epicurus

Raphael, "School of Athens" 1511
(Detail of Epicurus) Vatican Palace, Rome

As we have indicated, Plato maintained that the good life has nothing to do with pleasure. Aristotle moderated this doctrine. Although he did not think that the good life was identical with a life of pleasure, he thought that "pleasure must be in some way an ingredient of happiness".

Epicurus disagreed with both of them. Epicurus was the exponent of a type of philosophy which has persisted down to the present time. He held a view which is sometimes called "Hedonism", the doctrine that pleasure is the only good.

The influence of his philosophy can be judged from the fact that the English language contains the word "epicure". As with many words, however, the meaning of the word epicure as it is now used does not represent accurately Epicurus' philosophy. An epicurean is now depicted as a person whose main delight consists in the enjoyment of exotic or fastidiously prepared food and rare wines. As a matter of fact, Epicurus himself suffered for years from stomach trouble and was never an epicure in the modem sense.

The ethical philosophy of Epicurus consists mainly of advice for living moderately but pleasurably. He considered pleasure to be good, but he also realized that if a person seeks pleasure too actively, pain will follow. If we drink too much we will suffer headaches the next day.

Epicurus' philosophy may be seen as instructions designed to help us achieve pleasure & to help us to avoid pain. If one engages in a life of pleasure which leads to pain then such a life would be regarded as a bad one by Epicurus.

Since some pleasures are obviously accompanied by pain, Epicurus distinguished between those pleasures which are accompanied by pain ("dynamic" pleasures ) and those which are not ( 'passive' pleasures ). Epicurus regarded only the latter as good. Sexual love, for example, is bad because it is accompanied by fatigue, remorse and depression. Other "dynamic" pleasures are gluttony, fame & drinking. All of these are bad because they are accompanied by pain: gluttony will lead to indigestion, fame may be accompanied by all sorts of distress, drinking will lead to headaches, disease, & so forth.

As a result Epicurus advocated (and led) a life which we now think very ascetic. This is because he believed that it is better to avoid pain than to seek pleasure if it will produce pain. He is remembered for his simple belief that "if you live according to nature you will never be poor." Friendship, on the other hand, is a "passive pleasure". It is not accompanied by pain and therefore is permitted & encouraged by him.

Hedonism, in philosophy, has two forms: "Psychological Hedonism", and "Ethical Hedonism". Psychological Hedonism is the idea that we in fact do pursue pleasure, & only pleasure, in our lives. All activities, according to this theory, are directed toward gaining pleasure & avoiding of pain.

Epicurus is generally seen as being a Psychological Hedonist. He apparently believed that all people were motivated in their daily lives to attempt to acquire pleasure. Epicurus is also an Ethical Hedonist (with some qualifications). Ethical Hedonism is the view that we not only in fact seek pleasure, but further that we ought to do so since pleasure alone is good.

Psychological Hedonism does not entail Ethical Hedonism. For example, we might believe that we are motivated to seek pleasure, and we also might believe that we ought not to do so. In fact, this is roughly what Epicurus believed. His view was that even if we are motivated to acquire pleasure, certain pleasures are bad & should be avoided.

On the other hand, he held that some pleasures, such as friendship, conversation, philosophy & so on, ought to be cultivated; & the good life consists in acquiring pleasures of this sort. He can therefore be interpreted as holding a limited form of Ethical Hedonism, as well as a psychological version of the theory.

kinds of hedonism

According to Psychological Hedonism every conscious action is motivated by the search for pleasure. Whether we are a hermit, or whether we seek fame, in either case (if we accept Psychological Hedonism) we are motivated to act as we do because we are striving for pleasure. What the theory attempts to do is to provide a single explanation for every possible type of conscious or voluntary action we engage in. Consider any kind of conscious behaviour - why do we do it? The answer is always the same - we are seeking pleasure.

Here we need to mention the distinction between 'means' and 'ends'. Some things may not be worth having in themselves, are but worth having because they help us to achieve other goals. On the other hand, other things may be worth having in themselves. They are, as philosophers say, 'intrinsically valuable'. We value them not because they help us to achieve something else, but for their own sakes. Exercise, for example, may not be worth doing in its own right but it has value in that, by doing it, we will become healthy, which is valuable in itself. In terms of our distinction, exercise is valuable as a 'means' while health is valuable as an 'end'. The argument of the Psychological Hedonist is that the ultimate end towards which all activity is directed is pleasure. Fame, riches, success are all means to other ends. Thus, all conscious human behaviour can be explained by saying that we are motivated ultimately by pleasure - it is the end for which we all aim. Put this way, Psychological Hedonism has been a theory which has attracted many followers, and has had a great influence on the history of Western thought.

Ethical Hedonism, on the other hand, goes beyond the psychological account: it holds that we ought to seek pleasure, for ultimately this is the only thing worth having for itself. Both aspects of Hedonism seem plausible.

