Epicureanism

"Tim O’Keefe is a really excellent scholar of Epicureanism. There are a number of works that are explicitly supposed to be introductory to people who are wanting to engage with Epicureanism in this way. I chose this one because it’s a relatively brief, but really well written and very philosophical. Tim deliberately avoids the philological nitpicking that you might get elsewhere and takes you directly to the meat of things. It’s very readable and it covers the whole range of Epicureanism. He doesn’t merely concentrate on the ethical stuff that people find fascinating; he’s just as interested in Epicurus’s theory of perception, of knowledge, and so on. So, I think it’s a really good way in. If that doesn’t suit, then I should mention there’s a really excellent Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism , which has multiple authors, but I think is certainly worth checking out. I edited that particular volume so it didn’t make it onto my list. That’s right, though I think there is a virtue to having a single guide to take you through it, actually, because that person can look at the system as a unity and present it in ways that make interesting connections."