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

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

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 The story is engaging and well-written, turning what could easily have been dry historical content into a lively, readable narrative populated by a host of vivid characters.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Pleasure is good. Pain is bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original Text

De Rerum Natura, Book III, Lines 1-30

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Simple food is all you need for happiness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. The goal is greater pleasure: practice enjoyment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Horace, Odes 1.31)

Enjoy what you have.

4. The good is easy to obtain—eat frugally

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Buy the foods that are on sale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. It’s OK to eat animals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recap

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

1. Eat simply.

2. Sometimes, eat very simply.

3. Enjoy your food.

4. Spend less money than normal people.

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

6. Eat meat if you want to.

7. Don’t eat alone.

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

Principal Doctrine 6:

Principal Doctrine 7:

Principal Doctrine 14:

Commentary

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

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

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

Political power corrupts.

Fame is contemptible.

Money is wicked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes politicians achieve a confident position. (PD 6)

PD 7 and 14 then made the contrary position explicit:

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

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

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

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

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

• General Perdiccas: Assassinated when Epicurus was 21

• General Craterus: Killed in battle when Epicurus was 21

• General Antipater: Died of illness when Epicurus was 22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Original Text

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s take these one by one.

Stoicism and Epicureanism have significant overlap

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

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

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

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

We accept temporary hardship and use austerity as a tool:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pleasure is good. Don’t you agree?

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

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

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

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

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

In Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Commentary, Part 1: Overcoming Pain

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Commentary Part 2: The Philosopher of Friendship

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

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

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

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

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

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

Original Text

From Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 10.22

Ἤδη δὲ τελευτῶν γράφει πρὸς Ἰδομενέα τήνδε ἐπιστολήν:

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

Henry Sidgwick is generally considered to be the last of the three major classical Utilitarians, after Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. His masterwork is universally declared to be The Methods of Ethics, a hefty 500-page tome first published in 1874 that compares three different ethical systems, including our own favored egoistic hedonism. Although the book is not exactly in vogue today, partially perhaps due to its length and somewhat dry style (Mill’s Utilitarianism and On Liberty are far more approachable books), it has had many prominent admirers. Derek Parfit, for instance, considered it the best book on ethics ever written.

For our purposes, what is especially valuable about The Methods of Ethics compared to much contemporary ethical philosophy is that it takes Epicureanism seriously, even if it is not an outright defense of the system. The “methods” of the title are three: egoistic hedonism (Epicureanism), universalistic hedonism (utilitarianism), and intuitionism (now usually called deontology, by which Sidgwick primarily meant the collection of seemingly independent ethical intuitions expressed by “commonsense” morality). In the book, Sidgwick considers the reasonableness and internal consistency of each system in great depth, refreshingly giving egoism equal standing with its two competitors, rather than relegating it to an easily dismissed subsidiary position, as is commonly found in modern textbooks.

Giving a comprehensive account of this massive landmark in philosophy is beyond the scope of today’s essay, but I would like to draw attention to why Epicurean sympathizers might want to read Sidgwick, focusing both on areas where he capably defends our positions and on aspects where he intelligently challenges our thinking.

First Things First: A Recap of Terminology

For those who have not studied ethics in a formal, systematic fashion, some review of the relevant vocabulary is in order. And even if you have, explicitly defining the position of Epicureanism in relation to the available alternatives is a very useful and important task for anyone trying to clarify their own philosophic convictions.

In Sidgwick’s attempt at laying out the viable ethical options, he concludes that there are only two possible final ends that “have a strongly and widely supported claim”—either happiness or what could be termed perfection or excellence (1.1.4).1 Among those who believe happiness to be the most rational objective of human behavior, he believes there to be two camps: those who believe we should pursue the happiness of all (Utilitarianism) and those who believe we should pursue our own happiness (Epicureanism). By the pursuit of “perfection or excellence,” Sidgwick generally means adherence to some vision of the right or good conceived separately from happiness. Sometimes he puts this in terms of the work of Kant (the foremost representative of what we now typically refer to as deontology), but most of his discussion focuses on the commonsense morality of his time. The main term Sidgwick uses, however, is Intuitionism: many everyday people assert that there are various freestanding moral intuitions such as “one should not lie” and “one should keep one’s promises,” for instance.

There are a few things to note already, then, about how Sidgwick situates Epicureanism relative to other philosophical schools.

1. Sidgwick understands Epicurean “hedonism” correctly, as perfectly parallel to that of Utilitarianism. For largely historical reasons, Utilitarianism is usually spoken of accurately as advocating for maximizing “utility,” a somewhat specialized term of philosophy that is generally understood to mean the same thing as maximizing “happiness,” while ancient Epicureanism is often described simply as pursuing “pleasure,” a word that has of course given rise to all kinds of misinterpretation. Sidgwick understands that the pursuit of “pleasure,” “utility,” and “happiness” are all the same thing. For more, see my essay on Epicurean hedonism.

2. The difference then between Epicureanism and Utilitarianism is then simply one between egoistic hedonism (the term Sidgwick usually uses) and universalistic hedonism (which Sidgwick usually calls Utilitarianism). This clarifies and sets the stage for one of the main questions of the book: is either self-interest or altruism a defensible, self-evident first principle? Sidgwick’s answer is roughly “both”—a famous conclusion known as “the dualism of practical reason.” Read on for more.

3. Sidgwick’s opposition between the two hedonistic schools and the camp of the “perfection or excellence”-seeking Intuitionists similarly boils down the core dispute: do we really have independent intuitions against lying, stealing, killing, etc., or are those seeming “intuitions” really only valid insofar as they actually contribute to happiness?

This clarity of categorization alone is a good reason to read Sidgwick. Many summaries of Epicureanism treat the philosophy from a merely historical perspective. Sidgwick puts egoistic hedonism into a live debate with the two dominant ethical systems of his time, both of which continue to be hugely influential today. And despite egoism being the least respected option among philosophers of both his day and our own, Sidgwick is a consistently fair-minded and detail-oriented thinker, who never simply brushes Epicureanism aside without careful consideration of its arguments.

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Sidgwick the Epicurean Ally: Things He Affirms

Let’s next consider some points where Sidgwick is generally in support of the Epicurean position.

Hedonism is right

A large part of the book is given over to an extensive analysis of the commonsense morality of Sidgwick’s day, with several chapters analyzing different virtues or principles such as self-control, justice, promise-keeping, and so on. (In lecture notes printed in the preface to the sixth edition, Sidgwick noted that this was the original core of the book, conceived as a modern imitation of Aristotle’s practice in the Nicomachean Ethics.) The basic result of his analysis is that all of these seemingly disparate “intuitions” all boil down to hedonism: in cases where “keeping a promise,” for instance, would reduce the happiness of all the relevant parties, he thinks the intuition of moral obligation no longer holds. Instead, the principles of commonsense morality should be treated as helpful rules-of-thumb that usually, but not always, lead to good hedonistic outcomes.

Most reactions against hedonism are simply aversion to the word “pleasure,” combined with unreflective allegiance to inherited societal rules. Sidgwick, however, sees such arguments for what they really are: terminological confusion and a fundamental lack of reflection about the true nature of our learned moral rules.

In practice, egoism is usually aligned with Utilitarianism

Sidgwick and Epicurus agree that egoists will generally agree with Utilitarians on the best course of action, because the publicly beneficial course of action is most often beneficial to the individual too. Sometimes, this occurs in a very natural and subconscious way, where the egoistic benefits of cooperation are obvious: most of the time, each individual wants to follow the rules of the road, because driving against traffic or in flagrant disregard of lane markers would be very hazardous to his own safety. In other cases, there might be legal sanctions that help align the egoistic and altruistic interests: people may be held back from shoplifting by the thought of the punishment they will experience if they are caught, for instance. According to Epicurus, the fear of legal penalties or adverse social reactions is essentially inescapable, so wise egoists will nearly always follow the course of action that is approved of by society.

When someone secretly violates the covenants that men form to neither harm nor be harmed, it is impossible for him to be sure that he will escape detection, even if up to now he has escaped a thousand times. (Principal Doctrine 35)

Sidgwick also recognizes the practical effectiveness of sanctions in the majority of cases and gives a very useful extended account of how they can influence the rational egoist:

[Legal sanctions] We must indeed admit that in an even tolerably well-ordered society… all serious open violation of law is contrary to prudence. (2.5.2)

[Social disapproval] No doubt the hope of praise and liking and services from one’s fellow-men, and the fear of forfeiting these and incurring instead aversion, refusal of aid, and social exclusion, are considerations often important enough to determine the rational egoist to law-observance, even in default of adequate legal penalties. (2.5.3)

[Social benefits] A rational egoist will generally be strict and punctual in the fulfilment of all his engagements, and truthful in his assertions, in order to win the confidence of other men; and he will be zealous and industrious in his work, in order to obtain gradually more important and therefore more honorable and lucrative employment; and he will control such of his passions and appetites as are likely to interfere with his efficiency; and…[etc.] (2.5.3)

[“Internal sanctions”—the pleasure or pain we habitually come to feel in performing socially-approved actions] There is every reason to believe that most men, however firmly they might adopt the principles of Egoistic Hedonism, would still feel sentiments prompting to the performance of social duty, as commonly recognized in their society, independently of any conclusion that the actions prompted by such sentiments were reasonable and right. For such sentiments would always be powerfully supported by the sympathy of others, and their expressions of praise and blame, liking and aversion. (2.5.4)

Now, to be clear, Sidgwick’s final conclusion is that all of these collective sanctions are not sufficient to bring egoistic and universalistic hedonism into perfect alignment. Officially, in Sidgwick’s attempt to craft perfectly consistent ethical frameworks, this means that any assertion of altruistic duty needs to be independently demonstrated—one cannot simply wave one’s hands and say “egoism poses no problems to conventional ideas of duty and virtue,” because he thinks we can always come up with some scenario in which an egoistically-motivated action will face no social consequences of any kind, even though the action in question is socially detrimental.

The disagreement with Epicurus here is a relatively subtle one. At first glance, Epicurus seems to simply state that egoism and conventional virtues will always coincide:

It is impossible to lead a pleasurable life without also living prudently, honorably, and justly; it is also impossible to lead a life of prudence, honor, and justice without living pleasurably. (PD 5)

Some fragments suggest, however, that Epicurus is aware that this alignment is not in fact perfect. Most notoriously:

In his Problems, [Epicurus] asks whether a wise person will do something that the laws forbid, if he knows that he will escape detection. And he answers that it is not easy to give an unqualified response. (Usener 18, Plutarch Against Colotes 1127D)

Epicurus knows that sanctions are not actually 100% effective at making egoism agree with conventional morality. In my reading, he is simply less concerned than Sidgwick with achieving 100% consistency. The life of the egoist will on the whole be what normal people would consider virtuous, but in effectively invisible situations where negligible harm is done to others, the egoist will not worry about an abstract idea of justice. For instance, when I file my California state income taxes, I am supposed to report any out-of-state purchases I’ve made from retailers too small to submit the sales tax for me. But I don’t. There are probably a few dozen people who do (estimates put it in the range of 1% compliance), but this law is effectively unenforced and there is no stigma against failure to comply, so I don’t worry about it. For Sidgwick’s project, however, this is a complication: he needs to ask whether we actually have a moral obligation to exhibit maximum socially-defined virtue even in cases where egoistically effective sanctions are lacking.

Personally, I think the Epicurean position that since sanctions are 99% effective at making socially beneficial behavior also egoistically beneficial, we shouldn’t worry too much about the rare discrepancies, is a good one. Additionally, one should note that Epicureans are not opposed to either the deployment of external sanctions (legal penalties) or the nurturing of internal sanctions (moral education in support of prosocial emotional defaults), so as far as public policy goes, there is essentially no dispute.

Finally, Sidgwick is also fair enough to note that in some prominent cases, egoistic impulses can be more socially beneficial than their absence would be: most normal people would consider it a good thing that people have more sympathy for their spouses and children than for anonymous strangers, for instance:

There are very few persons, however strongly and widely sympathetic, who are so constituted as to feel for the pleasures and pains of mankind generally a degree of sympathy at all commensurate with their concern for wife or children, or lover, or intimate friend: and if any training of the affections is at present possible which would materially alter this proportion in the general distribution of our sympathy, it scarcely seems that such a training is to be recommended as on the whole felicific. (Concluding chapter, section 3)

Egoism does not mean that you only consider yourself as an isolated being; it means that you consider the people closest to you as more important in your decision-making process than universalizing abstractions. Sometimes, Sidgwick admits, the best way to promote universal happiness is to endorse egoistic motivation.

Most cursory textbook treatments of egoism miss these factors. They might include legal penalties in the discussion, but they often exclude the benefits of trusting social reciprocation, the existence of internalized sanctions, or the fact that the widely admired traits of familial, friend-based, or patriotic loyalty are all ultimately egoistic impulses. Refreshingly, Sidgwick actually wants to make the best case he can for egoism, despite his Utilitarian inclinations.

Egoism is hard to disprove

The majority of moralists seem to find all forms of egoism to be inherently worthy of suspicion or disdain. Sidgwick, however, has the self-awareness to step back and make a real, good faith attempt to evaluate egoism neutrally. And while he stops quite a way short of a full endorsement (since he believes that he also feels a valid moral intuition to act on behalf of others), he does make a major concession that it is “difficult not to admit the ‘authority’ of self-love, or the ‘rationality’ of seeking one’s own individual happiness (3.1.1).

As supporting context, Sidgwick notes that many widely respected sources do in fact grant egoistic impulses a great deal of legitimacy—something else which is often left out of the modern textbooks. He notes that many Christian moralists promise that living virtuously will lead to happiness (2.1.1), as does Aristotle, perhaps the most influential ancient ethicist (2.1.2). Even Bentham, the originator of modern universalistic hedonism, considered it “right and proper” that each individual “should aim at his own greatest happiness.” And all of these philosophical precursors are largely following what is in many respects still the popular consensus: Sidgwick notes that there is a “wide acceptance of the principle that it is reasonable for a man to act in the manner most conducive to his own happiness” (2.1.1).

All of this should be recognized, not as “proof of egoism” per se, but as empirical evidence in favor of egoism’s fundamental reasonableness. While immersion in altruistic theories can distort this view, it is fundamentally very difficult to assert that people should not pursue their own happiness, or that the fate of a man’s wife and children should not be regarded as more important to him than the fates of distant strangers.

Sidgwick the Epicurean Skeptic: Two Clear But Minor Disagreements

While Sidgwick takes egoistic hedonism seriously, there are some points where he clearly diverges from Epicurus.

Psychological Hedonism

Epicurus believes in psychological hedonism—the proposition that all human motivation comes down to the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. We eat cookies because they taste good, sure. But we also do uncomfortable physical exercise: maybe we are thinking strategically of the future pleasure of health and fitness, maybe on net we enjoy the accompanying competition or companionship of a group activity, maybe we are trying to avoid the mental pain of guilt and shame at being fat and lazy—all of these could be seen as hedonistic motivations in the understanding of Epicurus (or of John Stuart Mill, for that matter).

Sidgwick, however, is unconvinced. In his paraphrase of Butler, which he often considers applicable, “we could not pursue pleasure at all, unless we had desires for something else”—we would take no net pleasure in exercise unless we wanted to be healthy, lean, or hardworking (1.4.2). Furthermore, in certain situations, many people have an impression of choosing between pleasure and other motivating factors (duty, for example). Sidgwick thinks this is a real phenomenon, while psychological hedonists would maintain that if we “do our duty” it is because we are receiving a psychological reward for doing so, such as avoiding painful shame or guilt.

In the end, I think much of this dispute is an irresolvable question of preferred definition. Sidgwick acknowledges, for instance, that the enlightened egoist experiences “sympathetic pleasures and pains, which have to be taken into account in the calculations of egoistic hedonism,” but asserts that there are also other “impulses to altruistic action” that do not fall under the name of pleasure and pain (Concluding Chapter, Section 3). Personally, I think “pleasure” is a reasonable word to use to describe the fulfillment of an impulse and find the recourse to other, vaguely motivating “impulses” to be an unhelpful complication.

That the Absence of Pain is Pleasurable

That the complete absence of pain constitutes the highest degree of pleasure is one of Epicurus’ more controversial takes (presented explicitly in both Principal Doctrine 3 and the Letter to Menoeceus). Sidgwick formally disagrees with this, stating that this “paradox of Epicurus” is “opposed to common sense and common experience” (2.2.1). Still, he disagrees with it less completely than many do, since he acknowledges that the theoretical “hedonistic zero” is not our normal condition, but rather that the normal condition of healthy human life is a largely pleasant one.

This is, in a sense, Epicurus’ main pragmatic takeaway: removing all sources of pain and achieving a state of untroubled health will render your life a pleasurable one. If certain modern readers balk at taking Epicurus quite literally here and wish to stick with Sidgwick’s position that an essentially neutral state must presumably exist at some point within our lives of fluctuating pains and pleasures, while still retaining Epicurus’ practical position that pain removal is paramount and that the normal state of a healthy mind is a pleasurable one, I am not too bothered.

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The Big Question: Is There a Valid “Maxim of Benevolence”?

Sidgwick is thus highly sympathetic to a number of core Epicurean positions: he thinks hedonism is the most rational basis for an ethical system, he agrees that egoistic considerations will generally lead to prosocial outcomes, and he thinks that the basic rationale of self-interest is essentially undeniable. Even his disagreements regarding psychological hedonism and the pleasurableness of a pain-free state are nuanced and technical, rather than truly cutting at the root of the Epicurean system.

But there is one big reason why Sidgwick is a Utilitarian, rather than an egoist: he believes in the intuitional validity of a “maxim of benevolence.” He first defines this as part of his tour of the moral intuitions proposed by commonsense morality, proposing a self-evident principle that

the good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view (if I may say so) of the Universe, than the good of any other… it is evident to me that as a rational being I am bound to aim at good generally,—so far as it is attainable by my efforts,—not merely at a particular part of it. (3.13.3)

Sidgwick recognizes that moral intuitions are in a sense unprovable—they are first principles rather than logical conclusions from previously accepted premises. He attempts to provide some criteria that he thinks can help us distinguish self-evident truths from mere opinion, but ultimately concedes that the self-evidence of the maxim of benevolence feels true to him, while there are rational egoists who do not accept it (4.2.1).

Personally, I don’t feel that the above maxim is self-evident: there is no clear reason to me why an individual should adopt “the point of view of the Universe.” There are reasonable grounds for thinking that a strong sense of sympathy with other people evolved because it was biologically useful for survival and reproduction (and that this could explain the feeling of an intuition), but there is no reason to consider such an impulse a form of “self-evident truth” in a rational sense. Biological impulses are real and important, but they are not logically truth-tracking.

Sidgwick, however, is unwilling to drop this intuition. Combined with his already mentioned difficulty in disproving egoism, he is left with a famous though controversial conclusion known as the “dualism of practical reason,” which states that there is an irresolvable discrepancy between these two seemingly self-evident propositions: that we should seek our own happiness and that we should seek everyone’s happiness. He does raise a caveat: one way that the two could be resolved is if we posit a deity who will ensure that those who act in the interest of universal happiness will be individually rewarded. It was for this reason that Keynes bitingly said of Sidgwick:

He never did anything but wonder whether Christianity was true and prove that it wasn’t and hope that it was.2

Sidgwick wanted to justify altruism, the teaching of his philosophical mentors. He wanted to disprove egoism, to which he felt an aversion. But he was also a careful and painstaking thinker, who endlessly qualifies, specifies, circles around and reapproaches every topic throughout the course of this sprawling book. And so, despite his own inclinations, Sidgwick ultimately concedes both that egoism cannot be dismissed as irrational and that the maxim of benevolence is fundamentally unprovable to those who do not consent to it. The reverse, perhaps, is true as well.

If everyone who expressed their opinions on ethics were similarly cautious, restrained, and reasonable, many discussions would be more fruitful. And if we are willing to put on hold the project of obtaining universal consent to a single, unified system, then we can embrace the vast possibilities found in the overlap between advocates of universalistic and egoistic hedonism.

That real world is where Epicurus worked. In that real world, you will occasionally encounter situations for which “it is not easy to give an unqualified response.” But far more often you will find that the path of justice and benevolence is the path of pleasure after all.

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Principal Doctrine 5:

Principal Doctrine 17:

Commentary

When it comes to the key ethical writings of Epicurus that have survived, two texts stand out: the Letter to Menoeceus (which I recently translated across five posts) and the Principal Doctrines, a collection of forty maxims on mostly ethical topics. Both are considered to be authentic and essentially intact transmissions of Epicurus himself, relayed in their entirety within Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. (Depending on your translation, you may also see this text referred to as the Key Doctrines, Leading Doctrines, Authorized Doctrines, Sovereign Maxims, or Kyriai Doxai.)

In my opening translation on Untroubled, I covered the first four of these aphorisms, which are often regarded as encapsulating some of the most central claims of Epicureanism in compact form. Over the coming months, I will proceed through the remainder of the Principal Doctrines, with regular intermissions to share other small texts. In general, I intend to move systematically through the collection, but I will take some maxims out of sequence in order to form thematic pairings or small sets of related aphorisms. Today, I will proceed to Principal Doctrine (PD) 5, pairing it with the related PD 17. Both deal with an important subject: the connection between the traditional virtues and the life of pleasure. According to Epicurus, they are inseparable.

There are some philosophically immaterial disputes about the text of this maxim.1 Brackets show scholarly additions to our received text, which I feel are generally well justified on the ground of both sense and the testimony of other texts. So, what exactly is the nature of Epicurus’ claim here?

It is important to understand the significance of the three traits that Epicurus juxtaposes with the life of pleasure: living prudently, honorably, and justly (φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως). Most simply, these are all traditional virtues. Many critics of hedonism insist that followers of Epicurus reject the virtues, and that the egoistic pursuit of one’s own pleasure must necessarily conflict with a virtuous life. In this common conception, the demands of honor and justice are what hold us back from pursuing pleasure.

In a simple example, someone might find it pleasurable to possess some given object—a given person might want to drink a nice bottle of wine, own a big TV, or wear a fine Italian wool coat. If he is presented with an opportunity to steal such an object, the critics assert, he would do so if only considering his own pleasure. That is why we need to teach the importance of honor and justice: so that we will not act shamefully or unjustly out of low hedonistic motives.

