Hellenistic Ethics

Catalog description

The philosophers we’ll read in this course have a lot of advice for us. Epicurus recommends that we “[g]et used to believing that death is nothing to us” (Letter to Menoeceus, trans. Inwood and Gerson). Epictetus tells us: “Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well” (Handbook 8, trans. White). Lucretius describes at length the “ills” that are “experienced in love that is steadfast and supremely successful”—and adds that “when love is frustrated and unrequited, the miseries you can spot with your eyes shut are countless” (On the Nature of Things 4, trans. Ferguson Smith). What are we to make of all this advice? And what’s behind it?