The Classification of Desires, Part 1

Which pleasures should we pursue?

Most of these things are not necessary for happiness. Image by Gemini.

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

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

Of desires, some are natural and necessary, some are natural and not necessary, and some are neither natural nor necessary, but are produced by empty opinion. (Principal Doctrine 29)

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. (Letter to Menoeceus 127)

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

Natural and necessary [desires], according to Epicurus, are ones which bring relief from pain, such as drinking when thirsty; natural but non-necessary ones which merely vary pleasure but do not remove pain, such as expensive foods; neither natural nor necessary are ones for things like crowns and erection of statues. (Long and Sedley translation)

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

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

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

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

Are the natural but unnecessary desires discouraged?

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

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

The desires that do not cause suffering if they are unfulfilled are not necessary, but rather are easily relinquished whenever they seem hard to attain or likely to cause harm. (PD 26)

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

Intense passion [sometimes] arises for objects of those natural desires which do not cause pain if unfulfilled. Such desires come about through groundless opinion and fail to be relinquished not because of their own nature, but because of the groundless opinions of mankind. (PD 30)

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

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

Nature must not be forced, but persuaded. And we will persuade by fulfilling the necessary desires, and the natural ones if they do no harm, while sharply denying the harmful ones. (VS 21)

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

1. If they are hard to obtain.

2. If they are likely to cause harm.

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

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

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

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

Conclusion, and what lies ahead

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

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

1. I see two mistakes as easy to make when relying on the standard translations. Inwood and Gerson translate like this:

Among natural desires, those which do not lead to a feeling of pain if not fulfilled and about which there is an intense effort, these are produced by a groundless opinion and they fail to be dissolved not because of their own nature but because of the groundless opinions of mankind.

The first major error is taking “these are produced” as referring to all of the natural but unnecessary desires. This seems to be the interpretation of the usually reliable Tim O’Keefe (at least it was as of his 2010 Epicureanism, 126), but I think it is clearly mistaken, as I describe above. A correct translation should make clear that the groundless desires in question are among the natural but unnecessary desires—they are not all of them. In this translation, “about which there is an intense effort” is placed as parallel and equivalent to “those which do not lead to a feeling of pain if not fulfilled.” I think the former must be a subset of the latter, and so have added “sometimes” to make this clear in English (there are other ways this could be done).

The second area for potential confusion is the phrase here translated as “about which there is an intense effort.” “Effort” is one valid translation of the word, but it might suggest to some that what is under consideration here is the difficulty of obtaining the desire in question. And it is true that Epicurus recommends against pursuing unnecessary desires when they are hard to obtain. It doesn’t seem to make sense, however, that the objective difficulty (for instance, the number on the price tag) would be the determinant of whether a desire is based on groundless opinion or not. If the mangos are on sale this week, is the desire to eat them natural, while when they go back to full price, the desire to eat them becomes unnatural and groundless?

I think, therefore, that the intense “effort” is probably better described by a number of other alternative options that the LSJ proposes for σπουδὴ, such as zeal, enthusiasm, earnestness, urgency, or relatedly, pains or trouble. The point is that it is not some characteristic of the desired object (i.e. requiring great effort to obtain), but the state of mind of the desirer (i.e. one who desires with excessive zeal) that is in question. If a person finds their zeal for an object of unnecessary desire is excessive, that is when an otherwise natural desire is being distorted by groundless opinion. For a defense of this interpretation, see Benjamin A. Rider, “Epicureans on Pleasure, Desire, and Happiness,” in The Routledge Handbook of Hellenistic Philosophy, ed. Kelly Arenson (New York: Routledge, 2020), 305.