Attribuée à Epicurus
«The fourfold remedy: God presents no fears; death no worries; the good is easy to get; the terrible is easy to endure.»
Fausse attribution
Verdict
Elle ne figure pas dans l'œuvre de Epicurus
The doctrine is Epicurus' (Principal Doctrines I–IV), but the compact formula of the "tetrapharmakos" is by his follower Philodemus (first century BCE), in a Herculaneum papyrus. Presenting it as a literal quotation from Epicurus is inaccurate.
Source: Long, A. A. y Sedley, D. N. The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987.
Ce qu'il a vraiment dit
Paroles vérifiées de Epicurus
«Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.»
Carta a Meneceo, en Diógenes Laercio X 122. Griego: Diógenes Laercio X, ed. de Wikisource griega; inglés: R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925, dominio público); español: traducción propia.
«When we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.»
Carta a Meneceo, en Diógenes Laercio X 125. Griego: Diógenes Laercio X, ed. de Wikisource griega; inglés: R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925, dominio público); español: traducción propia.
«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.»
Máxima capital II, en Diógenes Laercio X 139. Griego: Diógenes Laercio X, ed. de Wikisource griega; inglés: R. D. Hicks (Loeb, 1925, dominio público); español: traducción propia.