--- date: '2023-11-09' description: epicurus's philosophy on desire, kinetic versus katastematic pleasure, virtues including prudence and friendship, atomism, and challenge to religion. id: Epicurus modified: 2026-06-06 00:11:17 GMT-04:00 tags: - philosophy - philos1aa3 title: Epicurus created: '2023-11-09' published: '2023-11-09' pageLayout: default slug: thoughts/university/twenty-three-twenty-four/philo-1aa3/Epicurus permalink: https://aarnphm.xyz/thoughts/university/twenty-three-twenty-four/philo-1aa3/Epicurus.md generator: quartz: v4.6.0 hostedProvider: Cloudflare baseUrl: aarnphm.xyz full: https://aarnphm.xyz/llms-full.txt --- Sources: Epicurus, _Letter to Menoeceus_ and _Principal Doctrines_ (PD), in Diogenes Laertius, _Lives_ X.122–154, [Hicks translation](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0258:book=10). Section numbers below are to Diogenes Laertius book X. [[thoughts/Socrates|Socrates]], as the course set him up: - care for the self: happiness and virtue are problems of knowledge - the claim that being is idea, that fundamental reality is immaterial and rational, belongs to [[thoughts/Plato|Plato]]‘s theory of forms more than to the historical Socrates Epicurus keeps the first and rejects the second. - Philosophy is care of the self: _“no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul”_ (122). - Reality is atoms moving in void (_Letter to Herodotus_, 39–44), so materialism replaces idealism. ## Desire Desires are natural or empty. Natural desires are necessary or merely natural (127; PD 29). ### Necessary _Not satisfying them brings pain._ They are necessary for one of three things (127): - happiness: philosophy, friends - freedom of the body from distress: shelter, clothing - life itself: food, water ### Natural but not necessary _Not satisfying them brings no pain, or a pain that is easy to dispel_ (PD 26, 30). Sex and luxurious food are the standard examples. ### Empty Desires that come from false opinion and have no natural limit (PD 15, 29): fame, power, wealth beyond need, and immortality. The cure is to change the opinion, since no amount of the object satisfies them. ## The notoriety of Epicurus What made him notorious in antiquity: - materialism, with nothing spiritual in nature - chance (the atomic swerve) in place of a final purpose - denial of an afterlife - hedonism: pleasure is the highest good ## What pleasure is For Epicurus there is no neutral state between pleasure and pain. Removing pain is pleasure, and its upper limit: _“the magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain”_ (PD 3). The end of life is _“the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul”_ (131), which is why he rejects the reading that he praises the pleasures of the profligate. ### Kinetic _Pleasure in motion: it depends on an object and comes in episodes._ Eating while hungry is the example. Once the pain of the lack is gone, more of the activity only varies the pleasure and does not increase it (PD 18). Pursued past that point it brings pain. ### Katastematic _Static pleasure: the stable condition of not lacking anything._ - _Aponia_: absence of bodily pain - _Ataraxia_: absence of mental disturbance The terms “kinetic” and “katastematic” come from a fragment of _On Choices_ quoted at 136. ### Why pleasure is the highest good 1. Cradle argument. Every animal, from birth, seeks pleasure and avoids pain before reason can mislead it (137; Cicero, _De Finibus_ I.30). The first good is the one nature pursues unprompted. 2. Conceptual argument. Epicurus says he cannot conceive of the good apart from the pleasures of taste, sex, hearing and sight (fragment quoted at X.6). Take away pleasure and the word “good” has no content left. ## Plato against pleasure as the good - Pleasure is the replenishment of a lack (_Philebus_ 31e–32b; _Republic_ IX 585a–b). - A life of pursuing pleasure is a life of refilling lacks that keep returning. - Pleasure plus wisdom is better than pleasure alone (_Philebus_ 60b–61a). A good that can be improved by adding something is not the highest good. Epicurus’s reply follows from his account of pleasure. Katastematic pleasure is the absence of lack, so the replenishment model only fits kinetic pleasure. And the virtues do not add a second good on top of pleasure: _“we choose the virtues too on account of pleasure”_ (138). They are inseparable from the pleasant life: _“it is impossible to live pleasantly without living wisely and well and justly”_ (PD 5; 132). ## Virtues > \[!note\] Note > > Personal qualities that assist us in the pursuit of happiness. Their value is instrumental, and the pleasure they secure is katastematic. ### Prudence, practical wisdom Prudence is the measuring of pleasures and pains: _“by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, all these matters must be judged”_ (130). Some pleasures are refused because they bring larger pains; some pains are accepted because larger pleasures follow (129). The greatest good is prudence, _“a more precious thing even than philosophy”_ (132). The practical result is a private, low-profile life: “live unnoticed” (_lathe biōsas_, fragment 551 Usener). By the world’s standards this looks like an unsuccessful life. ### Self-sufficiency Self-sufficiency means being able to live on little, so that a change of fortune costs nothing essential: _“they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it”_ (130). ### Frugality Frugality does not mean poverty. _“Nature’s wealth at once has its bounds and is easy to procure; but the wealth of vain fancies recedes to an infinite distance”_ (PD 15). Wealth in Epicurus’s sense is having what natural desires need. That limit is low, so it is easy to reach. ### Friendship _“Of all the means which are procured by wisdom to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends”_ (PD 27). Friends are a source of security: _“we do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help”_ (Vatican Sayings 34). ### Justice Justice is a contract. Natural justice is _“a symbol or expression of expediency, to prevent one man from harming or being harmed by another”_ (PD 31). Where no such agreement exists, as among animals that cannot make one, there is neither justice nor injustice (PD 32). - Origin. Lucretius tells the story: early humans lived without organisation, then neighbours began to form friendships and agreed neither to harm nor be harmed (_De Rerum Natura_ V.1011–1027). The pact is conventional. The motive is natural: security and friendship. - Why the unjust cannot be happy. Injustice is not bad in itself. It is bad because of the fear of being caught, and no one who breaks the pact can be confident of escaping detection (PD 34–35). - Not eternal. What is just varies with place and circumstance. A law that no longer serves mutual benefit stops being just (PD 36–38). So justice is a conventional good, valuable as a means to pleasure, and its content changes when circumstances change. ## Challenge to religion - Ours is one of infinitely many worlds in an infinite void (_Letter to Herodotus_, 45). - Nothing in nature is spiritual. Human beings are systems of atoms like everything else, and death is the end of sensation: _“death is nothing to us”_ (PD 2; 124–125). - The gods exist, but they are blessed and indestructible and take no interest in human affairs. They are not moved by sacrifice or prayer (PD 1; 123–124). - The target is the false belief about gods held by the many, which produces fear (123–124). Lucretius calls religion the cause of evil deeds, with the sacrifice of Iphigenia as the example (_De Rerum Natura_ I.80–101). The aim of philosophy is to free people from that fear. The claim that religion was invented by a powerful few to control the rest is older, from the Sisyphus fragment attributed to Critias, and Epicurus did not hold it. He took part in civic worship. ## Tetrapharmakos _The four-fold remedy_, as Philodemus summarises it (PHerc. 1005): - The gods present no fears. - Death presents no worry. - The good is readily attainable. - The terrible is readily endurable.