Most Famous Epicureanism Philosophers

Epicureanism is the philosophical school founded by Epicurus around 307 BC in Athens at the school known as the Garden. It teaches that pleasure, properly understood as freedom from pain and from disturbance of the soul, is the highest good. Its physics is atomistic, drawing on Democritus, and its ethics emphasises the cultivation of friendship, modest desires, and tranquility of mind. The Roman poet Lucretius elaborated the system in his epic poem De Rerum Natura. Epicureanism survived as a major Hellenistic school for centuries and was rediscovered as a serious philosophical option in the European Renaissance and early modern period.

Philosophers in this tradition

Epicurus 341 BC – 270 BC · Greek
Epicurus was a Greek Hellenistic philosopher who founded the school known as the Garden in Athens around 307 BC. His ethics taught that pleasure, properly understood as the abse...
Lucretius c. 99 BC – c. 55 BC · Roman
Titus Lucretius Carus was a 1st-century BC Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher, known for his sole surviving work, the long Latin poem De Rerum Natura, On the Nature of Things....
Philodemus c. 110 BC – c. 30 BC · Greek
Philodemus of Gadara was a 1st-century BC Greek Epicurean philosopher and poet, who taught in Italy under the patronage of the Roman politician Lucius Calpurnius Piso. His works...
Apollodorus the Garden Tyrant c. 150 BC – c. 110 BC · Greek
Apollodorus, called the Garden Tyrant, was a Greek Epicurean philosopher of the second century BC and head of the Garden in Athens, the eighth or ninth scholarch of the school. ...
Diogenes of Oenoanda c. 150 – c. 220 · Greek
Diogenes of Oenoanda was an Epicurean philosopher of the second century AD who, in old age and at his own expense, had a long Epicurean inscription carved on the columned wall o...
Hermarchus c. 325 BC – c. 250 BC · Greek
Hermarchus of Mytilene was a Greek philosopher and Epicurus's chosen successor as the second head of the Garden in Athens. The principal philosophical writings attributed to him...
Polystratus c. 270 BC – c. 219 BC · Greek
Polystratus was a Greek Epicurean philosopher and the third head of the Garden in Athens, succeeding Hermarchus around the middle of the third century BC. The papyrus rolls pres...