Författare: Thomas Moran Lecturer in the Department of English Creative

If you peruse the philosophy section of your local bookshop, you’ll probably find a number of books on Stoicism – an ancient philosophy enjoying a renaissance today. But where are the Epicureans?

Both philosophical schools were popular in the ancient world. However, while stoic works such as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca’s letters still fill the shelves, alongside contemporary takes such as The Daily Stoic (2016), Epicureanism largely remains a historical curiosity.

Today, the Greek thinker Epicurus (341–270 BCE) is mostly remembered as the originator of the term “epicurean”, which describes someone devoted to sensual enjoyment, particularly of fine food and drink.

And while it’s true Epicurus argued pleasure is the highest human good, there’s a lot more to Epicureanism than merely savouring a glass of Shiraz with haute cuisine.

Philosophers in the garden

Epicurus was born on the island of Samos to Athenian parents. He studied philosophy in Athens before travelling to the island of Lesbos to establish a philosophical academy.

Epicurus was born on the island Samos, a birthplace he shares with the famous polymath Pythagoras.
Wikimedia

Upon returning to Athens in 306 BCE, he bought a tract of land and began a philosophical community known as the Garden.

The Garden was radically different from other philosophical communities at the time. While Plato’s Academy generally trained the children of the Athenian elite, and Aristotle tutored nobles such as Alexander the Great, Epicurus’ Garden was far more inclusive. Women and slaves were welcome to join the dialogue.

The community led a frugal life and practised total equality between men and women, which was uncommon at the time. In this atmosphere, noblewomen and courtesans, senators and slaves, all engaged in philosophical debate.

While many early Epicureans have disappeared from the annals of history, we know of some women, such as Leontion and Nikidion, who were early proponents of Epicurean thought.

Away from the main city of Athens, Epicurus’ Garden became a space for his followers to seek relief.
gka photo/Shutterstock

Philosophy as a way of life

It isn’t just the Garden’s inclusivity that gives it contemporary appeal, but its entirely unique notion of what constitutes a philosophical life.

According to Epicurus, a philosopher wasn’t someone who taught or wrote philosophical tracts. A philosopher was someone who practised what the French philosopher Pierre Hadot describes, in his work on Epicureanism, as “a certain style of life”.

Epicureanism was a daily practice, rather than an academic discipline. Anyone who strove to live a philosophical life was part of the Epicurean community and was considered a philosopher.

The concept of philosophy Epicurus promoted was more egalitarian and all-encompassing than the narrow definition we often see used today.

The pursuit of pleasure

But what did it mean to be a practising Epicurean? Epicurus conceived of philosophy as a therapeutic practice. “We must concern ourselves with the healing of our own lives,” he wrote.

This process of healing involves developing an inner attitude of relaxation and tranquillity known as anesis in Ancient Greek. To do this, Epicureans sought to turn their minds away from the worries of life and focus instead on the simple joy of existence.

Epicurus distinguished between different types of pleasure and advocated for a life of moderate pleasure, rather than excessive indulgence.
Wikimedia

According to Epicurus, unhappiness comes because we are afraid of things which should not be feared, and desire things which are not necessary and are beyond our control.

Most notably, he rejected the idea of an afterlife, arguing the soul did not continue to exist after death. He also argued it was wrong to fear death as it

gives no trouble when it comes [and] is but an empty pain in anticipation.

Instead of fearing punishment in the beyond, he said we should focus on the possibilities for pleasure in the here and now. But that doesn’t mean chasing every pleasure which comes our way; the task of the Epicurean is to understand which pleasures are worth pursuing.

The highest pleasures are not those which yield the highest intensity or last the longest, but those which are the least mixed with worry and the most likely to ensure peace of mind. In this vein, Epicurus sought to cultivate feelings of gratitude and appreciation for even the simplest everyday experiences.

While his critics cast him and his followers as unrestrained hedonists, he wrote in one letter that a single piece of cheese was as pleasurable as an entire feast.

For Epicureans, it is precisely the brevity of life that gives us such an exquisite capacity for pleasure. As one Epicurean Philodemus wrote:

Receive each additional moment of time in a manner appropriate to its value; as if one were having an incredible stroke of luck.

A philosophy for outsiders

Epicurus’ perennial appeal resides in how his philosophy gave strength and inspiration to outsiders. In the late 19th century, aesthetes such as critic Walter Pater and playwright Oscar Wilde praised Epicureanism as a way of life.

In Wilde’s letter De Profundis (From the depths) – written in 1897 while imprisoned in Reading Gaol on charges of indecency – he wrote that Pater’s novel Marius the Epicurean (1885) had given him both intellectual and spiritual solace during his trial.

