1. Pleasure - As The Guide Of Life
At the highest level of analysis, pleasure -- not virtue, not reason, not divine law, not duty -- is the guide of life. This is Epicurus' most fundamental and most controversial ethical claim, and it was immediately recognized in antiquity as a sharp break from the ethical frameworks of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. The basis for this claim is not mere preference but a naturalistic observation: pleasure and pain are the feelings that nature has given every living creature as guides to what is beneficial and what is harmful. Nature equipped us with these feelings precisely to direct us toward good and away from bad -- and Epicurus held that a philosophy which ignores or overrides this natural guidance in favor of abstract rational principles is going against the grain of how we actually work.
The important qualification is that "pleasure as guide" refers to pleasure as a whole -- the overall balance of pleasurable over painful experience across one's life -- and not to any particular pleasure in isolation. Epicurus was explicit that simple bodily pleasures, if pursued without wisdom, often lead to greater pain in the long run and should be evaluated accordingly. The guide is the total picture, not the immediate sensation. This is why prudence -- the wisdom to calculate which choices lead to the best overall outcome -- is described as the greatest of the virtues: it is what makes effective use of pleasure as the guide actually possible in practice.
The claim that pleasure guides should not be confused with the claim that pleasure compels. Pleasure is a guide the way a compass is a guide: it indicates the direction of the good, which it is then our task to pursue intelligently and with full use of reason. The Epicurean does not run blindly toward every pleasure any more than the navigator sails blindly toward every heading the compass might indicate. The guidance is real and reliable -- pleasure genuinely indicates what is beneficial, pain genuinely indicates what is harmful -- but wisdom is required to interpret and apply that guidance well over the course of an entire life.
The universality of pleasure as guide is also important: every living creature, from the moment of birth, pursues pleasure and avoids pain without being taught to do so. This is nature's own testimony, delivered through the conduct of every creature that has ever lived, that pleasure is the natural good and pain the natural evil. No philosophical argument for any competing theory of the good is more powerful than this universal natural testimony.
And for this cause we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good. (Bailey: [129])
But some in opposition to this, knowing nothing of matter, believe that without the gods' power nature cannot with so exact conformity to the plans of mankind change the seasons of the year, and produce crops, and in a word all else which divine pleasure, the guide of life, persuades men to approach, herself leading them and coaxing them, through the ways of Venus, to beget their generations, that the human race may not come to an end. (Rouse)
Some people do not know how matter works. They think that nature needs the will of the gods to fit the seasons of the year so nicely to human needs, to bring to birth the crops and other blessings, which our guide to life, the radiance of pleasure, makes us crave through Venus' agency. (Humphries)
But some in opposition to this, ignorant of matter, believe that nature cannot without the providence of the gods, in such nice conformity to the ways of men, vary the seasons of the year and bring forth crops, aye and all the other things, which *divine pleasure, the guide of life*, prompts men to approach, escorting them in person and enticing them by her fondlings to continue their races through the arts of Venus, that mankind may not come to an end. (Munro)
Since man has nothing left if sensations are removed from him, it must be the case that nature itself judges what is in accordance with or contrary to nature. What does it perceive or what does it judge except pleasure and pain as a basis for its pursuit or avoidance of anything? (tr. Long & Sedley)
[Above: Long & Sedley excerpt. Below: the same passage in full surrounding context, tr. Rackham, On Ends I.30-31: "Strip mankind of sensation, and nothing remains; it follows that Nature herself is the judge..."]
We recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good. And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them; and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. (Bailey)
Epicurus disagrees with the Cyrenaics on pleasure: they do not admit static pleasure but only the kinetic type, whereas he accepts both types, for soul and for body. In On Choices he speaks as follows: 'Freedom from disturbance and absence of pain are static pleasures; but joy and delight are regarded as kinetic activities.' He has a further disagreement with the Cyrenaics: they take bodily pains to be worse than mental ones, but he takes the mental ones to be worse, since the flesh is storm-tossed only in the present, but the soul in past, present and future. (Bailey)
Hence, also, the Epicureans suppose themselves to have proved that pleasure is naturally choiceworthy; for the animals, they say, as soon as they are born, when still unperverted, seek after pleasure and avoid pains. (Bury)
But some of those who belong to the sect of Epicurus, in answer to these objections, are wont to argue that the animal avoids pain and pursues pleasure naturally and without teaching; thus when it is born, and is not as yet a slave to opinions, it cries and screams as soon as it is smitten by the air's unwonted chill. But if it naturally has an inclination for pleasure and a disinclination for toil, toil is a thing naturally avoided by it and pleasure a thing desirable. (Bury)
2. Not All Pleasures Are Equivalent -- Pleasures Differ In Duration, Intensity, And Effect, And Must Be Calculated, Not Simply Added Up
Pleasures are not interchangeable units to be tallied up on a single scale. They vary in duration, in intensity, in which part of the body or mind they engage, and in how they are perceived -- by different people, and even by the same person at different times and circumstances. Epicurus makes this point most directly in Principal Doctrine 9: if every pleasure could simply be intensified and made to cover the whole of one's nature, no pleasure would differ from any other -- but pleasures plainly do differ, which is exactly why the doctrine's counterfactual matters. This is not an abstract puzzle; it directly refutes both the Platonic ranking that treats intellectual pleasure as intrinsically superior to bodily pleasure, and the crude hedonist's fixation on raw intensity as the only thing that counts.
Because pleasures differ along these dimensions, determining which pleasures to pursue requires judgment, not a simple rule. Epicurus is explicit in the Letter to Menoeceus that this judgment takes the form of a calculation and survey of advantages and disadvantages -- weighing a given pleasure's duration and intensity against the pain that may follow from it, and weighing a given pain against the greater and more lasting pleasure that may follow from enduring it. Diogenes Laertius records a further, specific instance of the same principle: bodily pain is confined to the present, but mental pain and pleasure extend across past, present, and future, which is one clear reason the two are not interchangeable and must be judged on their own terms.
If every pleasure could be intensified so that it lasted and influenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another. (Bailey)
However, we have to make our judgment on all these points by a calculation and survey of advantages and disadvantages. For at certain times we treat the good as bad and conversely the bad as good. (tr. Long & Sedley)
[Above: Long & Sedley excerpt. Below: the same passage in Bailey's translation.]
He has a further disagreement with the Cyrenaics: they take bodily pains to be worse than mental ones, but he takes the mental ones to be worse, since the flesh is storm-tossed only in the present, but the soul in past, present and future. (tr. Long & Sedley)
3. There Is No Objective, Absolute, Or Supernatural Ranking Of Pleasures -- Their Value Is Judged By Each Person, And Varies Even For The Same Person Under Different Circumstances
Because pleasures differ in duration, intensity, and the part of one's nature they engage, no external authority -- no god, no cosmic hierarchy, no Platonic Form of the Good -- hands down a fixed ranking of which pleasures outrank which. The value of a given pleasure is worked out by the person experiencing it, weighing it against the pain it may cost or the greater pleasure it may yield, and that judgment is not fixed once for all: the same food, the same activity, the same company can register as a great pleasure at one time and a matter of indifference at another, depending entirely on the person's state and circumstances at that moment.
Diogenes of Oinoanda makes this explicit in the case of mental versus bodily feeling: people cannot agree on which kind of pain or pleasure is greater, because no one can experience both extremes side by side for comparison, and so each person, in practice, ranks whichever feeling currently has hold of him as the greater one. Epicurus draws the same lesson from ordinary experience of want and abundance in the Letter to Menoeceus: bread and water bring the highest pleasure to a man who needs them, while the same fare would register as nothing at all to a man who has just eaten his fill of luxury -- and the reverse holds too, since he who needs luxury least gets the most pleasure from it when it comes. This is not a license to say that all pleasures are equally worth pursuing regardless of consequence -- that judgment is what the calculation of advantages and disadvantages is for -- only a recognition that no fixed, one-size-fits-all scale can substitute for the individual's own honest accounting of his own pleasures and pains.
