Here is today’s argument in a nutshell:

1. Educated modern people generally undervalue prudence.

2. Such people don’t particularly know about or respect Epicureanism—a philosophy which would correct this misvaluation—but they do respect literary icons and beautiful, eloquent writing.

3. Therefore, if I can show that prudence is highly valued not merely by Epicureanism, but by an array of widely respected, wise and intelligent writers with no explicit philosophical affiliation, some literarily-inclined people may find the underlying message more convincing.

On this basis, I am today inaugurating a different kind of post, the first in an ongoing but intermittent series in which I draw attention to unexpected Epicurean allies from the world of letters. My strong sentiment is that Epicurean values are not particularly obscure or sectarian values, but are in many respects widely shared among the wise people of the world. To bolster this claim, I’d like to highlight some entirely unaffiliated thinkers who endorse some key Epicurean claims or virtues. The virtue in question today is prudence. The thinker in the spotlight is Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Let me say a few more words of preface. What do I mean by prudence, and in what way is it undervalued? In Greek, the word used is phronesis, sometimes also translated as “practical wisdom” to avoid the either somewhat stiff tone or narrowly financial connotations of “prudence” in modern English. In the Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus states that phronesis is “the greatest good”—even above philosophy itself. While theoretical wisdom is often extremely valuable, nothing actually matches the importance of accurately weighing advantage and disadvantage when it comes to influencing the happiness of your life. It’s a very good thing if you understand the true nature of your postmortem fate, but if bad decision-making leaves you unhealthy, indebted, and unhappily married, you will still have a lot of trouble achieving eudaimonia.

Despite this importance, however, prudent decision-making gets relatively little love in modern philosophy, literature, or popular culture. I think a lot of people can go through, say, an elite university education without ever getting much sign that prudence is key to their happiness in life. Intense passions and commitment to abstract ideals are granted far more cachet, credentials and prestige are valued disproportionately to their worth, and when it comes to financial matters, the lion’s share of attention is given to boosting income rather than restraining spending. This is echoed in culture. Songwriters don’t write rousing anthems to prudence. Most heroes of novels and films are not marked for this quality.

I think this is somewhat of a modern quirk. If you rewind the clock by a mere century or two, you can find plenty of extremely eloquent and prestigious writers who did place an appropriately high value on this highest of all Epicurean virtues. This leads to the second natural question for this preamble: why Emerson? First, simply because he’s always been my favorite prose stylist in American literature. Second, because he’s a bit of an extreme case of seeming unlikeliness for an Epicurean ally: the leader of American Transcendentalism, Emerson falls quite strongly to the “Idealist” side of the Idealist-to-Materialist spectrum, seemingly far distant from Epicurus. Emerson loves Plato. Popularizations refer to him as “an American Stoic.” Overall, his essays are famous for their flights of grand, soaring rhetoric about the unbounded potentialities of the human soul.

However! He was still a 19^th century New Englander, which meant both that he lived in an era of generally limited material abundance compared to modern times (while not being so distant as to be unrelatable), and that he contains a vein of Puritan intellectual heritage that is inclined towards suspicion of the same kind of low, impulsive hedonism which Epicurus was also generally disdainful of. As such, he did still maintain a distinctly higher opinion of the virtue of prudence than is commonly encountered today.

So there you have it: I think that prudence—financial frugality, careful cost-benefit analysis, the suppression of short-term impulses in favor of long-term satisfaction—is routinely undervalued in the culture of modern, educated persons. Since this demographic is preferentially inclined to listen to eloquent idealists, I wanted an idealist who would praise prudence with all the eloquence the virtue deserves. Emerson is that man.

Emerson’s “Prudence”

In his celebrated first volume of Essays—containing such Transcendentalist greatest hits as “Self-Reliance,” “Spiritual Laws,” and “The Over-Soul”—is a relatively neglected essay on “Prudence.” Here, as he would do increasingly in his later books The Conduct of Life and Society and Solitude, Emerson sings the praises of conducting one’s private life with skill.

The domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock, and the airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces which others never dream of. The application of means to ends insures victory and the songs of victory, not less in a farm or a shop than in the tactics of party or of war. The good husband finds method as efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed, or in the harvesting of fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the Department of State.

In highbrow settings, people are more often praised for their elevated aspirations, intelligent taste, or commitment to abstract ideals. But Emerson, comparing what we value in good people with the realistic groundedness a great artist is attentive to in painting human figures, thinks that our more honest esteem is granted to people to have their feet on the ground:

This perpendicularity we demand of all the figures in this picture of life. Let them stand on their feet, and not float and swing. Let us know where to find them. Let them discriminate between what they remember and what they dreamed, call a spade a spade, give us facts, and honor their own senses with trust.

The arts are generally inclined to worship the “artistic,” granting most respect to those who “feel deeply,” but when such people lack basic prudence, then such admiration is mistaken. Emerson, a man of deeper thought and artistry than any modern songwriter or other performative bohemian, knew this:

We have found out fine names to cover our sensuality withal, but no gifts can raise intemperance. The man of talent affects to call his transgressions of the laws of the senses trivial, and to count them nothing considered with his devotion to his art. His art never taught him lewdness, nor the love of wine, nor the wish to reap where he had not sowed. His art is less for every deduction from his holiness, and less for every defect of common sense.

Artists are not the only ones who disappoint us by such a lack. Academics are often the same, getting lost in the minutiae of their theories and losing popular respect by their shortcomings in things that the less well-credentialed understand far better.

The scholar shames us by his bifold life. Whilst something higher than prudence is active, he is admirable; when common sense is wanted, he is an encumbrance.

Rather than disdain the practical, as some artists and scholars do, Emerson praises the most mundane forms of prudence—frugal living, careful investment of idle capital, efficiency and industriousness with the tools of one’s trade. And from this he expands from those elements of prudence as commonly conceived to praise of the “minor virtues,” such as punctuality and dependability. As with Epicurus, he points out that even the virtues and duties which are often held up as being of independent worth will be to our long-term advantage, are in truth a part of prudence too. Consider true-telling, for instance:

On the most profitable lie the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the parties on a convenient footing and makes their business a friendship. Trust men and they will be true to you.

So often the claim of the “noble” disparagers of prudence is that overemphasizing the practical will lead to the neglect of the higher virtues. Emerson doesn’t make this mistake. He gets it. As with honesty, so with courage—prudence is not the antithesis of bravery, but the enabler of it:

So, in regard to disagreeable and formidable things, prudence does not consist in evasion, or in flight, but in courage. He who wishes to walk in the most peaceful parts of life with any serenity must screw himself up to resolution.

Likewise, friendship, goodwill, and affection should properly be seen as advancing our prudential goals, not conflicting with them.

It is a proverb, that ‘courtesy costs nothing’; but calculation might come to value love for its profit. Love is fabled to be blind; but kindness is necessary to perception; love is not a hood, but an eye-water. If you meet a sectary, or a hostile partisan, never recognize the dividing lines; but meet on what common ground remains, — if only that the sun shines, and the rain rains for both; the area will widen very fast, and ere you know it the boundary mountains, on which the eye had fastened, have melted into air.

In antiquity, rival schools constantly criticized Epicurus for an ostensible willingness to set aside the virtues in preference to one’s hedonistic goals. People still constantly make this mistake today, thinking that Epicureanism is an invitation to discard honesty, courage, and faithfulness whenever it is temporarily inconvenient. That is very far from the truth. Epicurus’ point is that we should value the traditional virtues because their cultivation is necessary for our long-term benefit. Once you bring your mind to awareness of this harmony, acting rightly is no longer a struggle, but becomes self-evidently advantageous and consequently easy. Emerson—a man no one could accuse of meanness, sensuality, or ignorance of the life of the mind—understood this coincidence of virtuous character and our own well-being too:

Thus truth, frankness, courage, love, humility, and all the virtues, range themselves on the side of prudence, or the art of securing a present well-being.

And so, if you ever feel that to align yourself with Epicureanism would be to lower yourself, to debase the elevation of your thoughts, to abandon the arts and noble thinking in favor of mean and petty calculation, reconsider. The great American bard of self-reliance, the man who inspired Thoreau and set Whitman to a boil, did not think prudence beneath our notice. He recognized that common sense was indispensable to every artistic or scholarly soul. He celebrated those who planted and harvested, built and marketed, saved and invested with skill and forethought. He recognized that to be a person of prudence, in the true sense of the word, was to be someone who could be relied upon for fidelity, courage, and goodwill. Emerson understood the Epicurean truth that prudence is not an abandonment of higher thinking; it is the crucial grounding for any thought worthy of respect.

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Principal Doctrine 18:

Principal Doctrine 19:

Principal Doctrine 20:

Commentary

Today we’re hitting the halfway mark in our progress through Epicurus’ forty Principal Doctrines (you can see previous entries in the series here). All three of today’s maxims are occupied with describing the limits to pleasure. This is a very important notion for properly grasping the Epicurean version of hedonism, which is very prone to misunderstanding, since the school’s ideas about pleasure are much more precise and thoughtful than the loose and casual ways in which pleasure is normally discussed.

PD 18 opens the subject by first distinguishing two different categories of pleasure: physical and mental. This is not inherently a strange concept, but one which can easily be elided when people start thinking about the idea of maximizing pleasure—how does one weigh physical and mental pleasures against each other when deciding preferences? Epicurus doesn’t necessarily think there is a direct tradeoff. Instead, he advises us to maximize both: he believes that if we properly understand the respective limits of physical and mental pleasures, it is entirely possible for us to pursue and attain the highest degree of both.

In regards to physical pleasure, Epicurus’ position is idiosyncratic compared to the common understanding, but I think essentially convincing in its practical implications. According to him, physical pleasure reaches its peak when all pain is removed—any stimulus in addition to that point is mere “variation” or “embellishment,” rather than an actual augmentation of pleasure. We’ve encountered this idea before in the first half of PD 3:

Now, it is true that this isn’t how most people think of pleasure. In normal life, we might imagine ourselves to be in a perfectly pain-free state, and then to receive additional physical pleasure through some stimulus—maybe we eat a tasty treat or receive a massage. I think, however, that Epicurus would hesitate to endorse that description of our experience.

In general, he seems to think that many of our “pleasures” should actually be conceived of as alleviation of pain. We eat to relieve the pain of hunger—eating food will only be pleasurable if we have some hunger, while if we are entirely satiated, the food will no longer be a source of physical pleasure to us. Perhaps all physical pleasures are like this: the shoulder rub feels good because we were experiencing some degree of painful tension—this also has a point of satiation. Food, drink, massage, sex—all could be seen as relieving some form of pain or tension. To actually have all those painful appetites and desires fully satisfied would be to reach a point where further physical stimulus adds no further pleasure. If that eating and massage-receiving is pleasurable, then we must not be in a pain-free state.

Perhaps, however, you are unwilling to abandon all distinctions between different physical pleasures. You could alleviate your hunger by eating a bowl of plain rice, or by eating a delicious meal of varied tastes and textures. Isn’t the second one more pleasurable? I think a few routes of defense are possible here. First, one could argue that the more varied meal is more pleasing to us because our hunger is in fact more sophisticated than “present” or “absent”—our bodies require different nutrients, and so eating a more diverse diet than unvarying plain rice will probably be beneficial to the health of our body, avoiding more pain in the long run. First then, I think a properly fleshed-out modern Epicureanism will admit that we do have some legitimate need for variety.

A second defense is to make some concession to natural language, while maintaining the spirit of the Epicurean argument: if you want to call your gourmet meal more pleasurable than the bowl of plain rice, I don’t really mind, as long as you are willing to concede that the additional pleasure of that fancier meal is relatively miniscule compared to the hedonic difference between “satiated” and “actually starving.” In fact, it is arguable that even this is not actually a contradiction of the Epicurean terminology: some, notably Norman DeWitt, prefer to translate poikilletai as “is embellished” rather than “is varied.” If Epicurus calls such things “embellishments,” then perhaps “pleasure is not increased” really means something like “pleasure is not increased to any significant degree,” since I think “embellishments” as a concept could be fairly understood as “tiny additions.”

That was a long commentary on just the first sentence (I’ll get faster). The second half of the maxim describes the limit of mental pleasures. Here, Epicurus makes a similar argument: pleasure in our mind is maximized when all of our fears and distressing thoughts have been resolved. (The words used elsewhere for this pairing are aponia for the lack of physical pain and ataraxia for the freedom from mental distress, i.e. untroubledness). Epicurus does not go into detail here, but simply summarizes the largest sources of mental pains as stemming from a misunderstanding of “these matters” (i.e. the true limits of physical pleasure as just described) and “things like them” (i.e. any other false beliefs that might cause us pain).

According to Epicurus, those are the big sources of mental distress, and their resolution is consequently the biggest source of mental pleasure. As for the more everyday mental pleasures we might think of, I think they can be conceived of analogously to physical pleasures. What we might think of as positive pleasures—the happiness of seeing a friend again, the relief of knowing some danger has been averted, excitement about an upcoming experience—can all be understood as reliefs from pain. We missed our friend, we were afraid of something, we wanted distraction from more boring or otherwise painful objects of our attention. Such day-to-day gratifications are legitimate pleasures, but Epicurus seems to consider them to be quite small compared to the great sources of mental grief. This seems fair to me.

Again, I am not too much of a stickler over the language here. If you find this reframing to be an imperfect fit for some pleasures you can think of, then I am not too bothered if you prefer to continue speaking of purely positive pleasures, such that do not consist in the relief of pain. But I would still encourage you to take seriously the idea that such pleasures are very small compared to the great pains of life. Just as obtaining your preferred condiments is inconsequential if you are starving, the mental stimulus of your preferred genre of video entertainment is inconsequential if your life is dominated by fear, anxiety, and unsatisfiable longings.

Now that we’ve established the limits of pleasure according to reason, we’re already halfway to understanding PD 19. The things that truly enhance pleasure, in the Epicurean conception, are those that alleviate pain. Experiencing varied additional stimuli can be an agreeable embellishment to life, but it does not significantly increase your pleasure if you obtain a first-rate croissant, a $500 pair of shoes, and a luxury car. Collecting things and experiences is unimportant. Therefore, a greater period of time does not contain greater pleasure—it simply extends a given level of pleasure over a longer duration.

I won’t take up more space on this here, since this topic has already been discussed in Death Is Nothing To Us: Part One.

Principal Doctrine 20 summarizes the preceding two maxims and adds a little extra nuance. The first sentence is an acknowledgment that to our bodies, it feels like additional pleasure is possible. The claims of PD 18 and PD 19 are not asserted to be intuitively obvious: as a matter of simple sensory experience, our bodies feel like they would like to have their tastebuds stimulated by pleasant flavors over and over again. It is our minds that can perceive that such stimulation does not help the body to achieve a truly higher level of pleasure.

The other thing needed in order to discard the desire for infinite time is to resolve our “fears about eternity.” I agree with Cyril Bailey that this is probably referring to traditional notions of an afterlife, the “eternity” that we would experience after the dissolution of our temporary bodies. As Epicureanism teaches, such fears are groundless, since we will have no consciousness after death. This unjustified fear has also been discussed in Death Is Nothing To Us: Part One, as well as way back in Principal Doctrine 2.

The final sentence clarifies the proper orientation of our mind towards pleasure, given all that we have said in the previous maxims. We have no reason to flee pleasure: both bodily and mental pleasure are naturally appealing and intrinsically choiceworthy. But we should understand that increasing the duration of our life does not increase our pleasure. That is achieved through resolving our bodily pains and dispelling all the false beliefs that disturb our peace of mind.

A life can be complete, today. Your life can be “the best life” that any life can be, today. There is no need to wait.

Read the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.

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Original Text

18. οὐκ ἐπαύξεται ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ ἡ ἡδονή, ἐπειδὰν ἅπαξ τὸ κατʼ ἔνδειαν ἀλγοῦν ἐξαιρεθῇ, ἀλλὰ μόνον ποικίλλεται. τῆς δὲ διανοίας τὸ πέρας τὸ κατὰ τὴν ἡδονὴν ἀπεγέννησεν ἥ τε τούτων αὐτῶν ἐκλόγισις καὶ τῶν ὁμογενῶν τούτοις, ὅσα τοὺς μεγίστους φόβους παρεσκεύαζε τῇ διανοίᾳ.

19. ὁ ἄπειρος χρόνος ἴσην ἔχει τὴν ἡδονὴν καὶ ὁ πεπερασμένος, ἐάν τις αὐτῆς τὰ πέρατα καταμετρήσῃ τῷ λογισμῷ.

20. ἡ μὲν σὰρξ ἀπέλαβε τὰ πέρατα τῆς ἡδονῆς ἄπειρα καὶ ἄπειρος αὐτὴν χρόνος παρεσκεύασεν· ἡ δὲ διάνοια, τοῦ τῆς σαρκὸς τέλους καὶ πέρατος λαβοῦσα τὸν ἐπιλογισμὸν, καὶ τοὺς ὑπὲρ τοῦ αἰῶνος φόβους ἐκλύσασα, τὸν παντελῆ βίον παρεσκεύασεν, καὶ οὐθὲν ἔτι τοῦ ἀπείρου χρόνου προσεδεήθημεν· ἀλλʼ οὔτε ἔφυγε τὴν ἡδονὴν οὐδʼ ἡνίκα τὴν ἐξαγωγὴν ἐκ τοῦ ζῆν τὰ πράγματα παρεσκεύαζεν, ὡς ἐλλείπουσά τι τοῦ ἀρίστου βίου κατέστρεφεν.

Two recent posts have mentioned the great value Epicureanism places on gratitude. Epicurean Spiritual Exercises described how actively practicing gratitude was one of the key practices used by Epicurean students to form one’s mind and move towards eudaimonia, while this week’s Translation Tuesday explained how gratitude for what we have is our chief remedy for the mistaken enthusiasm for unnecessary desires. These articles suggested the importance that gratitude has in Epicurean practice, but didn’t really cover the topic in its full scope. It deserves that level of attention.

Today, I’ll proceed through three sections outlining the Epicurean case for cultivating gratitude. First, I’ll review some of the central passages so we can see what Epicurus & Co. had in mind, followed by a summary of their recommendations and rationale in the most straightforward sense. Second, I’ll discuss how that advice is supported by contemporary work in positive psychology. Third, I’ll share the argument of Benjamin Rider that the Epicureans conceived of gratitude not merely as a transient mental state, but as a virtue—a dispositional tendency we can cultivate that has a wide-reaching influence on our well-being.

1. An introduction to Epicurean gratitude

The Greek word for gratitude is charis (χάρις). In a sense, this is the very first word that many Greek students learn, as the related verb chairo (χαίρω, to rejoice or be glad) is, in the imperative, the standard greeting (chaire! Hi!). While that literal verbal meaning is quite submerged in the salutation, I think it is still quite visible in the case of the noun: it’s worth remembering that Greek “gratitude” is fundamentally and specifically “a being glad about something.” In Latin, gratia is the unproblematic equivalent, and the ancestor of our modern English word.

What do the Epicureans say about gratitude? First and most simply, to consciously direct our minds to “being glad about things” is a pleasurable experience. It would be foolish to spend our attentional energy engaged in elective unhappiness:

While “growing old” is here used as an isolated metaphor for someone who has lost their zest and enthusiasm, Epicurus’ actual advice for the elderly is that gratitude is particularly beneficial for the latter stages of life. As in the Cicero passage above, gratitude can be conceptualized as giving attention to the past and present, in contrast to expectation, which looks forward. Since older people have lived through more, they therefore have a larger reservoir of positive memories to pleasurably remember, while (if they are good Epicureans) experiencing a continually more stable life in the present.

We therefore have two possible subjects of gratitude: past pleasures and present blessings. If we are facing difficulties in the present, we can always draw on the past, which cannot be taken from us. Famously, when Epicurus was dying in extreme pain from untreatable urinary calculus, he declared himself to be happy on the basis of remembering past joys:

In part three below, I will discuss a few more passages that suggest an additional, wider scope for Epicurean gratefulness as a virtue, a relatively stable dispositional state that can be intentionally cultivated. For now, however, we can see the claimed benefit of feeling gratitude in any given moment: it immediately increases our pleasure and happiness. We have this recourse not only when everything is going swimmingly, but also—in some sense especially—when things are not. Pain and loss are bad. Old age will eventually limit our activity. But we can always find things to be grateful for.

Focus less on problems and more on the good things that abide: the connections you have, the necessities that are now safe and secure, the wisdom you have gained. When times are particularly challenging, you can choose to immerse your mind not in the most negative forecasts for the future, but in the most positive memories from your past. The objects of your thoughts are up to you to choose. Preferring thoughts that make you unhappy is the course of fools. Preferring thoughts that bring you joy is a longer name for gratitude.

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2. Support from positive psychology

The modern field of happiness studies is admittedly full of fluff, hype, and overblown claims. Massimo Pigliucci recently highlighted a useful review of the habits and behaviors that actually boost happiness from researchers Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn.1 This review was uniquely stringent in its criteria for included studies, intentionally aiming to combat the “replicability crisis” that has afflicted a large amount of previous work in the field. While a great majority of published studies were found to suffer from methodological flaws, often basing conclusions on insufficient sample sizes and hunting for any results of marginal statistical significance, the authors found that a few popular interventions for increasing well-being did have some solid evidence of effectiveness. The benefits of exercise, spending time in nature, and mindfulness were mostly unevidenced (which is not to say that they were proven to be ineffective), while positive social interactions provided a more reliable boost to well-being (this also fits quite well with Epicureanism). The single best-supported “tactic” for improving well-being, however, was gratitude.

In the majority of the stronger studies, the strategy under consideration involved some form of listing objects of gratitude. For example, participants might be instructed to briefly write down three people, events, or life circumstances for which they were grateful at the end of each day, or to write a mini essay in which they dwelt on their gratitude at slightly more length at wider intervals. Some studies tested a single “gratitude session,” while others evaluated daily or weekly repetition. Some studies measured emotional well-being and life satisfaction immediately after the intervention, while others conducted follow-up surveys after various intervals from a day to several weeks later.

First of all, I would note that such interventions sound perfectly in alignment with Epicurean practice. While we don’t have a specific document stating the recommended format for ancient gratitude practices, the extant passages suggest that an exercise of intentionally summoning up one’s reasons for gratitude, even when faced with difficult present circumstances, was indeed advocated for by the Epicureans. As Pierre Hadot has elaborated, ancient schools of philosophy emphasized such spiritual exercises as recurrent, formal practices that would be emphasized in verbal instruction of which we have only slight remaining traces—our modern notions of philosophy as a mostly written field, rather than a lived one, systematically underrates the ancient emphasis on shaping one’s mind through specific formal exercises.

