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Epicureanism (Episode 10)
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Is the ultimate aim of life tranquility?
Epicurus answered this question with a resounding "yes." The school he founded, Epicureanism, pitted itself against other ancient schools focused on virtue.
Michael and Caleb go deep into the philosophy, explain why they think it is mistaken, but also talk about what it can teach us today.
(00:41) Intro
(02:16) History of Epicureanism
(03:20) Epicurean Philosophy
(16:38) Differences Between Stoic and Epicurean Practice
(21:56) Similarities
(28:25) Problems with Epicureanism
(43:16) Why Does This Matter
(44:16) The Wisdom in Epicureanism
***
Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Something that I've added to my own practice is this redefinition of pleasure. This is something that I use all the time, which is this to
Redefining Pleasure with Stoicism
00:00:09
Speaker
say, look,
00:00:11
Speaker
Pleasure for the Stoics is still going to be preferred and different. You know, in so, in so far that I don't, they don't have to compromise my character. I should try to experience as much pleasure as possible. That's all fine and good. I try to minimize pain as much as possible, but there's a real tendency to try to say, well, what's the next thing? What's the bigger thing? What's the.
00:00:31
Speaker
And not only is there a tendency to try to go bigger in my own pursuit of things, but I actually actively suffer sometimes to try to reach those goals,
Introduction to Stoicism and Epicureanism
00:00:41
Speaker
right? Welcome to Stowe Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert.
00:00:59
Speaker
The ancient school of Stoicism had rivals. Perhaps the most important was the Epicureans. This is a school which, in my view, has a fundamentally mistaken philosophy. But it also contains a deep reservoir of wisdom about how to live. In this episode, Michael and I discuss what it is, offer our objections, and note what the Epicureans can teach us today.
00:01:26
Speaker
Once again, this is a new podcast, whether it's rating or subscribing in your favorite podcast player or reaching out with any feedback comments, we'd greatly appreciate it. And here is our conversation. Welcome to Stoa.
Epicureanism: Pursuit of Pleasure and Misconceptions
00:01:44
Speaker
My name is Caleb Ontiveros. Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Michael Trombley. And today we're going to be talking about the philosophy of Epicureanism.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, excited to talk about Epicureanism today. It's contrasts with Stoicism. I think it's a nice foil, both an alternative school of ancient thought and something that helps flesh out what it means to be a Stoic. You know, that's best done by contrasting it with something else, what it means to not be a Stoic, to be an Epicurean.
00:02:17
Speaker
Absolutely. So this podcast is focused on the theory and practice of Stoicism. And with many philosophies, it's always useful to start with a theory side. You know, what is the picture of
00:02:33
Speaker
humanity that the philosophy puts forth, what is the vision of a good life, especially with these ancient philosophies that the philosophy puts forth.
Historical Evolution of Epicureanism
00:02:44
Speaker
But before hopping into that, just on the historical side, Epicureanism was a philosophy developed by a fellow named Epicurus, and he was born in
00:02:58
Speaker
He was spent most of his time in or around, at any rate, Athens and built up a philosophical community, a philosophical school focused on this line of thought.
00:03:13
Speaker
And the philosophy was relatively popular for quite some time, both in ancient Greece and then it was transferred over to ancient Rome. It eventually fell out of favor amongst, say, Roman elites.
00:03:30
Speaker
and then sort of stayed in the background of a lot of philosophical discussions. So you have people like Thomas Jefferson, the American founding father, referencing Epicurus and stating that he is an Epicurean, and even Marx references Epicurus. So the main idea of Epicureanism is that
00:03:55
Speaker
humans are beings that pursue pleasure.
Understanding Epicurean Tranquility
00:03:59
Speaker
You can think of it as positive mental states. That's the account of
00:04:04
Speaker
human nature if you will is this is what we are geared towards is what we actually pursue and this isn't just a descriptive account it's not just an account of what humans are there's also this element that's it's a good thing that we are like this because pleasure is the only good and pain or suffering is the only evil so it is a
00:04:28
Speaker
hedonistic philosophy in that sense. It's focused on pleasure, positive mental states, negative mental states, and pain as the things of value in the world. And that's what the theoretical picture is. So that's the first pass. The largest confusion people have with Epicureanism is that, like many other ancient Greek philosophies,
00:04:55
Speaker
it has been caricatured. So when we say someone is a hedonist or an epicurean, usually we mean that they are far too focused on pleasure or they've developed, if you call someone epicurean, maybe they've developed especially sophisticated tastes around wine or food or what have you to the expense of other goods in the world.
00:05:21
Speaker
That's not right. That's not what Epicureanism is. Epicurus himself was pretty similar to the Stoics in some respects. He counseled that, you know, it's the rich who are people who have few in once, not
00:05:37
Speaker
those who have many material possessions and so on. So instead of cultivating a life of where one's in constant pursuit of maximizing their pleasure, he thought that what people ought to do is cultivate the character of tranquility, where they experience longer lasting, more stable pleasures as opposed to ephemeral things that might result from whether it's
00:06:08
Speaker
ecstatic social events or wealth or the pursuit of social office. He thought no people should instead be more interior and ground themselves in tranquility or the Greek word for this would be atoraxia. That's the quick picture then. What do you think we should add to that to Michael? Yeah, great. I think you nailed it. I think you nailed that kind of core difference too.
