Book Review: Emily Austin’s Living For Pleasure

If you read one book on Epicurean ethics, make it this one

As time goes on, I’ll be covering all aspects of Epicurean ethics in great detail. But if you would like a comprehensive overview of this philosophy that is available now, the first resource I would recommend is Emily Austin’s excellent book Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life.¹

Austin is a professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University, and her scholarly bent shows in the book’s accuracy, organization, awareness of historical context, and competence in dealing with the primary sources. Fortunately, her academic background does not squeeze the readability and humor out of her prose: Austin is consistently both easy and fun to read, which is admittedly rarely the case with ancient philosophy in the original. If you’d like to get a quick taste of Austin’s tone and approach, you might check out one of the several podcast interviews she has recorded in promotion of the book, including appearances on The Next Big Idea and UnSILOed.

So what does the book cover? After a few introductory chapters on the fundamental arguments of Epicurean ethics (“Maybe We’re Doing It Wrong”) and the basic historical background (“Epicureanism, the Original Cast”), Austin dives into a host of subjects with ongoing relevance: friendship, frank speech, wealth and what it costs, political activity, ambition and success, dealing with misfortune, love and marriage, and the usefulness of scientific knowledge are just some of her topics.

Let me give you an idea of the book’s approach. Consider, for instance, her summary of Epicurean prudential hedonism:

For example, Epicurus thinks we struggle to recognize the deleterious effects of greed for money, power, success, and admiration because we are so often sold on their benefits. The riches and recognition from long hours at work look great now, but we might find ourselves with grown children who resent us because we never got to know them. Power gleams until we get it and realize we have compromised for a status that we worry we could lose or have stolen from us at any moment. We might win money and fame from hamming for YouTube subscribers, only to discover that we have turned over the rudder of our life to the whims of whatever it turns out millions of other people want to watch.

Discerning and measuring the long-term consequences of indulging some powerful desires is more challenging because the error is so pervasive and so few people encourage us to look out into the distance. That sex can lead to pregnancy is commonplace. That greed is inconsistent with satisfaction is not so often acknowledged.

This is typical of Austin’s style: readable and contemporary, but still remaining faithful to what Epicurus and other ancient sources say. She is generally careful to ground each chapter in direct passages from primary sources to prevent becoming merely “Epicurean-flavored” self-help, as some contemporary books seem to do with Stoicism. While her examples are consistently drawn from modern life, I rarely find anything in Living for Pleasure with which I think Epicurus would disagree.

A major Epicurean quality which marks Austin out from some other scholars of ancient philosophy is her distinct lack of snobbery. Rare is the academic paper in which you will find phrases such as “magical sparkleponies of tranquility” or “Will Ferrell movies.” In one of her podcast interviews, Austin describes how she had never been to Greece until she got the opportunity for a free trip by working as a chaperone on a college study abroad trip and how her typical summer vacation involves working as a campground host in Idaho or somewhere. Or consider how she describes the Epicurean enthusiasm for shared meals:

Simply eating together with a friend in conversation counts as an Epicurean meal, whether you eat oatmeal, fire up the grill, or converse for hours over a six-course tasting menu with wine pairings. For me, this Epicurean conception of what matters in eating crystalized at a rare and welcome dinner party attended by eight people, some of whom had never met. Everyone had a wonderful time, and the hosting couple served frozen pizzas and a simple green salad on compostable plates. The drinks were tasty and abundant, and no one wanted to go home. In the same vein, some of the best and most meaningful conversations I have had were in dive bars or in the equivalent of a Chili’s. It’s not about the furnishings, the price, or even the food—it’s about the people, the time, and the spirit.

Frozen pizzas or drinks at a Chili’s knockoff—this is the true spirit of Epicureanism, but most scholarly writers don’t enter this territory. That isn’t to say that Austin isn’t a card-carrying academic philosopher, as you can tell by some of her jokes:

Thankfully, you can plow through Epicurus multiple times without losing a single month of your life—try that with Kant!

The book is written to be contemporary and relevant; the author is distinctly unpretentious and authentically funny. I think these are all valuable features in a book of popular philosophy. But Austin most importantly succeeds at what is ultimately the goal of any such book: to convey some real wisdom that can impact the reader’s life. Plentiful direct excerpts from Epicurus and other primary sources ground those useful examples from modern life, but Austin’s own paraphrasing periodically attains a pithy directness that the ancients would have appreciated. “Friends don’t make friends anxious,” she summarizes at one point. Or later: “We often assume that if we get what we want, it will be good. Never assume that.”

