Epicurus apparently suffered from kidney stones and eventually he died of one at age 78. The account I recall is that he got in a hot bath to reduce the pain and drank wine and drank wine until finally he passed out and slid under the water and that was the end of him.
When someone says “Epicurean” what comes to mind? Usually, it’s hedonism – life spent in the pursuit of pleasure. If we were raised in a christian tradition, we might even hear “Epicurean” as slightly louche or sexually promiscuous. Epicureans, many of us think, are the sort who wear velvet smoking jackets and snort cocaine off the upturned buttocks of prostitutes.
Natural justice is a pledge of reciprocal benefit, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another.
Death is nothing to us; for that which has been dissolved into its elements experiences no sensations, and that which has no sensation is nothing to us.
Some men want fame and status, thinking that they would thus make themselves secure against other men. If the life of such men really were secure, they have attained a natural good; if, however, it is insecure, they have not attained the end which by nature’s own prompting they originally sought.