Epicurus thinks this is wrong. Such a portrait of hedonism would only be accurate for the most unreflective person imaginable. Most people recognize that in most cases stealing will be hedonistically bad—there will often be a high likelihood of legal punishment or immediate retaliation. What Epicurus thinks we need to teach is thoughtful hedonism: we need to reflect that even when the danger of being caught seems low, it is non-zero. There is always some risk of being found out, so our peace of mind will inevitably be damaged by any acts of theft. Meanwhile, on the other side of the equation, fancy wine, TVs, and coats are really not that valuable and consist mostly of “variation” rather than increase in pleasure.

One might wonder: doesn’t the mention of “honor” and “justice” imply some belief in those ideas as freestanding, independent virtues? I don’t think so. I basically agree with Norman DeWitt’s reading:

… By honor is meant the unwritten law that determines the conduct of a gentleman; and by justice is meant obedience to the written laws of the country.2

Epicurus mentions honor and justice as examples of the conventional, socially-constructed virtues because he is responding to those who are concerned about the potential Epicurean disregard for commonplace morality, so it is natural that he uses those terms. For himself, the traditional virtues only have instrumental value insofar as they promote hedonistic benefit—which they almost always do!

We don’t have a great deal of testimony regarding Epicurean conceptions of honor, but on the subject of justice he is quite explicit: “Justice does not exist as a thing by itself,” he writes in PD 33, but is rather “an agreement of mutual advantage, a covenant to not harm one another and to not be harmed” (PD 31). If justice, then (as well as honor, presumably), can be broken down into terms of advantage and disadvantage, then prudence—practical decision-making about how to best forward our own interest—is the connective tissue that leads to the essential alignment of pleasure and the conventional virtues. This is, after all, exactly what Epicurus said in the Letter to Menoeceus, where he embedded the first half of PD 5 more clearly in that prudential context:

Prudence is the foundation of all of this and our greatest good. Because of this, prudence is more valuable than philosophy, and all the other virtues are produced from it. Prudence teaches that it is not possible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably, and justly, nor to live prudently, honorably, and justly without living pleasurably. For the virtues are necessarily intertwined with the pleasurable life, and the pleasurable life is inseparable from them.

As a further clarification of how living virtuously contributes to our own pleasure, it is helpful to look at PD 17, which applies the general principles of PD 5 to justice specifically. (Epicurus will have more to say on justice in the PD 30s.)

Here, the “hedonistic” benefit of acting justly is identified specifically: the famous ataraxia, or tranquility. Ataraxia is the absence of tarache—disturbance or trouble. By acting justly, you can avoid a wide swathe of disturbances to your peace of mind—the actual imposition of legal penalties, the risk of legal penalties, and social disapprobation in all its forms from violent reprisal down to mild distrust.

Crooks and cheats are not good models for a peaceful life. The just, honorable, and prudent person, in contrast, is ataraktotatos—the most untroubled.

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Original Text

5. οὐκ ἔστιν ἡδέως ζῆν ἄνευ τοῦ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως <οὐδὲ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως> ἄνευ τοῦ ἡδέως· ὅτῳ δὲ τοῦτο μὴ ὑπάρχει, οὐ ζῇ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως, <καὶ ὅτῳ ἐκεῖνο μὴ> ὐπάρχει, οὐχ ἔστι τοῦτον ἡδέως ζῆν.

17. ὁ δίκαιος ἀταρακτότατος, ὁ δʼ ἄδικος πλείστης ταραχῆς γήμων.

A disagreement has arisen in the Epicurean corner of the internet over the last few weeks regarding how much emphasis Epicurus placed on the reduction and avoidance of pain. I think the answer is clearly “a lot!” Some Epicureans, however, seem to feel that in modern contexts, the most salient risk is overemphasizing pain reduction: we should remember, they point out, that Epicurus advocated for the appreciation of easily accessible pleasures, not maximum ascetism.

Personally, I am not convinced about the merits of downplaying pain reduction’s place in Epicurean hedonic theory. While it is technically possible to overstate this emphasis, I think it is both extremely central to historical Epicureanism and essential to the philosophy’s therapeutic effectiveness to keep the focus on reducing and avoiding pain, broadly considered.

The disputed territory

I tiptoed into the debate with a passing phrase in my recent article reviewing the scholarly work of Tim O’Keefe, in which I wrote this:

While many correctly note that Epicurean “hedonism” is primarily about the reduction of pain, that bald summary can overlook the next layer of analysis: Epicurus believes that avoiding bodily pain is pretty simple, and that therefore most of our therapeutic attention should go to avoiding mental pain. The largest component of mental pain is fear.

A few commentors questioned this passing assertion, and a few days later a much more extended argument in favor of deemphasizing pain reduction came from Cassius over at Epicurean Friends. His thesis:

The claim that Epicurean philosophy is “primarily about the absence of pain” — that the Epicurean goal is a passive, featureless neutral state free from disturbance — is one of the most consequential misreadings in the history of philosophy.

Now, it should immediately be recognized that there are two different versions of the disparaged position here, which Cassius switches back and forth between in his essay. The first is the claim that Epicurean philosophy is “primarily about the absence of pain.” This is roughly what I believe, although even this more moderate framing is a little stronger than what I myself wrote:

Epicurean “hedonism” is primarily about the reduction of pain

There are other topics than pain reduction in the whole philosophy, and “reduction” is more precise than “absence”—the overall emphasis is on what can be done, not just an all-or-nothing insistence on achieving complete absence of pain. Overall, though, I think all variations of the “primarily” claim are worth considering and not dismissing out of hand.

The second iteration of the target position is the more dramatic claim that “the Epicurean goal is a passive, featureless neutral state free from disturbance.” I agree that this would be inaccurate. Cassius’ arguments against that position are correct. This concession, however, still leaves a significant gap in our choice of emphasis: Cassius seems to imply that mentions of pain avoidance are relatively minor and isolated elements of the philosophy, while I think the preeminent importance of pain reduction is the core thesis of Epicurean hedonism.

So, to clarify my position: I am not arguing that positive pleasures don’t exist or shouldn’t be enjoyed. “Primarily about the reduction of pain” does not mean “exclusively about the reduction of pain.” Nor would I endorse “The goal of life is absence of pain” as a good all-encompassing summary of Epicureanism. What I do believe Epicurus would agree with is that most of our therapeutic attention should go to avoiding mental pain.

The basic evidence for my position

Two texts are particularly foundational to my interpretation, Principal Doctrine 3 and the Letter to Menoeceus. In my own translation:

Let’s pull out the highlights:

This is the explicit and unambiguous content of the core ancient texts from Epicurus himself. It isn’t a single sentence taken out of context, but a clearly repeated emphasis: reducing pain—especially mental pain—is extremely, extremely, important. Most concrete Epicurean advice falls under the pain-reduction headings given here: we should practice prudence and seek to increase our security to avoid physical pain, while systematically removing mental pains such as unjustified fears of the gods, fears of death, and unsatisfiable desires for unhelpful things. So why do some advocates of Epicureanism think this theme should be downplayed?

The Critiques and My Responses

First off, I am glad EpicureanFriends exists. Cassius clearly knows a lot about Epicureanism. I think his arguments highlight important elements in Epicureanism about the appreciation of positive pleasures. When he objects to characterizations of Epicureanism as advocating “a passive, featureless neutral state,” I agree with him. But I think he got a little carried away in his enthusiasm for his argument and is significantly underrating Epicurus’ emphasis on the reduction of pain.

With that attestation of goodwill duly declared, allow me to go through the evidence Cassius proposes in favor of downplaying pain avoidance and more exclusively emphasizing positive pleasures and present my responses. The bold, numbered passages represent paraphrases of or quotations from his points, with my disagreements below.

1. Epicurus believes that a pain-free state is a pleasurable state. Because of this fundamental synonymity, for commentators to emphasize the absence of pain is “a rhetorical [choice], not a philosophical one — and it is a rhetorical choice that consistently misleads general audiences toward passivity and minimalism.”

I disagree with both of the internal claims here: that this doctrine does not represent a significant philosophical choice by Epicurus and that “passivity and minimalism” are the chief implications.

I think Epicurus’ point of emphasis is a very meaningful philosophical choice. Most philosophers don’t argue that the absence of pain is inherently pleasurable. Epicurus is making a distinctive argument that has a very real function: to argue for the importance of pain reduction. This is not mere rhetoric—the consequences are integral to his therapeutic advice, as will become clear below.

As both philosophical argument and rhetorical insistence, furthermore, I would not summarize the direction of this phrasing as pointing “toward passivity and minimalism,” exactly. Towards “tranquility and appreciation of simple things,” perhaps. But even that would be only a partial and indirect train of connection. What it points toward more specifically is the value of eliminating fear and illusion. This isn’t random speculation; it’s what Epicurus says in the subsequent lines of Menoeceus: the preferred alternative to actively accumulating sensual pleasures is not “passivity and minimalism,” it is “sober reasoning, which examines the roots of our every choice and avoidance, and drives out those opinions that so greatly disturb our lives.”

2. People who claim that the Letter to Menoeceus emphasizes the avoidance of pain are considering only “a single sentence torn from context.”

The sentence Cassius quotes is this, in his chosen translation:

There is a lot more than one sentence on this topic in the Letter to Menoeceus. Above, I quote around eight sentences, which comprises a large share of the discussion of pleasure in the LM. Cassius omits three out of the four explicit reiterations of the same point:

Someone is removing context, but it’s not my team!

3. Principal Doctrine 3 is not what it appears to be in isolation, but rather should be read only as a response to Plato on whether pleasure has a limit. “PD3 tells us the cup is full when it reaches the brim. It says nothing about what fills the cup.”

For reference, Principal Doctrine 3:

It is true, Epicurus does teach that pleasure has a limit. This is one of the key innovations of his brand of hedonism. But I think the obvious implication of that point is to deemphasize the pursuit of pleasures. It’s surprising that Cassius decides to appeal to the “full cup” metaphor from Book 6 of Lucretius (a connection he makes explicit below, in point nine), because Lucretius’ point is the opposite of his. In the Lucretian cup analogy, the problem is that the cup has holes that need to be patched. These are pains—things that spoil our happiness, no matter how many pleasures we attempt to pour into our lives. Insofar as PD 3 is focused on the existence of a limit to pleasure, the primary philosophical consequence is to imply that “filling the cup” with ever more discrete instances of pleasure is an ineffective strategy.

Cassius is right in pointing out that PD 3 is not an isolated maxim, but part of an intentional series of Principal Doctrines 1–4 (abbreviated further in the tetrapharmakon). However, looking at this context only underlines the importance of pain reduction in Epicureanism: all four are about pain reduction in the broad sense I describe.

PD 1: Reduce your painful fear of the gods

PD 2: Reduce your painful fear of death

PD 3: Reconsider popular ideas about pleasure and instead prioritize pain removal

PD 4: For pains that you do encounter, here is how to manage them thoughtfully.

This isn’t an accident—everyone agrees these are very central texts to Epicureanism. Only one of the four discusses pleasure and its explicit point is to recast pleasure in terms of the absence of pain. The other three are all about managing pain.

4. In other places, Epicurus describes pleasure in positive terms, not just negative. The most obvious example is from Diogenes Laertius, in which Epicurus is quoted as saying, “I know not how to conceive the good, apart from the pleasures of taste, of sex, of sound, and the pleasures of beautiful form.”

On this point, as on some others, Cassius’ argument narrows to the more extreme version of his opposing camp, those who assert that “that the Epicurean goal is a passive, featureless neutral state.” He is correct in saying that would be an inaccurate characterization.

My team in the debate doesn’t deny that positive pleasures exist; we just think Epicurus puts a huge emphasis on pain reduction. What does Epicurus actually recommend in regard to food, sex, and aesthetic stimulation? Mostly prudential avoidance. Excessive gourmandizing is bad for your health and financially costly. Sex can sometimes involve distorting erotic obsession, the complications of family life, or dangers to your health (there are exceptions). In other words: Epicurus’ advice on food, sex, and the rest is mostly about pain reduction.

The quoted sentence, taken in conjunction with the whole body of his related advice, is entirely consistent with my position that Epicurus recognizes positive pleasures, but offers a teaching that focuses largely on pain reduction.

5. “The ancient witnesses are unanimous that the goal is active, vivid pleasure.” Consider these four quotations:

These quotes do not say what they are asserted to say. Only two of them—the first and third—give any suggestion of an emphasis on “active, vivid pleasure.” Both are from Cicero, who, as Cassius points out, is a hostile critic rather than a sympathetic Epicurean. As I would interpret that fact, that suggests that he is more likely to distort or misunderstand the teaching. If Cicero is the most explicit voice one can find describing Epicureanism as advocating “a life crammed with pleasures,” you should be suspicious. He phrases it that way because he is maliciously or ignorantly misrepresenting the focus of the philosophy.

Even in those two quotes, the importance of tranquility (i.e. absence of pain) is explicitly included. The other two, meanwhile, are entirely on my side of the argument deemphasizing the pursuit of pleasures. The point of the final Torquatus quote is that if you have adequate wisdom you do not need to pursue pleasures at all. The Diogenes quote says nothing in support of “activeness” or “vividness”: the point of “fullness” of pleasure (εἰς τὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς πλήρωμα) is satiety and completion. This is entirely consistent with my understanding of Epicurean hedonism: what it offers as an explicit point of contrast with earlier, more simplistic hedonisms, is the possibility of satiety and a deemphasis on “cramming” more pleasures in.

6. Cicero says that the position of freedom of pain being the chief good was the position of Hieronymus of Rhodes, while pleasure being the chief good was the position of Epicurus.

This point again applies only to the more extreme anti-pleasure interpreters. Cassius is right in saying “if you maintain that “absence of pain” rather than pleasure is the true goal of life, you are not an Epicurean.”

I don’t see anything here that conflicts with the opinion of team “Primarily But Not Exclusively,” however. We do not assert that positive pleasures don’t exist or shouldn’t be enjoyed. We maintain only that the enjoyment of accessible pleasures is a relatively simple and straightforward part of the teaching that requires a smaller volume of elucidation and therapeutic attention.

7. Friendship “inevitably ends in grief,” so it could only be advisable if it is counterbalanced by positive pleasures.

This point has no direct quotes from Epicurus, but instead appeals to Frances Wright, presumably because the actual Epicurus quotes on friendship generally trend in the opposite direction. The inevitability of “ending in grief” is not an Epicurean emphasis. The case of losing a friend is brought up in one prominent place that I can remember offhand, with the message of do not grieve:

I take “as if he were to be pitied” to be an allusion to the teachings on death: we should not be sad on behalf of departed friends, for they are not suffering. Meanwhile, the continued existence of our larger community of surviving friends means that our own security is not harmed.

Overall, the most distinctive feature of Epicurean friendship is its emphasis on the practical, on how friends are perhaps the crucial tool for achieving security—the avoidance of physical pain and the reduction of fear about physical pain in the future.

8. “‘The Goal of Life Is Absence of Pain’ as a Standalone Phrase Is Liable to Systematic Misinterpretation”

This claim is also narrowly true: misinterpretation can happen and any eight-word motto should be carefully chosen. I agree that this would be a poor choice for an all-encompassing Epicurean motto.

I still stand by the proposition that avoidance of pain is the primary emphasis of Epicurus’ teachings on pleasure. The fact that people are liable to misinterpret the given sentence has no bearing on whether or not my more moderate camp is reading Epicurus correctly.

9. “The appropriate analogy — as used in the opening of Lucretius Book Six — is that of a ‘full cup’… A crammed-full cup is not a description of an ‘absence of pain’ philosophy. It is the description of a philosophy of positive, active, abundant pleasure.”

Let’s look at the Lucretius:

The whole point of the cup analogy is to show that cramming more stuff in the cup is useless unless we stop the leaks! These twenty lines are about the futility of wealth, praise, and honor (pleasures). The next twenty lines are about the better path: limiting desire and fear.

You can certainly note that the cup contains pleasure. (Though again, the cup’s “crammed”-ness is basically Cicero’s polemical mischaracterization of our goal.) But Lucretius’ obvious emphasis is on stopping the leaks (mental pains) while downplaying the pursuit of positive pleasures. To the degree that the debate is about the degree to which pain avoidance is “primary” to the Epicurean conception of pleasure, I think this analogy is pretty good evidence on my side!

10. The “absence of pain” reading arose from Stoic, religious, and Humanist filters, rather than an objective look at the original Epicurean texts.

People with such sympathies certainly could find something appealing in Epicurus. (That’s not a bad thing.) And perhaps they might then overemphasize this aspect while wrongfully excluding others. (That would be an error in their understanding.) But I don’t believe that either I, O’Keefe, or the other allied scholars are operating through any such filters. The existence of more extreme misreaders leaves plenty of room for those saying that Epicurus emphasized the avoidance of pain.

11. “The Historical Record of Epicurean Lives Contradicts the Ascetic Picture Entirely”

This entry is also limited in its applicability to the more extreme version of the opposing thesis. I would agree that Epicureans are not extremely strict ascetics (though I would still maintain that they are distinctly more moderate in their material consumption than the non-philosophical average, particularly when we focus on the original Epicureans rather than the later Roman followers).

When it comes to the more restrained contention that Epicureanism places a very strong emphasis on avoiding pain, these examples of Epicurean non-asceticism are largely besides the point. It is still true to say that Epicurus emphasized pain reduction. The correct elaboration of this point—the one given by me, O’Keefe, and Epicurus—is not that this implies intense minimalism, but rather that it implies a focus on common sources of mental pain. Our corollary to pain management is not asceticism, but rather claims such as:

• Epicurus thought that correcting misplaced fears about the gods was very important.

• Epicurus thought that correcting misplaced fears about death was very important.

• Epicurus thought that the pursuit of pleasure was often conducted in an unreflective way, in which people often caused themselves pain through an incorrect understanding of the categories of desire.

In Summary

Cassius is right to argue against those who assert that “the Epicurean goal is a passive, featureless neutral state.” But he overstates his case when he implies that the claim that Epicurean hedonistic advice is “primarily about the absence of pain” is fundamentally mistaken. One could quibble over words: perhaps if “about” is taken to mean “fundamentally aimed at,” then his argument is still technically defensible. But I think it is fair to say that he is arguing throughout his piece that the emphasis Epicurus puts on pain reduction is a relatively minor compared to the emphasis he gives to active, positive pleasures.

I think this is mistaken. I think the attention Epicurus gives to pain reduction is quite arguably the most central and distinctive feature of his theory of hedonism. I think O’Keefe’s suggestion that “tranquillist” might be a less misleading term than “hedonist” for general audiences is probably on balance correct. Students of Epicurus can recognize this emphasis without asserting a need for strict ascetism. Students of Epicurus should recognize this emphasis if they want to keep the vital core of the philosophy in focus: eliminating groundless opinions and living a life of thoughtful prudence is the best way to reduce fear and mental disturbance, and this in turn is the most crucial step in enabling a life of pleasure.

Epistle 1.4

Albius—o gentlest judge of my chatty verses—
What are you up to over in Pedum?
Working on poems that will top old Parmesan Cassius?
Or strolling along in the health-giving forests,
pondering subjects worthy of the wise and the good?

You’ve never been just a body, lacking feelings and brains. 
The gods gave you good looks, gave you money as well—
And even more important—the skill to enjoy them.
A nurse couldn’t ask for more for her boy
Than to be able to think right and express what he feels,
To be well-loved and healthy and lead a civilized life.

So amidst all your worries and hopes, angers and fears,
Believe that each dawn that breaks is your last.
A man’s always grateful for a bonus that he doesn’t expect. 
And if you ever need a laugh, then come and see me!
A fat, shiny pig of Epicurus’ herd.   

Ode 1.18

Before you plant a tree, friend Varus, plant grapes. 
The sacred vines will flourish in your soft soil in Tibur.
The gods have ordained the fate of those who don’t drink:
Everything will seem difficult, and worries will nibble them.
But with wine in one’s system, who moans about war?
Drinkers forget poverty and talk of Bacchus and Venus.

Just remember the fight of the Centaurs and Lapiths, 
And how Bacchus dealt with the lustful Sithonians,
Who lost sight of right and wrong in the heat of their passion.
One must not drink beyond measure—moderation’s the key.

I’d never do that, fair god of the fox-skins. 
I’m not the one to rile you up,
Or pluck out your emblems from their blanket of leaves.
So hold back the drums and Berecyntian horns!
I know what follows from that savage music:
Blind self-adoration, empty-headed boasting,
And unfaithful carelessness, that gives away secrets.

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Commentary

Horace was one of the foremost lyric poets of Augustan Rome. He also had strong Epicurean leanings, although most scholars would say that these fall short of strict adherence to the school. Horace seems to have read Lucretius and Philodemus, was friends with multiple members of Philodemus’ circle, and identifies himself—explicitly but perhaps ironically—as an Epicurean in Epistle 1.4. More importantly, many of his themes fit strongly with Epicureanism, in particular his emphases on simple living, avoiding political ambition, and cultivating friendship.

While I would concede that there are non-Epicurean elements in Horace’s poetry, I am less concerned with doctrinal purity and more interested in this truth: Horace’s poems are some of the most eloquent and memorable expressions of core Epicurean values to come down to us from antiquity. Some would also argue that Roman Epicureanism broadly is somewhat more relaxed and flexible in some of its principles than the Greek original; some explicitly self-proclaimed Epicureans of the Roman world seem quite willing to engage in politics and lead lives of more material comfort than may have been standard in the Athenian Garden. That might be true too. But that doesn’t necessarily vitiate Horace’s usefulness as an example of lived Epicureanism. It might even make it more useful for our times, when material abundance has continued to increase.

Compared to my more strictly philosophical translations, I will here be both looser in literal exactitude in the translation above and less focused on the nitty-gritty in the commentary. These are fun poems, and I want to keep them that way! But I would like to point out a few Epicurean notes in each one.

