Epicureanism MOGS Stoicism // 238

Stoicism is on its comeback among dumb 20 year olds, which is too bad because Epicureanism is the superior Athenian philosophy. We discuss hedonism, happiness, and the Swerve™. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
So I'm sold to Epicureanism, I think is better than
than stoicism.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
We've all been to undergrad grad school, put our toes
into every philosophy there is, and it happens we're coming
to right now January twenty twenty six. We've figured it out.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Yeah, it's weird as stoicism is so popular. But then,
I mean, I guess the reason I was trying to think,
Like you know, when I was reading this, I was
trying to imagine, like why isn't there a revival of
like self help books that are epicurean as opposed to stoic,
Like why is stoicism getting all the attention?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Well, Eric, you.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Converted to stoicism last episode, So are you are you switching.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Or or is this or are you sticking with it?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
It does not do it for you?

Speaker 4 (00:53):
No, I'm going to try it out first. Well, like
I mentioned last time, stoicism was a major inspiration behind
the guy who came up with CE cognitive therapy and
cognitive behavioral therapy CBT, which are like the gold standard
kinds of therapies, along with dialectical behavior therapy, which came

(01:18):
from somewhere else. And I haven't looked into the philosophical
roots of that one. I think it's Stoicism's emotional control
component that seem to be the most inspiring. Yeah, I
don't have any plans of I think. I think Stoicism,
like the data that they've gathered after having run this

(01:39):
Stoicism Week thing for like ten years plus, seems to
be pretty positive. And again, like I think there's a
lot of elements of like a pan therapeutic effect where
if you're just really reflecting on your moods and paying
more attention to yourself and like you're going to get
benefits anyway, and like stoicism may just be one route

(02:03):
to that. But I don't know, like it does epicureanism
have that sort of self care kind of element to it.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Like, yes, I think it does.

Speaker 4 (02:13):
Even that Fuco kind of saw in Stoicism. It seemed
later in his career he seemed to like be inspired
to go on that care for the self direction with Stoicism.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I don't know what it is, but our audience whenever
we say bring up CBT, which I think I don't
I don't know what it is, even you guys talk
about it every time, there's a very there's a very
passionate discourse in the comments about the some people who
hate CBT and some people who think it's it's I
don't know if anyone extols it like unreservedly, but everyone's

(02:47):
got a strong opinion on CBT and the other on
dialectical something something. Oh DBT, All right, so there's opinions.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, how does that one? How does that one come out?

Speaker 1 (02:57):
People want to.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Yeah, DBT is like an alternative.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
When we're comparing the therapy schools Greek philosophy, the Greek
philosophy schools are basically having the same argument, which philosophy,
which method is best. It's just that their therapies also
come with an entire cosmology and like an ordering of
the human person along with it.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
I want to make a claim that I think Epicureanism
and Stoicism are not totally incompatible. I think stoics think
Stoics will want to reject a lot of things Epicureans say,
But I feel like Epicureans would not necessarily reject everything
that the Stoic says, especially when it comes to conduct
like human well being. Like I felt, I was struck

(03:45):
by the fact that it seems to me like they
want similar outcomes. This I felt like I was reading
the Epicurean a case for happiness as a kind of
trinquil to be not that dissimilar than like what the
Stoics say matters. It's just that obviously the way that

(04:07):
they get there are very different. And certainly the thing
that I liked much more about Epicureanism is again they
emphasize relationality and friendship and other people, and I think
that that's a huge plus for the Epicurean school.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
I think Epicureanism is logically correct.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (04:25):
Yeah, like some Stoics were partly Epicurean, I don't think
they're too different.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well, they disagree on the virtues, and we can get
into the things they disagree on in detail. But let
me say this, all of all of practical philosophy, whether
it's Christian or Stoic, or Buddhist or Epicureanism or even
the Platonists, really all of them agree that if you
train your mind to control your desires, you'll be happier,

(04:55):
and if the other way around, you won't be happy.
So three thousand years of philosophy, all our years of
studying some shit in grad school. All you actually need
is your mind to control your desire, or, to put
it in other terms, if you set your mind to
giving negative feedback on desire instead of positive feedback. This

(05:17):
is what the wisest people have all agreed is how
to be happy.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, I agree. So it's not just stoicism and epicureanism
that are compatible in that way. You're right, it's like
the whole history of moral and the goal practical thinking.
It's you're right. I think they all converge on some
version of that. They obviously disagree with the underlying metaphysics
or epistemology that make that possible, and therefore also probably

(05:42):
disagree about some of the methods. But I think you're right.
They agree on that outcome, or on that being the
goal to like temper your desires.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
We kind of agree generally about like the outcome that
should be happening, but like nobody agrees how to get there,
and everyone fights passionately defending their point of view and
how how they think they should get there, How to
get to tranquility, how to get to emotional stability or whatever.

(06:12):
The youdemonia happiness are flourishing, probably better because happiness implies
like a psychological state, which.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
None of them are talking about.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
The goal of Epicureanism is what they call ataraxia, where
taraxia means disturbances and a means no disturbances, so it's
translated tranquility. But that's the goal, is a state of peace.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Being at ease in your in yourself, in your body,
in who you are.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Ye, peace of mind might be a good uh translation.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Being comfortable in your own skin, being comfortable with like yeah,
like just like not worrying as much, right, I think
like all those things are related as like an absence
of disturbance, right, which to me makes sense. I feel
like a lot of I feel like Stoicism is worried
about that too.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
Well.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
This was one difference that I noticed is that Epicureanism
seems to be decided that like like participation in politics
and the life of the police is like a no go,
like you should with live a kind of withdrawn life,

(07:27):
and and Stoicism is actually divided on this question. This
is that Which is another difference I'll get to is
that Epicureanism is is slightly more on the on the
dogmatic side, or some some make that claim, whereas so
Stoics are divided on whether participating in politics is like, okay,

(07:49):
something that should be part of the teachings. And I
think the general answer is like yes, as long as
it doesn't compromise virtue, which is the most important thing
is training up that virtue that we mentioned last time.
But for the Epicureans, right, it's more about withdrawing from

(08:11):
politics and kind of living the simple life. Epicurus himself
actually had his school outside the city walls, and there's
the famous Epicurean garden there. They had the academy, the lyceum,
the garden, and I guess just the barrel. If you're
a cynic, you're just living in the barrel wherever you are.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
And the porch.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah, the Stoa some parts some places called the Stoa
where the Stoics got their name from.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Epicurus is the most woke. He let women come to
the garden.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah that's true. I heard that, and yeah, yeah it
was egalitarian.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
If you're on the porch, how do you stop, Like
if women are walking by you, just you're like move on, lady,
Like are they not allowed to listen? You're just out
in public?