00:06:36
Speaker
When we think about, if you're coming from a Stoic background, the core difference there being what is essential human nature, the Epicurence, the pursuit of pleasure for the Stoics, it's the perfection of the function, the achievement of virtue.
00:06:49
Speaker
I think to build on what you were just saying at the end there, I think that's a pretty clear distinction. But what it gets interesting is when we try to flesh out into practice, because as you said, there's these ways of fine or kind of mocking
Pleasure and Pain in Epicureanism
00:07:04
Speaker
hedonism. It's often used as an insult today. It's not a good thing to be called a hedonist today.
00:07:10
Speaker
But in function, the pursuit, as you said, of pleasure looks a lot like the pursuit of tranquility. And so for that, we had to understand what the Epicureans meant by pleasure. So what they meant by pleasure was the absence of pain, or rather they define there as being two types of pleasure. One was
00:07:32
Speaker
the removal of pain. So this is the kind of pleasure I feel when I'm very thirsty and I take a drink of water. There's this kind of pleasure as my thirst is dissipating. It's the transition away from pain. And then there's this kind of pleasure when I exist at a painless.
00:07:49
Speaker
You know, I'm well-fed, I'm well-closed, I'm at appropriate temperature, I'm sitting in a room with some good friends of mine, I have my needs satisfied. That was the ideal, this absence of pain. And pains come in, that was what they viewed as pleasure. So they didn't actually think, they make these interesting arguments where they don't actually think
00:08:15
Speaker
who's eating plain food versus somebody who's eating fancy food, as long as both of those people are well-fed, as long as both of those people are in the absence of pain, their pleasure is equivalent, their pleasure just feels different or looks different. I think you can actually argue against this part of Epicureanism and you can say, well, no, clearly some food tastes better than others, but that's not the type of pleasure they were looking at. They were really looking at pleasures as the absence of pain.
Minimalism in Epicurean Philosophy
00:08:44
Speaker
pain itself then had two categories, which was mental and physical, right? And so physical pain, they thought was actually quite easy to eliminate or rather
00:08:59
Speaker
the body needs very little to receive a kind of physical tranquility. It needs enough food, enough clothes, some shelter, things like this. And then there was the kind of mental pain. And then mental pain comes from a variety of different reasons. But one of our biggest sources of mental pain is actually unmet desires. So when we're not happy with our potatoes and vegetables, when we want the big fancy $1,000 dinner, then
00:09:29
Speaker
we're actually causing mental pain. We're suffering because we desire these fabulous, excessive things. So when we desire this kind of extreme pleasure, what we today would call extreme pleasure, the Epicureans say, well, no, you're actually suffering. You're actually welcoming in this harm. So
00:09:52
Speaker
the way to achieve tranquility in the picture that it looked like was this picture of the Epicurean garden. So, you know, as I said, you have your food, you have your shelter, you have a few good friends, and it's this kind of minimalistic lifestyle where you didn't want more than that, you didn't actively pursue more than that, because having these extreme desires are only gonna welcome mental pain. So what I was trying to do there, Kelvin, and happy for you to jump in here,
00:10:21
Speaker
I was trying to construct this picture of Epicurean pleasure and practice as being very minimalistic. It's about satisfying base physical needs, and it's about achieving a state of minimal mental suffering. And you do that by
00:10:37
Speaker
not by achieving extravagant things, but by actually not wanting extravagant things and being satisfied with plain, easily achievable, normal things. And ironically, to somebody who has this kind of stereotype of hedonism, they might think, well, that's not the life of highest pleasure, but the Epicurean would disagree. They would say, no, that is the life of highest pleasure, because the person satisfied with few things is the person who has the least amount of mental suffering, and they have their physical needs met.
00:11:07
Speaker
So it's this kind of, it's a bit more of a boring picture than our contemporary use of hedonist might, might make it seem. What do you think about that? Yeah, it's, I think it's boring in the sense that there isn't this focus on a sort of extreme scavenging for pleasure or ecstatic experiences or what have you, but it is radical sort of in the sense that, you know, it's,
00:11:38
Speaker
I think another line is, he who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing. Then that is a picture of a humanity that offers a egalitarian route to the good life, somewhat in a similar way that Stoicism does, where both the Stoics and Epicurus say that you don't need that much to live well.
00:12:07
Speaker
What you need to do is, you know, work on your desires and the epicure sense, work on cultivating this sense of tranquility, or if you're a stoic, what you need to do is simply work on your thought and decisions, which both of those things are something that anyone can do, even if they are not especially easy projects.
00:12:31
Speaker
But just I think to try summarize some of what you said there about the view about pleasure. You know, I said that the Epicureans were all about promoting positive mental states, but there's this division between the positive mental state that comes from
00:12:51
Speaker
alleviating a desire, basically, or the positive mental state that emerges when someone is simply not suffering. They are free from the presence of suffering or pain.