Epistle 1.4

What will obviously attract the attention of Epicureans here is Horace’s closing self-identification as a porcum de grege Epicuri, a “pig of Epicurus’ herd.” This is playing with the longstanding critique of Epicurean hedonists as endorsing a pig-like view of human nature, contented with low and simplistic pleasures rather than high duties and ideals. It is entirely possible to interpret this obviously light tone as not signaling formal adherence to a philosophical school, but rather a general inclination in the Epicurean direction: towards a life of tranquility, simple pleasures, and few worries.

The fortunate qualities that Horace praises in his friend Albius are also largely compatible with Epicureanism: he has friendship, health, adequate resources, and importantly an artem fruendi—a skill or talent for enjoyment. This is one of the great virtues in Horatian hedonism, and one which hedonists of all sorts should remember to cultivate. Some people have health, money, beauty—but don’t enjoy their good fortune. Happiness is enhanced by awareness of our pleasurable state.

A few things might strike new readers of Horace as rather un-Epicurean. First, he mentions the gods (as he often does). While there is undoubtedly some variation in opinion, however, I think it is fair to say that most scholars consider Horace’s religious and mythological allusions to be largely traditional and literary, rather than expressions of literal faith. English Romantic poets can write about Greek gods too. It doesn’t mean they believe in them.

Next, Horace here seems to praise wealth, which is usually valued less by Epicureans than by the unphilosophic masses. We should be more precise, however: what Horace is saying here is that the possession of adequate resources is a reason for gratitude. He is praising security, but he is not encouraging the pursuit of wealth. (It is legitimate to note, however, that Horatian “simplicity” is usually a good deal more materially comfortable than the lives of the Roman population writ large.)

Some translations might render the original fama that Horace also praises as “fame,” which would also seem like an unusual quality for an Epicurean to praise. The word can also mean something like “good reputation,” however, which together with the original gratia (perhaps “esteem of others”) I have compressed in my translation to “well-loved.” So I think Horace is praising a solid social reputation, which leads to the goodwill of others, rather than “fame” as we might conceive it.

It is true that Horace himself became quite famous for his poetry, and that he was richer than most everyday Romans. But attitudinally, the important thing to notice is that the pursuit of wealth and fame never seem to cause Horace trouble. He, like Albius, was basically given adequate wealth, which he accepts gratefully. He enjoys writing poetry, and that has brought him fame and the security of patronage. That is also a subject for gratitude. But he does not engage in business to increase his wealth or politics to increase his power. Modern people of comfortable financial circumstances and solid social standing should likewise be contented.

Ode 1.18

As we continue to our second poem, the first thing to notice is that it is again addressed to a friend, in this case one Varus. Friendship is perhaps the single most prominent theme in Horace, which is an emphasis entirely in keeping with the original teachings of Epicurus. The closing lines of the poem, depicting the faults of those who drink to excess, are essentially failures of friendship: self-love, boasting or vainglory, and a lapsing trustworthiness that gives away secrets.

Next, this poem is another good reminder of the Epicurean acceptance of easily obtained pleasures, such as those of moderate drinking with friends. The original Epicureans of the Garden did drink regularly, in small and moderate amounts (about half a pint of wine each day, reports Diogenes Laertius 10.11). Personally, I enjoy echoing Horace’s rousing declaration as I raise my glass—siccis omnia dura! All things are hard to the dry!

Would Epicurus have agreed, strictly speaking? Perhaps not. But neither, perhaps, would Horace—I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to concede, when pressed on the question, that a sufficiently wise person could live contentedly without drinking. But as a general sociological observation, those who avoid all drinking may well tend to view life through an excessively negative lens. And that is a true pitfall that Epicurus and Horace both encourage us to avoid.

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Original Texts

Epistle 1.4

Albi, nostrorum sermonum candide iudex,
quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedana?
scribere quod Cassi Parmensis opuscula vincat,
an tacitum silvas inter reptare salubris,
curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est?

non tu corpus eras sine pectore: di tibi formam,
di tibi divitias dederunt artemque fruendi.
quid voveat dulci nutricula maius alumno,
qui sapere et fari possit quae sentiat, et cui
gratia, fama, valetudo contingat abunde,
et mundus victus non deficiente crumina?

Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras
omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum,
grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur hora.
me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises,
cum ridere voles, Epicuri de grege porcum.

Ode 1.18

Nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem
circa mite solum Tiburis et moenia Catili;
siccis omnia nam dura deus proposuit neque
mordaces aliter diffugiunt sollicitudines.
quis post vina gravem militiam aut pauperiem crepat?
quis non te potius, Bacche pater, teque, decens Venus?
ac ne quis modici transiliat munera Liberi,
Centaurea monet cum Lapithis rixa super mero
debellata, monet Sithoniis non levis Euhius,
cum fas atque nefas exiguo fine libidinum
discernunt avidi. non ego te, candide Bassareu,
invitum quatiam nec variis obsita frondibus
sub divum rapiam. saeva tene cum Berecyntio
cornu tympana, quae subsequitur caecus amor sui
et tollens vacuum plus nimio gloria verticem
arcanique fides prodiga, perlucidior vitro.

Epicurus is sometimes summarized as advocating for the avoidance of political engagement. This is roughly true, but requires clarification before it can be properly defended. What exactly are his relevant recommendations? Some things are clear: for instance, he thinks the life of political ambition, of the competitive pursuit of power, fame, or wealth, is misguided and counterproductive to happiness. However, modern citizens could justifiably pose some questions. Does this still apply to a low-danger contemporary political office, such as a small-town city council member? Or how about forms of political engagement that have very little to do with personal “ambition,” such as supporting a candidate’s campaign, advocating for a cause, participating in protests, posting online, or simply following the news? Although Epicurus does not specifically address each of these discrete modern phenomena, I think we can still derive clear guidance from his broader advice—advice that significantly constrains, but does not eliminate, these kinds of activities.

In this article, I’ll go through a few key, well-documented Epicurean positions and then apply them to the relevant forms of modern political engagement. Let’s start with the one he does address explicitly: political ambition.

Ambition Is Bad

On this topic, we have a few pieces of evidence that are quite clear:

Nor will [the wise man] be involved in politics, as Epicurus says in the first book of On Lives. (Diogenes Laertius X.119)

They must free themselves from the prison of everyday affairs and political life.1 (Vatican Saying 58)

Some caution is clearly in order here, however. What does it mean to “be involved in politics” (πολιτεύω—which some translate as something like “participate in civic life”) or to be in “the prison of political life”? Based on other writings, it seems to me most likely that Epicurus was referring primarily to the pursuit of a position of political power, an enterprise that he would warn against as counterproductive to security and tranquility of mind.

A man who has understood the limits of life knows that the things that remove the suffering of want and make his whole life complete are easy to obtain, so there is no need for the things involving competition. (Principal Doctrine 21)

This warning against competing for power, fame, and wealth is well attested, both in Epicurus’ own writings (see Principal Doctrines 7 and 14 as well, for example) and in the larger tradition that consistently attributes a maxim of “live unnoticed” to the Epicureans. According to the school’s teachings, power, fame, and wealth do not contribute effectively to the essentials of life: there are far easier and simpler ways to obtain food, shelter, and security about the future.

Worse, these things can easily become counterproductive. All three can attract envy and competition, which reduce our security. Or we can develop insatiable desires for more power, more money, or more fame, losing sight of the ostensible benefits for our own comfort and security, and thereby living continually in a state of painfully unfulfilled (and unfulfillable) desire. Those who achieve great political power often lead lives of great instability. Those who achieve great political power often make their lives (and the world) worse off as they get caught up in their own advancement or ideological ambitions.

“Don’t be politically ambitious,” however, is not necessarily the same as “avoid political engagement,” as most everyday people would imagine it today. Would Epicurus discourage joining a campaign for a candidate, political party, or policy proposal? Would he have political positions? Would he keep up with political news? For these kinds of activity, we need to zoom out a little to broader teachings.

Philosophical Opinions Are Political Opinions

Let’s move next to a seemingly foundational qualification for political activity: political opinions. Do Epicureans have any interest in how the state should be run? I think they do. Epicurus himself wrote extensively about some of the fundamental political questions: Principal Doctrines 33 and 36–38 outline his theory of justice, while Diogenes Laertius tells us that Epicurus wrote multiple books on justice and on kingship. We also have an extended account of the Epicurean theory of justice, contained in Porphyry’s Of Abstinence, which seems to be drawn primarily from Hermarchus, Epicurus’ immediate successor as head of the Garden.

The basic theory of the school argues that laws are created as agreements between people that aim to maximize each participant’s pleasure (which they also refer to as “advantage,” or which more modern philosophers might refer to as “utility”). Epicureanism, despite its anti-political reputation, therefore anticipates both modern social contract theory and Utilitarianism in significant ways. Importantly, the Epicureans argue that justice cannot be defined apart from hedonistic outcomes and so the process of evaluating laws cannot be settled by appeal to any free-standing moral intuitions, but only through prudential calculation, the evaluation of what is most likely to maximize pleasure and happiness.

Those who, considering what has been framed in law, say that the good and just derives from the individual beliefs of each person, are deeply foolish. For this case can be no different than other matters of identifying what is advantageous, as we do in matters of health or countless other subjects. (Of Abstinence 1.12)

So: we should not mistake Epicureans’ famous reluctance to engage in politics as signaling an absolute disinterest in political topics, or an unnuanced insistence that political matters have no impact on human well-being. Questions about crime and punishment, public safety, or improving economic security are therefore all entirely valid topics for Epicurean philosophers. We think it is good to understand how different policies came about and be clear-eyed about whether those policies continue to contribute to the collective well-being.

But if one establishes a law and it does not turn out to be in accord with what is useful in our dealings with one another, this no longer possesses the nature of justice. (PD 37)

The Epicurean tension with modern, politically-active types therefore does not stem simply from ignorance, or from intellectual apathy regarding the ways in which government activity can impact our lives. We may give less attention to such topics than other schools, but if asked to consider the merits of a policy proposal, for instance, we will happily apply the same process of hedonistic calculus we apply to our individual lives.

A tribe, city, or country is an assemblage of egoistic individuals. Laws that benefit the country benefit the individual. When considering the question of “ideally, how should the laws be formed?” there is really very little daylight between Epicureanism and more modern Utilitarians. Where we differ is in our judgment regarding the prudential importance and individual advisability of actively trying to change existing laws.

The Benefits of Political Action Are Smaller Than People Think

The baseline prudential calculation when it comes to existing legal structures is clear: you usually want to follow the law, because breaking it leads to punishment and the fear of punishment.

Injustice is not bad in itself, but because of the fear and apprehension that one will not escape notice by those appointed to punish wrongdoing. (PD 34)

The net benefit of attempts to change laws or officeholders is much less certain. In contrast to political enthusiasts, Epicurus would say that the benefits of their hoped-for outcomes are much smaller than they think, while the typical costs of their engagement are steeper and less well-warranted than they imagine. We’ll consider the purported benefits of political change first.

The underlying Epicurean perspective is that changes in political conditions are generally far less important to one’s happiness than the exercise of individual prudence and clear-thinking. At its root, this insistence arises from Epicurean first principles: the necessary desires are few, we already have more than we need, and our happiness is within our own individual control. The subjects of modern political dispute are often simply unimportant.

For instance, the back-to-first-principles Epicurean perspective on wealth and poverty is radically different than that of most contemporary political discourse. Consider a classic maxim:

Poverty, measured by what nature requires, is great wealth. And wealth, if it grows without knowledge of limits, is great poverty. (VS 25)

Epicurus means “what nature requires” pretty literally. He believes that “poverty”—the state of someone who has food, water, and adequate protection from the elements, but no luxuries of any kind—is entirely sufficient to meet the requirements of human happiness. The wealthy, on the other hand, if they lose sight of the true necessities, can quickly become “impoverished” insofar as they feel a constant state of unsatisfied desire. Most impassioned protest about income inequality, therefore, consists in a fundamentally misplaced envy. This isn’t to say that an Epicurean wouldn’t conclude, for instance, that a progressive income tax is a reasonable policy for a state to have, but he wouldn’t get angry about the existence of rich people—their wealth isn’t helping them at all, while those of modest income have all they need.

Simply put, Epicureans believe we don’t need much in the way of externals to secure happiness. This is even more true in the modern developed world, where the low-hanging fruit of material abundance and basic security have been achieved. The hoped-for objects of further reform are—just like most things people wish for—fundamentally unnecessary. Many Epicurean dictums that are often taken as purely individualistic pieces of advice can therefore be applied equally well to political desires.

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

A person buys a new pair of shoes. She is happy for a little bit, then desires another new pair. This is not productive of stable, lasting happiness. Political observers set their heart on a new health insurance subsidy or tax cut, get it, and then similarly move on to their next desire. Most non-philosophers simply overrate the importance of external factors for happiness.

To be clear, true malnutrition or living in a dangerous war zone would indeed be bad—Epicurus would heartily recommend you change your personal situation. But he thought the average Athenian resident of his time—women and slaves included—had all that was required for a happy life. If your living standards, personal security, and political protections exceed those of a woman or slave in 4^th century BCE Athens, then Epicurus would say that basically all you need for happiness is a clear understanding of how the world works and the skillful exercise of rational calculation. Your happiness is not significantly dependent on external circumstances.

Chance intrudes little in the life of the wise man, for reasoned calculation has, does, and will govern the greatest and most important things for the duration of his life. (PD 16)

Sure, I’d like a better functioning healthcare system, but I’m grateful that medicine and insurance exist at all. Sure, it would be nice if the government could continue to fund old-age pensions and medical coverage at current or expanded levels, but if some cuts are needed—well, the very existence of these programs is a huge bonus in historical perspective. The list could go on forever. If Epicurus looked at the modern United States, he would clearly say that our average material, political, and security standards are already far more than sufficient for human happiness. Willfully postponing happiness until the achievement of some future societal standard would be deeply counterproductive to the actual goal—which is happiness! Most political debate is mere squabbling over inessentials.

The Costs of Political Engagement Are Higher Than People Realize

Within an egoistic framework, then, the likely benefits of a political change for any one individual are very small, especially when you try to measure the proportional slice of any such benefit attributable to your individual contribution to its realization. Of course, some people deny that egoistic hedonism is the right lens for looking at the world at all. In response to the Epicurean contention that it is natural and good for us to pursue our own happiness, a frequent objection would be something along these lines:

What about other people? Some innocent people are victims of our wars, live in daily fear of deportation, or struggle to pay their bills as inflation or high gas prices outstrip their earnings. Maybe it makes your life easier to just ignore these things, but you should be willing to accept some minor discomfort when other people are suffering. The collective suffering of the many outweighs your individual inconvenience.

The short and blunt answer is no: we do not believe that any individual has an obligation to cause herself mental suffering for the sake of others. We hold it to be utterly commonsensical for people to pursue their own well-being. This will often include awareness of the well-being of those in your immediate circles—family, friends, neighbors—but trying to expand this circle to the whole world is a recipe for inefficacy at improving results and impossibility of achieving satisfactory success.2 It prevents your happiness while not doing much good.

I’ve written at more length about the justification for Epicurean egoism, but I think that in many scenarios, such self-interest would be widely accepted as obvious and natural rather than morally deficient. Imagine a woman living in a remote Bhutanese mountain village. Epicureans would say that it is very reasonable for her to try to promote the interests of her friends and family—if those closest to us are suffering, our own lives will be negatively affected, while cultivating a circle of mutual support will improve our own circumstances and security. But it would be ridiculous for an American to walk into that village and tell her that she should postpone her happiness as long as the United States is fighting a war in Iran or has $6 per gallon gas prices.

As a matter of dispassionate analysis, my individual ability to affect these outcomes is hardly greater than that of the Bhutanese villager. I can vote, sure. And I don’t see any reason why Epicurus would forbid that. But there is no dramatic difference in our respective potential for enacting political change: the reasonableness of the remote villager in prioritizing her own well-being over that of distant strangers remains intact for someone in California or Florida. All that is different is the perceived salience of political issues.

And increasing that salience in our lives is itself a harm we should recognize. We have no obligation to suffer, I said above. “Make no mistake—we are suffering,” I believe Epicurus would add. The prominence of politics in the mental landscape of many contemporary Americans is excessive and counterproductive to happiness. The demands of political enthusiasts may seem modest enough: they often aren’t asking for large amounts of time or money, but simply emotional sympathy, an avowal of shared distress, a refusal to be satisfied with the current state of the world. But to an Epicurean, the willful embrace of distress and the refusal of contentment are far greater costs than money. Such mindsets are antithetical to the whole goal of philosophy.

And for the unconverted altruists out there, note that this is a largely self-imposed harm, yes, but it is a widespread form of distress. The potential damage to happiness applies universally: political engagement is very often harmful to the peace of mind of the politically-engaged. Such persons are more likely to be distressed about the state of the world, sometimes extending to a pessimism that darkens their perception of everything. They are more inclined to tribal thinking that supports causes because of who else supports them, rather than accurately assessing ideas on their merits. They are more inclined to partisan hostility, which encourages peace-disrupting anger while inviting reciprocal hostility and thinning the ranks of one’s personal social allies. Reducing these tendencies would help other people.

The evils of tribalism and hostility were well-recognized by Epicurus. He encourages us to avoid making enemies for the sake of our practical security:

The man who manages the insecurity of the outside world in the best way does three things. The forces he can render friendly to himself, he does. If this is not possible, he makes them at least not hostile. And if even that is not possible, he avoids contact, and expels from his life that for which it is best to do so. (PD 39)

He asserts that personal animosity and vitriol are never merited or worthwhile:

No one chooses the bad because it is bad. Instead men are caught by it, lured in by how it seems good in comparison with some greater evil. (VS 16)

Envy no one. The good do not deserve ill-will, and as for the bad, the more they prosper, the more harm they do to themselves. (VS 53)

And he views tribalism and conformity to popular opinion with a great deal of skepticism:

When I discuss nature, 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)

I think, then, that we can add some further principles that constrain the circumstances in which political engagement would be advisable. In addition to not overrating the importance of actually unimportant things, we should not, 1) feel a principled obligation to undertake mental suffering on behalf of others, or 2) accidentally participate in or advocate for tranquility-destroying practices, such as the common correlates to political engagement of making unnecessary enemies, viewing people as willfully evil, conceiving envy as righteousness, or letting popular opinions distort our own thinking.

Conclusion: Egoism Leads to the Best Altruistic Outcomes

According to Epicureans, our goal as intrinsically egoistic animals is physical security and mental tranquility for ourselves, liberating us into lives of easily available pleasure. Our goal as advising philosophers is security and tranquility for everyone. In most parts of the world—especially in rich, developed nations—the Epicurean diagnosis is that these are overwhelmingly available to individuals as things stand, under current political conditions. We want more people to be happy! We simply think that those who pin their hopes on political change are going about this goal in a highly ineffective way. Let me underline that: we downplay political concerns in order to help people be happier.

In other words: although we believe our individual motivations to be necessarily egoistic, that does not mean that we think our advice will lead to worse outcomes for the world at large. Are you concerned about the suffering of others? Then consider it a good if their suffering is reduced, however it comes about—if philosophy is a more efficacious way of achieving that end than relying on the difficult and uncertain path of political change, then you should encourage them to employ that means. Might a proposed change in public policy lead to better outcomes? Sure, and you are welcome to vote for it, spread the word, and advocate for that change, as long as you do so in a way that is not on balance counterproductive to happiness. Productive conversations with friends, non-conflict-inducing nudges with acquaintances, even a financial donation to a campaign, if you have extra money and calculate that the money could actually do some good—these activities are not intrinsically forbidden.

You can both endorse Epicurean philosophy and recognize the ways in which good policy and good leaders can bring real benefits. But what Epicurean philosophy does entail is this: that you neither overestimate the importance of those changes or the ease of their achievement, nor underestimate the costs of erroneous thinking, tribal passions, and spreading hostility. As in all things, we encourage an attitude of sober comparison: What will help? What will harm? Do anger or distress make the lives of those nearest you happier than would a glow of calm benevolence? As the master says:

An untroubled person causes disturbance neither to himself nor to others. (VS 79)

Many things are beyond our control, but we have the power to choose whether we add or subtract anxiety from those lives we touch each day.

Whom do you consider better off than one holding pious opinions about the gods and completely free from the fear of death, who understands the end towards which we are oriented by nature, and who knows that the full extent of the good is easy to achieve, while all evils are limited to either a short duration or mild intensity? Who is better than one who laughs at fate, which some put forth as the mistress of all things? <The wise man gives his attention to what lies within our power—correctly recognizing that some things happen by necessity> and some by chance, while other things are up to us—for he sees that fate is beyond our control and chance is uncertain, but the things that are up to us answer to no master, and it is to these things that blame and praise rightfully attach.

It would be better to accept the stories about the gods than to be a slave to the fate of the natural philosophers, for the first offers some hope of entreating the gods through worship, while the second offers only an inexorable necessity. The wise man does not accept that fortune is a god, as the many believe, for nothing unpredictable and disorderly is done by a god, nor the unreliable cause <of our true good and bad>. For he does not believe that the good and bad of a blessed life come to men by chance, but that chance supplies only the starting basis for our greatest goods and evils. He holds it to be better to suffer misfortune while thinking correctly than to be successful while reasoning poorly, for it is better for what is well-chosen <to fail in its results than for a poor choice> to turn out well by chance.

Study these precepts and those that go with them, by day and by night, by yourself and with a like-minded companion, and you will never be troubled, neither waking nor asleep, but will live like a god among men, for a human who lives among such immortal goods no longer seems like just another mortal.

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Commentary

In the final installment of our five-part series on the Letter to Menoeceus, we will cover the proper attitude towards fate and wrap up the letter as a whole, having now covered the true nature of the gods, why death is not an evil, the argument for hedonism, and the consequent case for simple living. This is the only part of the letter that has major textual difficulties, although most of them are not significant as to the core philosophical message. I’ll briefly discuss a few of these in my commentary, with more exact specifications of my editorial decisions beneath the Greek text at bottom. For now, note that bracketed text in the above translation is not in our received manuscripts but is the result of subsequent scholarly reconstruction.