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, probably the different was
they could listen, but they can't participate, right, whereas an
epicurea epicurean probably could.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
Now, Stoicism did permit women as well. They were also
sort of they were they were semi woke in in
was it Musonius. Here's here's the line from our last reading.
Musonius Rufus argued in his lectures that because young girls
have the capacity to reason just as well as boys

(09:26):
young boys, they too should receive a full education in philosophy.
That's from the discourse. For in all the ways that
matters most, there is no difference between men and women.
As a consequence, it is equally appropriate for women to
become philosophers as it is for men. That is an
argument put forward by Musonius Rufus, who was the teacher

(09:50):
of Epictetus. I believe, and Epictetus is one of the
big three later Stoics whose work actually survives well.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
I did want to go back to the point about
withdrawing from public life, because that also stood out to
me as very interesting, and I was sort of thinking
about it, you know, you could think about it as
a normative claim, or you could think about it as
a descriptive claim, and I think I'm very sympathetic to
it as a descriptive claim in the sense that participating

(10:22):
in like politics is probably going to make you unhappy,
like going and trying to like I mean, we all
know it. It's like if you withdraw from Twitter or
withdraw from like political arguments, like being involved in those
is bad for your mental health. So like as a
descriptive claim, I just think that that's one hundred percent right,
Like it's just it's not going to be good for
you as a moral claim. As a normative claim, like

(10:43):
obviously there's going to be circumstances where you need to
participate in politics, So I'm not for that. But I think,
like from just the psychological claim, I mean, that doesn't
seem that crazy to me. And and I think and
I actually appreciate it as kind of a counter which
even sort of dovetails into some of the work that

(11:03):
I've done, even in my dissertation and stuff that you know,
these views of democracy or politics that sort of glorify
like the you know, the the meeting the council as
these important parts of like a good life. Like I've
always been skeptical of those, I'm like, that's bullshit, Like
people going to those things is a pain in the ass,
Like it's you know, it's not It's not like some

(11:25):
beautiful thing. The outcome is beautiful, the work that it
does could be beautiful, but like the actual thing itself
is a pain in the ass. And then I guess
the final thing I would say about it, though, is
I do think it might expose attention in the ideal
of like the epicurean community, and that just to me
raises a question of, well, how do you make those
communities work without politics? Like I don't understand it, Like

(11:48):
how are you guys deciding things? Like it's it's going
to be unavoidable. So I don't know if he had
if there is an answer to that that I missed,
but I was just curious, like these communities are with
drawing from the city, but internally they must have maybe
they remain small enough that it's like not a big
deal to figure those things out, and like maybe the

(12:08):
kind of politics he has in mind is like in
the at the scale of the city or bigger, which sucks,
And you know, just right about that, So that was
that was interesting, and that that's kind of how I
process that claim.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Well, there are no commandments obviously in Epicuranism. Yeah, so
there's no like there's nothing that says don't do politics.
It's more like, if you're gonna dedicate your life to politics,
this is most likely gonna make you unhappy.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, exactly, if you're trying.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
To climb the ladder to to I don't know whatever
the Greek equivalent of that, If you're trying to get
famous and powerful, that leads to unhappiness.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah. So that's why I read it more as a
descriptive claim exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
But it's not retreating from the police in terms of
being ascetic or like living in a cult because you
need epicure. Epic gears is pretty you need money also
to be happy. You just need not as much money
as you think. You don't go for money for money's sake,
you go for money for food sake.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:09):
No, I think the cynics like rejected society sort of
not even like ascetically, but just like almost in like
a Russoian kind of way. Is just like no society
is corrupting, And I think that's probably the view of
politics too, is you know, like I said, for the
stoics too, right, like participate in politics insofar as it

(13:33):
does not compromise your virtue. And we all know politics
can be extremely compromising for the development right.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
It's it often.

Speaker 4 (13:45):
Requires you to be cutthroat and immoral and lie and
not cultivate your better virtues anyway, the character virtues.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
And it can also make you obsessed with some things
like don't actually matter that much from the perspective, like prestige,
and like these different things.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
That popularity, everything that.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
Popularity don't really matter.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, so let's set up the comparison here for the stoics.
To be happy, you need virtue. You live the virtuous life.
You find virtue in nature, which is again much more
expensive than the way we use it. But your nature
is your fate. If you fight, if you live in

(14:28):
accordance with nature, you'll live and die happy. Even if
you have nothing and no one with you, Your happiness
is there to be found. Epicureanism. They say that happiness
is found in pleasure. That's it very simple. It's hedonistic.
But like we use the word stoicism wrong. The way

(14:49):
we use stoicism means like someone without emotion. Hedonism does
not mean sex drugs and rock and roll. It literally
just means the pursuit of pleasures.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
The British. The British are at fault for that because
the British version of hedonism is the way that people
think of hedonism. But it's not like that.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
Like also the term of materialism, what that tends to
mean too, like being obsessed with material things, Like you know,
we're all modern consumer culture running on that hedonic treadmill,
waiting for the next iPhone to come out, and that's
the only thing that makes you happy.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
No, like none, Yeah, put all of that out.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
None of that would apply. In fact that, as Pills
just said, like trying to chase those material things would
be a path to unhappiness for the epicurean.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah. If there's anything banned in epicureanism, it's chasing fame
and fortune.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, but they say this will carry out in your actions. Really,
it doesn't matter what you believe at all.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
And it's not even and it's not even banned. It's
just like be aware that that's actually like you're just
increasing your likelihood of misery if you keep doing that.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Like there's no there's no benefit to fame and fortune
because Also another reason is they can't be limited. You
can always have more, seek more fame, you can always
seek more money, whereas the natural desires like food when
you're when you're full, you can't eat anymore. So it's
not an infinite waste. But yeah, happiness and the highest happiness,

(16:16):
this is the highest goal. It's not a sage, it's
not a person. The highest point of happiness is called
I said it already at araxia.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yeah, being at ease at piece, and it.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Means being free of pain. So the highest pleasure is
not feeling pain and not physical pain. Right, So the
main pains that you feel, the most intense pains you
feel are fear and regret and anxiety. Says the mental pains,
they can last forever because you can never be free
of it until you deal with it. So physical, physical pleasure,

(16:49):
physical pain, these are they're there, but you can basically
get over it. But the main point of epicureanism is
to free yourself from the pain of regret. The fear
of death is a big one, and the fear of
the gods, which he constantly brings up. This must have
been a big issue, but he says the only purpose

(17:09):
of the gods, they're made up by a corrupt society.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
Well actually make you feel shitty.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Technically he doesn't say they're made up, but all the
rules around them, they are made up to make you
feel shitty. So one of the first things you got
to do is get rid of religion and down the
road Christianity would basically stamp out that picarianism for it's
a pretty obvious reason.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, yeah, I know. That's that's super interesting. It also
strikes me. One thing that strike struck me when you
were talking their pills is how this ataraxia is that?
Am I saying that? Right? This kind of like absence
of pain. It's it reminds me of like the way
modern times we talk about privilege, right, like something like
white privilege, and people are like, oh, you don't notice

(17:52):
your privilege. You just like you realize that you're at
ease in a space. It's like I can go into
a store and feel comfortable. Right. For example, if if
you're a white person or whatever, and it strikes me
that this account of like absence of pain, we could
compare it conceptually to that, because it's like it's like
an absence of worrying, right, Because The thing that makes
white privilege good isn't that white people are like, oh

(18:15):
my god, I'm enjoying my white privilege so much, this
is so great. It's the fact that they don't have
to worry about things, which is the good part. Right.
It's not some additive. It's actually a subtractive in a way.
It's like, I don't have to think about how people
are looking at me when I'm in a space. Right.
That's and I think in a way that's you want
to expand that to all parts of your life, and

(18:36):
that's I feel like, in a way, like the Epicurean good.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
I found there's this dope quote from seventeen seventy by
a materialist named Baron Tolback, who wrote a text called
The System of Nature seventeen seventy, and this just reminded
me of what you were saying about the getting rid
of the gods part of Epicureanism. It's like, the quote

(19:04):
runs something like, if we go back to the beginning,
we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods,
That fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned them, that weakness worships them,
that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny
support them. And I think epicure Epicureanism was one of

(19:27):
the main I mean, maybe we'll do another legacy thing later,
but I just thought that was a badass quote to
bring forward.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Epicura says, if the gods exist, you're not going to
be hearing from them, because if the gods who are
who we think they are, then they're happy, and if
they're happy, they're not going to pester us. And if
they exist, they're also made of atoms. They're atom is there,
so everything's made of atoms, including the gods. They're not special.
In other words, they're not special, and if they are happy,

(19:55):
you're never even going to hear from them. So they're
kind of like agnostic with respect to debating that. But
what he cares about with respect to the gods is
their main purpose seems to be coercing obedience out of
people or making people afraid that they're doing the right thing.
Are they being obedient to God or not? Are they

(20:16):
going to go to hell after they die? I don't
know what all the Greek equivalents to these things are,
but in our terminology, yeah, God causes a lot of anxiety.
This is kind of the inverse of the Calvinists. The
Calvinist is so worried about whether he's going to heaven
or not that he works his ass off his whole
life just with the vain hope that somehow he'll squeak by.

