Ethics Midterm

Midterm-Preliminary Questions

1.Christopher Dimaano
2.Yahoo Username = dimaanochris
3. E-mail = whoisdilated@hotmail.com
4. 7 completed posts. (Post 1 & 2 January 15th, Post 3, 4, & 5 January 22nd,
Post 6 & 7 January 27)
5.I did complete the first field trip. I went to the Simon Wiesenthal Center/ Museum of Tolerance last Sunday which was January 21st. It was a different experience then my first visit as a 5th grader. Now my thoughts and ideals have changed. I reacted more with remorse and sadness because how our world really is, was, and continues to be. Even though the situations and events are different, it’s just evil in different forms. I went through most of the tours consecutively. One after another, a presentation was given. At the end, they let the stats and results of the holocaust. These numbers were astounding, you would have never known that that many people were discriminated against and killed for being a certain type of person. It’s a harsh world, and we will always know this.
6. I read the biography websites for Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus, Spinoza, Kant, Mill, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche. I also read the first parts in Aristotle’s Books 1 and 2, didn’t finish. I read both readings for Epicurus and Epictetus. I read the first reading on Spinoza and not the second. I also read both Kants and Mill’s readings. I read the first part of Kierkegaard’s reading, and didn’t watch the short film. I finished Karl Marx bio and writing. Finally I read the 7 selections from Nietzsche.
7. I did not complete any extra credit.



Essay Questions
1. Nietzsche famously claimed that God is dead. This does not mean "God is now physically dead". What he meant was the idea of God is no longer capable of acting as a source of any moral code or teleology. He believed there could be positive possibilities for humans without God. In believing this, it opens the way for human's creative abilities to fully develop its own uniqueness. It is a freedom to be something without being made to accept what was believed happened in the past. He is also noted for distinguishing between master and slave moralities. Master morality arises from a celebration of life while slave morality is a result of ressentiment, also known as resentment, at those capable of master morality. The difference between the two is summarized as the difference between "good and bad," or "good and evil". This is an example of a paradox. Paradox has contradictions. Nietzshe is also an aphorism. He adopts a viewpoint and identifies the things which are only visible from that perspective. He once said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” In, Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft, 1886) these closely defines the aphoristic style of his middle period. He was well known to make true statements that leads to a contradiction or a situation which defies intuition.
In Nietzsche’s The Antichrist, Curse on Christianity (Der Antichrist. Fluch auf das Christentum, September 1888), he launches into an attack on the morals of Christianity. He cited elements of the religion as creations of resentments. He refers to a "transvaluation of values” (flipping morals upside down) as coming from a denial of life, flipping between good and evil which is driven by our conscience. Nietzsche had love for Jesus for the mere fact that he believed God before becoming dead in men's hearts and minds, had given the foundation of a "Christian-moral" defining and uniting approach to life as a shared cultural set of belief fully within which people had lived their lives. He hated Paul because he exploited Jesus. He used what he learned from him, against him.
Christian morality offended Nietzsche because in Christian morality such as “loving thy neighbor” is something Nietzsche could not support if the neighbor is a killer. He believes Christian morality comes from non-realist approach suggesting moral values are creations, dependent on people's feelings and goals regarding themselves and others or on their belief systems. Nietzche on the other hand, was a realist. Realists believe that moral value is somehow an intrinsic property of the world and that ethical principles are simply discovered or intuited. Nietzsche's criticism of religions and of Christianity is brought about by the forgetfulness of the human religious experience due to the de-animization of the cosmos. In addition, his criticism of Christian morality comes from the degeneration of Western philosophy.
Nietzsche envisions the height of humanity for some to recognize no difference between right and wrong. As defined in the dictionary, “Humanism” is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities—particularly rationalism. People have different ways of thinking and beliefs.
In trying to objectively describe his views, the following quote that “God is dead” comes to my mind. I do not completely agree with Nietzsche in that “God is dead”. However, I understand what he tried to convey in that people should have the option to develop new creations without having to be stuck with what was in the past.
2. Epictetus was an Stoic teacher who encouraged his students to live the philosophic life, filled with happiness. We should be able to judge what is good and what is evil. He also said we have power over our own minds. According to Epictetus, some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. The things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. He also said the actions we undertake should be motivated by the specific obligations that we have in virtue of who we are, our natural relations to others, and what roles we have adopted in our dealings with the wider community. For Epictetus, God is the 'captain' who calls us back on board ship, the subsequent voyage being a metaphor for our departure from life. According to Epictetus, God is 'the Giver' to whom we should return all those things we have enjoyed given by him as on loan to us when we lose close relatives or friends who die, and when we lose our possessions. Epictetus presents orthodox Stoic views on God. His justification for believing in God is expressed essentially along the lines of what we recognize as an argument from design. The Stoics were materialists. They believe God is conceived of as a type of fiery breath that blends perfectly with all other matter in the universe.
According to Spinoza there are three primary emotions: desire, pleasure, and pain. Desire may arise from either pleasure or pain. Pleasure may be produced by a transition from a lesser to a greater state of perfection. Pain may be produced by a transition from a greater to a lesser state of perfection. Spinoza claims that the more perfect a thing is, the more active and less passive it is. The mind is most perfect when it knows God. Spinoza argues that knowledge of good and evil arises from the awareness of what causes pleasure and pain. The greatest good of the mind, and its greatest virtue, is to know God. To act with virtue is to act according to reason. According to Spinoza, if we act according to reason, then we desire only what is good. If we act according to reason, then we try to promote what is good not only for ourselves but for others. Spinoza admits that all emotions may not necessarily conflict with reason. Emotions which agree with reason may cause pleasure, while emotions which do not agree with reason may cause pain. Inability to control the emotions may cause pain. Spinoza believed God is an infinite substance. By this, he meant both that the number of God's attributes is unlimited and that there is no attribute that God does not possess. Spinoza argues that if two or more substances were to exist they would be differentiated either by a difference in modes or by a difference in attributes. However, they could not be differentiated by a difference in modes, for substances are prior in nature to their modes. Therefore, they would have to be differentiated by a difference in attributes. Controversially, Spinoza believed that no two substances can have exactly the same set of attributes, nor can they have a common attribute. Spinoza reminds us that God's existence is necessary. Imagination is a perceptual ability that is of particular interest to Spinoza. Imagination includes more than the capacity to form those mental constructs that we normally consider to be imaginative. According to Spinoza, it includes memory and sense perception as well. Spinoza consistently opposes imagination to intellect and views it as providing no more than confused perception. To use his preferred terminology, the ideas of the imagination are inadequate. For Spinoza, God is the necessary cause of all things. All things by nature proceed from necessity. All things are predetermined by God, and for anything that exists, some effect must follow. Spinoza argues that the human mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God. Spinoza also argues that from any idea, an effect must necessarily follow.
Epictetus and Spinoza had many similarities. The first one is their regards to God. For Epictetus, God is the 'captain' who calls us back on board ship. According to Epictetus, God is 'the Giver'. For Spinoza, God is the necessary cause of all things. The second one is Epictetus’ belief that our capacity to flourish and be happy (to attain eudaimonia) is entirely dependent upon our own characters. It is completely up to us what qualities our characters come to have which means how well we flourish is also entirely up to us. Spinoza argues that to live according to reason is to live freely, and is not to live in servitude to the emotions. If we act according to reason, then we are guided by love and good-will and not by fear or hatred. According to Epictetus, to be secured by living the life of reason, we need to live our lives virtuously and living 'according to nature'. He said we have the power to have authority over ourselves. Spinoza maintains that reason can control the emotions. Reason is virtue, and virtue is love toward God. The more we love God, the more we are able to control our emotions. For Spinoza, the more active the mind is, the more adequately it knows God. Spinoza argues that all ideas are found in God, but that ideas are true only if they adequately refer to God. Truth is adequate knowledge, but falsehood is inadequate knowledge.
The Stoic ethical teaching is based upon two principles, first, that the universe is governed by absolute law, which admits of no exceptions and second, that the essential nature of humans is reason. Both are summed up in the famous Stoic maxim, "Live according to nature" and as described above what Epictetus’ and Spinoza’s beliefs were. For this maxim has two aspects. The first one is that men should conform themselves to nature which Epictitus belived in, and secondly, that they should conform their actions to reason which Spinoza believed in.
Epictetus and Spinoza also had differences. Epictitus as a stoic talks about virtue and what it means according to reason. Unlike Spinoza, the Stoics envisaged life as a battle against the passions and that virtue is founded upon reason, and so upon knowledge. Stoics identify the happy life as one that is motivated by virtue. Epictetus employs a number of metaphors to illustrate what the Stoic attitude to life should be. Some are Life as a festival, Life as a game, Life as weaving,and Life as a play. Stoics hold that the mind of each person is quite literally a part God and that the rationality that we each possess is in fact a fragment of God's rationality. Epictetus expresses this in terms of what God has given.
3. The Manifesto of the Communist Party was first published on April 14, 1848. It was commissioned by the Communist League and written by communist theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Manifesto suggested a course of action for a proletarian (working class) revolution to overthrow the bourgeoisie (ruling upper class) and to eventually bring about a society that was classless. This book changed the world politically because it introduced the concept of the transition from socialism to communism which many critics of the Manifesto, particularly during and after the Soviet era. Anarchists, liberals, and conservatives have all asked how an organization such as the revolutionary state could ever "wither away" as Engels had put it.

The book also has an ethical text because it included the following “10 Planks of the Communist Manifesto” which affected the morale values of people. Some in good ways, others in not so good ways:
Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Abolition of all right of inheritance.
Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form.

It also conceptualized a classless society, which was an important Marxist term. According to Marxist theory, ancient society, primitive communism, was classless. Everyone was equally poor and carried out the same work. This may or may not be acceptable to everyone’s standards in the past or at present time.

The first section, "Bourgeois and Proletarians," Marx claims that the history of all existing society is the history of class struggles. He cited, “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. “ This section goes on to argue that the class struggle under capitalism is between those who own the means of production, the ruling class or the bourgeoisies, and those who labor for a wage, the working class or the proletariats. Though the bourgeoisie has played a progressive role in destroying feudalism, according to Marx and Engels, it has also brought about the conditions for its own impending downfall by creating a contradiction within capitalism between the forces of production and the relations of production. Feudalism generally refers to a relational set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility of Europe during the Middle Ages.
The second section, "Proletarians and Communists," starts by outlining the relationship of conscious communists to the rest of the working class. The Communists are not a special party in relation to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by two means, one in the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries and two in the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through. The second section goes on to defend communism from various objections, such as the claim that communists advocate "free love," and the claim that people will not perform labor in a communist society because they have no incentive to work. The section ends by outlining a set of short-term demands. One particularly controversial passage deals with this transitional period: When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.
Marx's vision of a utopia or perfect community failed because there was also the tension between Marx the political activist and Marx the student of political economy. He was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. Many of his expectations about the future course of the revolutionary movement have, so far, failed to materialize. However, his stress on the economic factor in society and his analysis of the class structure in class conflict have had an enormous influence on history, sociology, and study of human culture.

4. Aristotle was born in 384 BCE. at Stagirus, a Greek colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace. For Aristotle, philosophy arose historically after basic necessities were secured. It arouses from feeling of curiosity and wonder, to which religious myth gave only temporary satisfaction. The earliest speculators were philosophers of nature. Aristotle argues, forms are powerless to explain changes of things. Forms are not causes of movement and alteration in the physical objects of sensation. Forms are also equally incompetent to explain how we arrive at knowledge of particular things. For Aristotle, the form is not something outside the object, but rather in the varied phenomena of sense. Real substance, or true being, is not the abstract form, but rather the concrete individual thing. Unfortunately, Aristotle's theory of substance is not altogether consistent with itself.
The development of potentiality to actuality is one of the most important aspects of Aristotle's philosophy. He pursued in solving the difficulties with reference to the beginnings of existence and the relations of the one and many. The actual vs. potential state of things is explained in terms of the causes which act on things. Below are the four causes:
Material cause, or the elements out of which an object is created;
Efficient cause, or the means by which it is created;
Formal cause, or the expression of what it is;
Final cause, or the end for which it is.
God to Aristotle is the first of all substances. God has everlasting life, and perfect blessedness. Aristotle sees the universe as a scale lying between the two extremes: form without matter is on one end, and matter without form is on the other end. He also defines the imagination as "the movement which results upon an actual sensation.” According to Aristotle, ethics is an attempt to find out our chief end or highest good: an end which he maintains is really final. Such a chief end is called happiness. Alike the belief of Epictitus, happiness is what a philosophical life is all about.
Epicurus is one of the major philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the three centuries following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE (and of Aritotle in 322 BCE). Epicurus pursued to develop an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics, empiricist epistemology, and hedonistic ethics. Epicurus taught that the basic constituents of the world are atoms. Epicurus rejected the existence of Platonic forms and he said that the gods have no influence on our lives. This is the exact opposite of Epictitus’ and Aristotle’s acceptance that God is the substance of all matters. Epicurus' ethics is a form of egoistic hedonism. By this he means, the only thing that is intrinsically valuable is one's own pleasure. Epicurus agrees with Aristotle that happiness is the highest good. However, he disagrees with Aristotle by identifying happiness with pleasure. Epicurus claims that everything we do, we do for the sake ultimately of gaining pleasure for ourselves. Unlike Epictitus, the Stoic, Epicurus goes against the majority of Greek ethical theorists, who identify happiness with virtue, and Aristotle, who identifies happiness with a life of virtuous activity. Epicurus thinks that natural science and philosophy itself also are instrumental goods.
Epictetus was an Stoic teacher who encouraged his students to live the philosophic life, filled with happiness. According to Epictetus, we should be able to judge what is good and what is evil. He also said we have power over our own minds. According to Epictetus, some things are up to us and some things are not up to us. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. The things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions. He also said the actions we undertake should be motivated by the specific obligations that we have in virtue of who we are, our natural relations to others, and what roles we have adopted in our dealings with the wider community. Like other Stoics, Epictitus believe God is conceived of as a type of fiery breath that blends perfectly with all other matter in the universe.
Epictetus pursued his goal of life employing a number of metaphors to illustrate what the Stoic attitude to life should be. Some are Life as a festival, Life as a game, Life as weaving, and Life as a play. Stoics hold that the mind of each person is quite literally a part God and that the rationality that we each possess is in fact a fragment of God's rationality. Epictetus expresses this in terms of what God has given.

5. Another highly recognized philosopher of the 20th century is Jean-Paul Sartre. His lifetime and works isn’t too far behind the timeline, for he was born 1905 and died 1980, which isn’t too far into the past. He was on the search for philosophical reflection. Sartre was among the atheist existentialists. During the 19th and 20th centuries, this trend was becoming popular of being atheist. He responded to Communist and Catholic critics. I believe an atheist can be moral. It’s not even that these atheists don’t believe in right or wrong, but they don’t believe in a higher being such as God.

Sartre was a moralist and not a moralizer. He states that we are responsible for our egos and this is because it’s an object of consciousness and to a philosopher that’s what it’s about. His works with existentialist ethics assumes that the societies we live in are all oppressed and exploited. Yet in still, we are subjected to having freedom. We have the choices to choose philosophical path or not. Existentialists had one virtue, and that’s authenticity, it’s compared with many other life choices. Ethics could mean to you, what you do, and why you do it. He is to defend existentialism. In the second reading, he states that they have been charged with basing existentialism on human degradation. This meaning that they only see the evil and dark side of the world and not the bright, positive sides of our worldly views. They’re also charged with giving the humans the benefit of the doubt of being self-centered beings and that they don’t need other human alliances to live. Christians blamed existentialists of not believing in God’s commandments and eternal promises. And to the Christians, this means all pureness and holiness is obsolete. This doesn’t make existentialism look good or positive at all. Actually, they are compared to naturalist in a negative way, yet the naturalists have caused more controversy then existentialists. The few common grounds for the atheists and Catholic/Christian existentialists is that existence comes before essence. Both sides believe that an individual or object has a written purpose and the only thing now is to fulfill that purpose.

6. Kant’s ethical theory would define as being rational. He called it “Categorial imperative”. Being rational, meant not being out of this world, so that rules out being immortal, this would be irrational. He would agree with my rational thinking because it has to do with reasoning, which is good. A self-governing reason must be in place with a rational outlook. It the pending outcome is definitely unattainable, then this is not what Kant is stating in his theories. He would critique my views as being self-governed because the majority of decisions I make are about my own personal experiences.

One of his works was called The Critique of Practical Reason, and it was a newer version of his thoughts after one of his first writings The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. He analyzed how common sense worked with morality, but is common sense a true indicator of what’s right and wrong, I disagree. It just can’t be. First and foremost, common sense is different for everyone, so there’s no way it can apply to universally. This relates to having a good will, this is supposed to based on the value of your moral. How moral are you, and how moral can you be? The route you choose will change as well. Times where you need courage or wittiness will come up. Other times where there’s no need for courageousness because it brings injustice or a time for being witty when its being cruel to someone. There’s more then one side to the spectrum. Taking it too far to the extremes can disrupt someone’s morals.

Kant describes having morals to be a good attribute, and if there is anything to pursue it’s that. Having sincerity and sympathy can be a great thing, but too much of it will ruin it. Imagine being too sincere or too sympathetic, it would not work for the individual. Balance is a must. Kant states that even when a person has courage, perseverance, intelligence, and wit, it won’t do them any good if they don’t have good will to go along with it. With good will, comes duty. Kierkegaard states in his writings that Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac to the social norms. You might think that he doesn’t recognize a higher being, but he does. He knew Abraham needed to fulfill his own duties. Both these philosophers realize that a duty is to be acted upon, and carried out.

Kierkegaard was a Christian thinker and the father of existentialism. He was on the constant tour of spreading Christian views. He would use biblical figures and use them to relate to modern day events and struggles so the people would understand. His attempts to revitalize Christianity came out in Danish church politics. He was also a poet, using religion as his subject matter. Existentialism is philosophical movement that deals with religious freedom, he was involved with this. It actually contradicts the traditional philosophy that most philosophers have come up with. It’s has to do with the fundamentals of human conditions and how they react with the world around us. The freedom we have is questionable, but the duties we have are undeniable. And existentialism in definition is hard to explain thoroughly because there are parts within that contradict the outlooks. At least we know that existence comes before essence, many other philosophers feel the same way. The movement deals with the issue of actually dismissing that life has meaning, and this collides with Christian’s beliefs of why we are here. In existentialism, they want the individual to come up with the values themselves, and not be spoon fed what to do or say. They want the human to define what’s supposed to be fulfilling to them or not. Existentialism often is related with terms such as anxiety, death, and freedom. Christianity acknowledges these things also. Soren Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to create this existentialism. Him and Friedrich Nietzsche didn’t even use the term existentialism.

Just like most of all philosophers, they were looking for the meaningfulness in life. Kierkegaard said that human nature and human identity are different depending on the values and beliefs that that person has for themselves. It’s always been a known fact, that everyone is different and in turn it changes someone’s outlooks and wants.


