Frequently Asked Questions

1. Epicurean Philosophy had this to say about the best life to live:
   1. "If, gentlemen, the point at issue between these people and us involved inquiry into «what is the means of happiness?» and they wanted to say «the virtues» (which would actually be true), it would be unnecessary to take any other step than to agree with them about this, without more ado. But since, as I say, the issue is not «what is the means of happiness?» but «what is happiness and what is the ultimate goal of our nature?», I say both now and always, shouting out loudly to all Greeks and non-Greeks, that pleasure is the end of the best mode of life, while the virtues, which are inopportunely messed about by these people (being transferred from the place of the means to that of the end), are in no way an end, but the means to the end. Let us therefore now state that this is true, making it our starting-point." - Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda
   2. "We are inquiring, then, what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil." Torquatus, in Cicero's "On Ends"

1. Epicurean Philosophy had this to say about the ultimate pleasure(s):
   1. "That which produces a jubilation unsurpassed is the nature of good, if you apply your mind rightly and then stand firm and do not stroll about {a jibe at the Peripatetics}, prating meaninglessly about the good."- Usener Fragment 423
   2. "The truth of the position that pleasure is the ultimate good will most readily appear from the following illustration. Let us imagine a man living in the continuous enjoyment of numerous and vivid pleasures alike of body and of mind, undisturbed either by the presence or by the prospect of pain: what possible state of existence could we describe as being more excellent or more desirable? One so situated must possess in the first place a strength of mind that is proof against all fear of death or of pain; he will know that death means complete unconsciousness, and that pain is generally light if long and short if strong, so that its intensity is compensated by brief duration and its continuance by diminishing severity. Let such a man moreover have no dread of any supernatural power; let him never suffer the pleasures of the past to fade away, but constantly renew their enjoyment in recollection, and his lot will be one which will not admit of further improvement." - Torquatus, in Cicero's "On Ends
2. Men need not be concerned about "gods" - supernatural beings do not exist, and any higher beings which are "perfect" are not concerned with men. Therefore it is false to believe that gods favor and reward their friends and disfavor and punish their enemies. Therefore it is foolish to ask the gods to do things for us that we can do for ourselves.
3. Men cease to exist at death and thereafter experience no sensations whatsoever. Therefore there is no reward or punishment after death. Therefore all the pleasure that we want to experience must be experienced in life.
4. Pleasurable living is the ultimate goal of life set by nature. The highest degree of pleasurable living possible to us (the "limit of pleasure") is attained by filling our experience with pleasures and expelling all pains. But men who lack knowledge of the nature of the universe are troubled by fear of supernatural forces, and men who are not independent of other men fear their enemies. Men by nature are troubled by these concerns, so they must study of nature and pursue independence. It is not possible to live to the limit of pleasure unless we study nature and attain the power to live safely and apart from our enemies. Therefore knowledge is indispensable for happy living, but knowledge is not an end in itself.
5. The pursuit of pleasure as the guide of life does not lead is not endless and is not in vain, because there is no goal higher than seeking the limit of mental and physical pleasure possible to you as an individual. You can experience that goal by filling your experience with pleasures and expelling all pains. Even if you are not able to expel every pain, pleasurable living is possible to most men because pain that is strong is generally short, and pain that is long is generally mild. Therefore pleasurable living is the goal of life. Therefore the escape from pain is not the goal of life, because the only means of total escape from pain is death, and the experience of pleasure, which is the goal of life, is only possible to the living.
6. It is possible for us to attain the limit of pleasure (the maximum pleasure possible to us) if we pursue pleasure intelligently. Therefore we must not think that we can increase our limit of pleasure past the limit which we experience when we are living most pleasurably and also experiencing as little pain as possible. Therefore we must not regret that we cannot live forever, because the limit of pleasure is not measured by the time available to us, but by our capacity to live as pleasurably as possible while also experiencing as little pain as possible, and the mind is capable of understanding this and eliminating the fear of death and regret that we are not immortal. Therefore we must learn also that it is not necessary to compete with others in seeking pleasure, as it is easy to live a complete life without comparing ourselves with other men. Therefore we must also learn to analyze our desires so as to pursue those which bring the most pleasure with the least accompanying pain. Therefore we must learn that it is as great an error to live too simply as it is to live too extravagantly, as the goal of life is pleasant living, and different circumstances will require and allow different levels of simplicity and luxury.
7. In pursuing pleasure we must remember that no pleasure is bad in itself, but some pleasures frequently bring more pain than the pleasure justifies. Therefore in all actions we choose to pursue we must ask: "What will be the result if I pursue this and what will be the result if I do not?" Therefore we must remember that it is not the faculty of pleasure that is to blame when some men pursue actions we consider to be evil, it is the unintelligent or malicious mind of the individual that employs the faculty of pleasure in a way likely to bring more pain to him than pleasure.
8. In pursuing pleasure we must remember that no single pleasure can be pursued to the point where it consumes our lives, because if it did so there would never be any room for any other pleasures. Therefore do not seek to pursue one pleasure to the exclusion of all others.
9. Protecting yourself from other men is something that is naturally to be desired, and any action necessary to achieve this is justifiable. But fame and power frequently do not achieve this result for us, and those who pursue fame and power frequently do so in vain. Therefore pursuit of fame and power can be justified in particular circumstances, but frequently the results do not justify the effort.
10. "Virtue" is not the goal of life, but simply the name we give to the necessary tools by which pleasurable living can be attained. It is not possible to live pleasurably without these tools, nor is it possible to employ these tools properly without living pleasurably. Therefore it is essential to see that "virtue" is an empty word when divorced from the goal of pleasurable living, as other philosophers attempt to do.
11. The only way to dismiss superstition and other fears from life is to live intelligently, and therefore confidently, and this requires that we study nature and employ the faculties of observation given us by Nature (the Epicurean Canon of Truth). Therefore we must always keep our minds clearly focused on the goal of pleasurable living. Therefore we must never allow ourselves to repress our faculties of observation, including our faculties of anticipations and our faculty of pain and pleasure, because if we abandon these we have no ability to judge what is true and what is false.
12. It is possible for men to live wisely and pursue pleasure intelligently, for men are free agents and their actions are not wholly determined by outside forces. Therefore we should reject both those who teach determinist views that men are nothing more than pawns of outside forces, and those who teach that men are playthings of chance.
13. If we live wisely we will see that our most important tool of happiness and security is friendship. Therefore we will cultivate and protect our friends.
14. As with any other virtue, "Justice" is not the goal of life, but justice is essential to happy living because the just man is the most free from trouble, and the unjust is the most full of trouble. Therefore we should seek arrangement with other men that are just.
15. The only true foundation of Justice is mutually advantageous agreement among intelligent beings to neither do or receive harm from each other. Therefore when possible we should pursue agreements with other men that are mutually advantageous.
16. There is no such thing as absolute or universal justice or injustice. Therefore what some men label "injustice" is never evil in and of itself, no matter how intensely we may dislike the activity. The penalty of injustice is only the pain that it brings to the men who are unjust.
17. Because justice is founded on mutually advantageous agreements, relationships which change over time so as to no longer be mutually advantageous are no longer to be considered just. Therefore human relationships must constantly be reexamined and reconstituted to fit circumstances in order for them to be labeled "just" or "unjust."
18. The man who pursues happy living most intelligently will live among friends, and he will refrain from mixing with, and expel from his life, all those who are not his friends, or who are his enemies. Therefore happy living requires us to constantly examine our circumstances and take action to pursue friendly relationships and separate ourselves from unfriendly relationships.