(20:38):
And the Epicurean works as little as possible because it's
a waste of time and waste of happiness and tries
to be at peace in the here and now.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
Well, the Calvinists kind of like Stoicism too, because of
the fatalism there, whereas Epicureanism has the famous swerve idea
the Clinemen the swerve where where atoms will just sort
of completely randomly, by pure absolute chance diverge from their path,

(21:11):
that they will dissent from the path that they're on,
just like at random, which is a kind of they'll follow.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
I think the way I heard that is it'll follow it.

Speaker 4 (21:22):
Their inclinations and the inclinations of matter can just like
take random turns and swerve, which is a little bit
like what following pleasure is is about following the intrinsic
like paths things want to take their inclinations as opposed

(21:45):
to like psychological pleasure again and psychological happiness, although psychological
hedonism is what this book calls Epicurus's position, But I
think it has to do with inclination, because what we
get right I see here. You know, one of the

(22:05):
main differences between Epicureanism and Aristotle is the rejection of
telos that things have a purpose, which is another one
of those like I think you were saying earlier, like
oh my god, this is so like correct, like it's
so modern sounding, like it sounds like modern scientific materialism

(22:25):
in the same way that it rejects teleological explanations and
purposes and the idea that everything is like striving towards
this wholeness, which is what the kind of root of
telos is in Aristotle, like a wholeness, that things are
kind of moving towards an end, a whole, and fulfilling

(22:48):
a kind of purpose within that whole. Epicureanism does not
that dismisses that entirely, saying no telos is telos is
nothing for us. Things don't have purpose.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Which sounds very modern. Well, they weren't right about everything,
Like it's not true that sour foods taste sour because
there's tiny little barbs in the food that stab our tongues.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
It's a good theory, you know. And our understanding of atoms,
the secondary sources are like, oh they were, they were
atomists and they were right, Like, no, they were not
at all. Their understanding of atoms was like fire atoms
are these tiny little triangles and like earth atoms are
tiny little squares.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Like yeah, they were only they were only broadly pointing
in a roughly right direction. But they were very wrong
about all the details.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
They were accidentally right. But this thing called swerve swerve,
which sounds like sounds like zoomer TikTok slang. Every everything's
got some swerve. Hashtag swerve, says the new wrapper, little
skizzer or whatever. Anyway, Yeah, they're they're basically their universe

(23:56):
is basically deterministic. There's all these little atoms that are
flying in their own direction in which is pure determinism,
except then every once in a while there's a swerve
where they go to the left or to the right.
They're still going in the same direction, but there's a
little bit of like randomness. I guess you'd call it.
And you could say, then it's a soft determinism. Instead

(24:18):
of a hard determinism. So it's because atoms can move
spontaneously that we have the ability to to change our lives.
I guess. So there's an account of where our freedom
comes from. But I know, I know, I hate when
people do this, by the way, but it sounds so
much like the double slit experiment, like you know where
the you know where the beam starts, you know where

(24:40):
it ends, but you don't know you don't know which
way they got to get there. They weren't right about it.
I'm just saying it's just a parallel, an accidental parallel.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Well, yeah, I've I've heard many times.

Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, like epicureanism leaves room for free will, like true
free will because of this swerve thing. But it is
very unclear how you get from the clinemen to like
human free will.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
There's no obvious path from.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Like A to B. There.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
It's like Dpak Chopra. Are those all the New Age
guru grifters who are like, well, there's an observer in
quantum physics that changes reality. So if you talk to
your plants, then they're going to grow greener. And if
you think about money, it has no choice except to
arrive in your bank account.

Speaker 4 (25:31):
Yeah, or like your brain is quantumly entangled with the
whole universe, Like, yeah, okay, can.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
We also bring to the forefront. What I thought was
maybe the most appealing, especially in contrast to stoicism, was
the importance of relationality. I think is very appealing. You know,
he talks about friendship being crucial At one point, I
think the author quotes if not Epicurist and someone else
who was a follower of Epicurus saying that, you know,

(25:58):
we should even love our friends like that there's more
pleasure in like loving your friends than loving yourself or
something like that. And in a way I was thinking
as I was reading that, you know, kind of the
British liberal individualist version of hedonism we might call like
rational egoism, right, it's like just worried about yourself. This

(26:19):
almost sounded like rational collectivism in a weird sense. It's like,
do things that benefit like your collective connections the most,
and that's going to be a way of cementing and
securing that kind of tranquility that you have, that having
relations to other people both materially and emotionally secures your
tranquility and your ease of mind, and it seems like

(26:42):
for the stoic they would almost say, well, you can
just get over not having friends, you can just you know. So,
So this I liked and I think it's an interesting contrast.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, all these porn addicted eighteen year olds are in
the discord trying out stoicism. They should be on epicureanism.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
I was wondering if you're going to bring this up.
I mean, I knew you were going to bring this up.
But it's interesting that the reason to have friends is
not any like good in itself, like it might be
for play too. At the symposium, it's like, yeah, you
need to have a network because at the end of
the day, this is more likely to make you happy
in the future.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
So it's exactly, that's true.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
It's it's a little bit what would we call instrumental,
But I mean it's true, that's true, right, It's true,
not like not sentimental exactly, it's not sentimental.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
It's not intrinsic. And that's why I think that maybe
like rational collectivism is like not a bad way of
describing it, because it is like rationalistic instrumental. Uh, in
a similar way that like rational egoism is kind of individualistic.
H it is about your future well being, but it
goes far right, It goes really far in the sense that,

(27:53):
you know, it was striking to me again that he's
saying that, Well, yeah, I don't know, maybe I need
to take look at that section again. But it's interesting
that he talks about how there can be more pleasure
in enjoying the well being of your friend than even
in yourself like that, And that's not I don't think

(28:14):
he's trying to say that in some sentimentalist way like
you said pills. It is almost coming from a place
yeah that like, maybe there's a pleasure I need to
check again in like enjoying your friends. That is a
that is like a distinct kind of pleasure. And maybe
this is a good way of leading into the conversation
about the way that the Epicureans divide up the types

(28:34):
of the types of pleasure.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
My aunt had a little poster in her bathroom that
I remember when I was little, and it had two
little kittens on it and it said, uh, trouble shared
is trouble halved. Joy shared is joy doubled. So that's
that's the.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
Right there, that is that is, Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 4 (28:57):
Epicureanism operates within a kind of Aristotelian ethical framework, and
we do know that Aristotle makes a big deal out
of friendships. And one of the things we learned about
the difference between stoicism was, yeah, Victor's right. Stoicism really

(29:20):
like doesn't emphasize friendship as super important alongside virtues on
the pathway to happiness. Stoicism doesn't, like I guess, I
guess one of the outcomes would be like your pleasant
and a friendly person, like easy to get along with,

(29:40):
if you're like the stoic on the way towards stage
like qualities, but like, yeah, friendships not essential.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Don't they even go further the stoics and say, like,
wouldn't they say that your dependence on friendship is an
illusion and that if like you could just figure out
that you all you need is yourself and your ver
and that like, if you are overly dependent on friends,
that you're that's like one of their lies or like
false falsities. Right, It's like, that's that's just not true.

