Epicurus vs the Stoics
Atomist hedonism against providential cosmopolitanism
Venue: Epicurus's school, the Garden (founded c. 307 BC); the Stoa Poikile in Athens (Zeno of Citium c. 300 BC) and successor Stoic schools through Marcus Aurelius (d. 180 AD).
The two great Hellenistic schools, in sustained opposition for half a millennium.
Epicureanism and Stoicism were the dominant philosophical schools of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, in sustained mutual opposition. Epicureans: reality is atoms and void; gods exist but are remote and uninvolved with human affairs; the chief good is *ataraxia* (untroubled tranquillity), achieved by satisfying natural and necessary desires while avoiding unnecessary ones. Stoics: reality is the rational divine fire (logos) permeating all things; everything happens by providential necessity; the chief good is virtue, the harmonious life according to nature, with indifference to externals (Stoic apatheia) and active engagement in the cosmopolitan order. The schools disagreed on physics (atomism vs continuum), theology (remote gods vs providential immanent divinity), ethics (pleasure-tranquillity vs virtue), and politics (withdrawal vs civic engagement). The opposition is the central one in ancient Hellenistic philosophy after Plato and Aristotle.
Historical Context
Both schools survived into the Roman imperial period; Epicureanism faded by late antiquity, Stoicism informed early Christian moral theology and survived as a tradition. Lucretius's *De Rerum Natura* is the great Epicurean Latin text; Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius are the great Roman Stoics.
Parties
The universe is atoms and void; the gods exist but are remote and uninvolved; the chief good is *ataraxia*, achieved by satisfying natural and necessary desires while avoiding the unnecessary ones produced by social convention.
Key arguments
- Atomism: all that exists is atoms in motion through void (following Democritus, with the addition of the *clinamen* or atomic swerve to allow for chance and free will).
- Theology: gods exist but are remote and have nothing to do with human affairs; fear of divine punishment is unfounded.
- Death: "death is nothing to us" — when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not. Fear of death is irrational.
- Ethics: pleasure is the good; but the highest pleasure is *ataraxia*, the cessation of pain and disturbance, not the indulgence of unnecessary desire.
Allied schools
Reality is the rational divine logos pervading all things; everything happens providentially according to the cosmic order; the chief good is virtue (living according to nature and reason); externals are indifferent; the wise person is a citizen of the cosmos.
Key arguments
- Providence: nothing happens by chance; everything is woven into a rational cosmic order, even apparent evils have their place.
- Virtue is the only true good; everything else (health, wealth, reputation, even life) is preferred or dispreferred but morally indifferent.
- Cosmopolitanism: all rational beings are citizens of a single cosmic city; we owe equal regard to all.
- Cosmic conflagration (ekpyrosis): the universe periodically returns to its primal fiery state and renews; cyclical time, eternal recurrence of the same.
Allied schools
Dimensions Engaged
Matter
Matter · Ontological Status: atomistic-mechanical (Epicurus) or pneumatic-providential (Stoics)?
Observer
Observer · Agency: tranquil withdrawal (Epicurus) or active virtuous engagement in the cosmic order (Stoics)?
Time
Time · Direction: linear-finite individual lives ending in nothing (Epicurus) or cyclical cosmic recurrence (Stoics)?
Verdict in retrospect
Stoicism's providential ethics survived in (and shaped) early Christian moral theology, and Stoic-style philosophy of life has had several modern revivals (16th-c. neostoicism, modern "Stoicism" self-help). Epicureanism, briefly revived in the early modern period (Gassendi, modern Epicurean historiography), persists as an undercurrent of naturalist-empiricist thought. Both philosophical-ways-of-life have outlived most of their specific physics; the broader question — engaged virtue or withdrawn tranquillity — remains live.
Related Debates
Sharing parties or aligned schools.
Related Experiments
Experiments that share dimensions and/or aligned schools with this debate.
Other Personas Aligned With This Debate
Ranked by declared-influence weight in the schools either party is allied with. The named parties themselves are excluded — they're already listed above.
Works Most Aligned With This Debate
Ranked by declared-influence weight in the schools either party is allied with.
Related Films
Films engaging the same dimensions as this debate.
Related Contemporary Dilemmas
Dilemmas that engage the same dimensions as this debate.
Further reading
- Long & Sedley, *The Hellenistic Philosophers*, 2 vols. (1987)
- Lucretius, *De Rerum Natura* (tr. Stallings, 2007)
- Marcus Aurelius, *Meditations* (tr. Hays, 2002)