References and additional detail for this list may be found here.

Discussion of this FAQ entry is here.

Short Answer: The terms "good" and "greatest good" are ambiguous and must be carefully considered. Pleasure and pain have no meaning to the dead, so life is a man's greatest possession, and in that sense the "greatest good." Pleasure, however, is the guide of life, and the reason for living, and so Epicurus identified pleasure as "the alpha and omega of the blessed life," and "the end and aim."

Long Answer:

From Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy" Chapter 12: "The New Hedonism"

The "Summum Bonum" Fallacy

The first step toward understanding rightly the new hedonism of Epicurus is to discern and eliminate this summum bonum fallacy. Since the Latin language lacks the definite article, the Romans were unable to say "the good," which is in Greek an alternative way of denoting the end or telos of an art or activity. Neither could the word finis be equated with telos, because it means end in the sense of limit or termination and not in the sense of fulfillment or consummation. Consequently the Romans were forced to adopt a makeshift, which happened to be summum bonum. Only by convention was this employed to denote the telos, but so inveterate did the convention become that the ambiguity of summum bonum was overlooked. Literally it means the highest or greatest good but this was not necessarily the telos. To Epicurus pleasure was the telos and life itself was the greatest good. Thus the hedonism of Epicurus must be explained from the beginning.

The belief that life itself is the greatest good conditions the whole ethical doctrine of Epicurus. He sees life as narrowly confined between the limits of birth and death. Soul and body are born together and perish together. Metrodorus gave telling expression in figurative language to this melancholy belief, Vatican Saying 30: "The potion mixed at birth for all of us is a draught of death." There was for Epicureans no pre-existence, as Plato believed, and no afterlife, as the majority of mankind believed. Epicurus himself expressed the thought with stark directness, Vatican Saying 14: "We are born once and we cannot be born twice but to all eternity must be no more." Thus the supreme values must be sought between the limits of birth and death.

