# Epicurus — The Religion of Nature Delineated character guide

> Epicurus in The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Epicurus

**First appearance:** 0005-ii-of-happiness

## Snapshot

The pleasure-loving Greek whose doctrines Wollaston summons to the dock, forced to answer whether appetite can ever be reconciled with reason's supreme rule.

## Who they are

Epicurus enters Wollaston's argument less as a historical figure than as a test case: the philosopher who made pleasure the measure of the good, and who therefore must be weighed against the claim that reason is man's uppermost faculty. The tension is sharp — Wollaston grants that desire, hope, and joy are natural, yet insists that a being who pursues only sensual objects 'cancels his reason' and sinks toward the brute. For the early arc, Epicurus matters as the foil whose challenge forces the reader to ask whether happiness and virtue can truly be separated.

## Links

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