Epicureanism: The Basic Idea
Is it so hard to satisfy our senses?
What is happiness?
We begin our exploration of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) with a very high-level look at what he wants to do with his theory — and we will see why this is still incredibly important for our lives two thousand years later. In fact, Epicureanism may be more necessary today than it ever was before in human history: Our modern version of capitalism has brought about exactly those conditions that Epicurus himself saw as the greatest obstacle to a truly happy life — and in this, Epicurus would readily agree with Fromm and also with Bertrand Russell, although their reasons to criticise modern life would be different.
A comprehensive overview of Erich Fromm’s philosophy of happiness. We discuss his life, his ideas and his main works, both in their historical context and how they are still relevant for us today.
When we ask what makes us happy, we can give many different answers.
Throughout history, philosophers have tried to argue that perhaps it is fulfilling our duty to others that makes us truly happy; or developing our own potential to its highest degree, and achieving a kind of flourishing as a human being; or perhaps happiness is nothing more than having pleasurable experiences, of enjoying the world and all it has to offer, which is a position known as “hedonism.”
But trying to enjoy the world is not without its problems.
Obviously, the world is not always a source of contentment and delight to us. There are people who have terrible accidents; others who live in poverty; others again who suffer from a chronic illness. These things are mostly out of our control. Taking care of one’s body can, to some extent, make it more likely that we will not develop severe illnesses too early in life, but nobody is truly safe from cancer, a car accident, the loss of one’s job, or a painful divorce.
Hedonism is the thesis that happiness and pleasure are the same. But is that true? Does the enjoyment of pleasures like good food, chocolate, sex and a myriad other things that we consume everyday — do these things really make us happier?
So in a world that is unpredictable and that throws at us all kinds of things that might be painful and that might destroy our happiness at any moment — what can we do in such a world to maximise our chances of achieving some degree of happiness? When we don’t know what will be waiting around the corner for us in the next hour: love, friendship, the enjoyment of great art and our favourite food; or a catastrophic event that will ruin our life — how are we to step out into the world and take our chances?
Happiness is a distance
Epicurus tried to think rationally about this and to find a solution that would maximise our chances to be happy.
Look at what makes you happy, he says, and particularly what role your expectations play in how you feel.
When we expect too much, it is easy to be disappointed. Expect a perfect Sunday, a perfect birthday, a perfect Christmas — and you have probably ruined your Sunday, your birthday, your Christmas.
On the other hand, imagine that you approach these occasions without an expectation. For example, say, I’ll just do my best. I don’t expect anything special, just a normal day, and whatever additional joy these days may bring, I will see as a bonus. It is easy to see that such an attitude will make it much easier for us to have a happy experience on our special day.
What can we learn from this for how our happiness seems to work?
Epicurus would say, we can see that unhappiness is really a distance. It is the distance between what I expect and how my reality turns out. If the reality matches my expectations, I can be content. If it exceeds them, I can be happy. If it falls short, then I’ll be unhappy.
But I cannot really influence what the world will do. So I have these two levels of happiness: the expected one and the real one. One of the two, the real one, is essentially random; it is what the world throws at me. But the other, and here comes the Epicurean trick, is in my control: my expectation of the future.
Epicurus (341-270 BC) is often seen as an advocate of a luxurious life, rich in good food and other pleasures. This is incorrect. Epicurus was, if anything, an ascetic: someone who thought that pleasures and good food have a negative effect on our happiness and that we should train ourselves to enjoy the simpler pleasures of life.
Now if happiness is achieved whenever my expectation is lower on the happiness scale than the reality, and I can control only my expectations, but not the reality, how can I make sure that I will be happy in the future? — I just have to lower my expectation so much that it will be very likely that the reality, whatever it will be, will be better than my expectation.
At the basis of Epicureanism is this trick. Instead of expecting something and then randomly having the universe destroy one’s expectations, you should, Epicurus says, lower your expectations so that most of what can happen will be better than what you expect.