It is difficult for people in general to calculate the superiority of these mental feelings [over bodily ones]. For it is impossible to suffer the extremes of both on a single occasion by way of a comparison, on account of the rarity of this occurrence and of the destruction of life when it does occur. Therefore no criterion has been found for measuring the superiority of these over the others. Rather, when someone has bodily pains he says they are greater than mental ones, but when he has mental pains he says they are the greater. For present things are always more convincing than absent ones, and each person evidently either through necessity or through pleasure assigns the superiority to the feeling which has hold of him. But by means of many other considerations a wise man reasons out this point that the majority find hard to calculate. (tr. Long & Sedley, punctuation adapted)
- Page scan: Diogenes of Oinoanda, Fr. 44-45 (tr. Smith)
We also regard self-sufficiency as a great good, not with the aim of always living off little, but to enable us to live off little if we do not have much, in the genuine conviction that they derive the greatest pleasure from luxury who need it least, and that everything natural is easy to procure, but what is empty is hard to procure. Plain flavors produce pleasure equal to an expensive diet whenever all the pain of need has been removed; and bread and water generate the highest pleasure whenever they are taken by one who needs them. (tr. Long & Sedley, excerpt)
4. The Three Categories Of Desire -- Natural and Necessary, Natural and Unnecessary, and Empty
One of the most practically useful frameworks in Epicurean ethics is the classification of desires into three categories. This framework is the key to understanding why Epicurean philosophy is not a license for unlimited self-indulgence, and why it is fully compatible with the simple, self-sufficient life that Epicurus himself modeled and praised.
The first category is desires that are both natural and necessary -- desires whose satisfaction removes pain and without whose satisfaction genuine suffering results. Hunger, thirst, and shelter from cold are the clearest examples. When we are hungry, we are in pain; when we eat adequately, that pain is removed and pleasure follows. These desires are easy to satisfy: nature has made the things that remove natural pain readily available. The person who satisfies these desires with simple food, water, and adequate shelter has achieved the complete pleasure of a pain-free body -- and further elaboration adds variety but not greater pleasure.
The second category is desires that are natural but not necessary -- desires that arise from our nature as sensory beings capable of enjoying variety, refinement, and aesthetic pleasure, but whose non-satisfaction causes no genuine pain. A taste for fine food, for example, is natural in the sense that it arises from our genuine capacity to enjoy the flavors nature provides; but its non-satisfaction does not cause the kind of suffering that hunger causes. These desires are neither to be condemned nor blindly pursued -- they are to be enjoyed when convenient and economical, but not pursued at a cost in pain or anxiety that outweighs the pleasure they provide.
The third category is desires that are neither natural nor necessary -- desires generated entirely by false beliefs and empty opinion, having no basis in nature at all and producing no genuine pleasure when satisfied because no genuine pain preceded them. The desire for crowns, statues, public acclamation, unlimited wealth, and political power belong in this category. These desires are unlimited precisely because they have no natural stopping point: unlike hunger (which is satisfied by adequate food) or the desire for variety (which is satisfied by any range of genuinely pleasant experience), the desire for fame or power has no natural limit and therefore produces chronic anxiety rather than pleasure. The pursuit of these empty desires is the principal source of the unhappiness Epicurus diagnosed in ambitious, wealthy, and powerful people who nonetheless find their lives full of anxiety and dissatisfaction.
The practical application of this framework is liberating: once we can identify which of our desires fall into which category, we can pursue the natural and necessary ones easily and without anxiety, enjoy the natural but unnecessary ones when they present themselves without strain or obsession, and recognize the empty ones for what they are -- not genuine goods but traps set by false beliefs -- and decline to be driven by them.
[Reattributed: this text does not appear in the Letter to Menoeceus. It is the ancient scholion (marginal note) on Principal Doctrine 29, quoted by Bailey in his commentary -- verified against the rendered page, which explicitly introduces it as "the scholium on this aphorism." The letter's own sec. 127 covers similar ground on the classification of desires but in different wording ("natural...vain...necessary...merely natural"), without the "crowns and statues" example.]
