Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Epicurus on Freedom written by Tim O'Keefe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-07-28 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Tim O'Keefe reconstructs the philosopher Epicurus' (341 271/0 BCE) theory of freedom. Epicurus' theory has attracted much interest, but our attempts to understand it have been hampered by reading it anachronistically as the discovery of the modern problem of free will and determinism. O'Keefe argues that the sort of freedom which Epicurus wanted to preserve is significantly different from the 'free will' which philosophers debate today, and that in its emphasis on rational action it has much closer affinities with Aristotle's thought than with current preoccupations.