Pater, too, had faced discrimination at Oxford for having homosexual relationships. His novel is an evocative celebration of the possibilities of a life lived in the pursuit of sensual and spiritual beauty.

In one of his earlier texts, The Renaissance (1873), Pater paraphrases Victor Hugo, writing

we are all under a sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve […] we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. […] Our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.

This profoundly Epicurean sentiment, of a life lived in the interval, remains appealing to those who seek to turn their lives into a work of art. Läs mer…

Chinese independent director Jia Zhangke’s new film Caught by the Tides, now in select Australian cinemas, provides a unique vision of China’s rapid social transformation in the 21st century.

Using a combination of documentary footage and scenes shot by Jia over the past 20 years during the making of his earlier films, Caught by the Tides follows Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao) and her boyfriend, small-time hustler Bin (Li Zhubin).

Bin leaves their small town to make his fortune working on the Three Gorges Dam and Qiaoqiao goes to find him, taking her on a journey through the changing landscape of contemporary China.

The film not only registers monumental changes, like the building of the dam, but the minutiae of everyday details from changing fashion to altered streetscapes.

Jia’s film is a quiet and meditative affair which dwells on the passage of time in a fast-paced world. The film not only captures 20 years in a rapidly changing China, but also offers a reflection on Jia’s career as a filmmaker.

Framing the provinces

Jia was born in 1970. He grew up in the city of Fenyang, Shanxi province, and came of age during Deng Xiaoping’s economic liberalisation and “opening up” of the 1980s.

He studied at the Beijing Film Academy before returning home to shoot his first feature Xiao Wu (Pickpocket) in 1997.

The films he made in Shanxi – Xiao Wu, Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures (2002) – have been dubbed his “hometown trilogy”.

Shanxi is known for its notoriously dangerous coal mining industry. Jia focused on the lives of those left behind by China’s “economic miracle” and life outside of the metropolis. His use of non-actors, preference for street shooting and slow minimalist style set his work apart from commercial Chinese cinema.

The second film in the trilogy, Platform, includes a mesmerising performance from Zhao Tao, then an unknown actor who has since starred in all of Jia’s later films. Zhao and Jia were married in 2012. Zhao is a key artistic collaborator whose portrayal of strong female protagonists is central to all the director’s later work.

Cinema and cultural memory

Jia’s international breakthrough came with Still Life (2006), shot in the ancient area of Fengjie on the banks of the Yangtze while cities were being demolished and thousands displaced to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.

Working on Still Life confirmed Jia’s belief in “cinema’s function as memory” which captures the present before it disappears. Still Life combined Jia’s early realist style with a new surreal approach, including a building taking off and a mysterious flying saucer zooming into the distance.

To Jia, this blend of realism and surrealism is essential for portraying China’s rapid historical transformation. He says the speed of development in China “has had an unsettling surreal effect”.

To represent this, he has experimented with all the possibilities of cinema blending documentary, fiction, animation, pop music, Chinese opera and digital images to create a stunning body of work.

Caught by the tides of history

Caught by the Tides continues Jia’s experimentation with cinema and history in his most ambitious work to date.

Production was influenced by the COVID pandemic, when Jia was unable to start work on a new film. Instead, he began to review footage he and his director of photography Yu Lik-Wai had shot since 2001.

Jia describes the process of reviewing the footage as “like time-travelling” as he returned to the beginning of the 21st century and his youth.

The film is partly composed of a collage of documentary footage which Jia and his collaborators spent over two years editing. We see excitement in the streets when Beijing is announced as the host city of the 2008 Olympic Games, before cutting to a montage of young people dancing in strobe-lit underground nightclubs.

This kaleidoscope of documentary footage is combined with scenes shot during the making of Jia’s earlier films. From this combination of archival footage featuring Jia’s regular stars Zhao and Li Zubin, a story emerges about China’s rapid change.

Jia began work on Caught by the Tides during COVID.
MK2 Films

As Qiaoqiao guides the viewer through the chaotic transformations taking place in the country, there is something particularly arresting about seeing places and actors change before our very eyes.

The final scenes, shot with modern digital cameras, have a sleek and cold aesthetic in contrast to the pixelated early footage. It is in part a reflection of Jia’s own melancholic view of historical change in which the past is forgotten, and the everyday lives of ordinary people disappear from view. Yet as a whole, the film suggests cinema can preserve the past and give dignity and beauty to everyday experiences.

Caught By the Tides provides viewers with a refreshing glimpse of Chinese life from within. Cinema like Jia’s remains in a unique position to promote a more nuanced view of China’s complex and ever-evolving history. Läs mer…