Epicurus and his theory on pleasure

Epicurus was a Greek philosopher born in 341 BCE. He is the founding father of a popular school, known as Epicureanism. 

To understand the theory of Epicurus, we need to know what ethics mean.

Ethics is a branch of philosophy whose main subject matter is the examination of moral values and value judgements. Judgements concerning what is good or bad or judgement about what morally ought or ought not to be.

Since naturally we attempt to strive for what is good and move away from what is bad, ethics is concerned with question of how one ought to behave or how we ought to live our life. It deals with how things should be, rather than how things are, which are called factual existing statements.

There are mainly two questions which ethics deals with and which are 

1)  What is the ultimate good in life, and

2) How should one behave in order to obtain this goal and lead the best life possible.

Many have answered these questions but three answers have been specifically prominent. Some philosopher have stated that virtue is the ultimate good, some have answered happiness and others have said pleasure is the ultimate good and we must strive after it. 

Amongst the three answers, Epicurus's answers i.e. pleasure, which is perhaps the most famous amongst all. Epicurus gives us his views on pleasure and what we must do, to achieve this pleasurious life.

This theory that views pleasure as the ultimate good is called hedonism.  Many of the philosopher have laid importance to this view. In general, keeping philosophers aside, non philosophers prescribe hedonism as the default position.

Another philosopher Richard Taylor states :"Feelings of pleasure, it would seem, are always good and there opposite, i.e. Feeling of pain, are always bad. One need not be a philosopher to come to this opinion"

One general view about hedonism comes from another school of cyrenaics, who father was Aristippus. This school emphasises as, most intense pleasures are the bodily pleasures. This school thought that we should try to maximize these pleasures to greatest degree possible.

Epicurus's hedonism is far different from the school of  Cyrenaics. He readily agreed that the most intense pleasures are indeed the bodily pleasures, however he thought that over indulging in such pleasures was not necessary for the attainment of good life, and in fact prevented one from attaining a pleasurious life. 

Bodily pleasure, he reasoned are not only of short duration, but ending almost as soon as they have begun but more importantly they are often followed by intense pain. For example: the pleasure of being drunk may be great in the moment, but the pain of horrible hangover offsets that pleasure with a more intense pain of longer duration the following day.

Hence, in order to live a pleasurious life, Epicurus believed it is the avoidance of the pain that is essential, not the indulgence in pleasure. To avoid pain we must cultivate discipline and often decline opportunities to engage in bodily and sensual pleasures.

Paradoxically, he thought the most pleasurious life was actually the life in which we avoid chasing after the pleasures all together. 

As Epicurus says "When therefore we say pleasure is a chief good, we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and the soul from confusion"

We understand that the pleasure Epicurus wants us is to have freedom from pain, worry, fear, and confusion and not bodily pleasure.

Coming to the second question discussed earlier, i.e."What must we do to life a pleasurious life?"

Epicurus thought that one of the chief obstacle preventing most individuals from acting in a way that would enable them to achieve the good life was there ignorance, regarding the nature of their desires, as he explained all desires can be placed in the following three categories:

1) Desires which are natural and necessary: These are the desires we share with animals. They include the desire for food, drink and shelter. They are considered natural and are not product of social conditions and are necessary and we must fulfill such desires on order to survive.

2) Desires which are natural but unnecessary: example: The desire for sexual gratification. These are natural but unnecessary. These cannot be eliminated entirely however such desires can elad to painful life If not controlled. We should avoid such pleasures.

3) Desires which are unnatural unnecessary: These are most to blame for our inability to live a pleasurious life. Example: power, fame, extreme wealth, etc. I.e. all desires socially conditioned to us. These desires chained us to a life of continual frustration ad they are desires that are insatiable and keep us in a constant state of want and therefore pain.

To live a pleasurious life we must satiate desires which are natural, but only to the extent it eliminates pain. We must also discard all desires which are unnatural. 

The good life is the simple life, said Epicurus.

Epicurus leaves us a with a different perspective of pleasure in his theory. If this theory is used properly, a lot of our daily life problems could be solved.