00:13:06
Speaker
And it's this latter one that is the state of tranquility. It's the more stable state. Whereas the former one is contingent. It depends on our desires. And there's nearly a Buddhist type picture where you have desires that
00:13:24
Speaker
emerge cause suffering until they are satisfied and often given the way humans are set up we want some other thing and now that next desire that next one causes further suffering. Yeah as you were saying it's contingent upon desires it's contingent upon you know suffering to an extent it's a contingent upon
00:13:49
Speaker
not being
Philosophical Approaches: Epicureanism vs. Stoicism
00:13:50
Speaker
satisfied. You have to be thirsty to feel the pleasure that comes from alleviating thirst. You have to be lonely to get the pleasure that comes from having company. So this kind of transitionary pleasure, which a lot of people seek, I think you're right to point out in our modern lives, right? We often say, well, what am I lacking? What am I missing? And then we pursue that in kind of a short-sighted, short-term cycle.
00:14:17
Speaker
This is not a satisfying way to go about things. This is related to the common criticism of the hedonistic treadmill that we have now, which is about a constant pursuit of more. Another thing that I wanted to add about Epicureanism is I think that many people come to philosophy
00:14:40
Speaker
At least I did. I think many people come to philosophy as Epicureans in a sense, or at the very least as Utilitarians. I used to teach first years, and if you ask people what's right or wrong, a lot of the time it's going to be, well, what helps the most people and what harms the most people? So for those that don't know, Utilitarianism is an 18th century ethical theory.
00:15:05
Speaker
basically says when you're calculating was the right or wrong action what you do is you measure up what causes the most benefit for people or what causes the least amount of harm and then you kind of you can make a calculus based on that. And utilitarianism is different from epicureanism because utilitarianism does this at a
00:15:28
Speaker
basically a universal scale, right? Like what causes the most harm or most benefit across all human beings? Whereas the curinism is asking you to do this calculus at an individual level, right? What's gonna be the best course of action as the one that causes you the most pleasure and the least amount of harm? And I think most people intuitively, if they haven't studied philosophy, adopt this perspective. And I even think many people come to stoicism with this perspective. And you see this all the time.
00:15:57
Speaker
is people are suffering and they want to not suffer. They have some sort of issue, emotional regulation with anxiety, with a lack of meaning, and it's causing pain, and they want a solution to that pain. And so they start studying stoicism. But what the Epicureans would say is that you're actually just practicing Epicureanism, right? Because if what you're pursuing is a lack of anxiety, if what you're pursuing is ataraxia, tranquility,
00:16:25
Speaker
a lack of existential dread, then your ultimate goal, your ultimate aim is an epicurean one. And I think that's something interesting for people to think about, myself included. Sometimes I often fall into that epicurean trap of pursuing things that make me feel good instead of pursuing things that I think are absolutely right or being motivated by virtue. Yeah, so I think that's something interesting to keep in mind.
00:16:55
Speaker
One important question is, okay, now that we have at least the sense of the theoretical differences between Epicureanism, Stoicism, and other philosophies, what does this look like in practice?
Societal Roles in Epicureanism and Stoicism
00:17:09
Speaker
So how would a practicing Epicurean behave difference from a practicing?
00:17:16
Speaker
stoic and to get some answer to that question we can look at the historical examples of Epicureans and Stoics and one key difference between the two schools is that the Epicurean their home was in the garden and this was a
00:17:36
Speaker
You can say this in a metaphorical sense, but also in a literal sense, there was an Epicurean garden, which is where the Epicurean events were held, where the school took place. And this image promotes the idea of sort of
00:17:54
Speaker
in a way more isolating yourself from the external world in order to promote tranquility, creating a community of Epicureans who are focused on the good.
00:18:08
Speaker
and not being so active in the city politics or other city events. And you can contrast that with the Stoics, where the Stoics thought that it was important to cultivate a sense of
00:18:26
Speaker
sort of self-sufficiency, a sense of individual virtue, but the way that virtue is expressed is through roles in the city, if you will. So their home, the Stoics' home, was not in an isolated garden, but it would be in the city where, depending on who you are, you find yourself with particular roles, depending on how you're embedded in your community, whether they are political, communal, family-oriented, and that vision of life
00:18:54
Speaker
is distinct from the Epicurean one. So I think that's an essential difference and one reason why some people are attracted to Stoicism or different Epicurean approaches to life is because they are more attracted to this isolationist picture or a picture where you can cultivate virtue while remaining in the city, if you will.
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I would say that's the biggest difference. You mentioned at the start of the podcast how Epicureanism fell out of favor with Roman elites or educated Roman culture. And at least part of that picture, I assume, would be because Stoicism provides, you know, you think of Marcus Aurelius, I think it's
00:19:51
Speaker
you know, book two, chapter one, saying he reminds himself that he'll wake up and deal with ungrateful, conniving, difficult people. Stoicism is this thing about when you're in the thick of it, you know, when you're in the dirt, how can you survive and do the best job you can in that situation? And Epicureanism is this picture of being in the dirt, being in the thick of it, being around conniving people is stressing you out. It's like,
00:20:16
Speaker
just don't worry about it, you know, just leave, just get out of there. And I guess maybe large scale Epicureanism might think that like,
00:20:24
Speaker
a lot of human machinations, a lot of human states, this is my first time thinking about this, but a lot of human activity itself is because they're not pursuing tranquility, because they're not pursuing at least the Epicurean picture of tranquility, of satisfying of your needs. So instead you're pursuing more and you're building up these situations and these events and you're putting emphasis on these roles, right?
