Episode #019 - Epicurus Was Not an Epicurean

If someone described a philosophy whose central teachings were: live simply, eat bread and water, cultivate close friendships, manage your desires so they never exceed what is easily available, and spend time thinking about death so you stop being afraid of it — you probably would not call that philosophy Epicurean.

And yet that is exactly what Epicurus taught. The man whose name became synonymous with luxury and sensual indulgence was a philosopher who lived in a garden outside Athens, ate simple food, drank water rather than wine, and argued that most human suffering comes not from the absence of pleasure but from the disordered pursuit of pleasures we do not need.

In this episode, Shawn and Claire correct a misreading that has been running for roughly two thousand years. They cover the distinction Epicurus draws between kinetic pleasures — excitement, acquisition, sensation — and katastematic pleasures — the stable absence of pain in the body and disturbance in the mind. His central claim, consistently misread, is that tranquility is higher than stimulation. The good life is not organized around the pursuit of more. It is organized around the achievement of sufficiency.

The episode also takes seriously Epicurus's philosophy of death — his argument that death is nothing to us, the symmetry between pre-natal and post-mortem non-existence, and what Thomas Nagel's deprivation account says in response. And it covers the role of friendship in Epicurean life: not casual social connection, but the deep, lasting philosophical friendship that Epicurus called the greatest good wisdom procures.

The contemporary research on hedonic adaptation — how quickly we return to baseline happiness after acquiring more — suggests Epicurus was onto something real. The person whose happiness depends on bread and water and good conversation is almost always able to be happy. The person whose happiness depends on fame and wealth is perpetually at risk.

The question Epicurus leaves you with is simple and genuinely difficult: what do you actually need? And do you already have it?

Shawn and Claire together. No prior philosophy required.

SHOW NOTES

Primary Sources

• Epicurus. (1994). The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia (B. Inwood & L. P. Gerson, Trans. & Eds.). Hackett Publishing.
• Diogenes Laertius. (2018). Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (P. Mensch, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work written c. third century CE)
• Lucretius. (2007). The Nature of Things (A. E. Stallings, Trans.). Penguin Classics. (Original work written c. first century BCE)

Works Referenced in This Episode

• Nagel, T. (1979). Death. In Mortal Questions (pp. 1–10). Cambridge University Press.
• Waldinger, R., & Schulz, M. (2023). The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Simon & Schuster.
• Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Random House.

Accessible Starting Points

• Greenblatt, S. (2011). The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Norton.
• Wilson, C. (2019). How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well. Basic Books.
• de Botton, A. (2000). The Consolations of Philosophy. Pantheon.

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