The specific teaching that life itself is the greatest good is to be drawn from Vatican Saying 42: "The same span of time includes both beginning and termination of the greatest good." If this seems to be a dark saying, the obscurity is dispelled by viewing it as merely a denial of belief in either pre-existence or the afterlife. As Horace wrote, concluding Epistle i.16 with stinging abruptness, "Death is the tape-line that ends the race of life." Editors, however, misled by the summum bonum fallacy, equate "the greatest good" with pleasure and so are forced to emend. The change of a single letter does the trick but fundamental teaching is obliterated.1

While this quoted statement is first-hand evidence of the Epicurean attitude, the syllogistic approach is also known from an extant text, of which the significance has been overlooked. The major premise is the assumption that the greatest good must be associated with the most powerful emotions, that is, the worst of all fears and the greatest of all joys. Now the worst of all fears is that of a violent death and the greatest of all joys is escape from the same. The supporting text runs as follows: "That which occasions unsurpassable joy is the bare escape from some dreadful calamity; and this is the nature of 'good,' if one apprehend it rightly and then stand by his finding, and not go on walking round and round and harping uselessly on the meaning of 'good'." 2 This passage marks the summary cutting of a Gordian knot, the meaning of "good," upon which Plato had harped so tediously. Epicurus finds a quick solution by appealing to the Feelings, that is to Nature, as the criterion; it is their verdict that the supreme good is life itself, because the strongest emotions are occasioned by the threat of losing it or the prospect of saving it.

Discussion about this answer is here.

Short Answer: Lucretius records that "Divine Pleasure [is] the guide of life."

Long Answer:

From Norman DeWitt's "Epicurus and His Philosophy" Chapter 12: The New Hedonism

PLEASURE IDENTIFIED AS THE TELOS

When once the summum bonum fallacy has been detected and the difference clearly discerned between the greatest good, which is life itself, and the end or telos, the next step is to apprehend clearly by what procedure the end or telos is identified as pleasure. The nature of this procedure and of the attitude which determined it was one thing in the time of Cicero and quite another in the time of Epicurus himself. In the space of the two centuries between these two men the study of formal logic had been forced into a dominating position in the curriculum through the aggressive genius of the Stoic Chrysippus, and after his time the incessant needling of Stoic adversaries had shaken the confidence of many Epicureans in the word of their founder.3 The faith of Epicurus himself had pinned itself upon Nature as the norm, not upon Reason. The faith of the Stoic, on the contrary, and of those Epicureans who wavered in their faith, while ostensibly pinned upon Reason, may more correctly be said to have been pinned upon argumentation and disputation.

When Epicurus himself identified pleasure as "the end of Nature" he was setting Reason aside and recognizing Nature as the norm or as furnishing the norm. In this he was merely following a trend of his time. The brilliant Eudoxus, for example, who had preceded him by no great interval, also declared pleasure to be the good and he took his start from the observation that all creatures, whether rational or irrational, pursued it.4 Confirmation for the truth of this observation was found in the behavior of all creatures toward pain. If we may accept as authentic the tradition as reported by Aristotle, it would seem that Eudoxus thought of the pursuit of pleasure as comparable to the instinct of wild creatures to seek their proper food and to avoid the opposite. This demonstrates clearly the incipient tendency to recognize Nature as furnishing the norm.5

Thus the originality of Epicurus did not consist in recognizing Nature as furnishing the norm but in working out this principle to its utmost limit, which he did by setting up his Canon, each item of which, Sensations, Anticipations, and Feelings, was a separate appeal to the authority of Nature.

In identifying pleasure as the end or telos it is both possible and probable that Epicurus was taking up a suggestion of Aristotle, who dropped the hint in this instance that the evidence drawn from the behavior of irrational creatures is superior in value to the evidence drawn from the behavior of rational creatures.6 At any rate the declaration of Epicurus, as reported by Cicero, runs as follows: "Every living creature, the moment it is born, reaches out for pleasure and rejoices in it as the highest good, shrinks from pain as the greatest evil, and, so far as it is able, averts it from itself." 7

In the evaluation of this text the important words are "the moment it is born." By narrowing the field of observation to the newborn creature Epicurus was eliminating all differences between rational and irrational'creatures. In infancy even the creatures that by courtesy we call rational are as yet irrational. By narrowing the field to the newborn Epicurus was also reducing animate life to its minimum value, because at the moment of birth even some of the senses have not yet begun to function. Consequently, as Cicero says in the same context, "since nothing is left of a human being when the senses are eliminated, the question, what is according to Nature or contrary to Nature, is of necessity being judged by Nature herself."

It is doubtful whether any other item of Epicurean invention is the equal of this in logical acumen. Even if weight be allowed to the later objection of the Stoics that the behavior of the infant has its cause in what we now call the instinct of self-preservation, this interpretation would lead to the recognition of life as the greatest good, which was the doctrine of Epicurus, and it would still be left for pleasure and pain to function as the criteria.

Incidentally, this appeal to the evidence afforded by the newly born exercised its effect upon the terminology of Epicurus. The infant, being still in a state of nature, is "not yet perverted." These words afford a hint of the perversion ascribed to the study of rhetoric, dialectic, and mathematics, which a lad was judged lucky to have escaped. As for Nature herself, she speaks through the newly born "undefiled and uncontaminated." Her word is "true philosophy," the vera ratio so often invoked by Lucretius.