00:20:51
Speaker
In some roles, you know, like father, mother, brother, sister, these are core, but things like, I'm not sure how much sympathy Epicureans would have for your role as a politician or your role in your job if that was causing you more stress than pleasure, more stress than tranquility, how much sympathy they would have about fulfilling that kind of role. They'd think, you know, you're getting caught up in something else. So I think that's, yeah, that's absolutely...
00:21:19
Speaker
major difference in practice.
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Speaker
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Eliminating Harmful Beliefs
00:22:08
Speaker
One thing I wanted to add is I think there's also some similarities, namely that when we look at, so before I made this division between physical suffering and mental suffering, physical suffering you alleviate by being part of the garden, you have enough food, you have enough company, that's all, you have a house, a shelter, but mental suffering is really complicated. And for the Epicureans,
00:22:36
Speaker
A lot of their study in practice was about eliminating beliefs or the thinking patterns that were false or harmful in contributing to this suffering. They emphasized a lot coming in terms of death. There's a famous argument by Epicurus about how death should not be fearful for you because when you're alive, you're not dead, and when you're dead, death isn't harming you, you're dead.
00:23:04
Speaker
There's these arguments about why we shouldn't worry about the thoughts of God.
00:23:11
Speaker
or worry about God's being angry with us. So there was a lot of practices about identifying the kinds of beliefs or anxieties that made people suffer the most and then applying to kind of a therapy or remedy to those. And in practice, I would say that looks almost identical to stoicism, just the difference with stoicism and stoicism says, you know, you shouldn't think these things because they're false
00:23:37
Speaker
And Epicureanism says you shouldn't think these things because these are the kinds of ways of thinking that ends up being more harmful than beneficial. But that kind of psychological reflection and psychological discipline was a similar part of Epicureanism. Yeah, that's right. Absolutely. In some ways, the Epicureans and Stoics
00:24:00
Speaker
have more in common with each other than the two philosophies do with many modern.
00:24:08
Speaker
philosophies or ideologies. They both have this focus on cultivating virtue. For the Epicureans, you want to cultivate virtue because that's what leads to a more tranquil life. So it's not primary in the same way it is for the Stoics, but it still is of utmost importance. The two philosophies are quite distinct from
00:24:34
Speaker
Modern philosophies, even when you look at modern philosophies like utilitarianism that are similar to Epicureanism, they have the same, or at least very similar, often accounts of the good. The classical utilitarian will say that pleasure is the only good, pain is the only bad, and what you want to do is maximize pleasure. And Epicurean picture agrees with that.
00:24:56
Speaker
but has a more virtue-focused approach or individual-focused approach to thinking about what it is to live a good life and is less concerned with questions like how do you maximize the good across all people or all
00:25:15
Speaker
animals, what have you. It's a different way of thinking about ethics. It's less focused on maximization and more focused on cultivating a way of being. I think that's a good picture of the practice. So yeah, as you said, it is still a practice. It is still a philosophy as a way of life, which in a way separates it from these modern philosophies as you were pointing to. In terms of other things of how it manifests in practice,
00:25:46
Speaker
I would say for those listening, just really emphasizing that idea, if you're going to be charitable with Epicureanism, really understanding and practice how minimalistic an Epicurean lifestyle will look like. Ironically, according to the Epicureans, those most in pursuit of pleasure would have less possessions
00:26:09
Speaker
less focus on nice things, owning things, than almost anybody in a modern Western society. I'm in Canada, you're in the United States. Almost anybody in those positions, and almost anybody, more so than almost anybody in any society would have if they had the money to acquire more things.
00:26:29
Speaker
Most people would, you know, there's been this contemporary movement towards minimalism. And I guess Epicureanism is kind of channeling some of that beforehand, where just to say, look, if your real goal is pleasure, you're going to want to actually have less things, take less things, acquire less.
00:26:48
Speaker
And you can contrast that with someone like Marcus Aurelius, someone like Seneca. The Stoics were not afraid of having things. They just said you just had to relate to them properly. There's no problem with having money. There's no problem with having a house full of possessions. You just gotta use them properly and you gotta understand their purpose and their function. But the Epicureans, I think,
00:27:13
Speaker
We're actively more skeptical of your capacity to have things without desiring more things and skeptical of your capacity to, you know, why would you even want to earn the money to acquire these things if it's not for mistaken desires that those will make you happy, right? Or mistaken desires that those will satisfy your needs. So.
00:27:36
Speaker
There's just that fundamental irony, I can't stress enough, that these hedonists wanted less than almost any other philosophy is going to recommend, either in ancient times or modern times. And only once you wrap your head around that, can you see, okay, well, this actually looks a lot different than you might think a hedonist philosophy looks like. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:27:58
Speaker
So at this point, I think we should talk about some objections to Epicureanism. You know, we've laid out the theory, what should we think about it? What did the two of us think about it? And then we can wrap up with any insights or other areas of agreements between the Stoics and the Epicureans.
