The Epicureans understand philosophy as a study of nature [φυσιολογiα] aimed at dissolving empty opinions, along with the vain desires and fears grounded on them, and at attaining imperturbability [αταραξiα].

At first glance, their programme seems to suggest - or, more precisely, to call for - a move away from society and politics, as suggested by the two famous Epicurean slogans ‘live unnoticed' [λαθε βιωσας ] and ‘do not participate in politics' [ μη πολιτευσεσθαι].

This is how the adversaries of the Epicureans (mainly Cicero and Plutarch) presented their views in antiquity. But to distance oneself from contingent politics and society does not necessarily mean a solitary way of life or a lack of interest in society, the existence of which it certainly presupposes (or so we shall argue). At the beginning of On the Nature of Things 6, Lucretius praises the work of Epicurus for its critique of societies that have achieved the security to satisfy necessary natural desires, since paradoxically such societies foster in human beings both the vain desires and the fears that prevent them from being happy. Moreover, few philosophies have exalted friendship as the noblest of all relationships in the same manner as Epicureanism. We hold that a philosophy that extols friendship and understands itself in the terms indicated by Lucretius cannot lack interest in the ‘communal ingredient' of life. In fact, consideration of the nature of human communities, justice and laws was a crucial part of Epicurean philosophy. That this has been missed is due largely to the vicissitudes of the transmission of Epicureanism to posterity, and to the silence of Cicero and Plutarch regarding the specific approaches of the Epicureans to political philosophy. The core of this chapter focuses on discussing how the application of the Epicurean study of nature to the analysis of justice and laws is translated into a genealogical approach to these realities.

We proceed as follows. In section 1 we show that, contrary to what might be expected, such an interpretative pattern does not presuppose a conventionalist view of justice. The Epicureans analyse the just as a modality of the useful, and for that they make use of the Hellenistic category of the relative [τo πρoς τι]. The just is not conventional because it is constrained by conformity to the purpose established in the first pacts of human communities (pacts based on the basic agreement encapsulated in the principle ‘neither harming one another nor being harmed'). This conformity is always determined by circumstances, these circumstances constituting an inexorable factor. In the Epicureans' view, the geographical diversity and temporal variability of justice pertains to its unconventional character. In section 2 we emphasize that the genealogical pattern that underpins the Epicurean investigation of nature extends the rationalistic attempts to explain the origin of living beings and of civilized, social life. We stress that the traditional opposition between disordered and bestial primitive life and human civilization receives an interesting reformulation in Epicureanism. This is so, we hold, because in their view the pre-social primitive life is not ‘Hobbesian'; the Epicureans contrast the primitive state of human beings not only with the arrival of human groups and justice, but also with the subsequent stage in which it became necessary to establish laws and sanctions. The utility of the pacts and the relations of friendship (established between individuals humanized by the use of fire, housing and family life) are the two causes through which Lucretius explained the origin of human associations capable of forming pacts and of justice. In section 3, against interpretations stressing the incoherence of appealing within a hedonistic theory to friendship as the essential cause of the origin of justice, we maintain that such interpretations presuppose a too sharp distinction between altruism and selfishness. Such an approach misconstrues the way in which interpersonal relations were conceived in the ancient world and by the Epicureans. For the Epicureans, the origin of laws and sanctions is precisely the result of the weakening of friendly community relations and the forgetting of the usefulness of justice for the survival of the individual and the contractual community. Finally, in section 4 we summarize and indicate some conclusions.

1

More on the topic The Epicureans understand philosophy as a study of nature [φυσιολογiα] aimed at dissolving empty opinions, along with the vain desires and fears grounded on them, and at attaining imperturbability [αταραξiα].: