Editing Epicurus (section)

===Enlightenment and after===
The Anglican bishop [[Joseph Butler]]'s anti-Epicurean polemics in his ''[[Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel]]'' (1726) and ''[[Analogy of Religion]]'' (1736) set the tune for what most orthodox Christians believed about Epicureanism for the remainder of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} Nonetheless, there are a few indications from this time period of Epicurus's improving reputation.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} Epicureanism was beginning to lose its associations with indiscriminate and insatiable gluttony, which had been characteristic of its reputation ever since antiquity.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} Instead, the word "epicure" began to refer to a person with extremely refined taste in food.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}}{{sfn|Brewer|Evans|1989|page=388}} Examples of this usage include "Epicurean cooks / sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite" from [[William Shakespeare]]'s ''[[Antony and Cleopatra]]'' (Act II. scene i; {{circa}} 1607){{sfn|Brewer|Evans|1989|page=388}} and "such an epicure was [[Potiphar]]—to please his tooth and pamper his flesh with delicacies" from [[William Whately]]'s ''Prototypes'' (1646).{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}}

Around the same time, the Epicurean injunction to "live in obscurity" was beginning to gain popularity as well.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} In 1685, [[Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet|Sir William Temple]] (1628–1699) abandoned a promising career as a diplomat and instead retired to his garden, devoting himself to writing essays on Epicurus's moral teachings.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} That same year, [[John Dryden]] translated the celebrated lines from Book II of Lucretius's ''On the Nature of Things'': "'Tis pleasant, safely to behold from shore / The rowling ship, and hear the Tempest roar."{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} Meanwhile, [[John Locke]] (1632–1704) adapted Gassendi's modified version of Epicurus's epistemology, which became highly influential on English empiricism.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} Many thinkers with sympathies towards the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] endorsed Epicureanism as an admirable moral philosophy.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} [[Thomas Jefferson]] (1743–1826), one of the [[Founding Fathers of the United States]], declared in 1819, "I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us."{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}}

The German philosopher [[Karl Marx]] (1818–1883), whose ideas are the basis of [[Marxism]], was profoundly influenced as a young man by the teachings of Epicurus{{sfn|Schafer|2003|page=127}}<ref>Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works – Volume 1, p 30</ref> and his [[doctoral thesis]] was a [[Hegelian dialectic]]al analysis of [[The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature|the differences between the natural philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus]].{{sfn|Schafer|2003|pages=127–128}} Marx viewed Democritus as a rationalist skeptic, whose epistemology was inherently contradictory, but saw Epicurus as a dogmatic empiricist, whose worldview is internally consistent and practically applicable.{{sfn|Schafer|2003|pages=127–129}} The [[United Kingdom|British]] poet [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Alfred Tennyson]] (1809–1892) praised "the sober majesties / of settled, sweet, Epicurean life" in his 1868 poem "Lucretius".{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} Epicurus's ethical teachings also had an indirect impact on the philosophy of [[Utilitarianism]] in England during the nineteenth century.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] politician [[Joseph Stalin]] (1878–1953) lauded Epicurus by stating: "He was the greatest philosopher of all time. He was the one who recommended practicing virtue to derive the greatest joy from life".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Svanidze|first=Budu|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LepoAAAAMAAJ|title=My Uncle, Joseph Stalin|date=1953|publisher=[[G. P. Putnam's Sons]]|pages=213|language=en}}</ref>

[[Friedrich Nietzsche]] once noted: "Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former – although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity."<ref>Friedrich Nietzsche: ''Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits'', p. 44.</ref>

Academic interest in Epicurus and other Hellenistic philosophers increased over the course of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with an unprecedented number of monographs, articles, abstracts, and conference papers being published on the subject.{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} The texts from the library of [[Philodemus|Philodemus of Gadara]] in the [[Villa of the Papyri]] in [[Herculaneum]], first discovered between 1750 and 1765, are being deciphered, translated, and published by scholars part of the Philodemus Translation Project, funded by the [[United States]] [[National Endowment for the Humanities]], and part of the Centro per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi in [[Naples]].{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} Epicurus's popular appeal among non-scholars is difficult to gauge,{{sfn|Jones|2010|page=323}} but it seems to be relatively comparable to the appeal of more traditionally popular ancient Greek philosophical subjects such as Stoicism, Aristotle, and Plato.{{sfn|Jones|2010|pages=323–324}}