In recent weeks, we’ve been discussing the Epicurean theory of justice. Contrary to some oversimplifying narratives, Epicureans do have opinions about the best way to establish laws and run a polity. So what would you get if you tried to reconstruct Epicurean political advice for the contemporary United States? Such a thought experiment would inevitably involve lots of speculative extrapolation, but I think it’s still worth doing. One of the great benefits of studying past thinkers is to get some distance from contemporary debates and to see our current issues from entirely different perspectives. Many people theoretically praise this virtue of studying the past. Fewer are willing to let the ancient world actually give its unvarnished opinion of modern ways of life. I am!

Most clearly, I think Epicurus would think that modern people demand lots of unnecessary things from their governments. He thought happiness was widely accessible at far lower levels of both material abundance and political protections. I don’t have any illusion that contemporary political institutions will adopt a more Epicurean stance anytime soon, but I think that the exercise of applying a philosophy-from-first-principles to current political questions is still highly valuable for its effect on one’s personal mindset. If you are convinced that all the heated political debates of the current moment are relatively unimportant to your life—as I firmly believe Epicurus would assert—then you will find it much easier to follow the core Epicurean advice: Don’t Worry About Politics.

Let’s do some time travel.

America has had its election. Seeing the need for wise counsel on how to meet the country’s true needs, Congress summons Epicurus to give them his honest advice, sans sugarcoating. In his typically terse style, he resolves most of the nation’s issues in a few sentences. Here are his responses to a dozen questions from the newly inaugurated members of Congress, desperate for guidance.

1. O wise Epicurus, here’s how we’ve been managing our resources [handing over a one-page summary of the federal budget]. How are we doing?

I have rarely seen such obvious imprudence: you clearly need to close your deficit. I always advise prudence, and there are few things more straightforwardly imprudent than spending more than you earn, year after year. For a household to pay 10 obols a month in interest tends to indicate poor management; for a state to pay $1 trillion in annual interest seems likewise problematic.

2. I know it seems bad. But how should we fix it? Some of us think taxes are self-evidently still too high, while others think a just society requires more spending.

Remember: there is no such thing as abstract justice. The most just course is whatever your society is able to agree is most beneficial overall. Hmm, let me take a little look at this paper and see what might plausibly secure agreement…

Your government expenditures are currently 23% of GDP, while your tax revenues are 17%. You’ve never collected even 20% of GDP in taxes, even during the height of your second World War, so it seems unlikely that your country will agree to increase taxes by a third to all-time record levels in order to meet current expenditures. I think you’ll need to cut spending. Meanwhile, it looks like you haven’t had spending as low as your current revenue level of 17% for over 50 years, so it seems unlikely that the people will have much appetite for a 25% cut in spending either. Looks like you’ll need to raise taxes too!

Overall, what you need is less rhetoric and more sober weighing of your options, or what we Epicureans call a symmetrisis kai sympheronton kai asymphoron—a weighing of advantage and disadvantage.

3. [A Republican Senator] What do you mean by spending cuts? I don’t want to cut our military spending.

Let me see… you’re currently spending about 15% of your budget on the military, or about a trillion dollars a year. That’s about a third of the world’s military spending to protect 4% of its people. $50 billion on a war of choice with Iran, as of October. That does seem excessive.

I’m all for self-defense. That’s why I think people came together in groups in the first place. But I am not in favor of glory-seeking on foreign campaigns (that’s Plutarch’s thing) or trying to dictate to other states what they should consider just. So yes, it seems like you could cut this.

4. [A Democratic Senator] What do you mean by spending cuts? I think we should expand our social spending on things like education, healthcare, childcare, and home-buyer assistance.

That is a lot of desires. Remember, the desires that are truly necessary for happiness are very few. Keep in mind that no particular level of subsidy for education or medical care is inherently just, while a lower level is inherently unjust—from an individual perspective, any net benefit from such programs should be treated as a welcome bonus. Some of my happiest friends are slaves and women who can’t even own property! Never postpone your happiness until you get a subsidy!

Now, if you all agree that it is more advantageous to band together and pay for some of these services collectively through taxes, then you are perfectly free to do so. But if your country does not agree to raise taxes a sufficient amount to pay for all of your wish list, then some of these things will also need to be cut.

5. [All the Senators] At least we can agree not to cut spending on our cherished elders!

Yes, on them too. Old people are not exempt from the classification of desires or the contractual nature of justice. It looks like your Social Security and Medicare programs make up a huge part of your spending, so you probably need to rein them in. The desire to use a more generous formula for calculating cost-of-living increases rather than a more conservative one, or to receive maximum benefits at 67 rather than 69, or to pay a specific low Medicare premium even if you have a high income—none of these are necessary desires, which doom an individual to unhappiness if not fulfilled. Happiness is usually equally possible under either policy regime. And if a state collectively decides not to fulfill those desires as arbitrarily quantified, it is not inherently unjust in its decision.

Such reforms should therefore be on the table like any others, as part of a sober comparison of advantages and disadvantages.

6. [A Republican Congressman begins to pontificate] I heard you say that we should raise taxes. That seems like a straightforwardly bad thing to do, taking money out of people’s pockets!

Ah, you seem to be fundamentally mistaken, even though my words have come down to you in Vatican Saying 81 and elsewhere: “Great wealth… does not resolve the troubles of the soul or produce joy worthy of the name.” Your wealthy people—and they are incomprehensibly wealthy compared to my experience—are not all happy. But their obstacle to happiness is not lack of wealth. You can increase their taxes and they will be fine.

7. [A progressive firebrand exclaims] Ha, I knew you’d agree with us! Let’s soak the rich!

Well, most of you are rich. As I understand it, your country’s median income is now $87,000, higher than any point in the history of mankind. I’m sure you have some poor people, but it seems like you could ask the majority of the country to pay somewhat more if they are indeed benefiting from those public expenditures.

How about a broad-based consumption tax? I hear that all 37 other members of the OECD have a VAT. After all, buying stuff is never very important and seeking to maximize the number of objects one owns is a fundamentally poor strategy for pursuing happiness. If things cost 5% more and people consequently have 5% fewer things, they will be fine. You know what I say: Nothing is enough for one to whom enough is little.

8. Let’s move on from the current budget and address some other topical questions. How should we reform education? We obviously need to help more people go to college.

Is that like the Platonic Academy? No, I wouldn’t recommend that. For the general populace, the sciences only need to be understood sufficiently to dispel fears. Education should teach people how to live good and happy lives. Securing material sufficiency is a fine goal too, but the wish to achieve great wealth or to plume oneself on one’s educational attainments are both empty desires and we shouldn’t fan such unnatural wishes under the noble-sounding name of “education.”

9. How should we practice policing and address urban disorder?

The most fundamental principle of justice is avoiding harm from others. Laws exist to protect the wise. We should avoid harassing innocent citizens, but law and order is generally a very understandable priority in human societies.

10. How should we reform healthcare?

I am confused by this notion of “healthcare.” People should take care of their health and avoid pain, for instance by not eating too much and doing some exercise. Forgoing immediate pleasures to avoid future pain is the essence of prudence, as is accessible to everyone.

We largely mean health insurance: sometimes people have injuries or illnesses which are very expensive to treat.

Ah, insurance. In my day, we called this “friends and family,” but that’s rather clever of you to pool together in larger groups to support each other in times of trouble. Some things are indeed “up to chance,” so in an ideal world, I think I’d favor some kind of universal catastrophic coverage. I’m afraid these “Medicare for All” proposals look far too expensive for your country’s appetite for taxes. Anyways, for most people’s everyday maintenance, individual prudence should be sufficient.

11. The people are struggling! They can’t make ends meet!

They don’t look poor to me. Many appear to simply be imprudent and confused. I suspect they have been the victims of unscrupulous sophists. Looking at your statistics, not only is your median income higher than ever before, per person living space has gone from around 200 square feet to around 1000 over the last century, the share of income spent on food has fallen in half over the same time period even while people eat out more than they used to, the majority of households own multiple $25,000 transportation machines with the power of two hundred horses, and almost everyone has an inconceivably powerful computer in their pocket.

You seem to have quite dysfunctional markets for medical treatment and housing construction in high-demand areas, so if you can fix such issues, that would make a lot of sense. But overall the people need to be wiser, not richer. Remember what I said about Pythocles: if you want to make him wealthy, do not increase his riches, but reduce his desires. It looks like you’ve been trying the “increase his riches” strategy for a long time. But feeding unnatural desires tends to make them grow.

12. But aren’t the people always right? We’re a democracy!

No, the people are often foolish. You thought I would give you popular answers? There’s a reason I don’t go proselytizing in the public square like that imprudent Socrates—democracies have no particular sympathy for wisdom. You happened to invite me here, so I’m happy to let you know my thoughts. But “I prefer to speak with an oracle’s frankness, sharing things that benefit all men, even if no one understands me, rather than to conform to popular opinion and so enjoy the mob’s ready praise” (VS 29).

Having uttered his oracular opinions, Epicurus leaves his congressional hearing and rejoins Metrodorus and Leontion for a meal. They discuss the latest silly things the Stoics are saying in the 21^st century and give no further thoughts to whether Congress acts on his advice. They don’t. Epicurus, however, remains untroubled.

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Principal Doctrine 36:

Principal Doctrine 37:

Principal Doctrine 38:

Commentary

In my last two posts on the Principal Doctrines, I first introduced the Epicurean theory of justice (PD 31–33), then discussed some of its implications for individual conduct (PD 34–35). Today’s maxims wrap up the Principal Doctrines’ main coverage of the topic by turning to wider social questions. Can laws differ in different places or at different times, but still be just? Or will the rules of justice look the same everywhere and at all times? What does this imply about efforts to critique or change current laws?

Epicurus addresses the first two of these questions head-on in our first maxim, PD 36:

This saying first recaps the basic theory we met in PD 31–33: a law or other arrangement is just if it is conductive to mutual advantage in our social interactions. The word translated here as “advantageous” is sumpheron (συμφέρον). Sometimes I translate it as “what is useful,” which is a more everyday equivalent to what has become known in modern philosophy as “utility.” Given Epicureanism’s hedonism, utility is technically equivalent to pleasure, but just as with Bentham’s and Mill’s adoption of the word “utility,” sumpheron has a suitably generalizing connotation: the advantages we derive from social cooperation are extremely varied and go well beyond what everyday people might think of when hearing the word “pleasure.” We agree not to intentionally harm one another, we agree to follow the same rules of the road, we agree to pay taxes to fund shared services—all of these arrangements are useful and promote the general utility.

That general characteristic of justice is universal: if a given arrangement is destructive to the common utility, then it cannot be just. The specifics, however, vary. Laws or cultural mores will be different in different places, without any necessary implication of injustice. Sometimes, these differences may be fairly arbitrary: in some countries, people drive on the right side of the road, in others they drive on the left. In others, they may be historically contingent: the governing rules of a primitive warlike tribe probably look different than those of a complex modern democracy. Imposing the rules of one onto the circumstances of the other would not necessarily be advantageous to the society as a whole—on average, societies will tend to adopt rules that convey some kind of advantage.

Epicurus elaborates on the topic of how laws1 change over time in the next two maxims.

Something is “just” as long as it is useful—this is the principal criterion we should look to. It doesn’t matter if a legal arrangement is different in another state. And it may be true that circumstances may change in the future, such that old laws will need to be updated. But if a given law was felt by the participating citizens to be mutually beneficial and advantageous, then opinions in other places or at other times, grounded in entirely different circumstances, may not be very relevant.

Two more notes on this maxim. First, Epicurus refers to “our concept of what is just.” The word translated here as “concept” is the famous Epicurean prolepsis. This is a word that has been the subject of much debate and controversy, which I mostly don’t want to get into here.2 Put simply, Epicurus believes we have essentially innate and universal ideas of certain things that are not really subject to dispute, and which we can therefore take as starting points for our discussions. For instance, in the Letter to Menoeceus, he says that our prolepsis of gods is of immortal and perfectly untroubled beings—it is inherently contradictory to speak of petty, fickle gods. (There is still plenty of debate as to what exactly Epicurus did think the gods were really like.) In today’s maxim, Epicurus seems to be asserting that the definition he has offered for justice (that what is just is what is mutually advantageous) is similarly intrinsic to the basic idea we all have of the concept: the exact laws that are most conductive to mutual advantage may vary over time, but the fact that a law must be conductive to mutual advantage to be considered just does not vary. If we start to point to some other abstract principle in favor of real-world benefit when defining what is just, we are on the wrong track.

Second, Epicurus first broaches an important subject in this maxim: the case of unjust laws. “If one establishes a law and it does not turn out to be in accord with what is useful,” then it is not just. While Epicurus in some sense may seem to equate the laws with justice, that does not mean that the act of setting something into writing as a legal statue automatically and absolutely confers the status of “just.” He elaborates on the two ways this can come about in our final doctrine:

Either 1) circumstances have not changed, but we realize that our laws were never just to begin with, or 2) circumstances have changed, and formerly just laws are no longer just, because they are no longer mutually advantageous. This offers a very direct clarification of two frequent misconceptions about Epicureanism. Many think that we are incapable of criticizing the established political order—we’re not! Others think that our endorsement of a kind of social contract theory as the basis of justice implies complete relativism, with no objective standards—that’s not right either. We are fully capable of recognizing when a society’s laws are destructive to their internal happiness. We just make sure we keep that internal effect central in our evaluation, rather than turning to some external and unchanging ideal form of Justice as our arbiter.

What remains true is that the critique of existing political arrangements is not generally central to the Epicurean project. The reason for this is latent everywhere in our ethical advice: most political arrangements do not determine our ability to satisfy our truly necessary desires, efforts to change political realities requires a lot of competition and uncertainty that on average will have a negative hedonic impact on our lives, and the basic rules of prudence will usually show us that our highest payoff efforts will usually focus on things that are more closely under our control.

I agree that this is the sweet spot of wisdom, and well-timed for election day here in the US: the Epicurean can recognize that current political arrangements are not optimal (they never are!), while also declining to grant such external problems significant influence over his or her own happiness. People on the political left can point out things they would like to change—sometimes I agree! People on the political right can point out things they would like to change—sometimes I agree with them! Legal structures are always an evolving approximation of the just, an ongoing attempt to advance the general utility. To postpone your happiness until more perfect laws have been achieved is to postpone your happiness forever.

It would be very difficult to make the case that our contemporary political woes are objectively more challenging to human well-being than those with which Epicurus was familiar: he saw Athens starving and besieged, shifting between half a dozen different military overlords over the course of his life. And throughout these several challenging decades, he continued to invite students from all walks of life—foreigners, women, slaves—to pursue lives of joy and pleasure. Epicurus could certainly imagine a more widely beneficial set of social arrangements. He chose to focus his efforts, however, where they could do the most good: close to home.

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Original Text

36. κατὰ μὲν <τὸ> κοινὸν πᾶσι τὸ δίκαιον τὸ αὐτό· συμφέρον γάρ τι ἦν ἐν τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους κοινωνίᾳ· κατὰ δὲ τὸ ἴδιον χώρας καὶ ὅσων δήποτε αἰτίων οὐ πᾶσι συνέπεται τὸ αὐτὸ δίκαιον εἶναι.

37. τὸ μὲν ἐπιμαρτυρούμενον ὅτι συμφέρει ἐν ταῖς χρείαις τῆς πρὸς ἀλλήλους κοινωνίας τῶν νομισθέντων εἶναι δικαίων, ἔχει τὸ τοῦ δικαίου ἐνέχυρον, ἐάν τε τὸ αὐτὸ πᾶσι γένηται, ἐάν τε μὴ τὸ αὐτό· ἐὰν δὲ νόμον θῆταί τις, μὴ ἀποβαίνῃ δὲ κατὰ τὸ συμφέρον τῆς πρὸς ἀλλήλους, οὐκέτι τοῦτο τὴν τοῦ δίκαιου φύσιν ἔχει· κἂν μεταπίπτῃ τὸ κατὰ τὸ δίκαιον συμφέρον, χρόνον δέ τινα εἰς τὴν πρόληψιν ἐναρμόττῃ, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐκεῖνον τὸν χρόνον ἦν δίκαιον τοῖς μὴ φωναῖς κεναῖς ἑαυτοὺς συνταράττουσιν ἀλλʼ εἰς τὰ πράγματα βλέπουσιν.

38. ἔνθα, μὴ καινῶν γενομένων τῶν περιεστώτων πραγμάτων, ἀνεφάνη μὴ ἐναρμόττοντα εἰς τὴν πρόληψιν τὰ νομισθέντα δίκαια ἐπʼ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔρων, οὐκ ἦν ταῦτα δίκαια· ἔνθα δὲ καινῶν γενομένων τῶν πραγμάτων οὐκέτι συνέφερε τὰ αὐτὰ δίκαια κείμενα, ἐνταῦθα δέ τότε μὲν ἦν δίκαια ὅτε συνέφερεν εἰς τὴν πρὸς ἀλλήλους κοινωνίαν τῶν συμπολιτευομένων, ὕστερον δʼ οὐκ ἦν ἔτι δίκαια ὅτε μὴ συνέφερεν.

Principal Doctrine 34:

Principal Doctrine 35:

Commentary

A note on posting frequency: Since launching in April, Untroubled has been publishing every Tuesday and Friday, week in and week out. Given other current obligations, that pace is rather difficult to sustain, so I’ll be shifting to a once-a-week schedule going forward. Some weeks this will be a translation and commentary, some weeks an essay.

Last week, I introduced the Epicurean theory of justice in Principal Doctrines 31–33. There, we learned the basic Epicurean perspective: the rules and principles that we label as “just” arise from a kind of agreement between humans. In the most elementary historical form, this involved a reciprocal promise: I will not harm you, if you do not harm me. Next time, in PD 36–38, I’ll discuss some political ramifications of this concept of justice, such as the way it explains geographical variation in laws and the implications for how laws might change over time. Today, however, we’ll be dealing with an aspect of this theory that has particular relevance on the individual level: how does society enforce those just agreements, and how should the individual act in response?

As we found last week in the case of “justice,” Epicureans deny independent existence to some absolute quality named “injustice.” Instead, what defines actions as unjust is their violation of social agreement, a status that brings along with it some form of punishment. This is most clearly the case with official, legally-defined crimes. For instance, most societies consider unprovoked killing of other humans to be unjust, statutorily declare such killings to be illegal, and officially appoint individuals to punish those who commit murder. This seems to the primary emphasis here, given the specific calling out of persons “appointed” as punishers.

There’s no reason, however, why the same principle can’t be applied to instances of non-illegal, but clearly anti-social conduct. Constant dramatic rudeness is not bad because of any cosmically inherent quality, but because it receives the “punishment” of social disapproval. Importantly, in contexts of both formal and informal sanctions, Epicurus does not simply say that the punishment alone makes the unjust actions bad, but that the fear or apprehension of such punishment is bad. This is a critical premise of the Epicurean theory: the fact that someone might seemingly escape punishment by committing a crime in secret does not make his crime good, because there is always the possibility of being found out—fear of punishment is therefore inescapable. That is the subject of the next maxim:

Some will dispute this on empirical grounds. Cicero, for instance, thinks that the Epicurean theory does not adequately account for crafty criminals who will aim only at “seeming good,” rather than truly being good. Epicurus denies this, not on the basis of an overly optimistic or rosy view of human good faith, but because of his insistence on the detrimental effect of any fear or uneasiness about our social relations. Do criminals exist, who apparently do not think that this psychological penalty outweighs the potential gains from their crimes? Certainly. But the core Epicurean interpretation denies that such criminals are actually maximizing the pleasure and happiness of their lives: the “benefits” of crime usually aim at fulfilling unnecessary desires, while some amount of unease is always present, even if it is somewhat repressed and non-obvious. I agree with this evaluation. Contra Cicero, I don’t think hardened criminals are generally good examples of hedonistic success.

You might still find the Epicurean position empirically questionable as an absolute statement. Surely, there are some cases where individuals have the opportunity to secretly violate a law or social norm with minimal fear of punishment? I think this is true, and I don’t think that even Epicurus would outright deny it, despite the seemingly blunt “it is impossible” of this maxim. The truth is that Epicurus can sometimes be somewhat hyperbolic, especially given that much of our extant texts consist of aphorisms, rather than extended treatises. In this case, however, we do have another text that acknowledges this gray zone of very-unlikely-to-be-detected crimes:

Plutarch, of course, interprets this straightforwardly as a cause for criticism: “I will do it, but I do not wish to admit it,” he says that the Epicurean statement means. And he isn’t entirely wrong! As I interpret Epicurus (again, lacking all the more extended discussion that would have been present in the original text), if you postulate that the subject in question knows absolutely that he will escape detection, then such a subject might be justified in violating the law. In practice, such a situation implies that little or no harm is being done to anyone—if there were major harm involved, then we would presumably have more safeguards to prevent it and subsequent investigation to discourage it. If little or no harm is being done to anyone, and there is no chance of legal or social penalty, then there might well not be a strong reason to prohibit the action in our ethical guidance. Plutarch is simply being a stiff-necked moralist who thinks that every little white lie, for instance, is a grave moral failing. They aren’t.

So why doesn’t Epicurus simply say, “yes, the wise man would break the law in that circumstance”? Because he doesn’t think it is realistic, or at least not representative of anything like our common experience. In real life, it is quite rare for someone to be presented with an opportunity for utterly secret, practically victimless crime, that actually serves our well-considered best interest. There is always some chance of detection, broadly considered: legal penalties are undesirable, social disapproval is undesirable, the need to lie and maintain consistent fictions for the rest of our lives whenever the event or time of our misdeed is under discussion is undesirable.

Furthermore, it is important to remember the place of this doctrine within the whole of Epicurean ethical advice: we think wealth, luxury, power, and fame are all largely worthless and often counterproductive for the happy life. When evaluating the desirability of violating a law, then, you have to look at both sides. What does one gain? Worthless things. What does one lose? Peace of mind.

If you really want to shoplift, you can find opportunities to do so, but the payoff-to-risk ratio is terrible for people of adequate resources. Why steal some trivial little thing that you could buy if you really wanted it? Why risk punishment for monetary gain, when you can earn money through a socially-approved channel? Epicureans have moderated their material and psychological needs, and so they always feel like their resources are already adequate for happiness: willfully inviting fear into our lives for such worthless objects would be foolish.

In practice, then, the wise wouldn’t want the “advantages” promised by law-breaking, even if the laws didn’t exist. Another fragment reveals the real purpose of laws and sanctions:

Formal laws and punishments do not create the reason for just conduct. The reason to act justly stems from the underlying benefit of social agreement and concord: it is legitimately impossible to live peacefully if you have hostile relations with all of your peers. The wise don’t need this to be formalized into laws and underlined with institutional threats. The purpose of those kinds of threats is to make the hedonic calculus more obvious for those who are not wise, those who are not skilled at evaluating the long-term consequences of their actions.

While some people cling to the possibility of retribution as an inherent virtue of legal punishment, I think most thoughtful modern people align more with the Epicurean view: legal punishments exist primarily for their deterrent effect. When we decide our fines and prison sentences, we do not accordingly consult some heavenly book of objective justice, but measure their deterrent effect against their other costs and impacts in an attempt to achieve the most beneficial outcome for society. In our next installment, we’ll turn to those kinds of societal issues and answer some frequently asked questions: Are Epicureans complete relativists? Will they criticize or violate laws they believe to be unjust? Do Epicureans contribute to societal progress, or are they necessarily advocates for the status quo?

We are frequently criticized on many of these fronts, but I think we have good answers. To learn them, check back soon for our penultimate chapter on Epicurus’ Principal Doctrines.

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Original Text

34. ἡ ἀδικία οὐ καθʼ ἑαυτὴν κακόν, ἀλλʼ ἐν τῷ κατὰ τὴν ὑποψίαν φόβῳ, εἰ μὴ λήσει τοὺς ὑπὲρ τῶν τοιούτων ἐφεστηκότας κολαστάς.

35. οὐκ ἔστι τὸν λάθρα τι ποιοῦντα ὧν συνέθεντο πρὸς ἀλλήλους εἰς τὸ μὴ βλάπτειν μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι, πιστεύειν ὅτι λήσει, κἄν μυριάκις ἐπὶ τοῦ παρόντος λανθάνῃ· μέχρι γὰρ καταστροφῆς ἄδηλον εἰ καὶ λήσει.

In my last installment of Practical Epicureanism, I discussed Cheap Fun—providing ten ideas for ways to inexpensively enjoy the widely available pleasures of life. Today, I have another list of ten for you: ten categories in which many residents of the developed world also make their lives more expensive than they need to be, not through any particular desire for more extravagant options, but simply because they fail to practice any reasonable degree of phronesis, or practical wisdom. Doing a little prudent comparison shopping when it comes to things like choosing insurance, deciding your financial arrangements, or obtaining various services of modern life can often provide significant relief from various kinds of money worries, from the most pressing (how will we pay the bills this month?) to the most long-term (when can I retire?).

Why does such a discussion belong in a philosophy newsletter? Because Epicureanism gives a uniquely large amount of attention to practical matters, seeing them as vital elements in leading a happy and untroubled life. Consider this central passage in the Letter to Menoeceus:

Epicurus insists on the importance of making all our decisions against the backdrop of a “comparison of advantages and disadvantages,” or “weighing of pros and cons” (symmetrisis kai sympheronton kai asymphoron; συμμέτρησις καὶ συμφερόντων καὶ ἀσυμφόρων). The judgments we are most often called to make are not those dealing with the obscure philosophical problems of the modern academy, not questions of morality, metaphysics, or epistemology, but with the comparison of hedonic possibilities which we encounter in our daily lives. This is no small matter. Every one of our decisions has the potential to bring our lives more pleasure or more pain. Developing skill in such decisions will naturally influence the levels of joy and disturbance you experience from day to day.

Some people face truly precarious circumstances, with threats to their ability to obtain food, maintain secure housing, or retain the general respect of society. Epicurus recognizes such things as real impediments to happiness. For people facing such risks, the items below can be of real use in easing financial pressures, and gradually building up financial reserves that reduce the threat of such negative outcomes.

Other people face milder financial constraints, but turn their comparative lack of affluence (there are always more affluent people with whom we can compare ourselves) into sources of grievance and mental pain. When this is pure envy—desires for luxuries and ostentatious wealth—Epicurus would say that such people need to study the classification of desires. When financial dissatisfactions consist of more everyday elements—the desire for stability, the ability to save, the occasional modest extravagance—then practical prudence is invaluable. Griping about politics or about the excesses of the ultra-rich simply isn’t a very effective way of reducing your worries. Cutting your expenses by 30% through intelligent planning is.

Even for the comparatively wealthy, who don’t worry at all about near-term financial insecurity, efficient living can often be a valuable element in achieving a more tranquil life. If you have ever felt that retirement is farther off than you would like, or that you would prefer to work fewer hours, or that you would prefer a different field of work if only you didn’t need the money, then consider whether your lifestyle need cost as much as it does.

Most people, in short, whether rich or poor or somewhere in between, can benefit from exercising a little more practical wisdom in how they arrange their spending and saving. These questions aren’t indifferent—as Platonists, Stoics, or Skeptics might say—but have a real impact on the tranquility of your life and your freedom to enjoy the ubiquitous pleasures of existence. Maybe only a few of these ten suggestions will help you. But if you can make an improvement in any one of these domains, then you have taken one more step towards ataraxia.

I make some specific recommendations below based on my personal experience, with links where it seems helpful. I derive no financial gain from any of these recommendations except for the labelled referral link for Mint Mobile.

Mid-sized Recurring Expenses

1. Phone Service, Phones, and Internet Access

Let’s start with a few simple and straightforward expenses, discrete line-items in the family budget that are often more expensive than they need to be for no good reason.

I’m often shocked by how much people pay for their cell phone service out of mere inertia and brand name familiarity. This is pointless: the big companies are all legally required to share network access with smaller companies. I use Mint, which is on the T-Mobile network and has been just fine for me for years (technically, they have now been acquired by T-Mobile). Even their base tier has unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data, so my monthly cost is $15 (when paid in advance). If you happen to know that, say, the AT&T network is better than T-Mobile in your area, then you can use Cricket or PureTalk or some other provider on the AT&T network. And so on. (If you’d like to try Mint, they have a referral program: use this link and we’ll help each other like good Epicureans and each get some extra credit.)

