Ataraxia

Greek ἀταραξία (ataraxia), "undisturbedness"

Freedom from mental disturbance. Ataraxia is a genuinely desirable state, but it is not itself the goal: Epicurus names pleasure as "the beginning and end of the blessed life," the standard by which every other good, including tranquility, is measured. Treating ataraxia as the goal in place of pleasure is one of the most common misreadings of Epicurus. See Other Controversies ("Is Pleasure, Or Tranquility, The Epicurean Goal?").

1. Key Texts

Quote from Diogenes Laertius 10.136-137

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, as he says in his book On Choice and Avoidance and in On The End and in Book 1 of On Lives. 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. (tr. Long & Sedley)

2. See Also

• Other Controversies
• The Term "Pleasure" Is The Exact Equivalent Of "Absence of Pain"
• Aponia
• Katastematic and Kinetic Pleasure