Could Epicurus save us?

A philosophy of pleasure could cure our modern ills

di Steven Gambardella

For over a hundred years archaeologists have been reconstructing, piece by piece, a message of hope from the ancient past.
The message is estimated to comprise of 25,000 words inscribed in 260 square meters of stone. That stone crumbled and was scattered about the ruined site of the ancient Greek-speaking hilltop city of Oinoanda near the south-western coast of modern Turkey.
The author of the message was a man named Diogenes, who in old age commissioned the inscription for the city’s portico wall as a gift for fellow citizens, foreign visitors and future generations. He wrote, “I wanted, before being taken by death, to compose a fine anthem to celebrate the fullness of pleasure and so help those who are well constituted.”

Diogenes wanted to cure a “common disease, like a plague” which gave people a “false notion about things.” The plague he describes is, in a word, desire.

Diogenes’ wall text is a comprehensive explanation of the philosophy of Epicureanism.

Archaeologists are still painstakingly piecing together the inscription from among the remains of the ancient city. Only about a quarter has been assembled so far.

A coherent passage was reconstructed as recently as 2008 allowing us ever more insight into this ancient philosophy that once had hundreds of thousands of followers.

Little is known of Epicurus the philosopher. There are surviving writings, but nowhere near the hundreds of books he supposedly wrote, only fragments and letters.

Much of what we do know about Epicureanism comes from Diogenes’s inscription and the sublime poem by the Roman Lucretius, Of the Nature of Things. A great deal was written about Epicurus over the ages – much of it critical – but we are now seeing a clearer picture of the man and his philosophy.

Epicureanism is a practical ethical doctrine based on a purely physical understanding of the universe. In many ways it is very much a product of its time: the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s vast expansion of Greek influence and his sudden death.

Humble Beginnings
Epicurus was born into a modest household in 341 BCE in the Athenian colony of Samos. Schooled in Athenian philosophy, he rejected the ideas of Platonism.

For the new breed of philosophers in the wake of Alexander the Great’s death, philosophy had become more concerned with well-being rather than knowledge. The world had become increasingly chaotic, and Platonism provided no antidote to chaos.

New schools emerged – like Stoicism and Skepticism – that looked inward for peace in a strife-riven world. In his mid-thirties Epicurus founded his own school and commune outside of the walls of Athens called “The Garden”.

Epicurus had many radical ideas, one of which was that philosophy should be accessible to women, an idea scandalous to Athenian culture, dominated as it was by propertied men.

In a society in which women were barely permitted to leave their house, Epicurus opened the doors of The Garden to them. Slaves too, were welcome. Epicurus was wilfully blind to the strict hierarchy governing Athenian social relations.

Rumours circulated about the commune among the civic-minded Athenians: a commune that permitted women to study must be up to no good. What’s more, the commune was dedicated to hedonism.

Hedonism
Epicurean philosophy is associated with pleasure. As such it has an undeserved reputation in the modern world as making a virtue of the selfish pursuit toward that end.

This is not entirely untrue, but it is an over simplification that gives a false impression of Epicurean goals. In the Christian world — particularly in the middle ages when little was known of Epicureanism — Epicurus was damned as a hedonist who indulged in orgies and rich banquets, a philosopher-patron of drunkards and whores.

Epicurus was indeed a hedonist. He sought to answer the question “what makes us happy?” and from there went on to teach that happiness is the greatest good.

But rather than maximising happiness through greedy consumption, Epicurus looked at the problem of well-being through the other end of the telescope. The central tenet of Epicurean philosophy can be summarised easily: to be happy you need to change your desires.

To Epicurus, happiness is the default condition of living. But humans have afflicted themselves with unnecessary desires.

There are two kinds of pleasure: kinetic pleasure and static pleasure. Kinetic pleasure is active fulfillment, static is the default state of having no immediate needs, it is the tranquility of the absence of pain.

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