Some people get sucked in to the big companies by their offering of “free” phones (along with a contract to their overpriced services). But so many people abandon perfectly fine phones these days that you can get refurbished previous-year models at quite affordable prices. I’m a fancy modern person, so I purchased my first iPhone about two years ago. It was $133 on Backmarket and is still going strong. (I also got a perfectly good Android tablet for $55 there, on which I can read philosophy pdfs just as comfortably as on a $600 iPad.)

Your options for internet service will often be more constrained by your location, but it’s still worth checking if you have more than one local option, and avoiding getting upsold to faster speeds. I type words and watch movies and have never felt the need for more than the most basic tier of internet access, which currently costs me $40 a month (with a discount for automatic payment by bank account).

2. Food

I’ve written a bit before about Epicurus’ advocacy for frugal eating (for which we have specific testimony), so I’ll keep it brief here. If you consider yourself an intelligent and philosophical person, you should be able to feed yourself more cheaply than the average unreflective individual. Based on local prices, apparently the average monthly expenditure on food and alcohol in my area is $567 per person. In my household, it’s around $300. If you need tips, see that previous article.

3. “Servants”: Restaurants, Home Maintenance, Professional Services

Most modern people would look a little askance at the suggestion that they employ servants—we’re not 19^th century aristocrats here! But essentially everyone hires the assistance of part-time servants in some form or other. Maybe you could do with fewer.

One of the most ubiquitous ways in which people hire the labor of others is in restaurants, where separate individuals can be paid to cook for you, pour your drinks, relay your commands, and wash your dishes. Personally, I enjoy home-cooked meals more—the food is made with affection, the ambience is just how I like it, the wait is never tiresome, and the drive home is non-existent. So I eat out fairly rarely.

Many people hire house cleaners, lawn mowers, driveway shovelers, and car washers. Check how much you’re spending on those: is it worth it? Personally, I find intervals of physical tasks rather refreshing after a long time on the computer or doing dense reading. And if you have kids, give them chores. It’s good for them.

Beyond the most basic maintenance, many household tasks are perfectly approachable by the individual of average intelligence with the ability to consult the internet (or a dad, friend, or neighbor), yet are often timidly outsourced. You need a new headlight in your car or a new tube in your bike tire? There’s a hole in your wall that needs to be patched? You don’t know how to exercise? It’s time to file your taxes? I wouldn’t outsource any of these things. The material costs are negligible, and learning how to do things for yourself will boost your sense of secure competence and render you more fearless of misfortune, as Epicurus would say.

4. Entertainment Subscriptions

How much are you paying for your current custom mix of constantly renewed video, music, and words? That stuff can add up quickly.

First, of course, you’ll want to unsubscribe from any Stoic Substacks or other peddlers of misguided dogma. All Untroubled content is free, unless I can someday get enough readers that it seems worthwhile to monetize it. (You’re safe for now.) Other than that, read mostly books instead of ephemeral digital trivialities.

Then start going to the library. I preached the virtues of this wonderful institution in Cheap Fun: they give me movies on DVD, movies on streaming, e-books, books made of paper, free passes to parks, free passes to museums, and more.

More broadly, spend more time outside, learning, or creating than passively consuming. It’s more satisfying.

Once you have executed the above steps to the fullest extent, you may carefully add back in one or two sources of consumption-based entertainment, if truly needed. I have Spotify. I split the family plan between three separate households (they haven’t cracked down on me yet!), because Epicureans like sharing.

Financial Matters

5. Insurance

There are many forms of insurance, and a full treatment of the topic could obviously get lengthy. But there are two basic guidelines that everyone should keep in mind. First, don’t buy too much. Remember, insurance companies make money; therefore, whenever you buy insurance, you are, on average, going to lose money. Insurance should accordingly only be voluntarily purchased when the event you are insuring against would be objectively calamitous. For a prudent Epicurean who has a comfortable amount of savings, there is no real reason to be more afraid of a $10,000 expense than a $1,000 expense, so you should choose high deductibles and skip insurance on replaceable things (consumer goods, comprehensive insurance on cheap cars). This is mathematically the more logical course. If you can’t afford a $10,000 emergency expense, work on that as an urgent priority, then implement this strategy.

Second, comparison shop. I occasionally hear of people paying astronomical amounts for their car insurance, for instance. Get a few quotes. I’ve usually ended up with Geico. In my experience in recent years, I’ve paid between $400 (cheap car, no comprehensive, just me) and $1400 a year (babysitting my sister’s fancier car when she moved abroad, with comprehensive, adding a younger driver). If you pay substantially above that, wouldn’t you prefer not to?

For more, I recommend the classic Mr. Money Mustache article, “Insurance: A Tax on People Who Are Bad at Math?” Weighing advantages and disadvantages in a process of calm, quantifiable comparison is what Epicureans do, so we pay less of this “tax” than the fearful many.

6. Banking

As with cell phone service, a lot of people act like the big companies have a monopoly on the industry, and that they have no choice but to go to the downtown Bank of America or Wells Fargo or whatever, where the gracious big company will charge them a mere $25 a month to have an account while paying them 0.01% in interest on their cash. This isn’t necessary! The cost of a bank account should be $0, and you should earn at least 2% on your cash these days.

Try your local credit union (usually you can use any credit union ATM without fees, if you’re worried about convenience). If your local options don’t pay reasonable interest, consider an online cash management account. As of this writing, Fidelity and Wealthfront are both paying over 3.5% interest on their free accounts, for instance.

7. Credit Cards

Your existing cash savings can earn you 3%, or it can earn you nothing. Similarly, your existing spending can earn you around 3% back via well-chosen credit cards, or it can earn you nothing. In the simplest form, if you want zero hassle, get a card that has no annual fee and gives you 2% back on everything, like the Citi Double Cash or the Fidelity Rewards (when depositing rewards into a Fidelity investment account). If you have an expense category where you spend a relatively large amount, look for a card that offers a higher rate on that. For my family, the only category that is particularly high is groceries: I have this Aven card that gives 6% back on groceries, or if you don’t like new financial tech startups, this AAA card offers 5% back. Neither has an annual fee.

There are, of course, lots of options. The most lucrative way to play the credit card game is to regularly get new cards that offer big welcome bonuses (“earn 100,000 points when you spend $4000” and the like), redeem the points in an optimal way (which usually means airline tickets), and then cancel the cards before any fees are due for the second year. But that hassle may not be worth it for most people. Be careful, folks. Don’t sign up for things if you don’t know what you’re getting into. And of course: do not do this if it will make you spend more, or if you are paying interest on any of your purchases.

Almost everyone, however, does use credit cards. And there are no-fee cards out there that offer at least 2% cashback on everything, so I don’t see any reason to get less than that.

8. Investments

As of October 2026, cash can easily earn 2–4% with no risk. Of course, financially capable people do not merely save cash, but invest their money. There are myriad investment approaches and I am not going to get into details here, but the conventional wisdom would say that money in your savings account will ultimately just keep track with inflation (at best), while index investing in the overall stock market offers an average return in the neighborhood of 7% after inflation. Of course, stocks are more volatile and there can be years in which the return is negative, so investment decisions should be made carefully.

If you have not given any thoughts to investing strategy and would like to keep things simple, the general recommendation which I would endorse is simple low-cost index investing. Get a book like Collins’ The Simple Path to Wealth or Bogle’s Little Book of Common Sense Investing, follow their advice, and your money will grow, quite reliably in the long run. Such a strategy is easy to execute and avoids paying useless advisors to “manage” your money, while earning less than the average return of the market.

So: make sure your long-term savings are being put to work, earning money for you. If you need to figure out a strategy, do so. If you get any employer matches or tax benefits for retirement savings, take advantage of them. The specifics are too varied for me to go into here, but I would be remiss to omit this potentially very large opportunity cost from what is otherwise an article about more typical expenses.

Two Big Ones

9. Transportation

Lastly, I want to mention two particularly large items on the balance sheets of many families: transportation and housing. These expenses are of course not easy to shift quickly, but if you are under 80 years old or so, you will probably have to make some decisions related to them at some point. You want them to be good ones.

For transportation, the two most valuable things you can do are to avoid a big car commute and to avoid buying an unnecessarily fancy car, lured by the marketing of novel features or social prestige. Most people never calculate the cost of their driving. A minority will make some estimates of the most obvious costs, such as gas or tolls. Really, a full estimate would also account for maintenance and depreciation of your car (the IRS uses .76 cents/mile, including gas) and the value of your own time. If you drive a fancy car, command a personally high hourly wage, or drive more than average, you should incorporate all those facts into your estimates.

Just on the car side and ignoring the value of your time (which you shouldn’t do), the average American drives around 14,000 miles a year, which costs $10,640 per year based on the IRS estimate, which equates to about $153,000 over a decade if you add in the opportunity cost of not having that money invested and earning 7% or so in a standard stock index fund.

This is the kind of quantification exercise which you rarely encounter in philosophical writings, but which I think Epicurus would endorse as part of that symmetrisis kai sympheronton kai asymphoron, that comparison of advantages and disadvantages. It’s not a moral or metaphysical dilemma, but it makes a big difference to the cost and quality of your life if you can engineer your life to require less driving.

I’ve moved several times in the last decade: I started out with an hour-long car commute, then reduced it to a ten-minute drive, then to a fifteen-minute bike ride with busy streets and a big hill, then to a ten-minute bike ride on a flat path. I consider this a good example of phronesis, prudence or practical wisdom, in action: continually look to make your life better by calmly comparing your options and choosing the course with more pleasure and less pain.

10. Housing

Typically the biggest expense of all, and often the hardest to modify, is housing. I live in California, so naturally I would like it if housing were cheaper: the state’s median home value is currently around $760,000. But as an Epicurean, I focus on what is under my individual control. In the big picture, there’s a lot of variation in how much people pay for housing, with many different relevant factors depending on your own circumstances.

The general message is what it has been throughout this piece: make your comparisons carefully. Measure the pros and cons of your choices as comprehensively as you reasonably can. For instance, you may think you’re getting a lower housing cost by living farther from your work, but make sure to fully account for the cost of your commute, as described in the previous entry. Think carefully about how much benefit you will derive from a prospective increase in home size or additional amenity. Compare the costs of renting and homeownership—in certain circles of the United States, the passion for owning a home (by which we usually mean “paying a mortgage”) often approaches a religious zealotry that doesn’t even admit the relevance of math. Math is always relevant.

In closing, I’d like to reiterate the goal of all this. A lot of “money saving tips” leave the underlying goal up to the reader. For many people, the implicit benefit of saving money on a given service is that the money can then be spent on something else. For Epicureans, however, the benefit of living more frugally is a little different: we are not trying to skillfully maximize our consumer consumption, but to maximize our security (as in PD 6, 7, and 14). Recall the Letter to Menoeceus:

To be “fearless of misfortune”—that is our goal. If you feel you need a six-figure income “just to get by,” then life will indeed seem more precarious and challenging than if you can get by perfectly well with half the expenditure. Over time, the benefits of always living below your means compound: productively invested savings accumulate and various forms of potential financial distress drop out of sight, one after another. Frugality becomes effortlessly habitual, or even a pleasant pastime in certain domains—one more well-practiced skill to deploy, like riding a bike or cooking your favorite food. As worries diminish, your daily life is increasingly occupied by the innumerable pleasures of existence, which are never hard to find. To choose the less painful path is to choose the path of pleasure.

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Principal Doctrine 31:

Principal Doctrine 32:

Principal Doctrine 33:

Commentary

Our continued progress through the Principal Doctrines is drawing towards the finish line. Today, I’ll outline the basic Epicurean theory of justice in PD 31, 32, and 33. The next two installments will deepen the discussion, dealing first with the implications of the theory for one’s personal conduct (PD 34 and 35), then with the implications regarding cultural variability and political change (PD 36–38). Finally, the last two Principal Doctrines (39 and 40) will move on to a connected but somewhat distinct subject: how cooperative alliances between individuals can enhance our security.

In this opening discussion of Epicurean justice, then, I’ll mostly stick to an introductory outline, clearing up some conceptual issues, but leaving the full ramifications of the theory for both individual and political action to future installments. Let’s take PD 31 and PD 33 in conjunction first, as both seem to offer fairly general definitions.

The first thing to note is Epicurus’ clear rejection of an eternal, freestanding, ideal, capital-J “Justice.” The breadth and consistency of this rejection is somewhat obscured in many translations: only in PD 33 does he employ the hypostasizing, idealist term of dikaiosyne (δικαιοσύνη) familiar from Plato as the “Form” of Justice, specifically in order to deny its independent existence. In all the other Principal Doctrines, Epicurus instead refers to to dikaion (τὸ δίκαιον), which has more of a lowercase, everyday kind of feel, and which I have accordingly translated as “that which is just.” We can have red things, but Redness does not exist as an independent form. We can usefully describe certain social arrangements as just, but that does not mean that Justice is an eternal ideal we are always striving to perceive.

Instead, justice is the result of a kind of contract or covenant between human beings, with one preeminent objective: avoiding mutual harm. Many modern philosophers later elaborated their own versions of social contract theory, with varying degrees of resemblance to (what remains of) the Epicurean position. Particularly notable, however, is that very specific and limited goal which Epicurus repeats in all three of today’s maxims: the behavior which we are most obviously and universally interested in is to avoid being harmed. This kind of general inclination towards limiting the influence of social agreements over the individual will strike many readers as anticipating John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle,” originally formulated in On Liberty and subsequently adopted as a foundational plank for many modern libertarians:

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. (On Liberty, Introductory Chapter)

Of course, determining the situations in which individuals “harm one another” has become increasingly complex in the modern world. Mill wanted to avoid paternalistic policy that impinged upon individual freedom, but once society also agrees to pool resources for, say, old age pensions and medical care, then are some paternalistic nudges justified to reduce the waste of those universally appropriated funds? These are questions that Epicurus doesn’t deal with. I can only speculate that his general orientation would probably continue to lean towards an emphasis on individual action and small-scale alliances over grand social reforms or utopian projects.

Speaking of those “small-scale alliances”: this is a second oversight omitted by many translations. PD 33 contains a phrase which I have translated as “on any scale” (opelikous topous, ὁπηλίκους τόπους, literally “in places however big”). For some reason, the most popular modern translators (Long & Sedley; Inwood & Gerson) entirely omit this phrase, despite previous translators retaining it (Strodach, DeWitt). Maybe they just found it clunky. It’s actually fairly important: Epicurus believes that justice can be a quality found within any form of covenant, from a group of friends or communal organization to a city state or larger nation. The ability for an agreement to reflect the justice of nature is not dependent on an elaborate legal apparatus or powerful enforcement mechanisms. It’s a basic principle which we can perceive in all our dealings with others.

Finally, as a last clarification on these two maxims, note that the dependence of justice on the existence of some kind of social contract does not mean that justice is entirely mutable or subjective: there is a “justice of nature.” We will delve much more deeply into this notion that justice is an objective term, despite the changing arrangements in which we find it, in PD 36–38. For now, the basic idea is this: an agreement is only just if it actually benefits the various participants. This is basically the idea of Utilitarianism, at least of those forms of Utilitarianism that focus on the human participants in given society. Epicureans are egoists, but we recognize the usefulness of “just” as a term that equates roughly to “mutually beneficial” or “fair”—something that is just is something in which each individual will rationally want to participate.

In accordance with this theory, our third maxim sets out some limits on the contexts in which justice is a relevant concept:

According to the Epicureans, there is no such thing as justice towards animals. If we could make a deal with lions or mosquitoes not to harm us, that would be nice, but we cannot; consequently, we do not have any moral obligations towards them. Hermarchus, Epicurus’ immediate successor as head of the Garden, elaborated on this position in a passage preserved by Porphyry:

This doesn’t deny the possibility of some reasons for limiting harsh treatment of animals. Maybe we think it breeds cruelty of character—Kant’s argument. Maybe we think reducing meat consumption would reduce the impacts of climate change in a way that yielded human benefit. But killing animals cannot be simply and flatly wrong, according to the Epicurean theory. While animal rights defenders are more numerous among philosophers than the populace at large, I think the Epicurean position is in closer alignment with the intuitions of normal people and I would agree: hunting, killing pests, and eating meat are not inherently unjust.

When he extends the same argument to barbarous tribes, modern people are probably even more inclined to get touchy. Most of the world has moved past this debate, but it did endure for thousands of years after Epicurus. Mill, for instance, articulated a similar position in the very next paragraph of On Liberty from that cited above, in 1859:

It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that this doctrine is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties... For the same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backward states of society in which the race itself may be considered as in its nonage.

For Mill, this justified British colonial activity in India. Similar arguments have been made by various self-appointed representatives of “civilization” throughout history and are mostly out of fashion today. On some level, however, I think Epicurus’ contention is quite understandable: if some non-aggressive travelers were passing through an unknown country and were attacked by a vicious band of savage warriors who made no overtures of peace before commencing violence, rape, and robbery, then I think one can make a strong case that the victims needn’t quibble too much about using potentially lethal force to defend themselves, for instance. Perhaps this kind of thing is what Epicurus had in mind, integrating scary stories from exotic lands into his speculation on the origins of social contracts.

If we accept the premise of violent and unreasoning savages, then, this seems defensible. It’s true that similar arguments have often been invoked over the intervening millennia to justify not forming or abiding by covenants that presumably would have been beneficial as a whole, but I don’t think we can really lay responsibility for all such conduct at Epicurus’ feet. Nothing suggests that he was a vigorous enthusiast for repressive colonialism. His primary interest here was probably anthropological, tracing how one prominent motive for early social alliance was mutual protection against outside threats. This story is also elaborated in that same Hermarchus passage found in Porphyry:

Now we know what Epicurean justice is, in broad outline: that which is mutually beneficial in an agreement between human beings, with a particular focus on promises to refrain from harming one another in exchange for reciprocal security against being harmed oneself. In future installments, we’ll expand upon this account, discussing how such agreements can be adequately enforced by sanctions (without any particular invocation of moral obligation), recognizing how an individual should live in a society, and evaluating the ways in which specific laws and customs vary from place to place and across time.

If you’ve ever heard that Epicureans are unprincipled cowards who throw out all civilized morality, or selfish isolationists who rule out the possibility of political progress, you will soon be equipped to rebut such misconceptions. It is true that we do not believe in a transcendent Justice existing independently of all human activity. But we are firm believers in the benefits of just agreements that lead to the greater happiness of all.

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Explore the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.

Original Text

31: τὸ τῆς φύσεως δίκαιόν ἐστι σύμβολον τοῦ συμφέροντος εἰς τὸ μὴ βλάπτειν ἀλλήλους μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι.

32: ὅσα τῶν ζῴων μὴ ἐδύνατο συνθήκας ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν ἄλληλα μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι, πρὸς ταῦτα οὐθὲν ἦν δίκαιον οὐδὲ ἄδικον· ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν ὅσα μὴ ἐδύνατο ἢ μὴ ἐβούλετο τὰς συνθήκας ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν μηδὲ βλάπτεσθαι.

33: οὐκ ἦν τι καθʼ ἑαυτὸ δικαιοσύνη, ἀλλʼ ἐν ταῖς μετʼ ἀλλήλων συστροφαῖς καθʼ ὁπηλίκους δήποτε ἀεὶ τόπους συνθήκη τις ὑπὲρ τοῦ μὴ βλάπτειν ἢ βλάπτεσθαι.

Plutarch, the famous biographer of the first century CE, did not like Epicureanism. He himself was a Middle Platonist, viewing himself as an essentially faithful follower of the Academy, and penned numerous anti-Epicurean and anti-Stoic polemics, most of which have been lost. Three of his anti-Epicurean books have survived, however: the short Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept?, a rebuttal of a first-generation Epicurean entitled Against Colotes, and the more interesting follow-up That It Is Impossible Even to Live Pleasantly According to Epicurus.

These are not particularly widely read books today, but they contain some valuable quotes and testimonies of Epicurean doctrines, as well as a decent array of still extant criticisms and questions regarding Epicurean ethical advice. Why shouldn’t we pursue a life of intellectual contemplation, as praised by Plato? What about the life of glorious public action, as praised by much of society? Is traditional religion really harmful to happiness? Although these books are nominally dialogues, no characters really take up the Epicurean cause and push back against the arguments that Plutarch advances. So, as I recently did with Cicero’s objections, I will today take on that role myself, outlining Plutarch’s main critiques and offering my own responses.

Two practical notes on approaching these texts. First, if looking them up or seeing them referred to, you may often encounter the traditional Latin titles (though they were originally written in Greek), which are respectively De latenter vivendo (abbreviated De lat. viv.), Adversus Colotem (Adv. Col.), and Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum (Non posse).

Next, since these books have no truly modern English translation, the best edition in which to read these is clearly that of the Loeb Classical Library printing of Plutarch’s Moralia, Volume XIV. The 1967 Loeb translation by Einarson and De Lacy is generally readable and the introductory material is quite useful, including helpful systematic outlines of each book. If you read a free online copy or cheap ebook anthology, you will probably get the Goodwin translation from the 1870s. This is exceptionally cumbersome to understand, though fairly effective as an insomnia treatment. For example:

So that, should they pass for very knowing men upon all other accounts, yet their very calumnies and reviling language would bespeak them at the greatest distance from philosophy imaginable. For emulation can never enter that God-like consort, nor such fretfulness as wants resolution to conceal its own resentments. (Non posse §2)

With that said, let’s look at each of these three works, passing over the rather boring Against Colotes rather briefly in favor of the juicier ethical disputes.

Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept?

This short essay (about 10 pages) attacks the classic Epicurean maxim “Live unknown” (lathe biosas). Based on our extant texts, it is not known if Epicurus himself said those exact words, but it is clear that they were widely understood as expressing the consistent Epicurean counsel not to seek fame. Plutarch sometimes insinuates a slightly broader application, which I suspect is not really fair, but we admittedly do not have the exact original context. Overall, Plutarch makes five objections:

1. Epicurus wanted fame himself, so he is being dishonest or hypocritical.

I consider this baseless ad hominem. I know of no textual evidence that Epicurus ever sought fame as an intrinsic component of happiness or as an important instrument to its realization. As far as I know, fame came as a side effect of the activity he enjoyed doing anyways: writing and teaching. This is an important distinction. Certain kinds of fame may be acceptable, but fame is generally not worth seeking in itself. As far as we can reconstruct it, this appears to me to be the actual Epicurean position.

2. It is good for vices to be exposed so that they may be cured, while it is good for virtuous behavior to be public, so that others may be benefited.

“Live unknown” clearly does not mean that we should behave viciously in secret—to imply that is clearly a distortion of Epicurean advice. In reality, Epicurus frequently emphases how normal, everyday exposure to the judgment of society must necessarily shape our conduct and cannot be avoided. Nor does “live unknown” imply that we cannot help others. Personally, I would say that people who are of service to their family, friends, and community may often be more substantively helpful than those who seek the greatest celebrity (consider modern pop stars, actors, or any political figure you dislike). Occasionally, acts of helping others may result in some wider degree of recognition (as with Epicurus), but “level of famousness” does not correlate particularly tightly with “benefit to others.”

3. Obscurity leads to inaction, while public acclaim motivates to vigor and activity.

As with the above, I am unwilling to condemn all private lives and to praise all public lives. I think many obscure individuals have led happy lives that benefited those around them, while many well-known individuals made both themselves and others less happy by their activity. Think again of all the vapid celebrities, pointlessly wealthy plutocrats, and harmful political figures of history. An excessive concern with public opinion tends to distort our perception of what is truly valuable and can easily lead to socially counterproductive forms of “activity.”

4. Man by nature desires to know and be known, just as he loves sunlight and hates darkness.

Chapter 6 contains some fancy metaphors, mythology, and Platonizing, but is substantively both shallow and mistaken. The general human preference for light over darkness has no bearing on whether fame is worth seeking. If evolutionary biology were to be appealed to, I suspect we would find that humans are actually more contented when they secure the approval of a smaller tribal circle (which Epicurus would endorse) than when they engage in an endless quest for mass celebrity, which is necessarily difficult and unstable.

5. Those who have won fame go to a nice place with eternally flowering trees after death, while those who lived in obscurity must necessarily have been impious criminals who will be condemned to further eternal obscurity as a punishment.

I don’t think this is true.

Against Colotes

Colotes was a younger contemporary and direct student of Epicurus who wrote a lost book entitled On the Point that Conformity to the Doctrines of the Other Philosophers Actually Makes it Impossible to Live. In it, Colotes apparently went through a bunch of other philosophers, picked out some lines in which they expressed skepticism about the reliability of our senses, and therefore accused them of making life impossible; his targets include Democritus, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and the early skeptical turn of the Academy under Arcesilaus. Plutarch, offended by this disrespect towards the philosophers of the past, defends them all, and in turn takes phrases out of Epicurean philosophy to declare that no, your doctrines make life impossible.

Overall, it’s a pretty silly and pedantic competition of taking lines out of context (although I do think extreme skepticism is a practically unproductive line of thought). This book is substantially longer than the previous one (some 65 pages of English text in the Loeb edition), but contains relatively little that will be of interest to the average contemporary reader.

That It Is Impossible Even to Live Pleasantly According to Epicurus

This other relatively long book (~70 pages) is the best of the three. Although I still disagree with the majority of Plutarch’s conclusions, they are—at least sometimes—based on substantive differences of opinion, and adopt a rather novel angle: rather than claim that Epicurean teachings are focused on the wrong goal (pleasure), this book argues that alternative methods will secure greater pleasure. Here are four veins of critique that Plutarch develops at length:

1. Bodily pleasure is greatly overrated.

First, in chapters 3–8, Plutarch criticizes what he takes to be the Epicurean emphasis on the body. Mainly, he seems to adopt a jumping-off point based on a notorious sentence of Metrodorus that the good is found in the belly. A verbatim quote is not given here, but the reference is often taken to refer to a sentence preserved by Athenaeus:

The beginning and root of all good is the pleasure of the stomach; all wisdom and refinement exist in reference to it. (Usener fragment 409)

From this, Plutarch launches into the usual reactions. Such physical “pleasure” is flimsy, unstable, and narrow, affecting only small parts of the body. Eating and drinking are minor notes in the goodness of a life. Sexual pleasure can be intense, but soon departs. Recollections of past pleasures are even less substantial. Meanwhile, the body is more often subject to pains, which are often not avoidable by any kind of prudence or philosophy: disease or injury can come for anyone, and so a stable expectation of health is impossible. In short, argues Plutarch, “not only is the basis that they assume for the pleasurable life untrustworthy and insecure, it is quite trivial and paltry as well” (1091A).

The first problem here, as in the previous books, is selective quotation. Epicureans do indeed think that we can’t ignore the pleasure and pain of the body, but they place quite little value on typical sensual pleasures and far more on satisfying the necessary desires for food, water, and shelter. Plutarch notes a few such quotes, but takes them as evidence of confusion and inconsistency, rather than making a real effort to interpret quotes such as the above in a consistent and charitable way. 90% of this particular section is therefore pure strawman: Epicureans do not advocate for the accumulation of sensual pleasures as the key to the good life.

The final point mentioned above—the idea that freedom from bodily pain is impossible to guarantee—is slightly more substantial, but I think also misses the mark. While guaranteeing a pain-free existence is, of course, impossible, Epicurean prudence will certainly reduce bodily pain on average, while Epicurus also offers advice for how to deal with unavoidable pain.

2. There are higher intellectual pleasures—but Epicureans don’t appreciate them.

Next, in chapters 9–14, Plutarch notes some pleasures that he does endorse, but which he thinks Epicureans are incapable of appreciating. As a Platonist, many of these naturally tend towards the intellectual: history and poetry are praised first (1092 F), followed by math, astronomy, and music (1093 D). He basically assumes that his audience will acknowledge the superiority of such pleasures, but offers a few interesting maxims by way of proof: apparently Pythagoras sacrificed an ox after making a mathematical discovery, while no one has ever done that after making love (1094 B).

