As a philosophical school of thought, Epicureanism is practical from the outset and throughout. It is first and always a way of living, not only a set of philosophical theories, and the philosophical theories are only meant to help us find the way of living. Echoing Socrates, Epicurus said that philosophy that does not heal the soul is no better than medicine that does not heal the body. Our souls are sick, constantly troubled, always wanting more than we need, always worrying about things that we shouldn’t worry about. We stumble into this because of our ignorance. We chase empty desires that can never be satisfied; we lock ourselves into cycles of frustration and boredom; we bind ourselves to inescapable fears. This soul-sickness prevents us from living a happy and untroubled existence, but Epicurus has the remedy.
Understand the nature of the world and your part in it: the world is physical, only, and you are a physical thing. Consequently, physical sensations, pleasures and pains, are the only indication of what is good and bad for you. You should look to maximise the good and minimise the bad if you want to live a good life; you should aim to maximise pleasures and minimise pains. But a little philosophical reflection shows that this is best achieved by making yourself better able to take pleasure from what you have or can easily acquire. If you understand the nature of pleasures – static and kinetic – and you understand the nature of desires – natural necessary, natural non-necessary, and non-natural or empty – then you can see the way of living that wisdom recommends: look to satisfy only your natural necessary desires, as far as possible keeping yourself in a statically pleasurable state of ataraxia, tranquillity, or freedom from troubles and pain.
As a result of their approach, the Epicureans do not need much to make them happy. That is why happiness is always so easily within their reach. They only need enough to get by, in a comfortable place, with the company of friends. This is easily achieved. And when natural troubles come, which they must, then they will endure them with equanimity, knowing that they will soon pass. These troubles are easily endured. And when death comes, as it necessarily must, then they will not be troubled, knowing immortality to be an empty desire. Death is not to be worried about.
Free from worry and unburdened by unnecessary desire, the Epicurean lives contentedly. It is a nice idea. But it not only a nice idea. Epicureanism is a method, and you can learn that method. It is not particularly mysterious. If you want to live a life free from worry and unburdened by unnecessary desire, you only need to follow their instructions.
Live simply
The Epicureans recommend a simple life, untroubled and free. Their desire for this is driven by a key philosophical insight: Until you try to be content with less, you will always be troubled with needing more. This is not a new insight: you can see it in Socrates, and in the Cynics, and there is even a hint of it in Aristotle (see the notional example of Alexander the Great for what happens when you reject this insight, weeping for lack of worlds to conquer). If you allow your desires for pleasure (or glory or wealth, etc.) to go unrestrained, you will end up suffering more in the long run. Perhaps it is unreasonable to follow the Cynics and try to be content with nothing. But the Epicureans agree that every indulgence of an unnecessary desire only buys you a debt and a burden.
For this reason you should keep your luxuries to a minimum. You should look after your basic needs, indulging only these natural necessary desires and only as much as is necessary to preserve a statically pleasurable state of being. You should not add to these desires needlessly.
Epicureans seem to be against the idea of marriage and families for this reason. This can seem counter-intuitive to the idea of a simple life that takes pleasure in companionship, which for many of us suggests a simple family life. But the Epicureans reason that friends can provide companionship, and taking on the stresses and strains of family life, with all its responsibilities and dramas, can only give you more reasons to worry. We love our children, but because of this we fear for them. We can never be free from that fear, because we know that our children can never be safe from all harm. We know that our children will get ill, suffer injustice, die; no one gets to live a life free from significant suffering. To desire that our children be free from significant suffering is an empty desire, its object does not exist, but we cannot help but want it and need it. And in exchange for this desire, that can never be satisfied, we suffer. Our love buys us a debt and a burden. The Epicureans recommend that you see this for what it is and avoid it.
And they also recommend that you avoid any stressful work. You must do something to earn your daily bread, but is it necessary to go out into the world and ‘succeed’? Why, if humble work can earn enough to satisfy the desire for goods that are easily got? Is it necessary to actively participate in public life? Do you need to go and gain glory, wealth, status, or a certain standing in the world? It’s not clear that any of that is necessary – as is shown by the many people who get by without any of these things – and many of these extravagant ways of living lead to troubles that cannot be avoided. Running a successful business? Let’s hope the orders keep coming in! Let’s hope the economy remains stable and your borrowing doesn’t become unsustainable! Working in a well-paid job? Let’s hope the boss likes you! Let’s hope their business continues to do well! Let’s hope that pension pot will still be there when you come to retire! There are just so many things to worry about. Is the benefit worth the cost?
