General Conclusions

Abstract The General Conclusions summarize the main findings of the book from a bird’s-eye view before addressing some challenges and potential limitations. Through what might be called a textual anthropology, the book conclusively maintains that the access to happiness, understood as a continuous process, must be taken into account when addressing the role and function of human beings in Epicurus’ philosophy. Indeed, it is the very capacity to sustain such an effort that results in happiness, which is characterized by a highly dynamic epistemological resilience in the face of experience, rather than a bullet-proof state of completion. Further, this process is one that benefits from mutual exchanges, for example in the correction of false beliefs, and implicitly countenances a distributed, yet qualitatively single perceptual experience among human beings. Relatedly, Epicurus’ philosophical project continuously requires epistemological agency to make the reading of his works efficacious. It calls for a constantly renewed correspondence between the perceived world and one’s understanding of it (rather than certain, definitive knowledge). The formal and linguistic analyses show how such philosophical findings are embedded in the text’s form and materiality. Finally, the General Conclusions address the tension between such Epicurean adaptability and the ancient criticism of their doctrinal rigidity, as well as potential inconsistencies between claims of inclusiveness and exclusions from sagehood or happiness. They conclude that, if true, such incoherences should be acknowledged and taken as shortcomings or compromises indicative of the actual implementation of Epicurus’ project rather than theoretical contradictions.