Given that the techniques evaluated in the research seem broadly relevant to the likely Epicurean practice, how did they fare? Quite well! In their stringent review, Folk and Dunn found 15 sufficiently powered studies involving some form of gratitude-listing exercise, of which only one failed to find a positive effect. While almost all of these evaluated more temporary aspects of subjective well-being, i.e. the emotional components of positive affect (the intensity of positive emotions such as enthusiasm, determination, excitement, etc.) and negative affect (the intensity of negative emotions such as fear, guilt, irritation, and so on), a large number also found boosts to more big picture questions of happiness (“Taking all things together, how happy would you say you are?” or “Compared to your peers, do you consider yourself happy?”) or life satisfaction (measuring agreement with such claims as “In most ways my life is close to my ideal,” “The conditions of my life are excellent,” or “I am satisfied with my life”).

There are a few critiques of this line of work that I think are easily overblown and which don’t personally cause me to hesitate about the overall value of such exercises. First, among many philosophically-minded persons (including myself, before I looked at several of these studies), I think there is a tendency to be dismissive of reductive “happiness” measures, suspecting that what is primarily being measured is merely some shallow temporary state of mind, while many things that are far more important for a good life are not captured. There is some truth to this, but 1) in my opinion, being routinely happier, even as a momentary state, is still an important element of well-being, and 2) a large share of these studies do include broader life satisfaction measures, which seem to show positive results from gratitude interventions with a similar reliability to the more short-term metrics of positive and negative affect.

A second common vein of critique is that the most sizeable effects are seen when comparing gratitude interventions to interventions that trigger a negative response. For example, one group of participants will list three positive recent events, while another group will list three recent sources of hassle or frustration. (Some studies compare gratitude interventions to “hassle” interventions, some with more neutral controls, and some with both.) I don’t think, however, that the supposedly more neutral control tasks (“Think about the shape of a large black umbrella” in one study, for example) are really representative of normal human behavior—in many cases where we might recommend such an intervention, people do have an unhelpful habit of reviewing their annoyances and causes for complaint. While explicit comparisons between gratitude interventions and hassle interventions may therefore overstate the average effect size, this doesn’t mean that those results are entirely invalid. In some cases, they may be more representative than are the theoretically neutral controls.

Overall, then, my non-expert conclusion from reviewing what the more skeptical specialists are willing to endorse is that there does appear to be solid evidence that simple gratitude practices such as listing things one is grateful for or reflecting on positive circumstances and persons of one’s life, reliably boost both immediate emotional well-being and overall life satisfaction. There are still plenty of reasonable caveats one should make—the effects are not huge, such techniques are no panacea for serious depression or anxiety, and short-term interventions have only short-term effects—but it is still a noteworthy observation that one of the prime emphases of Epicurean spiritual practice replicates the single best-supported happiness exercise known to modern psychology.

3. Gratitude as a virtue

We have, then, a modest but well-evidenced finding: think of some things you are grateful for, write them down or otherwise concentrate on them for several minutes, and you will feel better for hours or days with a decent degree of reliability. This matches the most obvious function of the Epicurean recommendation, that of making your immediate experience of life more pleasant. A deeper dive into the ancient texts, however, reveal an additional, more ambitious hypothesis: that the deliberate cultivation of gratitude can durably shift one’s temperament in a way that has broad, ongoing benefits. In other words: that gratitude is a virtue.

The evidence for this position is helpfully assembled in Benjamin Rider’s excellent paper, “The Ethical Significance of Gratitude in Epicureanism.”2 In his view, gratitude was essentially parallel to the other virtues as conceived in the ancient world, not simply something we feel for a moment, but “an enduring character trait, developed through repeated practice and reinforcement… which plays an important role in a person’s development and flourishing.” The ancient Greeks had a wide degree of agreement that being a brave, generous, temperate, and just person would be good for oneself. The Epicureans seem to conceive of gratitude in a similar way. (While an emphasis on cultivating the virtues is most famously associated with Aristotle, it should be remembered that Epicurus also endorsed the traditional virtues.)

Since the Epicureans view the virtues as advantageous only insofar as they contribute to our pleasure, what are the deeper advantages of not simply experiencing gratitude, but of becoming a more grateful person? They put forth a few plausible channels of benefit. The first is that the routinely grateful person will not be a victim of insatiability, the intense and unsatisfiable desire for more. Unsatisfied desires are intrinsically painful. This floats in the background of numerous texts, but one of the most explicit is Vatican Saying 69, covered in the last Translation Tuesday:

The desire for variety is considered “natural, but not necessary” in the Epicurean classification. Nothing is wrong with enjoying variety. Most people enjoy not eating the same food every day. But to be “endlessly greedy” for variety, to be unable to be satisfied if the desired novelty is not forthcoming, is destructive to happiness. According to Epicurus, a rational person will recognize this, will recognize that eating chicken for three dinners in a row, or drinking only water every day, or not buying a new article of clothing all year does not lead to the pain of hunger, thirst, or cold. To persist in such greed, then, is to persist in a form of unhappiness that has no real substantive relation to what our nature requires for happiness. Instead, the source of that unhappiness is ingratitude—a failure to appreciate what we have. If we accustom ourselves to grateful appreciation, therefore, we will no longer suffer from that insatiable greed and will be able to easily give up the desire for any novelty when it turns out to be hard to acquire or to have injurious consequences.

The second danger of an ungrateful character is intimately related to this dissatisfaction: the fear of death. As I have discussed in Death Is Nothing to Us, the perceived need for additional experiences is the most pernicious form of ungrateful insatiability.

There can be other aspects to the fear of death (such as fear of a painful afterlife), but many seem to think the badness of death consists in how it deprives us of various pleasures or other positive experiences we could have added to the sum total of our lives. Epicureanism rejects any such additive model. One’s life can be made more pleasant (or less painful), but we should not mistake mere extension in duration as equivalent to an increase in amplitude of pleasure, which is our real objective. An 81-year life is not intrinsically better than an 80-year life. If we feel it is, this too is the product of ingratitude: the 80 year-old will not secure happiness if he is given one more year. He will be happy when he casts aside the greed for more, and instead turns to grateful reflection on what the past and present give him.

A third benefit of a durably grateful character, in Rider’s interpretation, is that such a quality is an essential prerequisite to generosity. People often hear that Epicureanism is an egoistic philosophy and so struggle to grasp its endorsement of that traditional virtue. If one is an egoist, why would one give things away when faced with hard times? Part of the Epicurean answer is that gratitude leads to contentment with what is easy to obtain, contentment with what is easy to obtain constitutes self-sufficiency (autarkeia), and self-sufficiency makes generosity effortless.

Given the limited material benefits of miserliness, and the more substantial benefits of social harmony, generosity usually is the more prudent course in the long run. A grateful character is what makes choosing that long-term prudence easy. The same considerations apply in cases of friendship. The misunderstanding might ask: “If one is an egoist, shouldn’t friendship only be engaged in when it is clearly advantageous to oneself and abandoned when it is not? Expressing ‘gratitude’ might make sense as a bargaining chip if it yields some concrete benefit, but we shouldn’t feel obligated to feel such emotions when there’s no payoff, right?” That isn’t Epicureanism either:

For Rider, the key to understanding such passages correctly is a proper understanding of the centrality of gratitude. For Epicureans, generosity need not be the enemy of self-interest. Instead, generosity is the natural consequence of a deeply grateful character. If one has developed a constant orientation towards gratitude for the simplest of things, then sharing of excess is effortless. For shallow misunderstanders of Epicureanism, the ideal friendship would seem to consist of copious material aid which need be repaid only with costless expressions of “gratitude.” But that isn’t real friendship—that is a merely mercantile relationship which can never have the depth and solidity which would actually improve our lives the most. Gratitude worthy of the name is intrinsically non-calculative: we are grateful for our friends’ assistance, and so we recognize their goodwill, properly recognize them as friends, and reciprocate with generosity that is dismissive of narrow disadvantage. Gratitude leads to something far more valuable: the fidelity and trust of true friendship.

Epicurean gratitude, therefore, is not merely a psychological hack, a shortcut to positive emotions. We will practice it daily, happy to enjoy its immediate pleasure, but also so as to develop a more grateful character. The grateful person does not crave superfluous variety, no longer reacts to the idea of death with an instinctive fear of an incomplete life, and is happier to give than to receive—a virtuous trait by all conventional standards and a key to dependable friendship.

I accept all of these claims. Some are well-evidenced in the literature. Some I’ve found supported by the smallest, but most important sample of humanity: myself. It is pleasant to note how little cause for complaint I have, and how full my life is with pleasures. My family is all hale and hearty. The world beyond is relatively peaceful, safe, and prosperous. I have been victim to no great blows of distress recently, whether physical, financial, or emotional.

Recently, it is true, circumstances required that I move. In my last home, an old house in the country, I was grateful to wake up and hear birds, see the forest, feel the chill, unheated air. Now I live in town, in an apartment, and am grateful to have air conditioning, ice cubes that come right out of the refrigerator door, and a single tree outside my window. Each morning, I hold a mug of fresh-brewed tea and find the sky has grown no smaller. Each evening, I turn the lamps down low and rest my eyes, smiling with amusement at the small voice of my cat, with tenderness at the soft voice of my wife. Each day I hear music.

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Recognize the necessary desires:

Limit the unnecessary desires through gratitude:

Let go of the unnatural desires:

Commentary

Last week’s translation featured a selection of aphorisms from the Principal Doctrines extolling the virtues of the simple life. And my last two Friday essays have dealt with the Epicurean Classification of Desires, a central doctrine that helps us to distinguish between what is necessary for happiness and what is not—and shape our lives accordingly. Before leaving the topic, it seems appropriate to note that Epicurus had a good deal more to say about appreciating the simple pleasures of life while avoiding the lure of the “unnatural” desires. Today I’ll cover seven more aphorisms on the subject from the collection known as the Vatican Sayings.

A brief word on this collection before we begin. Unlike the Principal Doctrines, the Vatican Sayings are not an original and intentional collection, published as a deliberate whole during the lifetime of Epicurus. Instead, they are the assemblage of an anonymous scribe from many centuries later who collated a variety of somewhat random ethical aphorisms from Epicurus and his followers. Of the 81 included maxims, 13 are essentially repeated from the Principal Doctrines and so are usually excluded from printed editions. Some are known from other sources to be from Metrodorus (Epicurus’ closest philosophical associate and friend) and at least one other is clearly post-Epicurus-himself (describing in the third person “the life of Epicurus”), but many have no independent testimony and so are attributed to Epicurus, rather than to his followers, purely as a necessary convenience. This singular manuscript was discovered in the Vatican library in the late 1800s (you can view the digitized version here, starting on page 401), earning it the English name of the Vatican Sayings (VS) or the Latin title of Sententiae Vaticanae (SV).

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On the natural and necessary

For convenience of commentary, it’s probably useful to group these thematically, as shown above (unlike the Principal Doctrines, the numbered order is not particularly meaningful anyways). Let’s start with three sayings that are all closely tied to the recently much-discussed-by-me topic of the necessary desires.

The first of these is particularly sympathetic with Principal Doctrine 15, which I discussed last week, sharing that maxim’s concern with wealth “according to nature.” Today’s saying makes, however, a slightly more dramatic claim, at least rhetorically. (While Epicurus’ reputation as a stylist is not great, he certainly has a taste for this kind of sharp contrast or paradox.) According to VS 25, not only is the state of “wealth according to nature” limited and easy to attain, it is also synonymous with “poverty,” in the common usage of the term. The first half of VS 25 is a challenge to anyone who accepts this standard conception of “poverty”: People who the many call poor are not poor, in the true sense of being unable to fulfill their necessary desires. If you call yourself poor, you are probably wrong.

The second half of this paradox (“wealth without limits is great poverty”) is likewise a challenge to the language of the many. There are numerous people who are wealthy in the eyes of the world, but if they have no sense of limits and sufficiency, they will always be poor relative to their desires. According to Epicurus, a millionaire who is hungry to be a billionaire, or anyone who lives in a state of perpetually unsatisfied desire, is the one who is more aptly described as “poor.”

Here the physically necessary desires are listed in their starkly minimal essence: the actual requirements of our bodies are very limited. Now, it is true that Epicurus elsewhere describes us as having desires that are necessary “for happiness” in addition to those that are necessary “for life itself” and “to pacify the body’s demands,” so he should not be taken as maintaining that the demands of the flesh are everything we need as humans. But we should not mistake the desire for, say, sushi, fine wine, and cashmere blankets as being necessary for our contentment. All of the body’s discontents can be satisfied very simply.

(Occasionally, Epicurus—like Lucretius after him—will refer to the traditional gods as a rhetorical or literary device.1^[1] That doesn’t mean he believes in the traditional stories about them.)

Another classic Epicurean paradox. If a person considers what is truly “enough” (that which satisfies all the necessary desires) to be “little” in his mind, then for that person, there is nothing that he will consider to be “enough.” If sufficient food, water, clothing, shelter, and friendship are dismissed as minor things, unimportant compared to the bigger projects of one’s life, then where will the line of sufficiency be drawn?

Perhaps this is a little hyperbolic for rhetorical purposes—one could technically imagine someone whose threshold for “enough” is just a little inflated—but I think it’s usually correct. The most reliable way of ensuring that someone possesses some mental threshold for “enough” is if they calibrate that word to the truly necessary desires, as Epicurus recommends. Typically, people never make a deliberate effort to define “enough,” and so they just unconsciously add more and more desires, lured on by the appeal of the next objective in their sights.

On the natural but unnecessary desires

The next two maxims are united by their tacit endorsement of one of the key Epicurean spiritual exercises: practicing gratitude as a remedy for the desire for novelty. Enjoying variety is not in itself bad—such pleasures, in themselves, belong to the category of the “natural but not necessary” desires, rather than to that of the “unnatural desires”—but letting such desires grow into urgent, driving passions in your life is not conducive to happiness.

Simple, but potent. So much consumption and novelty-seeking is relentlessly forward-looking: we are always thinking of the things and experiences we could get. Epicureanism recommends looking back, and thinking of the things we already have. This has two positive consequences. First, it may undermine the seeming urgency of those desires “for things we don’t have”—how plausible is the feeling that a stylish new sweater will bring someone happiness, if she already have five similarly stylish sweaters for which she once held out similar hopes? Second, it will enhance the pleasure of our current lives to reflect on all the good things they already contain.

Translators differ on whether ἐν διαίτῃ should be understood as referring narrowly to one’s “diet” of food (Bailey, DeWitt, Arrighetti) or more broadly to one’s “way of life” (Inwood and Gerson, Morel). In the Letter to Menoeceus, the same word is used once in clear reference to food, and then a second time with similar ambiguity to this case. Without the original context of this sentence, it is impossible to know which meaning is intended.

In truth, both are legitimate Epicurean positions. People are often greedy for variety in both their diet and in their lives more broadly. The word ποίκιλμα is standardly and correctly rendered as “variety,” but can also refer to a more literal “ornament” or “embellishment,” as in embroidery—this word for “variety” therefore suggests something that is inherently “extra” and beyond-what-is-necessary, a kind of superfluousness.

As discussed in the Classification of Desires essay, embellishments to one’s diet and lifestyle are perfectly benign in themselves. It is when one becomes “endlessly greedy” for such variety, when the hunger for novelty becomes overly intense, that there is a problem. According to Epicurus, the fundamental remedy for neophilia is gratitude.

On the unnatural desires

Finally, our last two sayings consider not the “natural and necessary,” nor the “natural and unnecessary” desires, but the unnatural ones, those founded on empty, groundless opinion. Two of the most prominent of such desires are those for wealth and admiration: while it may be natural to want adequate resources for your needs and the goodwill of your peers, there is no natural need for this to balloon into the superfluous accumulation of goods and chasing after the admiration of strangers.

This saying adds a few interesting reflections beyond the now familiar baseline observation that great wealth is not necessary for happiness. Some people might theoretically concede that wealth is not necessary, but still pursue it, perhaps claiming that they enjoy the process of gaining wealth, or that the costs of that process are smaller than the pleasure they get from the extra resources. Here, Epicurus adds a caution about the process of wealth accumulation: it often requires “servitude to either the mob or to the mighty.” Arguably, the exceptions to this have grown since Epicurus’ time: many “normal” jobs now deliver paychecks far in excess of what the necessary desires require. Still, I think the caution is worth bearing in mind: even if your livelihood is not derived from explicit service to a dictator, for example, work often requires unpleasant compromises of your preferences and beliefs. If your current employment requires subservience of any kind to people you do not admire, or labor in service to a project which you think is bad, then changing your employment—even at some financial cost—may well make your life more pleasurable on balance.

The second interesting suggestion here concerns what the wise man would do if he happened to acquire great wealth. The basic idea is that he would give it away, though it should be noted that this encouragement has neither the urgency nor the mandate of cost-effectiveness that you would encounter from modern effective altruists. Instead, the “donation” is entirely framed as an alternative, more effective egoistic action: since wealth gives negligible benefit, and may even be socially harmful to oneself (i.e. by attracting envy, theft, or sycophancy), it is better to convert it into social goodwill by giving it away.

I basically agree. The trickier question is to determine the threshold for when one’s resources become superfluous. Wealth operates differently today than it did in Epicurus’ time: we have investment options that are safe from theft, non-ostentatious, and that provide ongoing income. How to decide exactly what amount of wealth moves a person into the “time to give it away” category is therefore a fairly complex question that probably deserves its own essay at some point. For now, I will leave it at this: generally speaking, Epicurus is not particularly interested in advising people of normal means to give away their money. The necessary corollary to his ideas about the necessary desires, however, is that the accumulation of resources has steeply declining marginal utility and will at some point turn negative.

Let’s end with a fairly straightforward, but endlessly important encapsulation of the nature of the unnatural desires. Wealth and fame do not do the things that would benefit us most: they do not resolve our troubles nor produce real joy. Thoreau famously picked up this idea a few millennia later:

We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Crœsus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. (Walden, “Conclusion”)

Epicurus is often interpreted in a partial and uncharitable manner, with all of his prudential counsel and advocacy for the simple life assumed to imply a life of reduced vibrancy and joy. That’s not how it works. “Joy worthy of the name” does not come from wealth, which buys superfluities only. People will often protest that they enjoy their shopping, that they get pleasure from the things they buy—if they are not causing themselves great financial stress or other outright harm, then what’s the problem?

The problem is the missed opportunity. To spend your life collecting things is to miss “life near the bone,” life where it is sweetest. It is to voluntarily enlist yourself among the triflers, who spend their precious hours chasing shadows.

Look at your life. What are the great troubles that diminish your happiness each day? Are you stressed by your job, by your relationships, by the state of the world? Wealth and fame don’t make these better. (The desire for wealth is what keeps many people in their job—if you don’t care about wealth, and manage your money prudently, then you will have more latitude to find a an agreeable livelihood.) When in your life have you encountered “joy worthy of the name”? I would guess that that emotion did not rise up in you upon the acquisition of one more dollar, one more online follower, one more package in the mail, but from moments in which all thoughts of accumulation disappeared from your consciousness and you relaxed into peace and security, love and friendship, proximity to noble feelings or great beauty.

Recognize what you truly need. Let yourself be filled with gratitude for all that you already have. And let go of all the borrowed thoughts that distract you from what matters.

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Original Text

[On the natural and necessary desires]

25. ἡ πενία μετρουμένη τῷ τῆς φύσεως τέλει μέγας ἐστὶ πλοῦτος· πλοῦτος δὲ μὴ ὁριζόμενος μεγάλη ἐστὶ πενία.

33. σαρκὸς φωνὴ τὸ μὴ πεινῆν, τὸ μὴ διψῆν, τὸ μὴ ῥιγοῦν· ταῦτα γὰρ ἔχων τις καὶ ἐλπίζων ἕξειν κἂν <διὶ> ὑπὲρ εὐδαιμονίας μαχέσαιτο.

[On the natural but not necessary desires]

35. οὐ δεῖ λυμαίνεσθαι τὰ παρόντα τῶν ἀπόντων ἐπιθυμίᾳ, ἀλλʼ ἐπιλογίζεσθαι ὅτι καὶ ταῦτα τῶν εὐκταίων ἦν.

69. τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀχάριστον λίχνον ἐποίησε τὸ ζῷον εἰς ἄπειρον τῶν ἐν διαίτῃ ποικιλμάτων.

68. οὐδὲν ἱκανὸν ᾧ ὀλίγον τὸ ἱκανόν.

[On the desires which are neither natural nor necessary]

67. ἐλεύθερος βίος οὐ δύναται κτήσασθαι χρήματα πολλὰ διὰ τὸ τὸ πρᾶγμα <μὴ> ῥᾴδιον εἶναι χωρὶς θητείας ὄχλων ἢ δυναστῶv, ἀλλὰ <συν> συνεχεῖ δαψιλείᾳ πάντα κέκτηται· ἄν δέ που καὶ τύχῃ χρημάτων πολλῶv, καὶ ταῦτα ῥᾳδίως ἃν εἰς τὴν τοῦ πλησίον εὔνοιαν διαμετρήσαι.

81. οὐ λύει τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ταραχὴν οὐδὲ τὴν ἀξιόλογον ἀπογεννᾷ χαρὰν οὔτε πλοῦτος ὑπάρχων ὁ μέγιστος οὔθʼ ἡ παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς τιμὴ καὶ περίβλεψις οὔτʼ ἄλλο τι τῶν παρὰ τὰς ἀδιορίστους αίτίας.

In the first part of this essay, I introduced Epicurus’ classification of human desires into three types: those which are natural and necessary, natural but not necessary, and neither natural nor necessary. We reviewed what exactly Epicurus said, and clarified both what specific desires he placed in each category and how he recommended approaching each of the different classes. If you haven’t read that part, I recommend starting there. Today I’ll cover one further nuance that is sometimes debated—Epicurus’ attitude towards sex and romantic relationships and where he placed them within the trichotomy of desires—before turning to a broader discussion of how we can use the Epicurean classification of desires to guide our lives today.

As a form of brief recap before we get started, I’d also like to acknowledge Emily Austin’s suggestion for a catchier retitling or paraphrasing of Epicurus’ admittedly clunky titles. In her excellent introduction to Epicurean ethics, Living for Pleasure, she refers to the three categories as the necessary desires, the extravagant desires, and the corrosive desires. This is a reasonable and convenient shorthand. “Extravagant” desires are those which are decidedly not necessary—a particularly tasty sandwich and a decent beer, rather than bread and water—but which are not in themselves harmful. We broadly understand the concept of a “harmless extravagance.” “Corrosive” desires, on the other hand, are those which we should seek to minimize or eliminate: feeding the desire for great wealth, fame, power, or eternal life will only make it worse, as such desires have no natural point of satiation.

