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The Art of Living

The Epicurean Cure For Life

Massimo Pigliucci takes the philosophy pill.

Is there a cure for life? This question may seem rather bizarre, as we don’t normally think of life as a disease. And yet, a moment’s reflection reminds us that in modern times we have a huge industry of self-styled gurus who claim to provide us (for a large fee, of course) with the cure for all our existential ailments, be they dissatisfaction with our career or relationship, anxiety for the future, or fear of death.

But the ancient Epicureans had already come up with one such cure – for free. They called it the tetrapharmakos – the ‘four-fold remedy’ – a metaphorical version of an actual cure for wounds and inflammations of the skin that was a compound of four ingredients (beeswax, pitch, resin, and tallow). The Epicurean version of the four-fold remedy is usually summarized as a text attributed to the first century BCE poet Philodemos from Gadara in modern Jordan.

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