As recorded by Seneca (Moral Epistles 21.7), Epicurus suggested that the way to make a man rich is not to help him accumulate wealth, but rather to help take away his desire for richness. In other words, the key to happiness is not to seek a stable accumulation of unstable pleasures, because this is limitless and ultimately unsatisfying, but rather to remain content with stable pleasures alone.
The Epicurean mindset is that it is not a necessary feature of human psychology to crave wider and greater pleasures. Instead, the fear of being unsatisfied leads people along a path of unlimited desire (Vatican Sayings 59), which becomes longer and longer as one walks along it. A person must abandon the fear of remaining unsatisfied in life, and try to become open to the idea that satisfaction is easy.
Conscious indulgence in desirous pleasures, which an Epicurean would surmise in most (but not all) circumstances to produce more pain than pleasure in a long-term assessment, is a layered problem. Not only can excessive indulgence lead to difficulty in the future, but also the growing desire for greater and greater pleasures is a swelling pain of dissatisfaction – and in Epicurean terms, this second level is much more important. The dissatisfaction accumulated by increasing lust would amount to unhappiness.
Ataraxia
For Epicurus, the ultimate goal of pleasure is in a conceptual ataraxia, a removal of pain (Diogenes Lauertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.139) – and such a removal primarily necessitates the removal of desirous instincts. It is unclear if desirous and impulsive pleasure itself (as opposed to the motivations behind it) can play any role in this process of ataraxia whatsoever, or if it is really nothing but pain in disguise in all practical circumstances.
In his letter to Menoecus, Epicurus makes two points relating to this which are quite difficult to pin down. Firstly, he advocates being content with a frugal lifestyle. This is not for the actual benefits of frugality, but because “[the people who] have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury [are those] who stand least in need of it” (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.130). Secondly, he dictates that the “misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool” (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.134). By extension, the "prosperity" of the wise is not so bad too.
It is clear from these statements that Epicureanism is not actually in opposition to opulence, or in opposition to “prosperity” and wealth, but rather it is in opposition to three things: attachment to one's wealth, the covetous desire for more, and the ignorance of the serenity possible in the absence of this wealth.
Frugality?
Thus it seems that desirous pleasure itself does not need to be anathema for an Epicurean. Of course, a king does not need to forgo his luxury in order to feel happy, just like a homeless man does not need a castle to feel happy – simply both must sever their mental attachments to indulgence and be content with the more frugal choice; they do not need to always choose frugally. Nowhere is it explicit that they must reject luxury – only reject their hunger for it.
For the Epicurean, “whether he is well off or not will be a matter of indifference” (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.121). Clearly, this does not mean that an Epicurean must perforce not be well off. Indeed it is explicitly stated that he should care for not-so-basic things in life like property, public festivals, his reputation, and his writings (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.120a). ).
In no sense do the Epicureans deny the validity of the pleasures of indulgence, they simply believe the negatives usually outweigh the positives, and so desires are to be measured and dropped. In inhibiting desires, Epicurean self-preservation reacts introspectively to chastise impulses.
An Epicurean does not reject whimsical, kinematic pleasures for any inherent reason, he simply measures them against potential pains, and how it may affect his ataraxia. He chooses the pain of abstinence, if he predicts it will help him remove deeper pain in the future (Eusebius Preparation for the Gospel 14.21.3).
Two men in a desert - a conundrum for Epicureans
This position is extremely relativistic and egocentric, and ultimately unsatisfying. What is right in one place at one time will be unjust in another place at another time. The egoistic heart of Epicureanism dictates that the surroundings matter only in terms of how they affect oneself.
If a man were trapped in the desert with another man, with only one small bottle of water to share, what should he choose to do? What would bring him the greatest pleasure? Sharing the water and risking both dying, or giving this other man the water and sentencing himself to certain death, or drinking the water alone and sentencing the other man to death? An Epicurean could effectively argue for all three options.
For sharing and risking death: drinking is a natural and necessary pleasure (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.149), staying alive is a positive thing (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.126), and sharing with friends is good (Vatican Sayings 56).
For giving the water away: one should never fear death (Cicero On the Ends of Good and Evil 2.100), sometimes it is right to undergo pain for a friend (Vatican Sayings 28), and it is better to give than to receive (Plutarch Moralia 14.1097a).
