Philosophy as Practice 07

Welcome back!

Today, we’re moving onto a new topic: the philosophy of Epicurus, and the art of living pleasurably. The Greek philosopher Epicurus is a philosopher most often associated with hedonism, the idea that the good life is a life where we should seek to maximise our pleasure. This might conjure up images of wild excess, or endless drug-fuelled orgies. And this, in fact, is how Epicurus’s opponents sometimes represented his philosophy and his community of followers. But Epicurus’s own approach to living pleasurably was more sedate than his critics imagined.

Above all else, Epicurus believed we don’t take pleasure seriously enough. For all our commitment to pleasure, he argued, we are remarkably bad at it. So the way to live better is to get smarter about pleasure. His whole philosophy aimed to get us to be better at the art of pleasure. To this end, he set up a community, called “the Garden” (κῆπος / kipos in Greek), where his followers lived together and practised his teachings. In some ways, although Epicureans were atheist (we’ll come to that) you could think of Epicureans in the ancient world as, to some extent, more like a contemporary religious cult than a bunch of philosophers.

In the coming sessions, we’re going to explore this question of what makes life pleasurable. But we’re going to start from our own experience.

What makes life pleasurable?

Write for six minutes about what makes your life pleasurable. Be prepared to share in your groups.

• What makes life pleasurable?

• What is the role of pleasure in the good life?

• Are some pleasures bad and some good? If so, how do you distinguish between bad and good pleasures?

• How important is pleasure for you?

Who was Epicurus?

Epicurus was born in 341 BCE, on the island of Samos, an Athenian colony. At the year of eighteen he travelled from Samos to Athens to serve in the army, and then for the next twenty or so years he lived in various parts of the Greek world, both teaching and studying philosophy. He returned to Athens in 307 and set up his famous philosophical school, the ‘Garden’ (kepos). The garden was not just a place where people could go to talk about philosophy, but it was a community where Epicurus’s followers could live and practice his doctrines. Although Epicurus wrote extensively, very little of what he wrote remains, other than a few letters presenting his doctrines in abridged form, and a few piecemeal fragments. He died in 270BC of complications arising from kidney-stones. Although in enormous pain, he was said to have remained cheerful until the end, saying that his recollection of his various philosophical contemplations maintained him in a state of happiness despite the obvious suffering.

Thinking Through Pleasures

For Epicurus, all pleasure is good. This is a big claim. In other words, there is no other criterion for goodness than is this pleasurable? But what kind of life does this lead to? You might think it leads to a life is excess. But the reverse is true. Epicurus was not a fan of excess. So why not? Simply put, because when it comes to pleasure… we’re just pretty bad at it. We do things that we think will give us pleasure, but they lead to a whole world of pain.

So what Epicurus was interested in was the idea of taking an intelligent approach to pleasure, one that really looked at the pleasures of life, and that tried to make distinctions between them, so that we might be able choose our pleasures more successfully.

So what distinctions can we make when it comes to pleasure? Epicurus says that there are, broadly speaking, two kinds of pleasure.

1. Kinetic pleasures are those pleasures that stimulate us, that stir us up, that get us excited: sex, drugs and rock and roll, or whatever the equivalent of rock and roll was in ancient Athens. Kinetic pleasures are the kind of pleasures that send us skittering off in all kinds of odd directions, that unbalance us, that precipitate us into unexpected situations, and that lead to a kind of turbulence of the soul (for Epicurus, the soul was considered to be a physical entity, so this disturbance is not so much metaphorical as literal).

2. In contrast, static (or katastematic, to use the technical term) pleasures are those pleasures that are not so skittish, changeable or turbulent. For example, we could think of the pleasure of sitting and watching the sun set, the pleasure of enjoying the friendship of another human being , or the pleasures of simple food (cheese in particular—Epicurus loved cheese, but if you are lactose intolerant, you may differ): all these might be relatively static kinds of pleasure for Epicurus.

So Kinetic pleasures are those which lead to pain somewhere down the line: they are destabilising, unsettling and unbalancing pleasures. Katastematic or static pleasures which do not cause further disturbance, and that help support ataraxia (see above).

Writing task

Write a list of as many pleasures that you can think of that you enjoy. Which of these are static? Which are kinetic? If they are kinetic (or katastematic), what suffering or pain do they led to.

Does this exercise tell us anything useful or interesting about how to choose between pleasures? We’ll talk about this in groups.

Homework: Reading Epicurus

We’re going to dive deeper into this, by reading Epicurus’s letter to Menoeceus, which I’ll upload to canvas. Just read the letter, not the list of sayings afterwards (which we may look at the time after).

In the letter, Epicurus is giving advice. Reply on the discussion board to these two questions.

1. Which piece of advice do you think is most useful, or did you most respond to?

2. Which piece of advice do you think is least useful, or do you think is bad advice?