For a more complete review of the necessary, extravagant, and corrosive desires, head back to Part 1 of this essay. To see how we can use these categories to lead happier lives, read on.

In which category do sex and romantic relationships belong?

Last time out, I covered the debate over Epicurus’ general attitude towards the natural but not necessary desires (I think he is quite permissive of gratifying them, albeit with certain guidelines). Another subject of less than perfect agreement among scholars is the Epicurean attitude towards sex and romantic relationships. Some think Epicurus would classify sex as clearly unnecessary, and perhaps generally harmful. There is something to this, but I think such warnings are easily overstated. Along with some passages in Lucretius where the poet speaks quite harshly of romantic obsession (4.1058–1191) and some seeming advice from Epicurus on how to manage such emotions (Vatican Saying 18), the main passage read as discouraging sexual relationships is probably this one from Metrodorus:

On the one hand, it is true that Metrodorus1 says that “the pleasures of sex never profit us” and lists several possible downsides of their pursuit. On the other, this passage is not an outright rejection of sexual pleasure. “You may indulge this inclination as you like,” he formally concedes, as long as certain problems are avoided. One obvious case that would seem to satisfy his requirements is sex within a marriage (as long as your spouse doesn’t spend all your money). Metrodorus was married himself! Or at least had a long-term, stable, children-producing partnership with Leontion, an Epicurean philosopher in her own right. In general, Epicureans seem to me to be pro-marriage: other members of the Garden were married, Lucretius actually says quite nice things about long-wedded couples (IV.1277-1287), and Epicurus is said to have explicitly recommended marriage:

Strictly speaking, I would admit that Epicurus probably placed sex itself in the “natural but unnecessary category” for most people. As with other unnecessary desires, the cautions given by Metrodorus can be understood as warning of the potential prudential consequences (as in Principal Doctrine 26’s “hard to attain or likely to cause harm”). Likewise, the danger of excessive erotic obsession with a particular person (hinted at in VS 18 and the more precise topic of Lucretius’ diatribe) would constitute the addition of unwarranted opinions to the originally natural desire, converting it to a desire of the third, ill-advised category (à la PD 30).

Some might argue for putting sex and relationships in the “natural and necessary for happiness category.” I think it is even possible to read the advice in VS 51 as compatible with a partial acceptance of this position—it acknowledges the strong urge that Pythocles feels and doesn’t simply say “root out this terrible feeling,” but rather presents a list of prudential cautions, while acknowledging that if they are avoided, sex can be safely pursued. Perhaps Epicurus and Metrodorus might concede that it is necessary for happiness for at least some people, and so perhaps “the pleasures of sex do not profit us” should be understood more along the lines of “being a sex-chasing profligate does not profit us.” Perhaps if Pythocles had written with a complaint of his excessive interest in food, Metrodorus would have written back that “the pleasures of the table do not profit us,” while of course admitting the necessity of eating. I couldn’t rule this out.

What seems clear is that Epicurus would not consider all sexual relationships to be the product of ungrounded opinion, and therefore to be avoided. Instead, sex can reasonably be placed anywhere around the borderline of “natural and necessary” and “natural and unnecessary.” Either seems defensible as an interpretation of Epicurus and as a philosophical stance, as does a hybrid position of “necessary for some people.” Overall, however, the bulk of our surviving texts seem to treat sexual relationships most similarly to the natural and unnecessary desires, advising that one weigh the costs of their pursuit, avoid excessive obsession, and choose the most prudent way to satisfy such desires. For most people, this is probably marriage.

Actionable takeaways for modern life

It should now be basically clear what Epicurus puts in each category of his tripartite division. The corresponding general advice for each category should also be fairly apparent: prioritize and prudently pursue the first, pursue the second with some extra caution, and avoid the third. Let’s wrap up this essay by fleshing out those overarching themes with some more specific details. What does this look like in practice?

Natural and necessary

This is one of Epicurus’ most crucial and radical insistences: we must frequently remind ourselves how simple our true necessities are. If you think you need more, groundless opinion is creeping in: maybe you are comparing yourself with others, are being mislead by advertisements, or have simply been habituated to think of extravagances as essentials.

To “remind ourselves” does not mean that we will always live in a minimal way (see the Letter to Menoeceus and Seneca, Letters 18.9). It means that we will practice spiritual exercises aimed at internalizing the proper categorization of desires: read and reread the core doctrines, periodically experiment with a highly restrained lifestyle, and practice both gratitude for the simplest pleasures and the letting go of unnecessary desires. Remember what is necessary.

In terms of our overall lifestyle, correctly recognizing the necessary desires has a few implications. One of the most impactful is a recalibration of our true financial needs. Many people come to think of actually unnecessary desires as necessary for their happiness—a big house in an expensive area, multiple cars, frequent long-distance vacations, whatever—and therefore commit to longer, more stressful, or less enjoyable careers. If you trim back the unnecessary desires, your working life could be shorter in years, less demanding in hours, or chosen more for compatibility rather than income-maximization. Work accordingly.

Prioritizing the necessary desires also has implications for how we spend our time outside of making a living. Emily Austin likes to include the development of a correct understanding of the world, skill in prudent decision-making, and virtuous habits as among the necessary desires. While I’m not sure that these constitute independent objects of desire, I do agree that Epicurus would say these are essential tools for satisfying our necessary desires. (Friendship is more plausibly both an aid to material security and a direct object of desire.) Cultivating all of these therefore will occupy a larger share of the Epicurean’s time, in preference to the pursuit of wealth, reputation, or variety of pleasure. Such a life is not boring, as “a life focused on the essentials” might sound—it is one of constantly increasing tranquility. Make wisdom and prudence your hobbies.

Natural but not necessary

As previously discussed, the specific ancient example we were given for this category was “expensive food.” Modern variations on that theme are easily multiplied: expensive drinks, expensive clothing, expensive homes and home furnishings are all aimed at fulfilling natural needs for sustenance and protection from the elements, but add additional variety that is not actually necessary to remove the pain of true deprivation.

“Expensive,” of course, can mean very different things to different people. I think it is perfectly reasonable to admit that a great deal more consumer variety is affordably available to modern, financially-stable Americans like myself than was available in the ancient world. I can purchase an astounding variety of yogurts and pillows with negligible differences in cost, so there is very little need for outright monotony in the way we satisfy such desires. But along with this proliferation of affordable options has come a proliferation of expensive options, wherever you personally draw that line in relation to your financial resources. The first step in Epicurean prudence in regards to such desires, therefore, is simply to be aware of this differences in how “easy to attain” different options are, and generally choose the ones that are cheaper in total lifetime cost. Make the hard to obtain extravagances a negligible element in your life.

The more nefarious phenomenon to watch out for here is the transformation of natural desires by groundless opinion. The telltale symptom is “intense zeal” in your desire, as described in Principal Doctrine 30:

Fancy food, fancy drink, fancy clothes—so many things other than actual necessity creep in here. Repeat to yourself: kenai doxai, kenai doxai, kenai doxai. Even when you can identify some putative improvement in function, that function is usually irrelevant to the alleviation of the pain in question. “High fiber,” “convenient,” “cerulean blue.” “Keto-friendly,” “all natural,” “better quality stitching.” None of these qualities is necessary. Don’t empty your wallet, neuroticize your mind, and dilute the irreplaceable hours of your life fixating on such inconsequential details. Beware obsession.

More controversially, Epicurus would probably apply a similar logic to the choice of romantic partner: avoid obsession. That coat might seem perfect to you now, but it probably doesn’t seem perfect to other people, and probably won’t seem perfect to you either in a decade, because it probably isn’t perfect, in any objective sense. The same is true of our objects of erotic desire. Be content with good enough. A trustworthy companion is far more valuable than sexual novelty. If your partner treats you well, then consuetudo concinnat amorem—familiarity produces love.3 Don’t compare, don’t seek novelty—practice gratitude.

Unnatural and groundless

There is fairly general agreement that Epicurus felt that the desires for wealth, fame, power, and eternal life were all unnatural and unnecessary. (Numerous quotes could be lined up; for brevity, you can refer to past articles on the shortcomings of the first three for the pursuit of peace of mind, the futility of political competition, and the error of fearing death.) To be clear, all of these desires have a presumably natural evolutionary origin—it’s just that they have taken on distorted forms that are no longer beneficial for their original function, whether in the most dramatic extremes of billionaires, Hollywood stars, and dictators, or in the more modest versions of normal modern people.

For instance, when Epicurus says that the desires for wealth and fame are groundless and should be avoided—

—You might be tempted to say that he is referring to business tycoons and global celebrities, while it is perfectly natural for a person to wish to accumulate sufficient resources to comfortably meet her basic needs and to acquire enough social standing to ensure the cooperation and assistance of others. The latter is certainly true, and I don’t think Epicurus would dispute it. But I do think that he would consider the great majority of developed-world modern people to exceed the bounds of what is natural, falling victim to “unbounded desires” with no prudential calculus for when their success is sufficient.

In other words, try to be honest with yourself when evaluating whether you fall prey to any unnatural desires. You might think that you aren’t pursuing wealth, fame, power, and eternal life. But I think Epicurus would consider desires such as these to be roughly as “groundless” as the obvious cases of international tycoons and dictators:

• If you want more wealth because it makes you feel important, or to enable any appearance-oriented consumption, or to purchase lots of little extravagances that you “must” have in order to be happy.

• If you work to be admired by passers-by, vague acquaintances, or strangers on the internet.

• If you want to have a prestigious title, whether in government, business, academia, or any organization.

• If you want to live longer because you think death is terrible.

All of these have their natural origin, but all of them have exceeded that origin in a way that makes them counterproductive for contentment. People have been happy without any of these things. It is empirically trivial to find unhappy people who are rich, unhappy people who are famous, unhappy people with powerful positions, and unhappy people with highly optimized health regimens. Set limits. Relax your desires. Always remember this central dictum:

Fulfilling unnatural desires never brings stable happiness. Letting them go never causes disaster. Such desires often feel pressing, urgent, all-important. They aren’t. The particular manifestations of our unnecessary desires are highly contingent on our education, our peers, and our cultural environment. All of these things can be changed, even if that change is not easy or immediate. Mindsets that are the product of what you were told in school, what was modeled by friends and parents, what you saw on TV and on the internet can all be reformed by finding different teachers, different role models, a different culture. To read a philosophic essay is not the end of retraining your desires. It is the first, preliminary exercise in relearning what you want.

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Principal Doctrine 15:

Principal Doctrine 16:

Principal Doctrine 21:

Commentary

In our next stop along our tour of Epicurus’ Principal Doctrines, we have three maxims revolving around one central idea: the good is easy to obtain. This is one of those concise, memorable sayings so much valued in ancient philosophy for its use in mental retraining: ταγαθόν εὐπόριστον (t’agathon euporiston), one might frequently remind oneself, when momentarily tempted into the pursuit of some difficult-to-obtain object under the mistaken impression that it constituted something that was truly essential to happiness.

Last week’s essay on the Classification of Desires discussed the basis for this claim that what we truly need for happiness is simple, limited, and easy to obtain. And our next installment of Principal Doctrines 18–20 will dive more deeply into one element of this fundamental justification, the idea that pleasure has a limit and is infinitely additive neither in magnitude nor in time. But today we will take a basic agreement about the easy attainability of the necessary desires for granted, and explore some more practical corollaries to these philosophic underpinnings. How much wealth do we need? How important is luck? Is success in life dependent on coming out ahead in competitive fields? If you truly internalize the belief that t’agathon euporiston, the good is easy to obtain, then the answers to these questions will be clear—and radically different than the way many people live their lives.

“The wealth of nature” is here contrasted with the wealth “of empty opinion.” The contrast between the natural and the unnatural—synonymous with that which is founded on “empty” or “groundless” opinion—should be familiar from our discussion of the Classification of the Desires. As discussed there, our natural and necessary desires are those which are innate and non-removable, such as our desires for food, hydration, and basic shelter. To be “wealthy” according to our natural needs means being able to satisfy those limited desires securely: it is not hard to obtain enough food, water, clothing, and shelter to meet our actual physical demands. In contrast, to be “wealthy” relative to the uncapped desires for consumerist variety, fame, or financial accumulation itself requires an amount of resources that has no intrinsic limit—there is no point of satiety for such desires in the way that there is for hunger or thirst.

Some might protest that it is not that easy to secure our basic needs. Our lives are not as simple as those of animals. What if we are opposed by unfavorable political or societal conditions, oppressed by prejudice or world events, or simply the victims of bad luck in the lottery of life? Epicurus has an opinion:

Epicurus does not deny that “chance” (or “fortune” or “luck”) exists. Unlike the Stoics, if you suffer a misfortune—if you are struck by a rare, painful illness, if you lose a friend in a car accident, if your house burns down—Epicurus would readily acknowledge that something bad has happened. Pain has been imposed upon you. Your confidence in securing the necessary desires has been diminished.

What he says, however, is that chance intrudes little in the life of the wise. Our primary defense against misfortune is not some extreme level of unshakeable virtue, but “reasoned calculation” (λογισμὸς, logismos). Some translations simply render this as “reason,” which has, I think, an excessively abstract air. The LSJ suggests “calculation” as one possibility, or Norman DeWitt is also on the right track when he translates logismos as “rational planning”—this is a word that refers to prudential calculation, rather than to some kind of insight into the nature of the universe. DeWitt goes on to comment:

Those who bewail the influence of bad luck and external circumstances on their happiness are usually mistaken. When viewed over the whole of one’s life, Epicurus is confident that the rigorous application of practical wisdom is essentially always sufficient to meet our natural needs.

In the rich countries of the modern world, relative poverty still exists. But if all the currently poor were to instantly adapt all the financial habits and other prudent behaviors of the most “successful” people, Epicurus does not think that the misfortune of their starting point would be an insurmountable obstacle to their happiness. He believes in individual agency, in one’s ability to craft a good life for oneself.

Of course, this is not easily done. If one’s environment has devalued the prudential virtues for all of one’s life, dismissed the importance of thrift, saving, weighing of long-term consequences, diligence, responsibility, restraint, financial literacy, or whatever else you might consider valuable for economic security, then it will be hard for anyone to instantly adopt all of those values and habits. But this is the point of practical intervention for Epicurus, and ancient philosophy more broadly: if someone comes to the Garden, and wants to achieve happiness, he will be told how to change his way of thinking—not told that he is unlucky and that his situation is hopeless.

Developing a correct understanding of big philosophic issues is part of this training. Contentment requires freedom from ungrounded fears of death or of the gods, for instance. But developing the ability to effectively calculate the advantages and disadvantages of different courses of action is just as important.

I’ve temporarily skipped a bundle of maxims (PD 18–20) that have some significant relevance to this one, detailing further some of the “limits” of life. But I think we already know enough to understand the main premise of this saying and consider the truth and implications of its conclusion. “The things that remove the suffering of want” are the objects of our old friends, the necessary desires. Food, water, clothing, shelter. Some might add friendship and a correct understanding of the world. None of these are in themselves expensive, or subject to some high bar of requisite luck. None of them require competition.

You don’t need to climb some high careerist ladder to obtain the food you need to live in health. You don’t need to become famous to have all the water you could ever want. You don’t need to win any political battle to secure clothing and shelter. You don’t need to be the best at anything to have faithful friends and family.

None of the most important things require such struggle. Many who dedicate their lives to whatever form of competition—from professional athletes to highly paid executives, political activists to online influencers—remain unhappy and unfulfilled. It isn’t because they don’t have enough. It’s because they don’t truly recognize what makes a life complete.

Read the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.

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Original Text

15. ὁ τῆς φύσεως πλοῦτος καὶ ὥρισται καὶ εὐπόριστός ἐστιν, ὁ δὲ τῶν κενῶν δοξῶν εἰς ἄπειρον ἐκπίπτει.

16. βραχέα σοφῷ τύχη παρεμπίπτει, τὰ δὲ μέγιστα καὶ κυριώτατα ὁ λογισμὸς διῴκηκε καὶ κατὰ τὸν συνεχῆ χρόνον τοῦ βίου διοικεῖ καὶ διοικήσει.

21. ὁ τὰ πέρατα τοῦ βίου κατειδὼς οἶδεν ὡς εὐπόριστόν ἐστι τὸ <τὸ> ἀλγοῦν κατʼ ἔνδειαν ἐξαιροῦν καὶ τὸ τὸν ὅλον βίον παντελῆ καθιστάν· ὥστε οὐδὲν προσδεῖται πραγμάτων ἀγῶνας κεκτημένων.

Epicurus famously thought that human desires could be usefully put into three categories: the natural and necessary, the natural but unnecessary, and those which are neither natural nor necessary. Once we learn how to correctly place our desires into these mental buckets, we will know how we should approach them: either pursuing them strongly, gratifying them when reasonably convenient, or training ourselves out of them. As with my recent essays on the Epicurean approach to death, this is one of the major doctrines and will require two parts. Today I will introduce what exactly our ancient texts say and clear up one common area of confusion—how strongly does Epicurus discourage us from pursuing the natural but unnecessary desires? Next week I will address another common query—where do romantic relationships fit into this framework?—and conclude by considering how we should apply the categorization of desires to modern life.

Let’s start by defining the three classes of desires more precisely. Our surviving texts provide us with two direct statements of this doctrine from Epicurus himself:

Our next most important text is a scholion to PD 29, a brief commentary written on our manuscripts which is fairly universally regarded as being of ancient origin and a trustworthy report of Epicurus’ now lost elaborations:

Some other texts provide good supporting evidence, which I will touch on below. But let’s pause to recap what we can say about these three categories now, and how we might start to fill in each bucket with illustrative examples.

Natural and necessary: Most obviously, this includes physical necessities of the body. Without food and water, we will die. Without basic clothing and shelter, we will feel pain in harsh weather. Anything, therefore, that is required for the healthy and pain-free functioning of the body belongs here. Notably, this category also includes things necessary “for happiness.” It is less obvious what would qualify for this sub-category in Epicurus’ mind. One of the more plausible suggestions is the desire for friendship, based on separate statements of the indispensability of friendship for peace of mind.

Natural but not necessary: The vaguest and most debated category. From these initial texts, the only example that we have in an essentially direct form is that of “expensive foods,” which “vary pleasure but do not remove pain.” Based on this, most scholars think this category primarily refers to the desire for particular ways of fulfilling our natural desires—certain kinds of food and drink, certain kinds of clothing, and so on. The original desire is natural (hunger), but the particular manifestation is not necessary to avoid pain (a tomahawk ribeye steak). Scholars are divided as to whether sexual desire also fits in this category, or whether Epicurus would be more likely to put a parallel “desire for sex with particular people” here. We’ll get more into that question next week.

Neither natural nor necessary: These are the desires that originate in “empty” or “groundless” opinion (kenai doxai), a common Epicurean target. The examples given by the scholion are for “crowns and erections of statues.” Based on both that narrow example and other examples of kenai doxai discussed elsewhere by Epicurus, the big three desires usually placed in this category are those for wealth, fame, and power. The desire for eternal life is another unnatural desire belonging to this category.

Are the natural but unnecessary desires discouraged?

If you read the secondary literature, the experts are not in complete agreement about the degree to which Epicurus approves of satisfying the natural but unnecessary desires: some think he is quite permissive, while others think he is highly restrictive. I am generally in the “permissive” camp, and think that Epicurus allows the fulfillment of a great many unnecessary desires—as long as certain conditions are met.

A careful reading of the texts supports this. First off, there are two more Principal Doctrines that discuss these desires directly.

This one is straightforward enough: it sets forth the same criterion we are already familiar with to define the category (such desires do not cause pain if unfulfilled, unlike necessary desires such as hunger and thirst), and tells us how we should approach them (don’t pursue such desires if they are difficult to satisfy or if they bring other harms). The next maxim adds further specificity, although the exact nature of this specificity has been the subject of some debate:

Here, Epicurus adds a nuance within one of his three larger categories: when observing people pursuing the natural but unnecessary desires—which, if we remember PD 26, are supposed to be “easily relinquished”—we will often encounter individuals who become intensely impassioned and obsessive in their pursuit. According to Epicurus, desires of such intensity must have ceased to be merely natural, and have now been distorted by groundless opinion: to accurately categorize desires, we therefore need to look not only at the material object of desire, but also at the thought process of the person involved. If you see people getting distressed over not being able to get their favorite sushi or a piece of clothing they had their eyes on, for instance, then you can attribute that distress to mistaken human opinion—there is nothing in the natural desire for food or clothing that mandates that intense discontent.

This maxim has sometimes been misunderstood. Some translations imply that all of the natural but not necessary desires evoke intense feelings or require intense effort, that all of them are produced by groundless opinion, and that all such desires should therefore be stringently avoided.1 The Greek is admittedly a little tricky, but I don’t think this is a tenable interpretation: most simply because it would collapse the three categories into two, making the whole trichotomy pointless. Furthermore, while Epicurus often recommends relatively simple living, he also often acknowledges that unnecessary desires can be enjoyably fulfilled under the right circumstances. Consider Letter to Menoeceus 131, for instance, or Vatican Saying 21:

We do not need to “sharply deny” the natural but unnecessary desires. Instead, it is perfectly reasonable to fulfill them, except when they involve certain specific conditions. From PD 26 and 30, we can now identify those three situations when we should forgo their pursuit:

1. If they are hard to obtain.

2. If they are likely to cause harm.

3. If the zeal and urgency of our desire become too intense when not gratified. (We should then recognize that the originally natural desire is being distorted by groundless opinion, which we should always strive to free ourselves from.)

The first two are relatively easy to understand and fit well with a wide range of Epicurean advice. If we encounter easy opportunities to enjoy fancier food or drink, we should enjoy it. But if it is expensive or unhealthy, then we should realize that pursuing this pleasure will be on net negative for our well-being. Epicurus says that such desires should be “easily relinquished” and in fact I think they often are, when viewed solely in their original natural capacity, before the addition of any “groundless opinions.” Most people of modest income, if presented with the menu of a very fancy restaurant and offered the opportunity to purchase a $300 entrée, would feel very little desire for that purely gustatory experience. (Some people might want to be the kind of wealthy person who dines at such places, or to have sufficiently enormous wealth that the $300 meal was a meaningless expense, but very few would say that the pure pleasure of tasting such food was worth $300 more than a home-cooked meal of negligible cost.)

It is the third principle that suggests the more difficult case: when groundless opinions are attached by habit, education, or peer influence to our originally natural but unnecessary desires, they can become quite deeply ingrained. Then our intrinsically simple desires to be fed, hydrated, clothed, and sheltered become addictive, obsessive, and painfully difficult to satisfy. If you find yourself compulsively shopping for new clothes or trying to justify increasing your house-shopping budget by another $100,000 for “a little more space,” “a nicer neighborhood,” or various beautiful bits and bobs of interior design, then such desires are no longer those simple, natural desires they masquerade as. Groundless opinion has taken hold.