00:28:19
Speaker
A classic objection to Epicureanism that the Stoics gave that many other schools have given that I think is exceptionally persuasive is just the idea that not all pleasures are good. So on the account of Epicureanism we've given, one of the central claims is that pleasure is the only
00:28:47
Speaker
good, and all pleasures are good even if some are better than others. And it just seems like that's probably not true. We can imagine pleasures of a sadist who is torturing someone and that either results in a pleasure from satisfying a desire or in some way results in the absence of pain for them. We would not value that
00:29:14
Speaker
even if it does have this benefit of. So that notion of pleasure clashes with our idea of responsibility, these other ideas of it matters what you're taking pleasure in. Pleasure is almost a measurement of an action. It's not the end of itself.
00:29:36
Speaker
And that's a key idea, I think, that many oestoics latched onto, which is best pleasure is the evaluation of an action or perhaps a natural reaction to an action or event. And we shouldn't evaluate actions
00:29:58
Speaker
only by the amount of pleasure they produce because of cases like the sadists. The other one I'll mention just before turning it over to what you think Mike is at the there's a philosopher
00:30:14
Speaker
famous libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick who gives an example of what he calls a happiness machine. The main idea is, suppose there's some machine where you can plug into it and what will happen is you will live the most pleasurable life. The problem is that this machine is completely virtual and whatever life you lead will simply just be happening in your head. It won't have any more reality than that.
00:30:43
Speaker
And I think most people don't want to plug in because they think there's more to the world than merely feeling good. So these two cases, the case of the sadist, the case of the happiness machine, I think are
00:31:01
Speaker
especially the status, I would say, are good indications that Epicureanism, though, has some useful things to say about how we should relate to our desires is not the correct philosophical theory. What do you think about that, Mike? Yeah, great. I think those are two good examples. And I think they're two different arguments about
00:31:28
Speaker
things that need to have value, right? So I think I took the sadist example as, look, there's this thing called just like morality, ethics, virtue, there's a sense in which good and bad exists detached from pleasure and pain, right? And we can clearly see this because when a sadist is
00:31:51
Speaker
getting pleasure out of doing sadistic things. We want to say there's something wrong there and we can't point to his pain as being wrong because he's not suffering or she's not suffering, they're enjoying it. There seems to be something external from that.
00:32:09
Speaker
I guess with that one, to play Devil's Advocate, the Epicurean here, I guess they would say that, maybe they would say something along the lines of, you know, what's wrong here with the sadist conception is that it's harming somebody else. It's inflicting pain. You pick the example of a sadist.
00:32:28
Speaker
And I would be interested, Caleb, if you had any examples of intuitions of situations that go against morality that don't involve
Stoic Criticism of Epicureanism
00:32:38
Speaker
pleasure or pain being inflicted on somebody else, or pain being inflicted upon somebody else for the sake of somebody's pleasure. I think that that would be something there that the Epicurean could push back on. But that morality example, it reminds me of Euthyphro's dilemma
00:32:58
Speaker
platonic dialogue where the character youth throw is discussing with Socrates about piety you know what is pious what is the are things good and then the gods agree or
00:33:12
Speaker
Do the gods deem these things to be good and then they are good? Which is that, do gods create value or do gods just discover moral value and correctly identify moral value that already exists? And I see this as the art, the Euthyphrodilemma, where
00:33:32
Speaker
this would be the counter to the Epicurean, the criticism of the Epicurean would say, well look, it's pretty, because the Epicureans say, look, you should be virtuous, because virtuous people tend to be the most tranquil, because they don't feel guilty, they don't have people who want to get revenge on them. And so you might end criticism to say, well, that's pretty darn convenient, Epicurus, you know.
00:33:55
Speaker
It's pretty lucky of you that our intuitions about morality happen to graph on exactly to your intuitions about pleasure and pain. That's super lucky. And if those ever get pulled apart, maybe to say this example of work, maybe it doesn't, run up in an issue where you have to pick one, you have to pick your intuitions about morality, or you have to pick your intuitions about pleasure and pain. I have some things to say about the brain, the experience machine, but yeah, anything you want to say in response to that, Kyiv?
00:34:25
Speaker
So I'll respond to the case of the sadist and then we can talk about what you think about the happiness machine case too. So I think the relevant question in the sadist example is not whether the Epicurean can condemn the sadist. I think they typically can. They can say, as you did, that the sadist causes suffering to others and that is
00:34:53
Speaker
enough suffering that it outweighs any pleasure the sadist might get. And they can also say things like the character that sadism promotes is ultimately something that turns out worse for the sadist. Though, of course, as you said, that seems somewhat convenient for them. You know, is that always true that
00:35:17
Speaker
the sadist's character results in more suffering than pleasure over time, it's not obvious. But I think what makes this example so convincing to me is that the Epicurean cannot condemn the pleasure the sadist gets from the act in the sense that they must still say that pleasure has goodness inherent in it.
00:35:46
Speaker
because it is the only thing that is good and now they need to think, you know, take into account these other questions, you know, what's the effect on others or what's the long-term cause that, or what's the long-term effect of having a character that takes pleasure in this sort of thing. Whereas I think what one should say is that there's simply no, nothing good about experiencing the sadist pleasure.