7. A famous Utilitarianism principle is “the greatest happiness principle.” And this was to make the most amount of people to be as happy as can be. This means it’s not just for individual, but for the community. He distinguishes pleasure from contentment, making them two different feelings. I agree with this. Which one of these has utility though, is it the family or the party man The answer seems obvious here. It’s the family man who further carries on the name and provides for more then just himself. Hence the world utility, meaning use, in the word utilitarianism. To carry on for the human race is much more important then splurging thousands of dollars on wealthy items. Instead of using words like pleasure and happiness, utilitarianism uses the word welfare. And it’s important to separate the lines between pleasure and happiness. By happiness they mean intended pleasure. Intended as in this was what was called for. Reasoning and guidance wasn’t spoken much either. But happiness for the greater good and the greater majority is what they’re looking for. When it comes to the Greater Happiness Principle, it’s about the ultimate end, to have as much quantity and quality as possible. More then that, it’s about having the most happiness and least pain for Mill. When it comes to Mill, he wants us to be as happy as possible as well as the people around us, of course I expect he means the rest of the world as well. The test of morality is a test of utility. Epicurus was similar to Mill’s thinking. Mill’s pleasure was defined as having use or utility. And Epicurus wanted nothing to do with gods or death, in turn, finding the ultimate pleasure which was tranquility for him.

Epicurus was a major philosopher during the Hellenistic period. Many philosophers came from this period. Epicurus taught that the world consists only of atoms, bits of matter. Science was key here.. He explained the natural phenomena in atomic terms. By doing this, he removed the possibility of spiritual beings and a higher existence. It was a big thing to Epicurus that you were not to fear gods or even fear death. This rules an after life. So, his world, it’s during your lifetime you shine and not a day later. He also said that we could gain knowledge without relying on senses. He thought that the point of ones actions was to attain pleasure, and by pleasure he means tranquility, mostly to one’s self. An easy was of obtaining this tranquil life, it’s best to limit your desires and forget about fear or gods and death. This will consequently hold you down and fear will take over. His gospel of freedom from gods or death became well known amongst a certain group of individuals. And who is to blame them, it very well seems like a perfect method to face the fears that you do have, and conquer them by yourself. His ethics is a form of egotistic hedonism as in the only intrinsically valuable thing is ones own pleasure. Yet, he was still sophisticated. He would recommend a virtuous and moderately ascetic life. Some hedonists have the stereotype of being the ones to “eat, drink, and be merry.” How appropriate, wouldn’t that be a great slogan for philosophical life.

8. The philosopher that I clicked with during these readings was Epicurus. With the close connection of science based thinking, it’s easy too apply to our lives. I like the way he totally defines and teaches that the world only has atoms, and matter and nothing else in terms of a higher being. Even though I’m Christian, I feel for this. I could imagine a life with the fact that there’s no afterlife. By this, it’ll be an easier, stress-free lifestyle, instead of worrying about who to please, what to please, and when it’s going to end. Morals and good-will will still be in us, but without pressure of death hanging on our shoulders; maybe we can rise to the top with our own ambitions in mind. I also agree with his views on virtue. This is important for a successful life as well. Imagine we sat on our behinds, waiting for the end. Nothing can be solved with this. I also like Epicurus’ outlook on pleasure being tranquility. A calm, conservative life can help you live longer I think. Less stress, and more best wishes. I’d also join the stereotype of the Hedonists which is “eat, drink, and be merry.” Now, that’s one pleasurable lifetime, and nothing after. For some, this is unacceptable. A life without reason, but that’s on them to think this way. Just because there’s no afterlife doesn’t mean there’s no purpose. In contrast with our modern society, Epicurus’ views are much different. Everyone seems like their bent on something, and I assume and propose that that something is death. Fear of death is actually the killer. When you wake up each day, it would be beneficial to live it out and further know that it’s about that day and that moment. Last point that I feel similar feelings with is that the fact you can gain knowledge without senses. It’s a more free like state of mind and in order to have long, tranquil life, Epicurus’ Hellenistic views is the philosophy to live by.