Epicurus  

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A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)
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A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)

Epicurus (341 BC, Samos270 BC, Athens) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the founder of Epicureanism (adj.: Epicurean), one of the most popular schools of thought in Greek philosophy. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of existence and not to be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

In Literature

In Canto X Circle 6 ("Where the heretics lie") of Dante's Inferno, Epicurus and his followers are criticized for supporting a materialistic ideal.

Epicurus the Sage was a comic book by William Messner-Loebs and Sam Kieth, portraying Epicurus as "the only sane philosopher."




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Epicurus" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on original research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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