Whom do you consider better off than one holding pious opinions about the gods and completely free from the fear of death, who understands the end towards which we are oriented by nature, and who knows that the full extent of the good is easy to achieve, while all evils are limited to either a short duration or mild intensity? Who is better than one who laughs at fate, which some put forth as the mistress of all things? <The wise man gives his attention to what lies within our power—correctly recognizing that some things happen by necessity> and some by chance, while other things are up to us—for he sees that fate is beyond our control and chance is uncertain, but the things that are up to us answer to no master, and it is to these things that blame and praise rightfully attach.

The first sentence here recapitulates the themes we have covered so far (as well as the first four Principal Doctrines), casting them briefly as characteristics of someone who has achieved great progress in philosophy. (While the phrase “the wise man” or “wise person” does not literally appear here, such phrasing does come up in other Epicurean maxims, so it seems like an unobjectionable addition for English clarity as the sentence gets increasingly long. It is also possibly that an equivalent phrase did appear in the text that has clearly dropped out in the middle of this paragraph.) As we’ve discussed: neither the gods or death should be feared, the good is easy to obtain, and the bad is easy to endure.

Our next topic is the proper attitude towards fate. Many later philosophers worried over the problem of free will vs. determinism. The contemporary Stoics argued that all events were part of a divinely ordained rational order and that “what is up to us” basically consists in how we feel about events—our desires, aversions, and other judgments about the world we interact with. This position has sometimes been summarized by the phrase amor fati, or love of fate. The Stoic position is that we should happily assent to the cosmic order; while we can follow natural human preferences in our actions, we will often have to accept “bad” events as part of a perfect pattern that we simply lack the ability to fully perceive.

Epicurus is different. His wise man does not accept fate, but rather “laughs at” or even “derides” it. This is the result of a tripartite division that seems more rooted in the realities of human motivation and decision-making than in a grand theoretical division: some things are “necessary” and fit within a deterministic worldview, but some things are up to chance, and other things are up to us. In practical terms, it makes sense to preserve the popular category of “chance” or “fortune,” recognizing that some circumstances are outside of our control, but that this does not mean they are ordained by a benevolent divinity.

Epicurus is not highly prescriptive about what should be viewed as the product of “fate” and what of “chance.” You can apply what word you want as long as you recognize that the third category—what is up to us—is actually the most important. In Principal Doctrine 16 he makes this quite explicit:

Chance intrudes little in the life of the wise man, for reasoned calculation has, does, and will govern the greatest and most important things for the duration of his life.

Norman DeWitt paraphrases this mindset accurately: “Planning and the lack of planning make the difference between the wise man and the fool.”1 This emphasis on the ability of prudent, rational decision-making to improve our lives is one of the great distinctions between Epicureanism and Stoicism (and really most entries in the long line of idealist philosophies). The wise man can laugh at fate not because of any cosmic haughtiness, but because it is well within his power to secure what he needs for happiness once he reasons correctly about pleasure and pain and determines his actions accordingly.

It would be better to accept the stories about the gods than to be a slave to the fate of the natural philosophers, for the first offers some hope of entreating the gods through worship, while the second offers only an inexorable necessity. The wise man does not accept that fortune is a god, as the many believe, for nothing unpredictable and disorderly is done by a god, nor the unreliable cause <of our true good and bad>. For he does not believe that the good and bad of a blessed life come to men by chance, but that chance supplies only the starting basis for our greatest goods and evils. He holds it to be better to suffer misfortune while thinking correctly than to be successful while reasoning poorly, for it is better for what is well-chosen <to fail in its results than for a poor choice> to turn out well by chance.

Epicurus continues to lament the determinist mindset, which robs humans of hope and agency. Popular religion is clearly wrong—as he has previously discussed, stories about fickle gods are inconsistent and untenable—but even that vein of delusion would be preferable to strict determinism. It is therefore clear enough what he means when he says that the wise man “does not accept that fortune is a god,” but it is somewhat less obvious what he means by “nor an unreliable cause.” In the previous paragraph he had said chance was “uncertain” and in the following sentence he notes that chance can form the “start” or “beginning” of our human good and bad: this makes it seems like chance could be termed “an unreliable cause.” While most modern editors simply leave this phrase obscure, some earlier editors such as Bignone and Bailey conjecture that a word or phrase has dropped out here: Bailey suggests “an uncertain cause <of all things>” while Bignone proposes something along the lines of “an uncertain cause <of our greatest good and evil>. I follow this suggestion, which at least renders the passage comprehensible and consistent with the following sentences.

If chance can supply the beginning or starting point for good or bad, why does Epicurus consider it better to think well and have bad results than to think poorly and have good luck? (The text is emended here as well, but most scholars agree that something along these lines seems logically necessary.) I think this is again a primarily practical judgment: if you think correctly, over time you will achieve the best results. While bad luck is possible and can truly impact your well-being (misfortune is not part of a divine plan for you), correct thinking is the way to secure better results on average and overall.

Study these precepts and those that go with them, by day and by night, by yourself and with a like-minded companion, and you will never be troubled, neither waking nor asleep, but will live as a god among men, for a human who lives among such immortal goods no longer seems like just another mortal.

Here we come to the conclusion of the letter. Several themes are embedded in these short lines: Philosophy is a way of life, and its teachings need to be studied and meditated on repeatedly so that they can be fully internalized. Philosophy is an activity that is best pursued both privately and in company with like-minded friends. And the goal of philosophy is to be untroubled, to achieve ataraxia: one who reaches this condition is no low sensualist, no timid avoider of risks, but instead a fearless and serene being living in a state of tranquility worthy of the gods.

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Original Text

[133] ἐπεὶ τίνα νομίζεις εἶναι κρείττονα τοῦ καὶ περὶ θεῶν ὅσια δοξάζοντος, καὶ περὶ θανάτου διὰ παντὸς ἀφόβως ἔχοντος, καὶ τὸ τῆς φύσεως ἐπιλελογισμένου τέλος, καὶ τὸ μὲν τῶν ἀγαθῶν πέρας ὡς ἔστιν εὐσυμπλήρωτόν τε καὶ εὐπόριστον διαλαμβάνοντος, τὸ δὲ τῶν κακῶν ὡς ἢ χρόνους ἢ πόνους ἔχει βραχεῖς; τὴν δὲ ὑπό τινων δεσπότιν εἰσαγομένην πάντων ἄν γελῶντος <εἱμαρμένην… ῶν ἃ μὲν κατ’ ἀνάγκην γίνεται]>2 ἃ δὲ ἀπὸ τύχης, ἃ δὲ παρ’ ἡμᾶς, διὰ τὸ τὴν μὲν ἀνάγκην ἀνυπεύθυνον εἶναι, τὴν δὲ τύχην ἄστατον ὁρᾶν, τὸ δὲ παρ’ ἡμᾶς ἀδέσποτον, ᾧ καὶ τὸ μεμπτὸν καὶ τὸ ἐναντίον παρακολουθεῖν πέφυκεν.

[134] ἐπεὶ κρεῖττον ἦν τῷ περὶ θεῶν μύθῳ κατακολουθεῖν ἢ τῇ τῶν φυσικῶν εἱμαρμένῃ δουλεύειν· ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἐλπίδα παραιτήσεως ὑπογράφει θεῶν διὰ τιμῆς, ἡ δὲ ἀπαραίτητον ἔχει τὴν ἀνάγκην. τὴν δὲ τύχην οὔτε θεόν, ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν, ὑπολαμβάνων (οὐθὲν γὰρ ἀτάκτως θεῷ πράττεται) οὔτε <μεγίστων ἀγαθῶν ἢ κακῶν>3 ἀβέβαιον αἰτίαν, <οὐκ> οἴεται μὲν γὰρ ἀγαθὸν ἢ κακὸν ἐκ ταύτης πρὸς τὸ μακαρίως ζῆν ἀνθρώποις δίδοσθαι, ἀρχὰς μέντοι μεγάλων ἀγαθῶν ἢ κακῶν ὑπὸ ταύτης χορηγεῖσθαι, [135] κρεῖττον εἶναι νομίζει εὐλογίστως ἀτυχεῖν ἢ ἀλογίστως εὐτυχεῖν· (βέλτιον γὰρ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι τὸ καλῶς κριθὲν <σφαλῆναι μᾶλλον ἢ τὸ κακῶς κριθὲν>4 ὀρθωθῆναι διὰ ταύτην).

ταῦτα οὖν καὶ τὰ τούτοις συγγενῆ μελέτα πρὸς σεαυτὸν ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς πρὸς <τε> τὸν ὅμοιον σεαυτῷ, καὶ οὐδέποτε οὔθ’ ὕπαρ οὔτ’ ὄναρ διαταραχθήσῃ, ζήσῃ δὲ ὡς θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις. οὐθὲν γὰρ ἔοικε θνητῷ ζῴῳ ζῶν ἄνθρωπος ἐν ἀθανάτοις ἀγαθοῖς.

Diogenes Laertius tells us that the writings of Epicurus numbered over three hundred volumes. Unfortunately, most of those writings have been lost: we have three short letters, the Principal Doctrines, a later collection of aphorisms known as the Vatican Sayings, and assorted fragments and testimonials. Due to the fragmentary nature of our primary sources, the work of scholars who can reconstruct our scattered evidence to form more coherent and comprehensive accounts of Epicurean views takes on increasing importance. One contemporary scholar who has done a great deal of work in this vein is Tim O’Keefe of Georgia State University.

Today, I’d like to give you a brief tour of five of his Epicurean papers that are both publicly available and distinctly helpful. There is a lot of scholarly work that is far more interesting to specialists than to general readers, but O’Keefe is somewhat exceptional, I feel, in choosing subjects that are of actual ethical importance rather than mere narrow topics of historical or textual dispute. In particular, several of his papers serve as sympathetic synthesizing efforts that help make the Epicurean perspective on a given issue clear, rather than assuming specialist knowledge and then focusing on some narrow claim that is of minimal interest to anyone other than specialists (not that he won’t take on other scholars when he thinks they are misinterpreting the ancient texts). Finally, O’Keefe possesses one more quality rare in published academic writing—humor. I’ll highlight a few examples below as we peruse some of his greatest Epicurean hits.

Paper #1: Is Epicurean Friendship Altruistic? (2001)

Available on Phil Archive

Epicurus is generally classed as both a psychological and ethical egoist—he believes that we both necessarily act in our own self-interest and that it is always right for us to do so. However, he also is famous for his praise of friendship, which may seem at first glance to be a preeminently other-regarding activity. Isn’t the point of sincere friendship that one does care about the interests of others? This seeming incompatibility has on the one hand led a lot of unsympathetic listeners to dismiss or downplay Epicurus’ enthusiasm for friendship, while on the other leading some scholars who are highly aware of Epicurus’ documented enthusiasm for friendship to an awkward position of asserting that Epicurus is not a consistent egoist, whatever he says to the contrary.

In this paper, O’Keefe responds to those scholars, addressing nearly all of Epicurus’ texts on friendship (as well as ancient testimonials as to the Epicurean position, most notably Cicero in On Moral Ends) in order to construct a framework for Epicurean friendship that is both consistently egoistic and sincerely committed to friendship. The short version of this framework, which I find convincing, is that Epicurus has a two-level system, analogous to what is sometimes called “rule-utilitarianism” as opposed to “act-utilitarianism” in that non-egoistic system. In this understanding, while Epicurus views the ultimate goal of friendship to be our own self-interest (through material assistance, reduction of fear, and potentially—though this is disputed to some degree by O’Keefe—through the direct pleasure we receive from conversation and so on), we nonetheless will often weigh the interests of our friends equally to our own in any given situation.

I believe O’Keefe is correct in outlining Epicurus’ position like this:

1. Friendship is extremely valuable for our sense of security.

2. Reliable friendship requires that you act in a trustworthy way towards your friends, looking out for their interests equally with your own.

3. Therefore, the best way to secure your own long-term self-interest is to practice sincere friendship, even if that means prioritizing your friend’s interests over your own in a given situation.

Even some scholars get this wrong, but O’Keefe doesn’t—Epicurus is definitely an egoist, but he is still a better friend than most putative altruists.

Paper #2: The Epicureans on happiness, wealth, and the deviant craft of property management (2016)

Draft available on Phil Archive

Here, O’Keefe is primarily discussing Philodemus’ On Property Management. Philodemus was a later Epicurean, active around the Bay of Naples in the first century BCE (Cicero mentions him as a prominent Epicurean of the time). We have recovered fragments from several otherwise unknown philosophical treatises by Philodemus from the so-called Villa of the Papyri, which was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. Many of these works have been published in some form (this one in translation by Voula Tsouna in 2012), but all are far from complete and require a great deal of painstaking reconstruction to understand. For most casual readers, therefore, the original texts of Philodemus are not easy or inviting reading.

That’s where papers like this are useful: here, O’Keefe extracts some of Philodemus’ core points, summarizes the philosophical precursors with whom he is arguing (Plato, Xenophon, and Theophrastus), and sets his argument in its larger Epicurean context. In short, Philodemus believes that wisdom will exclude maximizing one’s financial acumen: attempting to make as much money as possible will induce stress and require an investment of time and attention that is incompatible with Epicurean tranquility. The wise man will not be foolhardy with his money, but will often settle for “good enough” rather than getting overly invested in financial optimization. Sound advice.

From around this point on in his career, O’Keefe also lets his personal humor peer through in his writings. In his summary, pleasurable activities with bad long-term consequences include “shooting up heroin or punching out people who annoy you,” while Plato’s character Gorgias argues that crafts are morally neutral, such that “boxers can use their skill either to defend the innocent or to pummel small children for fun” without any implication for their aptitude as boxers. I always find it preferable when scholars don’t force themselves to be boring in their examples.

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Paper #3: Epicurean Advice for the Modern Consumer, 2020

Draft available on Phil Archive

In this paper, O’Keefe draws on a variety of Epicurean sources to summarize the school’s views on money, consumption, and happiness, then compares their advice with that of modern empirical psychology. On the surface, this is simple—he isn’t making any particularly tenuous, controversial, or groundbreaking new interpretation of our source texts. But it is something that is all too rarely done in formal academic writing: evaluating the actual content of that ancient advice and seeing how it holds up for modern use. (This is also the one where he talks about Tom Yum soup and angry, kicking students wearing Doc Martens.)

So what is the advice? Understand what is actually needed to satisfy our necessary desires. Recognize which unnecessary desires should be reined in, rather than encouraged. Put yourself in an environment that encourages good habits, i.e. by associating with philosophically like-minded companions. Consider what truly enhances your security—friends do, but excessive wealth doesn’t.

As O’Keefe summarizes, these positions are generally supported by modern empirical research on happiness: materialism is negatively correlated with well-being, while gratitude is positively correlated with it. Increased wealth doesn’t seem to lead clearly to increased happiness at higher income levels. Our desires can be negatively impacted by our environment—such as through exposure to advertising and social media—but can also be positively modified through conscious reflection, as shown through studies on the effectiveness of cognitive-behavior therapy.

Epicurean ethical advice should not be confined to textbooks on the history of philosophy. It was good advice in 300 BCE and it’s good advice now.

Paper #4: The Normativity of Nature in Epicurean Ethics and Politics, 2021

Draft available on Phil Archive

Epicurus often makes appeals to “nature”—we should pursue natural desires rather than groundless ones, look to “uncorrupted” infants for a true picture of natural human desires, and always keep in mind the “natural good” aimed at in the acquisition of wealth and the definition of justice. Many a philosophy class, however, has found such arguments vexing rather than straightforwardly convincing: does being “natural” mean that something is ethically preferable?

Here, O’Keefe goes through essentially all of the different Epicurean appeals to nature to determine what exactly is meant by “natural” in each case and how that naturalness contributes to Epicurus’ ethical arguments. This closer analysis reveals a strategy that is usually best described as pragmatic, rather than dismissed as fallacious. For instance, “natural” desires for food or sex are biologically determined and probably can’t be eliminated. To argue for their elimination would be foolish, so instead we should try to manage those desires prudently. In contrast, unnatural desires (which are culturally learned, rather than innate) are more likely candidates for elimination: the desires to be portrayed in public statues or to have a billion dollars, for instance, are clearly not innate, and so it seems plausible to remove those desires through the cognitive training of philosophy.

I think a lot of normal people automatically incline towards the idea that what is natural is good (consider the successful marketing of “natural sweeteners” or “natural remedies,” for instance). Epicurus can be read simply and easily from this unreflective normie perspective: of course following our nature will generally work out better. O’Keefe’s work, however, demonstrates that Epicurus’ appeals to nature are not merely sloppy thinking or naïve sloganeering, but do in fact constitute a coherent basis for prudent ethical judgment.

Paper #5: Achieving Tranquility: Epicurus on Living without Fear, 2025

Draft available on Phil Archive

O’Keefe’s latest piece on Epicurean ethics is another work of helpful synthesis. While many correctly note that Epicurean “hedonism” is primarily about the reduction of pain, that bald summary can overlook the next layer of analysis: Epicurus believes that avoiding bodily pain is pretty simple, and that therefore most of our therapeutic attention should go to avoiding mental pain. The largest component of mental pain is fear. (Epicurus does also discuss other disturbing emotions such as regret and envy.)

In this paper, O’Keefe provides a tour of the types of fear identified by the Epicureans, and how they propose to ameliorate each one. Some fears are founded on false beliefs: hence the Epicurean focus on the use of science for dispelling superstition about the gods and about death. Correcting those false beliefs spares us from unnecessary fear. As O’Keefe helpfully points out, however, other fears do have a foundation in real concerns. If we think we won’t have enough food to eat or that we won’t have a safe shelter to sleep in tomorrow, it is normal and healthy that we would fear those outcomes. To reduce and manage those fears, we want to develop our practical wisdom (another translation for phronesis, also rendered as “prudence”) so that we can skillfully use our available tools to secure what we truly need. For instance, frugal living and dependable friends will greatly enhance our sense of security, while an extravagant lifestyle and celebrity probably won’t.

All in all, O’Keefe is probably my favorite scholar working on Epicurean ethics today. In the future, I’ll highlight other researchers who are making valuable contributions to the field as well, but few have O’Keefe’s track record of consistently covering topics that are truly important, accurately interpreting the Epicurean position, and rendering it into a form that is both readable and applicable to modern life. If you like the articles listed here, I encourage you to seek out more of his work, particularly his 2010 book Epicureanism, which is one of the best one-volume overviews of the philosophy if you’d like to go beyond ethics and learn more about Epicurean physics, anthropology, epistemology, and more.

And so we hold self-sufficiency to be a great good, not for the purpose of always living with little, but so that we will be satisfied with little when we do not have much, and because we are fully convinced that those who need extravagance the least enjoy it the most and that every natural desire is easy to satisfy, while those that are empty and groundless are hard to fulfill. When they remove the pains of hunger and thirst, simple flavors bring us pleasure equal to that of an extravagant diet. Even barley cake and water produce the highest pleasure when they are eaten by someone in need. Accustom yourself, then, to a plain rather than an extravagant way of life: this is integral to health, makes a man resolute before the necessary duties of life, enables us to better enjoy occasional luxuries, and renders us fearless of misfortune.

When we say therefore that pleasure is the goal of life, we do not mean the pleasures of sensualists or those that depend on acts of enjoyment, as some maintain in ignorance, or because they disagree with us or willfully misrepresent our teaching. What we mean by pleasure is the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the mind. For not a long chain of parties and drunken nights, nor the enjoyment of boys and women, nor a table laden with fish and other extravagances, produces a pleasant life, but rather sober reasoning, which examines the roots of our every choice and avoidance, and drives out those opinions that so greatly disturb our lives.

Prudence is the foundation of all of this and our greatest good. Because of this, prudence is more valuable than philosophy, and all the other virtues are produced from it. Prudence teaches that it is not possible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably, and justly, nor to live prudently, honorably, and justly without living pleasurably. For the virtues are necessarily intertwined with the pleasurable life, and the pleasurable life is inseparable from them.

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Commentary

Today we come to the fourth entry in our five-part series on the Letter to Menoeceus, our longest continuous summary of ethical teachings from Epicurus himself. Previous installments have covered the true nature of the gods, why death is not an evil, and the argument for hedonism. In today’s segment, Epicurus puts his general teaching on pain and pleasure into more practical terms.

And so we hold self-sufficiency to be a great good, not for the purpose of always living with little, but so that we will be satisfied with little when we do not have much, and because we are fully convinced that those who need extravagance the least enjoy it the most and that every natural desire is easy to satisfy, while those that are empty and groundless are hard to fulfill. When they remove the pains of hunger and thirst, simple flavors bring us pleasure equal to that of an extravagant diet. Even barley cake1 and water produce the highest pleasure when they are eaten by someone in need. Accustom yourself, then, to a plain rather than an extravagant way of life: this is integral to health, makes a man resolute before the necessary duties of life, enables us to better enjoy occasional luxuries, and renders us fearless of misfortune.

There is some dispute as to how plainly and ascetically the Epicureans actually recommended we live. On the one hand, they clearly did not mandate constant extreme deprivation: Epicurus here says that he does not recommend “always living with little” and that one of the benefits of his teachings is to increase one’s enjoyment of extravagant pleasures from time to time. A testimony from Seneca (Epistles 18.9) reinforces this point:

Epicurus, the teacher of pleasure himself, used to have certain days during which he would do the bare minimum to quiet his hunger, in order to see whether his subsequent state would in fact fall short of a full and complete pleasure, and, if so, by how much it would fall short and whether that shortfall was worth the great efforts people often make to avert it. This is surely what he is describing in his letter to Polyaenus written during the archonship of Charinus. In this spirit is his boast that he is able to supply his day’s food for less than a single copper coin, while Metrodorus, who had not progressed as far, required the full coin’s value.

A key phrase here is certos habebat dies: Epicurus had “certain days” on which he would practice extreme frugality—this was not his constant habit. Still, he clearly enjoined a simple lifestyle (ἁπλαῖς καὶ οὐ πολυτελέσι διαίταις) and recommended that extravagances only come at intervals (ἐκ διαλειμμάτων), rather than being routinely sought out. There are therefore two guardrails for the Epicurean position: live plainly and simply, with only occasional luxuries, but do not be excessively ascetic or stringently avoid pleasures that are easy to obtain. (How exactly this should translate to modern standards of living is open to debate, and probably to a significant variety of reasonable positions depending on one’s financial circumstances.)