Discussion about this question is here.

There is no contradiction because Epicurus is defining "absence of pain" to mean nothing more and nothing less than the word "pleasure" itself. Since there are only two feelings, pleasure and pain, the absence of one IS the other, and vice versa. The terms "abscence of pain" and "pleasure" are therefore completely interchangeable.

This equivalency is clear when you read the Letter to Menoeceus as a whole, but it is even more clear in the statements of the Epicurean Torquatus in Cicero's "On Ends":

On Ends Book Two, 9 : Cicero: “…[B]ut unless you are extraordinarily obstinate you are bound to admit that 'freedom from pain' does not mean the same thing as 'pleasure.'” Torquatus: “Well but on this point you will find me obstinate, for it is as true as any proposition can be.”

On Ends, Book Two, 11: Cicero: Still, I replied, granting that there is nothing better (that point I waive for the moment), surely it does not therefore follow that what I may call the negation of pain is the same thing as pleasure?” Torquatus: “Clearly the same, he says, and indeed the greatest, beyond which none greater can possibly be.” (Plane idem, inquit, et maxima quidem, qua fieri nulla maior potest. Cic. Fin. 2.11)

On Ends Book Two, 16 : “This, O Torquatus, is doing violence to one's senses; it is wresting out of our minds the understanding of words with which we are imbued; for who can avoid seeing that these three states exist in the nature of things: first, the state of being in pleasure; secondly, that of being in pain; thirdly, that of being in such a condition as we are at this moment, and you too, I imagine, that is to say, neither in pleasure nor in pain; in such pleasure, I mean, as a man who is at a banquet, or in such pain as a man who is being tortured. What! do you not see a vast multitude of men who are neither rejoicing nor suffering, but in an intermediate state between these two conditions? No, indeed, said he; I say that all men who are free from pain are in pleasure, and in the greatest pleasure too.

There is a maddening discrepancy in the various translations of Diogenes Laertius in the crucial “Wise Man” sequence. CD Yonge’s 1853 translation reports that Epicurus thought marriage to be a bad idea: “Marriage, they say, is never any good to a man, and we must be quite content if it does no harm; and the wise man will never marry or beget children, as Epicurus himself lays down in his Doubts and in his treatises on Nature. Still, under certain circumstances in his life he will forsake these rules and marry.”

The Loeb Classical Library version of the R.D. Hicks translation, which dates from 1931, concurs: “Nor, again, will the wise man marry and rear a family: so Epicurus says in the Problems and in the De Natura. Occasionally he may marry due to special circumstances in his life.”

But Cyril Bailey in his 1926 translation says the opposite: “Moreover, the wise man will marry and have children, as Epicurus says in the Problems and in the work On Nature. But he will marry according to the circumstances of his life.”

The more modern Epicurus Reader translation by Inwood and Gerson agrees with Bailey: “And indeed the wise man will marry and father children….” The 1963 text by George Strodach endorses the same view: “In addition, the wise man will marry and beget children…. but he will marry according to his station in life, whatever it may be.”

In my view, this question is best answered by the observation that Epicurus himself provided in his last will and testament that the child of his valued student Metrodorus be married off to an Epicurean when she came of age. As Yonge translates: “In the same way also, they [Amynomachus and Timocrates] shall be the guardians of the daughter of Metrodorus, and when she is of marriageable age, they shall give her to whomsoever Hermarchus shall select of his companions in philosophy, provided she is well behaved and obedient to Hermarchus.”

It seems clear to me, therefore, that Epicurus held that marriage and child-bearing are natural, proper, and beneficial activities in which to engage, so long as partners are properly educated in and devoted to Epicurean principles of living.

It seems to me that this conclusion is also a logical extension of the very clear Epicurean principle that “friendship” is central to living a happy life. As Cicero wrote in “On Ends,” Epicurus “pronounced in regard to friendship that of all the means to happiness that wisdom has devised, none is greater, none is more fruitful, none is more delightful than friendship.” A happy marriage to one who is not only one’s mate but also one’s best friend would certainly seem to be a logical application of this principle.

We do, however, also have to consider the very strong cautions that abound in Epicurean literature against taking an unrealistic attitude toward romantic love. In addition to the admonitions stated in the Wise Man section cited above, there is the famous Vatican Saying 51, which contains what is widely regarded to be Epicurus’ advice to a young man: “You tell me that the stimulus of the flesh makes you too prone to the pleasures of love. Provided that you do not break the laws or good customs and do not distress any of your neighbors or do harm to your body or squander your pittance, you may indulge your inclination as you please. Yet it is impossible not to come up against one or other of these barriers, for the pleasures of love never profited a man and he is lucky if they do him no harm.”

And again from Cicero’s On Ends, we see the Epicurean advocate listing those who are “enslaved to the follies of love” as among those men whose failings “render their lives one unbroken round of misery.”