This sounds like an almost trivial idea, the approach of a pessimist. But it is really a very powerful idea, and we will examine it in detail in the coming weeks. Only have desires that are easy to fulfil, Epicurus is saying, and then you will always be able to fulfil them. Have desires that are hard to fulfil and you will have a miserable life, always chasing after what you can’t have. (Can you see now how capitalism comes into this game to prevent us from ever being happy?)
Erich Fromm, philosopher and social psychologist, points out that capitalism, in order to work, requires a large population of identical consumers with identical taste. This is opposed to the vision of a human life as individual, unique, and valuable in its uniqueness.
Coffee or mint?
Take an example. I am, right now as I’m writing this, sipping on a cup of latte that I just made in my kitchen, using a fancy espresso machine.
What would Epicurus say?
Well, he would say, there’s in principle nothing wrong with enjoying a coffee, but how likely is it that this coffee will always be available when you want to drink it?
Coffee depends on an international network of farmers, merchants, packaging factories, distributors and shops. Such networks are fragile, as we all learned in the first wave of Covid panic. It doesn’t take much for your favourite shop to stay closed, for the trader to not be able to go and source a shipment of beans, for the factory to be closed down because of a lack of safe working conditions, for the airplanes that transport my coffee to stay grounded. We saw all of these happen in the past year. And that’s not all. Because I’m fancy about my coffee, I’m grinding it at home, so I need a grinder and that espresso machine that can send 15 bar of steam through the coffee powder. These machines are expensive and I have to work more every day in order to be able to afford them. They break easily and then I have to have them repaired or replaced. If the power in my home goes out, I don’t have a coffee. To make latte I also need milk, which I don’t have when shops are closed or I’m quarantined. I don’t have a cow in my living room, so if anything goes wrong, I won’t be able to have my latte.
So despite the fact that we are so used to just walking into Starbucks and reliably stepping out of it with a big cup of coffee five minutes later, the whole thing is a complicated, expensive and very fragile process that can break any time, leaving me sad and coffee-less. We depend on a lot of luck to get our cup of coffee every day.
So what can we do instead? How can we enjoy a drink that is more resilient in the face of all sorts of disruptions?
The Art of Happiness is a collection of Epicurus’ writings related to his philosophy of happiness. Epicurus is easy and entertaining to read and has a lot to teach us in our modern (and often misguided) societies about how to live a happy life.
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As it happens, I also have a pot of mint growing in a corner of my balcony. It doesn’t need much care, just a glass of water now and then, and it grows and multiplies by itself. Every year, I take a few branches and plant them into new pots, where they grow into new plants without any fuss. Mint is incredibly fast growing and resilient. My mint pot has survived a month when I was away on a holiday, it has weathered rainstorms, typhoons and hot summer days. It just kept growing.
And from time to time I cut a few sprigs of it, let them soak in hot water and get a delicious herbal drink.
What must happen for this peppermint infusion to become unavailable? Short of my house exploding in a giant fireball, I cannot imagine many catastrophic events that would make it impossible for me to drink my hot mint. Even after a breakdown of civilisation, in many areas people will find sources of water. Just wait for the next rain and catch that in a few pots and pans. Heat the water in the sun or over a few burning twigs. Drop in the mint leaves and enjoy.
Daniel Klein: Travels with Epicurus.
A wonderfully human meditation on old age. A man travels to a Greek island with a suitcase full of books, in search of a better, more dignified way to age.
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This is a truly Epicurean solution to the problem of the fragility of that immensely long coffee supply and preparation chain. And we’d not even be cheating. I am not lying when I’m saying that I actually like that mint that grows on my balcony. Now if the mint gives me an equal amount of happiness to the coffee, then, Epicurus would say, it’s more rational to want the peppermint tea because I can obtain this much more easily — and it is much harder for the world to enter a state in which I’m unable to obtain my mint that grows just ten meters away from me.
And just this is the recipe for being reliably happy, Epicurus thinks.
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Cover image by Emma Smith on Unsplash.
