I have to say that some philosophers such as the late Bernard Williams, and I would include myself in this group, would say that tranquillity is overrated as the goal of life.

Moral theory develops from the divine command theory of medieval Christian philosophy, mixed up with a bit of ancient pagan virtue theory, to the purely secular moral sentiment and interpersonal reaction theories of Smith and Hume, to Kant's attempt to restore command theory but with something supersensible in the individual rather than God as the source of authority.

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.

Moral claims aren't, as a class, truth-value apt or not.

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.

It used to be that nobody would really argue with a woman, because what she thought (unless it was by way of providing helpful comments about one's own work) just didn't matter.

Epicurus was not at all interested in what we would call the problems of mass society, and he thought civic politics was just trouble and to be avoided by the wise.