So, to answer our original question: No, I would not say that Epicurus discourages the satisfaction of natural but unnecessary desires. He encourages us to recognize when particular desires impose higher costs than their satisfaction is worth. And he encourages us to recognize when our originally natural desires have become distorted by unnatural, groundless opinion. But there is no call to eliminate admittedly unnecessary variety from the pleasures of one’s life.

Conclusion, and what lies ahead

Our three categories have now been introduced, as Epicurus delineated them. We know roughly what desires he placed in each group, and what his general stance was towards each: fulfill the natural and necessary, pursue the natural and unnecessary if they do no harm, and deny those which are neither natural nor necessary. Despite some misreadings to the contrary, Epicurus did not advocate for stringent restrictions on the natural but unnecessary desires, but rather for targeted guidelines that still allow for significant variety beyond the bare minimum of the truly necessary.

Next week, I’ll conclude this essay, first with a consideration of another related topic of debate—in which category do sex and romantic relationships belong?—and then with a broader application of the Epicurean framework to contemporary life. We’ve laid the groundwork. Next week we’ll see it in action—and begin to reap the benefits.

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Peace and quiet are what sailors pray for,
When they are caught out on the open Aegean,
With a black cloud hiding the moon
And smothering the stars.

They pray for peace in war-torn Thrace,
As do the famous archers of Parthia,
But it can’t be bought, Grosphus—not with gems,
Not with purple, not with gold.

A consul is wealthy, protected by lictors,
But no wealth or lictors can clear the mobs
In his mind, or disperse all the worries beneath
His fine, paneled ceiling.

Live well with little—as does the good man
Whose father’s salt cellar is his only heirloom,
His table offers little, but he sleeps without nightmares,
Free from fear and from greed.

Our strength is short. Why do we aim
At so much? Why do we sail across the sea?
Does the man who flees his country in truth
Just flee himself?

Worry haunts everyone. That anxious vice
Boards armored ships, chases down
The horseman, outrunning all deer,
Outrunning the wind.

Find contentment in this moment. Decline obsession
With the future. And when hard times come to you,
Temper bitter things with laughter, knowing
Life is imperfect.

Life is imperfect—Achilles died,
Immortal Tithonus was crushed by age,
And while I do not have your wealth,
I have other things.

The sounds of your sheep and your cattle surround you;
Your team of mares strain at the chariot;
You are draped in twice-dyed wool of Africa,
The richest of all colors.

But Fate has not deceived me. I have
A small estate, the gift to write
My slender songs, and freedom to spurn 
The envious crowd.

Commentary

I have previously introduced Horace, a not-officially-Epicurean poet of Augustan Rome. To recap: he definitely studied Epicurean philosophy, had Epicurean friends, and was largely sympathetic to the philosophy, but occasionally strikes notes that are not in complete agreement with the school’s formal doctrines. Overall, he is still often quoted as an eloquent articulator of central Epicurean themes such as the value of simple living, the dangers of ambition, the importance of friendship, and the appreciation of the present moment’s pleasures. Today’s poem touches on all of these.

The basic structure of this ode is to alternate between portraits of various kinds of stressed, unhappy people, and alternative portraits of more contented ways of being. In the course of that alternation, we are given a virtual tour of the different ways the seemingly prosperous go wrong in their search for happiness, contrasted with affecting, highly Epicurean visions of what it would look like for that search to go right. Let’s take the whole poem in order.

[Unhappy people #1]

Peace and quiet are what sailors pray for,
When they are caught out on the open Aegean,
With a black cloud hiding the moon
And smothering the stars.

They pray for peace in war-torn Thrace,
As do the famous archers of Parthia,
But it can’t be bought, Grosphus—not with gems,
Not with purple, not with gold.

A consul is wealthy, protected by lictors,
But no wealth or lictors can clear the mobs
In his mind, or disperse all the worries beneath
His fine, paneled ceiling.

The first three stanzas introduce three different kinds of people: sailors, soldiers, and politicians. All are worried; none are happy. First up, we have the sailor (which in Roman poetry often means “wealth-seeking merchant”—see Odes 1.31 or 3.29, for example). But wealth won’t help you when you face the dark and dangerous sea. Second, educated young men (as Horace was) might join up with a military campaign (as Horace did, fighting against the future Augustus at Philippi) in order to pursue glory, political ideals, or eastern wealth, but the military life also guarantees a lack of tranquility. Third, consul was the highest political office in the Roman state. Being consul guarantees wealth, influence, and a personal crew of “lictors,” bodyguards/street-rabble-clearers armed with staffs. But, as we can see today as well, politicians do not lead peaceful lives.

[Happy man #1]

Live well with little—as does the good man
Whose father’s salt cellar is his only heirloom,
His table offers little, but he sleeps without nightmares,
Free from fear and from greed.

In contrast, a life that is not oriented around securing wealth, glory, or power does offer the possibility of peace. Even in his sleep, the good man is free from fear and greed—this is a good indicator of progress towards ataraxia. The opening line of this stanza, incidentally, is one of those felicitous, compact phrases for which Horace is famous (carpe diem, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, the golden mean, etc.). Here he says vivitur parvo bene: “life is well lived with little,” or for greater concision and directness, “live well with little.” Ancient Epicureans loved repeating memorable maxims as a form of philosophical practice, and this is an excellent one. Recall it regularly to your mind and the frugal mindset will become ever more natural and instinctive. I say vivitur parvo bene all the time, even if my wife often completes the words before I can finish, followed by “yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.”

[Unhappy people #2]

Our strength is short. Why do we aim
At so much? Why do we sail across the sea?
Does the man who flees his country in truth
Just flee himself?

Worry haunts everyone. That anxious vice
Boards armored ships, chases down
The horseman, outrunning all deer,
Outrunning the wind.

Next, Horace turns back to consider a few more versions of the worried life. Here, the emphasis is not so much on acquisition (of wealth, power, etc.), but on movement. Those who are discontented cannot stand still, just as in the passage from Lucretius that I shared earlier this month. “Travelling is a fool’s paradise.” Fast ships and fast horses give us the distraction of speed, but vicious worry (vitiosa Cura) always walks us down.

[Happy man #2]

Find contentment in this moment. Decline obsession
With the future. And when hard times come to you,
Temper bitter things with laughter, knowing
Life is imperfect.

The remedies to such insatiability for stuff and movement are primarily mental. As Pierre Hadot argues, perhaps the central spiritual exercise of all Epicureanism is one of relaxation, of letting go of worries in favor of contentment in the present. This doesn’t deny that painful moments sometimes occur, but those also we can soften by adopting the right perspective. As Epicurus says in Principal Doctrine 4, pain is temporary. It will pass. And so Horace issues yet another of his rolling phrases: amara lento temperet risu—may the happy man “temper bitter things with calm, easy laughter.”

[Unhappy people #3]

Life is imperfect—Achilles died,
Immortal Tithonus was crushed by age,
And while I do not have your wealth,
I have other things.

The sounds of your sheep and your cattle surround you;
Your team of mares strain at the chariot;
You are draped in twice-dyed wool of Africa,
The richest of all colors.

Our last turn to the world of unhappiness contains two ends of the spectrum. First, Horace offers us a more distant, zoomed-out perspective from the world of mythology. Achilles obtained more glory than anyone in the world—but he died, and his glory became worthless. Tithonous asked for and received eternal life, but neglected to request eternal youth, with the result that he became very miserable and decrepit before ultimately being turned into a cicada. Then Horace zooms in, at last directly addressing his friend Grosphus, who was briefly invoked at the beginning of the poem. From the mythological past to the immediate and contemporary, people do the same futile thing in their desire for happiness: they always search for more.

[Happy man #3—Horace!]

But Fate has not deceived me. I have
A small estate, the gift to write
My slender songs, and freedom to spurn 
The envious crowd.

Horace, in contrast, has what he needs. Not an ascetic lifestyle, but a modest one: his farm is parva (little) and the breath of his poetic muse is tenuem (slight, delicate—a reference to Horace’s specialization in short lyric poems about friendship and living well and so on, rather than some weightier genre like epic—rendered loosely here as “my slender songs”). The closing scorn for the general populace might strike some modern readers as jarringly elitist, given Horace’s criticisms of the rich: malignum spernere volgus could arguably be rendered even more strongly as “to despise the spiteful masses” or the like. But I think that Horace’s sentiment here is also ultimately compatible with an Epicurean perspective and suggests an important position that is not very prominent today: philosophers are not on the side of the rich (they are ignorant about what matters), but that does not necessarily mean they are on the side of the poor (they are ignorant too, often desiring the same things as the more unrefined and unreflective of the upper classes).

Live well with little. Be content with the present. Temper bitter things with gentle laughter. Do all of these and you will achieve some portion of that peace that so many seek without finding—at sea or in war, abroad or at home, in the midst of the crowd or surrounded by wealth. We have what we need.

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Original Text

Horace, Ode 2.16

Otium divos rogat in patenti
prensus Aegaeo, simul atra nubes
condidit lunam neque certa fulgent
sidera nautis,

otium bello furiosa Thrace,
otium Medi pharetra decori,
Grosphe, non gemmis neque purpura ve-
nale nec auro.

non enim gazae neque consularis
submovet lictor miseros tumultus
mentis et curas laqueata circum
tecta volantis.

vivitur parvo bene cui paternum
splendet in mensa tenui salinum
nec levis somnos timor aut cupido
sordidus aufert.

quid brevi fortes iaculamur aevo
multa? quid terras alio calentis
sole mutamus? patriae quis exsul
se quoque fugit?

scandit aeratas vitiosa navis
Cura nec turmas equitum relinquit
ocior cervis et agente nimbos
ocior Euro.

laetus in praesens animus quod ultra est
oderit curare et amara lento
temperet risu: nihil est ab omni
parte beatum.

abstulit clarum cita mors Achillem,
longa Tithonum minuit senectus
et mihi forsan tibi quod negarit
porriget hora.

te greges centum Siculaeque circum
mugiunt vaccae, tibi tollit hinnitum
apta quadrigis equa, te bis Afro
murice tinctae

vestiunt lanae: mihi parva rura et
spiritum Graiae tenuem Camenae
Parca non mendax dedit et malignum
spernere volgus.

To the ancient Greeks, philosophy is about more than thinking. To be an Epicurean is to change how you live. One modern thinker is more responsible than any other for clarifying this stark difference between the ancient and contemporary ways of practicing philosophy.

The late Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) was a celebrated scholar most well-known for centering the Greek philosophical tradition around the idea of “philosophy as a way of life,” rather than viewing it as a purely theoretical pursuit analogous to the modern practices of academic philosophy. According to this understanding, to be a philosopher is not to be a “writer of philosophic books” or a “presenter of lectures on philosophic books,” but rather to be a committed adherent to certain precepts that would shape one’s whole life: how one eats, dresses, earns a living, participates in society and politics, and much more. One of the most central concepts in Hadot’s revitalization of this mindset is that of “spiritual exercises,” practices which extended beyond merely reading texts in order to shape the minds of philosophical practitioners.

Although Hadot is most famous for applying this lens to Stoicism (he has written extensively on Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, while his generally like-minded wife Ilsetraut Hadot published on Seneca), he argues that spiritual exercises were a key practice of all the ancient philosophical schools, including the Epicureans. These exercises were first discussed at length in his article “Spiritual Exercises” from 1977, included in the translated anthology Philosophy as a Way of Life, and then again in 1995 in one of his most important books, What is Ancient Philosophy?¹

I agree with Hadot: to read ancient philosophy as if it were a merely intellectual exercise, akin to the work of modern university philosophers, would be a serious error. The Epicureans, as with the Stoics, Platonists, Aristotelians, and Cynics, thought of philosophy as a way of shaping who one was as a human being. So how did they do it?

What are spiritual exercises? What is their goal?

In What is Ancient Philosophy, Hadot describes spiritual exercises as “voluntary, personal practices intended to cause a transformation of the self. These are inherent to the philosophical life.”2 A wide range of activities fall within that definition: modifications to one’s everyday lifestyle (such as a regular practice of fasting or vegetarianism), daily meditations on certain topics or doctrines, memorization of sayings, submitting to a philosophical teacher’s spiritual guidance, or engaging regularly in “Socratic” dialogue are all exercises in this sense. All extend beyond the mere passive reading of a text or listening to a lecture and are intended to shape one’s thoughts, emotions, and way of existing in the world.

In “Spiritual Exercises,” Hadot eloquently summarizes the goal of Epicurean exercises, a goal which is broadly parallel with that of all the ancient schools:

Other thinkers have put their finger on this true philosophic experience over the millennia. In antiquity, when drawn to reflection on the subject, philosophers would return an unambiguous verdict: “Philosophy teaches us how to act, not how to speak,” said Seneca.4 Today, the philosophy most students encounter consists overwhelmingly of speaking. Take a half dozen philosophy professors from your nearest university: they may have very different areas of scholarly expertise, but they probably live in roughly the same way as each other, and the same way as their colleagues in the English or Art History departments. Their specific philosophic affiliations are rarely fundamental to how they lead their daily lives.

Hadot agrees with Thoreau’s famous sentiment: “There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live.” That insight continues to be true today.

The spiritual exercises of Epicureans

According to Hadot, then, what exactly did “being an Epicurean” involve in the ancient world? It meant to subscribe to a set of doctrinal teachings, yes, but also to integrate the following practices in one’s life.

Self-awareness of our spiritual state

The starting point and precursor to all the spiritual exercises proper is the development of a strong sense of contrast between the philosophic life and the life of non-philosophers. Today, students may attend classes in philosophy, but most do not think of themselves as philosophers. When used at all in contemporary settings, the word usually means “someone who writes or teaches philosophy.” In the ancient world, one could adopt the beliefs and lifestyle of a philosophical school and hence be considered, for example, “an Epicurean,” without being a writer or teacher. Although this may seem like a one-time choice or decision, rather than an ongoing “exercise,” I think Hadot is right in asserting that one’s self-conception as a philosopher has a dramatic ongoing impact on how one interacts with the world and daily decision-making. I think of myself as an Epicurean. This influences my life choices much more than if I thought of myself as “a person who enjoys reading ancient philosophy.”

Closely allied with this awareness of our starting point is awareness of our progress. In Stoicism, there is explicit testimony of “progress-check” type exercises, such as daily morning and evening reflections on one’s intentions, failures, and successes. While we don’t have direct evidence of that kind of exercise for Epicureanism, Hadot thinks a parallel phenomenon is implicit in the Epicurean emphasis on frank philosophic discussion, openness to correction, and acceptance of spiritual guidance from one’s masters. Philosophers notice when they fall short of a certain model of conduct, they welcome correction of their shortcomings, and they strive to have fewer such shortcomings in the future.

Meditation on core doctrines

Today, philosophy students read books of philosophy. Ancient Epicureans read books too, of course, but they did so in a different way. In addition to studying the longer treatises, Epicurean students would be expected to read and reread shorter texts, memorize maxims, and work to deeply internalize the core doctrines. One of our core surviving texts is Epicurus’ Principal Doctrines—these forty sayings are not just a random assemblage of aphorisms that happened to be compiled together and published, but an original, intentional selection of central principles that Epicurean students would read, reread, memorize, and meditate upon. The famous tetrapharmakon (fourfold remedy) represents a later tool in this vein, a striking compression of core doctrines into a memorable, easily repeatable form:

“Meditate” in this sense is not the attempt to clear one’s mind or still one’s thoughts, now familiar from eastern traditions. It is a combination of the conscious thinking-through of the maxim’s justification and implications, literal repetition or memorization, and the ongoing assertion to oneself of the truth of the statement.

Of course, this kind of contemplation is not restricted to singular maxims, but can also be practiced generally on a set of teachings about a particular topic. For example, an Epicurean might meditate on death, meaning not a vague, wandering rumination, but an intentional review of the school’s core teachings: there is no divine punishment or reward, there is no afterlife or posthumous sensation, death is nothing to us, and our mortal life is where pleasure is experienced. As Hadot summarizes:

Relaxation into pleasure, gratitude, and tranquility

Hadot argues that the conscious decision to appreciate the pleasures of life is the fundamental exercise of Epicureanism. I agree. While some spiritual exercises occur across multiple schools, this is one of the starkest contrasts within ancient philosophy: the fundamental Stoic exercise involves a tension, a constant vigilance over one’s thoughts, while the essential Epicurean practice is one of relaxation, of releasing our fears, anxieties, and desires. To be an Epicurean, you must practice “the deliberate choice, constantly renewed, of relaxation and serenity, and a deep gratitude towards nature and life, which, if we knew how to find it, constantly offers us pleasure and joy.”8 Or as Hadot expresses it in this interview, in a manner that is less elaborate but even more French, when asked if pleasure itself constitutes a spiritual exercise among the Epicureans:

Other writers have elaborated on the many objects of Epicurean gratitude.9 Some of the innumerable things we gratefully enjoy are:

• The satisfaction of the necessary desires (feeling warm, fed, etc.)

• Easy-to-obtain indulgences in natural but unnecessary desires (fancier food and drink, comforts, entertainments)

• The serenity that comes from scientific understanding (see PD 11–13)

• The practice of philosophy

• Friendship

• The memory of past pleasures

• The wonder-filled contemplation of the universe (see Lucretius)

• The simple pleasure of existence in the present moment

Discipline of desire

This is a term Hadot made famous in his discussion of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, but Epicureans also had their version of reviewing their desires and pruning away the undesirable ones. Some schools were much stricter in their ascetic practices, eliminating all luxuries or demanding vegetarianism, for example. Epicureans were not like this. They advocated for eliminating the “unnatural desires,” such as those for wealth, power, and fame—many people have happily lived without those things, while those who orient their lives around them never find tranquility. But when it came to the “natural but unnecessary desires,” such as those for certain kinds of food or drink, or other non-essential little indulgences, they advocated moderation: enjoy them without guilt when they come to you easily, but avoid taking on greater pains in their pursuit.

In practice, then, Epicureans avoid organizing their lives around making money or achieving fame, obtaining political power or achieving political goals. A belief in the truth of the school’s tenets rules these out as reasonable courses of action. It also means that Epicureans will tend to be moderate consumers: while not strict ascetics, they will typically spend less on food, clothing, cars, and home furnishings than the average non-philosopher. Such things do not fundamentally increase our happiness and their acquisition often requires an unnecessary investment of time and energy in making money.

Seek and accept spiritual guidance

This has multiple levels of practice, all of which are often omitted in the lives of non-philosophers. First and ideally, we will find a spiritual guide: a real, live teacher who can advise us, correct us when we are mistaken, and provide an example of wisdom. In ancient times, students would go to the Garden to study under Epicurus and his successors, which included directly personal advice on how they should live (Vatican Saying 51 seems to be an example of such personal guidance, possibly by Metrodorus). Outside of Athens, there were probably other Epicurean communities, such as the contemporary community in Lampsacus where Idomeneus and others lived.

Second, the vision of the philosophic life in antiquity was not simply a one-to-one relationship of master and disciple, but involved a whole community of fellow learners. Epicureans in particular were known for emphasizing the importance of “frank speech,” which involved directly pointing out the errors and shortcomings of one’s philosophic comrades, and accepting their corrections in turn, with humility and sincere good faith. In the world of non-philosophers, most people hate to be corrected and refuse to acknowledge anyone’s right to judge their conduct.

Finally, and perhaps especially important for those of us in the modern world who don’t have the opportunity to join an Epicurean community, we can adopt a spiritual guide indirectly, through a study of the writings of past masters with an attitude of trust and humility. Just like it was popular for a time for Christians to wear “What would Jesus do?” wristbands, the Epicureans advised students to “live as if Epicurus were watching you.” While some of the practices of personal reverence towards Epicurus seem excessively cultish to unsympathetic modern eyes (the abundant statues and other images, the ritual celebration of his birthday), the object of envisioning and remembering an iconically good person is our own improvement. Seneca testified to this Epicurean advice:

Spread the philosophy

Finally, while those hostile to Epicureanism often criticize a strawman version of the school that simply “withdraws” from the world, the reality is that historical Epicureanism was a missionary philosophy, one that strove to spread its teachings and attract new converts. Epicureans “withdraw” from some fields of competitive prestige—the usual culprits of wealth, fame, and power—but that doesn’t mean they were entirely insular and cut off from the world.

To some degree, new adherents to the school would appear naturally, as an outgrowth of the communal activities described above, which then attracted those in search of a spiritual home. Current members of the Garden would draw their friends, family, and offspring into the Epicurean orbit. And to some degree, the statues and images of Epicurus and the other leaders of the school also performed this missionary function, not just serving as valuable reminders of wisdom for existing followers, but making the schools’ models visible to the world at large.

But one final activity was practiced both in antiquity and into the present day: writing. By reiterating and expanding on the core doctrines, and sending those words out into the world, we hope to both help others find peace and pleasure, and to do the same for ourselves. To write Epicurean essays is itself to perform a spiritual exercise.

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Principal Doctrine 11:

Principal Doctrine 12:

Principal Doctrine 13:

Commentary

Epicureanism has a unique position in the history of science. On the one hand, the Epicureans were remarkably prescient on a wide number of factual claims about the physical world and employ methods that are strikingly closer to modern science than those of their predecessors (and many of their successors). On the other, however, they were notably moderate in their enthusiasm for the pursuit of science qua science—Epicurus insists that the main function of any study should be to assuage the fears that keep us from happiness. Today, many enthusiasts of the sciences would probably endorse the value of “knowledge for knowledge’s sake,” but I think the Epicurean perspective is correct: we should keep our scientific pursuits focused on the ultimate goal of making our inner lives better.

In today’s selection from the Principal Doctrines, Epicurus claims that natural science will sooth our fears and apprehensions about subjects such as celestial phenomena and death. If you haven’t reviewed your Epicurean advances in physics, cosmology, and meteorology recently, it might help to review some of the perspectives they advanced, often against the popular consensus of their day:

• The universe was not designed, nor is it currently managed, by any omnipotent deity.

• All celestial phenomena, from comets to thunderstorms, can therefore be attributed to purely material causes, rather than divine agency.

• Everything is made of tiny, invisible particles (atoms), which are combined in different ways to form different substances and objects.

• Since everything is material, when our bodies die, we die. There is no afterlife.

• The universe is inconceivably vast. We are not the center of it and there are other worlds.

To these we can add some more biological insights as well:

• The animals that we see living today are those that were well-suited to survive. In the past there were other animals that were not well-suited to survive—these have gone extinct.

• Humans are basically similar to other animals. Our more complex language and social systems developed over time because they were useful to our survival.

