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Aristotle's Ethics and Politics represent a summation of the characteristics of the classical Greek polis, a small independent state with active participation in government by a significant portion of its adult male citizens. By the time Aristotle died in 322 B.C.E. (one year after the death of Alexander the Great), that world was gone. Athens and the other cities of Greece continued to exist, but as parts of the Kingdom of Macedon, itself only one of several large military monarchies that included not only the territories of the classical Greek world, but the whole region from Egypt to the borders of India. The Hellenistic age (the conventional designation for the three centuries between the death of Alexander and the conquest of Egypt by Rome) saw a transformation of the Greek world from a collection of small independent cities with homogeneous populations and exclusive ideas of citizenship to a large, bureaucratic, and polyglot society in which few individuals had the power or opportunity to exercise political rights in any active way.
While the schools of Plato and Aristotle (the Academy and the Lyceum) continued to function for nearly a thousand years after the deaths of their founders, two important new philosophies arose in the generation after Aristotle's death: Stoicism and Epicureanism. Stoicism (named after the Painted Stoa in Athens,where the group originally met) was originated by Zeno of Citium (Cyprus), and reached its fullest development under Chrysippus in the third century. Epicureanism is named after its founder Epicurus, who taught in Athens beginning in 307 B.C.E. Unlike Stoicism, which changed considerably over the course of time, Epicureanism remained very much as Epicurus himself had explained it; perhaps as a result, we have a considerable number of Epicurus's own writings still available, while most of what we know about Stoicism comes from later writers, many of them Roman.
Although Stoicism and Epicureanism were mutually antagonistic, the two schools share many beliefs and attitudes. Both are ascetic philosophies, advocating that the believer separate himself from the pressure of society and from dependence on material goods. Both philosophies are materialist; both advocate living "according to nature," but the materials and the nature are very different. Both reject Platonic metaphysics: there are no Forms in Stoicism, although there is Reason (logos); and in Epicureanism nothing exists but matter and void. Neither philosophy awards any privileged position (to Greeks, Athenians, or even to males or free people); each considers the individual as the main unit. Both are, broadly speaking, the products of a world in which the established order had been destroyed and the scope of the world vastly enlarged: both philosophies attempt to provide an anchor for individuals in a world which seemed irrational and in which people felt (and were) completely powerless in the face of vast upheavals.
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Beyond these similarities, however, the two philosophies are antithetical. The Stoic universe is purposeful and unified; the Epicurean world is one of random atoms falling endlessly through space, with no direction and no meaning. The Stoic aims at living in harmony with the universe, with the logos which is both wisdom and virtue; the Epicurean, notoriously, aims at pleasure. Each believed that his goal was the source of individual happiness. For the Stoics, this involved the assumption that the universe was both rational and good, the best of all possible worlds, that it was designed for the benefit of rational beings and that therefore, whatever happened, was ultimately for the good. The goal of individual existence was not pleasure, but virtue, and the truly virtuous man was in complete control of his own destiny through choosing to will whatever happened to him. Thus the true Stoic, if he is completely virtuous, will not mind being tortured: he will smile on the rack, because, being virtuous, he must be happy. The Stoic universe is governed by reason -- indeed, it is reason, the divine fire which permeates the entire world. We participate in the divinity of the world, and our portion of that divinity is what gives us the possibility of acting rationally in order to make our lives harmonize with the divine world-soul. A Stoic is supposed constantly to make rational choices, to seek what is in accordance both with his own nature and with Nature as a whole. We may not see the pattern of the world, but it is there, and it is our job to be in harmony with it. The Epicurean world-view (which the Stoics were trying to combat) is totally different. The goal of Epicureanism is initially negative, to dispel those emotions which trouble calm; of these, fears and passions are the most important. The Epicurean should not love (too much), although sex, as the fulfilment of a natural function, is perfectly all right. But one should not allow strong feelings a hold. Although pleasure is the goal, the Epicurean (like the Stoic in some ways) is constantly involved in a calculation of benefits and drawbacks: he or she will not seek a momentary pleasure that has long-run drawbacks, and he or she will be willing to incur brief pain for long-term benefits. The method, largely, is to circumscribe desires.
Fears are dispelled by showing that they are not reasonable; and the two primary (and related) fears are those of the gods, and those of the afterlife. That is where Epicurean physics comes in. The world consists of atoms and void; everything can be explained as a function of the random collisions of atoms, and of the conservation of matter. Consciousness is a product of atomic motion, and after death, the material remains dissipate, and their is no soul. There is no underworld, no punishment, and hence one need not be superstitious or fearful. The gods, on the other hand, do exist -- and are proven to exist because of the shared perception of their existence among all people. But because blessedness is a defining characteristic of divinity, and in Epicurean terms blessedness implies complete calm and static pleasure, the gods by definition cannot take an active role in the government of the universe or of men, and hence we need not worry about them. Much of Epicurean physics is directed to dispelling phenomena that can cause fear or other troubling emotions. It is also anti-teleological. There is no purpose in the world which we must worry about respecting; there are no miracles. And men are definitely not the center of divine concern: the world is not created for them; they are rather an accidental product of the universe. Although this world is cold and (literally) heartless, at least it does not interfere: human beings are alone, but they are free to construct their own lives. The four selections of Epicurus' writings given here include two letters: the letter to Herodotus (not the historian) is a general summary of his philosophy; the letter to Menoeceus is a summary of his ethics. The Principal Doctrines
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consist of forty aphorisms excerpted from his works (probably by Epicurus himself) giving his basic beliefs in a memorable form: the true Epicurean would memorize these and recite them daily. The Vatican Sayings are another set of excerpts made later, but with a similar purpose. Although Epicureanism was despised by most Romans as hedonistic and anti-social, it remained an active force in the ancient world until the advent of Christianity. The Roman Lucretius in the middle of the first century B.C.E. wrote a six-book epic poem on Epicurean physics, and in the second century C.E. a devotee in central Asia Minor (Turkey) had an entire stone wall inscribed with Epicurean philosophy.
No Stoic selections are included here, but far more writings on Stoic ethics survive than do Epicurean texts. Many Romans found Stoicism congenial, partic- ularly its emphasis on virtue as the sole condition for happiness, its belief that all humans were fellow-citizens of one world-united by reason (the cosmopolis: and its sense of duty and civic responsibility. The writings of Cicero (first century B.C.E.), of Seneca (first century C.E.) and of Marcus Aurelius (second century B.C.E.) had a large impact not only on the formation of Christian ethics but also on ethical beliefs in the Renaissance and later. Modern readers often find Stoicism sanctimonious and unrealistic -- so did many ancients -- but, like Epicureanism, it provided a means of coming to terms with the isolation and powerlessness of the individual in the face of a large, complex, and often irrational world.