In so far as this part of Hedonism is interpreted as a purely scientlfic account of our conscious behaviour it does not withstand present-day scientific scrutiny. Psychologists agree that we are sometimes motivated by the search for pleasure, but they go on to say that such is not always the case. Some people may begin by trying to acquire riches as a means to pleasure, after a time they may come to regard wealth as an end in itself. In psychological language, they become 'fixated' upon the acquisition of wealth and disregard the use to which it may be put for acquiring pleasure. (Such people are commonly called 'misers'.)

These people may be so strongly motivated by the attempt to acquire money that they may disregard or even reject the pursuit of pleasure as being of any value to them if it interferes with the acquisition of money. We are all familiar with newspaper accounts of men and women who are found living in squalid conditions even though they may possess a fortune hidden in the mattress. The acquisition of money, not pleasure, becomes an end for them - and for this reason, psychologists tell us that Psychological Hedonism cannot be accepted as an accurate picture of all conscious human motivation. And this is merely one instance of such exceptions. Unfortunately, Psychological Hedonism is not simply a scientific theory, and it cannot be refuted merely by an appeal to the latest scientific findings.

The Psychological Hedonist will claim that the miser actually gains pleasure by hoarding money. The miser is merely giving up the usual means for acquiring p]easure, such as living in a decent home, eating well and so on. Money has not become an end in itself for him - rather it has become the sole means for achieving pleasure; but pleasure is still the end for which he strives. At this stage, the theory has been removed from the area where a scientific finding can possibly confirm or refute it. It has now become a philosophical, rather than a scientific, problem, for no collection of facts can be gathered which would resolve the problem.

But when Psychological Hedonism is interpreted in this way, it can still be attacked on philosophical grounds. For when any theory cannot be refuted by facts then it loses its explanatory force. It becomes true 'by definition' but no longer refers to the world in the way in which scientific theories do, since its truth or falsity no longer depends upon the facts. When this happens, the theory may be rejected on the ground that it has lost its power to provide us with a satisfactory explanation of the facts it started out to explain. It has now defined 'pleasure' as 'what people desire', so that in asserting that all people are motivated by a desire for pleasure it is asserting no more than the tautology that 'all people are motivated by a desire for what they desire'. It has become irrefutable by becoming trivial and not worth refuting.

Ethical Hedonism, as contrasted with Psychological Hedonism can be divided into two parts, which may be regarded as answers to the questions: 'What is the good life for people" and 'How ought people to behave ?' The answers, according to the Ethical Hedonist are that the good life for us consists of a life of pleasure, and that we ought to act so as to acquire pleasure.

Epicurus, the founder of Hedonism, recognized that some pleasures may produce pain. For example, smoking opium may give us pleasure, but it will produce physical and mental sickness if persisted in. It thus appears that some pleasures are bad and if so we cannot say simply that the good life is the same as a life of pleasure.

Epicurus attempted to escape this difficulty by finding pleasures that do not produce painful consequences, and then argue that such pleasures constitute the good life. But this approach will not do, since even friendship, which he regards as a passive pleasure is sometimes accompanied by problems. For example, if a friend dies, we may suffer a lot from sadness.

A second way of defending the view that pleasure is good is to hold that pleasure itself is never bad - the pleasure one gets from smoking opium and from a friend. It is only the painful consequences themselves which are bad.

This defence is logically good, but it has practical difficulties which make it doubtful that Ethical Hedonism can offer acceptable guidance in our daily life. We cannot, as a matter of fact, separate the painful consequences of an action from the pleasurable ones. If we smoke opium, we may be given pleasure, to be sure, but we will also suffer pain as a result of doing so. To advise one, as Ethical Hedonists do, to seek pleasure is in effect frequently equivalent to advising one to seek pain as well, since the two sometimes cannot be disassociated.

Ethical Hedonism therefore, must sometimes advise us not to pursue pleasures when those pleasures are followed by pain, and thus its practical effect seems incompatible with the theory.

Finally, let us consider the doctrine that men ought to behave so as to acquire pleasure. This view likewise seems plausible at first but further reflection shows that it violates our common-sense belief about how we ought to behave. Consider the following case:

A soldier is put on guard duty at an important post. S/he is forced to walk back and forth, and this is monotonous. It is a hot night. It would be more pleasant not to remain but to leave for a bar where s/he can have a cool drink. Most people would say that if s/he deserted the post for this reason, then s/he would be acting wrongly. If s/he said that s/he acted as s/he ought to have done because s/he was seeking pleasure this defence would be laughed at. The plain person feels that sometimes we should act so as to acquire pleasure, but not always. Sometimes we have obligations which we must fulfil and in these cases we ought to behave so as to fulfil them even if in doing so we do not acquire pleasure. This objection shows that it cannot be regarded as an adequate account of such behaviour.

Hedonism, even though theoretically attractive, can thus be seen to violate our ordinary feelings about what constitutes moral behaviour. Do we not object on moral grounds to the 'playboy' ? The objection is not merely that he seeks superficial pleasures, but more fundamentally, that pleasure is not the sole object which we should strive for. The average person is with regard to pleasure, more Aristotelian than Epicurean. We feel that sometimes pleasure is a worthwhile object, and that no life can be happy without some pleasure in it, but we find the doctrine that pleasure is the only worthwhile goal, objectionable. We reject it as containing advice that he cannot in fact follow.