L'Antiquité en œuvres | les Lettres d'Épicure (avec Mathilde Cambron-Goulet)

The Letters of Epicurus: Why would a philosopher write letters rather than treatises? Elsa Bouchard interviews Mathilde Cambron-Goulet, professor in the Department of Education and Pedagogy at UQAM and PhD in Philosophy, about the only three letters that have survived from a vast body of work that is almost entirely lost. Born in Athens in 341 BCE, Epicurus founded the Garden, a community open to women and people of all ages, where friendship and frugality were celebrated. The discussion will cover: the letter as a teaching tool in an ancient world without postal services, the Garden and its way of life, the letter to Menoeceus and its four themes (the gods, death, virtue, and pleasure), and above all, this pleasure defined as the absence of pain—the antithesis of what the word "Epicurean" means today. This episode originally aired on Radio VM (CIRA-FM) on November 4, 2025. For more information about our activities, visit fondationhumanitas.ca To view the show's page on the station's website: https://www.radiovm.com/ecouter/progr... RSS feed to listen to our show on all podcast platforms: https://rss.com/podcasts/l-antiquite-...