00:36:17
Speaker
that, you know, that's it. So I think that's what drives home that counter example to me is this idea that the Epicurean looks like they're committed to the idea that pleasure is always good, even if it's not good on net, of course, but it just seems like pleasure is not always good. Sometimes it's completely irrelevant to evaluating the value of an
00:36:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a compelling counter argument. Wasn't understanding that distinction before. You said it about, you know, it's not simply, it's not simply that the sadist or the person that takes pleasure out of hurting others. It's not simply the fact that this intuitively seems wrong to us. That's not your point. And then how can they explain that away? Because as you said, they can explain that away by referring to the suffering they're causing.
00:37:13
Speaker
It's the fact that they have no way of talking about or judging that the pleasure felt by the person harming others in a way that's negative at all because pleasure is just imbued with this positive moral force. It is imbued with this, and maybe they're closely related. Maybe they sometimes cause each other, but to say it's a one-to-one, as you point out in these kinds of situations, it makes that one-to-one correspondence seem really weird.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, I'm compelled by that. I think that's persuasive. The other example you raised, I think is a good one about the experience machine.
Nature and Relationships in Stoicism
00:37:51
Speaker
So, you know, in the 2000s example, just the matrix, you know, somebody plugs you in and you experienced the world. Because I think the example of the sadist is about.
00:38:01
Speaker
Well, how do we account for, or what do we have to say about morality that's separate from pleasure, or conceptions of good and bad that's separate from pleasure? And I think this other one, this experience machine is a question about where we place the value of truth, or where we place the value of meaning in a sense.
00:38:18
Speaker
Because we do not just want, you know, if we take a look at the Stoic picture, the Stoic would say, you want to be a good person. You don't just want to think you're a good person and then feel good about yourself, right? You want to actually be a good, you want to have meaningful friendships. You don't want to just have everybody pretending to be your friend. And then you feel, oh, wow, I'm so popular. I have such great friendships with people, but they all hate you behind your back. Like you want to, you want to actualize your nature.
00:38:49
Speaker
You don't want to just feel good about actualizing your nature. So there's this sense of truth and meaningfulness to living in the stoic picture that Epicureanism loses out on. And as you said, I think the Epicureans can have that internal consistency. I think the Epicureans can say,
00:39:08
Speaker
You think you want meaning and truth, but you just want meaning and truth because, you know, the person who actually has good friends tends to not learn, tends to have more pleasure because they tend to not learn that their friends actually hate them. Like it's just like, if it's true in reality, it's more secure. It's more likely to be to provide long-term tranquility, but that's why we value truth.
00:39:32
Speaker
It's a tool gathering pleasure, but I don't think that's persuasive. I don't think I, and the other thing that the Epicareans could say is, you know, just the fact that you wouldn't plug yourself into the matrix is not the same as it being better for you because we could have a mental hangup.
00:39:48
Speaker
where the idea of plugging ourselves in is very uncomfortable. But if someone could plug us in without us knowing, without us noticing, we didn't have to make that choice. I think there is some something to say in that sense, we might be better off for it. So I guess what I'm saying there is the fact that we might be hesitant to plug ourselves into the experience machine or the fact that it might seem intuitively or viscerally a poor choice is not the same as it being a bad choice.
00:40:16
Speaker
But at the end of the day, I'm more struck by that stoic picture of, you know, you want to actualize your function. You don't just want the psychological benefits of doing so. It seems like a shallow life. You know, when we only have, when we only have one to live, we only have one, one swing at this. That's my thought on that example.
00:40:34
Speaker
Absolutely. I would say that the experience machine is less compelling than the sadist example, but it does raise a lot of questions about what else might be of value to beans like us as opposed to pleasure.
Ethical Dilemmas in Epicureanism
00:40:53
Speaker
There are all these related cases like should you keep
00:40:56
Speaker
promises made to someone after they have died or something like this, where keeping your promise will not cause that person to have any more or less pleasure, any more or less suffering. But there's still this sense that there's something about
00:41:14
Speaker
truth about keeping your agreements that is good and potentially you would be in some respects making that person worse off by not keeping your agreements or you would be treating them in a way you shouldn't be treating them. And so up in question or at any rate, it's not easy for the Epicurean to explain why that would be the case.
00:41:43
Speaker
I think the Epicurean would have to do a lot of heavy lifting on saying we've developed these kind of heuristics, we've developed these kind of intuitions about breaking promises being false or being harmful, then those intuitions are just heuristics or proxies for things that tend to produce pleasure or tend to reduce pain. I think they would have to do a lot of heavy lifting by saying a lot of our conceptions of morality are things that we've developed
00:42:11
Speaker
as general guidelines to being as tranquil as possible. But I think all of what both these examples have in common is we're just saying no to that. We're saying, or at least we're saying the stoics would say no to that. There's something else. There's something else in play here than just a heuristic or a strategy for reducing suffering and maximizing pleasure. There's something else the morality tries to capture or tries to describe about the world.
00:42:38
Speaker
So the question arises, how does this matter on the level of practice? And the theme that I think emerges from these kinds of questions about Epicureanism is that there's more to life than tranquility or pleasure. So if you're thinking about making a decision, if you're thinking about some kind of life path,
00:43:02
Speaker
one shouldn't merely be thinking about questions of experience. And perhaps many people overrate, you know, how much.