To cynical modern ears, the earnest directness of ancient philosophy can sometimes seem naïve, excessive in its sincerity, self-seriousness, or belief in individual agency. By virtue of her subject, Austin can’t entirely avoid that impression, but her skillful writing and self-awareness mean that when she does dip tonally into self-help speak, she’s built up some credit and we’re more inclined to objectively evaluate the message she’s communicating. In her final chapter, “Practicing Epicureanism,” Austin distils the book into a number of thematically cross-cutting suggestions. On the highly important topic of gratitude, she includes this proposal, for instance:

In case of emergency, practice gratitude. Epicurus writes that “he who forgets the good which he previously had, has today become an old man.”

… I try, at least when I remember, to prioritize doing at least one thing worth remembering every day, jotting it down. It could be as simple as a good conversation with a friend or as momentous as a beautiful hike on a fall afternoon.

“Gratitude journals” are not a fresh and original idea. The notion can seem trite. But Austin’s presentation is reinforced by the testimony of Epicurus and the support of modern empirical research (to which she occasionally refers). It is given more substance and solidity by her choice of intensely Epicurean examples—friendship and the easily obtained gifts of natural beauty rank high among the worthy subjects of gratitude. And in the end, whether you pursue a wiser philosophy of life through ancient teachings or contemporary interpreters, you will have to set aside all cynicism and grapple with the ideas: will prioritizing friendship, nature, and the other multitudinous joys of the world—and remembering to be grateful for them—bring greater happiness to your life?

I think it will. And if you would like some 260 pages of such time-tested Epicurean advice, skillfully organized and updated for maximum modern applicability, presented with humor and unpretentious goodwill, then you cannot currently do better than Emily Austin’s Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life.

A quick look at the alternatives

This newsletter is intended to be a serious examination of the deep foundations of Epicurean thought, as you can tell from my use of quotations in the original Greek. So why don’t I recommend the primary sources as the first stop?

Well, I wouldn’t recommend against them—just be aware that our extant remains from Epicurus himself are very limited. The most important ethical writings are the Letter to Menoeceus and the Principal Doctrines, both contained within the biography of Epicurus in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. These are available in inexpensive paperbacks: The Epicurus Reader by Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson also contains the full Vatican Sayings (a collection of largely ethical maxims) and many other important fragments, while the Penguin Classics Epicurus: The Art of Happiness, translated by George Strodach, has a perhaps slightly more eloquent translation, but omits some of the Vatican Sayings and all of the more fragmentary material.

So that’s about 10–20 pages of ancient ethical content that is fairly accessible. Ideally, however, a full anthology of Epicurean ethical writings would contain a more comprehensive collection of fragments than is found in Inwood and Gerson, additional fragments from Epicurean followers like Diogenes of Oenoanda and Philodemus, well-chosen selections from Lucretius’ epic poem On the Nature of Things (much of which is occupied with physics and meteorology), ancient descriptions of Epicurean doctrine from non-Epicureans like Cicero and Seneca, and perhaps some eloquent poetry from Epicurean-inclined poets, most notably Horace. Unfortunately, such an anthology doesn’t exist. (Publishers—you know where to find me.)

As for modern, popular works, there are few true competitors to Austin’s book. For an even briefer introduction, John Sellar’s The Pocket Epicurean (around 70 pages; previously published as The Fourfold Remedy) presents a good, but necessarily less in-depth account. For more comprehensive accounts of the philosophy as a whole, including history, physics, epistemology, and so on, I like Tim O’Keefe’s Epicureanism and Norman DeWitt’s classic Epicurus and His Philosophy, although both are on the expensive side. I do not particularly recommend Catherine Wilson’s How to Be an Epicurean. Despite the implied practicality of the title, the book spends quite a bit of time digressing from the ethical material, and, more problematically, often veers off track in its search for modern parallels. Austin, like Epicurus, is insistently unpretentious. Wilson is not, with her version of Epicurean lifestyle advice including hiring a housekeeper, avoiding the painful ugliness of public transportation hubs, and liberating your house from the bane of plastic bottles with printed labels and “poorly functioning utensils.”

For a modern book on Epicurean ethics, Austin’s Living for Pleasure is currently unrivalled.

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