Justified True Belief

(●) Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who founded one of the most influential schools of Hellenistic philosophy, Epicureanism. He taught that the highest good is pleasure, understood not as indulgence but as the absence of pain (aponia) and mental disturbance (ataraxia). To achieve this tranquility, Epicurus advocated a materialist metaphysics: the universe consists only of atoms and void, the soul is material and mortal, and the gods (if they exist) are distant and uninvolved in human affairs. He denied divine providence, final causality, and life after death, arguing that fear of the gods and death are the chief sources of human anxiety and should be dispelled through reason. Epicureanism represents a direct challenge to core Christian doctrines: it denies creation by a personal God, divine providence and judgment, the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body. The Apostle Paul encountered Epicurean philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:18), and early Christian apologists consistently refuted Epicurean materialism, arguing instead for a rational Creator, moral accountability, and the hope of eternal life.

(Q) "Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist." + Source: Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 125.

(Q) "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" + Source: Attributed to Epicurus in later tradition (especially by Lactantius, On the Anger of God 13.20–21); the formulation is not found verbatim in Epicurus' surviving writings but reflects his argument that divine providence is incompatible with the existence of evil.

(Q) "The blessed and indestructible being of the divine has no troubles itself, nor does it cause trouble for anyone else, so that it is not affected by feelings of anger or gratitude. All such things are found only in what is weak." + Source: Epicurus, Principal Doctrines 1 (from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers X.139).

(Q) "We must free ourselves from the prison of everyday affairs and politics." + Source: Epicurus, Vatican Sayings 58; reflects his teaching to "live hidden" (lathe biōsas) and withdraw from public life to cultivate tranquility.