Epicurus · Philosophy
Epicurus’ much-misunderstood ethics: pleasure is indeed the highest good, but the greatest pleasure is not indulgence - it is <em>ataraxia</em> (freedom from mental disturbance) and <em>aponia</em> (freedom from bodily pain), a serene state reached by limiting desire, not multiplying it.
No philosopher has been more misunderstood than Epicurus. His name has given us the word epicure - a connoisseur of fine food and luxury - and ‘epicurean’ is used to mean devoted to sensual indulgence. This is almost the opposite of what he taught. It is true that Epicurus made pleasure the highest good and the goal of life: ‘pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life,’ he wrote, the standard by which we judge every good. But everything depends on what he meant by pleasure - and what he meant was not indulgence, luxury, or the chase after intense sensations. The pleasure Epicurus prized above all is a calm and stable state: ataraxia, freedom from disturbance or anxiety in the mind, and aponia, freedom from pain in the body. The happy life is not a life crammed with thrills; it is a life of serene contentment, untroubled in soul and at ease in body.
This rests on a crucial insight about the nature of pleasure. Epicurus distinguished between ‘kinetic’ pleasures - the active, exciting pleasures of satisfying a desire (eating when hungry, drinking when thirsty) - and ‘katastematic’ or static pleasures - the steady pleasure of a state in which there is no unsatisfied desire, no pain, no disturbance. The latter, he argued, is the higher and the truer goal. The pleasure of quenching thirst is real but fleeting and depends on the prior pain of thirst; far better is the settled, painless, untroubled condition in which one simply lacks nothing. The highest pleasure, then, is not a feeling that comes and goes but a stable state of completeness and peace - and once you have reached it, Epicurus says, pleasure cannot be increased, only varied. The aim of life is to reach and rest in that serene fullness.
The practical heart of Epicurus’ ethics is his famous classification of desires, a tool for sorting which desires to satisfy and which to discard. He divides desires into three kinds. First, desires that are natural and necessary: these are for the things we genuinely need to be free of pain and to live - food when hungry, drink when thirsty, shelter, basic security, and the removal of bodily distress. These desires are few, easily satisfied, and must be met; meeting them secures the foundation of the happy life. Second, desires that are natural but not necessary: these are for natural things in a more elaborate or intense form - not just food but gourmet food, not just shelter but a mansion, not just sex but extravagant indulgence. These may be enjoyed in moderation if they come easily, but they are not needed for happiness, and pursuing them hard brings trouble. Third, desires that are empty or ‘vain’ - neither natural nor necessary: these are the desires for wealth, fame, power, luxury, and immortality, manufactured by false beliefs and inflamed by society. They are insatiable by nature (there is no ‘enough’ wealth or fame), and so they breed endless anxiety and can never be fulfilled.
The path to tranquillity, on this scheme, is clear: satisfy the natural and necessary desires, enjoy the natural-but-unnecessary ones lightly and only when convenient, and root out the empty desires altogether. Most human misery, Epicurus argued, comes from the empty desires - from chasing wealth, status, and power that can never satisfy and that keep the soul in perpetual turmoil. The empty desires are limitless and therefore tormenting; the natural desires are limited and therefore satisfiable. By understanding which is which, and by pruning the empty desires from our lives, we free ourselves from the bottomless craving that wrecks peace of mind, and we discover that the requirements of a genuinely happy life are modest and within nearly everyone’s reach. ‘Nothing is enough,’ he wrote, ‘for the man to whom enough is too little’ - and the cure is to learn what is truly enough.
Epicurus’ ethics matters because it offers one of the most practical and durable blueprints for a contented life ever devised - and because it has been so persistently misread. Strip away the slander, and what remains is a sober, humane, and psychologically acute philosophy: identify what you truly need (which is little); free yourself from the empty desires for wealth, status, and power that society inflames and that can never be satisfied; cultivate friendship, simple pleasures, and peace of mind; and remove the great fears - of gods and of death - that poison human happiness. The result is ataraxia, a serene self-sufficiency that does not depend on fortune’s gifts and cannot be taken away by fortune’s blows. It is a recipe for being happy with little, in a world that constantly tells us we need more.
This message is, if anything, more relevant now than ever. Modern consumer society is a vast engine for manufacturing exactly the ‘empty desires’ Epicurus warned against - for persuading us that happiness lies in the next purchase, the higher status, the greater accumulation, in a pursuit that has no end and yields no peace. Epicurus’ diagnosis cuts to the root: insatiable desire is the disease, and the cure is not more getting but wiser wanting. Modern psychology has rediscovered much of this - that beyond a modest threshold, material wealth does little for lasting well-being, while close relationships, freedom from anxiety, and contentment with enough do much. Epicurus saw it twenty-three centuries ago and built a whole way of life around it. His Garden was, in effect, an experiment in living well on little: a community of friends, sharing simple food and good conversation, free from the rat-race of Athenian ambition. The experiment’s conclusion - that the happy life is simpler, cheaper, and more available than we think, if only we can free ourselves from empty craving and needless fear - remains one of philosophy’s most valuable and least heeded lessons.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that Epicurus held pleasure to be the highest good - but that the greatest pleasure is ataraxia (peace of mind) and aponia (freedom from bodily pain), a stable serenity reached by limiting desires to what is natural and necessary, not by piling up luxuries. Explain Epicurus’ true hedonism in your own words.
Leads to Jeremy Bentham.
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