You think that success will make you secure, and in that security you will be free from fear. But true freedom from fear only comes with ataraxia, the tranquillity of your soul, and ambition can never lead to such an end. Until you try to be content with what you have your soul will never be at peace.
Perhaps it’s not wealth you want but glory or status. Perhaps you go into politics, or the military, or compete in sports. In these cases, some of the sources of troubles and fear are obvious: it is difficult to be untroubled at the prospect of being shot at, and every person who makes their living through competitive sport surely lives in fear of the career-ending injury. Or else they just fear losing, making the mistake that costs their team the championship, exiting the field of contest in disgrace. And in politics, how dependent you are on the good opinions of other people! What if they don’t like you? And what if your carefully managed reputation is torn down by a backstabbing colleague or political opponent? Perhaps you should get the first stab in… So many things to worry about.
Or perhaps you would choose to be a philosopher and participate in philosophical debate. Why would you do this? Why would you want to go and give speeches and write works that people will only criticise? What do you gain from this, other than trouble and strife? You don’t need it, so why would you want it?
The Epicureans say: You don’t need any of these things! All you need is to do something that gives you enough to get by. This, to the extent that it is good, is easily got, and to the extent that it is bad, is easily endured. Do what you must but retreat, when you can, to somewhere peaceful, like the garden where Epicurus lived and taught, away from the marketplace and its ambitious temptations.
As and when society moves towards offering everyone a ‘universal basic income’, the Epicureans will have everything they need. But until then, so long as it is done with the right attitude (relaxed and uncommitted), the modern gig economy could be seen as a fine example of the type of low-stress and low-dependency work that an Epicurean could endorse: it gives you what you need without binding you to anything more. Or else you could choose a job that is most secure and least demanding: many traditional ‘trades’ or ‘professions’ fall into this category, so long as the ambition for more business doesn’t run away with itself. Perhaps you’re already in a stable job, in which case you can keep doing what you’re already doing but try to take it as easy as possible, maybe going part-time, maybe working from home, maybe retiring early. Ideally, if you’re lucky, you can find a way to make a small income from something that is pleasurable to you, such as looking after children or animals, tutoring a subject or skill that you love, or creating something that you enjoy creating. But however you earn your minimal income, it’s just a means to an end. It’s meant to lead to an untroubled life, and so if your work causes you more trouble than it’s worth, you should find something else to do. In the meantime, the most important work that you can do is learn how to be content with a simple life.
Take pleasure in conversations and friendship
Epicurus advises that we pursue the ‘static’ pleasures that result from the satisfaction of ‘natural necessary’ desires. It’s easy to identify material versions of these things: being fed and so not feeling hungry, being watered and so not feeling thirsty, being warm and comfortable. This is a contented state to be in.
But we don’t need to stop at only the satisfaction of our material needs. Many people would say that it is a natural and necessary part of human life that we have some kind of social interaction and companionship. This does not necessarily mean romantic relationships, and in fact the Epicureans would caution against the kinetic excesses of desire that tend to result from the pursuit of romantic relationships. Love hurts, as they say, and any wise Epicurean would avoid such pain. But the Epicureans placed great value on friendship. When you are fed, watered, comfortable, and having a pleasant conversation with good friends: does life get any better than that?
For the Epicurean, friendship can be a kind of static state of being: you are their friend, and they are yours. You can get friends – acquiring them, as some people do, like possessions or accessories – but friendship is not something consumable that, once consumed, is lost. Friendship need not lead you into a kinetic cycle of desire and frustration. Certainly friendship requires some cultivation, but often the cost of this is nothing material: it is a matter of time and care and attention, or else proximity. Often what is required from you to invest in a friendship is not a cost to you but a benefit. In its best form, friendship can be a soul-bond that provides limitless comfort and support, humour and happiness. It is a static state of pleasure. Once again it is something that costs so little but is worth so much. The Epicureans welcome it into their system of living and advise you to take as much pleasure as possible from friendship.
And so fill your time with friendship and do whatever friends do with one another. Have conversations, visit other friends, help and support each other, share a meal, play games, or do nothing. These are all great goods that are easily got. Revel in them for they can do you no harm.
