Friendship

The surviving evidence for Epicurus’s view of friendship has given rise to divergent scholarly interpretations. For some, Epicurus recommends narrowly self-regarding relations with friends, while for others, he seems to recognize the commonly held opinion that reliable and rewarding friendships require us to treat our friends not solely as instruments to our own pleasure. Both of these views have been bolstered by larger considerations from within the wider theory, practice, and history of Epicureanism. Thus, some have made inferences from what they take to be Epicurean social practices, while others have tried to view friendship within the larger context of Epicurean social theory. Still others have posited various kinds of developmental accounts that see Epicurus’s original theory changing as later Epicureans confronted new practical and theoretical questions raised by their conception of the good life. A further question is raised by later Epicurean evidence about divine friendships, which are not based on mutual need. To what extent can humans, enmeshed in the practical demands of human friendship, hope to realize Epicurus’s injunctions to live a life worthy of the gods, and hence, perhaps, form friendships untainted by mutual need? Again the evidence seems muted, but Epicurus’s concerns about the nature of ataraxia, autonomy, and our invulnerability to chance puts questions about the relations among philosophical philoi at the very center of what we might call his high philosophical discourse about the nature of the individual self and the external requirements of hedonistic happiness.