact with teachings from the Lyceum. When he finally made it back to his family he began to study more teachings of philosophy. He moved to the Island of Rhodes and began to study under Praxiphanes. He then later went on to study the atomic system of Democritus after he started to disagree with the teachings of the Lyceum. In 311 B.C Epicurus ventured out and started to teach his own form of Democritean physics. Epicurus later moved to Mytilene where he developed a circle of friends who would later become the founders of his new school. Once he gathered all of his friends together they traveled to back to Athens where Epicurus bought a house with a garden and this later became the center of his school known as “The Garden”. With his new school started he began to focus on pulling individuals in to teach his new philosophy. This is how Epicureanism was started.