Whilst the Epicureans might advise against the passionate pursuit of romantic relationships (and the families that result), our romantic relationships can be the best examples of a static state of being that brings us immeasurable reward. Many of us who are lucky enough to be in a long-term loving relationship have experienced those times when you are content to sit next to the person you love, happy in the understanding of your life together. You don’t need to do anything in particular. You can just sit and ‘be’, just as you are, and take immense pleasure from that. It is a precious thing, all the more precious for its rarity, but it is easy to overlook. And it’s more likely to be overlooked when you are distracted by non-necessary desires and the frustrations that they bring: focussed on whether you have enough money, progression at work, or your boss’s good opinion; ruminating about whether you’re getting enough sex; thinking about how nice it would be to be on holiday.
Remind yourself of the Epicurean way: you have a choice between the natural necessary desires of, amongst other things, human companionship – here perfected in the long-term loving relationship – and the non-necessary desires of money, reputation, sex, and holidays. One of these leads to the statically pleasurable state of ataraxia, untroubled happiness and contentment. The other leads to at best kinetic pleasure, with all its frustrations, and at worst static frustration. Which will you choose? And in desiring what is in your interests, can’t you take Epicurus’s lessons and work to find as much pleasure as you can in what you already have, here sitting next to your loved one?
For me, whilst I take the Epicurean point that love necessarily leads to suffering, I would choose to take the suffering for the sake of the love. I think it is more than worth the cost, even knowing the inevitable pain of grief. We can protect ourselves from that harm only by robbing ourselves of what is most valuable in life. A life under such protection is left shallow and impoverished by it. And what’s more, I think a philosopher, having made some attempt to understand and get true beliefs about what really matters, makes themselves curious to see love truly and find what meaning they can in the suffering that it brings. Love hurts; I don’t pretend that love doesn’t hurt. But it hurts because it matters, and it really hurts because it really matters. It is not something for the life of me I would go without.
Take pleasure in memory
In contrast to the Cyrenaics, who believed that you can only take pleasure from sensory experiences that exist only in the present moment, the Epicureans recognised that there is great pleasure to be had from pleasant memories. Remembering a good moment from your past is clearly not the same as experiencing it, but it is nonetheless enjoyable to relive and reflect on, even if only in the mind.
You are looking for statically pleasurable states of being that come without cost, remember. And what better example of this can there be than simply thinking about something pleasant from your past? It costs nothing but is worth, if not everything, then at least something.
Sit there, right now, and think of a pleasant memory. Does it feel good? If it doesn’t, find a different memory that does make you feel good. Found it? Good. Feel good? Excellent! And what did that cost you? Nothing. You can bump your pleasure levels up at any time you like simply by scanning for pleasant memories. It’s a costless pleasure; take it: it’s free and it’s good for you.
Common sense dictates that a bit of caution is called for here. Remembering pleasant times from the past can leave a bittersweet sensation that might leave you with more sadness than you bargained for. The Epicureans would see this sadness as something to be addressed philosophically and then trained to reach a state of acceptance. As with all pleasures, you need to be cautious not to let them spiral into non-necessary or empty desires. If your sadness comes from loss, for example, or from the fact that you cannot live those times again, then recognise that this is an empty desire that cannot be fulfilled. Abandon that desire, because it can only do you harm. But just because you can’t relive those moments doesn’t mean you can’t take pleasure in having had them, and remember the good times that you had, being grateful for having had them at all. Take what pleasure you can from their memory. And if the sadness persists, then take comfort in the fact that it will be mild and easily endured.
Cultivate your sensibilities, but be careful…
If you are looking to increase the amount of pleasure you experience by fitting yourself to the world, rather than trying to make the world fit to you, the sensible choice is not to try to get more fancy things (which is difficult and not something you can control) but instead to train yourself to get more pleasure from what you already have or can easily acquire (which is easier and in your control). But you can do more than this, if you like. Not only can you train yourself to be more content with what you have (or can easily acquire), you can cultivate your sensibilities to detect more in what you have (or can easily acquire).
I think a later philosopher – David Hume, writing in the 18th century – expresses this idea better, and for him it plays an important role in his ‘sentimentalist’ moral philosophy. There will be more on Hume’s philosophy later in this series, but for now, in short: Sentimentalism in moral philosophy means that moral understanding and truth is primarily a matter of emotions and feelings, not thoughts and facts. As Hume sees it, we begin with a natural desire to feel good (and not bad). To this we add a natural capacity for ‘compassion’ or ‘sympathy’, two words that essentially mean ‘feeling with’: if we see other living things feeling good, we feel good with them; if we see them feeling bad, we feel bad too. The natural desire to feel good combines with the natural capacity for sympathy and generates an outward-looking moral feeling (or ‘sentiment’, hence the name ‘sentimentalism’) to want to ensure that the living things around us are happy and not suffering. We naturally want to feel good (and not bad), and we can’t help but feel with other living things when they feel good (or bad), so we want them to feel good (and not bad) because it makes us feel better (and not worse). And from this an entire moral perspective follows.