Unfortunately, we don’t have any detailed account of Epicurus’ attitude towards history, poetry, and the rest. Instead, we have Plutarch’s uncharitable testimony and a few scattered aphorisms. From the direct quotes, it seems accurate to say that Epicurus was not enthusiastic about paideia, the traditional education of aristocratic Athenians, by which Plutarch seems to particularly mean mathematical study (1094 D). Metrodorus (in a book On Poems, let it be noted), advised someone to “not be dismayed” if he has not memorized Homer (1095 A). Later Epicureans of course wrote poetry themselves—most notably Lucretius and Philodemus, both writing before Plutarch—although neither are mentioned here. And Epicurus says that wise men will enjoy the theater and music, but that he does not recommend the “discussion of problems in music and poetry” (1095 D).

My impression, then, is that this criticism is also largely the result of distortion and uncharitable extrapolation from a few lines. Epicureans were obviously not illiterates. They enjoyed both theater and music. Some wrote poems. Where they did not agree with Academics (both capital and lower-case A) was whether specifically scholarly knowledge constituted a particularly high form of pleasure. Epicurus was the son of a lowly children’s schoolteacher and was mocked for his humble background. He himself did not go to elite prep schools or prestigious colleges, and naturally maintained that years of esoteric intellectual development are not prerequisites for living a good and happy life. This position seems correct to me: enjoy the pleasures of music and the like when they are evident and accessible to you—but recognize that a lot of literary criticism is empty pedantry and that the practitioners of higher mathematics are not necessarily higher men.

3. The active life also offers pleasures that Epicureans don’t appreciate.

To conclude Plutarch’s evaluation of earthly pleasures, he turns in chapters 15–19 to a discussion of the active or political life. Epicurus, he tells us, denigrates specific historical heroes like Themistocles and Miltiades (1097 C) and generally ignores the pleasures of “conveying great benefits” through political or military success. As you might expect of the great biographer of men of action, Plutarch thinks these kinds of glorious pleasures are the highest:

The love of honor and beneficence reaches out to eternity as it strives for the crown by deeds and benefactions that bring the doer a pleasure impossible to describe (1098 E).

Here at least we do not have a dramatic distortion of the Epicurean position: we do indeed recommend against dramatic political or military aspirations as a high-likelihood route to happiness. Plutarch, of course, presents a favorable portrait of such activity, listing off a few dozen celebrated and victorious champions. A more statistically unbiased account of the probability of such success would also need to include all of those who died or suffered disabling injury while trying to achieve such goals, those who made the attempt but failed and faded into obscurity, those who achieved prominence but turned it to bad ends that Plutarch and his peers would criticize, and those who achieved a noble renown but subsequently found themselves unhappy. I’m not sure how many would survive such a winnowing.

The question still remains: do those who win the most praise thereby achieve the greatest pleasure? I am very skeptical. I live in the United States: it seems that anyone who achieves great political success must almost necessarily incur the dislike of roughly half of the country. No matter what one’s political affiliations, I think one would be hard pressed to say that either Joe Biden or Donald Trump represent the peak of possible human happiness, despite reaching the summit of the ladder of political achievement. Military glory is likewise in much lower standing than in Plutarch’s day: we’ve fought many wars, but I’m not sure any has secured significant approbation by the populace at large since World War II. Perhaps we could add other spheres of public-facing activity: are the most famous actors, musicians, or athletes the happiest people in the world? I doubt it.

Plutarch represents a common impulse to seek popular acclaim. But I think that dispassionate consideration of the empirical evidence would suggest that earning the love and respect of one’s friends and family is more valuable to one’s happiness than is the praise of the masses.

4. Traditional religion brings people pleasure.

Finally, for the last chapters of the book (20–33), Plutarch turns to a discussion of the hedonistic implications of Epicurean teachings on religion. As is clear from Principal Doctrines 1 and 2, Epicurus believes that there are no gods—beneficent or vindictive—judging our behavior, and that there is no afterlife. Plutarch interestingly does not attempt to contest these claims on the basis of their falsehood, but solely on the question of whether Epicurean teachings actually increase our pleasure.

According to him, even those who are afraid of divine punishment benefit from their beliefs, since that fear prompts them to good behavior (which, as Epicurus would agree, leads to better hedonistic outcomes than crime). More commonly, however, Plutarch holds that people’s fear of the gods is outweighed by the “cheerful hope” and “exultant joy” we derive from religion (1101 E). He specifically asserts that this is due to our sense of proximity to divine influence, rather than the incidental pleasures of communal ceremony and festivity. For good people, Plutarch considers belief in the gods to be purely a source of pleasure, since they will be confident that it is impossible “that one dear to the gods should fail to prosper” (1102 F).

The same is true of belief in the afterlife. Fear of bad outcomes after death makes bad people behave better, while good people are comforted by the thought of the pleasant existence that awaits them. Epicurus’ suggestion of posthumous nonexistence is no comfort at all, but is instead viewed with dread by most people: “in abolishing belief in immortality they also abolish the pleasantest and greatest hopes of ordinary men,” Plutarch claims (1105 C).

This section also does not explicitly misrepresent Epicurean teachings. Again, however, it presents a picture of religion that is very rosy and questionable on factual grounds. Some people derive comfort from religion, certainly. But how much of that is from the sense of community, the participation in shared festivities, and the redirection of attention from worldly goals to ethical reflection? Epicureanism embraces all of those activities. And some people certainly do have negative experiences of religion. I am unable to judge what the typical balance of positive and negative emotions from belief in traditional religion was in the ancient world, but that some people exist today who cause themselves unnecessary pain due to feelings of religious guilt, shame, or forced adherence to unreasonable dogmas, I feel quite confident. For myself, I have always found nonexistence quite unworrying, a position which I have generally attributed to my lack of religious upbringing.

All this talk of the instrumental benefits of religion also sets aside, of course, a very major question: are those religious doctrines true? And if beneficent gods and the immortality of the human soul seem like entirely unevidenced and extremely unlikely propositions to you, can you choose to believe in them on the basis of hoped-for emotional comfort? I don’t believe in such things, and don’t think I could even if I wanted to.

More broadly, the Epicurean tenets on religion are part of an overall system of thought that asserts the explicability of the world and our own individual agency. We believe that a reasonable weighing of the evidence will necessarily rule out superstitious theories, and that adopting overall habits of forming our beliefs and making decisions without ideological precommitments will lead to our greater happiness. We do not idolize the world of ideas, as Platonists do, but we do have great respect for a firm grounding in the truth. To argue for an untrue idea because it promises comfort is no solid path to pleasure. Illusions are inherently unstable, and prone to disappoint.

Epicurus advocates for the pleasures of living in the real world. These pleasures are not restricted to mathematicians or literary theorists. They are not reserved for lawmakers and generals. And they are not founded on fantasies or lies.

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Seneca, Letter 2.6 (Usener fragment 475):

Seneca, Letter 4.10 (Usener fragments 200 and 477):

Commentary

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger was a Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher of the 1^st century AD, living over 300 years after Epicurus. Despite these gaps of time, space, and philosophical allegiance, he remains a valuable source for Epicurean material. This is particularly the case in his Letters (also known as the Letters to Lucilius, Epistles, or Moral Epistles), a set of 124 short philosophical essays that quote Epicurus frequently, especially in the early installments. Sometimes we know the Greek originals of his Latin renderings, but often we don’t, making Seneca a legitimate and sometimes unique source for Epicurean aphorisms.

Unlike other later sources (such as Cicero or Plutarch), these quotes are usually not deployed polemically, but in general approvingly. The most common form they take in the letters is as a closing “gift,” a valuable piece of philosophical advice that Seneca endorses and briefly expands upon to end each letter. As such, Seneca’s framing sentences usually offer some sympathetic eloquence that occasionally adds substantive clarity to the meaning of the original maxim, but more often just supports and reiterates it, in a manner not too dissimilar to what I do here at Untroubled. Perhaps I’ll discuss Seneca’s relationship with Epicureanism more at a future date, but for now let’s jump right in with the first two examples from the Letters.

Romans like punchy aphorisms perhaps even more than the Greeks. This one from Epicurus comes across well in Latin: honesta res est laeta paupertas, or “cheerful poverty is an honorable thing.” While Seneca himself was famously wealthy (and has faced many accusations of philosophical hypocrisy for those who like to dwell on such things), his official position is that the Epicurean embrace of the simple life is a basically admirable trait. At other moments, he will soften this stance—perhaps to justify his own enormous wealth—arguing that one can still be virtuous while being rich. In practice, Epicurus would probably be rather skeptical of this position, seeing great wealth as something more likely to bring envy and encourage insatiable desires than it is productive of genuine improvements in security or happiness. Seneca’s prominent position, of course did not end well: under suspicion of conspiracy, he was ordered to kill himself by Nero.

As stated here, however, Seneca’s exposition of the life of cheerful poverty is entirely consistent with Epicurean principles. He identifies the problems with wealth: a constant “wanting more,” envy of one’s neighbors, obsessing over future gains. All of these activities are counterproductive to contentment. What we need to do instead is meet our real needs (i.e. to meet our necessary desires, to have quod necesse est), and then to be content with what we have (i.e. to have “enough”—quod sat est).

Seneca’s praise of poverty continues in an orthodox Epicurean vein. The main quoted maxim appears to draw from Vatican Saying 25, while his recognition of the law of nature as demanding “not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold” is based on VS 33, both of which I have translated and discussed previously. His examples of the consequently unnecessary behaviors stem from the Roman political world, where petitioning the powerful or joining the military in pursuit of foreign glory were standard parts of accessing or climbing the ladder of power.

Another effective Senecan aphorism: ad supervacua sudatur. This is a common impersonal construction in Latin, more literally “one sweats for” or “there is sweating for” superfluous things, but English calls for some syntactical revision with a more natural subject, like “we,” “men,” or “people.” “People sweat for pointless things,” we might observe as we see the latest jockeying for celebrity or wealth. “Why are we doing this?” we might usefully ask ourselves when finding ourselves entangled in some arduous or competitive pursuit which we find neither enjoyable nor admirable.

“Cheerful poverty is an honorable thing,” said Epicurus. “Poverty is great wealth, when it is organized according to the law of nature,” he also argued. Remember this message, in all its starkness: poverty, as the world conceives the word, defined by some arbitrary number, can be good. It can be honorable, not shameful. It can be more than ample to meet our real needs. Go ahead and read library books and play with a basketball you found on the side of the road. The wealthy are often unhappy misers. The ambitious wear themselves out in the service of empty goals.

Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. The thing that makes poverty cease to be poverty—that dreadful bogeyman of the respectable—is simple. If you can maintain this one thing, and be reasonably confident of retaining it, then the number of digits in your bank account dwindles to insignificance. That one essential quality that makes poverty a state of pleasure is cheerfulness. By all means, defend yourself against real insecurity that threatens your peace of mind, and make efforts to increase your security going into the future. But as a diagnostic tool for measuring the quality of one’s life, the quantity of one’s wealth has far less importance than the skill with which we use it, the skill with which we live. If your true needs have been satisfied, and you can reflect with pleasure on all the good you have obtained, rather than pass your days in dreaming of all the things you have yet to acquire, then consider your goal fulfilled: you have reached the ends of wealth.

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Original Text

Seneca, Letter 2.6 (Usener fragment 475):

Hodiernum hoc est, quod apud Epicurum nanctus sum; soleo enim et in aliena castra transire, non tamquam transfuga, sed tamquam explorator. “Honesta,” inquit, “res est laeta paupertas.” Illa vero non est paupertas, si laeta est. Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est. Quid enim refert, quantum illi in arca, quantum in horreis iaceat, quantum pascat aut feneret, si alieno inminet, si non adquisita sed adquirenda computat ? Quis sit divitiarum modus, quaeris ? Primus habere quod necesse est, proximus quod sat est.

Seneca, Letter 4.10 (Usener fragments 200 and 477):

Sed ut finem epistulae inponam, accipe, quod mihi hodierno die placuit. Et hoc quoque ex alienis hortulis sumptum est. “Magnae divitiae sunt lege naturae composita paupertas.” Lex autem illa naturae scis quos nobis terminos statuat? Non esurire, non sitire, non algere. Ut famem sitimque depellas, non est necesse superbis adsidere liminibus nec supercilium grave et contumeliosam etiam humanitatem pati, non est necesse maria temptare nec sequi castra; parabile est, quod natura desiderat, et adpositum. Ad supervacua sudatur. Illa sunt, quae togam conterunt, quae nos senescere sub tentorio cogunt, quae in aliena litora inpingunt. Ad manum est, quod sat est. Cui cum paupertate bene convenit, dives est.

The Epicurean advocacy for pleasure is criticized on all sides. For example:

1. High-minded types say that pleasure is a low and inadequate goal for human beings.

2. Self-denying types say that pleasure is an outright bad or misleading objective, and that stringent asceticism is the way to go. (Occasionally, some people focus exclusively on Epicureanism’s pain reduction techniques and praise of “static” pleasure and think that we are recommending avoidance of active pleasures.)

3. Conventional modern consumers say that pleasure is expensive. They like it, but think that tasting lots of pleasures requires lots of money: either you need to dedicate yourself to careerism, or you are justified in complaining that only rich people get access to the good life.

I reject all of these. I’ve previously explained the theory of what we mean by pleasure and why we think it is our most appropriate goal, but today I’d like to address such criticisms in a more practical way, because they can all be vividly refuted by the very real existence of Cheap Fun. The activities I’m about to share with you are not low, ignoble, and “piggish,” and may indeed involve high levels of aesthetic refinement and spiritual elevation. They are all actively “enjoyable,” as that word is conventionally understood, and do not derive their primary pleasantness from the avoidance of pain. And they are all cheaply and easily attainable.

These are examples of activities that practicing modern Epicureans enjoy with gusto. None of them individually constitutes the good, but we are happy to recognize them as good. In many respects, regular joyful participation in cheap fun may be a better yardstick of Epicurean alignment than abstract knowledge of the doctrines; I think there are probably many professors of philosophy who could smoothly recite the arguments of the ancient texts, but who often fail to appreciate the joys of everyday life. Today is your test: do you live like an Epicurean?

My aim today is to be very concrete and normal—I’m talking about fun and games, books and movies, projects and activities—but there are, of course, some deeper underlying threads that run through all of these surface amusements. The first is the idea of leisure: most of these activities cost very little in terms of money, but every activity requires some amount of time. If you currently have a demanding job, you can certainly still enjoy many of these in what leisure you have, but I would keep in mind that a potentially bigger pay-off of frugality is getting to work less, retire earlier, or choose an occupation that is more agreeable to you even if less lucrative. These specific kinds of fun activities are not the goal of the philosophic life; they are a tool to help enable it, while enjoying yourself along the way. If work is too demanding, don’t get stuck on thoughts of “but I don’t have time for this frivolous stuff!” Instead, consider whether you can replace any high-cost leisure activities with these cheap ones so that you can engineer a more leisurely lifestyle for your future.

The second underlying current is the idea of philia, friendship or reciprocal affection (i.e. including partners and family members). A great many activities are more enjoyable with a companion. Maybe if you opted for the most expensive rather than the cheapest versions of the below, you could boost the momentary pleasure by 10% or so (while incurring substantially greater long-term costs). But if you can do the cheap versions with an agreeable companion, then you boost the enjoyment by far, far more. Such companionship is the cheapest way of making life more pleasant.

That’s it for theory! Here are ten widely accessible sources of pleasure. I do all ten, so in this department I am a 100% A+ Epicurean. What’s your grade?

1. Books

Since you’re reading philosophy Substack, there’s a good chance you like to read, so let’s start here: in large parts of the world, most books are basically free. There are two main routes to free books. The first is the public library, which is one of the greatest inventions of modern civilization. Not only do most towns have a library, many of them let you request books from other nearby libraries. Many of them also let you request books from far-away or more specialized libraries too—have you ever used your local library’s “interlibrary loan” service? You should! Most let you suggest purchases to add to their collections. Have you ever done that? You should! For extra benefits, check the rules at your nearest couple of libraries: maybe the next town over is in a different system and gives you access to more titles if you get a card there, or maybe there is a local college that gives access to community residents.

The second key to free or nearly-free reading is that a lot of the best books are old and therefore out of copyright. Old philosophy, for instance. Or the greatest poetry, essays, and novels in the history of literature—Epicurean ally Jane Austen, for one example. You can read these completely free online, in $1 e-book editions if you prefer an e-reader (a reasonable investment), or for a dollar or two in old copies from your local thrift store.

2. Movies

On the subject of consumable cultural products, I like movies too. Overall, movies are of higher quality than TV shows and inestimably higher value than short-form streaming video, so it is more pleasurable to watch real films rather than online junk. As with books, favoring old things is a good way to raise your quality levels, since a strategy of “pick the best old things” will yield on average better results than a strategy of “watch whatever is new.” Sometimes, old movies can be found for free on YouTube or other commercial streaming platforms (with ads), but your best tool again is the library: DVDs are still a thing! Many libraries also give access to ad-free streaming platforms like Hoopla or the very excellent Kanopy, which is like a better Netflix full of high-quality classic, foreign, and independent films.

I admit that I do enjoy going to the movie theater sometimes. Most American theaters have a “discount day” once a week. In my town, tickets are $6.50 on Tuesdays at one theater, and on Wednesdays at the other. $13 is a pretty cheap date. (Skip the popcorn; enjoy a nice dinner at home.)

3. Nature

As Landor said, “Nature I loved, and, next to Nature, Art”—books and movies are fine things, but nature offers truly inexhaustible depth and variety, without the intrusion of short-sighted humans with wrongheaded ideas. Access to nature varies in different places in the world, but if you have any local woods and forests, lakes and rivers, ponds and creeks, mountains and hills, marshes or coastlines, meadows and fields, parks and gardens—enjoy them! Many towns have free parks. Here in California, the library once again steps up by offering free State Park passes for access to hundreds of miles of wilderness trails.

So go for a hike, run, bike ride, or leisurely stroll. Look at flowers, trees, birds, bugs, rocks, and stars. Learn how to recognize things. Understand where and when you’ll find them. Learn how the plants and animals live and interact. Natural history is an inexhaustible pursuit.

4. Fun and Games

My family has a couple of old-fashioned board games: a chess set and a Scrabble board made decades ago and inherited from relatives have given us many hours of innocent and costless amusement.

We also have two balls, one soccer ball and one basketball. We don’t play basketball as often, which is why my ball is still in good shape—I believe I found it abandoned on the side of the street around the year 2000. You have my permission to pick one up at a garage sale for $5 though.

5. Bikes

Speaking of nature and sports equipment, a bike is perhaps one of the most valuable items one can own. As Epicurean ally Mr. Money Mustache often evangelizes, bikes can easily save you money, improve your health, and bring you joy when you use them to replace local car trips. If there are a lot of cars in your neighborhood and biking is not optimally pleasant right outside your door, you should probably do it anyways—a lot of the hesitation is often a matter of habituation. The first time you drove a car in traffic was a little nerve-racking too! You get used to it. In the long-run, prioritizing bikeability when choosing your home location can have a very big hedonic payoff. It is really nice to not have to drive every day.

6. Exercise and Fitness

Speaking of nature, sports equipment, and bikes—let’s talk about exercise. Some people spend rather incredible amounts of money on fitness classes, gym memberships, or complicated equipment for their athletic hobbies. This isn’t necessary. The things I mentioned already are basically free—walk or run outside, get a ball and mess around with friends and family, ride a bike.

Personally, I find getting stronger to be an enjoyable and inexpensive hobby. (It also reduces the long-term pains of ill-health and limited physical function.) Calisthenics—push-ups, pull-ups, and other bodyweight exercises—are basically free. A few simple weights (dumbbells or kettlebells, for instance) can also be a sound investment, as they never break or become obsolete. If you get them used on Craigslist or something, and then outgrow them one day, you can accordingly usually resell them for around the same price you acquired them for.

7. Travel Less Far and More Cheaply

Many people spend large amounts of money on travel. The best way to reduce this, of course, is to travel less. Or at least to travel much less far—have you really comprehensively explored your own neck of the woods? Thoreau used to jokingly but seriously note that he had travelled a good deal in Concord. And he was going mostly by foot:

If you have not yet walked every trail within an hour’s drive of your home (ideally in every season), then I would start there.

Of course, if you must travel more distantly, there are cheaper ways and more expensive ways of doing things. The tactics associated with cheap travel are legion. One simple tactic, for example: don’t pay cash for plane tickets. Credit cards—including ones with no annual fee—are always offering sign-up bonuses that can be converted to airline miles. If you’re going to fly anyways, these bonuses can accrue at a rate of around 15% of your spending (i.e. spend $3000 and get points worth around $450 in plane tickets). We fly occasionally, mostly when visiting family, but we try not to do so at a faster rate than we can earn the free miles with our usual spending and a periodic new card. (Of course, this technique is counterproductive if you spend extra to earn the bonuses, take extra trips you wouldn’t have taken, or pay interest on your purchases, but if you are a prudent Epicurean, you will not fall for such traps.)

Think creatively when you travel. If you can, stay with family. If you can, stay somewhere with a kitchen, so you can cook your own food. Go camping. Consider less expensive places rather than the typical tourist traps. My wife and I visited rural Utah this year and had a pretty jolly time. A meal for two at the nicest restaurant in town came to about $35, while mostly we stocked up at the region’s Walmart Supercenter like real Americans. I tromped around and saw lots of trees and birds and animals that I hadn’t seen before. My wife drew a lot. I saw this cool woolly mammoth skeleton at a free museum. Stuff like that.

8. Cooking and Other Domestic Insourcing

Admittedly, travel still tends to cost something. Other enjoyable activities may have a negative cost—they can save you money. The most obvious cases are those of “domestic insourcing,” where you take on tasks that the less frugal pay others to do for them. Many people enjoy working in their gardens, fixing things around the home, or taking care of their own bikes and cars, for instance. You get to learn, feel competent, and do things just the way you want them—why pay someone else to deprive you of those satisfactions?

One prominent example of this is cooking. Some people frequently eat in restaurants or get take-out. This is expensive. For many people, cooking itself is enjoyable. Many people also get pleasure from presenting their friends and family with something they made themselves. Most people enjoy eating a home-cooked meal more than a restaurant meal of equivalent cost (i.e. the most basic kitchen skills will give you something better than a fast-food meal, while real high-level culinary skill can get very pricey).

Division of labor with family members can help you find the most pleasure-enhancing arrangement. My wife likes cooking more than me, while I derive greater intrinsic satisfaction from a tidy home, so she does most of the cooking, while I do most of the dishwashing and other cleaning.

9. Learning

Gaining knowledge is pleasurable. I’ve already alluded to a few ways of doing this. Read a book from the library. Consult the internet, YouTube, or a chatbot and learn how to cook something, fix something, or perform some other household task. This is satisfying.

More structured learning from qualified experts is not in itself expensive, although the high prices of full academic credentials can be. As a philosophy Substack reader, you may be drawn to more bookish fields of knowledge. Here are two tips. First, use community colleges. In California, $138 gets you access to a full semester of an expert teacher, curriculum and equipment, and a community of learners. In my state, we have a website (cvc.edu), where you can search every online class offered at every community college in the whole state, if your local college doesn’t offer what you would like to learn. I think that’s a pretty great value, and so I’ve taken classes on everything from botany and accounting to Italian and art history.

Second, if you have a full four-year college or university nearby, see if you can informally audit classes for free. This strategy can be particularly valuable for those interested in the classics, since these departments are generally shrinking and often have extra capacity. That’s how I learned Greek: I was living in a college town, I sent emails to some professors, and they all said “please join us.” I took six full classes while I lived there, going through their whole introductory Greek sequence and multiple upper-division Greek and Latin classes, with a price tag of $0.

10. Creation

The implication of “pleasure is for pigs” critiques is that pleasure is inherently crude and unrefined. I don’t think this is particularly true of the examples above—reading classic novels and learning ancient Greek are not too popular among pigs—but nowhere is it more false than when it comes to active creative endeavors. Play or write music. Draw or paint. Write.

These pleasures take some work, but they offer lots of challenge and progressive skill development—that kind of difficulty enhances, rather than offsets pleasure. In many cases, such hobbies are basically free: pen and paper, or access to a basic word processor, are not hard to obtain. Not uncommonly, they are income-positive. Maybe only in a small way: perhaps you can make some little crafty items rather than buying all of your Christmas and birthday gifts. Maybe in a slightly bigger way: sell your art online or in a local gallery, write for your local paper or on Substack, teach your skills to others. Writing my bird books didn’t make me rich, but the process brought me more satisfying hours than any act of passive consumption. That is pleasure too.

When it comes to the conventional pleasures and pastimes of modern society, this is roughly what my life looks like. I have both deeper interests and more casual hobbies. I engage in several of these activities each day, in greater or lesser degrees (reading, writing, and dishwashing are pretty constant). This is not a particularly expensive life, nor a piggish one, nor an empty one. It is a life full of many pleasures, because the good is easy to obtain.

Principal Doctrine 27:

Principal Doctrine 28:

Commentary

As a philosophy of egoistic hedonism, Epicureanism grounds a large part of its enthusiasm for friendship in practical benefit. Friends are not merely people with whom we like to sit and watch the game on the weekend; they are people whom we can trust to be there when we need help. Looking at some other texts will help flesh out what Epicurus has in mind:

Importantly, emphasizing the importance of “utility” or “help” does not imply a constant calculation of material advantage, as disingenuous critics like Cicero claim. Epicurean friendship is grounded in practical benefit, but it is not oriented around maximizing the amount of money, goods, or services you can extract from others. Instead, feeling confident of assistance in the case of real need is a kind of guarantee and indicator of the solidity of the relationship: if a friend wouldn’t help you in the case of sickness, imprisonment, or poverty, then that is a weaker and less valuable kind of bond. What we are after is not stuff—it is “confidence about the future.”

Given this background knowledge, we can evaluate the claims of today’s two Principal Doctrines more fully.

Some modern readers will encounter a phrase like “blessed state” and find it decidedly unmodern and hyperbolic (perhaps even more so if translated as “bliss” or “blessedness”). Many people have friends, but few people feel like complete bliss has thereby been achieved. The first thing that I think you need to do to properly calibrate your reading of this maxim is recognize that while, yes, Epicurus is very enthusiastic about the merits of friendship, he is also very insistent that the requisites for a completely happy life are few. Remember what he said about blessedness in the Letter to Menoeceus:

Epicurus is constantly reminding us that we don’t need most of the things we think we need. The truly necessary desires are few, and very achievable. When it comes to making sure you won’t starve to death or die of cold exposure, a few reliable friends do indeed provide a huge boost to your security. This limited nature of the problems we are aiming to forestall is indicated in the second of today’s Principal Doctrines:

You may remember the doctrine about the short duration of pain from back in PD 4. This is a claim that frequently arouses skepticism among non-Epicureans when stated bluntly. Even I would hesitate to tersely assert that “pain never lasts long” without further explanation and qualification. But I think that such explanation and qualification is quite available, if we are interested in a good-faith search for therapeutically valuable advice. Consider a few suggestions:

1. If you don’t like the seeming hyperbole of nothing terrible lasting for very long, simply think of it as “very few terrible things last for very long”. The majority of sources of pain clearly don’t. You stub your toe, break a wine glass, lose some money—and you get over it. Advice that applies 99% of the time is good advice. (You may set it aside if you have some rare medical condition that causes immense pain for many years with no way of amelioration.)

2. What constitutes a “long” time is very subjective and context-dependent. Some things are not resolved in minutes, but are resolved in days or weeks. For those kinds of stressors, I agree with Epicurus’ point: we should keep in mind that they will be over soon. For things that last for years, we should think about how to change our situation and resolve them. Usually, we can. Epicurus would agree with that as well.

3. Note here that Epicurus says that “nothing terrible” lasts for a long time. This doesn’t deny the empirical reality that people can cause themselves pain over a long period of time. They do! But the objective source of their pain is usually not equivalently enduring. People suffer from mentally-created envy, anxiety, fear, and depression. These things can be remedied, and Epicurus offers help for them.

