Friday, June 12, 2026

Another utopia

 It’s odd what writers think readers want to know.

Consider how the concept of writing a life has changed. St. Matthew starts his gospel with a genealogy. Diogenes Laertius doesn’t get far in his life of Epicurus before he quotes the text of his will.

Epicurus’s will made me think of another genre — the literature of utopias.

The will is a legal document, but it’s also a vision of an ideal world. Epicurus made provisions to allow his friends to live in a garden where they could investigate how the world works and could have philosophical discussions about their questions.

Epicurus  couldn’t imagine anything better.

• Source: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers; translated by R.D. Hicks; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, Vol. II. The text of the will is on pp. 544-8.

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