00:43:11
Speaker
you know, how uncomfortable they might experience as a result of a particular action, or maybe even how much pleasure they would get after an action. And it's, there's more to the world, more to value than our experience is the main upshot or the main practical upshot of these objections. And that matters when it comes to making everyday decisions. Yeah. Well put.
00:43:36
Speaker
The last thing we can discuss before wrapping this off is, okay, so we spent some time explaining what Epicureanism is.
Pleasure, Truth, and Meaning in Life Decisions
00:43:43
Speaker
We've explained some key problems with philosophy and contrasted it with aspects of Stoicism. But of course, the tradition has a lot of wisdom in it. So let's end with some notes on that. You know, what comes to mind when you think about what the Epicureans can offer us today?
00:44:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good one. I think what comes to mind with what the Epicurean, something that I've added to my own practice is this conception, is this redefinition of pleasure. We already hit on it, but this is something that I use all the time, which is this to say, look,
00:44:26
Speaker
Pleasure for the Stoics is still going to be preferred and different. You know, in so, in so far that I don't, they don't have to compromise my character. I should try to experience as much pleasure as possible. That's all fine and good. I try to minimize pain as much as possible, but there's a real tendency to try to say, well, what's the next thing? What's the bigger thing? What's the.
00:44:46
Speaker
And not only is there a tendency to try to go bigger in my own pursuit of things, but I actually actively suffer sometimes to try to reach those goals, right? Like, so I might say, well, look, I need to, I need to make a lot of money, which, which involves hard work. So I can get this nice shiny new toy or go on this vacation or something like this, or I need to deprive myself in the short term. I need to save money. Like I need to.
00:45:17
Speaker
do all these things that are short-term difficult in pursuit of this big thing at the end. And I think Epicureanism causes me to kind of question that line of thinking and say, well, look,
00:45:30
Speaker
Is that what life is about? Is it about suffering so that I can have this big payoff? Or is it about trying to be as happy as I can be in the moment, as tranquil as I can be in the moment, which involves being as satisfied with what I have? You know, all of us have much, much more than any person.
00:45:49
Speaker
You know, perhaps someone like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, you know, they had a lot more wealth. They could do different things, but our access to the internet or access to physical security medicine.
00:46:01
Speaker
access to food, a variety of experiences. If you're in Western, if you're in Canada or the United States, there's already, at least in my experience, access to lots of amazing things. So trying to take more enjoyment of those in the moment, that's a big thing that I'm working on that I've taken from Epicureanism.
00:46:25
Speaker
Another thing that I've taken ironically is just a joy in the reduction of suffering. So this view of this second type of pleasure. So that was one type of pleasure, which was just like being satisfied with tranquility, satisfied with having enough. And then the other type of pleasure is reducing suffering. So trying to take joy from, you know, when I'm really thirsty on a hot day and I just did a workout, taking joy from drinking water. When I'm really tired after a long day of work, taking joy from sleeping, from lying in my
00:46:54
Speaker
When I'm hungry, taking a joy in eating large, this kind of idea of enjoying these small transitions towards tranquility, that's something I really take on in my day to day. I guess to wrap those up, Epicureanism has really inspired the way I deal with indifference.
00:47:14
Speaker
way that I deal with external goods and the way I try to relate to those in terms of pleasure and pain have been deeply influential for me in that sense, but not I think as influential in terms of the way I orient the ultimate goal of my life. I'm still compelled by this stoic picture of virtue instead. What about you Caleb? What are your thoughts?
Desire Management for Happiness
00:47:34
Speaker
Absolutely. Those are all
00:47:36
Speaker
All good. I would say, for me, I think I would name three aspects of Epicureanism, two which it shares in common with Stoicism and another which is slightly different.
00:47:53
Speaker
So the first is just this idea that as Seneca quotes a peculiar scene once, if you wish to make Pythakles rich, do not add to his material goods but subtract from his desires. So there's this emphasis on
00:48:15
Speaker
As you mentioned, sort of desire management, this discipline of desire, and often what you want to do or who you want to be is cultivate yourself to be someone who doesn't want these unnecessary goods, unnecessary things.
00:48:33
Speaker
The second aspect that Epicureanism shares with Stoicism as well is just this thought that happiness is available. You don't need that much to live well in a given moment. And I think like Stoicism, it forces you to question, to step back whenever you're in the thick of things, whenever I'm maybe caught up in a particular project. You know, do you have
00:48:59
Speaker
enough do you have what you need at the current moment and typically these thoughts about us being dependent on externals things outside of us are misleading and I think both the Epicurean and the Stoic will often say look you have you do have what you need in the current moment and that is enough if you orient yourself in the right way. The very
00:49:25
Speaker
The final aspect, which I think is slightly different from Stoicism, is this idea of passivity. So the Epicureans may have gone too far in the direction of extracting themselves from the city and isolating themselves in a garden. But there is this insight that the Epicureans had, which is that some games are just worth exiting from.