The point about bad things not lasting a long time boils down to this: the wiser you are, the quicker you shake things off. Realize your causes of pain or sadness are finite. This mindset will make you feel better than if you spend your time thinking up reasons why your current sources of sadness are so big and imposing and seemingly permanent. Don’t be like the sad, ruminating kids. Write it in your heart: the wiser you are, the quicker you shake things off.

So, given that the typical long-lasting sources of pain (existential dread, religious guilt, unsatisfiable desires for impossible objects, etc.) are all ultimately insubstantial things with no independent existence, which you can cast aside as soon as you start thinking reasonably, the remaining sources of disquiet are indeed things which friends can help a great deal with. What external, objectively existing problems would really be an obstacle to happiness? Starvation. Homelessness. A dangerous environment. Perhaps loneliness—the lack of friends itself. All of these can be alleviated by friends worthy of the name.

There are two more points I’d like to make. First, I think a large part of the gap between Epicurean enthusiasm for friendship and the relatively muted response from some readers stems from confusion about the word itself. Greek philia (φιλία) is commonly rendered “friendship,” because this is on average the closest English equivalent. But the Greek concept is broader. In some Epicurean contexts, it might be something more like “fellowship,” like in Lord of the Rings—you know you can count on Legolas to protect the ring-bearer, but it’s not exactly because they are “friends” as we typically use the word.

Even more importantly, philia includes all family relationships: parents and children, siblings, and spouses (in their companionable, rather than erotic, dimensions). “Reciprocal affection” might work in English (I think this is probably the more accurate general translation, it’s just rather clunky). There is no reason to think that the Epicureans were dismissive of the value of such family ties. We have fragments of an affection letter from Epicurus to his mother. His brothers were members of the Garden. Epicureans—unlike all the other ancient philosophical schools—were known for their philosophical couples: Metrodorus and Leontion, Leonteus and Themista. So, if you think that Epicurus overrates “friendship,” and that you are getting along just fine without crucial contributions from unrelated friends, make sure you extend his arguments to all of your relationships with other people. I don’t know anyone who is happy with zero people they can count on in their lives.

Second, talk about the “insurance” value of Epicurean friendship might incline one to ask, “what about real insurance?” People often have health insurance, home insurance, car insurance. They also have access to government social safety nets: old-age pensions and healthcare, unemployment and disability payments. These kinds of benefits overlap with those that Epicurus praises in friendship. In much of the modern world, medical bills and houses can cost so much that it is hard for a local network of friends to absorb those costs if disaster strikes—our larger scale of political organization is good for that. We should be grateful for such things and take comfort in the security they add to our lives.

On the other hand, of course, these systems are colder and more bureaucratic. They don’t feel as nice. They don’t come with the ancillary pleasures of company and conversation; they come with paperwork. Such modern schemes of insurance are therefore supplements, not replacements, for friends and family.

So, how should you live by these rules? First of all, remember to cultivate this sort of solid, helpful friendship, including spouses and family members. Contrary to some shallow readings of Epicurus, that just see the word “friend” and assume this entails a blanket advocacy for gregarious sociability, I think the implication of Epicurean practicality is actually that you should deprioritize your efforts at socializing that don’t seem promising for real, trustworthy, dependable relationships. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be agreeable—Epicurus says that you should. But the right goal for a given relationship is not always friendship. Sometimes it is neutrality. Sometimes it is avoidance.

Second, remember that Epicurean friendship does not mean that you need to constantly evaluate current and prospective relationships through a calculating lens of what you will actually “get out of” these people. Even scholars get that wrong. To clarify what Seneca said about help in the case of illness and poverty: it’s not as much about having someone sit by you in illness as it is about knowing that someone exists who would.

You may or may not need to call upon your friends and family for rescue from dire misfortune. Hopefully you won’t! But if you never need great assistance, that doesn’t mean that the friendship “didn’t pencil out” for an Epicurean—it means that your life is working out well, and the fact that you had a backup network of affectionate support increased your mental comfort.

This mental aspect points to perhaps the biggest point, our third: worry less about accumulating a greater quantity of friends, and spend more time relishing the ones you do have. People worry too much. Do you have a friend or two? Good! Even in our comparatively isolated age, I suspect people who say they don’t are typically underrating their networks. Do you have parents? Do you have children? Do you have siblings? Do you have aunts and uncles? Do you have a spouse or partner? Does your spouse or partner have parents, siblings, aunts, uncles? If you lose your job, lose your savings, or lose your home, these people won’t abandon you.

Especially, that is, if you don’t abandon them. This is the last piece of Epicurean friendship that is often overlooked. Uncharitable readers think it is all about “self-interest” when Epicurus “praises friendship.” But he isn’t simply saying, “go get friends.” Just as often, he’s insisting that we need to be friends. Help others. Give them the assurance that you would help them should they ever be in need. And thus you will form a web of trust that leaves you blessedly free from fear.

Cultivate dependable friendships, including with family and partners.

Don’t focus on near-term utility. Focus on who you can trust.

Appreciate the friends and family you have, and relax in the security they give you.

Be someone others can count on.

Explore the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.

Original Text

27: ὧν ἡ σοφία παρασκευάζεται εἰς τὴν τοῦ ὅλου βίου μακαριότητα πολὺ μέγιστόν ἐστιν ἡ τῆς φιλίας κτῆσις.

28: ἡ αὐτὴ γνώμη θαρρεῖν τε ἐποίησεν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μηθὲν αἰώνιον εἶναι δεινὸν μηδὲ πολυχρόνιον καὶ τὴν ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς ὡρισμένοις ἀσφάλειαν φιλίας μάλιστα κατεῖδε συντελουμένην.

There is a bit of a strange disconnect when an advocate for Epicureanism encounters the rest of the philosophy blogging world. Philosophers debate subtle terminology, the interpretation of obscure texts, and Hard Problems. And I do some of that as well. But the biggest thing that separates Epicureanism from other philosophical schools is not our views on the possibility of knowledge, free will, or the like, but our insistence that philosophy is not the most important thing for the happiness of one’s life. The most important thing is prudence, also known as practical wisdom or phronesis.

In today’s edition of Epicurean Allies, I’m pulling our focus back towards this vital, practical center. Philosophy blogs can provide some interesting food for thought. But I’d be lying if I said that any formal “philosophy” blog has had as much positive influence on my life as Mr. Money Mustache, one of the leading online presences of the Financial Independence movement in the early 2010s (he has tapered down his activity significantly in recent years). There are various flavors of Financial Independence gurus out in the world, but “Mustachianism” emphasizes things like:

• Frugality, partly through smart shopping, but largely through reduced consumerism

• Replace consumption with productive, life-enhancing activities:

  • Ride bikes, lift heavy things, don’t be fat, and spend time outside for your health

  • Insource domestic tasks so that you increase your skills and enhance your feeling of both technical capability and general life competence

  • Instead of reading anxiety-producing news or trivial social media, read library books and actually learn something useful

• Mathematically analyze your spending decisions (consumer purchases, transportation and housing choices) and investment choices (he mostly advocates for low-cost index investing)

• Do all of this by adopting a mindset of triumphant growth (or as he tends to refer to it, “badassity”), constantly celebrating your increasing knowledge, capability, strength, and financial security as you leave behind a life of unreflective inefficiency

I think this is all completely compatible with Epicureanism. Many of these topics are obviously and explicitly present in the ancient texts, where Epicurus regularly champions frugality and emphasizes the incomparable value of careful prudential analysis. Since Mr. Money Mustache is more concerned with action than theory, however, his articles often expand on what is implicit in those ancient texts. For obvious reasons, Epicurus can’t give you specific advice on choosing a car, shopping for insurance, and formulating your investment strategy. But if he were alive today, I think he very much would want you to think carefully about these decisions.

To clarify what this practical fleshing-out of modern Epicureanism might look like, let me highlight a few articles chosen from among MMM’s more philosophical entries:

Luxury is Just Another Weakness

Mr. Money Mustache once reflected on an unusually fancy business trip he went on:

“I am Mr. Bigshot,” I thought to myself. “I sit in bigass cars, with muscular V-8 engines which waste huge amounts of gas while people drive me around. I sit upon polished strips of sliced-up cows, dyed and stitched together by workers who earn far less than me. When I get to the expensive hotel, I will be presented with an internationally-sourced meal prepared by chefs, and a large private suite, while others bow down and wait and pay me for the priceless solutions I deliver from my powerful mind. THIS is the treatment I deserve! Why have I been taking the bus and riding my bike and setting up tents all these years?”

Humans are silly. We get used to certain luxuries and then we think they constitute our self-worth. They don’t. Instead, we should view them—as Epicurus suggested—as something that is most enjoyable as an occasional contrast to a generally simple, easy lifestyle. Mr. Money Mustache says the same thing: luxury is a drug, and taking drugs constantly is a really idiotic strategy for life satisfaction.

But to seek to constantly maximize luxury in all areas of your life to the limits of what you can afford? Pure insanity. Just as it would be insane for me to say, “Since I can afford it, I need to start taking drugs for as many of my waking hours as possible. Alternating shots of espresso and fine scotch all day, with hits from the bong every hour on the hour!”

That’s roughly how I imagine a lecture by Epicurus sounded to his contemporaries.

Read “Luxury is Just Another Weakness”

It’s All About the Safety Margin

A lot of people keep working and working because they have no clear idea of financial “enough.” Some pick an arbitrarily high number of dollars or an arbitrarily high number of years, and then keep accumulating funds until they reach that point. Others think vaguely about such a number, view it as impossibly far off, and therefore never make consistent efforts to achieve it.

The Mustachian/Epicurean advice insists on sober reasoning that comes to definite conclusions. If you want to achieve financial independence, you need a rational approach, which might look something like:

1. Make some concrete calculations as to what you really need. For instance, follow the FI mantra of “accumulate 25 times my annual spending in productive investments,” i.e. “the 4% rule.”

2. Make your life choices in light of that overarching structure. For instance, “If my annual spending were 25% lower, I would have a higher savings rate and would need to save 25% less money to retire—restraining my spending would move me towards my long-term hedonic preference and would therefore be the most satisfying choice.”

3. Then relax in the security of your solid reasoning.

Many people, of course, struggle psychologically to refrain from worrying. Compulsive worriers sometimes mistakenly think, therefore, that Epicureans advocate a life of miserable, penny-pinching scroogery as they constantly worry about money. But we don’t. Pierre Hadot knows it. Mr. Money Mustache does too. The Epistachian life recommends that you build an appropriate level of safety margin into your life, then appreciate it so that you can stop worrying.

Read “It’s All About the Safety Margin”

Frugality is the New Fanciness

The “old fanciness” was conspicuous consumption. Throughout most of human history, high consumption was a reliable indicator of higher social status. Today, however, we have a historically unique situation: people of normal financial means and social standing can also consume at very high levels. In many contemporary cases, however, the chase for visible consumption goes hand-in-hand with worse financial acumen, as people dig themselves into debt or tether themselves to unnecessarily long or stressful careers. Among wiser Mustachian/Epicurean peers, therefore, the absence of bloated consumption is a better signal of intelligence and worth.

When newcomers stumble across the Mr. Money Mustache blog, they are immediately excited by the idea of early retirement and a lifetime of freedom. But then they are immediately dismayed when they realize that to earn this freedom, they will need to spend much less money than they earn, for several years.

“Dammit!”, they say. “I want the reward, but I really don’t want that hardship and struggle that it takes to get there. I will be viewed as a lesser person among my peers if I dare to embrace such frugality!”

Well guess what? You can now drop your fears of looking like a loser, because things have changed. If you haven’t heard the word, here it is: Frugality is the New Fanciness.

One of the big successes of Mustachianism is to create a (sub-)culture in which frugality is not merely seen as “prudent,” but is seen as smart and admirable. It’s entirely possible for that to become the accepted value in a given social sphere. That’s how it works among Epicureans, who emphasize communal philosophizing.

Imagine that revelatory change. Many people are drawn to consumer purchases because they think it will give them increased social standing. They buy fancy cars, fancy clothes, fancy houses. But what if every one of those purchases just made you look stupider in the eyes of your family, friends, and respected teachers? That’s a big part of the value of joining an Epicurean or Mustachian “cult,” even if only virtually. It changes whose good opinion you strive to earn.

Read “Frugality is the New Fanciness”

Conclusion

These are just three, semi-arbitrary examples from an impressive back catalog. There are other pieces of highly Epicurean theorizing, such as Mr. Money Mustache’s take on hedonic adaptation (and “How Can it Turn You Into a Sucka”) or his advice not to worry about politics and other things beyond our circle of control. There are more practical pieces, such as articles on keeping your grocery costs down by refusing to buy overpriced things (“Grocery Shopping With Your Middle Finger”) or on the basic math of early retirement. I encourage you to explore. If you have consumer debt, dislike your job, or consider retirement an impossible dream, then it’s very likely that the Mustachian advice will have a greater positive impact on your life than anything you will find in, say, Plato, Kant, or Existentialism.

Personally, I feel I’ve been getting a little too exclusively technical myself in recent months. My stated goal when starting up Untroubled was to offer “Epicurean ethics for modern times.” I personally have a strong scholarly bent, and often feel the lure of poring over the old books for subtle details. This is harmless enough in itself, but shouldn’t be mistaken for the full Epicurean lifestyle. Going forward, I intend to let a bit more of the Mustachian spirit out—merging the practical with the theoretical, the irreverent with the serious. Epicureanism is not merely a philosophy to be studied in classrooms. It’s a philosophy to be lived.

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Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, X.135–138

With him weeping and crying out, the rocks were moaning,
Locris’ mountain peaks and the heights of Euboea.

Commentary

Epicurus advocates for the pursuit of pleasure. Everyone knows that. But there are constant misapprehensions regarding what he means by that seemingly simple word. In today’s extremely helpful passage from Diogenes Laertius, we’ll touch on all the big distinctions: active vs. static, physical vs. mental, positive vs. negative, psychologically all-encompassing vs. arbitrarily restrictive. If you want to pursue pleasure successfully, these are crucial principles to understand.

The passage above comes from Diogenes Laertius’ biography of Epicurus, and is composed of an assemblage of semi-random paraphrase and quotation from various Epicurean texts, inserted between the Letter to Menoeceus and the Principal Doctrines. (In two previous installments, I translated and discussed the section describing the Epicurean “wise man” that comes before the Letter to Menoeceus.) Let’s dive in.

This opening passage demonstrates the haphazard approach to composition characteristic of Diogenes Laertius, inserting a random observation on divination into an unrelated context before announcing the end of the ethical discussion, somewhat prematurely. (It is possible that our manuscripts have been distorted by copyist errors as well.) In any case, as one would expect of the materialist Epicureans, prophecy is not taken seriously—the modern popularity of astrology and continued financial viability of psychic mediums suggests the world at large is still catching up with Epicurean good sense. The phrase stating that events are “ultimately unimportant to us” is a tiny bit ambiguous in the original1, but I think must mean something generally analogous to Principal Doctrine 16:

Even if we could know the outcome of various future events, this information is of very limited importance to a wise and prudent person, who generally arranges his life in such a way that his happiness is not dependent on any one particular event turning out in one way or another.

Here we have the famous distinction between active (or “kinetic”) and static (or “katestematic”) pleasures. Although the concept is not explicitly elaborated in any of our longer surviving works by Epicurus himself, it points to a major point of differentiation between the Epicureans and the other prominent hedonist school, the Cyrenaics. The Cyrenaics are roughly what common prejudice thinks the Epicureans are: they advocate for collecting lots of positive physical pleasures, consider the absence of active pleasure to be a neutral rather than positive state, and advise focusing on the present. As I’ve discussed before, the Epicurean idea of pleasure is much different from this kind of clichéd hedonism: we place far more value on the “static” pleasure of being free from pain and distress than on maximizing the frequency of titillating experiences.

Additionally, Epicurus considers mental pleasure and pain to be more important than physical pleasure and pain. Here, this differentiation is attributed to temporal scale: mental distress can cause us pain in remembrance or anticipation, while an episode of physical pain is intrinsically limited to the present. (We can remember past physical pain, or worry about future physical pain, but those experiences are themselves mental.) Elsewhere, Epicurus often emphasizes how simple the actual needs of the body are: “not to be thirsty, not to be hungry, not to be cold” is all a healthy body needs to alleviate its pains. Freeing ourselves from mental disturbances like fear or unfulfillable desire is often the more complex process. Physical suffering is therefore both less severe for the typical person, and a less pressing philosophical problem on the population level (outside of times of terrible famine or the like).

With him weeping and crying out, the rocks were moaning,
Locris’ mountain peaks and the heights of Euboea.

This is a fairly clear, though brief, statement of the Epicurean belief in psychological hedonism: we consider that all creatures necessarily seek pleasure and avoid pain. At a fundamental level, this isn’t a matter of choice. What does vary and cause differences in our choices are our ideas about what will bring us pleasure and pain. Epicurean philosophy is therefore largely occupied with evaluating what courses of action seem empirically more likely to secure our physical needs while avoiding unnecessary distress. This is the broadest possible conception of “pleasure,” one which drives some people crazy (Cicero, for instance), but which has had some prominent philosophical supporters (such as John Stuart Mill).

The quoted lines about Heracles (Hercules) come from Sophocles and don’t add much. (This is probably a Diogenes example, rather than an Epicurus example.) You can read a short summary of the story of the death of Heracles if you like; I guess the point in Diogenes Laertius’ mind is that not even the greatest heroes can choose not to feel pain when their body is smothered in Hydra blood. Which is true, though perhaps not the most relevant parallel for the average person.

A practical application of psychological hedonism: How could it be that people choose the virtues “for the sake of” pleasure? To many, this seems obviously false. Doesn’t someone choose to be diligent, even though laziness would be more pleasant? Doesn’t someone choose to be honest, even though lying would bring advantages? According to the Epicureans, this is a biased, inaccurate, and unhelpful way of understanding our motivations. Instead, we always choose what seems to us like the most pleasurable path.

Sometimes, we may “act virtuously” while being well-aware that we are choosing our own advantage. Maybe a kid cleans his room not because of any sense that it is “the right thing to do,” but because he knows he will be punished if he does not—cleaning the room seems less painful. Sometimes, however, fundamentally similar social pressures may be less obvious. Maybe someone will choose to tell the truth not because they know for sure that a self-interested lie would be detected, but because of a vague and inchoate sense of unease that they feel when they consider lying. Many traditional moralists like to downplay this complex web of motivations at play within us; most individuals, when they do the “right” thing, like to claim that such self-interested, prudential speculation never crossed their mind, and that they acted out of a pure commitment to virtuous behavior. But how can we ever disentangle such entirely interior impulses? Even those who hesitate least, who spend the least time dwelling on possible downsides to misbehavior, are not necessarily the most “virtuous” in any noble sense. They may just be well-trained goody-two-shoes who have developed extreme levels of timidity about “breaking the rules.” Epicureans act as virtuously as anyone. We just don't get all stuck up about it.

All in all, the Epicurean take is pragmatic: don’t worry about dressing up some of your motivations as “good” and others as “bad.” Instead, just practice recognizing how going with the socially-approved flow of virtuous behavior is generally the least troublesome, least stressful way to behave. Doing something “wrong” is highly unlikely to get you anything truly necessary to your happiness, while it is essentially certain to degrade your peace of mind. “Virtue,” therefore, is “inseparable from pleasure.”

It is not entirely clear why food would be more separable, as the last line says—we really do need to eat!—but one idea is that this is referring to specific foods we eat. While we can cast aside burgers and fries without losing the static pleasure of sated hunger, we cannot abandon the virtues in the same way: that inevitably harms our tranquility.

And that’s a wrap. From Diogenes Laertius, we’ve now covered the entirety of the Letter to Menoeceus and the Letter to Idomeneus, the Principal Doctrines are well underway, and the additional ethical material has all been translated and discussed. While a few passages from the scientific letters (to Herodotus and Pythocles, also included in Diogenes Laertius) may merit inclusion in our ethical discussions at some point, future translations will shift increasingly toward later writers. We’re not done with the master himself—various essentially verbatim maxims have come down through other sources—but other followers of the Epicurean tradition will also help to fill in the picture of how we can live well.

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Original Text

[135] Μαντικὴν δ᾽ ἅπασαν ἐν ἄλλοις ἀναιρεῖ, ὡς καὶ ἐν τῇ μικρᾷ ἐπιτομῇ. καί φησι: “μαντικὴ οὖσα ἀνύπαρκτος, εἰ δὲ καὶ ὑπαρκτή, οὐδὲν παρ’ ἡμᾶς ἡγῇ τὰ γινόμενα.” Τοσαῦτα καὶ περὶ τῶν βιωτικῶν: καὶ ἐπὶ πλείω διείλεκται ἀλλαχόθι.

[136] Διαφέρεται δὲ πρὸς τοὺς Κυρηναϊκοὺς περὶ τῆς ἡδονῆς: οἱ μὲν γὰρ τὴν καταστηματικὴν οὐκ ἐγκρίνουσι, μόνην δὲ τὴν ἐν κινήσει: ὁ δὲ ἀμφότερα <τὰ γένη> ψυχῆς καὶ σώματος, ὥς φησιν ἐν τῷ Περὶ αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς καὶ ἐν τῷ Περὶ τέλους καὶ ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ Περὶ βίων καὶ ἐν τῇ πρὸς τοὺς ἐν Μυτιλήνῃ φίλους ἐπιστολῇ. ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ Διογένης ἐν τῇ ἑπτακαιδεκάτῃ τῶν Ἐπιλέκτων καὶ Μητρόδωρος ἐν τῷ Τιμοκράτει λέγουσιν οὕτω: νοουμένης δὲ ἡδονῆς τῆς τε κατὰ κίνησιν καὶ τῆς καταστηματικῆς. ὁ δ᾽ Ἐπίκουρος ἐν τῷ Περὶ αἱρέσεων οὕτω λέγει: “ἡ μὲν γὰρ ἀταραξία καὶ ἀπονία καταστηματικαί εἰσιν ἡδοναί: ἡ δὲ χαρὰ καὶ ἡ εὐφροσύνη κατὰ κίνησιν ἐνεργείᾳ βλέπονται.”

[137] Ἔτι πρὸς τοὺς Κυρηναϊκούς: οἱ μὲν γὰρ χείρους τὰς σωματικὰς ἀλγηδόνας τῶν ψυχικῶν, κολάζεσθαι γοῦν τοὺς ἁμαρτάνοντας σώματι: ὁ δὲ τὰς ψυχικάς. τὴν γοῦν σάρκα τὸ παρὸν μόνον χειμάζειν, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν καὶ τὸ παρελθὸν καὶ τὸ παρὸν καὶ τὸ μέλλον. οὕτως οὖν καὶ μείζονας ἡδονὰς εἶναι τῆς ψυχῆς.

ἀποδείξει δὲ χρῆται τοῦ τέλος εἶναι τὴν ἡδονὴν τῷ τὰ ζῷα ἅμα τῷ γεννηθῆναι τῇ μὲν εὐαρεστεῖσθαι, τῷ δὲ πόνῳ προσκρούειν φυσικῶς καὶ χωρὶς λόγου. αὐτοπαθῶς οὖν φεύγομεν τὴν ἀλγηδόνα: ἵνα καὶ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς καταβιβρωσκόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ χιτῶνος βοᾷ

δακρύων ἰύζων: ἀμφὶ δ᾽ ἔστενον πέτραι
Λοκρῶν τ᾽ ὄρειοι πρῶνες Εὐβοίας τ᾽ ἄκραι.

[138] Διὰ δὲ τὴν ἡδονὴν καὶ τὰς ἀρετὰς αἱρεῖσθαι, οὐ δι᾽ αὑτάς, ὥσπερ τὴν ἰατρικὴν διὰ τὴν ὑγίειαν, καθά φησι καὶ Διογένης ἐν τῇ εἰκοστῇ τῶν Ἐπιλέκτων, ὃς καὶ διαγωγὴν λέγει τὴν ἀγωγήν. ὁ δ᾽ Ἐπίκουρος καὶ ἀχώριστόν φησι τῆς ἡδονῆς τὴν ἀρετὴν μόνην: τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα χωρίζεσθαι, οἷον βρωτά.

Καὶ φέρε οὖν δὴ νῦν τὸν κολοφῶνα, ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις, ἐπιθῶμεν τοῦ παντὸς συγγράμματος καὶ τοῦ βίου τοῦ φιλοσόφου, τὰς Κυρίας αὐτοῦ δόξας παραθέμενοι καὶ ταύταις τὸ πᾶν σύγγραμμα κατακλείσαντες, τέλει χρησάμενοι τῇ τῆς εὐδαιμονίας ἀρχῇ.

Cicero’s On Moral Ends (De Finibus) is an important source for Epicurean ethics, despite the fact that Cicero views our school quite unsympathetically. The work is in dialogue form, with the first of its five books largely dedicated to a speech by the Epicurean spokesman Torquatus. This passage is arguably the most extended, continuous exposition of Epicurean ethics that we have, and is generally accurate and well-informed. Book 2 of On Moral Ends, however, is where Cicero offers his own criticisms of Epicurean ethics. He has a lot to say.

I think it’s helpful to read both one’s philosophical allies and critics, so today I’ll be diving into all the things Cicero thinks are deficient in the Epicurean ethical system. Cicero is famously a man who loved to hear himself talk, so I won’t be able to address every one of his complaints. (They come pretty flying out at a pretty furious pace for about 40 pages, in response to Torquatus’ 12 pages of exposition.) What I’ve done instead is to pick out ten of his arguments that seem to be both significant to Cicero and routinely encountered among Epicurean critics down to the present day. If people have found the same things objectionable for 2000 years, then those points should probably be carefully considered and addressed.

At the end of Book 2, Torquatus says that he would like to consult Philodemus and Siro before responding to Cicero. Unfortunately, we don’t get to hear how contemporary Epicurean teachers would have answered these charges. We’ll have to make do with me.

1. Pleasure and absence of pain are different.

I would concede that in normal, casual use, “pleasure” and “absence of pain” typically refer to different things. However, it is very common for philosophers to use words in more precise and specific ways than we customarily do. Even Cicero acknowledges this when it suits him: “Philosophy is the art of life, and it cannot take ordinary language as the basis for its discussions,” he writes in the introduction to his account of Stoicism (3.4). To be a meaningful objection, then, I think one would have to argue that Epicurus’ deemphasizing of this distinction (he certainly still uses both the words “pleasure” and “removal of pain” when differentiation is useful) is pointless, confused, or unhelpful.

Personally, I think Epicurus’ point is a good one, and far from totally divorced from common sense. People enjoy receiving “agreeable stimulus,” certainly. But they also enjoy the alleviation of pain. The two phenomena often are joined in a single decision-making context, from the most simple (we stop putting pleasant-tasting food in our mouths if the discomfort of overeating becomes apparent) to the more long-term (we do unpleasant diet and exercise in order to access the pleasures of health, fitness, or feeling more attractive). It would be very strange to say that people should only consider one side or the other of such equations, and so putting pain down as a negative quantity of pleasure has become a standard philosophical practice running through the entire Utilitarian tradition.

2. Psychological hedonism is a bunch of hooey. Contrary to Epicurus, infants and animals don’t always seek pleasure, and neither do mature humans.

Epicurus liked to demonstrate that pleasure (and the avoidance of pain) were universal and innate objects of pursuit by pointing to infants and animals. Cicero doesn’t buy it, but instead asserts that infants are motivated by a distinguishable phenomenon of self-preservation, while numerous animals demonstrate supposedly altruistic behavior. As with the previous criticism, such arguments reflect Cicero’s desire to reduce “pleasure” down to the most narrow usage of common language. Here, however, he portrays this as an objection to the substance of Epicurus’ doctrines, rather than just a quibble over his use of words. In reality, it’s still the latter.

One could say that “self-preservation” is a goal of evolution. Epicurus wouldn’t argue with that. But he would argue that sensations of pleasure and pain are the mechanism by which we are steered to self-preserving behaviors. If an infant feels pain, it cries. This brings assistance, which aids self-preservation, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t responding to pain. An infant drinks milk because it’s pleasurable. This is undoubtedly good for its self-preservation, but again pleasure was the signal. Animals protect their young. This is good for ensuring their genetic survival, but they aren’t calculating that benefit—they feel a shock of painful fear when a predator threatens their offspring and feel an urge to alleviate that emotion.