We must reckon that of desires some are natural and necessary, some natural and unnecessary, and some neither natural nor necessary but arising from empty opinion. Epicurus regards as natural and necessary those which remove pain, like drink when thirsty; natural and unnecessary those which merely vary pleasure without removing pain, such as costly food; and neither natural nor necessary, for example, crowns and the erection of statues. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Natural and necessary [desires], according to Epicurus, are ones which bring relief from pain, such as drinking when thirsty; natural but non-necessary are ones which merely vary pleasure but do not remove pain, such as expensive foods; neither natural nor necessary are ones for things like crowns and erection of statues. (tr. Long & Sedley)
- Page scan: Scholion on Principal Doctrine 29 (tr. Bailey)
- Online text: Scholion on Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 29 -- Perseus Digital Library (Diogenes Laertius X, tr. Hicks, Loeb)
- Online text: Scholion on Epicurus, Principal Doctrine 29 -- Perseus Digital Library (Diogenes Laertius X, tr. Hicks, Loeb)
Those desires which do not bring pain when unfulfilled are not necessary, and the longing for them is easily dispersed, when to achieve them seems difficult or when they seem likely to produce harm. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Of desires, some are natural and necessary, others are natural and not necessary, and others are neither natural nor necessary but are due to idle imagination. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Whenever intense passion is present in natural desires which do not lead to pain if they are unfulfilled, these have their origin in empty opinion; and the reason for their persistence is not their own nature but the empty opinion of the person. (tr. Long & Sedley)
We must not compel nature but persuade her; and we shall persuade her by pursuing the necessary desires, and the natural ones if they do no harm, but harshly rebuking the harmful ones. (tr. Long & Sedley)
Poverty, when measured by nature's end, is great wealth, but unlimited wealth is great poverty. (tr. Long & Sedley)
The flesh's cry is not to be hungry or thirsty or cold. For one who is in these states and expects to remain so could rival even Zeus in happiness. (tr. Long & Sedley)
What is insatiable is not the stomach, as people say, but the false opinion concerning its unlimited filling. (tr. Long & Sedley)
This question should be applied to all desires: what will happen to me if the object of my desire is achieved, and what if it is not? (tr. Long & Sedley)
[Note: this entry was previously mislabeled as a Cicero citation. The wording is Epicurus's own, from the Letter to Menoeceus, per Bailey's translation -- Bailey translated Epicurus, never Cicero, which was the tell. Verified against the actual page: "And bread and water produce the highest pleasure, when one who needs them puts them to his lips" (§131), preceded by the "independence of desire," "natural is easy to be obtained," and "plain savours" material of §130.]
Nature's desires are easily satisfied and inexpensive. It is empty opinion that has no limit. From a little bread and water a man can feel as much pleasure as a king at his banquet, provided he understands that the limit of pleasure in the body is the removal of pain that want produces; and that the pleasures of the mind consist in the contemplation of bodily pleasures past and to come, together with freedom from the disturbing fears about death and the gods. (Bailey, adapted)
Nature's wealth is both limited and easy to achieve; but the wealth defined by groundless opinions falls into an infinite abyss. (tr. Long & Sedley)
One should not spoil what one has by wanting what one has not, but should remember that what one has was also wished for. (Bailey)
Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little. (Bailey)
No one when he sees evil deliberately chooses it, but is enticed by it as being good in comparison with a greater evil and so pursues it. (Bailey)
Remove sight, association and contact, and the passion of love is at an end. (Bailey)
The love of money, if unjustly gained, is impious, and, if justly, shameful; for it is unseemly to be merely parsimonious even with justice on one's side. (Bailey)
The wise man when he has accommodated himself to straits knows better how to give than to receive: so great is the treasure of self-sufficiency which he has discovered. (Bailey)
We must envy no one: for the good do not deserve envy and the bad, the more they prosper, the more they injure themselves. (Bailey)
The ungrateful greed of the soul makes the creature everlastingly desire varieties of dainty food. (Bailey)
The greatest fruit of self-sufficiency is freedom. (Bailey)
The first measure of security is to watch over one's youth and to guard against what makes havoc of all by means of pestering desires. (Bailey)