from Hacker News

How to Be an Epicurean

by nocoder on 11/14/19, 1:07 PM with 31 comments

• by polytronic on 11/17/19, 1:13 PM

  How to be an Epicurean? That's easy! Start by using his Tetrapharmakon (means the quadruple remedy) to live a happy life, which is the following:

  Θεός Άφοβον - God is not to be feared

  Θάνατος Αναίσθητον - You don't feel (sic or meet with) death

  Τ'αγαθόν μεν εύκτητον - It is easy to acquire goods

  Το δε δεινόν ευκαρτέρητον - So is easy to withstand rough times

• by viburnum on 11/17/19, 5:10 PM

  I read about Epicurus when I was a little kid and it really resonated with me (basically, the “hang out with your friends and don’t get too worked up about things” part). Now that I’m getting old and basically wasted most of my life, I wish I had done the “have a mission in life” track. But really I think people are born with a temperament and personality that mostly shapes how they react to their environment, and I’m not sure I could have ended up any different.

• by gtirloni on 11/17/19, 1:01 PM

  About Stoics:

  >The world, they thought, is ruled by providence; all that happens is fated to happen, and we must embrace our individual fates and the past and the future that has been determined for us.

  That's not the understanding I got from reading about Stoicism. Sure, some of it could be "fate" and out of your control but there is a lot of emphasis on what you can control. I think the author simplified this too much to the point of making it incorrect.

• by mcguire on 11/17/19, 7:02 PM

  "Epicurus was notorious for his nonmarital relationships that combined sex and philosophy."

  The major problem of studying Epicurean philosophy is that few original sources have survived and almost all of the writing about it is from its opponents.

  As far as I have ever seen, the only source for sexual promiscuity is that women were allowed in to his school.

• by mjfisher on 11/17/19, 10:08 AM

  A nicely entertaining read. Does anyone else find the author's characterisation of Stoicism a little reductive? My reading of the Stoics has been limited so far, but at least as far as Marcus Aurelius writes one of the primary Stoic paths to peace and virtue is through helping others.

• by earthboundkid on 11/17/19, 2:14 PM

  BRB, buying some barrels and lanterns for the revival of cynicism. I’ll sell them as “honest philosopher’s goods” and make a fortune.

• by hunterloftis on 11/17/19, 6:00 PM

  > Fame and wealth are zero-sum. For some to be wealthy, powerful and famous, others must be poor, obedient and disregarded.

  Is this accurate? My understanding of wealth might be simplistic or reductive, but I have equated it to two neighbor craftsmen producing and trading goods. Each benefits from the other’s specialty and increases overall wealth, which is not zero-sum.

  I can agree with the statement regarding fame, since fame is more directly correlated with time, which is strictly zero-sum.

• by pyyding on 11/17/19, 12:25 PM

  I feel bad I only found out about this "ism" now because it aligns with many of my values I've had to figure out myself. Thanks for posting!

• by myusername334 on 11/17/19, 11:48 AM

  Hacker news censors 100 percent of my posts for three years running folks including the one previous to the above, which of course you can't see. But they let ONE post through, mocking them for censorship, just so I look like a fool..

  Clever, No?

• by HNLurker2 on 11/17/19, 1:27 PM

  Epicurean said something and the sceptic showed a middle finger.