When we say therefore that pleasure is the goal of life, we do not mean the pleasures of sensualists or those that depend on acts of enjoyment, as some maintain in ignorance, or because they disagree with us or willfully misrepresent our teaching. What we mean by pleasure is the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the mind. For not a long chain of parties and drunken nights, nor the enjoyment of boys and women, nor a table laden with fish and other extravagances, produces a pleasant life, but rather sober reasoning, which examines the roots of our every choice and avoidance, and drives out those opinions that so greatly disturb our lives.

In last week’s selection, Epicurus outlined his position that the elimination of pain constituted the height of pleasure. Here, he reiterates that point along with some corollaries that should be obvious, but which are often omitted from the critiques of hedonism given by both the generally uninformed and by philosophical opponents who may or may not be engaging in good faith debate. Since Epicurean pleasure is the absence of pain, we are not talking about drinking, feasting, and having sex with boys and female slaves (i.e. the milieu of Plato’s Symposium, not too far distant from Epicurus’ life—he was born about six years after the death of Plato).

Instead, the kind of pleasure Epicurus is talking about is enhanced primarily through reasoning and the removal of false opinions. The physical training he describes above (routinely living simply and experimenting periodically with stricter austerity) is a useful precursor to philosophy. It helps us to understand what is truly needed to satisfy our necessary desires. But while chasing sensual pleasures is clearly not the path to a pleasant life, neither is material austerity per se. Relative material austerity is just one tool towards the real goal: reducing mental disturbance.

Prudence is the foundation of all of this and our greatest good. Because of this, prudence is more valuable than philosophy, and all the other virtues are produced from it. Prudence teaches that it is not possible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably, and justly, nor to live prudently, honorably, and justly without living pleasurably. For the virtues are necessarily intertwined with the pleasurable life, and the pleasurable life is inseparable from them.

Here we come to a few of the most radical and distinctively Epicurean positions. First, that prudence is more valuable than philosophy—a very unusual thing for most philosophers to say! Prudence is a rendering of phronesis, which is also sometimes translated as “practical wisdom” in distinction from more theoretical or abstract forms of clear thinking. “Theoretical wisdom” does include valuable teachings, such as Epicurus’ own regarding the correct understanding of the gods and of death. But practical wisdom is concerned with the proper weighing out of the pleasure and pain attendant to any possible course of action. It is prudent to recognize that continuous attendance at drunken sex parties is not an effective way to achieve a pleasant life, because that lifestyle comes with significant downsides. If you don’t get that right, all the theoretical subtlety in the world will not bring you happiness.

The second essential teaching here is that Epicurus considers all the traditional, normie virtues (“By honor is meant the unwritten law that determines the conduct of a gentleman; and by justice is meant obedience to the written laws of the country”2) to inevitably go along with the pleasurable life. Critics will often oppose such values to hedonism (improperly understood). “Living a life of pleasure,” they will say, “is opposed to honor and justice. We need to teach people to forego their own pleasure in the interest of these virtues.”

Epicurus denies this. And what squares this circle, reconciling the life of pleasure and the life of virtue, is phronesis. This teaching is elaborated more elsewhere, but the point is that a rational consideration of our advantage and disadvantage will almost always lead us to behave as the just and honorable citizens would have us do. We will not steal, lie, and cheat, because that will not bring us more pleasure. What it will bring us is some superfluous sum of money or other such insubstantial “benefit,” while also earning us legal penalties, the fear of legal penalties, mistrust, the fear of mistrust, and reduced opportunities for trustworthy friendship. The only conflict between Epicureanism and common-sense morality here is this: Epicureans act justly and honorably because they recognize it is in their own best interest, rather than forcing themselves to do so while believing they are actually harming themselves.

Next week, we’ll conclude the Letter to Menoeceus with a consideration of fate and a wrapping-up of all we’ve covered, summarizing how one who internalizes all of these precepts can live “like a god among men.”

Original Text

καὶ τὴν αὐτάρκειαν δὲ ἀγαθὸν μέγα νομίζομεν, οὐχ ἵνα πάντως τοῖς ὀλίγοις χρώμεθα, ἀλλ’ ὅπως, ἐὰν μὴ ἔχωμεν τὰ πολλά, τοῖς ὀλίγοις χρώμεθα, πεπεισμένοι γνησίως ὅτι ἥδιστα πολυτελείας ἀπολαύουσιν οἱ ἥκιστα ταύτης δεόμενοι, καὶ ὅτι τὸ μὲν φυσικὸν πᾶν εὐπόριστόν ἐστι, τὸ δὲ κενὸν δυσπόριστον, οἵ τε λιτοὶ χυλοὶ ἴσην πολυτελεῖ διαίτῃ τὴν ἡδονὴν ἐπιφέρουσιν, ὅταν ἅπαν τὸ ἀλγοῦν κατ’ ἔνδειαν ἐξαιρεθῇ, [131] καὶ μᾶζα καὶ ὕδωρ τὴν ἀκροτάτην ἀποδίδωσιν ἡδονήν, ἐπειδὰν ἐνδέων τις αὐτὰ προσενέγκηται.

τὸ συνεθίζειν οὖν ἐν ταῖς ἁπλαῖς καὶ οὐ πολυτελέσι διαίταις καὶ ὑγιείας ἐστὶ συμπληρωτικὸν καὶ πρὸς τὰς ἀναγκαίας τοῦ βίου χρήσεις ἄοκνον ποιεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον καὶ τοῖς πολυτελέσιν ἐκ διαλειμμάτων προσερχομένους κρεῖττον ἡμᾶς διατίθησι καὶ πρὸς τὴν τύχην ἀφόβους παρασκευάζει.

ὅταν οὖν λέγωμεν ἡδονὴν τέλος ὑπάρχειν, οὐ τὰς τῶν ἀσώτων ἡδονὰς καὶ τὰς ἐν ἀπολαύσει κειμένας λέγομεν, ὥς τινες ἀγνοοῦντες καὶ οὐχ ὁμολογοῦντες ἤ κακῶς ἐκδεχόμενοι νομίζουσιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μήτε ἀλγεῖν κατὰ σῶμα μήτε ταράττεσθαι κατὰ ψυχήν.

[132] οὐ γὰρ πότοι καὶ κῶμοι συνείροντες οὐδ’ ἀπολαύσεις παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν οὐδ’ ἰχθύων καὶ τῶν ἄλλων, ὅσα φέρει πολυτελὴς τράπεζα, τὸν ἡδὺν γεννᾷ βίον, ἀλλὰ νήφων λογισμὸς καὶ τὰς αἰτίας ἐξερευνῶν πάσης αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς, καὶ τὰς δόξας ἐξελαύνων, ἐξ ὧν πλεῖστος τὰς ψυχὰς καταλαμβάνει θόρυβος.

τούτων δὲ πάντων ἀρχὴ καὶ τὸ μέγιστον ἀγαθὸν φρόνησις. διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφίας τιμιώτερον ὑπάρχει φρόνησις, ἐξ ἧς αἱ λοιπαὶ πᾶσαι πεφύκασιν ἀρεταί, διδάσκουσα ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν ἡδέως ζῆν ἄνευ τοῦ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως <οὐδὲ φρονίμως καὶ καλῶς καὶ δικαίως> ἄνευ τοῦ ἡδέως. συμπεφύκασι γὰρ αἱ ἀρεταὶ τῷ ζῆν ἡδέως, καὶ τὸ ζῆν ἡδέως τούτων ἐστὶν ἀχώριστον.

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While there are several hundred pages worth of intact Plato, Aristotle, and ancient Stoics, the Epicurean texts that have come down to us from antiquity are relatively few in number. But it can still be a little confusing knowing how to approach the primary sources. The major texts have multiple translators and varying editions: which should you read? The minor texts are often fragmentary or embedded in non-Epicurean works: where can you even find them? Today, I’ll present an overview of what we have, together with my recommendations of the best English translations currently available.

Epicurus

The main texts we have from Epicurus himself consist of three short letters and a collection of maxims, all contained within the biography of Epicurus in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. While Diogenes Laertius was writing hundreds of years after the death of Epicurus and can sometimes be more interested in gossipy stories about his subjects than about the details of their philosophical doctrines, it is generally accepted that his text offers a faithful transmission of the Epicurean originals.

• Letter to Herodotus (on physics, also called “The Small Epitome”)

• Letter to Pythocles (on celestial phenomena, sometimes speculated to be the work of followers rather than Epicurus himself)

• Letter to Menoeceus (on ethics)

• The Principal Doctrines (or Kyriai Doxai, forty mostly ethical maxims)

Diogenes Laertius also includes a brief biography of Epicurus, a rather scattered summary of some of his teachings, and a discussion of the often-personal critiques that went back and forth between Epicurus and his philosophical rivals.

You could simply get an edition of Diogenes Laertius to read all of this core material in one continuous piece, as it has come down to us. The Loeb edition provides a facing Greek test and an old translation by Hicks (this is also available on Perseus). Pamela Mensch has written a more modern, easier to read translation of the whole work.

Most people, however, will probably prefer to get a collection of Epicurean writings that includes not only the material from Diogenes Laertius, but also a few other odds and ends that have survived independently. (An Epicurean anthology may also often provide more philosophically-focused editorial notes than a general translation of Diogenes Laertius.) Of these other texts, the most important is probably another collection of aphorisms known as the Vatican Sayings. This manuscript was discovered in the late 19^th century in the Vatican library—you can see it digitized here, starting on page 401—and represents a later compilation rather than an original, ancient collection, so it has some duplication with the Principal Doctrines, as well as some fragments that we know from elsewhere to be originally authored by Metrodorus, Epicurus’ best friend and right-hand man. Modern anthologies will also include various short sayings quoted by other writers, fragments recovered from the Herculaneum papyri and the inscription of Diogenes of Oenoanda, and passages describing Epicurean doctrines from Lucretius, Cicero, Porphyry, and others. I’ll say a little more about some of those texts below.

For serious, English-speaking students, the best collection remains Cyril Bailey’s 1926 Epicurus: The Extant Remains. This remains the only edition with an (old-fashioned but excellent) English translation, Greek text, full critical apparatus, and notes covering both Epicurean doctrine and translation decisions. While it has been reprinted a few times, print copies are rather rare and can be expensive; fortunately, it can be viewed for free at the Internet Archive.

Of modern, currently in-print collections, the best option is probably The Epicurus Reader by Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson (the same material is also combined with Stoic and Cynic texts in their Hellenistic Philosophy). On the positive side, this book is cheap, frequently cited in academic papers, and contains all the core texts, as well as some fragments not found in Bailey. Some modern academics will probably prefer this translation to that of Bailey for its tendency towards greater word-for-word literalism, which can be useful when tracking the use of specific terms, although this is not a particularly eloquent translation. Be aware that this is a very bare bones edition, however, with no Greek or Latin text and very little in the way of notes or commentary.

Still, it’s probably your best choice for a currently available, hard copy anthology. Second place goes to The Art of Happiness, Penguin’s modern printing of the translation work of George Strodach from the 1960s. This translation is somewhat more eloquent than Inwood and Gerson, and the editorial commentary is much more extensive, but the volume falls short as an anthology, as its only offerings beyond the core texts from Diogenes Laertius are some of the Vatican Sayings and “parallel passages” from Lucretius, who can perfectly well be read independently. (Though if you are not going to read through all of Lucretius, reading Strodach’s selections in direct conjunction with the Epicurus texts, with accompanying commentary, is not the worst way to round out your understanding of the teachings.)

There is also The Essential Epicurus translated by Eugene O’Connor, which aims to compete in the Inwood & Gerson niche of a minimalist, quarter-inch paperback, but which contains fewer fragments, doesn’t indicate the original sources, is never cited in scholarly work, has a fine but unexceptional translation, and is printed cheaply and uncrisply. The Hellenistic Philosophy anthology of Long and Sedley is cited regularly in academic circles, but is more suited to use as a textbook for a Hellenistic philosophy class: it cuts up the source texts into tiny fragments, ranges across the schools, and is arranged thematically (“Epicurean proof of the existence of void,” “Stoic non-simple propositions,” and so on). Long and Sedley occasionally have valuable notes, but I wouldn’t really recommend either of these for general readers.

If you happen to read French, you could get the expensive but magisterial Les Épicuriens edited by Daniel Delattre for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. If you happen to read Italian, you might seek out Arrighetti’s Epicuro: Opere (out of print since the 1970s, but the most modern and comprehensive scholarly edition with the Greek and Latin texts) or a modern reprinting of the Scritti Morali compiled by Carlo Diano (which I haven’t seen, but Diano is a major scholar and I’d love an Ethical Writings anthology in English). And if you are comfortable in Latin, you could go back to the granddaddy of Epicurus anthologies, the Epicurea of Hermann Usener.

Failing such multilinguism, stick to Bailey (if you can find a copy, or don’t mind digital) or Inwood and Gerson (if you want something cheap and on paper).

Lucretius

Epicurus has attracted a relative paucity of skillful translators: there simply aren’t many texts and they aren’t famous as literary compositions. Lucretius, however, is a different story. Writing in the 1^st century BCE, the Roman poet rendered Epicurean philosophy into an epic poem called De Rerum Natura, most commonly rendered On the Nature of Things. While much of the content is occupied by the teachings on physics and celestial phenomena, which may be less gripping to modern readers searching for ethical advice, the poem is widely acknowledged as one of the great masterpieces of Latin literature and has had no shortage of English renderings.

How to choose one? The first choice is whether you want a prose or verse translation. If you are simply using the poem as a source for Epicurean teachings, or if you simply want a supporting translation as you study the work in the original Latin, a prose translation might be appropriate. There are two prominent options here: the Loeb edition with facing Latin text and English translation by Rouse (lightly corrected by Martin Ferguson Smith, but largely that of the first 1924 edition) or the monolingual Hackett edition (Smith’s own modern translation).

Book II proem, by Rouse:

Pleasant it is, when on the great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another’s great tribulation: not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive what ills you are free from yourself is pleasant.

And by Smith:

It is comforting, when winds are whipping up the waters of the vast sea, to watch from land the severe trials of another person: not that anyone’s distress is a cause of agreeable pleasure; but it is comforting to see from what troubles you yourself are exempt.

While Smith is more modern, I wouldn’t say that I find him particularly easier to read or more accurate, so if you would like to have the Latin text there, you aren’t losing anything by just sticking to the Loeb. Smith does have a useful synopsis at the beginning of each book though.

The real translation competition, however, is between the many poets who have tried their hands at a verse translation. Here is a rundown of four widely available editions, in rough order of my descending preference, although reasonable people could have different priorities. I’ll illustrate their different approaches with a slightly longer selection of the opening ten lines of Book II, the famous “shipwreck” proem.

Ronald Melville, On the Nature of the Universe, Oxford World’s Classics

The introductory material notes that Sir Ronald Melville studied classics at Cambridge and that the composition process was conducted “in the evening after dinner, with a glass of port at hand in case I got stuck.” And that’s how the translation reads, like the stately, classic, rather timeless work of an old English gentleman. I find this style appealing, though some might consider it a little stuffy and old-fashioned.

As with Humphries and Copley below, Melville’s approach is basically the old English standby of unrhymed iambic pentameter, but I would say his attempt is the most successful at conveying the dignity and grandeur of the original. The old-fashioned-ness comes in part from vocabulary, in part from stylistic choices like the frequent inversion of normal syntax for the sake of more regular meter (“But nothing sweeter is than this” etc.), but if you’re at all accustomed to classic English poetry, it should still be quite readable.

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A joy it is, when the strong winds of storm
Stir up the waters of a mighty sea,
To watch from shore the troubles of another.
No pleasure this in any man’s distress,
But joy to see the ills from which you are spared,
And joy to see great armies locked in conflict
Across the plains, yourself free from the danger.
But nothing sweeter is than this: to dwell
In quiet halls and lofty sanctuaries
Well fortified by doctrines of the wise,
And look thence down on others wandering
And seeking all astray the path of life—

The Oxford World’s Classics edition is attractive and well-printed. Endnotes by Don and Peta Fowler provide assistance when needed, but don’t mark up the body of the text for an undistracted reading experience. All in all, this is my preferred verse edition.

Rolfe Humphries, The Way Things Are, Indiana University Press

Humphries, like Stallings below, is a poet first, translator second. Originally published in 1968, I imagine this rendition felt very vivid and fresh when it first came out: while he loosely keeps the blank verse form of Melville and much classic English poetry, Humphries opts for a more modern, looser diction. Sometimes it is refreshingly direct, but sometimes it feels more like a product of its time compared to the more timeless feel of Melville (which was actually written later, in the 90s).

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How sweet it is, when whirlwinds roil great ocean,
To watch, from land, the danger of another,
Not that to see some other person suffer
Brings great enjoyment, but the sweetness lies
In watching evils you yourself are free from.
How sweet, again, to see the clash of battle
Across the plains, yourself immune to danger.
But nothing is more sweet than full possession
Of those calm heights, well built, well fortified
By wise men’s teaching, to look down from here
At others wandering below, men lost
Confused, in hectic search for the right road…

The book is a serviceable paperback from Indiana University Press; the endnotes by Strodach are relatively minimal. All that is fine, though I would say one step down from Melville/Oxford in terms of both editorial usefulness and visual appeal. Verdict: perfectly reasonable if you like Humphries’ style, which is a little more direct and modern than Melville.

A.E. Stallings, The Nature of Things, Penguin Classics

This is the most contemporary translation, adopted by Penguin Classics for their 2007 re-edition of the poem, and also the most innovative and distinct. As with Humphries, Stallings is a poet in her own right, rather than purely a classical scholar. In her translation, she to break out of the stodgy blank verse tradition in favor of rhyming fourteeners (i.e. longer, seven-beat lines instead of the typical five-beat lines of all three of her competitors described here). The longer lines make it easier to fit all of the Lucretian content into a line-for-line translation without omission (Latin is denser than English), while rhyming makes the poem feel insistently like a poem, more sprightly and forward-moving than many other attempts. Of course, the constraints of rhyme necessitate on average a little more distance from a literal translation, but Stallings generally navigates the task well.

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How sweet it is to watch from dry land when the storm-winds roil
A mighty ocean’s waters, and see another’s bitter toil—
Not because you relish someone else’s misery—
Rather, it’s sweet to know from what misfortunes you are free.
Pleasant it is even to behold contests of war
Drawn up on the battlefield, when you are in no danger.
But there is nothing sweeter than to dwell in towers that rise
On high, serene and fortified with teachings of the wise,
From which you may peer down upon the others as they stray
This way and that, seeking the path of life, losing their way…

I can see the advantages. The long lines fit the Latin better, while the rhyming fourteeners are easy to read, with a lilting feeling of forward momentum—which is quite a valuable quality when pitching a 200+ page poem on ancient physics to modern readers. However, rhyming has downsides: it requires circumlocutions that on average will be more distant from a precise rendering, requires sometimes awkward enjambments that may feel less “like a poem” than blank verse, and can have a sing-song quality that to modern ears often lacks the grandeur and dignity of the original.

The modern black Penguin classics are handsome at first, but tend to get less so as white creases get worn into the covers. Stallings provides fairly streamlined, helpful notes, supplemented by a glossary of classical references to reduce duplicative bulk in the notes (though this may mean having to look in two places to find what you are looking for). Overall, Stallings is still a skillful craftswoman and this is a fine translation, though it is less to my personal taste than Melville.

Frank O. Copley, On the Nature of Things

One more blank verse/loose iambic pentameter effort, this one authored by Frank Copley, professor emeritus of Latin at the University of Michigan, and first published by Norton in 1977.

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It’s sweet, when winds blow wild on open seas,
to watch from land your neighbor’s vast travail,
not that men’s miseries bring us dear delight
but that to see what ills we’re spared is sweet;
sweet, too, to watch the cruel contest of war
ranging the field when you need share no danger.
But nothing is sweeter than to dwell in peace
high in the well-walled temples of the wise,
whence looking down we may see other men
wavering, wandering, seeking a way of life…

Although verse, Copley’s translation does feel more like the work of a Latin professor rather than a poet. This isn’t all bad—his translation is generally accurate and straightforward. But overall, I find his version more generic and less poetically powerful than the other blank verse versions.

Norton’s cover design is a bit cheesy and dated. This edition is the only one of the verse translations with footnotes, rather than endnotes, so if you despise having to flip to the back for notes, it does have that virtue. Overall: serviceable, but other options are better.

Other Ancient Sources

An Epicurus anthology and a copy of Lucretius are the two essentials. Once you have those, some other ancient sources to look into are:

Cicero, On Moral Ends (De Finibus): This dialogue presents and discusses the ethical systems of the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the contemporary Academic Antiochus. The exposition of Epicureanism given in Book I by the character Torquatus is one of the more extensive ancient accounts we have and generally seems to be an accurate and good faith rendition of Epicurean doctrines, despite Cicero’s many criticisms in Book II. Available with the Latin text in an old Loeb edition, or a good modern translation by Raphael Woolf.

Seneca, Letters on Ethics: Although Seneca is one of the three major figures of Roman Stoicism, he also finds much to admire in Epicurus. In his Letters (or Epistles, or Moral Epistles), he shares a large number of direct quotes from Epicurus that often have not come down to us from any other source, along with some eloquent rephrasing and commentary. Epicurus and his followers are almost omnipresent through the first 29 letters (out of 124 in total) and are then occasionally cited in later entries. The best complete translation is that of Margaret Graver and Anthony Long; Loeb divides the letters into three volumes, so Epistles 1-65 is of most interest to Epicureans.

There is also some minor, scattered discussion of Epicurean doctrine in Seneca’s essays as well, primarily in On Benefits, On the Happy Life, and On Leisure.

Philodemus: Unlike the two previous sources, Philodemus actually was an Epicurean. A contemporary of Cicero, Philodemus was active around the Bay of Naples and several of his philosophical works survived the eruption of Vesuvius and have been recovered—in very fragmentary form—from the Villa of the Papyri. Unfortunately, the texts are highly damaged and cannot really be read in a casual fashion. Although attempted reconstructions have been printed of several of his treatises, the most practical entry point to these fragments is probably through Voula Tsouna’s The Ethics of Philodemus.

