Quotulatiousness

July 21, 2018

QotD: Epicurus and Plato

Filed under: Greece, History, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Epicurus had reacted against the Platonic concepts of Reason with a capital R, the Good, the Beautiful, Duty, and other absolute concepts existing in themselves in some supernatural world. For Epicurus, what is moral is what brings pleasures to individuals in a context where there is no social strife. The Epicurean wise man will keep the covenant and not harm others not because he wishes to comply with some moral injunction being imposed from above, but simply because that’s the best way to pursue his happiness and keep his tranquility of mind.

Martin Masse, “The Epicurean roots of some classical liberal and Misesian concepts“, speaking at the Austrian Scholars Conference, Auburn Alabama, 2005-03-18.

Related posts:

  1. QotD: Thomas Jefferson on Epicurus and Plato
  2. QotD: Epicurus on the ethics of pleasure
  3. QotD: Epicurean philosophy
  4. QotD: Plato, Epicurus and Democritus
  5. QotD: Ludwig von Mises and Epicureanism

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

Powered by WordPress