DAY 72 - HAPPINESS ACCORDING TO EPICURUS

Day 72 - Epicurean hedonism

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher (yes, another one) and the founder of the Epicurean philosophy school.  He lived from 341 to 270 BC.   He viewed friendship as being fundamental to happiness.  As a result, his school served as a platform to develop friendships. 

Although he established a hierarchal system of levels among his followers, because he regularly accepted women and slaves at his school, he is seen as being one of the first Greek philosophers to introduce the concept of human egalitarianism.

Epicurus associated happiness to pleasure.  However, his definition of pleasure had nothing to do with excess.  He believed in moderation, since pleasure had to be evaluated not only in terms of intensity, but also in terms of duration and purity (moral virtue).    In that perspective, getting drunk or overeating transgress the durability and purity aspects of pleasure.  He thought that a simple life would lead to a more durable happiness.

For him, all our actions are governed by our desire to seek pleasure and try to avoid pain.  He actually viewed the absence of pain as being pleasure in itself. However, he also deemed that some pain could be endured with the help of the mind, by focusing on present, past and future happiness.

Epicurus did not believe in the afterlife.  For him, the soul and the body both disintegrate after death, so there is no reason to fear death.  If there is no existence after we die and therefore, we can no longer experience any kind of sensation, why worry and become unhappy over something that we will never experience.

Finally, Epicurus perceived freedom from material goods, prudence, security and the study of philosophy as being essential tools in the pursuit of happiness.  

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for."

"Of all the means to insure happiness throughout the whole life, by far the most important is the acquisition of friends."

"Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist."

— Epicurus