Diogenes of Oenoanda: This monumental Epicurean inscription has similarly come down to us only in fragmentary form. (Though there is hope that improved editions of both Philodemus and Diogenes will arrive in the years to come, as papyrus-reading technology improves and perhaps future excavations one day take place at Oenoanda.) Newly discovered fragments have been published bit by bit over the past several decades, but a full scholarly edition with Greek text has not yet been produced. Just this year (March 2026), however, the leading scholar on Diogenes, Martin Ferguson Smith, released the most up to date English translation of the whole text, available free online under the title Urbi et Orbi: The Epicurean Inscription and Prescription of Diogenes of Oinoanda. (“Oenoanda” is another common spelling.)

Porphyry: If you look through Bailey, Inwood & Gerson, or Usener, you will see many “fragments” from Epicurus that have come to us through two works by the Neoplatonist Porphyry, To Marcella and On Abstinence from Killing Animals. Each contains several continuous pages paraphrasing and sometimes quoting Epicurus or his follower Hermarchus. Neither work is particularly renowned in itself, but both To Marcella and On Abstinence have been published in English translation.

Plutarch: The famous biographer also wrote extensively on ethics, including several polemics against the Epicureans. While these works often distort Epicurus’ arguments and generally exhibit poor philosophical judgment, they are still a valuable secondary source of information. Three essays in particular fall in this category: That Epicurus Actually Makes a Pleasant Life Impossible (“Non posse”), Against Colotes (“Ad. Colotem”), and Is “Live Unknown” a Wise Precept? (“De latenter vivendo”). These are relatively little read by the general public, so you will often see the abbreviated Latin names used by scholars.

Horace: One of the greatest of Latin lyric poets, with distinct leanings towards Epicureanism. Sometimes this is explicit, while often it is implicit in his celebrations of simple living, friendship, moderate drinking, and contentment. Unfortunately, my current impression is that there is no adequate translation in English, so you’ll just have to learn Latin and get the Loeb edition of the Odes. (There is Epicurean-flavored material in the Satires and Epistles as well, but these are less celebrated poems for a reason.)

None of these authors is perfectly represented in the available Epicurean anthologies. Ideally, a more comprehensive collection of ethical writings would include all of the relevant material that currently needs to be excavated from these diverse and sometimes difficult sources. But until someone gives me an opportunity to write that book, you’ll just have to tune in to Untroubled and our regular installments of Translation Tuesday, in which all of these writers will eventually claim their moment in the spotlight.

Know that some desires are natural, while others are groundless, and of the natural desires some are necessary, while others are not. Of the necessary desires, some are necessary for happiness, some to pacify the body’s demands, and some for life itself.

Keeping these facts in unwavering focus allows us to refer every choice and avoidance to the health of the body and the serenity of the soul, for to secure these is the object of a blessed life. Everything we do is for this purpose: the avoidance of pain in our body and fear in our mind.

When we achieve this state, the storm inside of us goes quiet: when pain is removed, no creature feels compelled to travel on in quest of something missing, searching for something else to complete the good of its body and soul. For it is when we feel pain from the absence of pleasure that we require pleasure; when all our pain has been relieved, we need no further pleasure. This is why we say that pleasure is the beginning and end of a blessed life.

Indeed, having judged pleasure to be our first and innate good, from this we begin our every choice and avoidance, and to this we refer as our standard of judgment, measuring every good according to this feeling.

Pleasure is our first good and natural to us, and for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, for there are often times when we pass over opportunities for pleasure if greater difficulties will follow them. Likewise, we consider many pains to be preferable to initial pleasures, if greater pleasures will follow after we submit to them for a time. And so every pleasure is good, and is by nature fitting for us, but not every pleasure is to be chosen. In the same way, every pain is bad, but not every pain is to be avoided.

Indeed, all things should be judged through comparison, and through a consideration of their advantages and disadvantages. For sometimes we will treat a good thing as bad or a bad thing as good.

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In our third installment of the Letter to Menoeceus, we move on from discussions of the gods and death and arrive at another core Epicurean teaching: the proper classification of desires and the case for hedonism. You might think the latter of these to be the more foundational and expect it to be covered first, but in fact Epicurus starts with the classification of desires. This is characteristic of the empirical or even anthropological approach of the school: it is by observing the various things that humans do desire that we can form an accurate general theory of what will conduce to happiness.

Know that some desires are natural, while others are groundless, and of the natural desires some are necessary, while others are not. Of the necessary desires, some are necessary for happiness, some to pacify the body’s demands, and some for life itself.

These short lines are extremely important to Epicurean ethics. The most fundamental scheme of categorization gives us three families of desire: the natural and necessary, the natural and unnecessary, and those which are not natural or necessary, described here as kenai, meaning groundless, empty, or pointless. (These descriptions are admittedly a mouthful: I rather like Emily Austin’s shorthand terms of “necessary,” “extravagant,” and “corrosive” desires.) Epicurus’ helpful elaboration of what he considers necessary allows us to fill out this taxonomy a little more:

1. Natural and necessary:

   1. For life itself: food, drink, basic shelter

   2. For the resolution of bodily pain: Some pains won’t kill us immediately (physical discomfort, moderate cold), but they will pester us incessantly until we resolve them.

   3. For happiness: As he will elaborate, the mental side of contentment mostly means freedom from fear. Epicurus believes tranquility requires a sense of security, achieved through things like a correct understanding of the world and friendship.

2. Natural but not necessary: Austin’s “extravagant” is correct—these are desires that are natural and fine to indulge, but which will not harm us if they are lacking. More tasty food, more comfortable clothing, and enjoyment of the arts seem to belong here according to Epicurus. He also generally puts sex in this category, although sometimes that gets more complicated: for some people the desire for sex seems to approach “necessary” in its inescapability, while for others it can get mixed up with unhealthy erotic obsession, which the Epicureans recognize as detrimental to happiness.

3. Neither natural nor necessary: The main traits of these desires are 1) that they do not actually contribute to the satisfaction of our natural desires for freedom from bodily pain and mental disturbance, and 2) that they cannot be satisfied. The desire for wealth or power would fall into this category. Austin calls them “corrosive,” because indulging them has negative effects. You could also simply call them “mistaken,” because they are based on an incorrect belief that their pursuit will lead to greater comfort or security. Epicurus believes this is simply wrong: the acquisition of wealth and power is more likely to disturb our peace of mind than add to it. Much more on this to come.

Keeping these facts in unwavering focus allows us to refer every choice and avoidance to the health of the body and the serenity of the soul, for to secure these is the object of a blessed life. Everything we do is for this purpose: the avoidance of pain in our body and fear in our mind.

Here we find some important philosophical vocabulary. The “object” of our life is a rendering of telos, a word which you will also see rendered as “goal,” “end,” or simply kept in the Greek due to its philosophical prominence. Another such word is ataraxia, translated here as “serenity.” “Tranquility” would also work. (The adjectival form, ataraktos, is our namesake condition—untroubled.)

For Epicurus, as for Aristotle, our proper telos is our own eudaimonia, or happiness. This essential egoism was the standard view in ancient Greek philosophy, reflecting the commonsense idea that it is right and natural for us to pursue our own well-being. I would say that is still the commonsense view of the majority of people, most of the time, even though many modern philosophers contest the idea that our own happiness is our only ethical imperative. Where Epicureanism differs from other ancient schools is the identification of eudaimonia with painlessness in the body and untroubledness in the mind.

When we achieve this state, the storm inside of us goes quiet: when pain is removed, no creature feels compelled to travel on in quest of something missing, searching for something else to complete the good of its body and soul. For it is when we feel pain from the absence of pleasure that we require pleasure; when all our pain has been relieved, we need no further pleasure. This is why we say that pleasure is the beginning and end of a blessed life.

Indeed, having judged pleasure to be our first and innate good, from this we begin our every choice and avoidance, and to this we refer as our standard of judgment, measuring every good according to this feeling.

Here is where Epicurus makes his controversial claim that the limit of pleasure is the removal of all pain (also seen in Principal Doctrine 3). He maintains that if all pain is truly removed, any further pleasurable sensations would at best consist only in variation, rather than true augmentation, of pleasure. If we have no hunger, we will take no pleasure in further food. If we are warm and dry, the softness of our bedsheets is immaterial. At some point, I’ll dedicate a whole essay to this doctrine, but for now it is important to recognize Epicurus’ stark refutation of the usual accusations of a low and sensual hedonism: for him, pleasure is the removal of pain.

Pleasure is our first good and natural to us, and for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, for there are often times when we pass over opportunities for pleasure if greater difficulties will follow them. Likewise, we consider many pains to be preferable to initial pleasures, if greater pleasures will follow after we submit to them for a time. And so every pleasure is good, and is by nature fitting for us, but not every pleasure is to be chosen. In the same way, every pain is bad, but not every pain is to be avoided.

Indeed, all things should be judged through comparison, and through a consideration of their advantages and disadvantages. For sometimes we will treat a good thing as bad or a bad thing as good.

Rounding out his initial theoretical overview of pleasure, Epicurus here introduces something very similar to what will become known as the “hedonic calculus” in the Utilitarian tradition of Jeremy Bentham. The language is now familiar to any philosophy undergraduate, while the idea should be familiar to any prudent person: a thoughtful hedonist does not grasp at any seeming pleasure that presents itself, but instead considers the total net pleasure that is likely to result from a given course of action.

Eating ice cream is pleasurable, but eating a whole tub will make my stomach feel uncomfortable. I will go to the dentist and give them money to perform an uncomfortable procedure on my teeth because if I don’t I will experience more pain in the future. Restraining overall spending and increasing savings leads to greater security in old age.

Such are my examples. Next week, Epicurus will give us some of his own, diving deeper into the application of his hedonistic theory. We’ll be talking about frugality vs. fish, unrestrained lust vs. sober reasoning, and the paramount importance of phronesis, or practical wisdom. Don’t miss it.

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Original Text

ἀναλογιστέον δὲ ὡς τῶν ἐπιθυμιῶν αἱ μέν εἰσι φυσικαί, αἱ δὲ κεναί, καὶ τῶν φυσικῶν αἱ μὲν ἀναγκαῖαι, αἱ δὲ φυσικαὶ μόνον· τῶν δὲ ἀναγκαίων αἱ μὲν πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν εἰσὶν ἀναγκαῖαι, αἱ δὲ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἀοχλησίαν, αἱ δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸ τὸ ζῆν.

[128] τούτων γὰρ ἀπλανὴς θεωρία πᾶσαν αἵρεσιν καὶ φυγὴν ἐπανάγειν οἶδεν ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ σώματος ὑγίειαν καὶ τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀταραξίαν, ἐπεὶ τοῦτο τοῦ μακαρίως ζῆν ἐστι τέλος. τούτου γὰρ πάντα πράττομεν, ὅπως μήτε ἀλγῶμεν μήτε ταρβῶμεν.

ὅταν δὲ ἅπαξ τοῦτο περὶ ἡμᾶς γένηται, λύεται πᾶς ὁ τῆς ψυχῆς χειμών, οὐκ ἔχοντος τοῦ ζῴου βαδίζειν ὡς πρὸς ἐνδέον τι καὶ ζητεῖν ἕτερον ᾧ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς καὶ τὸ τοῦ σώματος ἀγαθὸν συμπληρώσεται. τότε γὰρ ἡδονῆς χρείαν ἔχομεν, ὅταν ἐκ τοῦ μὴ παρεῖναι τὴν ἡδονὴν ἀλγῶμεν· <ὅταν δὲ μὴ ἀλγῶμεν> οὐκέτι τῆς ἡδονῆς δεόμεθα. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο τὴν ἡδονὴν ἀρχὴν καὶ τέλος λέγομεν εἶναι τοῦ μακαρίως ζῆν.

[129] ταύτην γὰρ ἀγαθὸν πρῶτον καὶ συγγενικὸν ἔγνωμεν, καὶ ἀπὸ ταύτης καταρχόμεθα πάσης αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτην καταντῶμεν ὡς κανόνι τῷ πάθει πᾶν ἀγαθὸν κρίνοντες.

καὶ ἐπεὶ πρῶτον ἀγαθὸν τοῦτο καὶ σύμφυτον, διὰ τοῦτο καὶ οὐ πᾶσαν ἡδονὴν αἱρούμεθα, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ὅτε πολλὰς ἡδονὰς ὑπερβαίνομεν, ὅταν πλεῖον ἡμῖν τὸ δυσχερὲς ἐκ τούτων ἕπηται· καὶ πολλὰς ἀλγηδόνας ἡδονῶν κρείττους νομίζομεν, ἐπειδὰν μείζων ἡμῖν ἡδονὴ παρακολουθῇ πολὺν χρόνον ὑπομείνασι τὰς ἀλγηδόνας. πᾶσα οὖν ἡδονὴ διὰ τὸ φύσιν ἔχειν οἰκείαν ἀγαθὸν, οὐ πᾶσα μέντοι αἱρετή· καθάπερ καὶ ἀλγηδὼν πᾶσα κακόν, οὐ πᾶσα δὲ ἀεὶ φευκτὴ πεφυκυῖα.

[130] τῇ μέντοι συμμετρήσει καὶ συμφερόντων καὶ ἀσυμφόρων βλέψει ταῦτα πάντα κρίνειν καθήκει. χρώμεθα γὰρ τῷ ἀγαθῷ κατά τινας χρόνους ὡς κακῷ, τῷ δὲ κακῷ τοὔμπαλιν ὡς ἀγαθῷ.

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Last week, I took on the first half of the philosophically-accurate but colloquially-confusing label “hedonistic egoism.” Epicureans are hedonists, I explained, but in practice that mainly means that we try to avoid mental pain. Today I’ll be discussing the equally disreputable word of “egoism.”

In the technical terminology of philosophy, Epicureans are ethical egoists, believing that self-interest should be the guiding principle of our behavior and that there are no external moral codes that define right and wrong, or that obligate us to consider the interests of others as equal to or of higher priority than our own. This is true. But in imprecise colloquial usage of the word “egoist,” or in the more correct usage of the related “egotist,” speakers usually mean something distinctly negative, imagining some kind of self-centered, selfish jerk.

Epicureans are egoists, but we are not self-centered, selfish jerks. How can we reconcile these two descriptions? What kind of egoists are Epicureans?

1. Psychological egoists: Just as with psychological hedonism, we think this is just descriptively true—people are inevitably motivated by self-interested impulses, a broad category in which we include impulses that may have prosocial results, or that might not pass a test of reasoned calculation of maximum benefit to ourselves. Just as with psychological hedonism, however, you don’t have to accept this entirely to find value in the central consequence: working with our predominant instincts is more likely to be successful than working against them.

2. Prudential egoists: This isn’t a standard term, but it’s important to keep in mind the consequences of our prudential hedonism—we don’t think maximizing our monetary wealth really helps us, for instance, but staying on friendly terms with our neighbors does add to our peace of mind. We do look for our own advantage—but only in things that actually matter. Importantly, living cooperatively with others falls into that category.

3. Prosocial egoists: We can go further. Not only is our understanding of “self-interest” quite different than the selfish egotism of the caricatures and therefore relatively benign, we believe that our philosophy is actively beneficial to others and to the world at large. Some things we value highly are friendship, conflict avoidance, and spreading our philosophy of thoughtful and cooperative anti-greediness to those who want to hear it. We avoid the commonly detrimental behaviors of greed, anger, ambition, and being moralizing busybodies.

1. Psychological Egoism

Let’s explore each of these in a little more depth, starting with psychological egoism. This is the term ethics textbooks use to describe a descriptive rather than normative belief: we believe that humans simply and inevitably do act based on their own self-interest, even before we get to consideration of what we should do.

In this perspective, even the most seemingly altruistic actions are ultimately motivated by our own self-interest—not necessarily in a rational and calculated sense, but as a matter of impulse. If you rush into a burning building in order to rescue someone at the risk of your life, that means that you are obtaining some psychological reward for doing so: if you do it, you will feel gratified, proud, or contented with yourself, while if you stand by while listening to the child screaming for help you will experience pain, guilt, shame, or remorse. Psychological egoism attempts to set our different emotions on a more level playing field, rather than labelling some actions with the privileged description of “altruistic” and others with the condemnatory epithet of “selfish.” We believe that jumping to moralizing labels isn’t particularly helpful: we want to develop a more useful conception of self-interest, a process that is not benefitted by across-the-board villainizing of our natural instinct to consider our own interest.

Some sources will insist that psychological egoism is invalid if any altruistic actions exist. Rescuing a child at risk of your own life is not “egoistic” in any normal understanding of the word, they would say. And if you want to stick to the commonsense usage of the word and call the child-rescuer “altruistic,’ that is fine with me! But we shouldn’t overlook that the vast majority of our mundane daily actions are clearly self-interested in a variety of often very boring ways. We eat because we’re hungry and put on socks because our feet are cold. We brush our teeth so we don’t experience dental health problems, bad breath, or consequent social disapproval. We go to work so we will have money we can spend on stuff from which we will derive utility or pleasure.

There are therefore two things to take away from the Epicurean belief in psychological egoism. The first is just an understanding and clarity about what we mean when we accept the label “egoism,” even if you are skeptical about the terminology. We are the kinds of egoists who will do seemingly “altruistic” actions—we just think that realism about our motives will reveal some form of psychological self-interest.

The wise man feels as much pain when his friend is tortured as when he is tortured himself.1

The wise man will sometimes die for a friend.2

The second useful reason for this lens of psychological egoism is a greater awareness and attention given to our default and natural motives for action. Whether you accept that egoistic rationales motivate all of our actions, or 99%, or 95% doesn’t really matter. If you are convinced that 5% of the time, humans manage to transcend or overcome their selfish instincts in order to behave in an authentically altruistic manner, it still remains the case that our most common motivational impulses are based on some form of self-interest. It is therefore of great practical benefit if we can have thought patterns in which those natural “selfish” instincts lead to good outcomes, rather than short-sighted greediness and zero-sum conflict.

In many contexts, this is now a familiar and mundane idea. Market-based economies are based on the premise that putting individual “greed” and ambition to work in a socially-beneficial structure will create value and improve outcomes for everyone: pre-determined labels of “selfish” or “altruistic” may not accurately identify whether a behavior actually has good consequences for the actor or for society at large. Or consider the usefulness of laws and social disapproval for enforcing good behavior. Awareness of legal and social penalties for violence and theft are sufficiently widespread that most people are not even tempted by egoistic impulses to push over little children and seize their snacks: you don’t need to be morally exhorted to unselfish conduct to conduct yourself well in this respect, you just need to have a clear picture of the likely personal consequences to see where your more secure self-interest lies.

The point is that some form of egoistic impulse makes up our basic motivation for almost everything we do, most practical people in real life accept that, and going against that current to insist that people “should” act against their own interest will induce lots of psychological strain, dissonance, and rebellion. Sometimes you will get the desired result, but better clarity about the true nature of your self-interest will probably get the same job done with more reliability and much less psychological effort.

2. Prudential Egoism

This leads to the next element of Epicurean egoism, which we can call “prudential egoism” in parallel with the “prudential hedonism” discussed in my previous post. We Epicureans don’t want endless riches, we want peace of mind. This means that in practice, we are law-abiding, prosocial, generous, and faithful friends. People think that egoists are disrespectful of common norms, greedy, and selfish. But keep in mind what Epicurus actually recommends we do.

He tells us that if we have more than we need to give away the extra, because it is better to have the goodwill of one’s peers.3 He tell us that the wise person would die for a friend, as described above. He tell us to follow the laws4, but that in general the wise won’t need to be compelled by legal sanctions, because they recognize that their true self-interest does not reach after any antisocial goals:

Laws are made for the wise: not to keep them from doing wrong, but to keep them from being wronged.5

Once you understand Epicurean hedonism, this point is relatively straightforward. But it is essential to keep in mind. If you ever hear a critique of Epicureanism as being an egoistic philosophy, you should inquire what exactly about this egoism does the critic dislike? That it authorizes greed? It doesn’t. That it encourages disregard for the laws? It doesn’t. That it licenses selfishness and makes generous relationships impossible? It doesn’t.

Epicurean egoists want what is best for themselves. But that is above all peace of mind, which is impossible in conditions of social conflict or suspicion.

3. Prosocial Egoism

We’ve established that Epicurean egoism does not motivate people to pursue the common objects of egotistical people: wealth, attention, or unfair advantage, for instance. Epicureans just aren’t interested in those things. But we can actually make a stronger claim: espousing an enlightened egoism will promote better results for society. Let me make this argument in yet another three-part division:

1. The things this philosophy values are prosocial.

2. The things this philosophy discourages are antisocial.

3. The way this philosophy convinces people is more effective than fighting against nature and pretending we can easily disregard or override our egoistic impulses.

First, egoistic values are not necessarily egotistic values. I hope I’ve made it clear that Epicurean egoists are not the caricatured selfish people that one might think of when hearing the word “egoist.” Many of our values have already been alluded to here and in the past. We place a very high value on avoiding conflict. We think friendship is the greatest source of pleasure. We enjoy practicing and spreading our philosophy of thoughtfulness and cooperation, which we do through writing and conversation with willing participants.

Next, the things that we discourage are all the same things that non-egoistic philosophies discourage. We recommend that people avoid greed, jealousy, anger, ambition, politics, and generally being moralizing busybodies (remember—we only talk philosophy with willing participants). Imagine if everyone followed that advice! The world would be nicer! It is in fact arguable that our set of discouraged activities is more prosocial than many traditional moral codes, insofar as many systems valorize various kinds of ambition that can easily turn harmful. The borders of “harmful” ambition can be endlessly debated, but can you imagine someone who is too intent on maximizing their financial gain, or who is too intent on securing political power? Such persons may think they are doing socially-sanctioned things, for socially-granted rewards, but their efforts can easily turn detrimental to actual societal well-being.

