Justice, law, and friendship: ethical and political topics in Epicurus

The paper will focus on the Epicurean notions of justice, law, friendship, and the philosophical community. By carefully and especially examining Epicurus’s Principle Doctrines (KD XXXI-XXXVIII), one can hope to reconstruct a reliable picture of the ‘relativity’ of justice as well as the role of law. Rather than presenting justice ‘in its own right’ or physei, Epicurus insists that to dikaion can be only thought of as an agreement rooted in mutual human dealings, which should therefore always be considered in its strict relationship with what is useful, since it has a strong yet exclusively symbolic value. What this doctrine tries to establish is a difficult equilibrium between physis and nomos. In addition, Epicurean doctrine aims to put at the core of any productive human action something else and more personal, namely friendship, since the circle of friends in the Garden, envisaged as the perfect form of society, is the final Epicurean answer to all political problems.