Living with Others

Abstract This chapter addresses the question: Does Epicurus’s theory of justice admit a concern for others for their sake? Epicurus famously held that justice, like the other virtues, is to be cultivated for the sake of one’s own pleasure. Ancient and modern critics alike have wondered whether this doctrine leaves room for genuine other-regarding concern. This chapter will examine the question in two parts. Sections 1–3 will first present Epicurus’s own account of justice. Sections 4–5 will then move on to Epicurus’s Roman follower Lucretius, who included a history of human social development in his monumental poem On the Nature of Things. Both parts will also bring in Hermarchus, a close associate of Epicurus. As the first part seeks to show, Epicurus proposed a new conception of justice as a compact to secure a common benefit by not harming one another. This is a self-interested type of compact, which aims in the end at a personal sense of security as part of one’s final goal, pleasure. It must be distinguished from the institution of laws, for which it serves as a norm for determining whether they are just or not. Lucretius offers a surprising role for a form of other-regarding concern—pity—in the earliest compacts made by humans. By adding pity for the weak to the compacts not to harm one another, he opens up the possibility of combining self-interest with a concern for others for their sake.