Epicurus

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher who founded Epicureanism, holding that pleasure — specifically the absence of pain and mental disturbance (ataraxia) — is the highest good. He established his school, the Garden, in Athens around 307 BC, teaching a small circle including, unusually for the time, women and slaves. His philosophy was a comprehensive system encompassing physics, ethics, and epistemology.

Epicurus argued that the gods play no role in human affairs and that death is simply the cessation of sensation — nothing to be feared. His materialist physics, derived from Democritus's atomism, served as the foundation for his ethics. Though most of his writings are lost, his philosophy survived through Lucretius and profoundly influenced Renaissance and Enlightenment thought.