76ENS REALISSIMUM
“Dare to know” (Latin: sapere aude). Con-
temporary philosophers are not united in
assessing the achievement of the Enlight-
enment. Thinkers during the Enlighten-
ment seemed to advance the case for
human rights (see HUMANISM), but
thinkers such as Hume and Kant also
appear to be guilty of racism, Locke
(paradoxically given his other convic-
tions) seemed to allow slavery, and the
Enlightenment’s concept of reason has
been critiqued as culture-specific and not
(as Kant and others hoped) universal.
Enlightenment can also refer to the
Buddhist concept of liberation or nir-
vana, an escape from the cycle of death
and rebirth (samsara).
ENS REALISSIMUM. Latin for “the most
real being.” Kant held that God is the
most real being.
ENTAILMENT. Entailment is a logical
relationship that warrants inference. For
example, given the thesis “If A, then B,”
and “A,” then “B” is entailed.
EPICTETUS (c. 55–c. 135 CE). A Greek
Stoic philosopher and, at least at one
time, a slave. Epictetus taught a spirit of
content resignation in the face of forces
that we cannot control. His works include
Discourse of Epictetus (8 books extant)
(c. 101 CE) and Enchiridion (a “hand-
book” summarizing the doctrines of the
Discourse) (c. 135 CE).
EPICURUS (341–270 BCE). An ancient
Greek philosopher who founded the
school of thought called Epicureanism.
Epicurus articulated a form of hedonism,
according to which all and only things
that give rise to pleasure are good. How-
ever, Epicurus did not endorse hedonism
in the popular, “spring break” sense.
Rather, a life of deep and refined pleasure
involves diligent moderation and philo-
sophical reflection. He argued that we
should have no fear of death for insofar as
death is annihilation, we will not exist
after death and thus will not be in any
state to have fear. Some 300 works
have been attributed to Epicurus. The
fraction of his work that survives includes
On Nature (in 37 books, fragments of
nine extant), the Canon, and letters to
Herodotus, Pitocles, and Menoeccus.EPIPHENOMENALISM. The thesis that
the physical world affects the mind or the
mental, but not vice versa. On this view,
the mental is like the sparks caused by a
machine or the suds of a beer or the foam
of a wave in which the key causal contrib-
utor is the machine, the beer, or the water.EPISTEMOLOGY. From the Greek
epistēmē, meaning “knowledge.” Episte-
mology is the study of or theories
about knowledge. One may also use the
term “epistemic” as an adjective to refer to
that which pertains to knowledge; e.g., do
we have epistemic access to the will of