Epicurus
On Choice and Avoidance
Written work
On Choice and Avoidance
Περὶ αἱρέσεων καὶ φυγῶν
A lost treatise on the calculation of pleasures and pains that guides conduct: what to choose and what to avoid. The Letter to Menoeceus summarises the principle: sometimes one forgoes a pleasure that brings greater trouble and accepts a pain that brings greater pleasure (X 129–130).
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Authorship note
Lost work. Only the title survives, which Diogenes Laertius (X 27–28) includes among Epicurus' "best" writings.
Editions and translations
Editions in your language first, without hiding the others. Each with its cover and its store.
No editions recorded yet.
Other works by Epicurus
- Letter to Menoeceus
- Letter to Herodotus
- Letter to Pythocles
- Principal Doctrines (Kyriai Doxai)
- Vatican Sayings
- On Nature · 300
- Last Will · 270
- Letter to Idomeneus (on his last day) · 270
- Letters (fragments)
- On Atoms and Void
- On Love
- Epitome of Objections to the Physicists
- Against the Megarians
- Problems
- On the End
- On the Criterion, or Canon
- Chaeredemus
- On the Gods
- On Piety
- Hegesianax
- On Lives (4 books)
- On Just Dealing
- Neocles, to Themista
- Symposium
- Eurylochus, to Metrodorus
- On Vision
- On the Angle in the Atom
- On Touch
- On Fate
- Opinions on the Feelings, against Timocrates
- Prognostic
- Exhortation (Protrepticus)
- On Images
- On Presentation
- Aristobulus
- On Music
- On Justice and the Other Virtues
- On Gifts and Gratitude
- Polymedes
- Timocrates (3 books)
- Metrodorus (5 books)
- Antidorus (2 books)
- Opinions on Diseases, to Mithres
- Callistolas
- On Kingship
- Anaximenes
- On Rhetoric
- Larger Epitome
Sources
- Diógenes Laercio. Vidas y opiniones de los filósofos ilustres, libro X (Epicuro: vida, testamento, cartas a Heródoto, Pitocles y Meneceo, Máximas capitales), s. III d. C. Trad. inglesa de R. D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library 185, 1925 (Wikisource en inglés); texto griego en Wikisource griega; trad. de C. D. Yonge, Bohn, 1853 (Project Gutenberg n.º 57342).
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