And some important methodological improvements:

• Our understanding of the world cannot come from purely a priori reasoning, but must incorporate empirical, sensible data along with our rational evaluation of its significance.

• Sometimes, the limits of human observation do not allow us to explain the cause of a given natural phenomenon with certainty. In such cases, we should formulate multiple hypotheses—all physical in nature, with no postulate of divine intervention—and suspend our judgment as to which one is correct.

This is, of course, a brief and favorable summary. Specific Epicurean claims can easily be found that did not pan out, and some of their theories now seem quaint. For instance, while Epicurus entertained the (correct) possibility that the daily setting of the sun came from the earth blocking its light, he also felt that we could not rule out a daily extinguishing and subsequent rekindling based on the conditions of different layers of the atmosphere. Overall, however, it is striking how much the Epicureans got right.

More important than the minutiae of the Epicurean meteorological claims are two insights that run throughout their scientific writings. First, they were highly prescient in their famous method of “multiple causes”—it is sound scientific practice to formulate multiple plausible hypotheses, then evaluate your evidence to see if you can rule each one out. Sometimes, our available tools and data will not allow us to decide which one is correct, and in that case, remaining agnostic as to the precise mechanisms of nature is the responsible thing to do. This approach is arguably central to modern scientific method. Secondly, the Epicureans were tremendously successful in their core goals of reducing our fears of the gods and of death. Their central relevant claims would come to be endorsed by the great mass of subsequent scientific progress—physical phenomena have physical causes, there is no afterlife—and are increasingly accepted by the public with each passing century.

Such are the Epicurean scientific bona fides. Where they probably differ from much of the modern scientific or academic community, however, is in their insistence that science be useful. Nor does this mean “useful for increasing material abundance,” which is another mindset you might encounter today, but rather “useful for achieving peace of mind.” Much of the research taking place in modern universities—whether in the hard sciences, social sciences, or humanities—would probably be rejected by Epicurus as rather pointless in reference to this goal. (Plato and Aristotle would likely be more sympathetic.) This requirement of therapeutic usefulness is quite explicit in the first of today’s maxims:

The point of natural science is to dispel fear and ignorance that causes us pain. If we experienced no disturbance or pain, we would have no need of science. PD 12 and 13 reinforce this message of the proper function of science:

According to PD 12, the point of natural science is to help us attained “unmixed pleasure,” which is not degraded or offset by fear. According to PD 13, just as our fears can be reduced by taking practical action to increase our worldly security, we also need to systematically eliminate our suspicions about natural phenomena. There is no prudential action that will prevent us from encountering thunder, earthquakes, and comets—the correct remedy for fear of such things is natural science, which will teach us that these phenomena do not originate from divine displeasure and cannot be prevented through prayer or sacrifice.

Elsewhere, Epicurus expands on the case of useless knowledge. While to know the “essential cause” of natural phenomena is important for peace of mind, certainty regarding the exact details of natural processes is not. Some people dedicate their lives to such investigations, but continue to live in fear. Their version of natural science is not helping them much: while it is very important to know that thunder does not come from an angry Zeus, it is not that important to actually be able to explain the precise physical process behind the phenomena:

While most people today do not think of themselves as “natural scientists,” these precepts continue to be perfectly relevant in the modern world. Many of us are heirs to the Epicurean scientific legacy, in that we do not experience baseless fears of an afterlife or of divine displeasure as expressed through weather. But some people do continue to suffer such fears. Similarly, many people express concerns about ghosts, aliens, and other paranormal phenomena. For anyone in such a case, Epicurus would recommend the practice of science, including discriminating judgment when evaluating evidence and the provisional acceptance of multiple hypotheses that are grounded in known physical possibilities over the introduction of unwarranted supernatural assumptions.

Furthermore, although “celestial phenomena” play a prominent role in these maxims, we should recognize that “natural science” is not limited to such topics. Epicurus also includes the correct understanding of death and human desires as subjects treated by natural science. Most broadly, then, we can say that science consists in looking at the evidence for how things work and drawing the most parsimonious and rational conclusions we can, while avoiding the intrusion of any unwarranted assumptions based on “myths”—a broad category that includes all the hearsay and stories that get repeated and handed down without critical evaluation.

Many people are free from superstitions about Zeus and Poseidon, but still behave in broadly superstitious ways when it comes to, say, understanding human nature, interpreting animal behavior, simplistic determinism, risk evaluation, and so on. People consequently adhere to unrealistic political expectations, think of their dogs as more human-like than they are, curse their fate/childhood/genes as preventing their happiness, and engage in compulsive gambling, just to name some of the multitudinous instances of irrationality that might be dispelled by more sober evaluation of the evidence.

Finally, what about the non-instrumental pleasures of learning and knowledge? Reading the bare sentences of the Principal Doctrines might make you think that the Epicureans are utterly dismissive of the joy found in the pursuit of knowledge. I don’t think that’s really the case. First, if something is a net source of pleasure to you, Epicureans generally consider that benign and perfectly reasonable to pursue. They forbid no harmless pleasures. Next, in practice, Epicureans obviously spent significant time investigating natural phenomena. They found the biggest and most essential component of that pleasure to come from the dispelling of fear, but this doesn’t disallow the possibility of enjoying the research process along the way.

Finally, natural science is vital to the grand sense of wonder Lucretius discussed in a passage that I shared a few weeks ago, addressed to Epicurus:

For as soon as your reason proclaims the nature of things,
And your mind like a god’s shows us at last what is real,
All the terrors that once haunted the soul disappear,
The walls of the world open, and everything is revealed.
…
Granted these sights, a divine pleasure takes hold of me,
And I am filled with awe and wonder, seeing by your power
Nature now uncovered and her beauty all laid bare. 

Our scientific knowledge has advanced. It is easier than ever to live without fear of the gods or the afterlife. Superstitious fears retreat on all sides. Things that were baffling have become comprehensible. But the world is not denuded of wonder or beauty by this process. Rather, illusory simplifications have been replaced by richer webs of meaning. The world used to be a comic book, with stories fit for children; now it is a vast and subtle novel. And to read that novel well is to see how little we have to fear, and how much we have to wonder at.

Read the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.

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Original Text

11. εἰ μηθὲν ἡμᾶς αἱ τῶν μετεώρων ὑποψίαι ἠνώχλουν καὶ αἱ περὶ θανάτου, μή ποτε πρὸς ἡμᾶς ᾖ τι, ἔτι τε τὸ μὴ κατανοεῖν τοὺς ὅρους τῶν ἀλγηδόνων καὶ τῶν επιθυμιῶν, οὐκ ἄν προσεδεόμεθα φυσιολογίας.

12. οὐκ ἦν τὸ φοβούμενον λύειν ὑπὲρ τῶν κυριωτάτων μὴ κατειδότα τίς ἡ τοῦ σύμπαντος φύσις, ἀλλʼ ὑποπτευόμενόν τι τῶν κατὰ τοὺς μύθους· ὥστε οὐκ ἦν ἄνευ φυσιολογίας ἀκεραίους τὰς ἡδονὰς ἀπολαμβάνειν.

13. οὐθὲν ὄφελος ἦν τὴν κατ’ ἀνθρώπους ἀσφάλειαν κατασκευάζεσθαι τῶν ἄνωθεν ὑπόπτων καθεστώτων καὶ τῶν ὑπὸ γῆς καὶ ἁπλῶς τῶν ἐν τῷ ἀπείρῳ.

Last week, I presented two key Epicurean arguments against the fear of death. First, as resolute materialists, we are convinced that there is no life after the dissolution of our bodies: since we will be unable to perceive pleasure or pain when we no longer exist, death cannot be considered either good or bad. Second, while some still consider death to be a bad thing, in that it deprives us of potential pleasurable experiences, Epicurus is unconvinced by all such models: in his view, we seek a state of enhanced happiness, and the mere prolongation or variation of pleasures does not actually achieve this aim.

Today, I will turn to a closing consideration of two frequently proposed alternatives to Epicurean untroubledness in the face of death. Is death always bad, and living an extra day always better? Or is death acceptable at the end of a long, full life, but tragic when it cuts one off “too soon,” with vital experiences and projects uncompleted? Epicureanism finds both of these alternative models of a good and complete life to be deeply problematic. They are destructive to happiness, as well as logically and psychologically unpersuasive.

Is an “additive model” of the good life better?

Zoom out from the narrow phenomenon of death itself and consider instead the big picture of a human life. “Is death bad?” can also be phrased as “is it bad when life ends?” Viewed from this perspective, we might ask whether we consider it good or bad, acceptable or tragic, when life ends under various different circumstances. Is there such a thing as a good, complete life that no longer gains from further temporal extension? In a very helpful paper, Epicurean scholar Benjamin Rider presents two common mental frameworks which people often appeal to in order to evaluate the “completeness” of a life, along with their Epicurean critiques and alternative.1

The first of these pre-philosophic models which you will commonly encounter can be called the Additive Model. In this perspective, a further year or minute of life is always good, since it presents the opportunity for additional positive experiences. In this understanding, death is always bad, whether it comes at age 15 or 115, kicking and screaming or with peaceful acceptance. This is the position of Thomas Nagel, who ends his celebrated article on the cheerful speculation that “a bad end is in store for us all.”

I’m explicitly describing this mindset to make clear two levels of Epicurean objection to such thinking. One level consists of the specific logical difficulties described previously: we don’t think it makes sense to consider a non-existent person capable of being harmed, nor do we think that that a happy person is made happier by an extra increment of life. But there is another difference of approach, in some ways even more fundamental, that characterizes ancient philosophy broadly in contrast to the modern philosophers who might defend the Additive Model: we think that philosophy should look at the world, then help people understand it in a way that promotes their well-being, peace of mind, and happiness. Many modern philosophers—and significant chunks of contemporary culture more broadly—have abandoned that as a core goal.

What, after all, does the message of Nagel boil down to? Something like:

Such a view claims that it is being hard-headed and realistic, following the truth to whatever uncomfortable place it leads. “We can’t just assume that reality will make us happy,” they might say. I think this claim is itself obfuscatory and illusory, obscuring the fact that the Additive Model is itself a created framework, one that constructs a definition of “the bad” that aligns with certain feelings of its proponents, but which does not serve the broad human preference for happiness.

The Epicureans are not unwilling to admit the concrete realities of the world. The actual constraint on human nature here is that people die; our lives are finite. A mental framework that defines an inevitable part of our existence as bad is therefore flawed and not fit-for-purpose. Epicurean acknowledgment of this is not blithe disregard of the truth—

There is no mistaking that life must end for all mortals. 
We cannot avoid death; we must go to meet it.

—it is a recognition of the conditions of human existence. Following that recognition, we view the task of philosophy to be that of finding the most productive way of living our lives in light of those facts: ancient philosophy has a therapeutic function. Many contemporary academics might disagree, but I think most normal people fundamentally would not want to abandon this. Few parents, for instance, would send their children to an actual therapist who tried to instill in them the idea that death was indeed a terrible and fearful thing that ought to be regarded with daily dread, rather than helping them to adopt a more functional perspective. In terms of its psychological consequences, the Additive Model is clearly terrible therapy.

Seen from this lens, the Additive Model does not merely instill a fear of death. It is actually one manifestation of a more broadly harmful mindset, one in which more is always better. It teaches not only fear of death, but unappeasable dissatisfaction in life:

Lucretius describes the same phenomenon at length. On some level, if you choose to abandon the intelligent pursuit of happiness, there is only so much Epicurus can do for you. He thinks that you will inevitably still grasp at perceived sources of pleasure in your life—petty and dissatisfactory things, like the sense of superiority to the naively happy people who don’t worry about death—while never achieving stable contentment. But if you share Epicurus’ view that a happy life is a good object to pursue, then you should not adopt a therapy of anxiety and dissatisfaction. You wouldn’t foist it on your children and you shouldn’t adopt it for yourself.

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How about a model of “time-dependent completeness”?

Many people recognize the inevitable dissatisfaction embedded in the Additive Model as a flaw, and so it is not uncommon to hear allusions to what Rider calls a Time-Dependent Completeness Model as an alternative. In one version of this, people think of life in stages: perhaps we should be more accepting of a 90-year-old dying than of a child or young adult, who did not get to experience all the “natural” stages of life. Or perhaps a more flexible notion of “projects” might be appropriate—maybe a man’s life can be considered more complete if he gets married, raises children, or finishes his great novel, but tragically curtailed if his personal endeavors are left unfinished.

This is somewhat better than the Additive Model, in that it allows for some possibility of contented passing. But Epicurus would say that these thresholds and projects are arbitrary and unnecessary. Who is to say that a given 80-year-old will die more happily than a given 50-year old? Some 80-year-olds are miserable, while some 50-year-olds are well-satisfied with their lives—where and why should we draw a line? Are those who never marry, don’t have children, or fail to complete a literary masterpiece doomed to unsatisfactory lives? If there are no objective standards for such value-bestowing projects, and they are all personally constructed, then why make your happiness contingent on something that may or may not come to pass? Why set requirements for happiness, rather than accepting it now? As Whitman eloquently put it:

Will you seek afar off? you surely come back at last,
In things best known to you finding the best, or as good as the best,
In folks nearest to you finding the sweetest, strongest, lovingest,
Happiness, knowledge, not in another place but this place, not for another hour but this hour.

Epicurus alludes to the universality of our true goal, regardless of age, at the beginning of the Letter to Menoeceus:

More broadly, he is dismissive of many common “projects” and requirements that people set for themselves before they will allow themselves to be happy. Some people have grandiose thresholds (wealth, political power), while others have more modest ones (a family, academic credentials). None of these are intrinsically necessary. People have been happy without them.

The good is easy to obtain. Other requirements for happiness ultimately consist in kenai doxai—groundless opinions, rather than objective truths. Just as I would be unwilling to teach a child that death is always bad (the Additive Model), I would also be unwilling to endorse a model that said that a good and complete life is impossible if one does not live to the age of 90, marry, raise children, or achieve a notable career. I refuse to tell anyone that they are too young or too old for happiness.

Conclusion

Neither the Additive nor Time-Dependent Completeness models therefore hold up to scrutiny. Instead, Epicurus proposes what Rider calls a model of Time-Independent Completeness. We still have something to strive for—a life of complete happiness—but it is not measured in duration. It is measured in the magnitude of our pleasure, a magnitude which is ultimately limited to the complete absence of pain and is fundamentally unrelated to the number of pleasurable sensations we experience.

To recap: If you are worried about an afterlife, don’t. It doesn’t exist. Your nonexistence after death will be no more painful than your nonexistence before birth. If you feel sorrow because of the pleasures you won’t experience, don’t. Again, you won’t exist. Furthermore, varied pleasure isn’t what you should be seeking. The success of your life is not a cumulative scorecard. Life is something to be lived now.

If you can’t help thoughts of “wouldn’t one more year be good?” from crossing your mind, then consider where this leads—to endless dissatisfaction. If you are setting thresholds for a complete life in your mind—celebrating your hundredth birthday, raising children, achieving a career milestone—don’t. All such lines are artificial creations, groundless opinions. Do you really want to sentence all who fail to achieve them to lives in which happiness is impossible?

There is no life after death.
Happiness is not determined by scorecard.
The additive model condemns everyone to dissatisfaction.
The projects model condemns many to dissatisfaction.
And so the Epicureans conclude: death is nothing to us.

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Even Epicurus died—that man
Who surpassed in genius the whole human race,
As the risen sun quenches the stars. 
So how can you hesitate and be resentful of dying?
Your life is already so close to death:
Most of your time is used up in sleep,
Even awake, you snore and see dreams,
Your mind is always anxious from fears without substance
And even as countless worries surround you,
You can’t figure out what is truly the matter,
Wandering and drifting in a sea of delusions.

So it is with men, always weighed down
By some great mass on their minds, by a wearying burden.
But if they understood the causes of their misery,
Knew the source of that mountain of sadness on their hearts,
They would not live as they do. We see so many
Who don’t know what they want and who constantly seek
New surroundings, as if that could shake off their burden.
Often a man will step out from his great mansion, 
Weary of his home, and then promptly return—
Being abroad does not make him feel better. 
Off he flies to his villa, driving hard his Gallic horses,
Rushing as if the house were on fire. 
He touches the threshold and in a moment is yawning,
Soon buried in sleep, in search of oblivion,
Or else turns around, back to the city once more.
Thus every such person attempts to flee himself—
An impossible task. To his own self each must cling, 
Against his own will, and so comes to self-hatred,
A sick man who can’t understand his own sickness. 
If such men knew the cause, they would abandon all else 
And study the nature of things. For the matter at stake
Is not our condition for an hour, but for all of eternity,
The endless time that waits after death for all mortals.

And so what is this great and evil craving for life,
That compels us so strongly to agitation, doubt and danger?
There is no mistaking that life must end for all mortals. 
We cannot avoid death; we must go to meet it.
We keep moving about, but are always in the same places—
A life that is longer does not forge us new pleasures:
While we lack what we desire, all else seems pointless. 
But once we attain it, we desire something else,
Our thirst undiminished, our mouths always wide open.

It is uncertain what fortune the future will bring,
What chance has in store, and what end awaits us.
But prolonging life can never take one whit away
From the time we are dead. We can never reduce that; 
There is nothing that will make the eternal less long. 
And so you may close out all the years that you wish,
But death will still await, no less eternal.
And the man whose life sets with this evening’s sun
Will no longer be, for no less a time
Than he who died in months past or long years ago. 

Commentary

In recent weeks, I’ve introduced both Lucretius and the Epicurean perspective on death. Today’s excerpt continues both tracks, with a key passage from On the Nature of Things rendering the raw doctrines into vivid, piercing poetry. As expressed in the previous essay, one of the key elements of the Epicurean response to the fear of death is a firm denial that merely accumulating additional experiences—no matter how pleasurable—should be considered an amplification of our happiness or an intrinsically important pursuit. Written in the minimal, blunt statements of the Principal Doctrines, this can seem abstract and unpersuasive, especially given the distance of such a claim from the way most people seem to live. Lucretius is the remedy: he makes the doctrines come alive.

He expresses the central principle with unmistakable directness:

But Lucretius also elaborates with a vivid portrait of a man who tries to fill his life with more such pleasurable experiences: a city mansion, a country villa, fine horses, leisure—none of these resolve the problem. Sometimes the condition of such people will look like explicit misery, sometimes it appears like boredom, often it is something like Thoreau’s “lives of quiet desperation.” But the real problem such people face, according to Lucretius, is that they don’t know what they want.

Travel is a potent and classic metaphor for this. It is impossible to flee ourselves. The idea comes up repeatedly in Horace. See Ode 2.16, or Epistle 1.11:

It was famously expressed in Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”:

Lucretius would agree that the desire for travel is not the sum of the mistake. That desire is merely the symptom of a deeper insatiability and confusion. The remedy is to study “the nature of things”—the subject of his poem. Such knowledge removes the anxiety and empty fears that weigh on our mind: people will be more at peace once they fully understand that life will end and that they have nothing to fear after death. But Epicurean knowledge is not limited to these big metaphysical questions, but also encompasses the understanding of human desires—what is natural, what is necessary, and what is neither. There is a theoretical basis for the Epicurean classification of the desires, but also an empirical one: watching people like the one depicted here makes it clear that travel and other novelty does not bring peace of mind.

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Original Text

3.1042–94

ipse Epicurus obit decurso lumine vitae,
qui genus humanum ingenio superavit et omnis
restinxit stellas exortus ut aetherius sol.
tu vero dubitabis et indignabere obire?
mortua cui vita est prope iam vivo atque videnti,
qui somno partem maiorem conteris aevi,
et viligans stertis nec somnia cernere cessas
sollicitamque geris cassa formidine mentem
nec reperire potes tibi quid sit saepe mali, cum
ebrius urgeris multis miser undique curis
atque animi incerto fluitans errore vagaris.

Si possent homines, proinde ac sentire videntur
pondus inesse animo, quod se gravitate fatiget,
e quibus id fiat causis quoque noscere et unde
tanta mali tam quam moles in pectore constet,
haut ita vitam agerent, ut nunc plerumque videmus
quid sibi quisque velit nescire et quaerere semper
commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit.
exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,
esse domi quem pertaesumst, subitoque revertit,
quippe foris nihilo melius qui sentiat esse.
currit agens mannos ad villam praecipitanter
auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans;
oscitat extemplo, tetigit cum limina villae,
aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quaerit,
aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit.
hoc se quisque modo fugit, at quem scilicet, ut fit,
effugere haut potis est: ingratis haeret et odit
propterea, morbi quia causam non tenet aeger;
quam bene si videat, iam rebus quisque relictis
naturam primum studeat cognoscere rerum,
temporis aeterni quoniam, non unius horae,
ambigitur status, in quo sit mortalibus omnis
aetas, post mortem quae restat cumque manenda.

Denique tanto opere in dubiis trepidare periclis
quae mala nos subigit vitai tanta cupido?
certe quidem finis vitae mortalibus adstat
nec devitari letum pote, quin obeamus.
praeterea versamur ibidem atque insumus usque
nec nova vivendo procuditur ulla voluptas;
sed dum abest quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur
cetera; post aliud, cum contigit illud, avemus
et sitis aequa tenet vitai semper hiantis.

posteraque in dubiost fortunam quam vehat aetas,
quidve ferat nobis casus quive exitus instet.
nec prorsum vitam ducendo demimus hilum
tempore de mortis nec delibare valemus,
quo minus esse diu possimus forte perempti.
proinde licet quod vis vivendo condere saecla,
mors aeterna tamen nihilo minus illa manebit,
nec minus ille diu iam non erit, ex hodierno
lumine qui finem vitai fecit, et ille,
mensibus atque annis qui multis occidit ante.

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Good news everyone! You don’t need to worry about death!

This is a core Epicurean doctrine, but one I’ve been putting off covering. Given my strong predisposition towards Epicurean untroubledness, I’ve always found death to be vastly overrated as a subject of concern. So many people make a big deal about it, but usually I think they fall victim to a habit Emerson described well:

People grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. There are moods in which we court suffering, in the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. But it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. The only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. (“Experience”)

Death seems like a very imposing thing to people in a certain mood, or suffering from certain illusions. But it just isn’t—it is a shallow phenomenon, with very little substance that can profitably be explored without diverging into fantasy. Today and next week, Epicurus and I will plumb those limited depths and put an end to this widespread but largely unnecessary source of grief.

I will present the Epicurean case in three steps. First, their most straightforward and well-known argument: there is no life after death and nothing can be bad without a being capable of perception, so it is neither good nor bad to be dead. To this claim, some respond with what can be called the “deprivation objection,” arguing that if experiencing a pleasurable or otherwise positive existence is good, to no longer have that experience is bad, even if we are no longer conscious of any alternative, worse-off state. Epicurus has a second response to this genre of complaint: the accumulation of pleasurable moments is never the proper metric for the happiness of one’s life. Well-being is a state—our proper goal of happiness is not a scorecard of aggregate points over a lifetime. Third and finally, I will conclude this essay next week with a consideration of some proposed alternatives to Epicurean acceptance. Is death always bad? Is it bad in certain circumstances? Epicureanism finds the common alternative models of a “complete life” problematic and unsatisfactory.

