Epicurus: Life Reflections

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Epicurus provides a recipe for happiness, beginning with the reminder that happiness, at the end of the day, is the absence of suffering. This reflection can be epitomized in the Epicurean tradition in the fourfold list summarized in Philodemus, 1. Don’t fear the gods; 2. Don’t worry about death; 3. What is good is easy to get; 4. What is terrible is easy to endure. This book discusses the simple art of happiness. But is that all it takes? Famously, Epicurus offers a more memorable and personable version: a little garden, some figs, small cheeses, a few friends? This idea of sufficiency suggests that the ingredients of happiness are available to nearly everyone (Epicurus counted women and slaves in his school). But this modest list is also elusive. This, and no more, is the measure of happiness.