And perhaps most famously of all, we have the long dissertation of Lucretius at the end of Book IV, which reminds us that the intense emotions involved in romantic love are ultimately derived from Nature’s call to procreation, and that the intensity of the emotion must be kept under control if we are to live happy lives and escape misery. Lucretius abounds with practical advice in this department, reminding us to keep our emotions under control, and that we can escape the mischief of unhappy romance if we do not stand in our own way: “And yet even when you are entangled and held fast, you may still escape the mischief, unless you stand in your own way and overlook all the defects of the mind and body of the person you woo. But men often do this, blinded by passion, and they attribute to the beloved advantages which are not really theirs.”

Please see the extended discussion here:

Discussion about this question is here

Key Doctrine 27:

“Of all the things which the wise man seeks to acquire to produce the happiness of a complete life, by far the most important is the possession of friendship.”

Key Doctrine 28: “The same opinion that encourages us to trust that no evil will be everlasting, or even of long duration, shows us that in the space of life allotted to us the protection of friendship is the most sure and trustworthy.”

Key Doctrine 39: “He who desires to live tranquilly without having anything to fear from other men ought to make them his friends. Those whom he cannot make friends he should at least avoid rendering enemies, and if that is not in his power, he should avoid all dealings with them as much as possible, and keep away from them as far as it is in his interest to do so.

Key Doctrine 40: “The happiest men are those who have arrived at the point of having nothing to fear from their neighbors. Such men live with one another most pleasantly, having the firmest grounds of confidence in one another, enjoying the full advantages of friendship, and not lamenting the departure of their dead friends as though they were to be pitied.”

Vatican Saying 23. “All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help.”

Vatican Saying 28. “We must not approve either those who are always ready for friendship, or those who hang back, but for friendship’s sake we must run risks.”

Vatican Saying 34. “It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as it is the confidence of their help.”

Vatican Saying 39. “He is no friend who is continually asking for help, nor he who never associates help with friendship. For the former barters kindly feeling for a practical return and the latter destroys the hope of good in the future.”

Vatican Saying 52.

“Friendship dances around the world bidding us all to awaken to the recognition of happiness.”

Vatican Saying 56. “The wise man feels no more pain when being tortured himself than when his friend tortured.”

Vatican Saying 57. “On occasion a man will die for his friend, for if he betrays his friend, his whole life will be confounded by distrust and completely upset.”

Vatican Saying 61. “Most beautiful too is the sight of those near and dear to us, when our original kinship makes us of one mind; for such sight is great incitement to this end.”

Vatican Saying 66. “Let us show our feeling for our lost friends not by lamentation but by meditation.”

Vatican Saying 78. “The noble soul occupies itself with wisdom and friendship; of these the one is a mortal good, the other immortal

Wise Man Saying 5. “The wise man shows gratitude, and constantly speaks well of his friends whether they are present or absent.”

Wise Man Saying 24. “The wise man will not mourn the death of his friends.”

Wise Man Saying 37. “The wise man will be willing even to die for a friend.”

Wise Man Saying 41. “The wise man holds that friendship is first brought about due to practical need, just as we sow the earth for crops, but it is formed and maintained by means of a community of life among those who find mutual pleasure in it.”

Cicero’s “On Ends” – the Defense of Epicurus delivered by Torquatus: “There remains a topic that is supremely relevant to this discussion – the subject of Friendship. Your [Platonic] school maintains that if pleasure is held to be the Chief Good, friendship will cease to exist. In contrast, Epicurus has pronounced in regard to friendship that of all the means to happiness that wisdom has devised, none is greater, none is more fruitful, none is more delightful than friendship. Not only did Epicurus commend the importance of friendship through his words, but far more, through the example of his life and his conduct. How rare and great friendship is can be seen in the mythical stories of antiquity. Review the legends from the remotest of ages, and, many and varied as they are, you will barely find in them three pairs of friends, beginning with Theseus and ending with Orestes. Yet Epicurus in a single house (and a small one at that) maintained a whole company of friends, united by the closest sympathy and affection, and this still goes on today in the Epicurean school. … The Epicureans maintain that friendship can no more be separated from pleasure than can the virtues, which we have discussed already. A solitary, friendless life is necessarily beset by secret dangers and alarms. Hence reason itself advises the acquisition of friends. The possession of friends gives confidence and a firmly rooted hope of winning pleasure. And just as hatred, jealousy and contempt are hindrances to pleasure, so friendship is the most trustworthy preserver and also creator of pleasure for both our friends and for ourselves. Friendship affords us enjoyment in the present, and it inspires us with hope for the near and distant future. Thus it is not possible to secure uninterrupted gratification in life without friendship, nor to preserve friendship itself unless we love our friends as much as ourselves. … For we rejoice in our friends’ joy as much as in our own, and we are equally pained by their sorrows. Therefore the wise man will feel exactly the same towards his friends as he does towards himself, and he will exert himself as much for his friend’s pleasure as he would for his own. All that has been said about the essential connection of the virtues with pleasure must be repeated about friendship. Epicurus well said (and I give almost his exact words): “The same creed that has given us courage to overcome all fear of everlasting or long-enduring evil after death has discerned that friendship is our strongest safeguard in this present term of life. … All these considerations go to prove not only that the rationale of friendship is not impaired by the identification of the chief good with pleasure, but, in fact, without this, no foundation for friendship whatsoever can be found.

