CAEN, France — Western higher education traces its origins to a couple of private homes with back gardens quite close to each other in ancient Athens. Both schools accepted students free of charge and women, but one was far more radical than the other: it admitted slaves.

That was Epicurus's Garden, which taught an ascetic form of hedonism to impart personal happiness and fulfillment for its own sake. The other, Plato's Academy, much like modern formal systems of education, aimed to help students improve their careers within society - primarily as politicians.

The Academy, which taught Plato's idealistic philosophy, had the longer-lasting influence. Still, Epicurean schools spread across the ancient world and lasted for about 600 years - until Christianity began to take offense, classifying their teachings as hedonistic excess.

Lost from view under the weight of ecclesiastical disapprobation was that Epicureanism captured much of the materialist, atomist view of the world that science would later confirm. When Michel Onfray, France's best-selling philosopher and best-known atheist, decided five years ago to end a 20-year formal teaching career to open his own private university, he chose to re-establish the Epicurean way of teaching.