Epicurus: An Introduction

Professor Rist's short introduction to the philosophy of Epicurus combines scholarship with clear exposition. All Greek in the text is translated, and discussion of more specialised problems of interpretation is relegated to appendices. In an account which mediates between the extremes of approval and opposition traditionally accorded to him, Epicurus emerges as an ideologist, a pragmatic philosopher whose most notable achievement perhaps was to reject much of the prevailing social ethos of Hellenism and assert the rights and claims of the individual against those of the community or state.

Professor Rist's account of Epicurus mediates between the extremes of approval and opposition traditionally accorded to him, and he emerges as an ideologist, a pragmatic philosopher whose most notable achievement was to reject the prevailing social ethos of Hellenism and assert the rights of the individual against those of the community or state.