(30:09):
Like the source of your virtue is internal. You don't
actually need anyone.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Your happiness shouldn't be dependent on them. But they're not
gonna say, don't have friends.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
No, no, I agree, they're not going to say don't
have friends. But they're gonna say. But if you think
that it's like that your happiness depends on it, that's
an illusion.

Speaker 4 (30:24):
The Seneca I think Seneca comments in one of his
letters that he has no time for He doesn't care
about the meaning of the word friend. He's only interested
in guidance for how to treat his friends.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
So I guess.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
I guess in the sense that like friendship can be
a source of like difficulty, then well.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
Let's say all the things that hedonism in this case
is not because it's better to get all the junk
out of the way. Hedonism is not wanting stuff because
your stuff, if you have a lot of it, you're
at risk of it being stolen from you. That's going
to produce anxiety. That's why you want a lot of friends,

(31:07):
but not a lot of stuff. I guess your friends
can't be stolen from you in this example. Oh, you
need variety in your life. Variety is a form of pleasure,
So it's not this is a this is a reason
to not eat like the same food all the time.
Either bread or steak. Even if you're rich, you don't
want to eat steak every day because if you eat

(31:28):
steak every day, it gets boring and you're not going
to get pleasure out of it. So you need a
bit of variety. That's why it's it's best to eat
bread like six days a week and have steak one
day on the weekends to make it, to make it special.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Like.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
One of the problems he's dealing with, basically is that
there's diminishing returns. There's diminishing returns from being bored of something,
So you want to you want to be okay with
the simple things enough so that when you get something special,
then it's noteworthy. Then you can actually get pleasure, pleasure

(32:00):
out of it. If you need luxury at all times,
then you're gonna have a very hard time getting pleasure
out of anything in your life. The other thing is
Epicurius says we might desire things that we shouldn't however,
and epicureanism, you're never prohibited by moral law. It's never
because God said that you can't drink that you shouldn't drink.

(32:20):
It's because if you drink too much, you're gonna get
sick from it. You're gonna get sick the next day,
you're gonna have a bad liver. But what it is
to be rational and what it is to be human therefore,
is to be able to plan in advance, to want
the general health overall, not the pleasure in the moment.

(32:41):
So you have to look to the future. Like if
your doctor prescribes you oxycon, it's going to stop your
it's going to stop your pain now, but the risks
are too great of it causing unhappiness that you should
probably you know, not take it. And other examples are
you should experience pain now if you want to have
pleasure later. So the main example for that is working out.

(33:03):
So yeah, it hurts workout, you're tired, But overall this
is it's going to be better for you. You're going
to be happier, being more fit because it's easier to
open doors and pick your kit up.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
And healthy long term health.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
One thing I thought was interesting here is the society
corrupts because there's three types of desire, those that are
necessary and natural. Those ones you should never inhibit yourself.
That's food, shelter, you know, friendships, family, you should never
prevent yourself from having those, which is in contrast to
ascetics or Christians or like things that say you should

(33:43):
fast to get yourself closer to God, you should starve yourself.
All those losers, there's no point. It doesn't make you
better to do any of those things. The second kind
of desire is natural but not necessary. So this would
be sexsive food. You know, it's natural to on expensive food,
but you don't really need it now. Natural but not

(34:05):
necessary you should do but in moderation, moderation, right right, right,
in moderation, and you need to do natural but not
necessary desires, give in to them just to increase the variety.
Like it. You can survive on eating rice or bread
every single day, but you're not going to be very
happy doing that, So you've got to spice it up

(34:26):
with natural but not necessary desires, even if it's unhealthy,
as long as it's not too often.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
It was interesting when you talked about oh go sorry,
if you're not done, continue last.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
There's only three types of desire that's natural and necessary,
natural but not necessary that you should engage in in moderation.
You know, recreational drug, drug use. All that goes into
natural but not necessary but then the third category is
vain and empty and vain desire. What classifies it is
that it has no limit. So this is where you

(34:57):
find the esteem of others or public esteem, or fame
or celebrity or money or wealth or yeah, you think
of anything else.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
And political, well that's where that's where the political realm is.
I think that's why he worries about the political.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Fit there too, anything that you're not, anything that can
never satisfy you, that you only need more. This is
only going to make you unhappy.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Maybe like maybe like sleeping with a lot of people,
like as much as you can. That could be like
a kind of vein.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yeah, well say I think sex would be natural necessary.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Right, but I guess, but maybe there's a separate category
of like the I like being attached to the identity
of like being like a player or something like that. Right,
that's like a kind of vainglorious thing that goes with it.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
You have sex not even because you want to, just
because you're trying to add to your body count.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
That's your exploits. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
So three, that kind of desire you never need. Number
one type of desire you should never you should never
limit yourself, like if you're hungry, eat, there's no there's
no benefit to fasting. I mean, unless there is a
physical benefit to fast there's no moral benefit to fasting.
And I thought that was just like that, that's how

(36:13):
you do it. That's how you do it.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Seems right, I mean, yeah, exactly, it seems totally right.
I also wanted to quickly highlight when he talks about
mental pleasures because that was interesting to me. Right now.
I don't know if he thinks that these like where
these mental pleasures fit into the three that you mentioned there,
but you know, for example, like like remembering really happy things.

(36:34):
There's actually an example where apparently when Epicurus himself was dying,
so he actually had a pretty painful, horrible death from
like kidney stones, like really uncomfortable. He was in a
lot of pain, and he apparently one of the letters
he wrote to his friend, as he said, even now
I remain what sustains my happiness is thinking about all
the great philosophical conversations I had with my friends, and

(36:55):
like that is like giving me Yeah, I know what
a nerd, but that was kind of interesting to me,
like like having like enjoying memories or anticipating future things
that you're looking forward to, and I don't know how
how pills, how do you think those fit into like natural, necessary,
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Well, he says, basically, ignorance is not bliss. So I
think I think you need there's some amount of thought.
I don't know if you necessarily say philosophy, but there's
some amount of thought that is necessary, some amount of
memory memories that are necessary. But then you can also
move them in like if you're too obsessed with philosophy

(37:39):
and all you want to talk about is philosophy all
the time, to the point that you annoy other people,
I know people like that, now you start causing. Now
you start causing pain. Or if you were if you
like your happy memories so much that you become nostalgic
and it prevents you from acting. Now you're Now you're
drifting into natural but not necessary. So you need to Yeah,
everything in moderation. It's the most basic, which.

Speaker 1 (37:59):
Again is like like Eric said, it's you know it does.
It does give Aristotelian virtues, which is maybe just a
very Greek way, ancient Greek way of thinking about things.
I did want to mention though, like this is reminding
me to contrast to Epicureanism with Aristotelian ethics. Is I
think they disagree? Yeah, is I think, And I think

(38:19):
it has to do with the role of of telos
right of teleology, because for for Aristotle, it seems like
these things like have a proper place, like an appropriate place.
So even though they seem to functionally agree, it seems
like for Epicureate Epicurus, there is no telos to like
our bodies or our natural things, like there's not really

(38:41):
I think I had a note on it somewhere here. Yeah,
Like he just doesn't think that there's any like telos
to our our organism. There's only a state of this ataraxia,
this kind of like ease. But it's not because that's
like naturally bat like he because for him, the universe

(39:02):
is kind of a chaotic place, right, It's not like
there's no such thing as some proper I'm just trying
to find it. Oh yeah, okay, So I think like
so Epicurus, I think agrees right that the highest good
is in a way happiness and like the quality of
your life, this being at ease. But Aristotle thinks that
our organs have a purpose, right, that our hands have