Discussion of this question is here.

Letter to Menoeceus: We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.

Vatican Saying 10. Remember that you are mortal and have a limited time to live and have devoted yourself to discussions on nature for all time and eternity and have seen “things that are now and are to me come and have been.”

Vatican Saying 17. We should not view the young man as happy, but rather the old man whose life has been fortunate. The young man at the height of his powers is often befuddled by chance and driven from his course; but the old man has dropped anchor in old age as in a harbor, since he secures in sure and thankful memory goods for which he was once scarcely confident of.

Vatican Saying 19. He has become an old man on the day on which he forgot his past blessings.

Vatican Saying 35. Don’t spoil what you have by desiring what you don’t have; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.

Vatican Saying 41. At one and the same time we must philosophize, laugh, and manage our household and other business, while never ceasing to proclaim the words of true philosophy.

Vatican Saying 47. I have anticipated you, Fortune, and entrenched myself against all your secret attacks. And we will not give ourselves up as captives to you or to any other circumstance; but when it is time for us to go, spitting contempt on life and on those who here vainly cling to it, we will leave life crying aloud in a glorious triumph-song that we have lived well.

Vatican Saying 48. While we are on the road, we must try to make what is before us better than what is past; when we come to the road’s end, we feel a smooth contentment.

Vatican Saying 55. We should find solace for misfortune in the happy memory of what has been and in the knowledge that what has been cannot be undone.

Vatican Saying 75. The saying, “look to the end of a long life,” shows small thanks for past good fortune.

Let's first look at the Wikipedia entry for the Experience / Pleasure Machine thought experiment:

"The experience machine or pleasure machine is a thought experiment put forward by philosopher Robert Nozick in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia.[1] It is one of the best known attempts to refute ethical hedonism, and does so by imagining a choice between everyday reality and an apparently preferable simulated reality. If the primary thesis of hedonism is that "pleasure is the good", then any component of life that is not pleasurable does nothing directly to increase one's well-being. This is a view held by many value theorists, but most famously by some classical utilitarians. Nozick attacks the thesis by means of a thought experiment. If he can show that there is something other than pleasure that has value and thereby increases our well-being, then hedonism is defeated."

This can be approached in many ways, but this is probably the most obvious:

First, we can quibble about application of the word "directly," but Epicurus is very clear that we sometimes choose pain in order to avoid worse pain, or to achieve greater pleasure. Therefore we start by noting that Epicurus does not maintain that "any component of life that is not pleasurable does nothing directly to increase one's wellbeing."

Ultimately, however, Epicurus does indeed say that there is nothing on is own that is desirable except pleasure. Pleasure, however, is widely and fully defined in scope to include all experiences of both body and mind that we find to be pleasurable. Epicurus in no way limits pleasure to immediate bodily sensations, and in fact it is stated specifically that mental pleasures are frequently of greater significance to us than physical ones. Anything in life that we find desirable - from food to sex to art to music to literature - is desirable because it brings us pleasure in some form.

The intent of the "Experience Machine" is to pose a logical trap much as did Plato in his "Philebus." Once you accept (as did Philebus, who started out as an advocate of pleasure) that anything in life is desirable of and for itself other than something we find pleasurable, then it makes logical sense to conclude that the best life would include not only pleasure but also that other thing. Further, the wisdom to know the right combination of pleasure and this other thing will be ultimately be seen to be more important than either pleasure or the other thing on its own. Thus the person who is beguiled into accepting the Philebus / Experience Machine argument, which is that there are things in life which are desirable but do not bring us pleasure, is led by logic to conclude that wisdom is the ultimate good, the standard Platonic conclusion. And that's just the start of discarding pleasure as any value at all, which is what the Stoics did in concluding that virtue is its own reward, and that to seek pleasure in compensation for virtue would negate any value in virtue.

Epicurus responds to this argument by consistently observing that pleasure alone is desirable in and of itself. This is the premise throughout the Epicurean texts but is stated particularly clearly by the Epicurean speaker in Cicero's "On Ends":

"We are inquiring, then, what is the final and ultimate Good, which as all philosophers are agreed must be of such a nature as to be the End to which all other things are means, while it is not itself a means to anything else. This Epicurus finds in pleasure; pleasure he holds to be the Chief Good, pain the Chief Evil. This he sets out to prove as follows: Every animal, as soon as it is born, seeks for pleasure, and delights in it as the Chief Good, while it recoils from pain as the Chief Evil, and so far as possible avoids it. This it does as long as it remains unperverted, at the prompting of Nature's own unbiased and honest verdict. Hence Epicurus refuses to admit any necessity for argument or discussion to prove that pleasure is desirable and pain to be avoided. These facts, be thinks, are perceived by the senses, as that fire is hot, snow white, honey sweet, none of which things need be proved by elaborate argument: it is enough merely to draw attention to them. (For there is a difference, he holds, between formal syllogistic proof of a thing and a mere notice or reminder: the former is the method for discovering abstruse and recondite truths, the latter for indicating facts that are obvious and evident.) Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge of that which is in accordance with or contrary to nature. What does Nature perceive or what does she judge of, beside pleasure and pain, to guide her actions of desire and of avoidance?"

