Hedonism - Epicurus

Epicurus (341-270 BCE) is a hedonist.  For those not familiar with the word, hedonists are those that value happiness above all else.  Hedonism puts pleasure as what we ought to ultimately pursue in life.  This can easily be misunderstood as to think that Epicurus encourages people to go out partying everyday and live a shallow life of shortsighted pleasures.  However, in his writing, Letter to Menoceus, he opposes this view of misrepresented hedonistic ideals and proceeds to explain what he means by pleasure-oriented life.

Epicurus starts his letter by establishing that death is something that the wise should not fear: “death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.”  He says that the wise do not degrade the value of life nor does the wise try to foolishly try to elongate it.  With that in mind, this wise man would seek to enjoy the time he has on this earth rather than to try and “live well” when young and “die well” when old.  This, he says, is foolish.

He also touches on the uncertainty of life and how we ought to think about such things.  He says that the future isn’t completely ours to control but at the same time, there are many things in our future that directly result from what we do.  We can’t count on everything to happen as we want it to but at the same time, we must not despair because of this uncertainty.

With these in mind, those who seek to enrich their life will devote his life to maximize pleasure.  This means that the wise man will try to stay healthy and have a peace of mind.  Everything we do is to relinquish ourselves from pain and fear, and when we are rid of those, our soul is at peace.

When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation.  By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.  It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul.

Contrary to how the word “epicurean” is used in the modern sense, Epicurus was rather a minimalist kind of guy.  He did not believe that we should seek after pleasures that derive from lavish eating or luxurious lifestyle; he believed that the most amount of pleasure comes from feeding your hunger with bread and water.  He believed that greater pleasure could be obtained by removing the pain of hunger with simple and inexpensive diet rather than continuing to search for expensive delicacies.

He concludes his letter by wrapping up what this wise man would be like: he is free from the fear of death; he has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained; how the duration or the intensity of evils is but slight; he scorns fate which destroys responsibility through the necessity of the concept.

That last bit about fate is elaborated more in his text and he talks about how an autonomous man who takes responsibility for his own actions is superior to those who believe things are inevitable. 

His letter is interesting and to say that we do not strive for pleasure would be a lie.  We all try to minimize pain and fear while trying to maximize happiness.  The question arises not out of some huge disagreement with this concept but out of the solitary reductionist view of “good”.  We ought to all strive for happiness and enjoy this life without a constant fear of inevitable death but is that enough?  Is there anything lacking in that?  What about an objective purpose?  If we are to dissect his views, we must start from the beginning.

The foundational support for his view is that death is inevitable and we should value life most of all.  On top of this, there’s no point in worrying about the future as it’s somewhat out of our control but at the same time, we have some control, which means that we should still put effort to ensure a painless future.  When you agree with this, you come to the life-centric conclusion which would put pleasure as the ultimate good for the short time you have on this earth.

The fundamental issue with this view is the way he views death.  Do we believe that death is meaningless?  Is there a purpose to our lives?  Even with differing answers to these questions, we are still largely hedonists.  Even if we believe in God and believe in serving God and enjoying him as the chief end of man, we can trace that back a few steps and say the reason why we believe in God is because it provides us happiness whether because it’s what God approves of or because of the assurance that faith provides us with.  The issue here, in my opinion, isn’t hugely of whether we strive for happiness; it’s about what we value as the highest good, if we believe in more than one “good” besides happiness.