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Beyond Stoicism: A Guide to the Good Life with Stoics, Skeptics, Epicureans, and Other Ancient Philosophers
By Massimo Pigliucci, Gregory Lopez, Meredith Alexander Kunz · 2025
(Preview)
Same old, same old regurgitated nonsense regarding the Garden. "Beautiful obscurity" 
If you go to the Google link, you can click the link in the table of contents to the Epicurean section. The "living like an Epicurean" is teeth-clenchingly bad
Well thank you for starting my day with a reminder of all that is wrong with modern Epicurean philosophy! 
I will check out the background of what you posted there and have much more to say.
But first I will say:
For those of us who have read extensively into the background of what the texts really say, we can grit our teeth and remember that ataraxia and aponia in now way exclude the active pleasures of life nor make us want to go live in an ascetic commune where "religion" and controversial subjects are never discussed.
But the opening you have posted there is calculated to exactly produce the kind of "beautiful obscurity" that it does produce -- a vision of total resignation from active pleasures and withdrawal from society and minimalism that is truly indistinguishable from asceticism.
All you have to do in life is negative:
Again, many of the things covered here have a grain of truth to them that can be saved from the wrong construction by knowing the subtleties of Epicurus' terminology. But the real problem I have with this approach is that 98% of normal healthy vigorous people reading this will read this and see it is the philosophy of undertakers giving seminars at nursing homes, and they will run as far and as fast as they can in the opposite direction. And even though i am no longer in my most healthy and vigorous years I will do all i can to keep up with them and get as far as I can from this brand of "Epicurean" philosophy.
I may understand completely that it is not necessary to live forever in order to experience the fulness of pleasure, but that doesn't mean I am going to live like an ascetic in a stupor during the years that I do have.
I failed to notice the tag line at the top of the front cover. This pretty much says it all, and it carries the implication that the reader is not going to discard his Stoicism, just recharge it. I'd predict the Stoic reader will find plenty of ways to make his Stoicism even worse in the neo-Epicureanism of the material referenced in the first posts above.
And I see that to prevent there being any ambiguity, the authors kindly spelled out in the final words before the chapter on Epicurus that the best kind of pleasure is absence of pain, particularly of the mental variety - so no need to worry about focusing any attention on bodily pleasures!!!
Interesting choice of words that I find very telling, whether chosen consciously or subconsciously.
Don't approach pain in life as something to be overcome through reasoned effort, through realization that pleasure is the guide and goal of life, and even through the judicious use of pain for the production of greater pleasure.
No, don't approach pain with vigor and determination to keep pain in its place.
Just FLEE from pain with as much speed and abandon as you can!
That's the message of Epicurus as the Stoics and other enemies of Epicurus want you to see it.
This strikes me as being particularly poorly stated (or well stated if your goal is to misrepresent Epicurus).
Epicurus does not distrust our reasoning abilities. Epicurus insists on reason, Epicurus uses reason vigorously and thoroughly, Epicurus establishes the existence of atoms and his entire physics based on reason, Lucretius describes Epicurean philosophy as true reason.
What Epicurus is distrustful of is Stoics and others who claim for reason things that reason (in the form of dialectical logic) cannot do. Words are useful, but they are not reality, and you cannot find truth by looking to syllogisms rather than by using the senses, anticipations, and feelings along with reason.
It's not reason that is to be distrusted, but Stoicism.
Just FLEE from pain with as much speed and abandon as you can!
Well, they're word choice is correct but in the wrong place. The old "choice and avoidance" is better translated as "choose and flee" but we aren't encouraged to flee from pain. We're instructed to choose the path that leads to the most pleasure, and sometimes that means experiencing some pain.
The whole chapter is a trainwreck from beginning to end.