Of course the experience machine argument is intended to embarrass the listener into thinking "of course not," but it's really just another way of asking if you would indulge in sex drugs and rock'n'roll every moment if you could get away with it without painful repercussions.

And to this Epicurus answers very plainly, "Yes you would, but you CAN'T":

PD10: "If the things that produce the pleasures of profligates could dispel the fears of the mind about the phenomena of the sky, and death, and its pains, and also teach the limits of desires (and of pains), we should never have cause to blame them: for they would be filling themselves full, with pleasures from every source, and never have pain of body or mind, which is the evil of life."

And ultimately it is the "can't" which is important, because Epicurus always looks to the facts of reality as established through the senses, feelings, and anticipations for all the proof that we need that a pleasure/experience machine is nonsense. "Experience machines" are suited only for purposes of confusing young philosophy students and persuading them to abandon the practical world that Nature makes available to us.

Also:

It is a trap, not totally unlike the experience machine itself, to accept as valid that there are objective standards of 'higher pleasure' and 'lower pleasure, because in order for that to be the case there would have to be an objective list somewhere outside of the scope of pleasure itself to serve as that reference point, and the Epicurean universe in which the only things that are eternal and unchanging are the ultimate particles does not allow for such an objective test of how everyone should judge pleasure and pain. The trouble with admitting such a list is that (as Plato will lead you) knowledge of that list becomes more important than pleasure itself (without that list, how would you know what pleasure to choose?) and so you end up seeing wisdom itself as the goal rather than pleasure.

This is likely why Epicurus held, according to Diogenes Laertius, that "the feelings are two, pleasure and pain..." and that all feelings fit within one designation of the other. And we know from the letter to Menoeceus explicitly that all good and evil come to us through sensations, which are things that are felt. Put it all together and you have the framework by which to analyze the experience machine or any other challenge to pleasure. Then, no Platonist logician will be able to trick you into thinking that "wisdom" (which of course they claim to be able to show you) or "virtue" (the Stoic specialty for those who are into "glory") are desirable in and of themselves.

If you keep in mind that (1) "pleasure" includes the full spectrum of human activity, not just the lower bodily pleasures that people ridicule as "base" but also "the highest mental pleasures that people praise as "sublime," with everything in between, and (2) that if a thing is desirable it is because it leads to pleasure, and that there is no other reason outside of pleasure to desire anything, and it is much easier to avoid confusion.

Discussion of this FAQ is located here: Would An Epicurean Hook Himself Up To An "Experience Machine" or a "Pleasure Machine" If Possible?

A preliminary caution before engaging with this question: these terms are not Epicurean terms, and the entire framing is alien to Epicurus. The word "hedonism" itself does not appear in the ancient sources — its earliest known use in English dates only to the 1850s. The paired labels "psychological hedonism" and "ethical hedonism" originate specifically with Henry Sidgwick, a 19th-century British Utilitarian, who coined them to diagnose an internal tension in Jeremy Bentham's thought — not to illuminate Epicurus. Fitting Epicurus into Sidgwick's categories risks distorting his philosophy by forcing it into boxes built for someone else entirely. The most reliable path to understanding Epicurus is to read Epicurus on his own terms, not to translate him into a framework invented nearly two thousand years after his death.

That said, the question has been seriously debated in our community and in the academic literature, and engaging with it carefully can clarify certain genuine features of the Epicurean texts. At the time of this writing our most significant thread on this topic is here. The material in this FAQ answer is written to assist you in forming your own opinion.

Defining the Terms

These definitions come from Sidgwick and the utilitarian tradition, not from Epicurus. They are reproduced here because they frame the scholarly debate, not because Epicurus would have recognized them as his own.

Psychological hedonism is a descriptive thesis: the claim that all human beings are, as a matter of psychological fact, always ultimately motivated by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain — whether they admit it or not. It makes no claim about what people should do. On this view, everyone who does anything — including the Stoic who claims to be motivated by virtue alone — is ultimately seeking something they find pleasurable.

Ethical hedonism is a normative or prescriptive thesis: the claim that pleasure ought to be the goal of human action, and that actions are good insofar as they produce pleasure and bad insofar as they produce pain. It says nothing about whether people actually pursue pleasure in all their actions. It is perfectly consistent with ethical hedonism to hold that people frequently and disastrously fail to pursue pleasure — that they pursue virtue for its own sake, or submit to divine command — and that philosophy is needed to correct these errors.