(39:23):
a purpose, that like there's that all these things have purpose.
And I think Epicurus rejects that. He's like, there's no
inherent purpose to organs or human beings there, We're just
we're just floating the atoms bouncing together in the universe.
And instead he pivots this this discussion of inherent teleology

(39:44):
to I think, just an account, a descriptive account of desire, right,
like what are the things that we desire and what
leads to this like appealing place of of of like ataraxia,
of being at ease, being tranquil. It's maybe a bit
of a subtle just but it's like a claim that
has to do with the metaphysics, right of like what
the truth of the universe is. I might have missed something,

(40:07):
so I don't know if you if you either be
wanted to add or help clarify that.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
That sounds right to me. But although there's a few
things that he does do that Aristotle would be very
upset by. One is basically Epicurea says the only value,
the only virtue that really matters, is prudence, and prudence
should guide all the other ones. Right. Aristotle has all
these balances. So prudence is just like if it works,

(40:33):
if it's gonna work better, then it's the right thing
to do. There's no like proper immaterial natural balance based
on like the uzia and final causality. There's no such
thing as predetermined outcomes because everything is matter in motion.
So we have to be empirically practical about what we're

(40:55):
gonna do. The one of courage, right, courage is like
you have to die your city, if your if your
city calls on you, and do it bravely, And Epicurius
is like, you don't gotta you don't have to do that. Yeah,
Like there's no there's no there's no benefit to courage
if it means you just you die for someone else

(41:16):
telling you to die, there's no there's no value to
that virtue.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
I mean there might be prudential reasons to defend the city, right,
which fine with right.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, Epicurus actually says like there, if you're going to
go and display bravery, this is good because you might
you might get land, like the Lord might give you
land for going to fight and showing bravery. But if
you're gonna for sure die, you for sure should run away,
like this is what this is what would be cowardice
and the Nicobakia ethics. But no, it's like, if you're
going to die anyway, don't have a glorious death. Get

(41:47):
out of there.

Speaker 4 (41:48):
Yeah, well this is this is part of my problem
with epicureanism is is it is kind of like a
calculus of pleasure. Like the only reason that you shouldn't
participate in some kind of pleasure like shooting up heroin
or like playing with matches because it's fun, And the
only reason you should do things that are painful like

(42:11):
getting a root canal or I don't know, like passing
a kidney stone or having loads of kids and undergoing
birth pains is because of the long term benefits. Right,
It's like a maximizing the pleasure in the long run.
That's why prude prudence is the only important thing, because
you have to have this foresight to see like whether

(42:33):
choosing this pleasure now is going to be consistent with
like maximizing the pleasure in your lifetime, which is kind
of the annoying part I think to think about with epicureanism,
Like this is why Cicero attacks it here and he
mentions like Cicero's complaints about epicureanism right where they because

(43:00):
pleasure is really the only thing that they care about,
right like you, I don't know, you run into these problems.

Speaker 1 (43:09):
And the pleasure not in the sense of additive though, right.
I think that's the thing that makes it a bit
more subtle, is like the pleasure that you're after is
actually this kind of absence of it's just being at ease,
being at peace. It's not really like it's not trying
to gather more pleasures in the in the sense of
like the British, you know.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
And it's still it still lines up with like Don's
kind of it still does line up with the general
idea of like seeking pleasure and avoiding pain though.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
And it is.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
The pain.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
But what what I don't understand the objection.

Speaker 4 (43:48):
Well because it has a kind of well, because it
has a kind of calculus to it. Instead of the
idea that you could the idea that you could justify
doing something compromising, like being a huge coward and running
away because that's the right choice to maximize pleasure in
the long run, or that you would participate the only

(44:09):
reason you would participate in anything meaningful, like fighting for
your country or joining a protest or anything is because
it would maximize the pleasure for you and your immediate
like comrades around you. It seems to me still kind
of you know, there's like it seems like beyond a

(44:31):
small group of people that you know directly, there's a
kind of moral bankruptcy to it.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
But there's a rebuttal Epicureans think that they can undermine
all the other rival philosophies because they all have the
definition of of what's going to make you happy and
the good. Right for Plato, the good is the highest,
the highest form. The Stoics think virtue the highest good.
Christians are Muslims will probably think like obedience to God

(44:58):
is the highest good, and the Epicureans think that pleasure
is the highest good. But the Epicureans think all of
these other people they're actually doing it to maximize pleasure.
They're just putting a different name on it. If you're
obedient to God, it's because you think that God's going
to give you a better life or a better afterlife.
If you're seeking virtue as the highest good, it's because

(45:19):
you think that's the thing that's going to make you
have the least pain. Right, that's the point of avoiding
relationships that can of people that can hurt you. So
they're all doing the same thing as Epicureans. According to
the Epicureans, the Epicureans are just saying, we're doing it. Honestly,
we're saying that we're doing this for pleasure. You say
you're doing it for God or Tellos or principles or virtue. Yeah,

(45:43):
that's a pretty good response.

Speaker 4 (45:44):
I think there is a sense in which all of that,
you know, you're categorizing different kinds of pleasure as you're saying.
I mean, because Epicureans would accept the idea that like
what's pleasurable for me is not pleasurable for you, and
what's pleasurable now might lead to pain later like obviously,
like shooting up Heroin. Like they would completely accept all

(46:07):
of those things and say, no, you have to direct
your efforts towards things that are like sustainably pleasurable and
not destructive.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
In the long run.

Speaker 4 (46:19):
And and then you have to realize that nothing is
intrinsically pleasurable, like like like just like what I said,
it's like what's sauce for the gander? Whatever the saying
is like what's what's pleasurable for me is not pleasurable
for you.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
It's good for the gander.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah, that's the one, the gander better something like that.

Speaker 4 (46:44):
Yeah, they would accept all those things. Yeah, and I
think I think even Aristotle, who would turn towards intellectual
virtue as more on the higher side, right, like the
intellectual thing there. Yeah, and it's a source of pleasure.
Contemplating pure, pure contemplation of the forms of things is

(47:08):
a pleasure in itself.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
It's just that.

Speaker 4 (47:11):
Yes, Okay, so there you go. You could you can
see it. You can be a little bit cynical and
just say, yeah, they're all just looking for that like
enduring source of pleasure.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
But the Epicureans would definitely reject like eternal forms because
for them it's all material. There are no forms separate
from the matter in which they inhere and everything is changeable.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
What a relief.

Speaker 4 (47:35):
Yeah, there's no, there's no eternal forms like they would
be complete like kant would be not an Epicurean because
the Kantient ethic is completely different in its sense of
like being reason based.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Well he's trying to I mean he's trying, he's trying
to do something insane, which is locate pure practical reason,
meaning practical reason that is totally devoid of any feeling,
and it's just you're.