In a sense, Epicurus is a moral sentimentalist too, though for different reasons. For Epicurus, everything of ethical value comes from our pleasurable and painful sensations: one makes us feel good, the other makes us feel bad. We want what makes us feel good and we don’t want what makes us feel bad. Fundamentally, like Hume, it’s all about feelings, and thoughts can at most only direct and guide our actions in an attempt to satisfy these feelings. As Hume famously says: ‘Reason is and ought only to be a slave to the passions.’ Our feelings tell us what we want and our thoughts tell us how to get it; Epicurus and Hume would seem to agree about this. Because of this shared ground, much of what can be said for Hume can be said for Epicurus, and vice versa.
Hume’s moral theory leads to a great deal of complicated philosophical discussion, and you will come to that in time if you choose to stick with your philosophical studies. But for now I will extract just one feature from that discussion: how you feel about something depends on what you perceive in that thing, and what you can perceive in something depends on your capacity to perceive. A blind man gets nothing from a silent movie. What you ‘sense’ depends upon your ‘sensibilities’. And your sensibilities, your ability to sense, can be cultivated.
Examples are easy to come by here. The most obvious are stereotypically ‘refined’ tastes like wine and food or art and music. Consider wine: The novice wine drinker can tell the difference between red and white, and perhaps what they like and what they don’t like, but that’s about it. But the expert wine taster can detect notes of this and that, and from this can infer the grape and region and vintage and more. The expert wine taster has cultivated their sensibilities, refined their palate, and so can now literally detect more in the wine than the novice drinker. They have become a ‘connoisseur’ (someone ‘with knowledge’). Because of this, they are able to take more pleasure from the wine than the novice. The wine is the same in either case, but the expert gets more out of it than the novice; the world hasn’t changed, but they have. (There is an important analogy here for moral understanding: cultivating your moral sensibilities, through philosophy, enables you to see and discern more value in the world.) The wine connoisseur has changed something in themselves, and as a result they can now get more pleasure from what they already have. In that regard they have followed the Epicurean ideal.
But there is an obvious problem here. The novice drinker is able to enjoy a cheap wine, knowing no better. But the connoisseur, having such refined sensibilities, can no longer tolerate such plonk. The connoisseur seems to have launched themselves on the trajectory of needing ever more refined wines in order to take any pleasure from them. This is surely contrary to the Epicurean ideal.
Or is it? Because whilst this is an obvious problem, it is also easily corrected through philosophy. Simply cut the trajectory off when it becomes problematic. Seeking to maximise pleasure in your life, it is good to cultivate your sensibilities and get more out of the wine that you drink, but it is bad to let that get to such a point that it ruins your enjoyment of simple wine. As Aristotle would no doubt recommend, you need to find the happy middle and avoid the vice of having excessively refined sensibilities. We have a vice-word for this: snobbery.
Cultivating your sensibilities is a good way to get more pleasure from what you already have. But the advice is clear: avoid the vices of deficiency and excess. Don’t just glug down without thinking, and don’t become such a snob that you can only enjoy fine wines. Cultivate your sensibilities to get more out of what you already have, but don’t become a slave to ever-higher tastes.
This is the approach that the later Epicureans would seem to recommend. By the time in which the Romans were the dominant cultural force in Europe, it is what the Epicureans have become known for: a cultivated ability to enjoy the finer things in life whilst not becoming slaves to their indulgence. The earlier Greek Epicureans, I would say, seem to be more restricted in their enjoyment of finer things, permitting themselves just a small glass of light wine, advising against any greater indulgence for fear that it leads to a desire for luxury: you would not want to buy yourself debts and burdens. But I speculate whether this might have been a shift in cultural and geo-political ground as much as a shift in the philosophical ground. I wonder if the material wealth of the Roman empire gave its intellectual elite easier access to a wider range of ‘fine things’; easier and wider than the equivalent of the Greek world, for instance. And if an Epicurean really can take pleasure from some pleasant thing without any danger of it becoming a burden, there seems to be little reason not to take what’s offered, provided you temper your consumption with moderation. It’s not a complicated lesson: If you live in a world where good wine is an expensive luxury, best take what pleasure you can from water. But if you live in a world where good wine is cheap and easily available, feel free to enjoy the wine (with moderation).
