Pleiade Volume on Epicureans: Pleasure as Ethical Foundation

A new volume in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade series, 'Les Épicuriens: une éthique du plaisir', presents foundational texts of Epicurean philosophy. Edited with an introduction by Jackie Pigeaud, it includes for the first time in French a translation of fragments from Epicurus's 'On Nature' and a new translation of Lucretius's 'De Rerum Natura'. The volume features Diogenes Laërtius's account of Epicurus's life and teachings, along with the 'Tetrapharmakos'—the four-part remedy against fear of the gods and death. Epicurus's ethics center on pleasure as a stable, rational goal, achieved through a hierarchy of desires: natural and necessary, natural but not necessary, and groundless. The physics of atomism, including the 'clinamen' (swerve), underpins human free will. The gods, composed of fine atoms, dwell in the intermundia and do not intervene in human affairs. Pleasure, defined as absence of pain (aponia) and tranquility (ataraxia), allows humans to attain a state akin to divine blessedness. The volume argues for the urgency of rereading these critiques of superstition, exemplified by Diogenes of Oenoanda's inscription mocking fear of death.