Cicero’s citation of a Roman soldier facing certain death is responding to an earlier exchange with Torquatus, the Epicurean spokesman of the dialogue. Torquatus explicitly addressed such scenarios, arguing that instances of risky military valor must have offered counterbalancing pleasures such as the prospect of glory or avoiding the shame of not doing one’s duty (1.35). Cicero the writer is therefore aware of the basic structure of the Epicurean response, but insists that glory and shame are inherently non-hedonistic motives. He prefers to view such behaviors as the product of self-evident, intrinsic virtue. I think this introduces far more questionable premises compared to an evenhanded comparison of psychological urges.

More on the virtues below. More on psychological hedonism here.

3. Epicurus gets even basic, obvious things about pleasure wrong. Everyone knows that longer periods of pleasure are better and that more expensive things give more pleasure.

For some reason, Cicero is happy to grant (in the same passage) the Stoic contention that once complete virtue is achieved, it gains nothing from temporal extension. I don’t know why he is unable to grasp Epicurus making a similar distinction between the magnitude of pleasure and the duration of pleasure. We consider it an inevitable part of human nature that we will always want to increase our current level of pleasure; we are constantly motivated by the prospect of alleviating a pain or obtaining a pleasure relative to our state right now. The comparatively abstract concept of wanting to live for 90 years instead of 89 we hold to be substantially less central to human psychology and largely a learned habit, one that is unhelpful if it becomes an excessive point of focus. I’ve written more about this distinction here.

As for the hedonistic preferability of expensive things, this is one of the main points of Epicurus’ insistence on the centrality of pain alleviation. Compared to any of the major pains of life, the majority of them mental, the difference in pleasure between a fancy meal and a normal meal is trivial. I’ve written about the proper perspective on such “natural but not necessary desires” here.

4. The senses are not a valid judge for the desirability of pleasure.

Apparently, if you ask “reason,” “wisdom,” and “the virtues” to judge what is best in life, they will say themselves. If you ask “the senses,” they will say pleasure. Obviously, the first are to be believed and the second are not, according to Cicero. Personally, I think this position is almost entirely a product of positive connotations being attached to “virtue” and the like in public discourse, while negative connotations attach to “pleasure.” This was perhaps especially true in elite Roman circles, but the same basic prejudice persists today. Pleasure feels dubious as an avowable life goal. This is a largely vibes-based argument.

In reality, I would reverse Cicero’s instinctual favoritism. To me, the senses seem to say that “pleasure is good” and “pain is bad” very consistently, while human reason comes to a great variety of conclusions as to the nature of wisdom and the virtues, and the degree to which they should be sought, so I would incline towards having more trust in the first of these judges.

For the full argument on why pleasure is the most sensible and conservative candidate for a final end, see John Stuart Mill is smarter than his critics.

5. After all, pleasure is obviously bad and unworthy of the noble human soul.

Speaking of Johnny Mill, I’ll let him respond to this old chestnut:

When thus attacked, the Epicureans have always answered, that it is not they, but their accusers, who represent human nature in a degrading light; since the accusation supposes human beings to be capable of no pleasures except those of which swine are capable. If this supposition were true, the charge could not be gainsaid, but would then be no longer an imputation; for if the sources of pleasure were precisely the same to human beings and to swine, the rule of life which is good enough for the one would be good enough for the other. The comparison of the Epicurean life to that of beasts is felt as degrading, precisely because a beast’s pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conceptions of happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. (Utilitarianism, Chapter 2)

Epicureans do more than eat and have sex. We are just as capable as any virtue ethicists of, say, engaging in civilized conversation, appreciating the arts, and writing philosophy.

6. Everyone admits the pleasures are bad. We all admire those who don’t choose pleasure. Those who choose pleasure are ashamed to admit that they do.

Pleasure does still have a bad reputation, though perhaps not quite as much as in Cicero’s day (especially when discussed under related terms such as “happiness” or “security”). If if I were entering political office like Torquatus, it’s true that I would not make a big speech about how my only goal in life is pleasure, in part because most people wouldn’t understand that, and in part because it wouldn’t be accurate in the way that Cicero is suggesting—Epicureans, like anyone else, do their jobs to the best of their ability, because the faithful and reliable discharging of our duties will lead to better personal results than if everyone is mad at us and we get fired.

This explains part of the Epicurean attitude towards “selfless benefactors” of humanity: when people accept a role of public responsibility, they should fulfill that responsibility. This is very similar to the Epicurean insistence on faithful friendship, even to the point of death if needed. To enjoy the trust and support of others requires that we stand by our own commitments and consistently demonstrate ourselves to be faithful and reliable.

That being said, it is true that we are less enthusiastic about “public-spirited” people than Cicero is. Often, such people just seem to be aiming at their own personal glory, which is no more admirable than any other way of pursuing one’s own happiness, and probably less effective. Dramatic self-sacrifice on behalf of the public is too exacting to serve as a standard for mass emulation, and so the elevation of such uncommon heroes as an ideal tends to exaggerate societal feelings of both self-importance and inadequacy, while unjustifiably denigrating more mundane ways of contributing to those around us. As I’ve argued before, Epicureans do help other people, in ways that I think are more substantial than most.

7. Friendship based on hedonistic advantage is no friendship at all.

Epicurus says that friendship originates in mutual advantage, and he often emphasizes the practical benefits of friendship—it’s good to have someone you can call on when facing difficulties! Cicero, like many others, dislikes even mentioning utility in the context of friendship, which he prefers to think of as a purely noble and selfless endeavor. In the process of advocating for this position, he either misunderstands or mischaracterizes the Epicurean idea of friendship, which clearly is “genuine” and not quick to desert a friend in need. Remember: the wise Epicurean will die for a friend if needed.

I describe the solution to this seeming paradox in my discussion of Tim O’Keefe’s comprehensive article, “Is Epicurean friendship altruistic?”

8. Virtue, in contrast to pleasure, is self-evidently choiceworthy to nearly everyone, especially to all of the best people.

First, as described above, Epicureans don’t think people act this way. While the virtues are names for socially-approved and generally socially-beneficial behaviors, the way individuals actually make their decisions is based on a complex psychological web of motivations that varies from person to person. Some people fear legal punishment if they behave “wrongly.” Some people fear social disapproval. Other people hope for praise, either from society at large or from particular peers. Some people have internalized these standards very strongly, such that they continue to feel the motivating fears of punishment or disapproval even when observation is unlikely.

These psychological phenomena definitely exist. People acknowledge that we have legal punishments at least in part for their deterrent effect. People acknowledge that teachers and parents, for example, should use praise and blame to foster good behavioral patterns in children. Disentangling any “pure” motivation that is some kind of non-socially-mediated intuition of the true nature of virtuous action seems like a much more tenuous claim.

Second, despite Cicero’s insinuations, Epicurus strongly endorses following the conventional standards of virtue. Essentially all of his teachings work to underline, not undermine, the social sanctions that encourage “good” behavior. For more on that, see Principal Doctrines 5 and 17.

9. Humans are made for virtue.

This kind of simplistic teleology (“Rationality is what makes humans uniquely human, therefore reasoning is our highest purpose. Unlike stupid, dirty animals”) is mostly out of fashion among modern people, but it continues to have a strong afterlife in the high regard granted to Aristotle and the Stoics. Epicurus thinks this is silly: we are basically animals like any others, just more clever. We should therefore use our greater intelligence to pursue the normal animal desire for pleasure in a more thoughtful and effective manner. Humans are smarter than other animals, but that doesn’t make us exempt from being animals.

10. Epicurus’ claim that virtue is good because it leads to pleasure is false. It doesn’t. Only seeming virtuous does.

I alluded to these Epicurean teachings in my answer to #8. Some of the most concise encapsulations of the relevant ideas are Principal Doctrine 34 and 35:

As is widely acknowledged, legal punishment and social disapproval shape behavior. As is sometimes recognized, fears of these downsides (and hope for praise or reward) can become sufficiently habitual so as to retain a large part of their effectiveness even when enforcement is unlikely. Cicero claims, however, that the fact these external motivating forces are not 100% effective at generating good behavior undermines the Epicurean argument that the virtues can be regarded as instrumental tools, rather than things we need to insist are self-evident moral truths.

I don’t think this follows. Cicero’s preferred teaching is that the virtues simply exist and that following them often involves going against our own pleasure. Is this position really strengthened by the existence of conscienceless moral reprobates? Such people have evidently not been heretofore convinced by moralists extolling the importance of intrinsic virtue. Another sermon probably isn’t going to do it. But increasing the severity, likelihood, or salience of punishment might. Harsher legal classifications for certain misdeeds, or increasing cops on the street or cameras in the shops, leads to a decrease in undesirable behavior. Epicureans are practical, and favor practical enforcement over wishful pontificating. (Policy advice is not our main focus, but we recognize why cities have laws and think they make sense.)

It’s like crime boss Susie Glass said in The Gentlemen when explaining why she had to have the cheating bookie Sticky Pete beaten black and blue:

There’s a dog in a man that the man can’t control. So, we had to control it for him. D’you know what the fundamental challenge with the human condition is? … Too much untrained dog.

And we are in the dog training business.

If you’re particularly worried about people like Lucius Tubulus, Quintus Pompeius, and Sticky Pete, then you should probably advocate for more vigorous and consistent punishment, rather than spend your time lecturing the leading spokespeople of “crime doesn’t pay.” Since Epicurus isn’t in charge of law enforcement, but is giving individual advice, he does what he can to promote good behavior by highlighting the likelihood of bad consequences and emphasizing that socially-beneficial conduct will lead to outcomes that are clearly preferable on average. Cicero’s contrasting insistence that one has to choose either virtue or pleasure seems more likely to be counterproductive as crime-prevention rhetoric. “The consequence of law-breaking is pleasure” is a terrible slogan for a tough-on-crime politician.

Conclusion

To be fair to Cicero, he is not alone in most of his criticisms. Many of them are based on Epicurus’ redefinition of pleasure, a much-maligned word with quite different connotations in the vast majority of non-Epicurean moralism, and in popular use. A charitable reader could argue that while he has heard many Epicurean arguments (as evidenced by Book 1), he has not actually fully understood all of them. If this were a real dialogue, rather than an imaginary one, perhaps an intelligent Epicurean interlocutor could clarify various positions and nudge Cicero to give a less prejudicial consideration of our arguments. Personally, I think he often intentionally distorts Epicurean doctrine, but the borders are not always clear.

What does seem clear to me is that his arguments are not good. He quibbles over differences between the standard use of words and Epicurus’ preferred terminology, as if adopting particular formal definitions of common words were not standard philosophical practice. He often speaks reflexively against pleasure, simple spouting the common prejudices of his class against anything suggesting sensual indulgence, rather than engaging with the actually fairly austere lifestyle that Epicurus advocates. And where he does offer substantive challenges, I think the Epicureans have good responses to his objections.

Cicero pursued fame and ambition, faced political defeat and personal sorrows, and met a violent end due to personal enmity during the death throes of the Roman Republic. Throughout his life, he argued that he followed the path of virtue, and that that path would lead to greater happiness than a quiet life of tranquility and simple pleasures. Much could be said on behalf of his triumphs and accomplishments. But ultimately, neither his life nor his writings offer convincing testimony that he achieved the happiness he sought.

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Principal Doctrine 26:

Principal Doctrine 29:

Scholion (ancient marginal note) on PD 29:

Principal Doctrine 30:

Commentary

I have discussed all of these texts previously in the first part of my article on The Classification of Desires. Although I’ve fine-tuned my translations a little here, that two-part essay offers a deeper dive into the overall topic, bringing in some additional texts and addressing various nuances of the relevant doctrines. Today, then, I will confine myself to relatively briefer remarks on each saying: think of this as either a quick refresher, or as an abbreviated intro—for a fuller understanding, read the longer essay.

Although the Principal Doctrines often have clearly meaningful groupings, the order is often not as straightforward as one would like. Some speculate that some errors in transcription may have occurred, including here, such that the original order may have been lost. In today’s case, Principal Doctrine 26 discusses a part of the famous three-part classification of desires, PD 27 and 28 discuss friendship (I’ll return to them in the next installment), PD 29 provides the most natural introductory statement on the classification of desires, and PD 30 continues the discussion. Accordingly, the most straightforward order to take these in today is PD 29 (with its accompanying ancient commentary), then PD 26 and 30.

This maxim sets out the three categories in a very simple and straightforward way. A slightly more elaborate version has also been preserved in the Letter to Menoeceus:

In both cases, however, the categories are presented as generalities—some examples would be very helpful! Fortunately, the manuscripts contain a marginal note (scholion) that seems to be of ancient origin, by a commentator who had knowledge of other Epicurean texts.

This is one of the most straightforward pieces of evidence for what kinds of things Epicurus would have placed in each category. “Natural and necessary” is easily understood in the cases of bodily necessities: we need food, we need hydration, and we need basic clothing and shelter (if we lack these, we will experience pain from exposure to the elements. Such items would also seem to correspond to two of the sub-categories mentioned in the Letter to Menoeceus passage: food and water are things “necessary for life itself,” while clothing and shelter may fall sometimes into that sub-category and sometimes into that of things needed to “pacify the body’s demands”—i.e. while a certain level of cold will not kill us, it will be unavoidably uncomfortable. Epicurus would still consider that a “natural and necessary” desire, since it is not one we can train ourselves out of. The third sub-category from the Menoeceus passage is about desires needed “for happiness.” This is the least clear. A highly likely candidate for this designation is the desire for friendship; others also propose the desire for wisdom or for sex (for my thoughts on the latter, see here).

For the second category of “natural but not necessary” desires, the scholion suggests “expensive food.” It also notes that such desires serve only to “vary” pleasure, and do not take away suffering. The word translated as “vary” is poikillo (ποικίλλω), of which the literal meaning is “embroider,” “ornament,” or “adorn.” In many context, “vary” is a perfectly good translation, but I think it’s reasonable to see some flavor of “adornment” here as well: some people might say that if pleasure is “ornamented” further, then something has indeed been added to it. Technically speaking, this is defensible. But ornamentation is still inherently minor and non-essential, with only a trivial addition of value and no improvement of function (to a garment, for instance). So, while it is often written in commentaries that things like expensive food only “vary” but do not increase pleasure in the Epicurean sense, those who find this phrasing technically objectionable (“isn’t tastier food a little more pleasurable than less tasty food?”) could instead think of the Epicurean distinction in terms of “ornamentation.” Items in this category might “ornament,” might add some little frills and fancy edges to the pleasures of life. Such frills, however, are comparatively unimportant. The difference between the pain of real hunger and a satiated state is immeasurably larger than the difference between a $10 meal and a $100 meal.

To clarify these non-necessary desires further, we should look at our other texts:

To continue with the scholion’s “expensive food” example, you will not experience any suffering if you eat inexpensive food rather than expensive food. Your body will be just as satisfied. If someone walks into a sandwich shop with a hankering for a meatball sandwich, but is told that it will cost $500, while the chicken sandwich is available for $10, most people will drop the desire for the meatball sandwich, eat the chicken sandwich, and feel just as much physical contentment afterwards. We would likewise change our order if the meatball sandwich came with a warning that it will likely cause painful indigestion and vomiting after a few hours.

Similar scenarios could be written up for other such desires: more expensive drinks, more expensive clothing, more expensive houses. All such desires are “natural” in that we unavoidably desire to eat, drink, be clothed, and be sheltered. If the meatball sandwich is easy to acquire, then enjoy it! If you find some nice shirts on the clearance rack, then pick the one you like! But the desire for any one specific way of satisfying an underlying bodily demand is not itself necessary. Why then, you might ask, do some people get so attached to pursuing such desires? Epicurus has more:

Apparently, desires are not categorized only according to their external objects, but also according to the internal state they evoke: the desire for expensive food can be more aptly placed in the third category of “neither natural nor necessary” if it is held with an excessively “intense passion.” That strength of feeling, that neurotic obsessiveness, is a clear sign that this is not simply the natural and relatively unobjectionable desire for pleasant variety, but the product of some kind of “empty opinion” (kenai doxai).

Maybe you want expensive clothes because you think they will win you the admiration of the world at large as you walk down the street. Maybe you want to eat at the expensive restaurant because that’s where the rich people eat, and you want to earn their esteem. Maybe you want a new $100,000 car because driving a used Chevy is for poor people and you want potential mates to know that you are not a poor person. None of these desires are necessary. None of them are even “natural,” in the sense of “a universal attribute of human nature”—plenty of humans have lived through life without ever feeling such desires. Instead, they are the result of interacting with a particular society in a particular way, adopting the habits and beliefs of a particular subset of its members.

Now at last we can come full circle, to the main body of those desires which are “neither natural nor necessary.” The scholion mentioned “crowns and the erection of statues,” which are the physical manifestations of the desires for political power and fame. Other desires that belong in this category according to Epicurus are those for great wealth or eternal life. None of these are innate to humans; all of them are created through ungrounded opinion.

Evolutionary biologists might point out that the desires for, say, social status and material resources, are perfectly natural. Epicurus’ point is that the pursuit of these specific, particularly complex, hard-to-achieve manifestations of such desires is not. There is nothing in the human genetic inheritance to say that a person needs to be admired by thousands of online strangers or have five million dollars to be happy. There is nothing in our biology that says when our desires for status or resources have achieved “enough.” When it comes to such mental, rather than physical desires, it is therefore up to our minds to determine that point of pleasurable satiety. We should do so based on the careful evaluation of our own experience along with the rational application of science—not based on the hearsay of the least thoughtful.

Return, therefore, to the natural desires. It is easy to slake your thirst, satisfy your hunger, and wrap your body up in comfort on a cold night. Friendship and knowledge have very modest price tags. Fame and fortune have no limits except those we set ourselves, so be sure to set them wisely, at levels that are within easy reach. No matter where you draw the line, our nature will declare it sufficient for what is after all a really quite modest project—the making of a single happy human.

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Read more on the Classification of Desires here, or explore the complete series on the Principal Doctrines on this page.

Original Text

26: τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν ὅσαι μὴ ἐπʼ ἀλγοῦν ἐπανάγουσιν ἐὰν μὴ συμπληρῶσιν, οὐκ εἰσιν ἀναγκαῖαι, ἀλλʼ εὐδιάχυτον τὴν ὄρεξιν ἔχουσιν, ὅταν δυσπορίστοι2 ἤ βλάβης ἀπεργαστικαὶ δόξωσιν εἶναι.

29: τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν αἱ μέν εἰσι φυσικαὶ καὶ <ἀναγκαῖαι, αἱ δὲ φυσικαὶ καὶ>3 οὐκ ἀναγκαῖαι, αἱ δὲ οὔτε φυσικαὶ οὔτε ἀναγκαῖαι, ἀλλὰ παρὰ κενὴν δόξαν γινόμεναι.

Scholion to 29: φυσικὰς καὶ ἀναγκαίας ἡγεῖται ὁ Ἐπίκουρος τὰς ἀλγηδόνος ἀπολυούσας, ὡς ποτὸν ἐπὶ δίψους: φυσικὰς δὲ οὐκ ἀναγκαίας δὲ τὰς ποικιλλούσας μόνον τὴν ἡδονήν, μὴ ὑπεξαιρουμένας δὲ τὸ ἄλγημα, ὡς πολυτελῆ σιτία: οὔτε δὲ φυσικὰς οὔτ᾽ ἀναγκαίας, ὡς στεφάνους καὶ ἀνδριάντων ἀναθέσεις.

30: ἐν αἷς τῶν φυσικῶν ἐπιθμιῶν μὴ ἐπʼ ἀλγοῦν δὲ ἐπαναγουσῶν ἐὰν μὴ συντελεσθῶσιν, ὑπάρχει ἡ σπουδὴ σύντονος, παρὰ κενὴν δόξαν αὗται γίνονται, καὶ οὐ παρὰ τὴν ἑαυτῶν φύσιν οὐ διαχέονται ἀλλὰ παρὰ τὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου κενοδοξίαν.

One of the more popular articles on Untroubled is my invitation to modern Stoics to reconsider their allegiance, Most Modern Stoics Aren’t Stoics. Today, I’d like to do something similar for the ancient Skeptical school of Pyrrhonism, which has also (on a smaller scale) been finding some modern adherents. I believe that much of what might draw someone to Pyrrhonism is also present in Epicureanism, while I consider us to offer a broader scope of counsel that I think makes our school more compelling as an overall philosophy of life.

For those who are not familiar with Pyrrhonism, it is one of the two major Skeptical schools of antiquity (along with Academic Skepticism), both of which were concerned with undermining the claims of the other “dogmatic” schools. According to the Pyrrhonists, letting go of all dogmatic beliefs is the key to attaining ataraxia, the untroubled state also prioritized by the Epicureans. Importantly, suspending belief in dogmatic claims does not prevent one from living more or less normally: Pyrrhonists accept “evident” phenomena and the usefulness of subjective appearances, and have a practical set of criteria for action that they maintain as separate from appropriate criteria for belief. If you would like to know more, I recommend the work of Doug Bates, author of the book Pyrrho’s Way and of the Substack Ataraxia or Bust! I’ve always found Doug to be a willing participant in good-faith discussion and draw heavily on his work in today’s essay.

For my part, I would like to invite all Pyrrhonist sympathizers to consider the merits of Epicureanism in three steps. First, I’ll note some significant points of overlap between Pyrrhonism and Epicureanism: overall, both philosophies are intensely concerned with dispelling ungrounded opinions that lead to distress. Second, I’ll address perhaps the central Pyrrhonist concern with Epicureanism—the idea that we dogmatically assert the goodness and centrality of pleasure in an unjustifiable way—and lay out some factors that I think make our position significantly different than the dogmatic beliefs the Pyrrhonists rightly criticize in other schools. Finally, I’ll lay out my main dissatisfaction with Pyrrhonism: while the philosophy’s destructive project is quite effective, I think their constructive project is significantly incomplete, often briefly acknowledging practical concerns while consistently underrating their importance in achieving ataraxia.

Where we agree

I recently read and enjoyed Bates’ book Pyrrho’s Way. As far as I know, it is the foremost contemporary book that aims to take the doctrines of ancient Pyrrhonism, primarily documented in Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and actually advocate for their practical value. Based on the emphases of Bates’ book, there are a number of core Pyrrhonist claims with which Epicureans would be highly sympathetic:

1. Ataraxia is a good goal for philosophic practice.

Like the Pyrrhonists, the Epicureans consider this to be essentially self-evident. Almost everyone will agree, based on their own experience, that tranquility is preferable to distress.

2. Adhering to ungrounded beliefs causes distress; it is good to identify arguments against those beliefs and discard them.

The Epicurean term for “empty” or “groundless” opinions is kenai doxai. A great deal of Epicurean therapy is aimed at dissecting and dispelling counterproductive beliefs that dominate people’s thoughts, but which are not conducive to tranquility. For example, some Epicurean targets include the beliefs that death is bad, that the gods should be feared, that wealth, power, and fame will make one happy, or that the traditional virtues are inherently good.

3. Ordinary (“evident”) perceptions should be accepted. Useful criteria for guiding our practical decisions include the information of our senses, our internal drives such as hunger and thirst, and the laws and customs of our society.

All sound principles to the Epicurean mind! “Internal drives such as hunger and thirst” are a particular emphasis with us and I’m glad to see their usefulness is not disputed. We would likewise approve of the prudential consideration of local laws and customs:

4. Many of the dogmatic beliefs that are most troublesome are related to ethical matters, such as religion, laws, and customs. There is so much disagreement here that we should be very skeptical whether simplistic moral claims are straightforwardly and objectively true.

Yes, moral claims and talk of “virtue” are rife with kenai doxai. We never assert particular moral rules or virtues as justification for our choices. We think you can only evaluate such things in terms of more concrete results, such as their impact on those “internal drives” we were talking about, like hunger, thirst, and other forms of physical pain. Different formulations of what is approved by law or society will be adopted in different times and places.

5. Science is a largely inductive endeavor, and so scientific theories are generally not “true” in an absolute sense, although they may be very useful for predictive purposes. We should recognize the history of changing scientific paradigms and be aware that a better theory may well come along in the future. As Bates says, however, “Well-tested, no-longer-disputed scientific theories can also be seen as just more complex examples of things the ancient Pyrrhonists explicitly accepted.”1

Epicureans were famous for a practice sometimes known as the “principle of multiple explanations.” We recognize that our senses and tools of scientific observation are limited, and so, as a practice of epistemic humility, we recommend formulating multiple plausible explanations for phenomena without asserting any one of them as true. In ancient times, for instance, Epicureans were unsure whether the earth orbited the sun—it was one viable hypothesis among others. Today, based on a large basis of detailed observation and human space exploration, we would feel confident in accepting such a claim.

Of course, Pyrrhonists and Epicureans still have their differences. But it is important to recognize our many areas of agreement. My impression is that many modern Pyrrhonists find ancient Skepticism appealing because they either have experienced distress themselves from previous adherence to dogmatic claims, or because they see how others cause themselves such distress. Maybe they argued about politics. Maybe they found dogmatic philosophers to be blindly self-confident. Maybe they thought the Stoics were spouting nonsense.

I would invite all such people to investigate Epicureanism. We are the most famous advocates of not getting upset by politics. We are the most famous practitioners of refraining from unjustified certainty, because having multiple plausible explanations of the way things are is more conducive to tranquility than pinning one’s hopes on an unjustifiably singular theory.2 We are the most famous opponents of the Stoics—for every good Pyrrhonist argument against the Stoics, we are right there with you.

So what’s holding you back from joining the Garden?

The main Pyrrhonist critique of Epicureanism

Ethically, most significant differences between the two schools are downstream of one big claim: the Epicureans assert that pleasure is good and pain is bad, while the Pyrrhonists argue that this is a dogmatic position which is counterproductive to ataraxia and should be abandoned. I think this is wrong, for three reasons:

1. Most critiques of Epicurean hedonism (including Bates’ in Pyrrho’s Way) are based on simple misunderstandings of what we mean by pleasure and pain.

2. If you correctly understand what we mean by pleasure, the core Epicurean principles need not even be read as espousing dogmatic beliefs. Our advocacy for pleasure as the good is closer to an action-guiding principle than a metaphysical claim.

3. I don’t think the Pyrrhonists actually oppose the real-world advice we derive from our hedonistic principles.

1. Misunderstandings of Epicurean pleasure

The Epicurean idea of pleasure is constantly misunderstood. To briefly recap what I’ve elaborated on elsewhere, we are:

• Prudential hedonists: We do not grasp impulsively at near-term pleasures, but advocate for the careful calculation of total, long-term, net pleasure over pain.

• Largely “negative” hedonists: We consider the positive physical pleasures of caricatural hedonists (food, sex, etc.) to be very minor elements compared to the reduction of pain, particularly mental pains like fear, distress, and unsatisfiable desires.

• Psychological hedonists: We consider all human actions to be motivated by the desire for pleasure or the avoidance of pain. We prefer to consider motivations that are commonly considered to be opposed to pleasure (following duty or virtue, for instance) simply as alternative sources of psychological satisfaction that should not be categorically separated from more conventionally-understood sources of “pleasure.” This is a more neutral framework for comparing competing psychological impulses.

Once you understand this properly, much criticism of Epicurean hedonism is shown to be simply erroneous. For example, here is the complete response to Epicurean hedonism offered by Bates in Pyrrho’s Way:

The Epicureans think they have shown that pleasure is inherently choiceworthy. They point out that animals right from birth, and when still untrained, are inclined to pleasure and averse to pain. Against this position one can argue that what produces something bad cannot be inherently good. Pleasure, however, produces bad things, as pain is bound up with pleasure. For example, the drunkard feels pleasure filling himself up with wine, the lecher feels pleasure in risky and inappropriate sexual intercourse. But these activities lead to poverty and disease. Therefore pleasure is not inherently good.

