Epicurus

Socrates ideas:

• care for self → happiness and virtue are problems of knowledge
• Idealism: Being is Idea; fundamental reality is immaterial, spiritual, and rational
• Never by itself lead anyone astray

Epicurus

• Emphasize the value of philosophy as care of the self.
• Deny Idealism, affirm matterialism in the form of atomism

Desire

completely innocent, if it goes wrong because of its belief

May be necessary or not necessary

Necessary

non-satisfaction brings pain

• Happiness (philosophy, friends)
• Life (food, water)
• Untroubled body (law, leisure)

Not necessary

non-satisfaction not necessarily painful. Any pain of non-satisfaction relieved by other means (change one’s opinion about the object)

• Natural (sex, immortality)
• Conventional (reputation)

The notoriety of Epicurus

• materialism, denying the spiritual in nature
• belief in chance and no final purpose
• disbelief in afterlife
• hedonism: pleasure is the highest good

Idea of Pleasure

• A feeling, not a sensation
• An evaluation of sensation
• Pleasure and pain are distinct qualities, like the two poles of a magnet. Neither is merely the lack of the other

Pleasure

Kinetic

depends on an object and is intermittent or discontinuous Shadowed by pain Excess → produce pain

Katastematic

Continuous, independent of external objects. Types:

• Aponia: leisure, physical ease, stressless well-being
• Ataraxia: untroubled, tranquil mind

Un-quantified terms

Reasons for promoting pleasure as the highest good

1. Cradle Argument The goodness of pleasure is learned in the cradle. The first good, naturally pursued
2. Conceptual Argument Concept of good becomes meaningless when conceived as independent of pleasure

The more obstructive, unpersuasive the definition comes

Plato’s Against Pleasure as the Good

• Pleasure is the replenishment of lack
• Life spent in pursuit of pleasure constantly tries to fullfill newly arising lack
• Any pleasure is made better by adding virtue. - Pleasure plus wisdom is better than pleasure without wisdom - Pleasure plus courage is better than pleasure without courage

  So pleasure cannot be the highest good

⇒ Answer of Epicurus:

Wisdom, courage, and all the virtues are katastematic pleasures

Higher and lower hedonism

Virtues

NOTE

Personal qualities that assist us in the pursuit of happiness

Katastematic

Virtues according to Epicurus

Prudence, practical wisdom

Truly prudence have knowledge of kinetic pleasure ⇒ whether to choose or avoid it ⇒ never interfere with their katastematic pleasure

Successful life =: uncanny unsucessful life in the eye of the world Aim for self-sufficiency, cultivate leisures, prefer private life, private pleasure, low-profile

Learn to live in the little → circumstances changes ⇒ make due with less

Self-sufficiency

Frugality

Less toy ⇒ more katastematic pleasure Wealth shouldn’t be the most important

Doesn’t advocate poverty → invokes how we think wealth in a new way Wealth is not money, but the mean to enjoy life

Wealth is an abundant of katastematic pleasures

Basis in nature ⇒ easy to apply

Friendship

Being a friend, having friend ⇒ support katastematic pleasures

Awareness among friends that they are not alone Sense of security := katastematic pleasure of virtues

Justice

Can’t be happy when act unjust

⇒ Epicurus believes in social contract.

Human lives without any organisation

1st Civilisation: Agreement to prevent harm among themselves

• Why?: Motives is not fear, but the desire for friendship. Unpleasant to prepare to fight at every moment → Violence is not a way of life

IMPORTANT

Justice and pleasures are fundamental building blocks of society

Saw the needs for more formal definition of contract ⇒ Law and Justice

Justice is neither natural nor sheer conventional. Originated from conventional, but the motive is natural (pleasure of security and friendship)

• Justice is an conventional good contrived to promote pleasure
• Not eternal. Justice changes as circumstances change
• Not inherently good. Good as a means to the higher end of pleasure.

Challenge to Religion

• Our world is one of infinite worlds in endless void
• Nothing spiritual in nature. Human beings not special in nature. They are animals, system of matter, like everything else. Death is extinction.
• The gods takes no interest in human affairs and cannot be moved by sacrifice or prayer.
• Religious ceremonies are superstitious. They are the way a powerful few control the rest. The aim of philosophy is to liberate people from superstition.

Tetrapharmakos

The four-fold remedy

• The gods present no fears
• Death presents no worry
• The good is readily attainable
• The terrible is readily endurable