Tetrapharmakos

The tetrapharmakos as found in the Herculaneum papyrus in the Villa of the Papyri.

The Tetrapharmakos (τετραφάρμακος) "four-part remedy" is a summary of the first four of the Κύριαι Δόξαι (Kuriai Doxai, the forty Epicurean Principal Doctrines given by Diogenes Laertius in his Life of Epicurus) in Epicureanism, a recipe for leading the happiest possible life. They are recommendations to avoid anxiety or existential dread.^[1]

The "tetrapharmakos" was originally a compound of four drugs (wax, tallow, pitch and resin); the word has been used metaphorically by Roman-era Epicureans.^[2] to refer to the four remedies for healing the soul.^[3]

The four-part cure

As expressed by Philodemos, and preserved in a Herculaneum Papyrus (1005, 4.9–14), the tetrapharmakos reads:^[4]

Don't fear god, Don't worry about death; What is good is easy to get, What is terrible is easy to endure	Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος καὶ τἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐεκκαρτέρητον

This is a summary of the first four of the forty Epicurean Principal Doctrines (Sovran Maxims) given by Diogenes Laertius, which in the translation by Robert Drew Hicks (1925) read as follows:

1. A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness

2. Death is nothing to us; for the body, when it has been resolved into its elements, has no feeling, and that which has no feeling is nothing to us.

3. The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together.

4. Continuous pain does not last long in the body; on the contrary, pain, if extreme, is present a short time, and even that degree of pain which barely outweighs pleasure in the body does not last for many days together. Illnesses of long duration even permit of an excess of pleasure over pain in the body.

Don't fear god

In Hellenistic religion, the gods were conceived as hypothetical beings in a perpetual state of bliss, indestructible entities that are completely invulnerable. Gods in this view are mere role models for human beings, who are to "emulate the happiness of the gods, within the limits imposed by human nature."^[5]

Don't worry about death

As D. S. Hutchinson wrote concerning this line, "While you are alive, you don't have to deal with being dead, but when you are dead you don't have to deal with it either, because you aren't there to deal with it." In Epicurus' own words, "Death means nothing to us...when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist,"^[6] for there is no afterlife. Death, says Epicurus, is the greatest anxiety of all, in length and intensity. This anxiety about death impedes the quality and happiness of one's life by the theory of afterlife: the worrying about whether or not one's deeds and actions in life will translate well into the region of the gods, the wondering whether one will be assigned to an eternity of pain or to an eternity of pleasure.^[7]

What is good is easy to get

Sustenance and shelter, these things can be acquired by anyone — by both animal and human — with minimal effort, regardless of wealth. But if one wants more than one needs (over indulgency, gluttony, etc.), one is limiting the chances of satisfaction and happiness, and therefore creating a “needless anxiety” in one’s life. "What is good is easy to get" implies that the minimum amount of necessity it takes to satisfy an urge is the maximum amount of interest a person should have in satisfying that urge.^[8]

What is terrible is easy to endure

The Epicureans understood that, in nature, illness and pain is not suffered for very long, for pain and suffering is either "brief or chronic ... either mild or intense, but discomfort that is both chronic and intense is very unusual; so there is no need to be concerned about the prospect of suffering." Like "What is good is easy to get," recognizing one's physical and mental limit and one's threshold of pain — understanding how much pain the body or mind can endure — and maintaining confidence that pleasure only follows pain (and the avoidance of anxiety about the length of pain), is the remedy against prolonged suffering.^[9]

References and notes

1. "The fundamental obstacle to happiness, says Epicurus, is anxiety," Hutchinson 1994, p. vii.
2. The name cannot be traced further back than Cicero and Philodemos. Pamela Gordon, Epicurus in Lycia: The Second-century World of Diogenes of Oenoanda, University of Michigan Press (1996), p. 61, fn 85, citing A. Angeli, "Compendi, eklogai, tetrapharmakos" (1986), p. 65.
3. See Liddell and Scott, Greek–English Lexicon, New Edition revised and Augmented by Stuart Jones, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
4. Hutchinson, D. S. (Introduction) (1994). The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia. Cambridge: Hackett. p. vi.
5. Hutchinson 1994, p. ix–x.
6. Letter to Menoeceus, 125
7. Hutchinson 1994, p. viii–ix.
8. Hutchinson 1994, p. vii–viii.
9. Hutchinson 1994, p. viii.