The Book

Concerned about the fate of the oppressed and exiled Tibetan people, Gyatso [the Dalai Lama] once asked Elie Wiesel what has helped the Jews. Wiesel identified three things: a book, solidarity and memory. -Caspar Henderson, the Book of Barely Imagined Beings, p.168

Epicurus was a pragmatist: what good is philosophy if it didn't increase human happiness? Therefore, skepticism had to be rejected, and something had to be identified as truth. Thus he concluded that philosophy had to be dogmatic. "The wise man will not be a doubter but will dogmatize."   He developed the Canon: the criteria of Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings.

Of course, to dogmatize, there has to be a book. Epicureanism was the first missionary philosophy, and the first universal philosophy. It provided the template that Christianity took over (more on this later). But, as Henderson continues,

To promote solidarity across tribal boundaries it would help if the book were less amenable to sectarian interpretation and contained more truth about the world than the Bible.

He goes on to suggest "the book of life," but this is a cop-out. Where are the Epicurean Little Epitome and Big Epitome for today? Mao's little red book of Physics?

"He insisted that his teachings were the same for all men, assuming that each would benefit by them to the limit of his capacities and opportunities." -NWD, p. 22.

While dogmatism seems repulsive to the scientist, surely we would be better off with articles of faith distilled from physics, geology, and biology, than iron age mythologies. The first missionary religion co-opted the structure of the first missionary philosophy. "As Epicurus rightly discerned, human institutions arise from the evolution of the unintended." -NWD p. 26. Could this debasement be reversed?

Anticipation

The second criterion of truth is the Prolepsis or Anticipation... the innate capacity to distinguish color is an anticipation of experience no less than the innate capacity to distinguish between justice and injustice... color-sense is part of the individuals preconditioning for life in his physical environment... while the sense of justice is part of the preconditioning for life in the social environment...

Obviously all living things are preconditioned for life in their terrestrial environment. Is it, then, inconsistent with observed fact to assume that human beings are preconditioned for life in their social environment?

To [Plato] the process of learning was one of reviving prenatal memories [due to the transmigration of the soul]... since [Epicurus] denied both the pre-existence and survival of the soul, found his explanation in the preconditioning of man by Nature for life in the prospective environment.

As Epicurus employed the term... it was no more possible to have a prolepsis of an ox than of a ,,, caterpillar tractor; the pre-existence of the idea in advance of experience was essential.

-NWD, p. 142-150

The prolepsis of Epicurus are obviously analogous to the a priori concepts of Kant. One can even see the pattern of Plato,Aristotle, & Epicurus replay in Berkely, Hume, & Kant. The Divine and time are even mentioned as anticipations, though the latter is confusing and not really comparable to Kant's notion. Epicurus hated geometry, probably due to how it lead to Platonism, so there's no mention of mathematical concepts, which were fundamental to Kant. Epicurus was more interested in biology, following in the footsteps of later Aristotle, so in many ways hits even closer to reality. After reading Kant, my main impression was that he really needed Darwin.

The Canon

It is a tribute to the Canon [Sensations, Anticipations, & Feelings] that the chief weapon employed against it was ridicule. To have set up a criterion of truth in place of reason, if not impious or sacrilegious, was at least heretical and outrageous. Few concepts are so flattering to the vanity of mankind as the hypothesis that the possession of reason exalts it above the brutes and offers it an affinity with the divine.

 -NWD p. 126

Since Nature is assumed to be the sole creatrix and man is restricted to improving upon her suggestions, it follows that Nature is the supreme teacher. By the same reasoning Physics is the supreme science, because through the study of this the teachings of Nature come to knowledge. As Cicero correctly informs us, "Through this body of knowledge the force of words, the meaning of style and the distinction between the logically consistent and the logically inconsistent can be discerned [bitches]."

-NWD p. 130

There are two kinds of inquiry, the one about realities, the other ending up in sounds without sense.

-Diogenes Laertius, via NWD

Misunderstanding

"It is an even worse mistake to have confused the tests of truth with the content of truth... [t]his was the blunder of Pierre Gassendi, who revived the study of Epicurus in the seventeenth century. It was his finding "that there is nothing in the intellect which has not been in the senses." From this position John Locke, in turn, set out as the founder of modern empiricism. Thus a misunderstanding of Epicurus underlies a main trend of modern philosophy."

Norman Wentworth Dewitt (NWD), Epicurus and his Philosophy