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The Art of Living

The Epicurean Cure For Life

Massimo Pigliucci takes the philosophy pill.

Is there a cure for life? This question may seem rather bizarre, as we don’t normally think of life as a disease. And yet, a moment’s reflection reminds us that in modern times we have a huge industry of self-styled gurus who claim to provide us (for a large fee, of course) with the cure for all our existential ailments, be they dissatisfaction with our career or relationship, anxiety for the future, or fear of death.

But the ancient Epicureans had already come up with one such cure – for free. They called it the tetrapharmakos – the ‘four-fold remedy’ – a metaphorical version of an actual cure for wounds and inflammations of the skin that was a compound of four ingredients (beeswax, pitch, resin, and tallow). The Epicurean version of the four-fold remedy is usually summarized as a text attributed to the first century BCE poet Philodemos from Gadara in modern Jordan. It was found in a papyrus at Herculaneum, one of the two cities destroyed by the sudden eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE (the other being Pompei). It reads:

Don’t fear god,
Don’t worry about death,
What is good is easy to get,
What is terrible is easy to endure.

These are the first four doctrines out of a list of forty we know of that constituted the core of Epicurean philosophy. The other doctrines concern, among other subjects, natural philosophy (principles 10-13), the limits of desire (18-21), epistemology (22-25), the concept of justice (31-38), and the importance of friendship (39-40).

The first century CE satirist Lucian of Samosata wrote about Epicurean doctrine in the middle of his critique of a then-successful mystical charlatan, Alexander of Abonoteichus in modern Turkey. The work is called Alexander the Oracle Monger, and from it we learn that the title character at one point burned one of Epicurus’s books because he considered the Epicureans to be atheists (they weren’t). This is why Lucian concludes his devastating take-down of Alexander with high praise for the Epicurean doctrines:

“The fellow [Alexander] had no conception of the blessings conferred by that book upon its readers, of the peace, tranquillity, and independence of mind it produces, of the protection it gives against terrors, phantoms, and marvels, vain hopes and inordinate desires, of the judgment and candor that it fosters, or of its true purging of the spirit, not with torches and squills and such rubbish, but with right reason, truth, and frankness.”

Let’s take a closer look at the tetrapharmakos, then.

Don’t fear god – not because gods don’t exist, but because they are uninterested in human matters, being instead absorbed by divine activities, such as contemplating themselves. From an Epicurean perspective, it is a waste of time and energy to pray, and any priest who tells you otherwise is likely attempting to manipulate you. (This is one reason the Epicureans were never popular with the early Christian church.)

This brings us to the second, related entry in the four-fold cure: Don’t worry about death. Why not? Because, as Epicurus wrote in his letter to his friend Menoeceus, “Death is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not” (trans. Robert Drew Hicks). Since death is the cessation of our consciousness, there is no need to be fearful of any potential afterlife (another point on which the Christians vehemently disagreed).

It may seem difficult to agree that What is good is easy to get. However, for the Epicureans, what is good is whatever satisfies natural needs and uncomplicated pleasures, such as shelter, simple food, water, and human companionship. Those are, indeed, far easier to obtain when compared to the kind of unnatural or unnecessary pleasures the Epicureans counseled against, such as fame, success (however defined), great wealth, and piles of possessions.

It is perhaps even harder to swallow the last bit of the Epicurean medicine, What is terrible is easy to endure – and yet the basic idea makes sense. If we experience a painful situation, either mentally or physically, it will likely fit into one of two categories: relatively mild, and therefore endurable; or very intense, and therefore likely to kill us. So although this last prescription may be the most questionable component of the tetrapharmakos, it makes more sense once we realize that the Epicureans were open to the possibility of suicide under extreme circumstances – that is, suicide is seen as the very last resort, and each one of us must rationally assess our own situation and decide accordingly. Still, it is a possibility, and it opens up the idea that long-term unendurable pain is not really something we need to contemplate.

Even if one doesn’t buy wholesale into Epicurean philosophy, there is much to recommend in the four-fold cure (which some have seen as equivalent to the Buddhist Four Noble Truths). However, the most important, implied, insight, may be that things may not be as other people assume and insist on telling us. So, if we open our eyes to the actual realities of the world, we will be able to live a happy life.

Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His books include How to Be a Stoic (Basic Books) and The Quest for Character: What the Story of Socrates and Alcibiades Teaches Us about Our Search for Good Leaders (Basic Books). More by him at newstoicism.org.