Let’s get to it, and dispel some existential dread.

What cannot be perceived cannot be bad

Epicurus’ most well-known argument against death is stated repeatedly clearly in the core ethical texts. It follows quite naturally from the underlying tenets of the philosophy, so if you accept that all life is material (and so there is no continued existence or perception after the dissolution of our bodies) and that nothing is ultimately good or bad except our own pleasure and pain (which requires a perceiving individual to exist), then this line of argumentation may be quite comprehensive and convincing to you. Personally, I fall into this category. I was never thoroughly indoctrinated in ideologies with an afterlife or raised with an instinctive belief that “death is bad,” so I find this simple logic perfectly satisfactory and quite comprehensive.

As religious claims about postmortem punishment, reward, or purgatory have faded in the face of growing scientific knowledge and secularism, more and more people have at least partly internalized this Epicurean logic. Perhaps a smaller share of the population than ever before now lives in fear of (nonexistent) posthumous misery. That’s good! I suspect that many people who suffer anxiety about death are experiencing some form of residual influence from religious education, either directly or through cultural diffusion, even if they nominally do not believe in an afterlife.

If you are in that boat and consider the logic fundamentally convincing, but find that your emotions are not quite ready to come along for the ride, it may be helpful to read and contemplate the powerful “symmetry argument” found in Lucretius:

Look back upon the ages of time past
Eternal, before we were born, and see
That they have been nothing to us, nothing at all.
This is the mirror nature holds for us
To show the face of time to come, when we
At last are dead. Is there in this for us
Anything horrible? Is there anything sad?
Is it not more free from care than any sleep? 

The closest analogue to what it “feels like” after we die is what it “felt like” before we were born—there was and will be no sensation at all. Some people express their fears along these lines: “I know I won’t be anywhere after I die. But right now, I’m enjoying life. I don’t want to leave the party.” This is muddled thinking. Analogies are deceptive. When you are forced to leave a party, you might be forced to go home, sit alone in a room, and do something less pleasant while thinking of all the people still at the party enjoying themselves. That’s not what death is like. You won’t be alone. You won’t be thinking of the party. You won’t exist. The more relevant analogy, as Lucretius suggests, would be to regret at not attending a party that happened in 1894, which I assume has never bothered you. Remind yourself of this regularly.

As a good caveat to mention fairly early in proceedings, there are some death-related phenomena which are perfectly reasonable to wish to avoid. Pain is bad, and death is often preceded by pain. If you can take reasonable steps to safeguard your health and avoid high-risk vocations and hobbies, for instance, that makes complete sense—you might experience pain without dying or pain before dying, and the pain itself would be a bad thing. One’s death can also definitely be a source of pain to other people. If you have dependent children, for instance, their life would probably be worse if you weren’t around. Epicurus doesn’t deny that, and would recommend that you take prudent precautions to ensure their future care and well-being (such precautions will promote trust and security among the whole family body, thereby increasing your peace of mind while you live). What Epicurus denies is that your own death can harm you.

Some people are reluctant to accept this and claim that perception is not required for something to be bad and that the badness exists whether we perceive it or not. They will invoke cases of “unperceived” harm, such as a friend who goes against our wishes or talks badly about us behind our back. Even if we never know of their actions, they assert, haven’t we been harmed?

Typically, such scenarios represent more sloppy thinking stemming from the difficulty of conceiving nonexistence—the cases again are not analogous. Can a betrayed friend be harmed by an unrecognized betrayal? Certainly! The gossip may change the conduct of others towards us. The act of betrayal indicates the limited trustworthiness of the supposed friend, which may manifest in different unrelated ways. And so on. But what we are dealing with in the case of death is not a case of a friend who will “never know of the betrayal.” Death is the permanent foreclosure of all possibility of any perception whatsoever. The proper comparison is to the case of a friend who will never experience the slightest perceptible pain or downstream negative consequence of the “betrayal,” with 100% confidence. Has this person been harmed? I don’t think so.

Still, some people refuse to accept such “no subject of harm” arguments. One of the most famous framings for this school of thought was Thomas Nagel’s 1970 article “Death”, an undergraduate philosophy staple. According to Nagel and his ilk, what is at stake is what we could have perceived. Even if “what is good” does depend on perception, he asserts, then isn’t it bad if we don’t get to perceive it? But even if we grant this “Deprivation Objection,”—a dubious assertion—Epicurus has another response.

We want more pleasure—but in magnitude, not in duration

Epicurus is a hedonist. He thinks that all creatures want to pursue pleasure, and that achieving greater pleasure is the good and proper object for humans to aim at in life. The notion of achieving “greater” pleasure, however, is prone to misunderstanding. Properly understood, Epicurus argues, what we want is an increase in our level of pleasure, not a chronological accumulation of pleasurable moments over time. Happiness is a state, albeit one enhanced by a sense of confidence about the general stability of our well-being into the future. It is not a scorecard, in which one life can be pronounced happier than another by adding up its accumulated moments of pleasure. A person can go on a hundred luxurious vacations, eat all the tastiest food, sleep with the most beautiful people, never suffer sickness or injury, and still be unhappy. Another person could do none of that and achieve perfect contentment. Moments of pleasure are fine, but they are not the object of our pursuit or the metric of our success. This has big implications for the value of extending one’s life.

Admittedly, some of the confusion stems from Epicurus’ somewhat idiosyncratic use of the word “pleasure.” (Avoiding such confusion is presumably why Utilitarians instead speak of “happiness” or “utility.”) In Epicureanism, maximizing the actual magnitude of one’s pleasure has a very specific meaning: elimination of all pain and worry. This position is stated clearly in the Letter to Menoeceus and in Principal Doctrine 3:

In some ways, this is not how people typically think of “pleasure.” Couldn’t one be free of pain, then sip a delicious beverage or listen to beautiful music, thereby increasing one’s pleasure? But from a big picture perspective, I don’t think it is actually that hard to understand: when looking at two human beings, one happy and one not, the real difference between them is not constituted by such little frills. We are certainly free to enjoy whatever sensory pleasures we encounter, but their accumulation does not actually constitute an increase of our happiness in any significant way. Instead, it is more accurate to refer to this as mere “variation” or “embellishment” of pleasure.

Now consider the implications of this doctrine when it is connected to questions of time and the length of one’s life. This is discussed directly in Principal Doctrines 19 and 20:

Since accumulating more instances of pleasure does not increase the actual magnitude of pleasure, greater time does not contain greater pleasure.1 The goal is to live happily, which can be achieved as easily in a year as in a decade. Fundamentally, happiness is not increased by tasting an endless variety of novel flavors, wearing the finest clothing, or improving your home theater equipment. Happiness can only be experienced—it cannot be accumulated.

I consider the deprivation objection to be a frivolous semantic game that doesn’t truly evade the “no subject of harm” argument, but if you believe in it, then this larger framework addresses its concern from another direction: the good that one is “deprived of” is not the relevant good. At best, it is more time on top of a mountain when the goal is simply to reach the top. (For many people, it is more time stuck halfway up the mountain.) Holding “the happiest life” equivalent to the “the life with the greatest number of pleasurable moments” is a profound mistake, one which the acquisitive side of our brains can be convinced of, but which is not truly integral to our psychology. At root, we are like any other animal. Think of a cat. It wants comfort. It wants pleasure. If it is warm and fed, it is quite content. It doesn’t need to tally up its number of past good days to decide if it is happy, or could be happier. Neither do we.

I think the reasons given so far sufficiently answer the putative philosophical case for why death is bad: it isn’t painful, when it arrives we no longer exist and so cannot be harmed, and if we could be harmed all that death actually deprives us of is unimportant variation rather than an actual augmentation of our happiness. For logically-minded types, or those who have avoided indoctrination in the habit of death-fearing, this might be enough. But if you have long been accustomed to thinking of death in negative terms and need some further retraining of your instincts, there is one further therapeutic perspective I would suggest exploring. Interrogate the proposed alternatives to Epicurean tranquility and ask: do they make sense?

Next week, we’ll do exactly that in the conclusion to this two-part essay.

Principal Doctrine 8:

Principal Doctrine 9:

Principal Doctrine 10:

Commentary

Most people get pleasure wrong. Epicureanism is a hedonistic philosophy, which means it tries to teach us how to pursue pleasure effectively. Today’s set of Principal Doctrines accordingly lays out some important ground rules for Epicurean hedonism. Are some pleasures good and some bad? What differences between pleasures matter? How should we balance the pursuit of active physical pleasures with our overall goals in life? These are all vitally important questions that cause many people confusion, leading to a great deal of pain and wasted effort. Fortunately, Epicurus is here with some guidance. Let’s take these sayings one by one.

Principal Doctrine 8 is straightforward, but very important. Much conventional morality admits certain things as pleasurable, but then advises against pursuing them because they are wrong, wicked, ignoble, or qualitatively “lower” than some “higher” pleasure. Don’t sit on the couch all day while shopping on your phone, because it is sinful to be slothful and covetous, a simplistic Christian moralist might assert. Epicurus would give similar practical advice in this case, but the reason is because those activities will not on net make you happy—passing your life on the couch is bad for your mind and body, while online shopping gives too much value to unimportant things. The pleasure these things give is less than the pains they cost in health, time, and money. What this person needs is not a bigger dose of guilt, or additional labels like “wrong” or “sinful,” but better insight into his own long-term self-interest.

Pleasures are only bad if their accompanying downsides are greater than the pleasures themselves. The word for the negative consequences here is ὄχλησις. It could be translated as disturbance, distress, annoyance, or trouble, all of which are forms of pain, not moral depravity. Ultimately, there is only one scale of comparison between different objects of pursuit or courses of action and that scale is hedonic. If a given pleasure truly has negligible ill consequences, then you should feel free to indulge it. If a pleasure does have negative consequences, and you see them with adequate clarity, then you will find that you no longer desire it.

This one is a bit more obscure, and commentators have disagreed significantly as to its meaning.1 The interpretation that makes the most sense to me is that presented by Cyril Bailey in the classic translation and commentary Epicurus: The Extant Remains (1926). (His notes suggest that he is going all the way back to Gassendi in the 1600s here, and Strodach’s commentary from the 1960s also agrees, so Bailey is not an isolated voice in arguing for this position.) According to this interpretation, Principal Doctrine 9 contains the Epicurean case for “the differentiation of pleasures,” explaining the proper grounds for choosing between different options. While Epicurus famously declared there to be a strict quantitative limit to pleasure in the elimination of all pain, this maxim notes that pleasures differ in their “compression in time” (i.e. in duration) and in which parts of our organism they affect. A pleasure that affects our whole organism (being saved from drowning, say) or “the most important parts” (the mind, in Bailey’s reading, such as achieving liberation from all superstitious fears), is more valuable than a pleasure that only affects a narrow part of our body, such as a shoulder massage or sweet treat.

Per Gassendi, Bailey, and Strodach, this is therefore a response to the Cyrenaics, who did advocate for the kind of undiscriminating accumulation of pleasures which Epicurus was often accused of encouraging. As other texts make clear, Epicurus did believe we can perform a hedonic calculus: this maxim makes the relevant criteria of comparison explicit. It makes sense to choose pleasures that last longer, affect our whole organism, or affect our mind, in preference to those that are short and only affect a small part of our body. (This is in addition to avoiding pleasures that come with attached disturbances and pains, as in PD 8.)

My formal translation above tries to stay close to the literal text, while avoiding any direct implication of erroneous interpretive tracks. If I were fleshing out the paraphrase in modern English, however, I’d probably come up with something like this:

Importantly, these differences in duration or area of effect are not dependent on an additive model, in which simply accumulating the largest number of intensely pleasurable experiences is the priority, and so remain consistent with the claim that the elimination of all pain is the height of pleasure. Notably, this is a difference from the Bentham-style calculus familiar to students of Utilitarianism, in which intensity is not capped. In Epicurean hedonic calculus, we do not compare our pleasures based on perceived intensity (in practice, we think it is irrelevant to one’s happiness to choose a meal that gives you 89 hedons over another that only gives you 88), but in duration or stability (short-lived pleasures have only a minimal importance) and in breadth of effect (localized stimulation is inconsequential compared to overall health or peace of mind).

Don’t chase “intense” pleasures, whatever that might mean to you—exotic vacations, high-end restaurants, drugs, gambling, extramarital affairs, skydiving. Instead, strive to attain long-lasting pleasures that encompass your whole body and mind—health, security, friendship, wisdom.

Here we have one final guideline for the kind of hedonism Epicurus recommends. PD 8 warned against pleasures that came with associated pains. PD 9 advised long-lasting pleasures that affected the whole body or mind. In this maxim, we put the short-term pleasures up on stage alongside the primary objects of Epicurean therapy—elimination of fears, correction of illusions, training in good judgment—and see that even if the sensualists were able to avoid the pitfalls of PD 8 and 9, their course of action would be unlikely to bring them happiness. We might choose not to pursue certain kinds of pleasure because they come with pains (PD 8), because they are short in duration and small in extent (PD 9), or simply because they are relatively unimportant or irrelevant next to the big obstacles to eudaimonia (PD 10).

Contrary to the unfair imputation of Cicero, Epicurus clearly doesn’t actually encourage the lifestyle of “profligates” (On Moral Ends, Book 2). What he is doing is being careful to identify where his objections lie. Unlike Cicero and his ilk, Epicurus is unwilling to simply wave his hands in the general direction of the impulsive pleasure-seekers and say “such pleasures are bad.” Epicurus is reiterating that he doesn’t have any fundamental objection to any pleasure, but that he still doesn’t recommend the life of sensual profligacy because it simply isn’t an effective way to address our real problems.

Putting these doctrines together in a condensed form, then, we are left with this core advice:

1. Don’t pursue pleasures that bring you more pain in the long run.

2. Put most of your energy into pursuing pleasures that are stable and long-lasting, and that affect your whole body or your mind, rather than short-lasting pleasures that affect only an isolated part of your body.

3. Always keep in mind that sensual pleasures are insignificant compared to the big rewards of philosophy: freedom from fear, illusion, and unsatisfiable desires.

This all seems very sound to me. Most of it should be obvious—of course it makes sense to choose pleasures that don’t bring you more pain overall, of course long-lasting pleasures are better than momentary ones, of course fine dining is not a solution to existential angst. But most people don’t live as if they’ve truly internalized these ideas. Pleasures are immediately appealing, and it is easy to be drawn towards whatever nearest pleasure beckons, especially when the messaging on offer is split between the censorious moralists who say “pleasure is bad” as a simplistic and unjustified assertion and commercial marketing which simply says “you deserve pleasure—buy it from us.” Fewer voices are advocating the wise middle ground of prudence and common sense. But that is exactly what Epicurus does.

Read the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.

Original Text

I’ve talked about both obscure old editions of Epicurean primary sources and about well-done modern treatments of Epicurean ethics for general audiences, but neither of these genres of books has commanded truly widespread public attention. Actual philosophy books don’t win the latest prizes and climb the bestseller lists. But one Epicurean-adjacent book did do so in recent memory: Stephen Greenblatt’s 2011 volume The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. The book was very popular, rather contentious, and takes as its premise the idea that the rediscovery of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things constituted a crucial turn away from a long shadow of superstition towards modernity. It’s a bold and valuable thesis that ruffled lots of feathers in a way that epitomizes the still vivid emotions that Epicurean ideas can still provoke.

First, let me outline what The Swerve actually covers. The central through-line is a narrative of how the Renaissance humanist Poggio Bracciolini uncovered a copy of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things in a remote monastery in 1417, thereby reintroducing it to the learned world after centuries of invisibility, during which it lingered unread in a handful of monastic libraries. (Additional manuscripts were found later.) Along the way, Greenblatt tells stories of Bracciolini’s years of papal service, provides historical background of and a philosophical introduction to Lucretius, and traces the influence of the poem in the subsequent centuries after its rediscovery.

The Swerve is an undisputed success in several respects. The story is engaging and well-written, turning what could easily have been dry historical content into a lively, readable narrative populated by a host of vivid characters. This basic verve and storytelling panache are probably big elements in its National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize accolades. I think it’s also fairly uncontroversial to acknowledge that Greenblatt’s book is an intentionally popular tome—it isn’t a formal or comprehensive study, and so readers should expect some simplified narratives, modest levels of footnoting, and yes, some degree of “shallowness” compared to a more hefty academic work. For some readers, this is a limitation. For others, it means it’s an engaging and approachable work.

In the eyes of some academics, however, Greenblatt goes beyond mere simplification in his quest for popular readability and actual distorts the history—this was the book’s first level of controversy. I am no expert on the Renaissance or Middle Ages, so I can’t really pass definitive judgment on the severity of Greenblatt’s scholarly sins, but I did take a look at some of these critiques. My impression is that some of them are clearly over the top (Laura Miles calls the book’s portrayal of the Middle Ages an “abuse of power”), and some are probably a little on the harsh side (John Monfasani termed it “entertaining but wrong-headed”), while more balanced accounts seem to recognize positive and negative aspects to Greenblatt’s approach. Colin Burrow’s take seems about right to me:

… A dazzling retelling of the old humanist myth of the heroic liberation of classical learning from centuries of monastic darkness... This book makes that story into a great read, but it cannot make it entirely true.

Greenblatt joins his protagonist Poggio in proudly proclaiming the value of learning and antiquity against a medieval culture that placed less value on those things, and which definitely did at times suppress scientific inquiry in the name of Christian theological dogma. Although there undoubtedly were still some men of learning and scientific advances, as the offended medievalists points out, Greenblatt is correct in noting that texts were lost and veins of inquiry were deemed off limits during the period. Responding to his critics, he concisely summarizes his position as simply believing “that something significant happened in the Renaissance.” If one goal of the book is to teach historically-uninformed general readers something about the time period in the course of an entertaining reading experience, this doesn’t seem like the worst or most misleading takeaway.

Then there is a second battlefront. Somewhat aside from that sectarian battlefront of medievalists versus Renaissance afficionados is the deeper conflict between defenders of organized religion and scientific secularism. Greenblatt’s narrative makes many different passing critiques of the world of 15^th century Christianity, accusing the religious community of passive ignorance, active scientific suppression, flagellatory fanaticism, widespread hypocrisy, and deep corruption in the formal bodies of the Catholic Church. Some contemporary Christians took this personally. One widely read iteration of this critique came from Jim Hinch in the Los Angeles Review of Books:

The Swerve presents itself as a work of literary history. But really it is a salvo in the culture wars; an effort to lend an aura of historical inevitability to the idea that religious faith has no place in a modern democratic society.

In the ancient world, Epicurus and Lucretius lamented the pervasiveness of false ideology and dogmatic ideas about how the world works that had no basis in rational inquiry. Their rejection of divine order, life after death, and all the rest made them unpopular with Platonists, Stoics, and Christians, leading to the loss of many texts. In the Renaissance, the conflict between scientific materialists and dogmatic idealists continued. And in our contemporary setting, such disputes still carry on, with organized religion attempting to defend a shrinking patch of land as the world grows less and less convinced by biblical accounts of the past and future. In this ancient war of ideas, Greenblatt is firmly on the side of Lucretius, the Renaissance, and modern secularism. Some people really don’t like that.

Personally, I don’t really embrace a straightforward identification of Epicureanism with any side in contemporary culture wars. We are against superstition and fantastical accounts of how the world works, but we are not opposed to traditionalism, the comfort of old forms, or social order more broadly. We think that societies naturally form their own conventional virtues and that those virtues by-and-large are good. We aren’t particularly enthused about overthrowing the established order—what we want is to free individual minds from their burdens of unnecessary fear, guilt, and illusion into a life of constructive prudence and stable pleasures.

So, does The Swerve fall more into that old Epicurean model, or more into the role Hinch claims, that of a contemporary culture-war diatribe? I think the former. Greenblatt’s book is not particularly bashing traditionalism or modern conservatism. It is fighting against the same old and harmful illusions that were prominent in 1400 and which still survive today. What The Swerve does is to take a medieval detective story written for popular audiences and stick a well-written summary of Lucretian science that foregrounds the ethical implications right in the middle. Chapter Eight, “The Way Things Are,” gives a first-rate modern paraphrase of twenty vital claims of Epicurean science that largely continue to stand up today, things like:

• Everything is made of invisible particles, essentially indestructible, which are combined in different ways to form the objects of our perception.

• The universe has no creator or designer. All living beings have evolved through natural trial and error. The world was not created for humans and humans are not unique.

• The soul dies, there is no afterlife, and death is nothing to us.

• Organized religions are founded on superstitious delusions (there are no angels, demons, or ghosts) and rely on stories and structures of cruelty. They valorize completely unnecessary sacrifice, retribution, and anxiety.

• Pleasure is good. Pain is bad.

• The quest for knowledge is not contrary to God. A truer understanding of the world does not produce heresy, but wonder.

As a comprehensive account of how the Renaissance differed from the Middle Ages, I am quite willing to grant that The Swerve streamlines and simplifies, omitting nuance in favor of catchy narrative. That’s what I would expect from a Renaissance literature scholar aiming at the best-seller market. It’s solid entertainment and passable history. But from an Epicurean perspective, I would say that the relevant goal of the book is simple and successful: it argues that ideas like those listed above represent highly contested ground in the historical war of ideas, that the Epicureans were the wise people whose accurate insights on these topics were buried for centuries, and that the recovery and promulgation of those truths is a still-ongoing project.

If unsuspecting readers looking for an engaging historical yarn walk away with that insight—that ancient Epicureanism first formulated the truths so many live by today, in a coherent and convincing philosophy of happiness that is still available to us—then The Swerve will have accomplished something far more valuable than the average work of pop history.

You I follow, the glory of all the Greek race,
Who in such darkness first raised a blazing torch,
Illuminating all the great goods and joys of life.
In your footsteps, I set my own firm marks,
Aiming not at rivalry, but only in love
Yearning to emulate your path—could a swallow
Sing like a swan, or could a newborn kid
With his trembling limbs match a horse’s vigor?

You are our father; you are the discoverer of truths.
In your words we find a father’s precepts, 
And like bees sipping sweet nectar in a meadow of flowers,
We feed upon your golden sayings, each of which,
Each golden sentence, deserves to live forever.
For as soon as your reason proclaims the nature of things,
And your mind like a god’s shows us at last what is real,
All the terrors that once haunted the soul disappear,
The walls of the world open, and everything is revealed.

