We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look for anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing. — Letter to Menoeceus
Again, we regard independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when once the pain of want has been removed, while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one's self, therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all that is needful for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better condition when we approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune.
t's the only school of philosophy to which I ever felt attracted. Not a card-carrying member, mind you, but it sure sounds better than most of them. — Vera Mont
Further Epicurus' theory gets at something fundamental about desire -- that our desires can be the reason we are unhappy, rather than us being unhappy because we're not satisfying those desires, and so the cure of unhappiness is to remove the desire rather than pursue it. Which is a very different kind of hedonism from our usual understanding of the word since it's centered around limiting desire such that they can always be satisfied and you don't have to worry about them rather than pursuing any and all of them. — Moliere
The desire for riches should perhaps not always be understood as a simple hunger for a luxurious life, a more important motive might be the wish to be appreciated and treated nicely. We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us. Epicurus, discerning our underlying need, recognised that a handful of true friends could deliver the love and respect that even a fortune may not.
That is to say, in concrete terms, in any community where conspicuous consumption is an element of the scheme of life, an increase in an individual's ability to pay is likely to take the form of an expenditure for some accredited line of conspicuous consumption.
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper. In an industrial community this propensity expresses itself in pecuniary emulation; and this, so far as regards the Western civilized communities of the present, is virtually equivalent to saying that it expresses itself in some form of conspicuous waste. — Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class
Focusing so much on invulnerability, which was a major philosophical theme at the time so it makes sense, is also another point of departure for me. This dovetails with the above. It's not to be impervious to fortune, but to be able to feel and go with the flows of fortune with tranquility. — Moliere
I think that Foucault's The Care of the Self is a close examination of this "Epicurean" virtue. — Paine
Don't fear god,
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get,
What is terrible is easy to endure
Could some customized variation on that theme work for you? — Vera Mont
Desiring not to have desires is still ‘desire’. — I like sushi
Lo! I show you the last man.
What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is
a star? so asketh the last man and blinketh.
The earth hath then become small, and on it there hoppeth
the last man who maketh everything small. His species is in
eradicable like that of the ground-flea; the last man liveth longest.
We have discovered happiness; say the last men, and blink thereby.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they
need warmth. One still loveth one s neighbour and rubbeth
against him; for one needeth warmth.
Doctor knows how to set a bone, and The Master knows how to cure your soul. — Moliere
Epicurus was a dogmatist in the same way that a modern doctor is a dogmatist, in that you don't allow people to opt-in to sickness. — Moliere
It's the student who is wrong, rather than the master. — Moliere
Of course, that's all hearsay - credited only because the dogmatism of masters is a given.wiki: The discovery of irrational numbers is said to have been shocking to the Pythagoreans, and Hippasus is supposed to have drowned at sea, apparently as a punishment from the gods for divulging this.
So what Epicurus aims to remove from the soul without your permission are the very things which inhibit a person from being free. — Moliere
By overruling you, or rolling over you.... not quite my definition of freedom. — Vera Mont
Anybody can call himself a philosopher. — Vera Mont
Which is different from the way the Epicurean philosophy reads, and is different from the way the Epicurean philosophy was practiced. — Moliere
What if I'm hurting myself, though? — Moliere
That's why I put that school in with the Pythagoreans, Zen, Bauhaus and Kellogg - because they're holistic lifestyle regimes, rather than stand-alone philosophical theories. — Vera Mont
The immersion method is exactly what some people need -- but it must be one that corresponds to their actual life situation and the options available to them. Anything you can't move into for six months is just theory: interesting, often edifying, but external. — Vera Mont
I've always preferred the immersion method, though I'd call it the phenomenological method. Combining gardening, buddhism, and Epicurean philosophy with a few academic monographs I got a coherent feel for the philosophy at the way-of-life level, — Moliere
What if you are? You may be a professional prizefighter, ballerina or soldier and nobody thinks it's any of their business. If you are seen to do certain kinds of self-harm, you may be deprived of your liberty by legal authority and placed in an institutions. But modern human rights codes generally allow people to overindulge in food, drink, sex, extreme bodybuilding, masochistic relationships, conspiracy theories or sleep-depriving, stressful occupations.
Either it's your life, your choice, your responsibility or it's someone else's. — Vera Mont
That, or something like it may already exist. https://www.ic.org/directory/communes/
Or you can start one. Modern intentional communities are whatever the participants want them to be. — Vera Mont
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