The two theses are logically independent. You can hold ethical hedonism without holding psychological hedonism, and vice versa. The question of which Epicurus held — or whether he held both — is precisely what divides the commentators.

The Case for Psychological Hedonism

The central argument for the psychological reading begins with what scholars call the cradle argument. Epicurus appeals repeatedly to the behavior of young animals and human infants as evidence for his hedonism — the fact that all creatures, from birth, "rush toward pleasure and flee from pain without any reasoning" (Diogenes Laertius). The argument is that if Epicurus were making only a normative claim, the behavior of infants would be irrelevant evidence; they cannot deliberate about what they ought to do. The fact that he uses their behavior as evidence for his position suggests an empirical, psychological claim.

Raphael Woolf's 2004 paper in Phronesis — "What Kind of Hedonist Was Epicurus?" — is the most focused scholarly defense of the psychological reading, arguing that Principal Doctrine 25 is best read as an affirmation that whatever people claim their goals to be, their actual behavior will continue tracking nature's goal of pleasure. Emily Austin, in Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life (Oxford University Press, 2023), also defends a version of the psychological reading, holding that Epicurus grounded his ethics in facts about what living creatures actually pursue by nature.

The Case for Ethical Hedonism

The most powerful argument for the ethical reading is the one John Cooper makes in "Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus" (Reason and Emotion, Princeton University Press, 1999): if Epicurus's ethical theory turns out to be solely one of psychological hedonism, then it is not an ethical theory. It is a descriptive theory about human motivation, and nothing more. If people inevitably and always pursue pleasure whether they want to or not, the injunction to pursue pleasure becomes vacuous — you don't need philosophy to tell you what you're going to do anyway.

Larry J. Waggle, in "Epicurus: Psychological or Ethical Hedonist?" (Revista de Filosofía, 2007), reinforces this point with a methodological argument: the Letter to Menoeceus is full of prescriptive language — "we must practice," "we must reckon," "we must refer every choice and avoidance" — none of which would make sense if the agent were determined by nature to pursue pleasure regardless. The prescriptive language requires the possibility of choosing otherwise.

Julia Annas, in The Morality of Happiness (Oxford University Press, 1993), treats Epicurus primarily as an ethical theorist in the normative sense, showing how his account of pleasure as the final end participates in the same structure as Aristotle's account of eudaimonia: it specifies what the good life consists in, not a mechanism that compels behavior. Gosling and Taylor, in The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford University Press, 1982), add that the Epicurean distinction between kinetic and katastematic pleasures — and the complex calculus by which some pleasures are to be avoided because they produce greater pain — presupposes genuine deliberative agency that psychological hedonism cannot accommodate.

What the Cradle Argument Actually Proves

The most important evidence for the psychological reading is the cradle argument, but two very different things might be meant by it:

Reading One: The young of all species pursue pleasure — this is evidence that pleasure is the call of nature, and therefore the right standard. The psychological fact that all creatures naturally pursue pleasure is what justifies the ethical norm. Nature itself has identified pleasure as the genuine good.

Reading Two: Everyone pursues what they think of as pleasure whether they admit it or not — including the Stoic who claims virtue alone. The psychological claim is the strong one: all adult behavior is likewise ultimately pleasure-directed.

Reading One is considerably more defensible. The appeal to infants and animals does genuine philosophical work: it establishes that pleasure is not an arbitrary cultural preference but a feature of how living creatures are constituted by nature, making it the natural standard for evaluation. Reading Two faces the serious problem that if every action is "really" about pleasure at some deep level, the claim becomes unfalsifiable and the concept of pleasure loses any determinate content. The ascetic who renounces bodily pleasure and the libertine who pursues it are both "really" pursuing pleasure — but this explains nothing.

The full analysis points toward ethical hedonism as the more defensible label if one must choose within Sidgwick's framework — but the more important point is that these are borrowed categories built for a different debate. Readers who want to understand Epicurus should give priority to what Epicurus actually wrote, rather than to which of Sidgwick's boxes fits him best. The longer article linked below draws this conclusion in detail.

A longer version of this document can be found at EpicurusToday.com.

Key scholarly works: John M. Cooper, "Pleasure and Desire in Epicurus," in Reason and Emotion (Princeton University Press, 1999); Raphael Woolf, "What Kind of Hedonist Was Epicurus?" Phronesis 49 (2004); Larry J. Waggle, "Epicurus: Psychological or Ethical Hedonist?" Revista de Filosofía 25 (2007); Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford University Press, 1993); J.C.B. Gosling and C.C.W. Taylor, The Greeks on Pleasure (Oxford University Press, 1982). A full treatment of this question, with extended scholarly analysis, is available in the article "Was Epicurus a Psychological Hedonist, an Ethical Hedonist, Both, or Neither?" at EpicurusToday.com.