Principal Doctrines
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~1,900 words · 9 passages
Cite this work
- APAEpicurus. (n.d.). Principal Doctrines. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/epicurus/principal-doctrines
- MLAEpicurus. "Principal Doctrines." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/epicurus/principal-doctrines.
- ChicagoEpicurus. Principal Doctrines. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/epicurus/principal-doctrines.
What it is about
The Principal Doctrines: forty sentences to be learned by heart.
Context and history
Epicureans memorised them, which is why they survive. The first denies that the gods concern themselves with us; the second, that death affects us. Diogenes Laertius copied them out in full, and that is the only reason we have them.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
1. A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness 2. Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which has no feeling is nothing to us. 3. The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together. 4. Continuous pain does not last long in the body; on the contrary, pain, if extreme, is present a short time, and even that degree of pain which barely outweighs pleasure in the body does not last for many days together. Illnesses of long duration even permit of an excess of pleasure over pain in the body. 5. It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly. Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance, the person is not able to live wisely, though he lives well and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant life. 6. In order to obtain security from other people any means whatever of procuring this was a natural good. 7. Some people have sought to become famous and renowned, thinking that thus they would make themselves secure against their fellow-humans. If, then, the life of such persons really was secure, they attained natural good; if, however, it was insecure, they have not attained the end which by nature's own prompting they originally sought. 8. No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves. 9. If all pleasure had been capable of accumulation, -- if this had gone on not only be recurrences in time, but all over the frame or, at any rate, over the principal parts of human nature, there
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