For Epicurus, pleasure is nothing but the absence of pain. Pain can further be subdivided into pain of the body and trouble in the soul. This negative description of happiness is surprising at first sight, but is a necessary component of the Epicurean philosophy of happiness.
This article is part of The Ultimate Guide to Epicurus.
If you like reading about philosophy, here’s a free, weekly newsletter with articles just like this one: Send it to me!
Epicurus on pleasure and pain
Epicurus has this to say about pleasure:
But what does this mean? As previously discussed here, Epicurus does not think that there are any positive pleasures. What Epicurus calls pleasure is just the absence of pain. If we can reach a state of mind where all pain is totally absent, then we call state ‘happiness’.
Note that here Epicurus does not refer only to bodily pain, like a tooth-ache or such. “Pain” for him is every sensation that is negative, and that distracts us from being at peace. This can be a tooth-ache, but it can also just be hunger, thirst, the feeling of being tired. It can also mean anxiety: if I am afraid of losing my job, for instance, or afraid of a medical examination that is going to take place tomorrow. These are all causes of “pain.”
Are some desires better than others?
Epicurus believed that the most reliable way to be happy is to reduce one’s desires until it’s easy to satisfy them.
And, of course, the biggest such cause of pain is fear. We are afraid of small things: spiders, or dark corridors in the night. But we are also afraid of bigger things: of losing our loved ones in an accident. Of becoming incurably ill. And, of course, of dying.
We will talk in a later post about how Epicurus tries to rid us of these fears, especially the fear of death. But in order to understand the quote above, it is not necessary to go into the details of particular anxieties and fears. It is sufficient to note that if we have such fears, we will not be happy. So far, everyone would agree.
Is happiness really only negative?
But now comes the Epicurean move: He reverses the argument above. If we do not have such fears, he says, then we are perfectly happy.
Is this plausible?
Epicurus really needs to make this point. Because what he wants, in the end, is to say that we can become happy by reducing our desires. And the happiness that we will achieve by getting rid of our desires is as good as the happiness we would get by fulfilling them. Now that couldn’t be the case if fulfilling my desires, let’s say for chocolate, gave me anything positive. Then I would need that …
Read the full article which is published on Daily Philosophy (external link)