00:49:48
Speaker
And in their current moment, like the sorts of games they were leaving, not competing on, were these political, military ones which probably we would think are good
00:50:03
Speaker
things to not partake in. There's not that much glory or honor and simply playing another part in this long history of cities conquering one another and then being the conqueror and so on. What is all that for? The Epicarians extracted themselves from that game.
00:50:26
Speaker
And there's a challenge there, which is of the traditional roles people have of the calls for action, there are some times where what's required probably is simply exiting the relevant game or leaving to focus on what really matters instead of staying in the thick of it.
00:50:50
Speaker
So that's a challenge that I think is always worth having in the back of one's mind. Yeah. I love that third example. It reminds me of Seneca's calls for consistency or Epitetus's example of the man who's asked to hold the chamber pot, which is this idea of.
00:51:10
Speaker
You know, either, I guess the takeaway from that is either exit the game or play it well and commit to it. But in order to do that, you have to kind of ask yourself if it's worth exiting. And I think sometimes, as you point out, the Stoics can take a lot of these games for granted or a lot of these like social machinations for granted.
00:51:35
Speaker
And it comes across when you read Stoics, right? They get caught up in the way that philosophers should have a beard or the way people should dress or
Modern Lessons from Epicureanism
00:51:45
Speaker
things like this. And they're very clear these kind of cultural artifacts, right? They're very clearly
00:51:51
Speaker
talking about things that are, were just most relevant in this kind of Roman period of time. And from our perspective seems like, well, you didn't have to play that at all. You didn't have to participate in that at all. That doesn't seem essential in a certain way. So yeah, great point there to remind us to ask ourselves, are there some games that we shouldn't be playing? Do you have any examples from your own life when you've done this, when you've gotten out?
00:52:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's always an interesting question. I think that, I think there's one example that comes to mind are probably there's some amounts of pressure to be involved in political games or discussions on the national scale that are not always worth spending time on. And I think the way people spend time on those games as often
00:52:45
Speaker
probably a lot of people would be better off if they didn't spend so much time glued to their phone, reading the news regularly and so on. So I think that's something that the Epicureans would push for. And I think that there's always some temptation to stay on top of things. Politics is often, at least I find it very entertaining and intellectually interesting. It seems important, but often the better move is to extract yourself.
00:53:15
Speaker
from that. To your point there, that's a perfect example I think of how there's room in between the garden, you know, there's
00:53:25
Speaker
some space for political participation that falls in between constant obsessing and micromanaging and participation and isolationist existing in the garden and entirely removing yourself, right? So there's these kinds of degrees and scales. And yeah, even if the garden of the Epicureans has gone too far, um, it's still worth asking yourself what degree of participation you want. I think that's a good example that demonstrates that.
00:53:53
Speaker
Another example might be is an economist who I follow and I think he does a lot of good work. His name is Brian Kaplan. He has a piece which is called, this is not the exact name, but it's something like in defense of creating bubbles, which he argues it's good to create and cultivate your own social bubble of people like you who
00:54:22
Speaker
have the same values and who don't get trapped in sources of conflict that you might have if you are maybe wider, had a wider range of people you bump into every day. And part of life is cultivating. And the digital world, something like a garden where you don't just let everyone into your mental headspace, everyone into your feed, into your email, whatever it is, but you have a
00:54:52
Speaker
bubble that is productive and where you can form deeper, longer relationships with people.
00:54:59
Speaker
And I think that sort of pushes up against this narrative of it's good to diversify your friends. And there's always a question about why, you know, why is that? Why would it be good to diversify your friends? In some cases, you would learn a lot about the world and that might be a good fit for some people. But in other cases, the sort of pressure to not create a bubble probably just leads people to maybe focus too much on
00:55:24
Speaker
people who are outside of their social group or can end up generating points of conflict that just aren't that productive. So I think this is another thought that should be understood in the same way the chamber pot example is understood, which is something like if you want to have a wider range of friends, if you don't want to be the person who cultivates a bubble, then you should
00:55:53
Speaker
be, meet people where they're at in a genuine way, really be seeking to understand people's perspectives, or simply cultivate, you know, deep relationships with people like you. Don't do what so many other people do, which is this thing in between where you have some amount of, you know, just the right amount of going outside of your bubble to stress everyone out for, you know, no reason or something like this.
00:56:19
Speaker
I think a lot of people maybe explore things at the surface level without really understanding what other people's perspectives are, which takes a serious amount of investment. It might not be worth it for everyone.
00:56:32
Speaker
Yeah, great. Good example. I think we're running up on time now, but it almost makes me think of you could have another episode talking about what a contemporary Epicurean garden might look like. Understanding that in kind of a tech space or a social media space or media consumption space instead of a literal physical place. That's an interesting thought that you left me with. So I'll chew on that one more.
00:57:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great idea. I think, you know, there's something I was fond of doing. There's always this other source of wisdom in these different philosophical traditions. So certainly spend more time on epicureanism. That would be productive. Excellent. Want to call it there? Yeah, let's call it. All right. Thanks for chatting. That's another conversation.
00:57:25
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for listening, everyone. Let us know if you want to hear, if you have any other objections or want to hear more about Epicureanism or you have, you know, you think we, we were not charitable enough to your Epicurean tendencies. Let us know. We'll talk more about it.
00:57:44
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Stoic Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
00:58:00
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.