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Epicurus taught that pleasure is the greatest good — yet he lived on bread and water, in a garden, far from the crowd. This lecture from Academy of Ideas resolves that seeming contradiction. Epicurus saw that wild pleasures are brief and usually repaid in pain, so the most pleasurable life is actually the calm, simple one. He sorted our desires into three kinds and showed which to satisfy, which to soften, and which to abandon entirely. The result is a practical recipe for a life of moderation, contentment, and freedom from want.
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Epicurus and Ethics
In this lecture we will discuss the ethics of Epicurus, an ancient philosopher born in 341 BC and founder of the influential school of philosophy known as Epicureanism.
Before delving into Epicurus’ ethics, it will be helpful to clarify exactly what ethics is and the questions it tries to answer.
Ethics is a branch of philosophy whose main subject matter is the examination of moral values and value judgments.
judgments concerning what is good or bad or judgments about what morally ought or
ought not to be. Since we naturally attempt to strive for what is good and
flee from what is bad, ethics is concerned with questions of how one
ought to behave or how one ought to live their life. Thus, ethics is said to be
concerned with normative statements which are statements about how things
should be as opposed to statements of how things are which are called factual
or existential statements. Two major questions which ethics deals with and which Epicurus himself
was specifically concerned with are, what is the ultimate good in life and relatedly, how should
one behave in order to obtain this good and hence lead the best life possible? Throughout history
there have been a large variety of answers to the question, what is the ultimate good for human
beings? But three answers have been especially prominent. Some philosophers have responded that
virtue is the ultimate good. Some have said happiness, and some have claimed that pleasure
is the ultimate good we must strive after. Epicurus is perhaps the most famous proponent
of the third answer. In this lecture we will discuss his ideas regarding pleasure, and
his thoughts about what we must do in order to live the most pleasurable life possible.
The view that pleasure is the greatest of all goods is called hedonism. While there
have been many philosophers who have ascribed to this view, as Richard Taylor points out
in his book, Good and Evil, hedonism appears to be the default position which most non-philosophers
ascribe to. Of all the things that have ever been proposed as the unique and greatest good,
perhaps none has won more adherence than pleasure. Feelings of pleasure, it would seem, are always
good, and their opposite, feelings of pain, are always bad. One need not be a philosopher to
arrive at this opinion, and it is perhaps for this reason that the everyday philosophy of vast
numbers of people is the philosophy of Hedonism. When most people think of Hedonism, they think
of the form of Hedonism ascribed to by the Serenaic philosophers of ancient Greece. The
Serenaics, who were roughly contemporaries of Epicurus in the 4th century BC, thought
that the best life was the life filled with the most pleasure. They identified the bodily
pleasures, namely the pleasures we obtain from food, wine, and sexual gratification,
as the most intense of all pleasures, and thought that each moment we should try to
maximize these pleasures to the greatest degree possible. Epicurus’ hedonism was a far cry from
that of the serenatics. He readily agreed that the most intense pleasures are indeed the bodily
pleasures. However, he thought that overindulging in such pleasures was not necessary for the
attainment of the good life, and in fact prevented one from attaining a pleasurable life. Bodily
pleasures he reasoned are not only of short duration, ending almost as soon as they have
begun, but more importantly they are often followed by intense pain. The pleasure of
being drunk may be great in the moment, for example, but the pain of a horrible hangover
offsets that pleasure with a more intense pain of longer duration the following day.
Hence, in order to live a pleasurable life, Epicurus believed that it was the avoidance
of pain that was essential, not the indulgence in pleasures.
And to avoid pain, we must cultivate discipline
and often decline opportunities to engage in bodily and sensual pleasures.
Paradoxically, he thought the most pleasurable life was actually the life
in which we avoid chasing after pleasures altogether.
As Epicurus wrote, when therefore we say that pleasure is a chief good,
we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man
or those which lie in sensual enjoyment as some think who are ignorant
but we mean freedom of the body from pain and of the soul from confusion
so far so good Epicurus answered the first question of ethics we identified
at the beginning of the lecture
by arguing that pleasure is the ultimate good in life
but the pleasure we must seek is not sensual enjoyment
but instead freedom from pain worry fear and confusion
but what about the second question we discussed earlier what must we do
in order to live the most pleasurable life possible. Epicurus thought that one
of the chief obstacles preventing most individuals
from acting in a way which would enable them to achieve the good life
was their ignorance regarding the nature of their desires.
As he explained, all desires can be placed in one of three categories.
Firstly, there are desires which are natural
and necessary. These are the desires we share with the animals
and include the desire for food, drink, and shelter.
These desires are considered natural in that they are not the product of social
conditioning
and they are necessary in that we must fulfill such desires in order to survive.
Secondly, there are desires which are natural but
unnecessary. The most prominent desire in this category
is the desire for sexual gratification. This desire is wholly natural
and cannot be eliminated entirely. However,
Such a desire can lead to a painful life if it is not controlled.
We should satiate such a desire, no more than is necessary for the avoidance of pain, but never for the sake of pleasure itself.
Lastly, there are desires which are unnatural and unnecessary.
These are the desires which are most to blame for our inability to live a pleasurable life.
Such desires include the desire for power, fame, extreme wealth, social acceptance, and all the other desires socially conditioned into us.
These desires chain us to a life of continual frustration, as they are desires that are insatiable, and hence keep us in a continual state of want, and therefore pain.
To live a pleasurable life, we must satiate our desires which are natural, but only to the extent which eliminates pain.
We must also discard all desires which are unnatural.
The good life is the simple life, Epicurus taught.
Epicurus practiced what he preached.
In Athens, he set up a philosophical sanctuary called the Garden,
where individuals could practice self-discipline,
engage in philosophical discussions with friends,
and isolate themselves from the masses of individuals
who were in a continual state of misery, frustration, and madness.
Pierre Hadot, in his book What is Ancient Philosophy,
nicely summarized the Epicurean style of life.
Above all, Epicureans believed that it is necessary to practice the discipline of desire.
We must learn to be content with what is easy to obtain
and what satisfies the organism’s fundamental needs,
while renouncing what is superfluous.
A simple formula, but one that cannot but imply a radical upheaval of our lives.
It means being content with simple foods and simple clothes,
while renouncing wealth, honors, and public position, and living in retreat.
Source: Academy of Ideas