For drinking the water alone: if the Epicurean should not fear his own death, he certainly should not fear the death of his companion. If giving is better than receiving, then why not allow the companion the great honour of sacrificing his life on the Epicurean's behalf? The logical conclusion of this question reduces the argument to an absurd infinite repetition. I do not suspect that any Epicureans would choose the third option – the philosophy is of course designed to protect against it. I make this argument only to show that this design is ineffectual. Indeed, any design is ineffectual if it produces open-ended answers.
Unnatural versus natural
Prescription to detach from “unnecessary and unnatural” desires such as hunger for fame and glory (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.149) is rather easy to define, but detachment from “unnecessary but natural” pleasures, such as an overindulgence in food or sex, also condemned by Epicureanism, is much more ambiguous in realistic terms.
At what point has one eaten enough?
If two philosophers appear to accept the same basic Epicurean definitions of pleasure, but live by different standards, how can one objectively tell the other that he should be less happy? In real terms, if one philosopher follows Epicurus' methods and decides he will be content to live with merely bread, cheese and water – but then a second philosopher decides he will be content to live with only bread and water, without cheese – can this second philosopher call the first philosopher indulgent and desirous?
Taken to its logical conclusion, at what point can an Epicurean deny any luxury, if it is allowed with ataraxia in mind? It sometimes seems as if frugality among Epicureans was competitive, as a kind of one-upmanship (Vatican Sayings 36) – however they are warned against extremist frugality, alongside desires for luxury (Vatican Sayings 63). In both extremes, it is impossible to see where the boundaries of acceptability end, and the dangers begin.
Unattainable equilibrium
There is an uneasy balance in Epicureanism between, quite literally, the wish to live a life free of suffering (which, as established, necessitates a vigilant and inconsistent approach to living) and the nervous reluctance to encounter the potentially harmful consequences of whimsical pleasures (which, again, necessitates a vigilant and inconsistent approach to living).
A typical example of this kind of attitude can be found in Lucretius' discussion of sexuality (On the Nature of the Universe 4.1037-287). The author warns against the excesses of lust, the blinding effects of the love-sick mind, and how wild sexual passion is always insatiable and thus always on the precipice of pain.
As such, he presents an embittered repudiation of love via a catalogue of its suffering. Epicurus himself said that wise men should avoid marriage, and that the best possible result of sex is not that it might improve people's pleasures, but only that it might not make their lives worse (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.118-9).
In the same passage, however, Diogenes enigmatically states that a man “may marry owing to special circumstances in his life”, and in the closing passage of Lucretius' sexual analysis (On the Nature of the Universe 4.1278-87) he too describes something of an exception to his standards: a positive (or, more exactly: not unmanageably difficult) scenario in which a man and a woman might live together. It is impossible to specifically define these extenuating circumstances, because, presumably, they are flexible and relativistic along with so many other elements of the philosophy.
Lost at sea
Epicureanism attempts to make a dismissal of the apparent extremes of indulgence and frugality, but finds itself lingering in the vast middle ground between them, clinging on to the kind of moral relativism which dictates its uncertain values, unsure which extreme is intellectually closest at any one time. Furthermore, it can flirt quite comfortably with either extreme without damaging the flexible perimeters of its own limits.
That no pleasure is intrinsically negative but may lead to negative results (Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 10.141) opens the philosophy to an illogically massive, and possibly infinite, realm of potential wherein consequence and causation can be unravelled or not unravelled at the expense of the philosopher's awareness, in order to nullify or ratify any particular choices or rejections.
The Epicurean is swimming in a vast ocean, where the water is a massive potential, and where the extremes are demarcated, but nothing else is set. In the absence of a clear frame of reference across the whole ocean, it is impossible for him to chart a specific path – and much less to mark out his path from others – and such is the essentially unsatisfying nature of a relativistic understanding. Epicureanism, then, is not a certain route to happiness. But what did we all expect?
Sources
Cicero, On the Ends of Good and Evil, tr. R. Woolf (Cambridge 2001)
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, tr. R. D. Hicks (Harvard 1925)
Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, tr. E. H Gifford (Oxford 1903)
Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, tr. C. Bailey (Oxford 1921)
Seneca, Moral Epistles, tr. R. M. Gummere (Harvard 1917)
Vatican Sayings, tr. C. Bailey (Oxford 1926)
Kevin Stoba - Kevin Stoba is a careful-thinking contrarian with a boldly radical bent and an indefatigable tendency to doubt.
