Leucippus & Democritus

I'm back!! It's funny how I take a one week break from writing for a busy week, and next thing I know it's several weeks later... 

Today's reading was about Leucippus and Democritus. A big chunk of the reading covered Leucippus' theory of atomism, which was continued by his pupil Democritus. I actually found it fascinating how their theory sounds very similar to things we talked about in my high school science courses. (You know, back when science was I thing I was required to take.) I could go on to talk about what they said about atomism, but it would be at risk of put putting on display my ignorance of anything science-y.

So instead I’ll skip to the very end. In aphorism number 54, it says “cheerfulness arises in people through moderation of enjoyment and due proportion in life. Deficiencies and excesses tend to change suddenly and give rise to large movements in the soul. Souls that undergo motions involving large intervals are neither steady nor cheerful…”  Upon reading that, I immediately thought of Aristotle when he says in the second book of Nicomachean Ethics “there are, then, three kinds of disposition: two are vices (one marked by excess and one by deficiency), and one, virtue, the mean.” Aristotle was looking at virtue as the true way to achieve eudaimonia (or happiness in the sense of well-being and flourishing). So it seems that Aristotle borrowed directly from Democritus (I’m assuming it was him) the idea that the extremes cause imbalance, so true happiness is found in moderation.