Similarly, things which produce good things cannot be said to be inherently bad. But pains produce pleasures. For example, hard work is painful, but we gain things through hard work, such as knowledge and wealth. Exercise produces health. Therefore hard work is not inherently bad. Medical procedures are often painful, but people submit to them because the procedures so often make people feel better. If pleasure were inherently good and pain inherently bad, everyone would make the same decisions about them, but we see many people choosing hard work and temperance while disdaining pleasure. Therefore pleasure must not be inherently good nor pain inherently bad.3

Fully accounting for total hedonic outcomes is not a refutation of Epicureanism—it is Epicureanism! We don’t advocate in favor of drunken lechery, or against exercise and medical procedures. The only argument Bates gives against pleasure here is that sometimes pleasure will lead to negative outcomes like “poverty and disease”—such courses of action are simply not net sources of pleasure. His only argument against avoiding pain is that pains can “produce pleasures”—this likewise means they are not, on net, pains at all. The strategic mistakes that people make in their pursuit of pleasure have no bearing on whether people do or should pursue pleasure. This argument is so inadequate that I suspect Bates would probably revise it now, as I haven’t seen such clumsy anti-Epicurean arguments in his more recent work.

So, first of all: if you want to dismiss Epicurean hedonism, make sure you know what it is.

2. Our claim that “pleasure is the good” is not a dogmatic claim as commonly understood

Still, some might think that the Epicurean position remains unjustifiably dogmatic. Epicurus asserts unambiguously that “pleasure is the goal (telos) of a blessed life,” while other thinkers claim that we have, for example, an independent obligation to virtue, or moral responsibilities to others. I think the crucial point that needs to be emphasized here is our psychological hedonism, as mentioned above: we are not simply asserting that, out of various possible goals, humans should pursue pleasure. Instead, we prefer to view human motivation through a psychological framework in which we consider that people inevitably or even definitionally pursue their own pleasure, and that doing this well therefore constitutes success.4

Some people consider psychological hedonism to be itself an untenable theory. I simply consider it a useful framework, a practical redefinition of “pleasure” to enable consideration of all human motivations on an equal footing. Many don’t like this non-standard use of the word, but to criticize our choice of vocabulary is a much narrower argument against Epicureanism than a real dispute with the substance of our claims. And if our terminology is all you dislike, I am happy to reformulate! I understand that Skeptics often find the phrase “pleasure is the end” to be uncongenial and smacking of dogmatism. But I think one can find all kinds of wordings that are essentially synonymous with the Epicurean position, but which hopefully won’t trigger the same visceral reaction. For instance, just to rattle a few off:

Animals, including humans, are happier when they avoid pain. Avoiding pain is therefore good for producing happiness.

People prefer being happy over being unhappy. For humans, then, we can call happiness “good.”

It is reasonable to expect people to choose courses of action that appear conducive to their own happiness. Making those choices based on careful inductive prediction will probably achieve better results on average than making those choices without thoughtfulness about their conduciveness to happiness.

In all of these impromptu reformulations, I think the initial premises are ones that Pyrrhonists would largely agree are “evident.” While you can find a few philosophers willing to dispute anything, the opening sentences of these formulas are not controversial among normal people. (Modern skeptics might dispute the existence of the self or of physical objects, for instance, but Pyrrhonists don’t.) The second sentences are either modest, practical, clarifying definitions of “good” (the first and second) or a restrained, inductive claim (the third).

Our main “dogmatic” claim, then, is quite different than the typical targets of Pyrrhonist critique. For example, Pyrrhonists love to point out widely-abandoned moral beliefs (embracing the will of Zeus is good, race-based slavery is good) as evidence that dogmas don’t age well. But what Epicurean ethical advice seems obviously wrong? Mostly it seems like common sense, because that’s what it is—probabilistically prudent extrapolations from the essentially universal tendency to prefer happiness over unhappiness, shorn of extraneous dogmas.

I have very few “moral” beliefs. I recognize all the temporal and cultural counterevidence for traditional assertions—ask me if it is universally and inherently wrong to steal, to kill, or to eat dogs, and I will say “no.” I can easily imagine particular circumstances in particular societies in which such actions would reasonably not be considered wrong. However, I do believe that humans seek pleasure and avoid pain as an intrinsic aspect of our biological nature, that we will be unhappy if we fail at this goal, and that a philosophy that clears away illusory priorities and advises real-world prudence will improve our average level of success.

For more on why Epicurean advocacy for pleasure should be understood more as the basic, default position left over when dogmatism is stripped away, rather than itself an unjustifiably dogmatic position, see my recent article on Why Pleasure Should Be Our Goal.

3. Epicurean hedonic advice has no outright conflict with Pyrrhonist practice

To me, what makes it seem like Epicurean advice should be particularly congenial to Pyrrhonists is that the Pyrrhonists seem to accept it as well. They just classify its premises as part of “the criterion of action.”

In Pyrrho’s Way, Bates pushes back against the misconception that Pyrrhonists will not be able to function in daily life without beliefs. Instead of guiding one’s actions according to beliefs, the Pyrrhonist can respond to appearances. As mentioned above, physical sensations like hunger or a disinclination to go to jail would provide actionable reasons to eat and follow the law. Per Bates, then, this necessarily involves some amount of inference about foreseeable consequences.5 Pyrrhonists wouldn’t say that violating a local custom would be “inherently wrong,” but they think it’s perfectly reasonable for an individual to follow their aversion to social opprobrium. It seems fair to say that such subjective appearances of pain and pleasure are at least among the most widespread factors that guide human action.

Epicureans also think it reasonable to respond to the pain of hunger by eating. Epicureans also think it reasonable to respond to the appearance of potential pain from violating social norms by respecting social norms. So what’s the difference? It seems to me there are three possible reasons why a Pyrrhonist might still decline to endorse Epicurean ethics:

First, it might be largely a dispute of terminology. Epicureans like to call pleasure “good” and pain “bad.” These seem to me like reasonable and convenient labels, but if you want to replace every time we say “pleasure is good” with “pleasure typically appears good to people,” knock yourself out. The ensuing advice is unaffected.

Second, a Pyrrhonist might accept that “pleasure is good” is reasonable as a practical, everyday claim, but still dispute the Epicurean idea that “pleasure is the good.” Maybe something else should be considered. However, Pyrrhonists seem quite consistent in dismissing the claims of virtue, religious commandments, or other moral intuitions. As far as I can tell from the Pyrrhonists’ own writings, their remaining acceptable motives do boil down to hedonistic considerations, when considered in the broad Epicurean sense. So—unless they would like to reverse course and claim that there is some other value worth taking seriously as a guiding principle in life—perhaps this dispute can also be easily resolved by mild rephrasing. “Pleasure is the least problematic candidate for a human good that I am aware of” or “pleasure is the good which most consistently seems salient to me” would also lead one to Epicurean practices, while perhaps being less offensive to Pyrrhonist epistemological hygiene.

Third, perhaps the Pyrrhonists just haven’t thought through the actual Epicurean advice. As noted above, misunderstandings are rife. Perhaps if they evaluated Epicurean advice more closely, they would see that there is little to no substantive disagreement. Pyrrhonists generally prefer pleasure and decline unnecessary pain, but they simply spend less time talking about what courses of action tend to be correlated with more or less pain and pleasure.

This omission is what I consider to be Pyrrhonism’s biggest weakness as a philosophy of life.

An Epicurean criticism of Pyrrhonism

Pyrrhonists accept the existence of a criterion of action. They accept that internal impulses, such as pursuing the alleviation of pain, are valid for this purpose. They note that this includes prudential, forward-looking estimates of pain, such as the choice to follow laws and customs.

But that’s roughly all they say about such prudential matters. Instead, they spend most of their time asserting that the suspension of belief will itself lead to ataraxia. “The ancient Pyrrhonists do not give much advice about how to make decisions,” acknowledges Bates.6 As a side note, they propose that discarding unnecessary beliefs in the inherent goodness or badness of things can partially alleviate distressing reactions: “With regard to unavoidable experiences, the goal is moderation of feeling,” says Bates accordingly.7

I think this is a big hole. Is suspension of belief really enough to produce ataraxia? I would say it alleviates certain kinds of disturbance that stem from false beliefs, but it does not prevent more concrete sources of distress: hunger, isolation, or a lack of physical security, for instance. I assume that these kinds of biologically-mandated sources of discontent are what Bates means by “unavoidable” experiences, but it is very important to note that many unavoidably painful experiences are not themselves unavoidable. Pyrrhonism may be therapeutically sufficient for those who have achieved complete security when it comes to all their material needs in life—health, safety, financial stability, and so on. But if any of those unavoidably apparent sources of distress factor into one’s level of disturbance, then merely avoiding dogmatic thinking will not be sufficient to bring about ataraxia.

What Epicurus does is to propose—alongside the clearing away of empty opinions—a constant practice of prudential calculus, often employing various pragmatic guidelines for reducing sources of distress. He recommends frugality and simple living, to make financial security easier to obtain. He recommends avoiding the impulse to pursue great wealth, political power, or fame, because all of these desires seem empirically difficult to achieve, stressful to maintain, and highly competitive, leading to conflict with others. Importantly, he does not say these things are bad in themselves. If people are able to attain fame or power successfully, without an overall negative impact on their tranquility, then he has no problem with them. He recommends cultivating friendship, because friends are an enormous boost to our sense of security; they are both the preeminent form of ancient “insurance” and a direct source of pleasure.

The Pyrrhonists seem to abstain from all such advice. They seem to imply that decisions can be made “as one goes” with equal success and that careful inductive forecasting of outcomes is a fool’s errand. They assert that they would advocate for “living like normal people,” just with less mental distress from beliefs. But some of the distress of “normal people” is neither based in false beliefs, nor unavoidable—with a little planning. Epicurus would therefore revise the formula from “live like a normal person” to “pursue the normal ends of life in a more thoughtfully planned way.” This advice introduces no additional assumptions or criteria than those involved in Pyrrhonist “normal living”—it just extends the admitted utility of inductive reasoning beyond immediate results to the forecasting of longer-term probabilities. Strategies can be revised as new data comes in. But approaching life with no strategy is likely to produce less desirable outcomes.

Do modern Pyrrhonists even live like that, without long-term prudence regarding pleasure and pain? I would guess that many of them save money for retirement, purchase medical insurance, and care for their long-term health. Why do they do such things? Most normal people would say that they “believe” such actions are more likely than not to improve their long-term hedonistic outcome—old age poverty, medical bankruptcy, or physical incapacity would all be sources of pain and distress. Pyrrhonists don’t like the word “believe,” but they must have some degree of parallel faith in such inductive forecasting. I don’t insist that they abandon their vocabulary; if the Pyrrhonists would like to file all the factors that lead them to adopt these prudent decisions under the “criterion of action,” rather than the “criterion of truth,” that is fine with me.

But I don’t think they should ignore the utility of such actions in the exposition of their philosophy, if they actually consider such planning to be useful in how they lead their lives. And they shouldn’t dismiss the advice of the Epicureans, who construct their whole ethical system on the basis of fundamentally similar prudential counsel. Skepticism and argument are powerful tools against erroneous opinions. But they do not prevent the pains of poverty or hunger, or all the parallel fears that plague the unplanned lives of the imprudent. Epicurus takes a broader view, and treats all sources of unhappiness.

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Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, X.119–121

Commentary

Two weeks ago, I presented the first section of a summary of Epicurean views on “the wise man” found in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Today, I’ll conclude this particular section, while a third installment to come will cover some additional summary of Epicurean ethical views also included in Diogenes Laertius. As noted previously, there is very little structure to this account, with a hodgepodge of semi-random topics thrown together in rapid succession. I don’t think there’s really any more systematic way of reviewing this than to simply proceed through the whole of the above excerpt, giving additional commentary as appropriate.

These comments, particularly the second, seem to have an underlying intention of contrast with the Stoics. While I won’t get into a full discussion of the nuances of the Stoic positions here, I think it is fair to say that the Stoics look more favorably on suicide and less favorably on the expression of grief than do the Epicureans. In Epicurus’ view, most suicide is simply stupid: as he says in the Letter to Menoeceus, people to whom death seems like the least painful path are probably ignoring the real pleasures of life and overrating the importance of unimportant things. While I can imagine Epicurus making some exceptions for truly constant and debilitating pain (suicide is not sinful), the fact that blinding injury does not qualify as a justification of suicide underlines Epicurus’ insistence that the good things of life truly are quite realistically attainable, even in circumstances most would consider very difficult.

As for the emotions, there is nothing in Epicurus to invalidate grief over, say, the loss of a friend. While wisdom will presumably help us to recover equanimity more quickly, this is indeed a case for sorrow. Events in the real world cause us real pain—they are not simply “indifferent.”

Most of this can go down in the books as examples of “Epicureans will act like normal people.” Some people think our advocacy of “living unnoticed” means we will withdraw entirely from society—no, we are fine participating in the legal system, leaving writings behind, maintaining a basically respectable reputation in our community, and participating in civic festivals. (This includes ones with a nominal religious basis—I celebrate Christmas, even though I am not a Christian.) “Behave like normal people” also means “adhere to normal virtues”—although we are technically egoists, we believe strongly in friendship. For more on how a resolute principle of “never desert a friend” is compatible with consistently pursuing one’s own happiness, see Tim O’Keefe on “Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic?”

I find one particular line here rather humane and charming: the Epicurean wise man “will love the country.” I don’t know if this was intended to point out a contrast with any particular school or philosopher, but the one that comes to mind now is Plato, who has Socrates say, “I am a lover of learning; landscapes and trees have nothing to teach me” (Phaedrus 230d). Personally, I love trees, so I am fully prepared to take Socrates’ disinterest in country rambles as a clear indicator of the inferior wisdom of the whole Platonic tradition. Simple pleasures are good!

The ancient Epicureans were quite fond of statues. Images of Epicurus and other leaders of the school helped students to keep their spiritual guides in mind and remind themselves of their fellowship in a community of wisdom. But, as the scholion to Principal Doctrine 29 notes, a desire for there to be statues of oneself is a good example of the unnatural desire for fame.

On music and poetry, the reasoning is presumably similar to that given by Philodemus centuries later (in regards to music, specifically): it is good to enjoy whatever harmless pleasures are accessible to us, and the wise man will judge them well and without illusions, but to invest significant energy in high-skill aesthetic creation will usually not pay off. Of course, Philodemus himself, and Lucretius in a bigger way, did write poetry, so there does seem to have been some relaxing of this doctrine over time. Accordingly, I don’t hold to this dogmatically, but I do think it contains a good point: ultimately, wise people are the best judges of artistic value. Technically expert practitioners often lack perspective. Highly paid professionals write highly unwise film scripts. Extremely skilled visual artists may be quite foolish people. One shouldn’t mistake skill (or accompanying prestige) for wisdom.

“One wise man is not more wise than another” is sometimes interpreted as alluding to the completeness of Epicurean doctrine, with a sentiment along the lines of “once you attain wisdom according to these rules, there is no further gain in wisdom to be had.” According to this interpretation, then, this reflects an important Epicurean message: since there can be numerous people who achieve wisdom, wisdom is indeed achievable. This is another contrast with the Stoics, whose vision of sagehood was largely regarded as unattainable.

Four of these five statements emphasize the importance of practical flexibility in Epicureanism. Rather than simplistic, one-size-fits-all rules, we favor general guidelines that acknowledge exceptions and qualifications. (We saw this in several Principal Doctrines as well.) Note the recurrent pattern:

[The wise man] will make money… when he is in need… but only from his wisdom.

He will pay court to a king… when circumstances require it.

He will set up a school… but not so as to court the masses.

He will read in public… but not eagerly.

We don’t want to accumulate great wealth or engage in unscrupulous business practices, but it is sometimes necessary to earn money. Rigid refusal to acknowledge the power of kings is not always prudent. Seeking mass approval is generally unwise, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t teach willing students. Similarly, the prestige of public readings is not something to be eagerly sought, but if one is invited there isn’t a firm requirement to refuse the invitation. Context matters.

The other statement from this section (“He will rejoice alongside one who is corrected.”) has a somewhat disputed translation.3 My reading follows that of Long & Sedley and of Graziano Arrighetti: I think it is referring to the Epicurean practice of encouraging “frank speech” and accepting personal correction. The wise man doesn’t try to gloat over others or prove them wrong, but is warmly and earnestly supportive of their growth.

About half of the manuscripts read ἐπιχαρίσεσθαι (feel grateful for) instead of ἐπιχαρήσεσθαί (rejoice alongside someone). In that case, it could plausibly mean “he will be grateful to someone who corrects him.” This seems to be the reading of Inwood and Gerson, which does mirror the sentiment of Vatican Saying 74:

Overall, however, ἐπιχαρήσεσθαί (rejoice alongside someone) seems to be the slightly more likely manuscript reading, and the exemplary wise man probably doesn’t need correction very much, so I lean towards the first interpretation.

This first sentence is clearly a response to Skeptics (most likely early Pyrrhonists). “Dogmatize” is here meant here in the relatively technical sense that is opposed to skepticism; more colloquially, we could say “declare clear principles” or “profess certain things to be true.” To not “be inconclusive” is a rendering of ἀπορήσειν (aporesein, which some snobby philosophers mind render as “to be aporetic” or “remain in aporia”). Aporia is a state of argumentative impasse that precedes the Skeptical goal of epoche, or suspension of judgment. While Skeptics consider it to be wiser to reserve judgment regarding non-evident matters and avoid dogmatism, Epicurus decidedly does not: he thinks a wise man will be able to correctly perceive the truth and will not hesitate to declare it as such.

The idea that “not all failings are equally serious “ is thought to be a response to the opposite claim by the Stoics. The most famous iteration of their position is attributed to Chrysippus, who described the process of attaining wisdom by saying that it made no difference whether one drowned deep in the ocean or a few inches from the surface. This kind of firm line between the (unattainable) sage and everyone else was not one that the Epicureans echoed. Real, incremental progress is open to everyone.

The Epicureans considered practical advantage to be the origin of friendship, a claim which was a bone of contention with other moralists who didn’t like attributing such low motives to a putatively virtuous activity. But I think evolutionary biologists would fundamentally agree: presumably human sociability evolved because it provided us with practical, fitness-enhancing benefits, with the long-term result that we derive positive psychological feelings directly from associating with friends. Such an account is quite similar to the Epicurean one: we acknowledge (and embrace) the fact that friends are helpful, but frequently, as here, note that association is itself enjoyable.

Here we have a preliminary mention of the Epicurean doctrines on pleasure, which will be elaborated upon in the final segment. Contra Cyril Bailey, I think the two kinds of happiness here are both considered “real” by the Epicureans. While the godlike maximum of happiness is only attained by a sage, even those who have not achieved full Epicurean wisdom can still experience varying levels of a more human happiness based on “the addition and subtraction of pleasures.” If you add pleasure and remove pain from your life, that really does increase your happiness and is worth doing.

After this, Diogenes Laertius presents the Letter to Menoeceus, which I have previously translated. Next Tuesday we’ll alternate back to the ongoing tour through the Principal Doctrines, but in two weeks we’ll return once more to Diogenes, because he has a few more things to tell us. That concluding installment has one overriding topic: the nature of pleasure. What kinds of pleasure are there? Which pleasures are best? How do we know pleasure is the end?

These are all important questions. To learn the important answers, make sure you’ve signed up for a free subscription to Untroubled.

Original Text

ἀλλὰ καὶ πηρωθέντα τὰς ὄψεις μεθέξειν αὑτὸν τοῦ βίου, [120] ὡς ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ φησι. καὶ λυπηθήσεσθαι δὲ τὸν σοφόν, ὡς ὁ Διογένης ἐν τῇ πέμπτῃ τῶν Ἐπιλέκτων: καὶ δικάσεσθαι: καὶ συγγράμματα καταλείψειν: οὐ πανηγυριεῖν δέ: καὶ κτήσεως προνοήσεσθαι καὶ τοῦ μέλλοντος. φιλαγρήσειν. τύχῃ τ᾽ ἀντιτάξεσθαι, φίλον τε οὐδένα προήσεσθαι. εὐδοξίας ἐπὶ τοσοῦτον προνοήσεσθαι, ἐφ᾽ ὅσον μὴ καταφρονήσεσθαι: μᾶλλόν τε εὐφρανθήσεσθαι τῶν ἄλλων ἐν ταῖς θεωρίαις.

Εἰκόνας τε ἀναθήσειν. εἰ ἔχοι, ἀδιαφόρως ἂν σχοίη. μόνον τε τὸν σοφὸν ὀρθῶς ἂν περί τε μουσικῆς καὶ ποιητικῆς διαλέξεσθαι: ποιήματά τε ἐνεργείᾳ οὐκ ἂν ποιῆσαι. οὐκ εῖναι τε ἕτερον ἑτέρου σοφώτερον. χρηματιεῖσθαί τε, ἀλλ᾽ ἀπὸ μόνης σοφίας, ἀπορήσαντα. καὶ μόναρχον ἐν καιρῷ θεραπεύσειν. καὶ ἐπιχαρήσεσθαί τινι ἐπὶ τῷ διορθώματι: καὶ σχολὴν κατασκευάσειν, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ὥστ᾽ ὀχλαγωγῆσαι: καὶ ἀναγνώσεσθαι ἐν πλήθει, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ἑκόντα:

δογματιεῖν τε καὶ οὐκ ἀπορήσειν: καὶ καθ᾽ ὕπνους δὲ ὅμοιον ἔσεσθαι, καὶ ὑπὲρ φίλου ποτὲ τεθνήξεσθαι. Δοκεῖ δ᾽ αὐτοῖς ἁμαρτήματα ἄνισα εἶναι. καὶ τὴν ὑγίειαν τισὶ μὲν ἀγαθόν, τισὶ δ᾽ ἀδιάφορον. τὴν δὲ ἀνδρείαν φύσει μὴ γίνεσθαι, λογισμῷ δὲ τοῦ συμφέροντος: καὶ τὴν φιλίαν διὰ τὰς χρείας: δεῖν μέντοι προκατάρχεσθαι ῾καὶ γὰρ τὴν γῆν σπείρομεν̓, συνίστασθαι δὲ αὐτὴν κατὰ κοινωνίαν τοῖς ταῖς ἡδοναῖς ἐκπεπληρωμ<ένοις>.

[121] Τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν διχῆ νοεῖσθαι, τήν τε ἀκροτάτην, οἵα ἐστὶ περὶ τὸν θεόν, ἐπίτασιν οὐκ ἔχουσαν: καὶ τὴν <κατὰ τὴν> προσθήκην καὶ ἀφαίρεσιν ἡδονῶν. Μετιτέον δ᾽ ἐπὶ τὴν ἐπιστολήν.

I recently decided to read through Jane Austen’s five major novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion.1 In large part, reading old books is simply something I enjoy. Such reading is an eminently Epicurean hobby, since it is practically free and doesn’t generally do you any harm. In my case, it also gave me a good opportunity for rich family time, since my wife and I both read the books, talked about them, then watched various film adaptations and talked some more. But as I read through these novels, I couldn’t help noticing how particularly Epicurean the Austenian virtues seemed to be.

I haven’t read much Austen criticism, but I get a general impression that this is sometimes a theme of complaint: the characters have highly domestic preoccupations, concerning themselves with practical questions of financial prudence, managing their various social relationships, and above all getting married. Austen’s protagonists are not very concerned with big political questions, historically important events, or even particularly dramatic personal events (there are some peripheral elopements and adultery and so on, but it is never the sensible heroines themselves getting mixed up in such scandals). Much of our culture, in contrast, celebrates what appears sensational and important—the noble cause, the passionate feeling—at the expense of prudence and other virtues of stability that are the normal constituents of a happy life.

As with my recent piece on Ralph Waldo Emerson as an Epicurean ally, I think it is hugely valuable to recognize the degree to which the Epicurean insistence on individual tranquility and practical decision-making—while being routinely undervalued by philosophers—was integral to the basic background fabric of accepted wisdom until quite recently. The denigration of prudence, along with the advocacy of emotional instability on behalf of self-important aspirations, political causes, or valorized angst, begins to feel like a strange quirk of modernity when you immerse yourself in the world of Austen’s wiser women.

In this essay, I’ll share my brief reflections on each of these five novels, with two overarching aims. First, to encourage you to read these books, if you’d like to get a taste of extremely well-written characters who embody a largely Epicurean perspective on the good life. Second, to come at the Epicurean virtues from a different angle, one that might persuade Austen sympathizers to recognize what they actually value—these have long been traditional virtues, and while some of them have been de-emphasized in our modern world, Austen had greater insight and granted them appropriate centrality. If you admire her wisdom, then I suggest that Epicureanism might be the philosophical school for you.

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Sense and Sensibility

The title of this book refers to two sisters, Elinor and Marianne. Elinor exemplifies “sense”: she is frequently singled out as the most financially prudent of her family, she always controls her emotions, and she behaves generally in a mature, practical, reliable way. Marianne exemplifies “sensibility,” which means something like “sensitivity to emotions”—she is passionate about music, literature, nature, and romance. She has very strong opinions, which lead her to a great deal of grief and their eventual recantation, before ending up realizing that Elinor’s path is wiser.

The title, then, could be rendered in explicitly Epicurean terms: Phronesis and Kenai Doxai, or Prudence and Empty Opinions. I find this extremely refreshing. In so many stories, the dramatic, passionate characters take center stage, no matter how foolish, unwise, unreasonable, or self-destructive their passions may be, while the level-headed, practical people are relegated to minor supporting roles. Here, Elinor is clearly Austen’s preferred model of a good person, a preference which is then reflected in all the other characters. People who are financially extravagant, excessively occupied by social appearances, excessively prone to romantic enthusiasm, excessively prone to anger, or unfaithful to their friends and family are not admirable. People who can live on a modest income, don’t care about social pretensions, have slow and steady feelings, are slow to anger and quick to forgive, and who are loyal and trustworthy are.

Pride and Prejudice

In Austen’s second published novel, she again landed on a two-trait alliterative title. Here, though, we are not given a simple contrast of a wise and a less wise characteristic, but two different flaws, both of which will be alleviated by the book’s end. Pride is the fault of Mr. Darcy, who overvalues social position and propriety. Prejudice is the fault of Lizzie Bennett, who judges people too quickly and harshly based on insufficient information. Both of those faults certainly fall within the realm of Epicurean criticism, though they are not particularly unique to the philosophy.

This book gives a good opportunity—since this is probably the most well-known of the stories through the various film adaptations2—to note the most obvious preoccupation of the typical Austen heroine: securing a good marriage. For them, this absolutely requires personal affection, but it also requires a significant degree of social appropriateness—good partners belong to a similar class and educational level, are financially stable, and should generally earn your family’s approval (unless your family are terrible empty-headed snobs). It does not require extreme, immediate passion. In fact, that is often a warning sign. In Pride and Prejudice, Lizzie’s younger sister Lydia is misled by such passion into a very unsatisfactory match. In Sense and Sensibility, multiple characters (Marianne and Edward) are temporarily misled by such passions. In contrast, the wiser heroines do not fall in love quickly and impulsively, but instead develop their attachments gradually, as their knowledge of the value and worthiness of their prospective partners become clear. They do not rush into relationships, but once they commit to one through a formal process of engagement and marriage, their bond is inviolable. This seems quite compatible with Epicurean romantic preferences. Consuetudo concinnat amorem, says Lucretius—habit produces love worth having, while overwhelming passion results in frustration and illusion.

As with the other novels, the generally ambient virtues are highly Epicurean: safety and stability, faith and trustworthiness, family and friends, honesty and wisdom. Imprudence is bad, dramatic passions are bad, frivolous pleasure-seeking is bad, snobbery based on birth and wealth is bad, and the ornaments of an elite education are highly overrated. Not enough of our stories these days have these kinds of ethical priors!

Mansfield Park

The heroine of Mansfield Park, Fanny Price, is famously passive and so not very much to contemporary tastes. Austen is not blind to her heroine’s limitations (perfect heroines would be boring), but clearly prefers her over the various rich, spoiled, underoccupied young people who surround her. Many of Austen’s character preferences can easily be rendered through an Epicurean lens:

• Fanny is not too rich (which spoils a person), but is not improvident like her very imprudent family (who cause themselves daily discomfort and unpleasantness). That’s the Epicurean sweet spot too.

