The Good Is Easy to Obtain

Translation Tuesday: Principal Doctrines 15, 16, and 21

Walden Pond, circa 1908. Image from the Library of Congress.

Principal Doctrine 15:

The wealth of nature is both limited and easy to obtain, while that of empty opinion extends to infinity.

Principal Doctrine 16:

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

Principal Doctrine 21:

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.

Commentary

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

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

15. The wealth of nature is both limited and easy to obtain, while that of empty opinion extends to infinity.

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

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

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

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

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

While Socrates taught that “the unexamined life is not worth while,” Epicurus was teaching that “the unplanned life is not worth while.” Planning and the lack of planning make the difference between the wise man and the fool.¹

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

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

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

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

21. 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.

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

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

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

Original Text

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

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

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

1. Norman DeWitt, Epicurus and His Philosophy, 178