Coffee is my personal example and was an easy and self-deprecating go-to illustration in lectures. The life of an ambitious young academic might not require coffee but you would be forgiven for thinking that it can sometimes seem that way. At a point in my coffee-drinking past I decided I wanted ‘better’ coffee, and so I embarked on the long journey of coffee discovery that led me to specialist espresso machines and stepless micrometrical grinders, speciality beans sourced from the finest coffee-producing locations in the world and roasted within 24 hours of sale (sourced to the highest ethical standards, of course), and all the hipster rest. Throw in a decade of cultivation and know-how and I end up able to make, in my home, as fine an espresso as I could hope to get in any speciality cafe in the country.
I have mixed feelings about this. The first thing I notice is that I am no longer able to enjoy ‘basic’ coffee. Most coffee I drink out and about, when rarely that happens, is worse than I would make at home and so I am resentful of having to pay for it. But I know I used to enjoy that standard of coffee. In drifting into the vice of excessive coffee snobbery, haven’t I viciously robbed myself of a simple pleasure? Epicurus would be ashamed.
The second thing I notice is that my home-made coffee is much better than it used to be and I enjoy it more, and it comes at far less cost than the equivalent at any speciality cafe. It is pleasingly self-reliant. A lot of what it takes to make good coffee is a matter of know-how. And having put the effort in, I now have this know-how, and so I can make good coffee without any effort. I don’t chase the most expensive speciality beans because I know there’s no need: good beans are good enough and better beans make little difference. I know what I like, so I can avoid what I don’t. I still shop at a speciality coffee roaster but I buy the cheapest beans and prepare it using my relatively cheap old equipment, which I fix and service myself, and I still get to enjoy a morning coffee that is better than any speciality cafe within 100 miles. I have changed something in myself, and now I can take more pleasure from what I already have and can easily acquire. Epicurus would be proud.
I like to think I’ve found some kind of virtuous middle ground. I reason that if I am going to have the indulgence of drinking coffee, I might as well make the best of it and so make the best that I can from what I have or can easily acquire. My tastes have become snobby, it’s true, but I temper this luxury with moderation (I tend to only have one coffee, first thing in the morning) and other philosophical virtues: I value being self-reliant and economical, and I make sure I am not a slave to it. But if I am honest, with the perfect vision of hindsight, I suspect the Epicurean would advise me that it would have been wiser never to begin drinking coffee in the first place, or else remain content with freeze-dried instant. I think I made a mistake. It’s too late now! And besides which I am not, or not yet, a philosophical puritan; I’m not sure that would be a healthy ideal. Hume expressed a similar sentiment when he said that ‘nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable’ for a human being: in parts philosophical, social, and active, and not overcome by extremes of either. ‘Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.’ The more I live with Socrates, the less I find myself agreeing with Hume, but for now I still think he might have a point.
A final example: Music is another favourite example of mine because it is a case in which cultivating your sensibilities can lead to benefits that can come without cost. It is, therefore, a better example than wine or coffee, where cultivation and consumption always seems to come with a cost.
I’m interested in music and I play a little myself, but I am no expert. I know enough to know what I don’t know. It was a good experience for me to turn up to university and live with some ‘real’ musicians and realise just how amateur my abilities were. But what I have learned from my amateur attempts is that music listening (or playing) is much the same as wine drinking: it is a sensibility that can be cultivated. And with more cultivation and know-how, your trained ear can hear more than the untrained ear. In hearing more in music, you get more out of it. Because of this, music is a pleasure that can be added to without cost. All you need to do is cultivate your musical sensibilities.
How you go about doing this is something best left to the guidance of a real musician, but the basics ought to be obvious: study a little music theory, scales and harmonies and rhythms, etc. Perhaps try to play an instrument yourself; if you already play, play more and better. Expand your musical horizons, listening widely across a range of genres and styles. Find the good in them, even in what you don’t initially take to. Listen actively, not passively; try to hear as much as you can. Engage with it as a musician would want it to be engaged with: find the response in human terms. Don’t just slam it on in the background and pay no attention.
Music is feeding your soul. Train yourself to take more pleasure in it in exactly the same way as you would train yourself to take more pleasure from the food that you eat to feed your body. Needless to say the same can be said of art, literature, and all the rest. Human beings have already created more in these activities than could be consumed by a lifetime of indulgence; at this point it would seem that we are free to take as much as we choose from them with no fear that we might run out. Even though we could not call any of these things ‘necessary’, the Epicureans might grant a license for this indulgence on the basis that these are things that many of us already have or can very easily acquire. In that way it doesn’t seem to go against the Epicurean way.
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