Now the gods are seen as they are, undisturbed
In their peaceful realm, where no winds can shake them,
Nor rainclouds darken their sky, nor biting snow
Mar their comfort, but a constant, cloudless aether
Laughs, and covers all their world with light. 
There all things are supplied by nature,
And nothing can diminish the gods’ tranquility of mind.
And though the earth no longer obstructs our vision,
With all the void laid open, above and below,
The fabled realms of Acheron are nowhere to be seen.

Granted these sights, a divine pleasure takes hold of me,
And I am filled with awe and wonder, seeing by your power
Nature now uncovered and her beauty all laid bare. 

Commentary

From much of what I’ve written so far, a reader might get the impression that Epicureanism is merely about calculation and prudence, a philosophy of petty and mundane advantages and disadvantages. This is only part of the story. The other part is what Lucretius expresses here: our philosophy is revelatory, awe-inspiring, and transformative.

It’s my fault—in my translations so far, I have sadly neglected the great poet of Epicureanism. For newcomers to the philosophy, Lucretius is actually our most voluminous ancient source, having penned the 200-page epic poem On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura), a magisterial tour of Epicurean scientific thinking that combines physics, meteorology, biology, anthropology, and ethics with some of the most eloquent Latin poetry every composed. Written in the 1^st century BCE, the poem postdates Epicurus’ life by a few hundred years, but is generally considered to reflect the original tenets of the school fairly closely, perhaps being modeled specifically on Epicurus’ mostly lost treatise On Nature.

For my project here of assembling a digital anthology of ethical texts, much of the poem is somewhat tangential, occupied as it is with physics and celestial phenomena. But Lucretius does regularly turn to the ethical import of his scientific teachings, and to considerations of the value of Epicureanism writ large. This is especially true in the “proems,” the introductory passages that begin each of the six books of the poem. The first, second, and fourth of these are perhaps even more famous—and I’m sure I will turn to them at some point—but for today I have selected the proem to Book III, which offers a powerful and direct message that has largely been absent from the texts I have shared so far: that the rewards of Epicurean philosophy are not merely prudential, mundane, and banal, but are positively liberating and life-changing. Epicureanism changes how you see the world, making it a source of wonder, not of fear.

I would say that the positive, noble vision expressed in this proem’s address to Epicurus has two main aspects. The first is a major theme of both the poet and his philosophic master: one of the great blessings of reason is its ability to dispel fear.

For as soon as your reason proclaims the nature of things,
And your mind like a god’s shows us at last what is real,
All the terrors that once haunted the soul disappear.

People under the sway of superstition and illusion worry about the afterlife, about divine displeasure, about inexplicable phenomena, about the impossibility of satisfying their seemingly endless desires. The world can seem harsh or overwhelming, either incomprehensible or malevolent. And just because the exact forms of our fears have changed over the millennia—most contemporary people I run into don’t fear the ill will of Zeus or the power of lightning—doesn’t mean that this isn’t still generally the case today. I think very many people continue to have fictitious teleological frameworks for the world, seeing themselves as the pawns and victims of larger forces from the old-fashioned nemeses of formal religion and more colloquial bad luck, to the full complement of modern villains: political (fascism is taking over! the woke mind virus is everywhere!), economic (unbridled capitalism! overweening government!), technological (I must use all the tech! tech is bad!) and so on.

I’ve seen this strong human impulse to look for threatening forces described as “hyperactive agency detection.” It makes sense as an evolutionary development—alertness to threats is very valuable for survival. To keep our alarm bells from constantly ringing, however, we need to assess our actual dangers rationally: having the objective framework provided by Epicurean philosophy is an invaluable tool for keeping all such putative dangers in perspective. The reality is that modern residents of the developed world have greater security than humans have ever had. Logically, we should be less afraid. If you aren’t, you need philosophy.

Liberation from fear is the first gift of Epicurus described in this excerpt. The second is a sense of awe and wonder. Epicureanism illuminates the good things of life and reveals the nature of things. Marvellous pleasure is the result:

Granted these sights, a divine pleasure takes hold of me,
And I am filled with awe and wonder, seeing by your power
Nature now uncovered and her beauty all laid bare.

The wondrousness of existence can’t be fully appreciated as long as our minds are filled with illusions. The worlds of plants and animals, of the skies and the stars, become beautiful and awe-inspiring when they cease to be frightening. For many long centuries, the Epicurean beliefs that humans were not the uniquely perfect creations of God or the center of the universe were heretical. Now, there is widespread (though not universal) acceptance of these ideas. We recognize that such erroneous human-centrism is a form of myopia, obscuring the relatedness of life and the vast extent of the cosmos. There are vast and beautiful patterns in nature, but they are patterns of physics, biology, and evolution, not of some meticulous project of divine design.

Freedom from fear and the blossoming of wonder—these are the great positive gifts of Epicurean philosophy. In closing, I would like to point out two final features we see in Lucretius. First, notice the intense personal admiration he has for Epicurus, the unnamed addressee of this excerpt. Outsiders might find his praise hyperbolic. Admittedly, historical Epicureanism has its cult-like elements. But overall, I think this is a very positive sign: this is a philosophy that inspires warmth, love, and gratitude. People don’t feel this way about Zeno or Aristotle or Kant. Many people admire Socrates, but frankly, I don’t think he’s a great model. Willfully causing trouble until your town executes you is an overrated life path. Most people don’t actually do that because most people don’t want to do that. Followers of Epicurus are happy and grateful, rather than dead.

Lastly, I should give at least passing mention to Lucretius’ poetic abilities. I have tried to translate this poetic fragment as poetry, hoping to capture some elements of rhythm and memorable phrase, but it is of course impossible to convey the full scope of Latin eloquence in translation. While Epicurus himself was not famous as a stylist (though this is probably made to look worse than it is by the paucity of our remaining texts), we can count numerous eloquent voices of antiquity in our ranks: Philodemus, Horace, and Vergil all had inclinations towards both poetry and Epicureanism, in varying degrees. But Lucretius is a bona fide giant of Roman literature and is unambiguously on our team.

Noble, ringing phrases are too often lacking from philosophy. The power of language is invaluable, filling bare doctrines with a fervor that convinces. And in the poetry of Lucretius, we see a passion for philosophy that has never been surpassed.

Original Text

De Rerum Natura, Book III, Lines 1-30

O tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen
qui primus potuisti inlustrans commoda vitae,
te sequor, o Graiae gentis decus, inque tuis nunc
ficta pedum pono pressis vestigia signis,
non ita certandi cupidus quam propter amorem
quod te imitari aveo; quid enim contendat hirundo
cycnis, aut quid nam tremulis facere artubus haedi
consimile in cursu possint et fortis equi vis?

tu pater es, rerum inventor, tu patria nobis
suppeditas praecepta, tuisque ex, inclute, chartis,
floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,
omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta,
aurea, perpetua semper dignissima vita.
nam simul ac ratio tua coepit vociferari
naturam rerum divina mente coorta
diffugiunt animi terrores, moenia mundi
discedunt. totum video per inane geri res.

apparet divum numen sedesque quietae,
quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis
aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina
cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether
integit et large diffuso lumine ridet:
omnia suppeditat porro natura neque ulla
res animi pacem delibat tempore in ullo.
at contra nusquam apparent Acherusia templa,
nec tellus obstat quin omnia dispiciantur,
sub pedibus quae cumque infra per inane geruntur.

his ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
percipit atque horror, quod sic natura tua vi
tam manifesta patens ex omni parte retecta est.

This newsletter is supposed to be about “Epicurean Ethics for Modern Times.” So far, I’ve largely focused on establishing the core doctrines and presenting the most central ancient texts. But now it’s time to start interspersing some head-on, directly practicable counsel, casting scholarly snootiness aside to embrace the unambiguousness of self-help. After all, as Epicurus says:

Practicing philosophy means not just reading, thinking, and talking, but also letting philosophy shape how we live the rest of our lives. One appropriately concrete topic is food—we have a fair amount of direct evidence concerning the Epicurean position on how to eat. What’s more, I think it is all perfectly reasonable advice that would continue to make people’s lives better, and which can be conveniently packaged in the preferred format of all simplistic life advice: The List.

1. Simple food is all you need for happiness.

First, the Epicureans clearly believe that not much in the way of culinary sophistication is necessary for a good and happy life. Bread provides most of the calories; cheese is a treat. Water provides most of the hydration; a daily glass of wine is a pleasure. We have a large body of evidence along these lines:1

Epicureanism allows for all kinds of minor variation in lifestyle depending on what is easy to obtain in your particular circumstances, but the baseline orientation of the school was towards greater frugality and simplicity than the societal average. Bread, cheese, water, and single servings of pleasantly relaxing beverages all continue to be excellent candidates for regular inclusion on an Epicurean menu. In contrast, the regular consumption of fancy coffee drinks, sweet juices and sodas, or status-signaling alcohol labels—for some imbibable examples—brings “complications,” including greater expense, worse health, and psychological dependence.

For most residents of the developed world, taking down the gastronomic complexity a few notches will improve hedonic outcomes—most of the pleasure comes from the simple satisfaction of appetite with wholesome food, while the pursuit of variety involves various minor sources of pain. The first step in making your diet more Epicurean, then, is undoubtedly this: cut out some complexity and enjoy the basics.

2. Sometimes, you should make your food very simple.

Now, there is a qualification to make regarding all the “bread and water” rhetoric. Bread and water is not all that the ancient Epicureans consumed—we’ve already mentioned wine and cheese, and Roman sources mention many more foods. According to Seneca, however, Epicurus did periodically restrict himself to a particularly minimal diet for a few days at a time:

It’s easy to get in a pattern of feeling like you need much more elaborate food than you really do. “What’s for breakfast? What’s for lunch? What’s for dinner?” we ask every few hours. To counteract such habitual insatiability, many different traditions have their own form of fasting practice and so does Epicureanism: quell your hunger, but do no more. For Epicurus, maybe what he chose was a little wheat bread or barley porridge. Maybe for you it’s a handful of almonds, a little fruit, or a few hard-boiled eggs.

Taking a little break from typical rich-world overeating for a day or two is probably a net good for many people’s health. Perhaps even more importantly, it reawakens your ability to enjoy even the simplest gratification of hunger.

3. The goal is greater pleasure: practice enjoyment.

The substance of these first two points may seem austere: “eat simply” and “sometimes eat very simply” may seem like denials of pleasure rather than what you would expect from a hedonistic philosophy. So it should be reiterated: the point is the enhancement of pleasure. Epicurus’ position is that if we pay attention, we will find that the great bulk of the pleasure of eating comes from the satisfaction of hunger and thirst. I think this is obviously true—go for a twenty-mile hike without food and the simplest meal will taste delicious. Practice recapturing that satisfaction.

Furthermore, those who are accustomed to the constant stimulus of novel food aren’t the ones who enjoy it most. They expect it, and they are disappointed when they don’t get it, or when it imperfectly meets their expectations. But you don’t want to be like the restaurant snobs:

You want to be like a kid getting a birthday cake or a guest at some other infrequent but traditional celebration. It’s the occasional special treat that feels special.

The art of hedonism is not to surround yourself with the greatest number of pleasurable objects. It is to derive the greatest amount of pleasure from the objects that surround you.

Let others prune their vines in Campania,
If that is where fortune has placed them.
Let the merchant drain his cup,
His dyes and linens converted to wine.

That prosperous man must be a favorite of the gods,
Sailing again and again on the Atlantic,
And returning unharmed. But I dine on olives,
With a salad of chicory and a few leaves of light mallow.

(Horace, Odes 1.31)

Enjoy what you have.

4. The good is easy to obtain—eat frugally

Eat simply. How simply? One useful yardstick is the financial cost of your food. Epicurus enjoyed having frugal eating competitions with Metrodorus:

One way to implement such awareness is to see where your food spending falls relative to your local average. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area: if I’m adding up the data correctly, the average monthly spending on food and alcohol per person in my region is about $567. Given our greater than average wisdom and prudence, I think that Epicureans should be able to feed ourselves pleasurably for less than the average amount of money.

Ten years ago, when I was a single young man always riding a bike and living in a yurt, my food expenses hovered around $100 a month. Now I’ve become a respectably married citizen living in a real apartment and feel like we dine pretty extravagantly on around $300 per person per month. If your food spending is striking you as excessive and unphilosophical, the ways to reduce it are not rocket science:

• Cook your own food the great majority of the time.

• Avoid addictions (snack foods, soda, alcohol, Starbucks, etc.).

• Shop at the cheaper stores, rather than the expensive ones.

• Buy the foods that are on sale.

• Use intrinsically cheap base foods like beans, rice, oats, and flour.

• When you eat meat, favor pork and chicken over beef and lamb.

• When you drink, favor the $1 bottles of beer and the $4 bottles of wine.

Getting your food spending down below your local average is both an indicator of your growing skill at deriving pleasure from life and an instrumentally beneficial practice in its own right. As with all spending, the less you require for happiness, the greater your resilience and flexibility: cheap eating is part of cheap living, and cheap living is the pathway to financial security, more flexible and enjoyable employment, and immunity from the terrible stressor known as Money Problems.

5. The lack of health is painful—eat for health.

Saving money is one valuable effect of skillful eating. Another is improved health. If you aren’t in good health, you will experience pain. This is a bad state and you should avoid it.

The world of nutrition is home to a huge amount of marketing and superstition, but some things are uncontested. Fortunately, the most important elements of healthy eating are entirely compatible with frugality: eat real food, and don’t eat too much. Everyone agrees that excessive sugar, alcohol, and processed foods are not good for you. Everyone knows that eating too much makes you fat, which strains your heart, stresses your joints, reduces your activity, and generally makes life less pleasant. Many people struggle with high blood sugar, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure—simply eating less helps with all of these. Food that increases your long-term pain is not a prudent choice.

I’m no certified health advisor, but I think that Epicurus and your doctor would be in perfect agreement on such matters.

6. It’s OK to eat animals.

Epicureans do not think there is any moral obligation to vegetarianism. According to Epicurean ideas of justice, there are no intrinsic rights—the legal rights of humans come about through contract and rational agreement:

A report drawn from Hermarchus, Epicurus’ immediate successor, which is preserved in the early pro-vegetarianism tract On Abstinence from Killing Animals by Porphry, elaborates further. According to the Epicureans, it is perfectly reasonable for us to kill both dangerous predators and the traditional livestock animals:

You might say that the biological theory is a little weak here (unculled sheep are not likely to take over the world). But the underlying aim of Epicurean animal husbandry is clear: human benefit. As an essentially egoistic philosophy, we do not see any fundamental problem with eating animals.

This isn’t to say that Epicurus had any particular commitment to meat-eating. Rack of lamb is not essential to happiness. Beans and tofu are often cheaper protein sources. If a society collectively decided that it would like to enforce certain animal welfare standards because gratuitous cruelty is detrimental to human character, or to come up with some kind of methane tax that raised the price of beef for climate change reasons, I don’t think Epicureans would say such things are inherently beyond the scope of reasonable policy aimed at long-term human well-being. (Overall, we don’t get too upset about the existence of legal requirements one way or the other—the path of lowest friction is to follow the rules, which rarely affect our fundamental happiness.)

In short: both carnivores and vegetarians are welcome in the Garden.

7. Your dining companions are more important than your food.

Eat simply, cheaply, and healthily. Enjoy your food, including meat if you wish. One of the most pleasure-boosting pieces of Epicurean dining advice, however, doesn’t have anything to do with the food itself. What is even more important is the company you dine in:

The Epicureans were famous for their feasts and friendships. Diogenes Laertius tells us of their numerous gatherings, most notably for the Twentieth of every month (the eikas) in memory of Epicurus and Metrodorus (10.18). One charming epigram from Philodemus, the leader of the 1^st century BCE Epicurean community on the Bay of Naples, conveys an invitation to one of these Twentieth feasts:

Tomorrow, friend Piso, your musical comrade drags you to his modest digs at three in the afternoon,
Feeding you at your annual visit to the Twentieth. If you will miss udders and Bromian wine mis en bouteilles in Chios,
Yet you will see faithful comrades, yet you will hear things far sweeter than the land of the Phaeacians…

This doesn’t mean you need to host or attend big, lively gatherings every night. But it does shine a light on an important truth about the pleasure of eating: good companionship adds more enjoyment than culinary sophistication. Avoid eating alone, phone in hand or TV before you. Conversation is better.

Recap

If you would like to not merely read Epicurean philosophy, but practice it, then your eating habits should look something like this:

1. Eat simply.

2. Sometimes, eat very simply.

3. Enjoy your food.

4. Spend less money than normal people.

5. Don’t eat junk; don’t eat too much.

6. Eat meat if you want to.

7. Don’t eat alone.

The rules aren’t complicated. They have a good deal of flexibility. They save money and improve health. And every one of them shares the same underlying goal: they increase the pleasure of living.

Principal Doctrine 6:

Principal Doctrine 7:

Principal Doctrine 14:

Commentary

What makes something good or bad? According to Epicureanism, the answer depends on whether it is, on balance, more conducive to pleasure or to pain. Since most positive pleasures are easy to obtain, a large part of our attention should go to the avoidance of pain. The state of successfully avoiding pain, and feeling confident that we will continue to do so, can be summed up in a single word: security. Do the common targets of human ambition help us to obtain this kind of tranquility? Epicureans are skeptical.

Today’s selection1 from the Principal Doctrines considers some common desires of ambitious people—for political power, fame, and wealth, respectively—and analyzes the merits of each according to that one simple criterion: do they increase our sense of security?2 The Epicurean response is somewhat radical: they usually don’t. Many people bluntly believe that power, fame, and wealth are good things and that people are good and admirable when they obtain more of them. Epicurus thinks they are wrong.

Importantly, crucially, and distinctively, however, Epicurus does not simply say:

Political power corrupts.

Fame is contemptible.

Money is wicked.

Instead, in all three cases, Epicurus presents a conditional case in favor of or against the subject of each maxim. Power, fame, or wealth could increase one’s sense of security. Presumably they did in our evolutionary past, and that’s why we feel instinctually motivated to pursue social standing and greater resources today. In certain circumstances, attaining some degree of power, recognition, or wealth can still be helpful. In all three cases, however, Epicurus’ underlying conclusion is the same: when people pursue such objects, they think they’re increasing their security, but in practice they usually don’t succeed in doing so.

This consequentialist approach contrasts with the absolutism of many moralists both ancient and modern. Cicero, for instance, gets very upset at the way Epicurus says that he would not criticize those who pursue sensual pleasures if they lived without fear and understood the limits of desire.3 Cicero would prefer to simply say “pursuing pleasure is ignoble,” while Epicurus refuses to criticize natural human instincts. If we have an innate psychological propensity towards something, Epicurus generally thinks we need to learn how to accommodate it, rather than bluntly deny it. “Nature must not be forced, but persuaded.”4 Recognizing the healthy human instinct to seek security is part of “persuading” our nature to do so in more effective ways.

For many, the most familiar source of such castigation of human nature is probably Christian moral teaching. My wife was raised as a Catholic. In what I think is a reasonably representative experience, she doesn’t have memories of being taught to think through the long-term benefits or disadvantages of different courses of action. Instead, she was taught blunt rules of good and bad, enforced by shame and guilt. One memorable childhood lesson, for instance, involved a big bag of food from McDonald’s, which she alone in her squadron of little Catholics received by lot. Nominally, she was invited to do whatever she liked with it. Naturally, she started eating—until she was informed that to do so was bad and selfish, while sharing the fries and milkshakes with her classmates would be generous and good. My wife’s main takeaway was that while she thought she had simply won the lottery, she was actually acting in a shameful and reprehensible way.

Epicurus would approach this differently. “Can you actually eat that many cheeseburgers?” he might ask. “Will you feel good if you drink five milkshakes? Will your peers be nicer to you if you share the extra food with them?” Zealously guarding a food source is a perfectly natural and reasonable strategy in less cooperative species or circumstances. There is a reason that hummingbirds chase other birds away from the flowers, but it isn’t because they are sinful creatures with the devil in them. It’s because they are not as capable of prudential calculation as humans are. It’s fine to be animals, as we are, but that doesn’t mean we need to be stupid animals. It’s fine to pursue our own security, but we should do so in effective ways.

Today’s maxims have a clear message about the usefulness of pursuing fame, wealth, and so on. Almost as important, however, is the clarity with which they present the Epicurean method of evaluation: what is ultimately decisive is not a blunt set of inherited rules and values, but the comparative weight of advantage or disadvantage attendant on each possible course of action. With that general framework in mind, let’s now take a look at each of today’s Principal Doctrines through a practical, contemporary lens. PD 6 has been the subject of some textual dispute, so I’ll circle back to it after establishing the proper context with the other two. We’ll start with Principal Doctrine 7:

This one is nice and clear. We know what all the words mean, there aren’t any arguments, and the nature of the conditional claim is obvious. If the famous people feel secure, then they have acted in a perfectly reasonable way. But if they do not—which is clearly implied to be the more typical case—then they have made a tactical error in choosing to pursue public renown.

You can imagine how increasing your social standing in a simpler, tribal world could lead to a greater share of resources and aid from others. Because of that evolutionary legacy, positive social recognition instinctively feels good. And some parallel benefits do continue to accrue in the modern world. Famous actors and athletes have lots of money and mating opportunities, and may enjoy basking in the warm glow of mass admiration. If I were the most famous Epicurean spokesperson on the planet, I could probably make some useful cash selling Substack subscriptions. Fame is not bad absolutely and in principle.

There are, however, downsides to the life of even successful fame-seekers (to say nothing of the far greater number of those who seek and do not obtain fame). Financially, famous rich people are probably targeted by thieves, swindlers, and sycophants even more often than low-profile rich people—combined with the steep odds against winning the lottery of celebrity, fame doesn’t seem like a particularly efficient way of achieving financial security. In terms of tranquility, any material benefits need to be weighed against the psychological costs: many famous people seem to spend their time in constant pandering or self-promotion, which increases their anxiety, dents their self-assurance, and distracts from more valuable activities.

Our culture loves stories of underdogs who rise out of anonymity to climb the summits of Hollywood, popular music, or professional sports. But most parents know that aiming for such goals is usually not the most practical advice to give their children if they want them to attain peace and stability. The odds are against them. Epicurus prefers good odds.

Principal Doctrine 14 similarly presents two sides of a calculation: pursuing wealth and influence gives some benefits in terms of security, but a quiet life gives more.

Here, it’s not a question of likelihood or probability, as the comparison was framed in PD 7 (“if they obtained security, then good for them”), but a question of the comparative magnitude of the benefit (“sure, wealth will give you some security, but a quiet life will give you more”). It’s hard to say exactly what form of “power that comes from support” Epicurus had in mind—that of rich people? that of politicians? that of certain kinds of rich people or politicians?—but I think his general suggestion to favor the quiet life over the life of wealth still has plenty of usefulness for normal people today:

• Most simply, obtaining a lot of wealth is often stressful, competitive, and uncertain.

