Ἐπικούρειος

Epicurean derives from Epicurus (Ἐπίκουρος, Epíkouros), the Greek philosopher born on the island of Samos in 341 BCE, whose name meant 'ally' or 'helper' — from epi ('upon') and kouros ('youth, helper'). Epicurus founded his school in Athens around 306 BCE in a modest property known simply as the Garden (Kēpos), and it was here that he developed his philosophy of pleasure as the highest good. But the pleasure Epicurus advocated was radically different from what later centuries would attribute to him. He distinguished between kinetic pleasures — the active satisfactions of eating, drinking, and sensory indulgence — and katastematic pleasures — the stable, enduring states of freedom from pain (aponia) and freedom from mental disturbance (ataraxia). True pleasure, Epicurus argued, was the absence of suffering, not the accumulation of sensation. He lived on bread, water, and cheese, and considered a pot of lentils a feast. His Garden was not a palace but a commune where friends, including women and enslaved people, gathered to philosophize in equality.

The Epicurean school flourished for centuries across the Greek and Roman worlds. Lucretius, the Roman poet writing around 55 BCE, composed De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), a six-book poem expounding Epicurean physics and ethics in Latin hexameter. The poem argued that the universe consisted of atoms and void, that the gods existed but took no interest in human affairs, that the soul was mortal and dissolved at death, and that understanding these truths was the path to tranquility. Lucretius's work preserved Epicurean philosophy through the Middle Ages — barely, since only a single manuscript survived, discovered in a German monastery in 1417 by the humanist Poggio Bracciolini. The adjective Epikúreios ('of or relating to Epicurus') was used by ancient Greek and Latin writers to describe adherents of the school, and it entered English as 'Epicurean' in the sixteenth century.

The distortion of Epicurus's reputation began almost immediately after his death and accelerated through the Christian era. Stoic rivals caricatured Epicureans as hedonists devoted to bodily pleasure, ignoring the school's emphasis on restraint and simplicity. Early Christian writers, hostile to a philosophy that denied divine providence and the immortality of the soul, reinforced this caricature. By the medieval period, 'Epicurean' had become a synonym for 'glutton' and 'sensualist' — Dante placed Epicurus in the sixth circle of Hell among the heretics. The Renaissance recovery of Lucretius did little to correct the distortion in popular usage, even as scholars recognized the subtlety of Epicurean thought. The word split: among philosophers, 'Epicurean' named a rigorous school of atomist physics and minimalist ethics; among everyone else, it named someone devoted to fine food and luxurious living.

Today 'epicurean' in lowercase has completed its transformation into a word for refined gustatory taste. An epicurean meal is an exquisite one. An epicure is a person of discriminating palate. Epicurean food magazines, epicurean gift baskets, epicurean kitchen supplies — the philosopher who ate bread and water has become the patron saint of artisanal cheese and single-origin chocolate. The irony is total but not meaningless. Epicurus did argue that pleasure was the highest good, and his opponents seized on that claim while ignoring its content. The history of the word 'epicurean' is a cautionary tale about how a philosophy can be reduced to a slogan and then to a brand. The man who said 'send me a pot of cheese so that I may have a feast' would find it grimly amusing that his name now adorns restaurants where a tasting menu costs three hundred dollars.