"Principal Doctrines" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epicurus)

Epicurus
Principal Doctrines

Copyright 1995, James Fieser (jfieser@utm.edu). See end note
for details on copyright and editing conventions. Epicurus's
"Principal Doctrines" are preserved in Diogenes Laertius's
Lives of Eminent Philosophers. The following is from Robert
Drew Hicks's 1925 translation. This is a working draft;
please report errors.[1 ]

* * * *

1. A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and
brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt
from movements of anger and partiality, for every such
movement implies weakness

2. Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has
been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that
which has no feeling is nothing to us.

3. The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the
removal of all pain. When pleasure is present, so long as it
is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind
or of both together.

4. Continuous pain does not last long in the body; on
the contrary, pain, if extreme, is present a short time, and
even that degree of pain which barely outweighs pleasure in
the body does not last for many days together. Illnesses of
long duration even permit of an excess of pleasure over pain
in the body.

5. It is impossible to live a pleasant life without
living wisely and well and justly, and it is impossible to
live wisely and well and justly without living pleasantly.
Whenever any one of these is lacking, when, for instance,
the person is not able to live wisely, though he lives well
and justly, it is impossible for him to live a pleasant
life.

6. In order to obtain security from other people any
means whatever of procuring this was a natural good.

7. Some people have sought to become famous and
renowned, thinking that thus they would make themselves
secure against their fellow-humans. If, then, the life of
such persons really was secure, they attained natural good;
if, however, it was insecure, they have not attained the end
which by nature's own prompting they originally sought.