Speaker 4 (48:00):
Like universal universal validity would be Epicureans would be like huh.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Well, they'd be like that doesn't exist. They would just
be like that's not possible, yeah, which I kind of
agree with.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
We could talk about politics in an Epicurean sense, like
if you current current issues, if you object to your
government bombing other people, that's a source of pain for you, right, Yeah,
So you go to protest to not not because that
you are morally obligated to, but because showing your displeasure

(48:33):
with something being done on your behalf that brings you pleasure. Yeah,
or at the very least, it assuages your guilty conscience
because that's what your country is doing on your behalf.
But whether or not it accomplishes something is not really
an issue, know, in protest. For that reason, what matters
is that you feel, Okay, I have been now, I've

(48:53):
been seen, i have been heard, and if anyone asks,
they know I'm not a part of this. That's the
thing you're receiving pleasure from. Maybe you have more vein
motives and you're just trying to get on TV. But
at minimum you're assuaging the pain you feel at being
responsible for what your country's doing because you're not stopping
the bombs in all likelihood. But at least you can

(49:15):
sleep at night, So that's that's a win. No problem
with that.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Yeah, you're showing you're expressing disapproval.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Now, if you're in so much pain and you have
convinced yourself for you believe that there's only one way
to alleviate how much pain you're in, and that's to
go it in public and light yourself on fire. Now,
this is it's a little bit harder to justify as
an epicurean, but not impossible. So the first reason is

(49:42):
that they say there's no point in being afraid of death.
Death has nothing to fear. It's just the end of fear.
It's the end of pain or pleasure. Yeah, exactly, but
there is sort of a pleasure involved, and the pleasure
is something like the idea of dying a hero, or
the idea of dying a meaningful death, u maybe having
faith that you'll be remembered. Now, to be clear, for epicurean,

(50:04):
all of these are irrational because you'll never get to
experience the cost benefit. You'll never get to experience that
because you're dead, So you're dying with zero empirical basis.
But even so, it's not precluded, it's.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Not I agree. I kind of think almost nothing is precluded.
But I think what the epicurean might wonder about someone
who does that is what's going on in that person's
life that they want to do that, right, Like, maybe
that person should examine like the balance of things in
their life that causes them to want to do that,
I feel.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
Like, but then there'd be a healthy dose of the
idea that like, pleasure is relative to the experiencer. So
it could be the case that they get pleasure out
of it, truly, it could be the case that they're
masochistic or just you know, doing it because they look
they want to look.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
A certain way.

Speaker 4 (50:57):
I mean, the same person who experience this is pain
at the idea of their country bombing and other country, uh,
someone else, I mean my experience kind of pleasure a patriotic, patriotic, nationalistic,
jingoist joy in their country attacking another country and winning.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Yeah, that's true. You can't you can't really say things
are or you can't really evaluate things based on their
morality or immorality.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Right, it's all and I like prudence, I like that
this is that that's the only virtue it kind of
it kind of yeah, it makes sense to me.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
Isn't that a source of something to be worried about?
With an endorsing epicureanism is is a kind of moral
bankruptcy when it comes to pleasure being the ultimate good.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
No, no, if you have if you take pleasure in
your government dropping bombs somewhere else, this already proves you're
extremely fucked up. However, it's not because it's immoral. It's
because if you are so, if you live in such
a fake, imaginary world that you think something happening on

(52:09):
the other side of the world that's not even good,
but more that has nothing to do with you at all,
that has no effect on you, and that you didn't
plan to put your stock, your feeling and desire into that,
that's what's fucked up. It's like it's like saying I'm
not happy, but I would be if I won the
lottery and walking around with that belief all day. If

(52:32):
it's wholly distinct from nature or necessity, and you believe
that that makes you happy. You're doomed, You're you lived
in a fucked up society and you're fucked up.

Speaker 4 (52:43):
Like if even being ethical and more and acting morally
is only good because it's a source of pleasure for
the one acting in that way, Like, what does that say?
I don't know, it does it does seem it? Is
there a rebuttal for that kind of to say that
that's okay, that's pure hedonism to say that even even

(53:06):
the good is only good in so far as it's pleasurable.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
Yeah, but they go even further than that, they say
positing the good as this otherworldly thing that is also
an active pleasure. People follow morality to avoid pain, not
because the thing out there is real, because there is
no real morale, moral good out there in the universe,

(53:31):
because we've seen it all and it's all atoms.

Speaker 4 (53:34):
Well, like I'm pretty sure the Stoics also were thorough
going materialists, but still had a sense.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Of well a god.

Speaker 4 (53:48):
They just hadn't exist that there's a material god, and
they had a sense of soul. It's just a material soul.
Like the Stoics were thorough going materialists, and they're also
fatalists and determinists. They didn't have this swerve thing going
which seems to change a lot, which is to say that, like,

(54:08):
you don't have control over your circumstances, and going against
I guess an epicurean reading, going against what fate has
decreed is to be your lot, is going to cause
you a lot of anguish and pain, and you should
avoid that by going with the flow. I don't know,
but that seems a little bit different to me. That

(54:29):
still doesn't say, you know, pleasure is the highest good.
That's now saying okay, Well.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
I almost feel like using the English word pleasure is
as being the highest good is somehow misleading to what
epicureanism is really about.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Yeah, it sounds too horny, does.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, it's not really right. That's not right, And I
think it's an easy way to for people who haven't
read it to think that it's something that it's not.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
You know, Yeah, I was looking in the glossary and
it's not defined in there. You have atyraxia as pills was,
which is lack of mental turmoil, tranquility, or peace of mind,
considered the limit of mental pleasure by the epicureans. Yeah,
that's the highest, the primary constituent of the happy life.

(55:15):
So the idea of something being the limit of mental pleasure. Okay,
so I saw this about pain too. It's not like
pain is bad, it's just pain is the limit. Pain
marks out the point where pleasure stops. And that's the
only thing that's not great about pain. Otherwise, Otherwise, you know,

(55:38):
you should do the painful thing if it's going to
you know, have prudence, do the painful thing if it's
going to result in a lot of pleasure. Like, don't
avoid your problems just because it'll be painful to deal
with them, you know, like, do deal with your problems,
deal with that toothache, because yeah, it's going to cause
you more pain in the future.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
I feel like where the stoics said that they were
doing a consequentialist argument about what virtue is, Like this
is what works, So this is what we have retroactively
decided what virtue is. This is actually doing consequentialist ethics.
There's nothing good or bad, but you'll find out, and
you should pay attention to the wise people who have
come before you and gave you advice. But you don't

(56:23):
have to like, maybe they're.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Wrong, figure it out for yourself. Be prudential exactly.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
The ultimate, the ultimate uh Epicurean happiness is having a
summer barbecue with the boys. Like you don't and you
don't eat, you don't drink too much, you don't drink,
you don't eat.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
Too reasonable amount. You have a reasonable amount of hot dogs,
a reasonable amount of drinks.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
And you don't. You don't get the cheapest hot dogs.
You can have the good hot dogs. It's a it's
a Sunday, you have the boys over. But what else
do you do it? In epicureanism, it's like setting setting
accomplishable goals. Then you accomplish them, then you get new goals.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
Stress yourself out, having lots of lively conversation at the barbecue.
As much of that as as you can enjoy.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
You should.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Yep, you should stress a little bit, but not too much,
not so much stress that you're always stressed and anxious.
Be healthy now if you can, so don't don't have
cigarettes at the barbecue. You'll thank yourself later and get
a good sleep whenever you can. This is, like the epicurean.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Pretty basic and also like where there's overlap I think
with the stoics is, yeah, try to like sever yourself
from worrying about things related to vanity, right, like, for example,
social media. Obviously it didn't exist back then, but I
think clear epicuring advice would be, you know, stop fixating
on social media, probably because most of the people on

(57:46):
social media don't even know you, so like you're letting
these other people who aren't actually substantively in your life
dictate your happiness and well being. You shouldn't do that.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
This is why you have to have a barbecue with
the boys, because I don't think there's any epicure and
justification to have a wife and a kids and a mortgage.
This is that's way, that's way too much potential for pain, stress, anxiety.
You have to continue to work, you can never take
time off. This is so this is philosophy for the
Broskis bro This is Broski philosophy. Okay, well, no, there

(58:21):
is a reason to have to have kids and a
wife and a mortgage. It's if your your life is
unbearable without it, or you think in the future it
will be too lonely or unbearable.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Surely there's got to be some account of romantic good
in epicureanism, like like love of a woman or of
a significant other.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Yeah, for sure, but you're rolling the dice with like
roping yourself into commitments that you don't know if you'll
be able to keep or if they will.