• Keeping wealth can also lead to insecurity. Rich people spend a lot of money and energy safeguarding their possessions with purchases of security systems and insurance. But if you don’t have fancy stuff to guard and insure, then you don’t have to worry.

• Even spending lots of money is not an unmixed blessing. The wealthy spend a lot of money and energy keeping up with other rich people. They dress the right way, drive the right kind of car, go to the right kind of restaurants and gyms and vacation destinations. But that isn’t security—it psychologically locks you into a high level of consumption and makes you unhappy with a simpler life.

• “Withdrawal from the many” has non-monetary aspects as well. For instance, obtaining the goodwill and support of the many generally requires acquiescing to their views, no matter how unphilosophic. Assuming you have a wise Epicurean perspective internally, this means you will have to hide your real thoughts as you put on an air of sympathy towards the unimportant complaints and disputes of normal people. In addition to the general unpleasantness of such self-censorship, insincerity is not a stable basis for dependable support.

Wealth and the support of the world at large can be helpful. But the net benefit is usually much smaller than people think. With that in mind, let’s circle back to PD 6, whose context and method should now be clearer:

At first glance, this maxim might seem to say the opposite of what you would expect: doesn’t the actual text here say that political office is good for increasing security and confidence? I think the “sometimes” is important here. As I interpret it, what we have in PD 6 is essentially the first half of what was a more formal two-part structure in PD 7 and 14. These first half concessions all line up:

If the famous people have security, then good for them. (PD 7)

The rich have some degree of security. (PD 14)

Sometimes politicians achieve a confident position. (PD 6)

PD 7 and 14 then made the contrary position explicit:

… But if the famous people aren’t secure, then they made a mistake. (PD 7)

… But those who live quietly have more security. (PD 14)

… But very often, kings and politicians do not have a secure life. (PD 6, implicitly)

Some editors and translators (Usener, Bailey, Strodach) have been misled by the lack of an explicit counter-position to the extent of thinking that “public office and kingship” were an erroneous addition to the text that needed to be removed. But seen in the context of PD 7 and PD 14, the parallel format of PD 6 seems quite clear: Epicurus is admitting that many people think that pursuing a particular form of ambition will lead to more security, but inviting us to judge empirically how often it successfully does so.

Maybe the reason Epicurus didn’t feel it necessary to explicitly spell out the fact that kings and politicians don’t lead secure lives is because it was so obvious. (See my longer essay Don’t Worry About Politics for further evidence that Epicurus was well-aware of the pitfalls of political ambition.) Alexander the Great died when Epicurus was around 18. How did his successors do?

• General Perdiccas: Assassinated when Epicurus was 21

• General Craterus: Killed in battle when Epicurus was 21

• General Antipater: Died of illness when Epicurus was 22

• Alexander’s Half-Brother: Executed by Alexander’s mother when Epicurus was 24

• Alexander’s Mother: Stoned to death when Epicurus was 25

• Alexander’s wife and son: Immediately entered into seven years of dangerous fugitive existence, followed by seven years imprisonment, then poisoned in captivity when Epicurus was 32

But even without quite the same level of imminent death in today’s world, I think it is still clearly true that politicians do not lead peaceful lives. The risk of physical violence is not extinct, while other obstacles to tranquility continue to flourish: the constant sense of competition and instability, the relentless focus on one’s advancement, the need to constantly antagonize rivals or the public.7

Many of the same complications can also come up in all kinds of leadership roles besides the purely political. Navigating the corporate world, managing a small business, or leading a volunteer organization all have their own versions of competition and interpersonal conflict. You have to decide empirically whether the benefits are worth it. As Epicurus admits, sometimes they are. If your position is secure, provides real benefits, and has an overall positive hedonic balance, then he will not object.

But it is more often the case that the things people fight over, in politics or in business, in geopolitical conflict or in petty office squabbles, are simply not worth the hassles of competition. A sense of security is key to tranquility. Pursuing power, fame, or wealth rarely helps you to become untroubled.

Read the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.

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Original Text

6. ἕνεκα τοῦ θαρρεῖν ἐξ ανθρώπων8 ἦν κατὰ φύσιν ἀρχῆς καὶ βασιλείας9 ἀγαθόν, ἐξ ὧν ἄν ποτε τοῦτο οἷός τʼᾖ παρασκευάζεσθαι.

7. ἔνδοξοι καὶ περίβλεπτοί τινες ἐβουλήθησαν γενέσθαι, τὴν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἀσφάλειαν οὕτω νομίζοντες περιποιήσεσθαι. ὤστε εἰ μὲν ἀσφαλὴς ὁ τῶν τοιούτων βίος, ἀπέλαβον τὸ τῆς φύσεως ἀγαθόν· εἰ δὲ μὴ ἀσφαλὴς, οὐκ ἔχουσιν οὗ ἕνεκα ἐξ ἀρχῆς κατὰ τὸ τῆς φύσεως οἰκεῖον ὠρέχθησαν.

14. τῆς ἀσφαλείας τῆς ἐξ ἀνθρώπων γενομένης μέχρι τινὸς δυνάμει τε ἐξερειστιχῇ10 καὶ εὐπορίᾳ εἰλικρινεστάτη γίνεται ἡ ἐκ τῆς ἡσυχίας καὶ ἐκχωρήσεως τῶν πολλῶν ἀσφάλεια.

Stoicism is having a significant revival these days. Popular Stoicism books crack the best-seller lists, Stoic entries populate Substack’s top philosophy newsletters, and more people simply seem aware of Stoicism’s existence as a philosophical school than are aware of Epicureanism. Oddly enough, however, I think a good chunk of the modern fans of Stoicism are simply mistaken about the appropriate philosophical label for their beliefs: many of them would probably feel more at home with Epicureanism.1

I would base this argument on three claims. First, I think that many of the aspects of Stoicism to which people are drawn—the redirecting of our desires through reason, fearlessness in the face of difficulty, and the endurance of current discomfort for more important ends—are equally present in Epicureanism. Second, I think that many modern “Stoics” do not believe in the theological and metaphysical underpinnings of the school: a majority of the Stoic-sympathizers I have encountered actually have beliefs closer to the Epicurean position (a belief in scientific method, evolution, and a lack of divine guidance for physical phenomena) than that of the Stoics (that a divine force instilled humans with a special capacity for reason so that we could serve as witnesses to the rational cosmic plan behind every seeming misfortune). Third, I think most modern Stoics do not actually accept the irrelevance of pleasure to happiness, either for themselves or for others. The ancient Stoics don’t think that helping others to avoid pain is ultimately valuable in itself—that would be the position of universal hedonists, or Utilitarians. In reality, Epicureans are better aligned with Utilitarians when it comes to both final ends and matters of public policy or communal endeavor. They simply curtail universal concerns with commonsense individual prudence.

Let’s take these one by one.

Stoicism and Epicureanism have significant overlap

There are several aspects of Stoic ethics that I find appealing. It is good to question our desires and emotional reactions, inquiring whether seemingly bad events will truly harm us or seemingly positive outcomes will truly benefit us. It is good to accustom oneself to certain hardships, recognizing that temporary discomfort is often worth enduring for some larger purpose. It is good not to let fears of difficulty, loss, or death dominate our life or disturb our well-being. I whole-heartedly support all those who turn to these teachings in preference to the unreflective short-termism that dominates the world.

The thing is… all of those counsels are present in Epicureanism as well. We get caricatured as short-sighted, selfish hedonists (including by the ancient Stoics), but that just isn’t true. We constantly question what is truly good or bad for us:

Pose this question to every desire: what will happen to me if it is fulfilled, and what will happen to me if it is not fulfilled? (Epicurus, Vatican Saying 71)2

We must not spoil the things we have through desire for things we don’t have. Rather, we must use our reason to remind ourselves that these also were things we once wished for.(Epicurus, Vatican Saying 35)

We accept temporary hardship and use austerity as a tool:

We do not choose every pleasure, but there are many times when we pass over pleasures, when greater difficulty follows from them… Just as also every pain is a bad thing, but not every pain is always of a nature to be avoided. (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus 129)

Epicurus, the teacher of pleasure himself, used to have certain days during which he would do the bare minimum to quiet his hunger… The food the executioner gives to those on death row is more generous than [what he chose to eat]. So how great must be the soul of one who descends to such fare of his own free will, who faces privation that those sentenced to the most extreme penalties need not fear! Thus indeed can one forestall the harsh arrows of fortune. (Seneca, Epistles 18)

And when faced with the inevitable difficulties of life and death, we proceed without fear:

‘When I was sick,’ says Epicurus, ‘I never used to talk about my bodily ailments… my life merely went on its normal way, smoothly and happily.’ In sickness, then, if you are sick, or in trouble of any other kind, be like Epicurus. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.41)3

Death is nothing to us. (Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 2)

In addition to the direct quotes, did you notice who else testified above to the wisdom and integrity of Epicurus? Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. They understood that many of the things they valued and admired in philosophy were also taught by Epicurus. So if these are the types of attitudes that attract you to Stoicism, there is so far no reason to declare yourself one way or the other in your philosophical allegiance. The differences lie elsewhere.

Stoics are on the side of faith. Epicureans are on the side of science.

For many hundreds of years, Stoicism was viewed more favorably by the western world than Epicureanism. Perhaps the biggest factor in this differing reception was due to Stoicism’s greater perceived degree of compatibility with Christianity: the Stoics argued that there was a cosmic order to the world and devalued our material existence and its pleasures in favor of more idealistic virtues, while Epicureans were painted (not altogether accurately) as pleasure-loving atheists. Personally, I find this train of events regrettable (if only we had preserved as much of the Roman Epicureans as we did of the Stoics!), but historically understandable. What is stranger is the renewed popularity of Stoicism today, in an increasingly secular world.

If you are indeed committed to a belief in divine providence and are looking for an ancient philosophical school that is generally compatible with that idea, then I have no objection if you find yourself drawn to Stoicism, at least on this ground. But if you are in practical terms an atheist, agnostic, or simply secularly-minded person, you should be aware that Stoicism’s ethical teachings are strongly dependent on the conviction that the world operates in inevitable accordance with the divine logos and that our primary task is to assent to that rational design. In these teachings, to try to make the material circumstances of ourselves or others better is merely a “preferred indifferent” that is ultimately irrelevant to human well-being.

Whatever happens, happens rightly... as from the hand of one who dispenses to all their due. (Marcus, Meditations 4.10)

Since I am a rational creature, it is my duty to praise god. (Epictetus, Discourses 1.16.20)4

Realize that the most important factor in piety towards the gods is to form right opinions about them as beings that exist and govern the universe well and justly. (Epictetus, Enchiridion 31)

Personally, I find it more likely that the existing state of the world has come about without any grand design and that we should feel free to acknowledge its imperfections and try to make things better where we can, confident in the commonsensical belief that poverty, violence, and fear truly are detrimental to human happiness. I think that the galaxy and planet came to be through purely material chains of events. I think humans evolved as other animals did (a subject on which the Epicureans were quite prescient) and were not placed in the world as the special embodiment of divine rationality. I don’t think the world is directed by providence, and I don’t find my position to be a recipe for despair.

Either the world is a mere hotch-potch of random cohesions and dispersions, or else it is a unity of order and providence. If the former, why wish to survive in such a purposeless and chaotic confusion? (Marcus, Meditations 6.10)

Each of the animals is constituted by god for a purpose, one to be eaten, another for husbandry, or for the production of cheese… But god has introduced man into the world as a spectator of himself and of his works. (Epictetus, Discourses 1.6.18–19)

God is near you, he is with you, he is inside you. (Seneca, Epistles 41.1)

If all of these statements from the Stoics are reflective of your beliefs, then Stoicism may be right for you. But if you are skeptical that humans were intelligently designed for the purpose of witnessing the ongoing rational governance of the world by divine forces, then you will probably find yourself more at home with the Epicureans.

Pleasure is good. Don’t you agree?

Epicurus is straightforward: pleasure is good and pain is bad. This is a commonsense position that most people hold. We consider it perfectly reasonable to choose something tasty when handed a menu, we think that ibuprofen was a very helpful invention, and we believe that if people are starving it is good to give them food. If we can help a friend to these kinds of benefits, we will. If the state helps people to these kinds of benefits, it is furthering natural justice.5

The Stoics are less straightforward. According to them, the things commonly considered good—health and money, for instance—are merely “preferred indifferents,” since only virtue is truly good.6 I don’t get the impression that all the modern fans of Stoicism truly believe this. Take one common vein of Stoic critique of Epicureanism: the accusation that Epicureans are insufficiently engaged in politics. I often find the enthusiasm of such people for their chosen political cause to be very earnest. They seem to place a very high value on the advancement of their cause. But essentially all of their causes would actually be categorized as “indifferent” by the Stoics, and, in their teaching, whether they progress or not should be accepted with tranquility as part of the divine order of the world.7

Or consider another archetypal example of Stoics making a normal benign activity a little weird: friendship. Epicurus is a famously enthusiastic exponent of friendship. While he very clearly endorses all the standard behaviors necessary to be a good friend—trustworthiness and material assistance, even to the point of dying for a friend—he also considers a primary value of friendship to be the fact that friends can help us. The knowledge that we have friends who will come to our aid is a good thing. (There is no reason not to apply this position to spouses and family members as well.) Stoics find such reliance on others distasteful; according to Seneca, the purpose of friendship is that it gives you an opportunity for virtuous action—friends are unnecessary for the wise man’s happiness and their aid is indifferent.8 I think this is a very strange way of thinking about friendship and that few modern “Stoics” would truly be comfortable stating to their friends that the reason they engage in the relationship is because they appreciate them as opportunities for righteous conduct.

Epicurean hedonism has often been caricatured. But in this respect, it is the position of obvious common sense, controversial only to certain philosophers: every normal person actually recognizes that and acts as if pleasure is good and pain is bad, just as they know that fire is hot and act accordingly.9 My impression is that many more modern people would be willing to assert that “alleviating poverty and pain is good” and “friends make my life more pleasurable” than would choose the Stoic formulae “alleviating poverty and pain is reasonable to do, but it would be better for those unhappy people to recognize that the death of their child is an indifferent thing” and “the value of friends is that they let me practice virtue.”

Epicureans are psychological hedonists. We think that “seeking pleasure and avoiding pain” is simply the best description for whatever it is that humans do, although the everyday person’s tactics for pursuing pleasure are often misguided. Stoics are more radical and believe that normie intuitions about pain and pleasure, friendship and loss, are all mistaken. Both philosophies endorse living virtuously. So are you truly a Stoic, who considers the pleasure and pain of others to be fundamentally indifferent things, relevant to you solely as opportunities for virtuous conduct? Or are you closer to the Epicurean position, which considers increasing the pleasure or alleviating the pain of others to be the very real stakes that makes an action virtuous in the first place?

In Conclusion

Perhaps much of the contemporary confusion simply stems from the evolution of the English language. “Stoic” has become a synonym for patient, stiff-upper-lip endurance of suffering. “Epicurean” has been adopted in colloquial English as a term for those who love fine dining and other sensual indulgence. Many people then simply have impulsive reactions towards those words, independent of any consideration of the actual ancient doctrines.

If you’ve read all this and still feel like a Stoic, that’s fine. Go ahead! But if you don’t believe that suffering is part of a divine plan, but rather something we can reduce through prudent decision making and mutual aid, you might be an Epicurean. If you think that humans evolved like other animals, rather than being created to be witnesses to the perfect logos, you might be an Epicurean. If you think that pain inhibits happiness, you might be an Epicurean. If you are not convinced that the reason to have friends is so that you can practice your virtuousness upon them, you might be an Epicurean. Don’t be misled by modern misappropriations of the name—you can still practice moderation, control your emotions with reason, and live proudly above fear, for all of these are Epicurean practices too.

At the final approach of his death, Epicurus wrote a letter to Idomeneus:

On this blessed day, the last of my life, I write these words to you. The strangury has tight hold of me and I experience no relief from the painful dysentery that never relaxes in its severity. But against these things I weigh the joy that fills my heart when I remember the conversations I have shared with you and your companions. Since your youth, you have ever acted in devotion to me and to philosophy, and so I entrust the children of Metrodorus to your worthy care.

Commentary, Part 1: Overcoming Pain

All of my Epicurus translations so far have been core doctrinal texts—which are important! But focusing only on the doctrines might give an excessively dry and impersonal impression, when really this is a very human and humane philosophy. In that spirit, today we’re looking at a very short yet revealing text that gives us one of our most affecting portraits of Epicurus, showing us a man who was simultaneously a very imperfect bodily creature and a rousingly successful incarnation of his philosophic principles.

Diogenes Laertius gives us the Greek text of this letter and Cicero quotes it in full in Latin—both of these guys writing hundreds of years after the death of Epicurus—because this was one of the famous deaths of antiquity. I am in unsurpassable levels of pain, Epicurus wrote. And I am happy. Even Cicero—who could be very self-important and petty when it came to critiquing Epicurus—had to admire Epicurus’ “blessed day”:

This dying statement still impresses us today. How many other philosophers make it into the World Journal of Urology?1 Most people aren’t happy even when they are in sound health, let alone when they are dying from an untreatable case of urinary calculus. Do you know what “strangury” is? Google describes it as “an intense, urgent need to urinate, followed by the slow, agonizing passage of only a few drops of urine.” Do you know what “unsurpassable dysenteric suffering” is? Unrelenting bloody diarrhea accompanied by wrenching abdominal cramps. It’s all very bad stuff.

The point is: if some Stoic tells you that Epicureanism is for soft people who can’t handle pain, they are very wrong. Epicureanism is for reasonable people who acknowledge that kidney stones are painful and bad and that if you can treat them, you should. In the wise words of my mother-in-law when asked for pregnancy advice,

If we Epicureans do encounter unavoidable pain, however, then we will deal with it better than other people.

I’ve already introduced one Epicurean strategy for getting through difficult circumstances, as described in Principal Doctrine 4: we will be rational and calculating and recognize that pain has limits. Diogenes Laertius tells us that Epicurus’ fatal illness lasted for fourteen days. For decades, Epicurus had taught awareness of the finite nature of intense pain: he knew it would be over soon.

This letter gives us a second therapeutic technique: step back and add up all the pains and pleasures of your life, the mental as well as the physical, before declaring your current hedonic balance to be in a deficit. It usually isn’t, especially if you’ve arranged your life prudently. In his case, Epicurus thought above all of his friends:

One of the most obvious obstacles preventing people from being happier is a kind of shortsightedness about pain (or, more often, about minor discomforts and annoyances). Something happens that we would prefer not to happen—we spill our drink, get a papercut, buy something that doesn’t work as we envisioned—and then we get upset. But if we were to add up all the pleasures and pains of our lives, the pleasures would almost always come out on top. And if you have more pleasure than pain, then you are in a state that is, on net, pleasurable. And if your life is pleasurable, then you have everything you need to be happy.

The main philosophical proposition of this letter, then, is that pain has little influence over the happiness of the wise. Think of all the sources of pleasure in the world—the bodily functions that are available to you, food and drink, nature and art, music and beauty, laughter and friendship. How many have actually been cut off by your current misfortune? If Epicurus can handle fourteen days of unsurpassable physical torture, we can handle whatever little problems we have.

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Commentary Part 2: The Philosopher of Friendship

This letter is addressed to Idomeneus. Unless you read the version in Cicero, where he says it was addressed to Hermarchus. The text itself actually uses a second-person plural pronoun—“I write these things to y’all,” Epicurus actually writes. Then it ends with a reference to Metrodorus’ children. Who are all these people? Epicurus’ friends.

If you’re new to the life and times of Epicurus, this letter actually is a good compendium of some of the chief players. Metrodorus was his best friend, a companion since Epicurus’ time in Lampsacus, who accompanied Epicurus to Athens and died several years before him. Idomeneus was another Lampsacene, who seems to have stayed there as a leader of a secondary branch of the school, along with Themista and Leonteus, the famous Epicurean couple. Hermarchus, the alternative addressee, was a presumably even earlier follower from Mytilene who succeeded Epicurus as head of the Athenian Garden.

These names will recur. Many wrote philosophical works in their own right, although only small fragments remain. For now, what is important to note is that these were not just mere acquaintances or members of a modern alumni club, but real friends, the kind who will be there for you, the kind who will entrust you with their children and whom you can leave children to.

Some pedants don’t understand why Epicurus is concerned about things that will happen after he is gone, since he is a strict materialist who has no belief in consciousness after death. I think the answer lies in the preeminent importance he places on friendship. Reliable friends so far surpass all other means of increasing our overall security, that it is vital to practice faithful friendship without quibbling over petty, momentary self-interest. (For more on this “two-level” conception of friendship, see Tim O’Keefe’s “Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?”) Epicurus promised to take care of the children of Metrodorus, and he will pass on that obligation as part of an undying web of mutual support, because that is what friends do.

Lastly, it’s worth noting another difference between Epicurean friends and “friends” as we commonly use the term. In addition to providing practical assistance, Epicurus’ friends were his fellow philosophers. Such friends are people who agree with us about the most important things in life, but are also willing to speak frankly and listen humbly in our shared pursuit of the good life. There are often people who will reject your views out of hand—in dealing with them, circumspect neutrality might be the best you can achieve. Then there are people who would reject your views out of hand if you weren’t only saying things that they agreed with—that’s an echo chamber, not a real forum for deep discussion.

Idomeneus, Hermarchus, and all the rest were devoted both to Epicurus “and to philosophy.” To have an abundance of such friends as these would indeed outweigh a great deal of pain.

Original Text

From Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 10.22

Ἤδη δὲ τελευτῶν γράφει πρὸς Ἰδομενέα τήνδε ἐπιστολήν:

Τὴν μακαρίαν ἄγοντες καὶ ἅμα τελευταίαν2 ἡμέραν τοῦ βίου ἐγράφομεν ὑμῖν3 ταυτί. στραγγουρία τε παρηκολούθει4 καὶ δυσεντερικὰ πάθη ὑπερβολὴν οὐκ ἀπολείποντα τοῦ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς μεγέθους. ἀντιπαρετάττετο δὲ πᾶσι τούτοις τὸ κατὰ ψυχὴν χαῖρον ἐπὶ τῇ τῶν γεγονότων ἡμῖν διαλογισμῶν μνήμῃ. σὺ δ᾽ ἀξίως τῆς ἐκ μειρακίου παραστάσεως πρὸς ἐμὲ καὶ φιλοσοφίαν ἐπιμελοῦ τῶν παίδων Μητροδώρου.