• Fanny is meek and self-deprecating, but this is better than being vain and performative. Epicurus always teaches the futility of seeking popularity.

• Fanny has a strong sense of propriety, which is much preferable to the dismissiveness of societal rules exhibited by the other young people. Sometimes that has small consequences (angry father stops their amateur theatricals), sometimes it has big ones (adultery leads to loss of all resources and social standing). Fanny and Epicurus think it is very important to avoid incurring social animosity.

• Fanny’s preferred pastimes are reading for pleasure, spending time in nature, and helping people. The other young women pride themselves on their accomplishments in music, art, and learning. Epicurus criticizes the traditional education (paideia), thinking it produces mostly vanity.

• Fanny’s romantic preferences develop slowly, based primarily on admirability and compatibility of character. Other characters follow momentary passions (which lead to bad outcomes, as warned against in Lucretius) or chase wealth (also bad, according to all Epicureans).

I think Jane Austen is correct in all of these preferences. The novelist’s myriad fans should know that Epicurus is the appropriate philosopher for them.

Emma

Emma Woodhouse begins her eponymous novel with a few flaws. She has an excessive interest in steering her friend’s matrimonial interests in ways that she deems proper (a process in which she neglects authentic worth and feelings in favor of social standing). More generally, she gets too caught up in her “schemes” for others and is consequently led to misread their behaviors. Most generally, she is too sure of herself—a result, we are told, of being excessively spoiled and admired throughout her life.

While the exact manifestations of these flaws are, of course, quite different than those familiar to Epicurus, the underlying essence of Emma’s bad habits is timeless. Overrating social standing? Basing your happiness on things outside of your control and which have no real bearing on your personally-felt pleasure? Thinking poorly because you have never submitted to a wiser teacher or frank-speaking friends? All of these are regular topics of Epicurean advice.

Of course, Emma amends her ways by the end of the book. After spending some time with shallower men, such as Mr. Elton (status-obsessed, generally empty-headed) and Frank Churchill (too interested in superficial things, lacking in frankness, impetuous), she comes to realize that the better influence is that of Mr. Knightley, who is one of the worthier Austen leading men. He is marked in particular by his penchant for what the Epicureans call “frank speech”—he is willing to tell Emma when she is acting wrongly, while maintaining complete goodwill towards her. The rest of his portrait is the usual catalog of Epicurean-Austenian virtues: financial prudence, distaste for ostentation, unconcern with social prestige, relative disinterest in frivolous entertainments, and a mature lack of romantic hurry.

Persuasion

The heroine of Austen’s last novel is Anne Elliot. As usual, the plot revolves around the protagonist’s successful overcoming of interpersonal misunderstandings in her own romantic arc, periodically contrasted with the varying fortunes of friends and family in their own matrimonial endeavors. We have the typical array of admirable and unadmirable side characters, whose conduct is gently but unmistakably judged by Austen. Anne’s elder sister and father are obsessed with vanity and social prestige, while being incapable of truly warm friendship or financial prudence—not good! One suitor is revealed to be highly mercenary and unfaithful to his friends—very bad! In contrast, this novel finds its more admirable characters in an array of naval officers and their families, who have known hardships and obligations (unlike the idle aristocrats), and who continue to live responsibly within their means on land, bound together by warm, enduring bonds of fellowship.

The particularly unique element of Persuasion is the greater maturity of its heroine and romantic perspective: Anne’s romance is the story of a resumed relationship, thought to have ended eight years in the past (she is 27 as the novel opens). As I have noted throughout all the novels, the Austen heroine in general is noted for her more measured approach to romance, one in which she is not overly swayed by impetuous passion. Persuasion takes this to a new extreme, with the success of its central relationship not truly evidenced until an approximate decade after the couple’s initial meeting. This entails no loss of interest, no diminishment of their intense affection—their love is no less real. But, just as in Lucretius, it is built on well-founded knowledge of each other’s character and constancy. The perfect Austenian marriage, like the perfect Epicurean marriage, is not one of maximum, lightning-bolt suddenness. It is one that lasts, constantly reinforced by unwavering friendship and mutual support.

Some modern readers find the scope of Austen’s heroines’ ambition dissatisfying. Is all they hope for marriage? We have various ideologies that preach the inadequacy of such mindsets: maybe everyone should strive for worldly success (careerism), maybe women need to “catch up” with such aspirations (feminism), and maybe we should embrace feelings of guilt as a spur to our moral betterment (Christianity) or welcome difficulty and hardship as part and parcel of virtuous action (Stoicism). This is not Austen’s way.

She appreciates money, but only instrumentally, as it serves security and happiness. She thinks women are at least men’s equals, emotionally and intellectually, but doesn’t see that as necessitating careerist ambition. She is nominally a Christian, but religious doctrine is essentially absent from the novels. And her attitude towards suffering and difficulty is distinctly more Epicurean than Stoic. Consider the case of a minor character in Persuasion, a friend of Anne’s who has fallen on hard times. Her husband has died, she is broke, and she is an invalid who cannot move without assistance. Nonetheless, she lives fairly happily:

[Anne] determined that this was not a case of fortitude or of resignation only. A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good… (Volume 2, Chapter 5)

To cultivate an “elasticity of mind” which “turns readily from evil to good” is arguably the center of the Epicurean project. It is not Christian submission or Stoic fortitude that is most effective at securing our happiness in any circumstances. It is the ability to let go of what is inessential and focus on what brings us joy.

Do Austen’s heroines lack worldly ambition? They have this greater virtue.

Conclusion

In reading these selective summaries, you might still be underwhelmed by the supposed Epicurean undertones I am asserting. Are these virtues really particularly Epicurean? Surely everyone thinks that prudence, faithfulness, and a preference for friendship over social ostentation are good things? In part I agree, and this is in fact one of the underappreciated motifs I like to reiterate about Epicureanism: our virtues are the familiar, conventional virtues. We do not advocate for some radical discarding of everything the world recognizes as good, nor for the kind of impulsive, sensual hedonism which we are often caricatured as endorsing. If you think these “normal” virtues are admirable, then Epicureanism will seem sensible and familiar compared to a lot of philosophy, which travels far away from such practical matters.

At the same time, I think it is true that the particular virtues that Austen highlights, although “traditionally” recognized in significant swathes of our cultural history, are not the dominant virtues in our contemporary culture, in our contemporary romantic narratives, or in contemporary philosophy. Consider a few examples. Technological modernity has amplified the fetishization of celebrity and invented new ways to quantify and trivialize social standing (every form of online “like”). How many modern romance films portray financial prudence as a key quality in a good suitor? (Sometimes they advocate for career ambition, but very rarely for career contentment.) If you were to poll university students about the content of their philosophy courses, how many lectures do you think are dedicated to the value of reining in our expenses, making ourselves useful to our families, treating those we dislike with politeness, restraining our emotions, choosing our romantic partners wisely, or considering stable marriage as a high-priority life goal?

Almost none. Popular culture is often stupid, broadly speaking, and its visions of romance are typically shallow and unhelpful. This is unsurprising. Unfortunately, the academic field that is theoretically dedicated to the love of wisdom also has very little to say to those who actually want useful guidance on the crucial decisions of life, neglecting the practical in favor of esoteric abstraction. Jane Austen, in contrast, does address the real qualities that separate the wise from the unwise, the happy from the unhappy. Her answers may seem distant from philosophy as one encounters it today. But they are not at all distant from the teachings of Epicurus.

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Principal Doctrine 23:

Principal Doctrine 24:

Commentary

Today’s two Principal Doctrines focus on a core topic in epistemology: the appropriate attitude to take towards “sensation,” or the evidence of our physical senses. The Epicurean theory of knowledge is a large subject in itself, and not a main focus of this site, so I will not treat these two maxims as a springboard to launch into a comprehensive account of Epicurean epistemological theory. Instead, I think it is important to keep in mind their status as two entries in a series of forty otherwise entirely ethical maxims—they are not intended to present the full picture of Epicurean epistemology, but instead to make an essentially ethical point, one about how a person should choose to live. That advice boils down to this: don’t be a Skeptic.

(This is not to say that we should not be skeptical of bad arguments and unfounded beliefs. Epicurus puts a great deal of emphasis on rooting out “empty opinion” (kenai doxai) and so there is, in practice, a significant amount of agreement between ancient Skeptics and Epicureans, which I will explore further next week. But to elevate the withholding of belief to be the central tenet of one’s philosophy of life is unwarranted.)

The first of these maxims is quite straightforward:

The basic idea addressed here, not necessarily specific to one particular brand of Skepticism, is the contention that our senses can be deceptive. The go-to ancient examples included the observations that a partially submerged oar can appear to be bent, rather than straight, or that a square tower can appear to be round when viewed from a distance. Different philosophical schools could then take such claims in different directions: Academic Skeptics maintained that we should only treat our knowledge as “probable,” Pyrrhonists stressed that “appearances” were not the same as objective reality, and other thinkers generally downplayed the importance and validity of empirical observation compared to pure reasoning and dialectic.

In this maxim, Epicurus issues a fairly commonsense response to such Skepticism: if you want to claim that our senses are deceptive, then on what basis are you claiming their deceptiveness, if not through appeal to other senses? If you are asserting that the oar is in fact straight, presumably you are looking at it when not submerged, or perhaps you are touching it and evaluating it by feel. If you are asserting that the tower is square and not round, presumably you are looking at it from a closer distance. The conclusion “our senses are deceptive,” then, doesn’t seem quite right. The light waves are not “cheating” in one case, but then behaving “honestly” in another—the light waves are doing what they always do in similar circumstances, and we misinterpret them.

In Epicurean terminology, all sensations (aesthesis) are said to be “true” or “real” (alethes). Whether they unfailingly convey the right idea of reality to us depends on our interpretation and judgment, but the evidence of the senses themselves should not be thought of as “false.” To one who knows how light refraction in water works, the appearance of a bend in the half-submerged oar is normal and expected.

Still, if it is admitted that certain observations may lead our interpretations astray, how should we pursue the truth? Idealist philosophers use that “failing” of empirical observation as an excuse for denigrating all empirical research in favor of pure logic, dialectic, or metaphysical speculation. Skeptics use it as an excuse for questioning the possibility of true knowledge. Epicurus’ conclusion is more obvious, straightforward, and compatible with modern scientific method: if our observations are insufficient for reaching a clear understanding of something, we need to get better observations. The main way we can confirm or disconfirm the initial impressions from our sensory evidence is by collecting more evidence from our senses. If our initial observation is distorted or distant, we need to obtain sensory evidence that is clear (enarges) and close-up (paron, literally “present”). Pull the oar out of the water. Get closer to the tower. That’s what people living in the real world do.

Initial life advice, then, from this epistemological stance? Don’t abandon the gathering of empirical evidence as a means of pursuing the truth. Don’t abandon the concept of knowable truth just because you notice a mistaken judgment.

The second maxim elaborates and expands on this point:

Given the increase in technical jargon1, let’s start with a paraphrase of the main points of these two sentences:

1. If you reject a sensation (rather than distinguishing opinion as the source of error), you will be logically compelled to distrust all of the evidence of your senses, which would undermine any livable basis for knowledge and judgment about the world. Don’t reject sensation.

2. If you accept all of your opinions, both those which have been confirmed by careful, painstaking observation and those which are “awaiting confirmation”—i.e. those derived from distant, unclear, or haphazard observation—that would also be a mistake. Humans do make mistakes in interpreting sense-perceptions—you should still try to avoid interpretive errors.

The practical conclusion of what one should do when pursuing an accurate knowledge of the world is not explicitly spelled out here, but is pretty clearly implied by the two branches of this maxim: accept the truth and value of your sensations themselves, but seek confirmation when their initial reports are vague or incomplete.

I suspect a lot of philosophers will find this a pretty weak response to Skepticism. When a Skeptical philosopher says, “But look! our senses can deceive us!” they are rarely quieted by a pragmatic response of “Try to get a better look. Maybe get a little closer.” But for practical people interested in living effectively, Epicurus’ position is far more sensible than an across-the-board withholding of belief.

This greater practicality is obvious—whatever the Skeptics say, they all actually use the evidence of their senses to navigate the material world. And they will typically admit this, arguing that they are nonetheless making an important technical distinction about the reliability of knowledge. I’m not really convinced about this importance: at the end of the day, I think effectiveness in daily life is the most pertinent gauge of reliable knowledge. I’ve never personally found any supposed untrustworthiness of the senses to impinge upon my functioning in the world. To spend time denying the certainty of our clear perceptions (Academic Skeptics), or drawing distinctions between “appearances” and objective reality (Pyrrhonists), does not seem to me like a particularly fruitful form of philosophy.

Emerson said something similar about unhelpful occupation with the philosophical and theological conundrums of his day.

Epicurean philosophy is therapeutic. It promotes healthy thinking. The thinking of most non-philosophers has gone astray in one way or another, filled up with empty ideas that are often too distant from the real life of the senses, clear and simple concepts, and accurate comparison of the pleasures and pains of life. Many people think, for example, that pursuing fame is a high-probability path to happiness, or that death is a terrible thing.

Sometimes, however, the teachings of venerable religions or famous philosophers are also counterproductive when it comes to intellectual health and spiritual well-being. Idealists who teach the existence of vindictive gods or immaterial Forms are layering unnecessary and unhelpful fictions onto your understanding of the world. Similarly, Skeptics who inflate the proper puncturing of groundless beliefs into an all-encompassing outlook on life, in which our senses, pains, and pleasures are no longer to be believed, are similarly importing unnecessary difficulties and perplexity into the project of living well.

Read the complete series on the Principal Doctrines here.

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Original Text

23. εἰ μαχῇ πάσαις ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν, οὐχ ἕξεις οὐδʼ ἃς ἂν φῇς αὐτῶν διεψεῦσθαι πρὸς τί ποιούμενος τὴν ἀγωγὴν κρίνῃς.

24. εἰ τινʼ ἐκβαλεῖς ἁπλῶς αἴσθησιν καὶ μὴ διαιρήσεις τὸ δοξαζόμενον κατὰ τὸ προσμένον καὶ τὸ παρὸν ἤδη κατὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν καὶ τὰ πάθη καὶ πᾶσαν φανταστικὴν ἐπιβολὴν τῆς διανοίας, συνταράξεις καὶ τὰς λοιπὰς αἰσθήσεις τῇ ματαίῳ δόξῃ, ὥστε τὸ κριτήριον ἅπαν ἐκβαλεῖς·

εἰ δὲ βεβαιώσεις καὶ τὸ προσμένον ἅπαν ἐν ταῖς δοξαστικαῖς ἐννοίαις καὶ τὸ μὴ τὴν ἐπιμαρτύρησιν, οὐκ ἐκλείψεις τὸ διεψευσμένον, ὡς τετηρηκὼς ἔσει πᾶσαν ἀμφισβήτησιν κατὰ πᾶσαν κρίσιν τοῦ ὀρθῶς ἢ μὴ ὀρθῶς.

It is well known that Epicureans believe that pleasure is the human telos, the goal towards which all of our choices should most rationally be oriented. Epicurus doesn’t (in our extant texts) really argue for this position. He seems to think that pleasure and happiness are self-evidently our goal:

To many, this is indeed self-evident: of course people want to be happy. In everyday life, an appeal to what one thinks will bring about one’s own happiness is generally admitted to be a sufficient reason for choosing a particular course of action. To claim that preferring happiness to unhappiness is an inherently invalid goal is definitely a minority position.

Still, when it comes to philosophical circles, where no claim will go undisputed, it is easy to find people willing to argue that happiness should not be our goal, or should not be our only goal, or should only be our goal if we define it as something clearly distinct from pleasure. Today, I’d like to explain the Epicurean argument for why pleasure is indeed the most reasonable ultimate goal by which we should guide our conduct, and respond to some possible critiques of this position.

Fortunately, one of the more incisive philosophical minds to ever write in English—John Stuart Mill—has already done the job. Unfortunately, his argument for hedonism is one of the most heavily criticized passages he ever wrote. Fortunately, I think those criticisms are wrong. I’m sure I won’t convince everyone that Mill’s position represents the one and only accurate way of understanding human psychology, but I do hope to demonstrate that his arguments are internally consistent, not fallacious in the commonly purported ways, and a perfectly reasonably way of looking at the world, one that needs to be seriously answered if one wishes to dismiss the case for hedonism.

What Mill Says and Why He’s Not Wrong

If you haven’t read John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, you should. It is an approachable philosophical classic that strongly lays out the case for hedonism and makes dozens of penetrating observations in generally lucid prose. Of particular interest (and notoriety) is the opening of Chapter 4, which is worth quoting at length:

This is frequently criticized, but, I think, frequently misunderstood.1 The most common accusation is that Mill is committing the “naturalistic fallacy,” slipping in a conclusion that happiness ought to be desired (one definition of “desirable”), when all his argument entitles him to claim is that happiness can be desired (the definition of “desirable” more correctly analogous to “visible” and “audible”). For all his intelligence and reputation, it is asserted, Mill is committing a rudimentary error of deriving an “ought” from an “is.”

A more careful reading, however, shows this to be false. Mill is quite explicit that he is not offering a formal, deductive proof. He says that he is providing something different—“evidence.” As a first step towards deciding what we “should desire,” it is extremely pertinent to note that any possible candidates must be something “capable of being desired.” What could “worth desiring” or “ought to be desired” mean, if we attempted to debate such a question without reference to what humans actually do desire? Mill therefore offers the claim that everyone desires their own happiness as a premise, not as his conclusion. If humans are incapable of seeing something, it would be nonsensical to propose it as something that we “ought to see.” Likewise with desire: the fact that happiness is generally desired by humans is the only relevant criterion for its initial inclusion in our list of candidates for things that “ought to be desired.”

When we start to assemble such a list of candidate desires, happiness is perhaps the most obvious starting point. In Mill’s view, essentially everyone would agree that they desire their own happiness. In further arguments which I don’t have space to quote here, Mill goes on to argue that all other proposed ends are desired as either means to happiness, or as components of happiness. Virtue, for instance, may be valued instrumentally, as a means to happiness (the Epicurean emphasis). Through education and habit, many people also come to find virtuous behavior intrinsically pleasurable, with non-virtuous behavior producing an immediately painful psychological sensation. If nothing can be proposed that is desired independently of happiness, and accepting that the desire for happiness is indeed universal, then happiness by default can be identified as the most fitting end of human conduct.

According to Mill, then, happiness is the only thing that humans ultimately desire. As another point of terminological clarification with which I agree, it is important to note that both Mill and the Epicureans consider “happiness” and “pleasure” to be essentially synonymous:

Here, in short, are Mill’s claims:

1. Everyone desires their own happiness.

2. Everything else we think we desire is valued only as a means to happiness or as a component of happiness. The things we label as “virtuous” or “right” ultimately derive their value because of their tendency to produce happiness for ourselves or others. (This was the conclusion of Sidgwick, Mill’s Utilitarian successor who exhaustively investigated all of the “commonsense” virtues of his day in search of non-hedonistic values.)

3. Everything we desire is by definition pleasant to us. It is impossible to desire something while thinking it (on net) painful. We may be mistaken as to that ultimate net pleasurability, but it is the prospect of pleasure that motivates our desires.

This is, of course, a very bare sketch. I’m not aiming to rewrite Mill’s whole chapter. But since “why should we consider pleasure the only good?” is a common question, and one which has been explicitly argued for by one of the great minds of English philosophy in a way that I find fundamentally convincing, it seems most efficient to say: here is what we think—for the full arguments, see chapter four of Mill’s Utilitarianism.

Some Objections

If you’d like to engage seriously with these ideas, therefore, you really should read Utilitarianism for yourself. Most of the objections one could make have crossed Mill’s mind; he was a very smart guy. But as a preview, we can run through some of the common complaints here.

Misunderstanding what we mean by “pleasure”

First, some will quibble over the word “pleasure,” thinking it implies advocacy for impulsive sensuality, or perhaps for hyper-refined aesthetic tastes. Some will quibble over the word “happiness,” thinking it refers to fleeting short-term mental states. For these people: use whichever word you prefer. Pleasure, happiness, eudaimonia, advantage, utility—Epicurus and Mill use these words essentially interchangeably and in the broadest possible sense.

Second, some will say that they sometimes choose a course of action even though it is not their most pleasurable option, and that therefore they aim at other things than pleasure. The Epicurean and Millsian perspective is that the pleasure of your ultimate choice may have been less obvious or immediate, but that in the end you inevitably chose the option that seemed on net more pleasurable to you. You cleaned the kitchen instead of watching TV? You must have felt the inconvenience, guilt, or shame of the dirty kitchen to be psychologically painful, such that alleviating that pain was a greater net pleasure than you would have derived from watching TV.

This way of framing things is called psychological hedonism. A lot of people don’t like it, because it applies “pleasure” to lots of activities that we don’t—in natural language—refer to as pleasurable. Epicurus and Mill like it, because describing your gratification upon cleaning your kitchen in terms of non-hedonistic ethical obligation towards what was “right” or “virtuous” would be to unjustifiably put a heavy finger on the scales towards viewing that action favorably. We shouldn’t. There is no intrinsic virtue to cleaning the kitchen. If it actually does produce less total pleasure than another course of action, then you shouldn’t do it.

Third, some people point out that different people find different things pleasurable. Are some things good for some people, but bad for others? What if someone says murdering strangers gives them pleasure? Should we call that good?

We would say that there are minor differences between different people and that is fine. Some people prefer chocolate ice cream, while others prefer mint chip. Each are free to pursue their preference. We Epicureans don’t aim to micromanage such preferences, or put precise pleasure scores on different activities.

As for the case of the serial killer, we have two responses. First, extreme skepticism that this applies to most people, especially once you consider the legal and social sanctions. Even if we grant an unusual psychological proclivity towards harming others, any such “pleasure” would have to be weighed against the costs of likely incarceration and ostracism. We would enjoin the normal people of the world to honestly ask themselves whether following some “abnormal” impulse would really bring them pleasure on net. It rarely will.

For the very rare cases where intense psychological abnormality means that an individual derives unsurpassable pleasure from a highly anti-social behavior, any pleasure that they may derive from the activity is presumably less than that of their victims or otherwise affected parties. From the perspective of the community or state, this activity is clearly a hedonistic negative and should be prevented. Nothing in the Epicurean or Millsian endorsement of psychological hedonism prevents the operation of legal and social sanctions that promote the overall happiness.

Wait, so how did you get to universalistic hedonism? Aren’t Epicureans egoists?

In the common, simplified narrative, Epicureans are “egoistic hedonists” concerned only with individual happiness while Utilitarians are “universalistic hedonists” who say we should maximize total happiness of all involved people (or sentient beings). This flattens the diversity within the world of Utilitarians and is consequently another frequent area of misunderstanding Mill.

Psychologically, Mill believes, with Epicurus, that we all inevitably desire our own happiness. We do not, by default, desire the happiness of the whole of humanity. Yes—basically, I’m saying Mill is more of an Epicurean than he is a Utilitarian, as the word is often tossed around. People read him saying this:

Then they assume that he is asserting that because each individual inevitably views his own happiness as a good, each individual is therefore obligated to feel that the good of all humanity is an equally compelling motive to himself personally—i.e. people assume that Mill is committing another obvious fallacy, one of composition. He clarified this sentence, however, in a letter:

Mill’s initial claim in Utilitarianism, then, is a simpler one: if we all feel that our own happiness is good for ourselves, we will tend to believe that Sara’s happiness is good for Sara and that Henry’s happiness is good for Henry. If we all share this way of looking at the world, then we will agree that it will be good generally if we can construct “society and education” in such a way that prosocial behavior becomes a source of pleasure to each individual (due to legal sanctions, social sanctions, and psychological habit).

There is nothing in this form of “Utilitarianism” that actually conflicts with Epicureanism, and so in my view there is an underrated amount of common ground between Mill and Epicurus. Generally speaking, Mill focuses more on policy and population-level well-being, while Epicurus addresses himself primarily to individuals, but their psychological theory is very similar.

What about virtue or moral rightness?

It is frequently proposed that objectives other than hedonistic ones have intrinsic worth. Aristotelians and Stoics, for instance, propose that our objective should be to live virtuously. (Conveniently, they say that this will produce eudaimonia as a side effect.) Christians propose something similar, with somewhat different virtues in mind. (Conveniently, they say that the virtuous will receive eternal eudaimonia in the afterlife.) A lot of modern philosophy, broadly speaking, focuses on distinguishing between “right” and “wrong” actions.

The hedonistic response is ultimately fairly simple: everything that is asserted as “virtuous” or “right” derives that status from its hedonistic consequences. If generosity and justice spread pain, we wouldn’t admire them. When a simple rule of right conduct (say, “tell the truth”) seems to have clearly negative hedonic consequences (informing Gestapo agents about hidden Jews), most people’s assurance in the preferability of following the rule is severely shaken.

This is, of course, the most cursory possible treatment of a longstanding issue. Mill discusses the question in Utilitarianism, and Sidgwick spends a few hundred pages of The Methods of Ethics trying to dispassionately consider whether any of the traditional virtues have an intrinsic value apart from their hedonistic consequences. He decides they don’t. The Epicureans agree.

Is “pleasure is the end” unjustifiable moral realism?

Those of a more skeptical or nihilistic bent respond with instinctive aversion to anything smacking of an absolute ethical claim. “Pleasure should be the goal of all human conduct” sounds like such a claim. However, it will hopefully be clear from the above that this Epicurean and Utilitarian formulation is not intended as an appeal to a real “moral truth” floating around in the ideal world. Instead, it is our practical conclusion based on what seems to us to be a widely-held understanding of human psychology.

Skeptical schools, such as the ancient Pyrrhonists, maintain that moral statements are not subject to certain human knowledge. Some say pleasure is the end, while others say virtue is the end—there is no agreement. Pyrrhonists would accordingly argue that all such statements must belong to the unverifiable world of beliefs, rather than that of evident and non-controversial facts. And yet, pragmatically (i.e. in terms of guiding our actions), I think there is little to set the Pyrrhonists strongly apart from the Epicureans.

While Pyrrhonists emphasize ridding our mind of unjustified dogmatic beliefs, they also admit the basic reasonableness of alleviating pain and practicing normal prudent behavior. Hunger and thirst are evident, and it makes perfect sense that individuals are motivated to alleviate such discomforts. Pyrrhonists “live in general conformity with the guidance of our society… seeing that going against the laws and customs produces difficulties,” writes contemporary Pyrrhonist Doug Bates (Pyrrho’s Way, 93). Epicurus makes very similar claims.

I have recently been having some fruitful exchanges with the Pyrrhonist community and look forward to going into more detail on our commonalities and differences soon, but for now I think it is roughly accurate to say this: insofar as Epicurean advice to pursue pleasure and avoid pain is interpreted as being based upon what the Pyrrhonists call “criteria of action” (i.e. appearances that are sufficiently useful guides for our conduct, even if not sufficiently evident to be endorsed as objectively true), rather than upon a “criterion of truth,” they would not generally disagree with the drift of our recommendations. Avoid pain and troublesome disturbance, while enjoying the common pleasures of life—Pyrrhonists do not dispute this as a reasonable set of priorities to guide our actions. While Epicurus does present his claims more absolutely than the Pyrrhonists do, he is concerned most of all with action. If we agree about how to live, then I think the Pyrrhonists will also have good odds of obtaining happiness.

The non-necessity of moral realism for practical hedonism is also the fundamental conclusion of some who take one step beyond moral skepticism to moral nihilism. “I have been a utilitarian since my undergraduate days… But I’ve also been a moral nihilist.” says Walter Veit, for a recent example from Substack. “Of all the ethical theories one might endorse, utilitarianism still offered the metaphysically least objectionable move, simply identifying the subjective values of creatures to the objective values of the universe.” Such a view is perfectly compatible with Epicureanism. To insist upon applying contemporary metaethical labels to Epicurus is ultimately an anachronistic exercise that is just as likely to distort as to illuminate. In practice, you can have the most conservative set of metaethical beliefs possible (i.e. none), and still find that hedonistic criteria are the most reasonable ones for the guidance of our individual conduct and our social arrangements.

