After 2000 Years Still The Three Main Contenders For Your Mind

"If you eat too much chocolate cake you will get sick, therefore don't eat more than is good for you." If you spend beyond your means, you'll go into debt, the bank will foreclose on your car and your house, and you'll be unhappy." Does anyone really want to contend with a straight face that commonplace advice like that is what made Epicurus famous in the ancient world, or is why we should be interested in him today? I mean, really......!

I prepared this graphic because I think it is helpful to hammer home the point that we aren't concerned about Epicurus because he gives us justification for liking chocolate cake. The significance of Epicurus is not that he has any particular insight on types of food, art, or any other type of pleasure to pursue, or even "how" to pursue them, but that he removes the stigma from Pleasure, and establishes "Feeling" as a first-rank competitor to "Supernatural Religion" and "Logic/Idealism/Virtue" as an organizational principle for intelligent life.

Of course if we decide that Nature knows more about organizational principles of life than we do, then "Feeling" isn't just a "first-rank" competitor for our allegiance, it is only competitor worthy of our allegiance.