Speaker 4 (58:44):
It says here that everything has value either as a
constituent of pleasure or a means to pleasure. So if
it's either a constituent of one's pleasure or a means
to pleasure, then it is good and pleasure. Yeah, it's
not like this hedonistic, sensualist pleasure. It's mental. I guess

(59:06):
there's a distinction between bodily and mental pleasure.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
And it's being at ease. It's not even additive. It's
like just being relaxed, just like you know.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
That's the thing. It's like pleasant.

Speaker 4 (59:16):
It's it's that it goes back to that living the
simple life. It's like what's pleasant is you know, if
it's pleasant.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Then it's good.

Speaker 4 (59:26):
Yeah, like like yeah, that's a.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Way better word seeking pleasantness, pleasantness instead of pleasure.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
Yeah exactly. It's that does.

Speaker 4 (59:35):
Get into weird like like kind of what's pleasing?

Speaker 3 (59:41):
That's very pleasing, I don't know, but.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
It's also I think, but I still, but I still exactly.
And that's why even that word is is like slightly misleading,
because it is very notable that this adoraxia or whatever
it is is the highest good, which is really just
taking away disturbances, right, removing anything that preoccupies you, that
stresses you out, that like that gives you anxiety, that

(01:00:06):
gives you like that makes you feel depressed, like taking
away those things and then just being like, ah, I'm chill,
like I feel fine, I'm at ease.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
This is so anti Kant.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
It just feels like it just feels like Grand Tour.
I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
People people who want to play Skyrim and see all
the nice views and love the graphics and oh my god,
this world is rendered so pleasantly and beautifully.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
That's why pleasantness isn't right. Yeah, that's fine too, That's
why pleasantness isn't the right word either.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
If you like fighting, if you like jiu jitsu, it
causes you pain, but it's good good in the end,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Or watching watching or reading a really sad novel that
like makes you cry, there's still a weird like pleasure
in that too, Like if you can if you can
handle it, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Horror movies. What struck me by the end of this
is how absolutely he says, kind of like Rousseau civilization,
society corrupts you ultimately because of its values, and this
is like, this is where we live in the most
anti Epicurean society in history. There's no way for guys
to have friends. That's why they're all addicted to peorn

(01:01:17):
in video games.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Well that's perfect because I was going to ask you,
pills if you retract what you've been saying before that
everyone's an epicurean.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Yes, because they're not stoics, they're not platonists, they're not skeptics.
But they are also not good Epicureans. They're very bad
at picureans. Yeah, everyone believes that the pleasure is the good,
but they're not doing the philosophy part of epicureanism.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
That's the thing. I think everyone's like a base cringe
like British Enlightenment hedonist Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
But if you think of what he says, like don't
ever do, don't ever do vain and empty desires. If
you think of our advertising, our politics, celebrity, social media,
every single person knows all these things make you sad
and depressed and anxious, and everyone does. The man.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
There's hours and hours of podcasts talking about that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
There's hours and hours of our podcast talk about things
that don't make you happier. And there is a certain
pleasure in it, right, There's a certain pleasure in dissection
or understanding. And this is why even mathematics and philosophy
are Those are fun for certain people. Those are pleasant
and pleasurable for certain people, and you should do it.

(01:02:29):
You should do everything in moderation. But if you had
read this book and you're like, let's do everything the opposite.
Let's let's be the least happy people. The people we
talk about are unhappy. The people we see on TV,
the people that make it in this society, they're vain
and unhappy, the worst form of desire. We don't look

(01:02:50):
for people who are happy, to admonish. Happiness is not
a goal. And the people who rule us our slaves
to the most empty desires. We have all the information
in everything that's ever happened in the universe, but no
way for bros to make friends.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
And then again, there's no there's I can't believe I'd
say it this way, but like there'd be no room
for like that kind of that kind of martyrdom, that
kind of self sacrifice that is also like important, you

(01:03:25):
know from a from a so at least just from
not even religious like from a social justice perspective.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
I guess you wouldn't have.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
People like oh God, I think they're still room for it,
gandhi mother Teresa. Would they be Epicureans too? When you
have when you have this really strong moral sense, like
I feel like what the Epicurean position, Okay, you're gonna
have to accept things that say Russo says right, or
even Freud and civilization and its discontents, right, Like you

(01:03:58):
know you're operating on the pleasure principle, this sort of
now now now, and you have to sort of like
civilization means you're repressing your instincts and desires in favor
of a reality principle that allows you to get along
with other people. Like I guess you still have still

(01:04:19):
even in Freuden psychoanalysis, you still have this fundamental like
pleasure and pain driving you. And then you have the
pleasure principle being suppressed in favor of the reality principle,
and you have the idea that society is just like
bad and that's why, you know, Epicureans are like, you know,
don't participate in politics because it's it's not very pleasurable.

(01:04:45):
Stoic's being like, well, maybe participate in politics because they're
still roomful compromise your virtue, and then like Rousseau and
Freud being like, no, like, society is fundamentally corrupting, and
in nature we are good and we can pursue our
desires immediately without all of these complicated ways of having

(01:05:07):
to channel our desires into creativity and all that bullshit.
We can just go straight for them. But society, civilization
doesn't let us. Does that epicurean lead to that kind
of like, No, I don't think so anti social.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
I think there's still room. I think there's still room
for all those things. Even before when we were talking
about politics. I think there's still space for participating in politics.
I mean, Pills even said there might even be space
for self immolation if you're you know, to free Palestine,
so that which would be like a case of martyrdom.
But I think what there's not room for is deluding

(01:05:44):
yourself into thinking that it's like based on some higher principle,
and it's more admitting and foregrounding the fact that there's
a lot of ajouissance and pleasure in like being a
martyr or an activist that you're kind of getting off
on it. And it's like if you're cool with it,
like if you're cool with admitting that. And also certainly
they would be critical of people who let well, not

(01:06:06):
even critical, but they would just say there's something wrong
with you if you let it like consume your life.
And you know, I don't even know. It's it's tough
to say, like whether they would condemn it, because I
feel like they're not really in the business of morally
condemning things. They would just be like, you seem kind
of an unhappy, Like you seem sad, Like you seem
like you're not living a good life. Like it would

(01:06:27):
be like descriptive, it would be diagnostic and descriptive. It's
like your whole life is about, you know, like being
a trotskyist in the street talking to people all the day,
trying to convince them. You seem kind of unhappy, like
your life seems a bit sad to me. But like
if you want to do it, like go ahead, right,
Like that. But but I don't think they're going to
be like, that's morally wrong what you're doing. I don't
I don't feel like they would say that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Yeah, we Epicureans were probably not going to be the
first one on the barricade, but it doesn't mean we're
not going to be.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
Yeah, exactly exactly. I agree.

Speaker 4 (01:06:57):
I just I just love this part though. Here's here's
part of what we read as as Aristotle puts it,
he does them for the sake of to kalon, the
noble or the fine, a person who behaves courageously, but
does so only for the sake of the good consequences,

(01:07:17):
and not because the action itself is noble and fine,
is not truly courageous, but pseudo courageous. Epicurus yields no
ground before such high minded criticisms, however, saying that he
spits on the noble and on those who vainly admire
it whenever it does not produce pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
Amen, brother, Like, oh, come on, that's a little bit.
I mean, it seems it seems descriptively correct. Though. That's
the thing that I feel like I can't get over,
Like it's just.

Speaker 4 (01:07:52):
The guy who's self emilating it. The guy who's self
emilating is not doing it because.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Of a higher more a callage.

Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
He's doing it because he's just imagining in his head
what he's going to look like on social media, even
though even though he's not going to be there to
see it, he's gonna be like, it's gonna look pretty
fucking good.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
That sounds worse than it is, though, because I think
in the epicurean world, do you there's still space, Like
he genuinely is concerned about the people in Palestine suffering, right,
Like that's giving him pain, right to So I think
there's still room for having that account. But yes, ultimately
it's like, yeah, how what what? What kind of message
is this going to send?

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Yeah, that's right, it's what. It depends. It depends the motivation,
It depends on why he did it. But an epicurean
is never going to care why someone else did something either.
So it's possible that an epicurean could be like, you
know what, I I don't fear death because I'm a
proper philosopher and I think that this is like the

(01:08:49):
best use of my energy is to burn myself alive.
That's it's completely possible, possible, Yeah, that an epicurean makes
that rational distinction. I just I doubt it. I don't know.
I doubt they wouldn't. They wouldn't do it diluted though.
And this is kind of what I believe about epicureanism,
is they say everyone else is diluted, and we're doing

(01:09:10):
this honestly, and then everyone starts yelling at them, no,
we're not diluted. You're diluted, and they're like, yeah, fine, bro, whatever,
I'm eating my burger exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
I'm converted. I'm converted. I mean not that I wouldn't
even say that I'm converted, because it's not like I
was anything else. But I like it well.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
As you could probably predict.

Speaker 4 (01:09:32):
Nietzsche appreciates elements of epicureanism, but also ends up finding
a life denying aspect to it, and a life denying of.

Speaker 2 (01:09:41):
Course he does.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Psycho's Psycho.

Speaker 4 (01:09:49):
Yes, as he finds in everything. He appreciates their free spiritedness.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
But doesn't like they're they're they're overly indulgent.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
Overly Yeah, I think nature would say, you have to
be you have to be absolutely obsessed day and night
with your aesthetic project. Let nothing get it in the way,
starve if you have to, as long as you get
the thing done. And the Epicureans are like no, no, no.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
No, no no, bro no, yeah, exactly that's right, that's
exactly right.

Speaker 4 (01:10:16):
They don't leave enough room for the will to power
over other people and ultimately power over yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Although I didn't I didn't even think of the word
jewey songs though, But this is like, this is like
everyone else, everyone else pretends they're not doing jewy songs,
and these guys just go, no, this is that's the law.
This is it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
Yeah, one's mind goes to psychoanalysis. I think more when
reading Epicureanism than reading Stoicism, because stoicism from from that
perspective just seems like pure repression, which which which would
be a problematic reading. But it does seem like that
you're not controlling your emotions, you're oppressing your emotions.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
That was my fear, And actually I wish I would
have used that language in Arstosism episode, because I think
that's exactly one of my worries with it. It feels repressive.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Yeah, yeah, there's a there is something another place to
go with this because we've kind of focused on like
individual decisions and all that, but there's a lot of
there's a lot of society being illusion or illusory or
setting up all these rat rat races. How does that happen?
And how does it how does everyone buy into it?

(01:11:29):
I think the Epicurean answer is a little bit too simple,
just saying, well, that's all that's all a lie and
everyone's falling for it, and everyone's falling for it because
they're stupid. Now, that could be, that could be correct,
and it might be just that simple, but I think
there may be missing how much in their analysis of pleasure,

(01:11:49):
there might be missing how much pleasure we get from
illusion itself.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
Maybe that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Instead of just from truth, they're focused on how much
they're focused on how much pleasure we get from true,
but there's no mention of how much pleasure we get
from illusion.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
That's a good point, which makes sense at the time
because not that there wouldn't have been like ways of
discussing that. But I do feel like the modern age
is there's so much more I guess awareness of like
layer upon layer of ideology and like propaganda. There must

(01:12:25):
have been people back then who were talking about things. Well,
I guess it would have been, you know, the sophists
would be like the closest thing to like the propagandist
or something.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
But Epicureanism basically died out or was absorbed into aspects
of Christian humanism, especially but in general, the Christianity is
obviously hostile to this saying that there's no God, there's
no other world, that there's no no law.

Speaker 4 (01:12:53):
Yeah, that's always been the interesting thing about these materialistic
philosophies is that they've always been very trenchant, very a
source of a source of disquiet. Throughout the Christian period,
they fed into you know, there's been materialistic movements and

(01:13:15):
closely connected usually with like atheism and free thinking and
like libertarianism in the old sense, and even in Marx
right studying Democritis and Epicurus and his dissertation back in
his university days and finding things to appreciate in the

(01:13:38):
early materialists and finding inspiration for his own positions.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
Yeah, I'm again confident in saying that the worst of
the Greek philosophies the worst of the Athenian philosophies. One.

Speaker 4 (01:13:50):
Yeah, I think the other thing we said at the beginning, though,
is that like Epicureanism seems so right because it's so
much like scientific materialism today as well.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
It has those parallels.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
And not even its metaphysical claims though, it just I
feel like it just rings true. It's weird, it's almost
it's almost spooky. How true it rings to me?

Speaker 4 (01:14:12):
Well, yeah, not just the atomism, not just the lack
of telos, but that certainly helps the atheism.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
It does have.

Speaker 4 (01:14:23):
The hallmarks of like a very modern way of thinking.
I think all those things together and then just looking
at pleasure as like the highest good.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
Imagine a world where Epicureanism had won, Imagine what the
world would look like.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
Well, actually, I'm just looking at Wikipedia right now. There's
a book called The Swerve and it's How the World
became Modern, And it looks like from the summary that
the claim is that the rediscovery of Lucretius's book because
Lucretius wasn't read and Epicureanism wasn't read for like over

(01:14:59):
a thousand year, and then a random monk, a random
monk in the what is it fifteenth century went to
a monastery in Germany and found a random copy of Lucretius's.

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
On Nature de rerum natura right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
And then supposedly this sparked the Renaissance and a whole
bunch of stuff. This is just from the summary. I
haven't read it, that's yeah, And it says it won
a Pulitzer Prize for General nonfiction. So it's a pop
a pop philosophy book. It'd be what's it called the Swerve?

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
The Swerve interesting? Maybe i'll get it on audible.

Speaker 2 (01:15:35):
Stephen Greenblatt. So it's interesting. It's interesting to think that
after this, these the Dark Ages, which was scholastic Aristotelianism,
then they rediscovered some some epicurean atomism and we're like,
oh shit, everything we're doing is bullshit. Let's go back
to Let's go back to the simple pleasures of sculpting
and painting.

Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
Stephen Greenblatt is a major twentieth century literary theorist who's
part of the New Critical School, and I think he
was one of the ones who published the New Historicism.
That's the school he's associated with, although he wouldn't call

(01:16:16):
it that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
I think, well, if it's true, then this is the
key swerve in the history of the West. Is the
rediscovery of epicureanism.

Speaker 1 (01:16:28):
Hashtags, I guess so good place to wrap it ups.
Hashtag swerve, hashtag modernity. I feel like no one actually
does hashtags anymore. It's actually I'm realizing it. It actually
dates no, it totally. Yeah exactly. It actually makes me
seem like a clear millennial and not at all.

Speaker 4 (01:16:46):
I don't know swerve swarf, I don't know sibb skibbitty toilet?

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Is that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Well that was fun.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
I'm on the fence boys.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
Eric is just he's just too attached to his principles.
He's too attached to his principles, which are really just Jewissance,
but he wants to say they're really about principles.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
Yeah, if you want to be actually courageous, it would
be more courageous to say I'm sticking to my principles
even though they have no basis and they don't even exist.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:17:17):
I'm a little too high minded for all this pleasure nonsense.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:17:22):
I am epicurious about the cynics, though, I must say

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
All right, stay tuned, see you then, everyone, all right,
did you stop it?