Epicurus was in favour of friendly sex but not of grand passions or marriage and children, viewing them as sources of trouble and vexation.

Even if you just want to make a simple clothing item for yourself or go for a long hike in the forest - something we imagine requires absolutely no resources - you have to go to the store and buy a lot of stuff, and probably use a car.

The moves to contractualism and utilitarianism required some extra ingredients besides mortalism, the denial that God is in charge of the world, and the doctrine that physical and psychological pain are the greatest evils.

People formerly seemed unable to evaluate a woman's c.v. or to accept a range of personal and communicative styles from the exuberant and confident to the sober and pedantic. It's much better than it was, and a number of male philosophers have been extraordinarily helpful in detecting and criticising everyday sexism in the profession.

There's Hobbes, who understood in the 1640s that the sovereign is not an appointee of God, or even a figure of superior virtue and wisdom, but just a functional device whose role is to keep people from hurting and killing each other.

We are now returning to the 18th century empirical approach with the new interest in the evolutionary basis of ethics, with 'experimental' moral philosophy and moral psychology. As a result, we understand better why moral formulas are experienced as ineluctable commands, even if there is no commander and even if the notion of an inescapable obligation is just superstition. So moral philosophy has made huge progress.

Even if the gods did exist, the Epicureans argued, they didn't care about us. Rather, everything comes from nature, and all that really exists are atoms and void, moving and congregating.