In sum, although Epicureanism is often dismissed as offering a shallow and incomplete vision of human life, such critiques are poorly substantiated and usually stem from cursory and uncharitable interpretations of our claims. In reality, we share much of our underlying hedonistic theory with modern schools of thought that—while certainly not universally agreed with—are usually accorded widespread and serious consideration. Contemporary English-speakers who are tempted to casually dismiss hedonistic philosophies should give careful thought to the detailed arguments of foundational modern hedonists like Mill and Sidgwick before making any hasty pronouncements as to the insufficiency of a philosophy oriented around pleasure and happiness.

Hedonistic philosophies continue to be debated, but they continue to find plenty of advocates: Epicureanism should be part of that conversation.

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Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, X.117–119

Regarding the principles of life and how it is necessary for us to choose things on the one hand and avoid things on the other, [Epicurus] writes in this way. But first let us go through the characteristics of the wise man that seem true to him and to his followers.

[It seems to the Epicureans that] men bring us harm because of hatred, envy, or contempt, which the wise man overcomes through reasoned calculation. But once he has become wise he no longer admits any disposition contrary to wisdom nor willingly feigns any. He will be affected more by feelings, but this will not hinder him from wisdom. One can become wise neither from every bodily condition nor in every nation.

Even if he is tortured, the wise man will be happy. Only the wise man will have gratitude and will speak well of his friends, equally with them being present or absent. When he is tortured, however, he will both moan and wail.

The wise man will not have intercourse with a woman for whom the laws forbid it, as says Diogenes [of Tarsus] in his summary of Epicurus’ ethical teachings. Nor will he punish his servants, but will show mercy and forgive those who are of good character. It does not seem to them that the wise man will be overcome by passionate desire. Nor will he care about his burial. Neither do they think that Eros is sent by the gods, as Diogenes says in his twelfth book, nor will he make elegant speeches in public. They say that sex never helps anyone, and that one must be content if it does no harm. The wise man will also both marry and have children, as Epicurus says in the Problems, and in On Nature. But he will marry according to the circumstances of his life.

He will be conscious of shame before certain people and will not act foolishly in drunkenness, says Epicurus in the Symposium. Nor will he meddle in politics, as he says in the first book of On Lives. Nor will he be a tyrant or a Cynic, as he writes in the second book of On Lives. Nor will he beg.

Commentary

Diogenes Laertius (c. 230 AD) is our main source for Epicurus (died 270 BC), since it is within his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers that are preserved our most significant and extended texts from Epicurus himself (the letters to Herodotus, Pythocles, and Menoeceus, as well as the Principal Doctrines). Along with a biography of Epicurus and a discussion of the various insults and accusations the different philosophical schools liked to throw his way, Diogenes also offers a useful compendium of Epicurus’ ethical advice. I’ll be covering this section in three installments of Tuesday Translations, alternating with my ongoing coverage of the Principal Doctrines.

As a rational and orderly summary, Diogenes’ account makes no sense. It is arranged seemingly at random, with occasionally dubious understanding. But Diogenes Laertius clearly had access to more Epicurean texts than us, and so his report conveys a lot of useful information that we otherwise would not have. Some of these tidbits are fairly self-explanatory, but some are worth pausing on briefly, either to offer further elucidation or simply to highlight sometimes overlooked elements. I will therefore proceed through the whole of today’s section with some hopefully useful notes as we go.

We begin the description of the wise man by describing how he deals with external sources of harm: through reasoned calculation (logismo), a process also discussed in Principal Doctrine 16. Then we turn inwards, from dealing with the hatred and envy of others to handling one’s own emotional dispositions. This whole excerpt is highly disjointed, but I assume at least some rough thematic continuity here, such that “disposition contrary to wisdom” includes emotions similar to those just mentioned (hatred, envy, and contempt). As I interpret it, such feelings are themselves sources of harm and contrary to wisdom. Many people will attempt to justify these emotions. Some (I hear this from some Stoics) will argue for feigning negative emotions if we judge that the behaviors are beneficial. Epicurus basically says no: hatred and envy are never choiceworthy, and the wise man will not pretend to have such emotions either. Perhaps he thinks that such pretending would result in generating at least some level of psychological disturbance; perhaps he thinks the benefits of such behavior are overrated.

Next, however, is the intriguing note that the wise man will be “more affected by feelings” than other men. Some think that “feelings” is being used here in a relatively narrow and technical way, suggesting something like “the wise man is very attuned to evaluating his own pleasure and pain, and so perceives these things more clearly.” Some think it is a more general statement refuting the idea (which some might jump to prematurely from the previous sentence) that the wise Epicurean will be an unfeeling block of stone. (If you ever run into this contention, say in the Substack of a prominent modern Stoic, know that it is simply false, and based on erroneous reporting of the evidence and instinctive opposition.) In this case, “affected more” might refer to the way the Epicurean wise man would relish pleasurable emotions such as those associated with security, comfort, or friendship, even while he reduces the salience of negative emotions in his life. Both positions are authentic Epicurean ones and I couldn’t rule out either as an interpretation of this sentence.

“Nation” is enthos, which can also mean race or class. The translators and commentors are divided; I can’t really say with certainty which one Epicurus had in mind, nor exactly what he was thinking with “bodily condition.” Overall, I suspect we should probably be wary of interpreting this as some broad-brush prejudice: the Epicureans were famously the most inviting school for the lower classes, scorning elitist education and its traditional paideia while welcoming foreigners, women, and slaves to the ranks of philosophy. Instead, I would guess that this is a statement of missionary realism: many people are resistant to philosophy due to some aspect or other of their nature, and so we have to calmly accept that some are unlikely to be convinced by Epicurean arguments.

If you read Cicero’s On Moral Ends, he misreports this in a very petty way, claiming that the Epicurean wise man will feel delight and pleasure on the rack. That isn’t what he says. Epicurus readily admits that a person being tortured will “moan and wail.” What he does maintain is that the most perfectly wise individual will nonetheless be “happy” (eudaimon). Being happy in such circumstances is not an easily obtainable achievement, but an asymptotic, aspirational one: to grow in wisdom is to increasingly build up your reserves of pleasure and perspective so that increasingly large discomforts can be counterbalanced and overcome.

A highly unwise person will be easily disturbed from happiness by a minor financial setback or minor physical injury. A comparatively wiser person will be able to maintain happiness even under significant losses or illness. A perfectly wise person will be able to maintain happiness under even the worst conditions. Fortunately (as Epicurus’ overall teachings make clear), there is plenty of room for rational planning to ensure that almost no one has to face those worst conditions.

This passage seemingly sets out a number of both “anti-love” and “pro-love” positions, in common oversimplifying summaries. In truth, there is no contradiction here. Sex that is against the law is bad. Obsessive erotic passion is also bad. What I translate as “overcome by passionate desire” is the verb eramai (ἔραμαι, the verbal form of eros). Many translators render this as “fall in love,” but this is potentially misleading in English. Phileo (φιλέω, the verbal form of philia, commonly rendered “friendship”) is a verb that, applied to a man’s wife, for example, we would render as “love” in English—and that kind of stable affection is encouraged by Epicureans. This can be inferred from their clear pro-marriage position, and is explicit in Lucretius.

Sex in itself should not be mistaken as a significant target of our actions (the “one must be content if it does no harm” line seems to be based on a letter of Metrodorus which we know from other sources—it is good to remember that these assorted positions are not always drawn from Epicurus himself, but from “the Epicureans). Marriage, however, is approved of and encouraged. (Some early editors unjustifiably amended this to read “will not marry”—I believe this is still in the old Loeb edition, for instance—but that is not what the text says.)

I disentangle the Epicurean distinctions about good and bad love further in The Classification of the Desires.

This first clause is a confusing one, with three different translations proposed for kai diatrapesesthai tinas (καὶ διατραπήσεσθαί τινας):

1. Usener, followed by Arrighetti and Inwood and Gerson, think it means “some turn aside” from marriage, referring to the previous sentence. This doesn’t seem to add much to the already qualified assertion, however, nor does it seem to be the most common use of the verb.

2. Translators Strodach and Mensch opt for understanding “turn aside” as meaning to “avoid” or “avert” certain people. This is good Epicureanism (I understand Principal Doctrine 39 as recommending something similar), but also seems like a relatively less common use of the word. It also has a weaker tie with the rest of the sentence.

3. Bailey opts for a sense of “turn aside” equivalent to “turn aside in shame” or simply “feel shame.”

My impression is that Bailey is right in thinking this the most common use of the word in Greek at this period, and such a reading also fits most naturally with the rest of the sentence as advice appropriate to a book on symposia. To “feel shame” in this context should therefore be understood as something like “the wise man will be aware of appropriate behavior and will not act in a socially shameful way.”

Epicurus’ advice regarding political involvement is a natural extension of this egoistic prudence: engaging in politics is highly likely to incur pains and inconveniences for the individual in exchange for very dubious benefits. (For more, see my Don’t Worry About Politics.) Being a tyrant would represent one extreme of concern with other people, seeing one’s good as consisting in maximizing one’s control over others. Being a Cynic would represent the opposite extreme, ignoring all prudence and propriety and thinking that our social reception is completely irrelevant to our well-being. Begging is both a behavior of the Cynics specifically, and a generally shameful action in the eyes of society.

In reality, our social position does matter to some degree, and we should tailor our actions accordingly. Friendship is best, when possible. In general, maintaining a modicum of social approval is prudent. With certain individuals, strategic avoidance is often reasonable. But neither seeking control over others nor ignoring all of our community’s social standards is an efficient way to pursue a pleasant life.

So far, this advice all seems quite good to me. Next time, we’ll cover another ecletic selection of topics: injury, grief, statues, poetry, public philosophizing, friendship, and more. I wish we had the cited books, but until we pluck them out from the ashes of Herculaneum, we will milk Diogenes Laertius for everything he’s got!

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Original Text

The textual disputes in this passage are pretty minor and inconsequential, and so I mostly adopt the text of Bailey without comment. My only variation is that I slightly prefer Hermann’s ληρήσειν (talk nonsense, act foolishly) in 119 rather than Bailey’s ἐπηρεάσειν (insult) as a correction of the MS τηρήσειν. No one really knows the exact word though.

[117] Περὶ δὲ τῶν βιωτικῶν καὶ ὅπως χρὴ τὰ μὲν ἡμᾶς αἱρεῖσθαι, τὰ δ᾽ ἐκφεύγειν, οὑτωσὶ γράφει. πρότερον δὲ διέλθωμεν ἅ τε αὐτῷ δοκεῖ περὶ τοῦ σοφοῦ καὶ τοῖς ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ.

Βλάβας ἐξ ἀνθρώπων ἢ διὰ μῖσος ἢ διὰ φθόνον ἢ διὰ καταφρόνησιν γίνεσθαι, ὧν τὸν σοφὸν λογισμῷ περιγίνiεσθαι. ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν ἅπαξ γενόμενον σοφὸν μηκέτι τὴν ἐναντίαν λαμβάνειν διάθεσιν μηδὲ πλάττειν ἑκόντα. πάθεσι μᾶλλον συσχεθήσεσθαι <ὁ> οὐκ ἂν ἐμποδίσαι πρὸς τὴν σοφίαν. οὐδὲ μὴν ἐκ πάσης σώματος ἕξεως σοφὸν γενέσθαι ἂν οὐδ᾽ ἐν παντὶ ἔθνει.

[118] κἂν στρεβλωθῇ δ᾽ ὁ σοφός, εἶναι αὐτὸν εὐδαίμονα, μόνον τε χάριν ἕξειν τὸν σοφόν, καὶ ἐπὶ φίλοις καὶ παροῦσι καὶ ἀποῦσιν ὁμοίως διατε<λειν> εὐλογοῦντα. ὅτε μέντοι στρεβλοῦται, ἔνθα καὶ μύζει καὶ οἰμώζει.

γυναικί τ᾽ οὐ μιγήσεσθαι τὸν σοφὸν ᾗ οἱ νόμοι ἀπαγορεύουσιν, ὥς φησι Διογένης ἐν τῇ ἐπιτομῇ τῶν Ἐπικούρου ἠθικῶν δογμάτων. οὐδὲ κολάσειν οἰκέτας, ἐλεήσειν μέντοι καὶ συγγνώμην τινὶ ἕξειν τῶν σπουδαίων. ἐρασθήσεσθαι τὸν σοφὸν οὐ δοκεῖ αὐτοῖς: οὐδὲ ταφῆς φροντιεῖν: οὐδὲ θεόπεμπτον εἶναι τὸν ἔρωτα, ὡς Διογένης ἐν τῷ δωδεκάτῳ φησίν. οὐδὲ ῥητορεύσειν καλῶς. συνουσίν δέ, φασιν, ὤνησε μὲν οὐδέποτε, ἀγαπητὸν δὲ εἰ μὴ καὶ ἔβλαψε. [119] Καὶ μὴν καὶ γαμήσειν καὶ τεκνοποιήσειν τὸν σοφόν, ὡς Ἐπίκουρος ἐν ταῖς Διαπορίαις καὶ ἐν τοῖς Περὶ φύσεως. κατὰ περίστασιν δέ ποτε βίου γαμήσειν.

καὶ διατραπήσεσθαί τινας, οὐδὲ μὴν [ληρήσειν] ἐν μέθῃ φησὶν ὁ Ἐπίκουρος ἐν τῷ Συμποσίῳ. οὐδὲ πολιτεύσεσθαι, ὡς ἐν τῇ πρώτῃ Περὶ βίων: οὐδὲ τυραννεύσειν: οὐδὲ κυνιεῖν, ὡς ἐν τῇ δευτέρᾳ Περὶ βίων: οὐδὲ πτωχεύσειν.

Last week, I introduced the work of Michel Onfray, one of the most vigorous contemporary voices for a revival of materialist, hedonistic philosophies. In his book Les Sagesses Antiques (Ancient Wisdoms, unpublished in English) and lecture series Une Contre-Histoire de la Philosophie (A Counter History of Philosophy), Onfray focuses specifically on ancient Epicureanism as one of the first and most successful iterations of these evergreen ideas. In Part One, I covered Onfray’s discussion of Epicurus himself. Today, I’ll present the highlights from his presentation of the later Epicureans (Philodemus, Lucretius, and Diogenes of Oenoanda), and then offer some overarching thoughts on Onfray’s approach and primary theses.

Structurally, my discussion will simply trace the next six lectures from the Counter History series, enhanced occasionally by relevant elements from Ancient Wisdoms, which closely parallels the lectures.1 If you missed last week’s installment, you may want to start there for an introduction to Onfray and these works.

7. Under the Ash, Philodemus (Sous la cendre, Philodème)

With this lecture, Onfray turns from the original philosophy of Epicurus to its Roman incarnation. Often, these are treated as largely synonymous, with the testimonies of Cicero, Lucretius, and Philodemus assumed to be essentially entirely compatible with the original teachings of the Garden, despite their geographic and temporal remove (all three of those sources wrote some 200 years after the death of Epicurus). Onfray is not so sure, suspecting that the version of Epicureanism popular among the Roman upper classes was distinctly more luxurious in material terms than the initial incarnation of Epicureanism.

Here, Onfray opens his discussion of Philodemus, whose philosophic works are known to us only from what has been recovered from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. He describes the opulent villa, its location, and its suspected owner Lucius Calpurnius Piso, leading to a discussion of how we might square such riches with what Epicurus had presented as a philosophy characterized by habits of material simplicity. It is certainly arguable that the asceticism of “original” Epicureanism is sometimes overstated, while the riches of Piso are presumably not reflective of the average Epicurean philosopher of the late Republic, but I think Onfray has a point: if you accept, as I do, the general thesis that philosophic affiliation in the ancient world had strong implications for one’s way of life, then it seems that anyone working out of the Villa of the Papyri would likely have a relatively looser interpretation of “reasonable” luxury. (The original villa is still mostly underground, but you can look at its recreation at the Getty Villa in LA for an idea of its extravagance.)

Another distinct trend we can perceive from an initial glance at Philodemus’ recovered writings is a tendency towards the practical (as is the general prejudice about Roman thinking compared to Greek): his subjects include property management, anger, death, frank speech, and rhetoric. While we still do not know the full extent of his works, there seems to be a general trend away from physics and epistemology, towards what we might today call applied ethics. What those writings teach is the subject of the next lecture.

8. Epicureanism in Campania (L’épicurisme campanien)

Turning to Philodemus’ writings themselves (which are highly fragmentary and difficult to study), Onfray proposes four areas in which he thinks this “second Epicureanism” distinguishes itself from that of the founders. Each of these constitutes a difference of emphasis, rather than an outright abandonment or contradiction of any of the original teachings. Philodemus and his contemporaries may well have seen themselves as essentially faithful to Epicurus, but the themes of their writings and their way of life reflect, according to Onfray, a “less heroic,” more relaxed and pragmatic kind of philosophy, one relatively more interested in the pursuit of acceptable pleasures than in the systematic elimination of pains and fears.

First, in the ethical domain, Onfray considers Philodemus to reflect a less austere conception of Epicurean simplicity. Notably, for instance, both Philodemus’ poetic epigrams and the work of other Epicurean-adjacent poets of the time, such as Horace, seem to depict a significantly more enthusiastic attitude towards casual romances than can be found in Epicurus himself. Epicurus emphasizes the avoidance of pain; the Romans emphasize carpe diem. Likewise, Epicurus’ Garden seemed quasi-monastic, while Philodemus’ base was distinctly more opulent.

Second, Onfray notes that Philodemus’ descriptions of the gods offer several features that are absent from our surviving texts of Epicurus: Philodemus says that the gods “love philosophers” and are therefore seemingly more interested in human affairs, have male and female sexes, are physically beautiful, and have social interactions analogous to those of humans. (I have not studied these texts myself.) Third, Philodemus gives distinctly more attention to the arts than Epicurus: he writes poetry himself, discusses Homer without disapproval, and recognizes the pleasures of music. Onfray is sympathetic towards this view, as many moderns might be—it is entirely possible to think that for those in search of wisdom, culture could reasonably be seen “less as a trap and more as an ally” (Les Sagesses Antiques 12.9). More generally, Philodemus’ interests seem to extend to topics that were not of great importance for Epicurus: he also wrote on the history of philosophy, rhetoric, and logic.

Fourth and lastly, Onfray thinks we can find a kind of “rehabilitation of the political” in Philodemus. While Epicurus himself was famous for his skepticism towards politics, founding a school that was widely recognized as setting itself apart from Athens’ political life, Philodemus worked out of the famous “Villa of the Papyri” at Herculaneum, one of the most sumptuous and extravagant of all Roman villas, under the patronage of Piso, the father-in-law of Julius Caesar. It is unknown to what degree, if any, Philodemus influenced the political priorities of Piso or his peers, but from his writings it appears that he did not reject the possibility that Epicurean philosophers could have a beneficial impact on the governance of the state.

9. Divine Lucretius! (Divin Lucrèce!)

As with Epicurus and Philodemus, Onfray dedicates multiple lectures to Lucretius, beginning with an entry of biography and context before diving into the writings proper. Since we know essentially nothing about Lucretius’ life, Onfray turns to a consideration of the dubious testimonies and ungrounded speculation that makes up the corpus of Lucretian biography, starting with the account of Saint Jerome, which was penned some 400 years after the life of Lucretius. In that influential narrative, whose core elements have often been repeated with varying amounts of historical awareness, Lucretius was the victim of a love potion which destroyed his mind, wrote his poem in the intervals of lucidity, and then killed himself at the age of 44.

We have no reason to believe that any of that is true. Onfray brings it up, however, because the history of Lucretian biography and commentary reveals the same kind of antagonism which Epicurus has often faced. Idealist thinkers (i.e. Christians) had an unshakeable antagonism to Lucretius, whose poem was a manifesto of materialism that denied divine providence, benevolent creation, mind-body dualism, and all the rest of the “Christian intellectual baggage.” Onfray considers this early calumny of Lucretius to have then influenced modern reactions: he discusses feminist writer Agnès Lagache who considers Lucretius a misogynist (an accusation which Onfray thinks is completely off-base) and an obscure mid-20^th century psychiatrist who claims that Lucretius was a depressive, repressed mystic who was predestined to suicide (likewise totally unfounded in our historical knowledge or the text of the poem). Such narratives make more sense, Onfray argues, when seen as the modern inheritance of the ancient slander.

What, in broad strokes, does Onfray think is the reality? To the Idealists, who thought all materialist accounts were reductive and incomplete, he would argue for Lucretius’ “vitalist materialism,” which is full of life and energy. To the feminists, he would note Lucretius’ positive portrayal of an “ataraxic couple” and eminently modern recognition of female sexual pleasure. To the psychiatrist, he would argue that Lucretius was not depressive, but an impassioned advocate for life, not someone suffering from pessimism, but rather a poet characterized above all by a kind of hyper-lucidity, that values above all else seeing things as they truly are.

10. Caprices of Atoms (Caprices d’atomes)

Following his introductory contextual lecture on Lucretius, and preceding his lecture on Lucretian hedonism and ethical advice, is an entry on the implications of Lucretian physics (the “caprice” in question is the famous “swerve”). The workings of the natural world are, after all, the main subject of the poem. For my largely ethical purposes here at Untroubled, the topics covered in this lecture are somewhat less central, but Onfray still has a few interesting observations worth noting for general readers. One of the most valuable is his summation of the Lucretian mission, which applies equally well to his ethical advice as to his cosmology:

We have invented so many things that are illusory, fictions that enable us not to look reality in the face. We are going to die, we are going to grow old, we are going to suffer, we are going to disappear—we are filled with negativity. And Lucretius says, “Well, we’re going to look at things very carefully, we’re going to dissect everything with a scalpel, we’re going to employ a method of reasoning that will spare nothing.” Rarely, I think, has anyone pushed farther towards the deconstruction of fictions than Lucretius.

In the book, Onfray finds even more pungent formulae for this mission:

Lucrèce assassine les fictions. (Les Sagesses Antiques 13.3)

The poem recounts a martial odyssey against everything that prevents enjoyment and therefore living: fears, dread, illusions, fictions, fables. In its crosshairs are all mythologies both secular and religious. (13.8)

Lucretius argued for empirical observation, the testing of hypotheses, and the withholding of certainty when the evidence is insufficient. Do all this, and the result is not some dry, inert materialism, robbed of all order and majesty. The result is a greater perception of the true laws of nature, and a sense of wonder that is not based on groundless fears and fictions.

11. Tragic Hedonism (L’hédonisme tragique)

In Onfray’s sense, the tragic perspective is an alternative to both optimism and pessimism, which are both ways of distorting reality. As mentioned in the previous lectures, he views Lucretius’ most distinguishing feature as being a kind of hyper-lucidity that is concerned above all with the way things really are. Importantly, however, that does not mean that Lucretius is joyless, austere, or cruel (Onfray joins me in considering those who take the famous “struggling ship” proem of Book II to be evidence of sadistic pleasure to be severely misreading the actual text).

On the contrary, Lucretius is clearly still a hedonist: his descriptions of the pleasures of social intercourse, shared meals, music, nature, and so on are direct evidence of this. His account of the development of human society (which anticipated many aspects of later social contract theorists) is based around the central impetus to reduce dangers and pains while increasing our opportunities for pleasure. A topic to which Onfray gives particular attention is that of sexual relationships, on which Lucretius has again often been misinterpreted.

In shallow misreadings, Lucretius is represented as being “against love.” In reality, he warns against “l’amour-passion,” or passionate love. Erotic obsession leads to a loss of self-control, psychological weakening, imprudent neglect of our affairs, and—most seriously of all—a loss of touch with reality. Under the influence of such passion, the ugly appear beautiful, the bitter appear sweet, and the foolish appear wise. This has its ridiculous side (Onfray compares it to Moliere’s The Misanthrope), but the consequences are ultimately painful, even if one attains the object of one’s desire: these are illusions and will not last.

Lucretius proposes two counter-visions (in addition to his surgical dissection of romantic passion). The first is the more notorious: men could visit prostitutes. I think Onfray is right, however, in seeing this as a part of a very modern perspective, in which sexual pleasure is divorced from the economic needs of marriage (Lucretius acknowledges the existence of female sexual pleasure, which of course has often not been the case in western cultural history). The second is the “ataraxic couple.” In a few often-overlooked lines at the end of Book IV, Lucretius describes a different vision of romantic partnership, one which seems perfectly compatible with the friendship that Epicureanism so often praises. A happy marriage is not produced by extraordinary beauty or an intense and immiserating passion, but instead is built from pleasant habituation, which arises factis morigerisque modis—through one’s actions and obliging behavior. Such a partnership is a prudence-enhancing alliance amidst the challenges of the world, rather than a reality-distorting imprudence. It is a source of pleasure that strengthens, rather than weakens.

12. Upon the stone, Diogenes of Oenoanda (Sur la pierre, Diogène d’Œnanda)

There is less one can easily say about Diogenes of Oenoanda, the author of a later Epicurean inscription (c. 130 AD) found in very fragmentary condition in modern-day Turkey. The majority of the text has not been recovered, and much of what survives either reproduces Epicurus verbatim or is otherwise very faithful to the known doctrines. (The most up-to-date English translation of the inscription is that of Martin Ferguson Smith, available for free online.) Still, Onfray notes a few unique points before rounding out this lecture cycle with some comments on the transition to the Christian age and its destruction of Epicurean and other materialist texts.

Among other things, Diogenes makes a positive case for old age as the time when our desires are on the wane, so that tranquility is more easily attainable. Another interesting fragment contains his contention that statues of the gods should show them “genial and smiling,” rather than impassioned or frightening. Most interesting to Onfray is Diogenes’ hint of utopian aspirations, imagining a world in which Epicurean wisdom becomes universal:

To Onfray, this is one more entry in the evidence against simplistic accounts of Epicureanism as entirely disinterested in political questions, particularly when it comes to the later manifestations of the school: Philodemus and Lucretius were both in contact with the world of power, and seemingly hoped to influence it. To cultivate an Epicurean disregard for personal aggrandizement does not necessarily imply an apathy towards the well-being of the world.

Conclusion

The history of this great adventure was written by the conquerors—that is to say, it was the destroyers of these works who wrote the history, it was the enemies of the corporeal ideal, the sensual ideal, and the Epicurean ideal who constructed the story, including that of philosophy. We live under the written regime of this history of philosophy. This seminar proposes and will propose a history of the conquered. (Lecture on Diogenes of Oenoanda)

Onfray has a philosophical ambition and passion which I cannot help but admire. The experience of actually listening to an opinionated individual, well-rehearsed but unscripted, speak about Epicureanism for twelve enthusiastic hours is a unique one that is seldom granted to modern philosophy students. This is true first in simple volume of coverage: the median holder of an undergraduate philosophy degree probably discussed Epicureanism over one or two class sessions, embedded in a larger survey of ancient philosophy in which clear preference was given to Plato and Aristotle.

But even beyond this, there is something unique about listening to Onfray. One can, of course, find specialist books about Epicureanism that equal his page count. But his partisan passion is very rare in such books. (The closest English-language analogue would be Norman DeWitt’s Epicurus and His Philosophy—imagine getting to hear DeWitt lay into the Platonists, and Stoics for twelve hours! That would be a treat.) This isn’t to say that the lectures are angry harangues. They are substantive and positive, periodically leavened with French sex jokes. But they give listeners a hint of the experience of philosophical like-mindedness which must have been a part of ancient Epicureanism, a hint of the immersiveness that continues to draw people together through commonality of political or religious beliefs. While listening to these lectures, a modern Epicurean can feel at home.

There are plenty of more specific insights that even those already familiar with the texts can gather from Onfray’s discussion. I have catalogued many of them above and in the first installment of this essay, and so won’t bother repeating them. Overall, however, their cumulative force boils down to this: a revitalized conviction that hedonism and materialism need not be marginal philosophical positions, but could in fact constitute a widespread, common basis for human interaction. There are many people in the world who are ready to leave idealist fictions behind, who are ready to discard the intellectual baggage of guilt, sin, and shame over the corporeal. And when such people come to this perspective in the living of their modern life, they will likewise be glad to turn to the ancient teachings and learn that these wisdoms were discovered long ago, and have adherents still.

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