Differences and similitutes between the concepts of happiness in Epicurus and Seneca

Author(s)

David Bezerra

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2012-03-29

Examining board members

Francisco Benjamin de Souza Netto; Flávio Ribeiro de Oliveira; Maria Carolina Alves dos Santos; Dennys Garcia Xavier; Paulo Henrique Fernandes Silveira

• Advisor: Francisco Benjamin de Souza Netto

Abstract

Firstly, the purpose of this work was just defines and compares the concepts of happiness for two authors of the Hellenistic period, far way one of each other and separated by a cultural universe: the Greek Epicurus and the Roman Seneca. Therefore, the inaugural hypothesis ordered that we move farther, first working with a concept found at the reverse or negative of the initial concept, its says, the unhappiness, and then operating with the reasons which establishes the movimentation of the authors pesquised, i.e., the motives by which they dedicated themselves to this particular theme. This secondary impulse pushed us to another stage, the characterization of the universe in which the thinkers lived, for we found it as the responsible by the ask about happiness in both of them. In another words, the philosophical production had a socio-historical basis and, in second plane, an academic one. Such situation put us, at the end, to determine what is a philosophical Hellenistic product, once the motivation of the authors is owe so much to the environment in which they kept themselves involved that by this they should bring the stamp of this time (the preoccupation with happiness spawn, includes, manuals of how to live by men of low culture), separating it, for instance, of the time immediately posterior, the so called Classical Era. Particularizing the matter, we establishes that Seneca was more than a reader of Epicurus, and thus your ideas relating to the problem of happiness are tributaries to the ideas of Epicurus about the theme. By the other side, in both thinkers we demanded a interpretation beyond their own speeches to complete your definition of happiness, because the basis of this, the retirement of civil life, is not related in such definition. And more, we observe that the ideal virtue, defended by the radical stoics, like Chrysippus, and took as the happiness itself, gives place to a virtue of the possible in Seneca and that in Epicurus the fight for happiness find meaning in the smashing of the desires (AU)