So: Epicureanism by and large agrees with common moral frameworks in its selection of encouraged and discouraged behaviors. Cooperation and friendship are good; dishonesty, lawbreaking, and violence are bad. Right now, this form of egoism seems roughly interchangeable with non-egoistic philosophies espousing the same values. I believe that egoism’s big advantage, however, comes in how we advance those values. I think that we are more likely to successfully motivate the desired behaviors when they are framed as the thoughtful pursuit of our natural desires, rather than as some abstractly “right” course of behavior that actually conflicts with each individual’s true desires and self-interest, which need to be forcefully repressed. Remember the Epicurean precept:

Nature must not be forced, but persuaded.6

οὐ βιαστέον τὴν φύσιν ἀλλὰ πειστέον

The western world preached the Christian virtues for many hundreds of years characterized by violence, corruption, and inequality. Merely asserting altruistic duties does not seem highly effective. In the modern world, we have less public moral exhortation, but greater security than ever—I suspect that improved critical thinking through universal secular education and the existence of clear punishments, reliably enforced, have had a significantly higher impact on encouraging good behavior.

This doesn’t mean that Epicureans advocate for a maximum intensity surveillance state. It means that we recognize the reason those laws are formulated: to make the negative consequences of antisocial behavior clearer to those who are not wise enough to see those consequences already. We make these laws because they are more effective than exhortations to moral altruism: people respond to consequences that impact their own self-interest. In the same way, I think that increasing the salience of likely negative consequences in the long run and the big picture —as Epicureanism does—is the more effective, lasting, and easy way to encourage “good” behavior.

An important footnote: I refer to laws as one means to encourage good behavior. But how are these laws constructed if we assert that egoism is the proper lens for ethics? The answer is that laws should be written on the basis of universal hedonism, or Utilitarianism. If you happen to be a legislator, your job is to consider law writing from a universal perspective, rather than an egoistic one (in this specific scenario, your egoistic motivation is activated by the rewards of performing your job well—or at least it would in a well-functioning political system). Meanwhile, in our private lives, individual egoists should recognize that it is in their own prudential interest to live in a society that treats everyone with predictably equitable rules.

Summing it up

Now that you’ve heard these three detailed elucidations of Epicurean egoism, let’s drive home the key points.

First, now you know that Epicureans are psychological egoists, not stereotypical egotists. “Egoism” describes how we understand human motivation, but it doesn’t mean that we behave in ways that are self-important, greedy, or selfish. Epicurus tells us to keep a low profile, give away our excess wealth, and be willing to die for a friend, so don’t fight a strawman.

Second, reconsider the merits of prudential egoism. Next time you have some doubts about a course of action, confused by the specter of public opinion or some moral code you’ve learned of and how it might label a behavior as “wrong” or “bad,” throw out all such considerations. Instead, ask the simple question: if I consider my long-term goals and the long-term consequences, will this action help me?

Consider the big-picture merits of the superficially appealing option—does grabbing the last donut, arguing over the ten bucks, or winning the argument actually help you? Maybe those objectives offer very little or even negative pleasure in the long run. Or maybe the pleasure to you is very small and likely to be outweighed by the negative social consequences: will this action reduce the trust or goodwill of others towards you? Ongoing selfishness can cut off possibilities for friendship—that would be very bad indeed. But milder cases of pursuing an impulsive desire can also have negative results: maybe you will add a few drops of strain to an otherwise equable work relationship, or simply sour the conviviality of your passing interaction with a stranger. So don’t ask what is “right.” Ask if you are truly making your life more pleasant.

Finally, reevaluate what behaviors actually help other people. Do supposedly altruistic people necessarily make the world better than consistent practitioners of Epicurean prosocial egoism? I think that the common labels of “altruistic” and “egoistic” are simply poor predictors of behaviors and their social consequences. Consider any contentious political issue—abortion, immigration, or raising taxes to expand the social safety net, for instance. On any of these, you can find good-faith proponents on both sides who think they are supporting the “right” position in order to benefit their community, country, or the general human population. In the probable case that you disagree with at least one side of these arguments, you have to admit that you consider the behavior of some nominal “altruists” to be harmful. And a good chunk of that party will, in turn, consider your “altruistically” motivated positions to be harmful.

What might be a better way? Egoism, which diminishes all claims of an individual’s right to control the lives of others, which is always a doubtful and often a counterproductive endeavor. Are you a person with an emotional commitment to classically altruistic behaviors? There are still plenty of projects for you consistent with Epicurean ethics. Be a model of friendly, kind, cheerful contentment. If you have an excess of material wealth, then give it away to those who will derive a benefit from it. When you encounter people struggling with unnecessary mental pain, try to nudge them towards a more helpful way of considering their problems: maybe all they need to be happier is a few words. I would consider that to be a more helpful act than inciting them to anger, animosity, or vicarious victimhood: making people happy is better than making them bitter and aggrieved. Embrace all of these Epicurean-recommended behaviors and you will have made the world better with a high degree of certainty, along with obtaining an increase in your own contentment and security.

Admitting your egoism relieves guilt and cognitive dissonance. Being more thoughtfully prudential in your egoism achieves better outcomes than short-sighted impulsiveness. And recognizing the inherently prosocial qualities of this kind of egoism makes the world a nicer place to live in, reducing conflict, increasing harmony, and replacing discontented anger with tranquility.

Next, accustom yourself to living with this belief: death is nothing to us, for everything good and bad consists in sensation, and death brings an end to sensation. Knowing this, a correct understanding that death is nothing to us enables us to enjoy the mortal nature of life, not by providing us with unlimited time, but by taking away the desire for immortality.

There is indeed nothing terrifying in life for one who has truly understood that there is nothing terrifying in not living. Only a foolish man says that he fears death not because it will cause him pain when it is actually present, but because it causes him pain now when it is still in the future—something that gives us no trouble when it is actually present can cause only empty and groundless pain when it is merely expected. Therefore, death, the most terrifying of evils, is nothing to us, since whenever we exist, death cannot be present, and whenever death is present, then we no longer exist. I say to you again: death does not exist for either the living or the dead, for there is no death among the living, while the dead themselves no longer exist.

The many, however, sometimes shun death as the greatest of evils, while at other times they long for it as a relief from the evils of life. But the wise man neither refuses to live nor fears not living, for he does not find living to be distasteful, nor not living to be an evil. Just as he would choose not the largest portion of food, but the most pleasurable, so he also seeks to enjoy not the longest, but the most pleasant span of life.

Those who counsel the young to live well and the old to die well are fools, not only for failing to appreciate life’s warm welcome, but because the practices needed to live well and to die well are one and the same. Even worse is the man who claims that it is good not to have been born, or “Once born, to pass as quickly as possible through the gates of Hades.”

If he is persuaded of this, why does he go on living? It is easy to bid farewell to life if he has truly come to this conclusion. If he is only joking, however, and does not speak in earnest, then all those who do not believe his claim will see him as the empty fool he is.

Overall, we must remember that the future is neither entirely up to us, nor entirely beyond our control. Nothing is certain, and nothing is hopeless.

Commentary

This week, we’re moving on to the second entry in our five-part series on Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus, the short summary of his ethical teachings included by Diogenes Laertius in his Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Last week, we covered the intro and the nature of the gods; this week we’re talkin’ about death. This is a subject that continues to cause many people a good deal of fear, dread, and angst, but Epicurus is fortunately able to clear all that up in a matter of 300 or so Greek words. Let’s jump in:

Next, accustom yourself to living with this belief: death is nothing to us, for everything good and bad consists in sensation, and death brings an end to sensation. Knowing this, a correct understanding that death is nothing to us enables us to enjoy the mortal nature of life, not by providing us with unlimited time, but by taking away the desire for immortality.

“Death is nothing to us” is one of Epicurus’ most famous dictums. Here he presents a simple syllogistic defense of this position:

1. Things are only bad (or good) if they can be perceived.

2. Death brings an end to perception.

3. Therefore, death is not bad.

Personally, I accept both premises. Not everyone does, of course. Some people think that things are objectively good or bad, that perception has nothing to do with it, and that death self-evidently belongs in the “bad” category. Some people are convinced there is a life after death. I don’t see much usefulness in the first claim or evidence for the second, but if you adhere firmly to such a position, then Epicurus’ reasoning will obviously not appeal to you.

A somewhat better objection would be to dispute the precision of those two premises. Death brings an end to our own perception, but other people do perceive our death, and that may cause them pain. This is true and Epicurus does not dispute it: his argument here is about our fear of our own death, but he would not deny that it is painful to lose a loved one, for instance. Similarly, one might object that while death will not cause someone pain once it has arrived, the anticipation of non-existence does cause us pain here and now. Epicurus lets us know what he thinks of this argument in the very next paragraph:

There is indeed nothing terrifying in life for one who has truly understood that there is nothing terrifying in not living. Only a foolish man says that he fears death not because it will cause him pain when it is actually present, but because it causes him pain now when it is still in the future—something that gives us no trouble when it is actually present can cause only empty and groundless pain when it is merely expected. Therefore, death, the most terrifying of evils, is nothing to us, since whenever we exist, death cannot be present, and whenever death is present, then we no longer exist. I say to you again: death does not exist for either the living or the dead, for there is no death among the living, while the dead themselves no longer exist.

This is a somewhat nuanced distinction, and one which I think Epicurus gets more right than his detractors. Yes, the pain of anticipating death is clearly real—people do feel it. That is empirically undeniable. However, it is an “empty and groundless” pain (κενῶς λυπεῖ; literally, it “gives pain emptily” or “gives pain to no purpose”). The fact that someone can cause themselves mental pain is no evidence of that pain’s objective truth or inevitability. People cause themselves pain through unproductive thought patterns all the time.

This is the underlying premise of modern Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. If someone has a phobia of crossing bridges, we don’t simply accept that bridges are terrible—we encourage him to develop a more accurate and helpful understanding of the world, perhaps by showing him that no physical pain actually results from crossing a bridge. It is harder to demonstrate the painlessness of death, so people have often been tempted to give excessive credence to scary stories, but I think the preponderance of evidence strongly points towards death involving the dissolution of our consciousness. The fear of death is simply an irrational phobia that is relatively more widespread due to the historical prevalence of fear-inducing stories about the afterlife.

Today, those old stories are often not believed literally, but I think they have a vague afterlife in the background of our thoughts. For instance, I’ve heard people compare life to a party that they don’t wish to leave—they say that the thought of it all ending for them causes them pain, even though they don’t expect to be in Heaven, Hell, or anywhere else. But I think the party analogy falls apart when we truly embrace an expectation of nonexistence. In truth, we won’t be sitting home alone while the party continues. We won’t be going to work the next day and wishing our life were more pleasurable. We simply won’t exist, so it is no more reasonable to lament missing next year’s party than it would be to lament missing the party of life that took place a year before we were born. I agree with Epicurus: that would be a foolish and empty way of causing ourselves pain.

The many, however, sometimes shun death as the greatest of evils, while at other times they long for it as a relief from the evils of life. But the wise man neither refuses to live nor fears not living, for he does not find living to be distasteful, nor not living to be an evil. Just as he would choose not the largest portion of food, but the most pleasurable, so he also seeks to enjoy not the longest, but the most pleasant span of life.

Here, Epicurus adds additional precision as to how thinks the wise man will live once he has realized that death is not to be feared. It does not mean he will actively pursue death. As a general rule, Epicurus does not endorse suicide (the Stoics are more enthusiastic about it), though I think there is room for debate as to whether he would disapprove in cases of intensely painful terminal illness. It does mean that he will place a relatively low premium on extending his life. If one can secure additional days or years of life, but at the cost of diminished pleasure, it may well not be worth it. Betrayal of all your friends? Ridiculously expensive experimental longevity drugs? Becoming a house-bound recluse to avoid snakes, cars, and lightning? Probably not the choice of the Epicurean sage. Someone who lives a happy 80-year life is not less happy than someone who lives a happy 81-year life.

Those who counsel the young to live well and the old to die well are fools, not only for failing to appreciate life’s warm welcome, but because the practices needed to live well and to die well are one and the same. Even worse is the man who claims that it is good not to have been born, or “Once born, to pass as quickly as possible through the gates of Hades.”

If he is persuaded of this, why does he go on living? It is easy to bid farewell to life if he has truly come to this conclusion. If he is only joking, however, and does not speak in earnest, then all those who do not believe his claim will see him as the empty fool he is.

Epicurus enjoys calling people fools, even if they are supposedly authoritative wisdom poets (the quote is from Theognis 425-428). I think his certainty here is admirable and healthy. Suicidal tendencies should be recognized as obviously counter to common sense. I recently watched the movie Vicky Christina Barcelona, in which Penelope Cruz has an off-screen suicide attempt. In response, Javier Bardem shakes her and asks in frustration, “Why were you thinking about killing yourself? I mean, what a stupid idea did cross on your mind!” I agree with this emphasis on intelligence: for a healthy young person to think killing herself is a good way to pursue happiness is stupid, unreasonable, and obviously unlikely to achieve the desired result.

Overall, we must remember that the future is neither entirely up to us, nor entirely beyond our control. Nothing is certain, and nothing is hopeless.

Epicurus wraps up his discussion of death with a slightly broader look at fatalistic mindsets more generally. He will return to this topic later in the letter, but for now it sets a nice capstone to his dismissal of the sorts of gloomy, pessimistic, people who praise suicide (without actually killing themselves). Life is not entirely beyond our control. Chance exists, but we can make our circumstances better.

As a closing aside on translation, if you compare my version of these lines with other published ones, you may find that it seems rather condensed. It is. Literally, Epicurus writes:

And it must be remembered that that which is going to be is neither entirely ours nor entirely not ours, so that we may neither entirely count on it as going to happen, nor despair of it as entirely not going to happen.

μνημονευτέον δὲ ὡς τὸ μέλλον οὔτε πάντως ἡμέτερον οὔτε πάντως οὐχ ἡμέτερον, ἵνα μήτε πάντως προσμένωμεν ὡς ἐσόμενον μήτε ἀπελπίζωμεν ὡς πάντως οὐκ ἐσόμενον.

Literal translation of each individual word, however, is not the only thing that translation hopes to convey. Such a literal translation would make things longer (even my shortened version contains more words than the Greek), less natural, and harder to understand than they are in Greek. Epicurus is not famous for his prose style, but much of this letter is quite eloquent, in a terse and epigrammatic kind of way. A good translation should not replace lucid eloquence with unclear wordiness.

Up next week: why pleasure is the proper end of life and how we should best understand our desires so as to truly get the most of it. Stay tuned.

Original Text

συνέθιζε δὲ ἐν τῷ νομίζειν μηδὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς εἶναι τὸν θάνατον ἐπεὶ πᾶν ἀγαθὸν καὶ κακὸν ἐν αἰσθήσει· στέρησις δέ ἐστιν αἰσθήσεως ὁ θάνατος. ὅθεν γνῶσις ὀρθὴ τοῦ μηθὲν εἶναι πρὸς ἡμᾶς τὸν θάνατον ἀπολαυστὸν ποιεῖ τὸ τῆς ζωῆς θνητόν, οὐκ ἄπειρον προστιθεῖσα χρόνον, ἀλλὰ τὸν τῆς ἀθανασίας ἀφελομένη πόθον.

οὐθὲν γάρ ἐστιν ἐν τῷ ζῆν δεινόν τῷ κατειληφότι γνησίως τὸ μηδὲν ὑπάρχειν ἐν τῷ μὴ ζῆν δεινὸν. ὥστε μάταιος ὁ λέγων δεδιέναι τὸν θάνατον οὐχ ὅτι λυπήσει παρών, ἀλλ’ ὅτι λυπεῖ μέλλων. ὅ γὰρ παρὸν οὐκ ἐνοχλεῖ, προσδοκώμενον κενῶς λυπεῖ. τὸ φρικωδέστατον οὖν τῶν κακῶν ὁ θάνατος οὐθὲν πρὸς ἡμᾶς, ἐπειδήπερ ὅταν μὲν ἡμεῖς ὦμεν, ὁ θάνατος οὐ πάρεστιν, ὅταν δὲ ὁ θάνατος παρῇ, τόθ’ ἡμεῖς οὐκ ἐσμέν. οὔτε οὖν πρὸς τοὺς ζῶντάς ἐστιν οὔτε πρὸς τοὺς τετελευτηκότας, ἐπειδήπερ περὶ οὓς μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν, οἳ δ’ οὐκέτι εἰσίν.

ἀλλ’ οἱ πολλοὶ τὸν θάνατον ὁτὲ μὲν ὡς μέγιστον τῶν κακῶν φεύγουσιν, ὁτὲ δὲ ὡς ἀνάπαυσιν τῶν ἐν τῷ ζῆν <κακῶν ποθοῦσιν. [126] ὁ δὲ σοφὸς οὔτε παραιτεῖται τὸ ζῆν>* οὔτε φοβεῖται τὸ μὴ ζῆν· οὔτε γὰρ αὐτῷ προσίσταται τὸ ζῆν οὔτε δοξάζεται κακὸν εἶναί τι τὸ μὴ ζῆν. ὥσπερ δὲ τὸ σιτίον οὐ τὸ πλεῖον πάντως ἀλλά τὸ ἥδιστον αἱρεῖται, οὕτω καὶ χρόνον οὐ τὸν μήκιστον ἀλλά τὸν ἥδιστον καρπίζεται.

ὁ δὲ παραγγέλλων τὸν μὲν νέον καλῶς ζῆν, τὸν δὲ γέροντα καλῶς καταστρέφειν, εὐήθης ἐστὶν οὐ μόνον διὰ τὸ τῆς ζωῆς ἀσπαστόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διὰ τὸ τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι μελέτην τοῦ καλῶς ζῆν καὶ τοῦ καλῶς ἀποθνήσκειν. πολὺ δὲ χείρων καὶ ὁ λέγων· καλὸν μὴ φῦναι,

φύντα δ’ ὅπως ὤκιστα πύλας Ἀίδαο περῆσαι.

[127] εἰ μὲν γὰρ πεποιθὼς τοῦτό φησι, πῶς οὐκ ἀπέρχεται ἐκ τοῦ ζῆν; ἐν ἑτοίμῳ γὰρ αὐτῷ τοῦτ’ ἐστίν, εἴπερ ἦν βεβουλευμένον αὐτῷ βεβαίως· εἰ δὲ μωκώμενος, μάταιος ἐν τοῖς οὐκ ἐπιδεχομένοις.

μνημονευτέον δὲ ὡς τὸ μέλλον οὔτε πάντως ἡμέτερον οὔτε πάντως οὐχ ἡμέτερον, ἵνα μήτε πάντως προσμένωμεν ὡς ἐσόμενον μήτε ἀπελπίζωμεν ὡς πάντως οὐκ ἐσόμενον.

In my opening essay, I outlined the positive case for Epicureanism: this philosophy gives good advice for increasing happiness by prudently reducing sources of disturbance while appreciating easily accessible pleasures. It seems wise for me to now turn, least briefly, to two of the most common critiques of Epicurean philosophy, in hopes of warding off some frequent misunderstandings and answering some of the most likely queries. These two veins of critique are encapsulated in the philosophically accurate but easily misunderstood description of Epicureanism as hedonistic egoism.

“Hedonism” and “egoism” both have a very bad reputation in everyday speech. To many, “hedonism” is suggestive of shortsighted pleasure-seeking. “Egoism” is often taken to imply selfishness or self-centeredness. Fortunately, I can comfortably assure you: Epicureanism is not a philosophy of selfish, impulsive sensualists. Today I will deal with the first of these two not-really-a-slurs: hedonism. In my next post, I will defend egoism against its many mistaken detractors.

Let’s start correcting the story. What kind of hedonists are Epicureans? In short, to use the philosophical jargon:

1. We are prudential hedonists: Epicureans don’t grab at the first source of pleasure that occurs to them, but consider the total net pleasure and pain of different behaviors.

2. We are primarily negative hedonists: Reducing pain is more important than diversifying pleasures.

3. We are psychological hedonists: Pleasure and pain are not confined to physical sensations. Most of our pleasures and pains are mental. In the most expansive definition of psychological hedonism, all of our motivations for action come down to seeking pleasure or avoiding pain, but you don’t need to fully accept this to find value in the Epicurean precept that alleviating and avoiding mental pain should in practice be the largest focus of our energy.

1. Prudential Hedonism

Let’s take each of these in turn, starting with the easy one: prudential hedonism. This is the subject of the most superficial misunderstanding of Epicurean hedonism. We don’t seize impulsively at whatever pleasures appear before us, but instead consider the total sum of pleasure and pain that each course of action is likely to provide.

Precisely because pleasure is our first and most natural good, we do not choose every pleasure. There are often times when we forgo certain pleasures, if greater discomfort or difficulty would come with them. Likewise, we often consider certain pains to be preferable to immediate pleasure, if a greater pleasure would follow after we endure the pain for some time. So while every pleasure is good and fitted to our nature, that doesn’t mean that we should choose every pleasure. In the same way, every pain is bad, but not every pain is to be avoided.1

If sensual indulgence of some kind (food, drink, drugs, sex, etc.) would be excessively detrimental to our health, financial security, or ability to perform the other necessary tasks of our lives, causing us larger pain later, then we will forgo those pleasures. Note that this applies not just to the easily identified and stereotypical images of excess (alcoholics, drug addicts), but potentially to just about any pleasure one might purchase. Financial expense alone represents a quantifiable “pain” to be weighed against any pleasure, which everyone agrees with on some level (few people would readily drop $10,000 on a sandwich), but which most people overlook when confronted with the steady drip of smaller enticing purchases. $8 can be safely spent on a fancy coffee drink by many people without threat to their financial security or peace of mind, but if you add up hundreds of purchases of this magnitude over the course of the year, then impacts to one’s larger financial picture become easier to see.

The point is not that Epicureans would never spend money on any pleasures. The level of “safe” expenditure will vary depending on one’s income and savings. But we are more thoughtful about such things than many philosophies, because prudence is in fact very relevant to our happiness. Chronic overeating or alcoholism are not net sources of pleasure, and we should try to avoid those behaviors. Financial hardship is a source of pain, and we should try to avoid that too. Most people would agree in principle with this basic idea of prudential hedonism, even if they don’t consider it to form the basis of an entire ethical system: if you are aiming for pleasure, but your result is frequently pain, then you are probably not acting wisely.

