Epicurus

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Epicurus, Hellenistic Greek philosopher (born Samos, 341 BC; died Athens, 270 BC). Epicurus was born into an Athenian �migr� family — his parents, both Athenian citizens, had moved to an Athenian settlement on the Aegean island of Samos. He returned to Athens to serve as an ephebe (http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Ephebe) — a young citizen in military training. The playwright Menander served in the same age-class of the ephebes as Epicurus.

After pursuing philosophical education in several Greek cities he taught in two cities in Asia Minor, and formed one of the most important Philosophy schools of the period in Athens, named The Garden.

Epicurus' teachings represented a departure from the other major Greek thinkers of his period, and before. He admitted women and slaves into his school, emphasized the senses in his epistemology, and was one of the first Greeks to break from the god-fearing and god-worshipping tradition common at the time.

Elements of Epicurean philosophy have resonated and resurfaced in various diverse thinkers and movements throughout Western intellectual history. Epicurus discussed a human being's natural right to "life, liberty, and safety." This was later picked-up by the democratic thinkers of the French revolution, and others, like John Locke, who wrote that people had a right to "life, liberty, and property." This triad was carried forward into the present tense, and into the American freedom movement and Declaration of Independence, by the great American founding father, Thomas Jefferson, as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."