User:Jaredscribe/Epicurean folly

The worldview of materialist atomism is usually traced to Democritus, and although refuted by Aristotle, continued under Epicurus as a basis for hedonist ethics.

Bacon's scientism is based on this worldview. Thomas Hobbes? Through them, utilitarianism of Mill and Bentham, Darwinism and Social Darwinism, Freudian theory. Consumer capitalism and Marxist historic materialism also share these similar premises, and differ only in their justice systems and eschatologies. Buddhism. As the materialist, hedonist, atheist, and ornery agnostic worldviews tend to evolve and merge into each other, this essay uses the term Epicurean broadly to refer to all these streams of thought that deny divine or natural justice, or remain indifferent to universal natural law, moral law, and human courts of justice.

The epistemic errors arise from the fundamentally inadequate account of causality with a string of relationships that relies ultimately on randomness and chance; whereas we observe that nature always acts for a purpose. The ethical error consists in abandoning the cultivation of virtue as a goal, and seeking merely escape from suffering and attainment of pleasure — whether defined as the indulgence of desire or as its extinction. Thus the Epicurean fails to cultivate and refine his soul, never achieves eudaimonia, and remains on the hedonic treadmill with diminishing returns, seeking in death and in self-anhilation the liberation that he is unable to find in life.

Intellectual History of the Error and its Refutations

In Ancient Greece

Most of what we know about Democritus's atomist theory comes from Arisotle's refutations of it. However, the latter's natural philosophy was not widely known or taught in the ancient world until the scholastic movement of 12th century, and pyhronnic skepticism became dominant in the middle Academy alongside Platonism, and Epicurus rejected the latter.

Epicurus's materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention, but (it seems that he was ignorant of natural philosophy and may have never read Aristotle). Following the Cyrenaic philosopher Aristippus, Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest, sustainable pleasure in the form of a state of ataraxia (tranquility and freedom from fear) and aponia (the absence of bodily pain) through knowledge of the workings of the world and limiting desires. Correspondingly, Epicurus and his followers generally withdrew from politics because it could lead to frustrations and ambitions. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism. Later its main opponent became Stoicism, which held that virtue was not only necessary for happiness, as in Aristotle's ethics, but sufficient as well.

De rerum natura by Lucretius to present in one unified work the core arguments and theories of Epicureanism. Many of the scrolls unearthed at the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum are Epicurean texts. At least some are thought to have belonged to the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus. Epicurus also had a wealthy 2nd c. AD disciple, Diogenes of Oenoanda, who had a portico wall inscribed with tenets of the philosophy erected.

By the late 3rd century AD Epicureanism all but died out, being opposed by other philosophies (mainly Neoplatonism) that were now in the ascendant, which became the basis of imperial christianity under Augustine's use of it in "the City of God". The early Christian writer Lactantius criticizes Epicurus at several points throughout his Divine Institutes. In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, the Epicureans are depicted as heretics suffering in the sixth circle of hell.

Interest in Epicureanism was resurrected in the Age of Enlightenment and continues in the modern era.

In Asia and Beyond

The word "Apikorsim" is used in the Talmud to refer generically to materialist hedonists, those who deny the reality of moral law or divine justice.

In Modern Scientism and Academia

Bacon, Hobbes, Darwin Fogelin says - philosophy has not advanced beyond pyhronnic skepticism. Modern Academia is an compromise between that and neo-platonism, IMHO. They agree on nothing except mutual shared indifferent contempt for Aristotle. Since they can't refute his common sense or his relentless analysis, the agree to simply ignore him.

In Psychology

Freudian Behaviorist Neurochemical Mind-Fixers

The Well-Intentioned Cruelty of Hedonism

Opinion section.