Pleasure is the aim of life, provided we sort our desires

Sorting desires; natural and necessary desires; Epicureanism; "pleasure, the beginning and end of the blessed life"

Épicure 341 BC · 270 BCHe rejects the fate of the natural philosophers: some things happen by necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency.

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What it claims

Pleasure is the beginning and the end of the blessed life. We reach it by sorting our desires, and it consists in having neither pain in the body nor trouble in the soul.

Why

Every living being turns to pleasure by itself: it is the first good, but each desire is judged by its consequences.

The same idea through history

Aristippe de Cyrène380 BCAristippus and his Cyrenaic heirs already make pleasure the only good, but they want the pleasure of the moment, in motion. Epicurus answers them by choosing another, calmer pleasure and by sorting desires.

Épicure300 BCEpicurus (341-270 BC) founds the Garden in Athens. He starts from the same observation as the Cyrenaics (we all seek pleasure) but draws a simple life from it: true pleasure is the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.

Lucrèce55 BCAt the start of book II, Lucretius writes that nature asks for only two things: a body free from pain and a mind that enjoys itself, free from care and fear. He adds that the body needs little, and that gold and palaces change nothing.

In short

"Pleasure is the aim of life, provided we sort our desires" is an argument by Épicure (Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines (c. 300 BC), 300 BC) on the question "What is happiness?" (answer: pleasure). Its claim: Pleasure is the beginning and the end of the blessed life. We reach it by sorting our desires, and it consists in having neither pain in the body nor trouble in the soul. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P2, P7). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus and Principal Doctrines (c. 300 BC)

Valid with an implicit premise

People often think Epicurus invites us to party. It is almost the opposite. For him, every living being seeks pleasure and flees pain, so there is no other aim than pleasure. But not all pleasures are equal, and many cost more pain than they give. So we must sort our desires: keep those that relieve a real pain (hunger, thirst), set aside those that make us dependent and anxious (fame, luxury). The pleasure aimed at is not the excitement of a banquet, but a body without pain and a soul without trouble. The text does not set out the argument as premises: the P1 to P7 form below is our reconstruction, from the Letter to Menoeceus (127-132) and the Principal Doctrines.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P2 and P7, the computer finds a case where all living beings seek pleasure from birth, where desires are sorted and the body is free of pain and the soul untroubled, but where we do not conclude that pleasure is the first good or that nothing is lacking: one could still need, for instance, just actions or knowledge.

With its seven premises, the argument is valid. Without P2 and P7 it no longer is. Without P2, we cannot move from "all living beings seek pleasure" to "pleasure is the first good": a fact becomes a good only if we grant that what is natural is good. Without P7, nothing says that the absence of pain and trouble is enough for happiness. Epicurus asserts P2 by calling pleasure the "first and native" good (Letter 129) and P7 by saying that the living creature has nothing left to seek once this aim is reached (Letter 128). This is also where his critics strike: Cicero denies that absence of pain is a pleasure, Seneca denies that pleasure is the first good.

Analogy. Think of a hungry traveller. A simple meal satisfies him as much as a feast: once hunger is eased, the feast adds only variety, and may even upset his stomach the next day. Epicurus turns this idea into a rule of life: seek what calms a real pain, and beware of what creates new ones.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Cicero 45 BC · attacks premise 6

In the dialogue On Ends, Cicero points out that "absence of pain" and "pleasure" do not mean the same thing: pleasure has one meaning, not suffering another. Epicurus therefore sets as his aim one thing (not suffering) and calls it by the name of another (pleasure). For Cicero, a truly happy life is not just the removal of an evil: it requires obtaining a good.

Épicure replies

Epicurus What Epicurus had already said (Diogenes Laertius X, 136; Cicero comes after him)

Epicurus distinguishes two kinds of pleasure. Peace of mind and freedom from pain are pleasures "of rest"; joy and delight are pleasures "of motion". Both are pleasures: absence of pain is not a mere void.

Cicero Cicero's rejoinder (On Ends II, 32)

Cicero notes that, to prove that pleasure is natural, Epicurus appeals to children and animals, which are drawn to the pleasure "in motion", not to the stable pleasure that is only the absence of pain. The aim the argument chooses (rest) is therefore not the one its proof establishes (motion).

The debate goes on (our summary) The disagreement is clear. Epicurus answers that rest is indeed a pleasure, and even the highest (Doctrine 3: pleasure reaches its limit when all pain is removed). Cicero answers that his proof from children holds only for the other kind of pleasure. The debate is about what should count as pleasure: only what we feel while changing state, or also the calm state that follows. It carries over to the Cyrenaics, for whom absence of pain is not a pleasure at all (see Aristippus' argument).

Seneca 58 · attacks the conclusion

Seneca, a Stoic, refuses to make pleasure the aim. Pleasure comes in addition when we live by virtue, as flowers grow in a cornfield: it is neither the reward nor the cause of virtue. To make pleasure the aim is to put first what should follow.

Épicure replies

Epicurus What Epicurus had already said (Letter to Menoeceus 132; Seneca comes after him)

For Epicurus, one cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honourably and justly, nor the reverse: the virtues are bound up with the pleasant life and it is inseparable from them. The pleasure he aims at therefore rules out unjust or unreasonable conduct.

Seneca Seneca's counter-reply (On the Happy Life 11, 2)

If virtue accompanies pleasure, it follows it, and pleasure is in command. But to follow is to obey; to rule one must be master. Putting virtue behind pleasure reduces it to the role of one who tastes pleasures before the others.

The debate goes on (our summary) Seneca stays fair to Epicurus: he writes that his teaching is "upright and holy", even "stern" when examined closely (On the Happy Life 13, 1), and that the dissolute hide behind his name. The disagreement is thus less about conduct than about rank: is virtue an end in itself (Seneca) or the condition and means of a pleasant life (Epicurus, who says we choose it "on account of pleasure", as we take medicine for health, according to Diogenes Laertius X, 138)?

Robert Nozick 1974 · attacks the conclusion

Imagine a machine that would give you any pleasant experience you wanted, though none of it would be real. Nozick thinks most of us would refuse to plug in for life, and he concludes that we do not want only to feel pleasure: we also want to do real things, to be a certain kind of person, to be in contact with reality. So pleasure cannot be the only aim.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1974, after the author's death (-270).

The debate goes on (our summary) This objection targets every doctrine of pleasure, Epicurus' included. It asks a question Epicurus could not have heard: is a life of pleasure with no contact with the real still a happy life? A defender of Epicurus can answer that his pleasure runs through knowledge of nature and friendship (Doctrine 27: friendship is by far the greatest means wisdom provides), hence through very real relationships. This debate is treated elsewhere on the site.

What today's voices say

Defend it

Alain de BottonIn The Consolations of Philosophy (2000) he turns to Epicurus to console money worries: sort your desires and see how few you truly need.