Epicureans are officially and self-declaredly hedonists. But part of being an avowed and intentional hedonist is being more thoughtful about our pursuit of pleasure than the average person, not more short-sighted and impulsive.

2. “Negative” Hedonism

The second idea that characterizes Epicurean hedonism is sometimes described as “negative hedonism,” though this is a less universally-used phrase and I am not personally enamored of it. (Describing Epicureans as “tranquilists” rather than “hedonists” at all is another terminological option.) It is crucial to keep in mind that Epicurean “hedonism” is not just concerned with positive pleasures as we usually think of them, but about the sum of positive pleasures and negative pains. Epicurus thinks that, in practice, the reduction of pain is usually far more important than addition or diversification of pleasures.

Take bodily pleasure first. Epicurus asserts that it basically consists in the absence of pain:

The body cries out to not be hungry, not be thirsty, not be cold. Anyone who has these things, and who is confident of continuing to have them, can rival the gods for happiness.2

As long as your hunger is fully sated, the boost in happiness you will obtain from an elaborate feast is zero. This same logic applies to any more superficially extravagant version of satisfying our basic needs: novel foods, sweet drinks, extra soft sheets, and so on. Epicurus maintains that so long as the pain of hunger is resolved, the difference between a four star restaurant and bread and cheese will ultimately consist only of a variation in pleasure, not any true augmentation. This ancient claim is in general alignment with the findings of modern psychological studies on hedonic adaptation: many seeming boosts to our material circumstances do not deliver a lasting increase to our well-being. Epicureans are hedonists—but we place less value on the “pursuit of pleasures” than the average person because our empirical observation is that this just doesn’t work. The main goal is alleviating pain—including that of unfulfilled desires.

If you want to make Pythocles wealthy, don’t increase his riches but reduce his desires.3

The same logic applies to mental pleasures as to eating and drinking. People often seek mentally stimulating pleasures: maybe they watch a funny video, go to a concert, or read a novel. As with physical pleasures, Epicurus doesn’t deny that such experiences can be enjoyable. But compared to alleviating the great negative emotions of life—fear, loneliness, self-loathing, greed, envy, resentment, or hatred, for instance—the pleasure of watching funny videos is inconsequential. If you are dissatisfied with your life, no amount of jokes will bring you happiness. You need to resolve the negative feelings, either through satisfying your desires or redirecting them towards more attainable objects.

Is alleviating mental dissatisfaction really “hedonism”? Consider this perspective: We think of “buying things” as generally falling under the larger heading of “pleasure seeking.” But in practice, many purchases do aim at the easing of such mental pains. Advertisements promise that if you buy a product, you will resolve your sense of inferiority, frustration, or boredom. Epicureanism offers the same reward, but directly, through wisdom, rather than indirectly, through some act of material acquisition. I think this is an entirely reasonable and healthy revision of our understanding of hedonism and pleasure: alleviating pain and dissatisfaction is the ultimate goal behind many of our actions, and successfully doing so is far more valuable to our happiness than passing in and out of ephemeral pleasures while leaving deeper dissatisfactions untouched.

Even if you don’t consider the resolution of mental pain or discomfort to be appropriately described by the word “hedonism,” it is important to know that this is what we mean. Attacking Epicurean hedonism on any other basis would be inaccurate, a strawman: we enjoy the easily obtained pleasures, but we invest our energy primarily in the reduction of pain.

3. Psychological Hedonism

This expansion of our frame of reference for hedonism to encompass both the positive and the negative, both the physical and the mental, gets us most of the way to our third description of Epicurean hedonism as psychological hedonism. The basic idea of psychological hedonism is that all human motivation comes down to pleasure and pain (this is also sometimes known as a strong form of “motivational hedonism”).

Everything we do, we do for this reason: to avoid pain and fear… pleasure is the beginning and end of a blessed life.4

As an absolute statement, this is contentious, to say the least (see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for an overview). Critics will ask: are altruistic acts of self-sacrifice pleasurable? How about continuous grinding efforts at living up to some idealized version of “self-improvement”? Throwing yourself on a grenade or exercising for an hour every morning at 5 AM, these critics maintain, would not fit any normal use of the word “pleasure.”

A thoroughgoing psychological hedonist would say yes—everything counts as pleasure. Acts of “altruism” must give us some immediate mental pleasure or we simply wouldn’t do them. A mother is more likely to impulsively take a bullet for her child than for a random stranger, presumably because the intensely painful prospect of harm coming to her child flashes through her mind. The seeming pain of self-improvement efforts is aimed at achieving a pleasurable state in the future, or might relieve us from immediate painful disappointment with our own self-image. I believe that Epicurus would be satisfied by these explanations and I largely am as well. But I don’t believe that it is necessary to categorically insist that no actions can be referred to as anything other than pain or pleasure to accept the substantial merit in broadening our conception of “pain” and “pleasure” beyond the most straightforward cases.

Putting our hand on a hot stove is a source of physical pain. Taking our hand away eases that pain. Wanting to own some particular item that you do not currently possess is a source of mental pain—that’s a plausible explanation of why people buy it. But Epicurus would say that if you cease to desire that thing, then you also resolve that pain. Feeling jealousy or anger is an unpleasant state; Epicurus thinks that replacing those emotions with mental tranquility constitutes a boost in net pleasure.

If you wish, you can quibble over philosophy’s choice of words: this isn’t what most people think of when they hear the word “hedonism.” But again, you should know that that is what we Epicureans have in mind: we seek to live with a maximum of mental tranquility, pursued through a combination of practical actions aiming at concrete results and deep thoughtfulness about which desires are really necessary and helpful. Along the way, we have no objection to enjoying other pleasures that cross our path, and when they are easily or costlessly attained, we will relish them without the least bit of guilt.

Do you know any people who seem less than perfectly happy? Of course you do. Can you think of some reasons for their discontent? Maybe they are in an unhappy relationship or a miserable job. These are hard situations to live with, and Epicurus would encourage them to find a way to change their situation and stop experiencing that pain. On the other hand, maybe they make a comfortable income but complain about money (while buying things that don’t bring them happiness), or worry about politics (while doing nothing that actually changes political outcomes). These are unnecessary sources of self-imposed pain—the easier way to resolve that pain is not to win the lottery or await the revolution, but to adjust your actions and expectations to match reality.

In a great many cases, our practically identifiable sources of unhappiness consist of mental pain of one kind or another. In the rich world, it’s rarely an absolute lack of food or a frigid shivering in the night that prevents contentment. And I would go so far as to say that happiness will never be secured by increased access to upscale dining options or an endless catalog of streaming video. If you agree that mental suffering in all its million forms is the chief obstacle to human happiness, then you are in fact a hedonist of the Epicurean school.

Epicurus to Menoeceus, greetings,

The young must not delay the practice of philosophy, and the old must not grow weary of the love of wisdom: it is never too early or too late to seek the health of one’s soul. To say that it is not yet time for philosophy, or that the time for philosophy has passed, is like saying that it is not yet time to be happy, or that the time for happiness is over. And so both the young and the old must practice philosophy—the old, so that they may be young again in their enjoyment of the good things of life, grateful for all that has come to pass, and the young, so that they may have the confidence of maturity, fearless about what will be. We all must study what truly produces happiness, for when we possess happiness, we wish for nothing else, but when we lack it, all our efforts go to its pursuit.

Remember all that I have taught you—study and practice these precepts, knowing them to be the foundation of a noble life. First, understand that the gods are immortal and blissful beings—this is what all conceive a god to be. Do not, therefore, attribute to the gods anything inconsistent with immortality and blessedness, but rather make sure that your beliefs keep their immortality and blessedness in mind. There are gods; we have a clear conception of them. But they are not as the many believe them to be, nor indeed do the many maintain a consistent account of them.

And so the impious man is not the one who does away with the gods of the many, but the one who attaches to the gods the opinions of the many. For the assertions of the many about the gods are not based on that universal and innate conception, but on false assumptions, according to which it is from the gods that the greatest harms come to the wicked, and the greatest benefits to the good. Since the many are familiar only with their own human virtues, they believe in gods that are similar to themselves, and find anything that is not like themselves alien and difficult to conceive of.

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Commentary

For our second installment of Tuesday Translations, I’ll be starting a multi-part series on the best short introduction to Epicurean ethics, the Letter to Menoeceus (we’ll be returning to the rest of the Principal Doctrines later). Preserved in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, along with the Letter to Herodotus (on physics), the Letter to Pythocles (on celestial phenomena), and the Principal Doctrines, this letter is the longest continuous piece of Epicurus’ own writings on ethics that survives, with his full, book-length treatises all lost.

Over the next five weeks, we’ll cover this five-page letter at a moderate pace, taking enough time to clear up vague passages and appreciate the implications of what he’s saying. In this opening segment, Epicurus introduces the goals of philosophy and briefly lays out his understanding of the gods, a foundational teaching that underlies his ethical advice.

A note on my approach to translation: In translating Epicurus, and philosophy generally, I think our first priority has to be clarity. This means fidelity to the meaning, to the philosophical argument, rather than fidelity to the original syntax. Accordingly, if a word-for-word translation would result in obscure translationese, I generally don’t hesitate to adjust the sentence structure. Sometimes a word present in the Greek will therefore be omitted from my English rendition, while conversely I will occasionally expand a single Greek word into a short phrase or a few alternative possibilities if I feel a single English word cannot capture all the connotations of the original.

Let’s go through some highlights:

The young must not delay the practice of philosophy, and the old must not grow weary of the love of wisdom: it is never too early or too late to seek the health of one’s soul. To say that it is not yet time for philosophy, or that the time for philosophy has passed, is like saying that it is not yet time to be happy, or that the time for happiness is over. And so both the young and the old must practice philosophy—the old, so that they may be young again in their enjoyment of the good things of life, grateful for all that has come to pass, and the young, so that they may have the confidence of maturity, fearless about what will be. We all must study what truly produces happiness, for when we possess happiness, we wish for nothing else, but when we lack it, all our efforts go to its pursuit.

Remember all that I have taught you—study and practice these precepts, knowing them to be the foundation of a noble life.

It’s easy to breeze over these introductory sentences as mere pleasant filler, but a number of distinctive and important features of Epicurean philosophy are actually present here:

1. “The health of the soul”: Epicurus frequently describes his philosophic mission as one of achieving health, a pleasurable and by no means impossible state. This is more grounded than idealist traditions (Platonism, Christianity) that suggest our bodily state is inherently flawed and that perfect happiness must be postponed to a future state of existence. It is more achievable than the Stoic ideal of sagehood. It is “merely” health, a mental and spiritual state that should be normal, and that can be normal, if certain specific errors are corrected.

Note that what is typically translated “the health of the soul” (τὸ κατὰ ψυχὴν ὑγιαῖνον) could also be translated as “the health of the mind” or even “mental health”—a great deal of Epicurus’ therapeutic activity is engaged in correcting intellectual error, and so this would not be inaccurate. Overall, however, “soul” better captures the grand and all-encompassing nature of the object of philosophical therapy.

2. Eudaimonism: Epicurus very directly states the objective of his philosophy: to secure happiness, or eudaimonia. (The Greek concept is somewhat broader than a merely momentary sense of contentment, so some prefer “well-being” or even “thriving.”) Epicurus is often quickly categorized as a “hedonist” while a thinker such as Aristotle is traditionally labelled a “eudaimonist,” giving some the erroneous impression that Epicurean hedonism is pursuing some less worthy goal than overall well-being. Don’t make that mistake—Epicurus is clearly a eudaimonist as well.

3. An exoteric—not esoteric—philosophy: What is the primary point of the opening lines? That philosophy is for everyone. This openness was one of the defining characteristics of the Epicurean Garden, which welcomed foreigners, wives, courtesans, and slaves. Some philosophical schools (such as the Platonic Academy) were intrinsically elitist. In Epicureanism, you won’t find any “noble lies” excluding the less worthy from the truth—just an open invitation to happiness.

4. How should one look back? With gratitude. The old should practice philosophy “so that they may be young again in their enjoyment of the good things of life, grateful for all that has come to pass.” A strictly literal translation can distract from the meaning:

ὅπως γηράσκων νεάζῃ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς

so that being old, one may be young in good things

“To be young in good things” is not a standard or even meaningful expression in English. Epicurus’ underlying point, however, is clear from other writings: we should be grateful for everything we have experienced, and continue to derive pleasure from both our memories and our awareness of current blessings.1

5. How should one look forward? Without fear. The advice directed towards the young employs a parallel structure, again somewhat awkward in a literal English rendering:

ὅπως νέος ἅμα καὶ παλαιὸς ᾖ

so that being young, he may at the same time be old

Here again, “so that the young may at the same time be old” is not a comprehensible rendering. What is enjoined is fearlessness about the future, derived from both prudence regarding the true necessities of life and and an accurate understanding of what comes after death. In what sense is this equivalent to “being old”? I have attempted to suggest it with my “so that they may have the confidence of maturity.” In terms of strict word-for-word correspondence, this is an invention, but I think this is the best way to understand the underlying meaning.

6. Living nobly: The closing phrase of my translation (“a noble life”) is often rendered simply as “living well” (Inwood and Gerson2) or “the good life” (Strodach3, Bailey4). The Greek is καλῶς ζῆν. Kalos is one of the classic examples of a Greek word that is not perfectly aligned with modern English. “Good” and the adverbial “well” are perfectly defensible translations. In some contexts, “beautiful” would be most appropriate, while in others, “noble” or “honorable” would better express the primary emphasis. What I would point out here—again in preemptive defense against accusations of a lower form of hedonism—is that Epicureanism does not aim at a base satisfaction of low desires, but at an overall existence that is not merely “good” but does in fact deserve the appellation of “noble”—one characterized by fearlessness and imperturbable tranquility.

On to the gods:

First, understand that the gods are undecaying and blissful beings—this is what all conceive a god to be. Do not, therefore, attribute to the gods anything inconsistent with immortality and blessedness, but rather make sure that your beliefs keep their immortality and blessedness in mind. There are gods; we have a clear conception of them. But they are not as the many believe them to be, nor indeed do the many maintain a consistent account of them.

And so the impious man is not the one who does away with the gods of the many, but the one who attaches to the gods the opinions of the many. For the assertions of the many about the gods are not based on that universal and innate conception, but on false assumptions, according to which it is from the gods that the greatest harms come to the wicked, and the greatest benefits to the good. Since the many are familiar only with their own human virtues, they believe in gods that are similar to themselves, and find anything that is not like themselves alien and difficult to conceive of.

In the second half of today’s extract, Epicurus summarizes his teachings on the proper understanding of divinity. We were introduced to this basic concept last week in Principal Doctrine 1. Here it is given slightly more elaboration (with a similar elaboration of PD 2 to follow in next week’s continuation of the Letter to Menoeceus). Still, the justification of Epicurus’ position is given quite briefly and controversially:

θεοὶ μὲν γὰρ εἰσίν· ἐναργὴς γὰρ αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ γνῶσις.

There are gods. For our understanding of them is clear.

A few lines below, he employs another term relevant to this “clear understanding,” contrasting a true “prolepsis” (πρόληψις) with the “false assumptions” of the many. A prolepsis is a central yet much-disputed term in Epicurean epistemology, which I have translated as “universal and innate conception.” There is significant debate over what exactly a prolepsis is. Diogenes Laertius describes it as being the result of past experience (from seeing many horses, we come to have a clear idea of a horse—probably what Inwood and Gerson are thinking when they translate it as “basic grasp”).5 However, we have four extant uses of the word by Epicurus, all of which refer to subjects for which we don’t have empirical experience (the gods, justice). More could be said in defense of my translation, but my brief position in this dispute is that I believe Diogenes Laertius did not accurately report Epicurean use of the term.6

I may write more on this in the future, but for now, the narrow takeaway is that Epicurus’ argument is that if everyone has a clear, innate, and uniformly-agreed upon idea of something, then we should accept that understanding as sufficiently evidenced. If everyone agrees that gods are immortal and lead lives of perfect bliss, then let us speak of them in a way consistent with that agreed-upon understanding—not by telling stories that portray them as petty, insecure beings who throw tantrums over peer slights or human misbehavior.

Now, even if we accept that this is what Epicurus means by “prolepsis,” we may still find this to be quite weak justification for the blank assertion that “the gods exist.” I agree! I myself lean towards the interpretive camp that is skeptical about Epicurus’ belief in literal gods and favors understanding his statement mostly as a rhetorical strategy to defend against accusations of atheism on the one hand, while defanging religion of all its actually harmful elements on the other. “Can we all agree that gods are perfect beings? Great. Would a perfect being really get so upset at Lizzie the slave-girl for not keeping her word last week that he would strike her with lightning? No? That doesn’t make sense? Good—it sounds like we agree that we don’t need to worry about divine displeasure, because we all agree that gods are perfect.”

Before I wrap up, I will note that the final lines have caused some translators difficulty. I rendered them like this:

For the assertions of the many about the gods are not based on that universal and innate conception, but on false assumptions, according to which it is from the gods that the greatest harms come to the wicked, and the greatest benefits to the good. Since the many are familiar only with their own human virtues, they believe in gods that are similar to themselves, and find anything that is not like themselves alien and difficult to conceive of.

This understanding is in accord with the old translations of Bailey and Strodach, but the popular modern translation of Inwood and Gerson rather makes a meal of the passage:

For the pronouncements of the many about the gods are not basic grasps but false suppositions. Hence come the greatest harm from the gods to bad men and the greatest benefits [to the good]. For the gods always welcome men who are like themselves, being congenial to their own virtues and considering that whatever is not such is uncongenial.

Some of the confusion is from a somewhat unconventional use of the word ἒνθεν for “according to which.” Bailey notes it as a “slightly forced” use of the word in his commentary, but the subsequent claim about the gods harming bad men is distinctly not Epicurean, so it seems necessary to understand this claim as existing only in reference to the preceding “false assumptions” of the many. The next sentence does not explicitly state the subject or the object (“they accept those who are similar to their own virtues,” says the Greek); I believe that Inwood and Gerson make a mistake in understanding this as “the gods welcome men.” Instead, I agree with Bailey that the subject is “the many” from the preceding sentence, which generates a more comprehensible meaning. The argument could be paraphrased like this: “The many are most willing to imagine gods who are like them, since that is what they can understand most easily. But this is not consistent with our formally agreed upon understanding of the gods as perfect and blissful beings, so obviously hoi polloi are wrong.”

That’s the entirety of Epicurus’ discussion of the gods in this text (if only we had his lost book On the Gods!). Does it prove their existence? Not very convincingly. But does it reveal the fallible, vengeful, spiteful, and capricious gods of traditional Greek religion—some of which characteristics could certainly be seen as surviving into the Judeo-Christian monotheism of the Old Testament—as internally inconsistent and unsuitable to be taken seriously? I think this point still stands.

Original Text

[122] μήτε νέος τις ὢν μελλέτω φιλοσοφεῖν, μήτε γέρων ὑπάρχων κοπιάτω φιλοσοφῶν. οὔτε γὰρ ἄωρος οὐδείς ἐστιν οὔτε πάρωρος πρὸς τὸ κατὰ ψυχὴν ὑγιαῖνον. ὁ δὲ λέγων ἢ μήπω τοῦ φιλοσοφεῖν ὑπάρχειν ἢ παρεληλυθέναι τὴν ὥραν, ὅμοιός ἐστιν τῷ λέγοντι πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν ἢ μὴπω παρεῖναι τὴν ὥραν ἢ μηκέτι εἶναι. ὥστε φιλοσοφητέον καὶ νέῳ καὶ γέροντι, τῷ μὲν ὅπως γηράσκων νεάζῃ τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς διὰ τὴν χάριν τῶν γεγονότων, τῷ δὲ ὅπως νέος ἅμα καὶ παλαιὸς ᾖ διὰ τὴν ἀφοβίαν τῶν μελλόντων·

μελετᾶν οὖν χρὴ τὰ ποιοῦντα τὴν εὐδαιμονίαν, εἴ περ παρούσης μὲν αὐτῆς πάντα ἔχομεν, ἀπούσης δέ πάντα πράττομεν εἰς τὸ ταύτην ἔχειν. [123] ἃ δέ σοι συνεχῶς παρήγγελλον, ταῦτα καὶ πρᾶττε καὶ μελέτα, στοιχεῖα τοῦ καλῶς ζῆν ταῦτ’ εἶναι διαλαμβάνων.

πρῶτον μὲν τὸν θεὸν ζῷον ἄφθαρτον καὶ μακάριον νομίζων, ὡς ἡ κοινὴ τοῦ θεοῦ νόησις ὑπεγράφη, μηθὲν μήτε τῆς ἀφθαρσίας ἀλλότριον μήτε τῆς μακαριότητος ἀνοίκειον αὐτῷ πρόσαπτε, πᾶν δὲ τὸ φυλάττειν αὐτοῦ δυνάμενον τὴν μετὰ ἀφθαρσίας μακαριότητα περὶ αὐτὸν δόξαζε. θεοὶ μὲν γὰρ εἰσίν· ἐναργὴς γὰρ αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ γνῶσις· οἵους δ’ αὐτοὺς οἱ πολλοὶ νομίζουσιν, οὐκ εἰσιν· οὐ γὰρ φυλάττουσιν αὐτοὺς οἵους νομίζουσιν. ἀσεβὴς δὲ οὐχ ὁ τοὺς τῶν πολλῶν θεοὺς ἀναιρῶν, ἀλλ’ ὁ τὰς τῶν πολλῶν δόξας θεοῖς προσάπτων.

[124] οὐ γὰρ προλήψεις εἰσίν ἀλλ’ ὑπολήψεις ψευδεῖς αἱ τῶν πολλῶν ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀποφάσεις. ἒνθεν αἱ μέγισται βλάβαι τε τοῖς κακοῖς ἐκ θεῶν ἐπάγονται καὶ ὠφέλειαι <τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς>. ταῖς γὰρ ἰδίαις οἰκειούμενοι διὰ παντὸς ἀρεταῖς τοὺς ὁμοίους ἀποδέχονται, πᾶν τὸ μὴ τοιοῦτον ὡς ἀλλότριον νομίζοντες.