For example we wish to be famous, so Epicurus might say, because we want to be well liked and so are really looking for friendship. If you can spare a dollar or two, or more, please donate by clicking on the link below. From his, Nevertheless, because Epicurus claimed the ultimate aim of happiness is to find pleasure – and not virtue or knowledge unto themselves – many of his contemporaries and later critics would uncharitably accuse him of advocating debauchery, one even. Friendship: Of all the things that wisdom provides us to help one live one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship. So I picked up a book, at random, as a means of trying to put my Humpty Dumpty brain back together again. Put simply, the Greek and Roman virtues are prudence, temperance, courage, and justice; the Christian virtues are the virtues of faith, hope, and love (but the greatest of these is love). So, although he suggested we are motivated to seek pleasure, Epicurus had a much different idea of what that looked like in daily living. Was he. In fact, Mr. Jefferson goes on in his letter to William Short, showing a penchant for synthesis and thoughtfulness rarely seen in American politics today, as he ventures a quick survey of moral philosophers throughout the ages (emphasis mine): I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us. They don’t actually contribute to the degree of happiness itself. that liberty lovers are simply “pot-smoking republicans” or libertines who barely understand life and are too drunk on utopian dreams to see clearly. Because what he wants, in the end, is to say that we can become happy by reducing our desires. This election season has let our boundless ambition for power and wealth, as well as our untrammelled compassion, get the best of us. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Necessary desires, like desiring to be free from bodily pain, help in producing happiness, whereas unnecessary desires, like desiring a bigger car or a more luxurious meal, typically produce unhappiness, The aim is not the positive pursuit of pleasure but rather the absence of pain, a neutral state he calls “ataraxia,” which is freedom from all worry, often translated simply as “inner tranquility.”, This state of ataraxia can be achieved through philosophical contemplation rather than through pursuit of crass physical pleasures, Happiness is not a private affair: it can be more readily achieved in a society where like-minded individuals band together to help inspire one another’s pursuit of happiness. By using Verywell Mind, you accept our, The How to Find Best Types of Happiness in Your Life. ), an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of Epicureanism, the path to living the good life is self-evident. Change ), A cult of Happiness Part 53 (31st December 2035), A cult of Happiness Part 52 (24th December 2035), A Cult of Happiness Part 51 (17th December 2035), A cult of Happiness Part 50 (10th December 2035), A cult of Happiness Part 49 (3rd December 2035), A Cult of Happiness Part 48 (26th November 2035), Son of Zeus Part 86: The Islands of The Damned, A cult of Happiness Part 53 (31st December 2035), A cult of Happiness Part 52 (24th December 2035), A Cult of Happiness Part 51 (17th December 2035), A cult of Happiness Part 50 (10th December 2035), A cult of Happiness Part 49 (3rd December 2035).
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