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Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who lived around 300 BC and was one of the most prominent figures in what’s known as the Hellenistic period, which was the roughly 300 years between the conquest of Alexander the Great and the conquest of Rome. Basically, Greece was no longer a bunch of loosely connected city states, but rather a region that was swapping between foreign dictators.
Like most of the Hellenistic philosophers, Epicurus was mostly concerned with ethics. He agreed with Aristotle that the highest form of good was happiness, which to him meant pleasure.
When people say the word “epicurean” they tend to mean someone who engages in refined luxury, and you tend to picture someone lying on a futon eating grapes, drinking out of a coconut, and being fanned by palm fronds. But this is a distortion of Epicurus actually believed.
For Epicurus, the ideal way to achieve maximum pleasure was not to seek out pleasurable experiences, but instead to teach yourself to find pleasure in whatever is available to you. The reason for this is that constantly trying to acquire wealth and opulence is itself stressful and if you’re used to living like that it’ll become painful if you ever have to live with less.
Unlike the Cynics, Epicurus didn’t preach the moral superiority of poverty. He didn’t tell people to throw all their money and possessions into a lake and live inside a bucket. Instead, he believed that you should enjoy whatever pleasures are easily and effortlessly attainable. Obviously that’s going to differ from person to person.
Because Epicurus believed that the good life was defined as the pleasurable life, he fits the definition of a hedonist, but again, not the type of hedonism that you’re used to. He’s better thought of as a negative hedonist, because for him, pleasure comes not from the accumulation of wealth, but through the elimination of desires.
Though he didn’t consider vast wealth to be a negative thing in and of itself, he did think that the grotesquely wealthy CEO with fourteen mansions and twelve yachts is less likely to lead a good life than the lowly fisherman with just one boat who’s still pretty happy with his quiet existence, because even though the CEO can basically purchase anything he wants, his life is consumed by perpetual frustration that he doesn’t own everything yet. That, plus the fact that he has to continually worry about the stock market and quarterly earnings calls, both things that did not exist at the time of Epicurus but just go to show how much his philosophy has held up.
Epicurus believed that human beings are part of the natural world and as such the best way to figure out which desires are worth pursuing is to identify which ones are most in line with nature. These were the necessary desires, things that would make you very unhappy or even kill you if you tried to abstain from them.
Food and drink are the most obvious necessary desires, and again Epicurus was not as extreme as the cynics, he didn’t mandate you subsist on bread and water alone, but his diet was limited to what was easily accessible to your average Ancient Greek peasant. That still meant that he could indulge in fruit, vegetables, and even cheese and wine.
Of course, wine must be consumed in careful moderation to be an acceptable Epicurean indulgence, because overindulgence is known to have a rather significant negative effect the next day.
Epicurus put pleasures into two categories: Dynamic and static pleasures. Dynamic pleasures are the pleasures you experience while you’re doing something—eating, for example—and static pleasures are the pleasures you experience by not having any desire to fulfill—for example, being full. Dynamic pleasures, although they are more pleasurable in the moment, are inferior to static pleasures simply because they end, and then you miss having them.
If Epicurus’ lifestyle makes a lot of sense to you, it is worth mentioning that the logical conclusion for the Epicureans was to live in total celibacy, as sex is both a dynamic and unnecessary pleasure. So if everybody decides to live like Epicurus we might want to consider whether a life of contentment is worth the end of our species.
Sources:
Adamson, Peter., Philosophy in the Hellenistic & Roman Worlds: A history of philosophy without any gaps. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Konstan, David., Epicurus. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.
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