Pleasure Is The Guide of Life

In contrast to "virtue," or "piety," or "rationality" or "wisdom" as others taught, Epicurus held that "pleasure" is the guide to life. Today we are going to discuss how Epicurus arrived at that conclusion and what it means for us in living our own lives.

First, it is very important to understand that when Epicurus spoke of Pleasure he meant much more than the "stimulating" pleasures that most people think about when they first consider the meaning of "Pleasure." We will touch here today on the full Epicurean meaning of Pleasure, but we will reserve the main part of that discussion until we address "Absence of Pain" separately. For today, we'll focus on the fact that almost everyone has at least a general sense of what "Pleasure" means. It isn't necessary to look Pleasure up in a dictionary, or engage in a long abstract and logical argument about what Pleasure means.

Unlike "virtue," about which Plato and Aristotle had said we need to look to "the best" men to figure out, Nature herself tells us through our own feelings of pleasure and pain what it is we find desirable and what it is that is undesirable. Snow is white, and honey is sweet, and we need no mathematics or geometry to understand the basic point.

So given that Nature gives all of us an immediate feeling of what is pleasurable, our first focus will be on the role of Pleasure as a part of the Epicurean "Canon of Truth," which also functions as "Guide of Life."

Lucretius states specifically that "Pleasure" is the guide of life in this way:

But some in opposition to this, ignorant of matter, believe that nature cannot without the providence of the gods, in such nice conformity to the ways of men, vary the seasons of the year and bring forth crops, aye and all the other things, which divine pleasure, the guide of life, prompts men to approach, escorting them in person and enticing them by her fondlings to continue their races through the arts of Venus, that mankind may not come to an end."

• Lucretius 2:167 (Munro)

Of course Lucretius had also started off poem with a beautiful description of how Pleasure, as represented by Venus, leads all living things on to do the things that they do and to continue their kind:

[01] MOTHER of Aeneas’s sons, joy of men and gods, Venus the life-giver, who beneath the gliding stars of heaven fillest with life the sea that carries the ships and the land that bears the crops; for thanks to thee every tribe of living things is conceived, and comes forth to look upon the light of the sun. Thou, goddess, thou dost turn to flight the winds and the clouds of heaven, thou at thy coming; for thee earth, the quaint artificer, puts forth her sweet-scented flowers; for thee the levels of ocean smile, and the sky, its anger past, gleams with spreading light. For when once the face of the spring day is revealed and the teeming breeze of the west wind is loosed from prison and blows strong, first the birds in high heaven herald thee, goddess, and thine approach, their hearts thrilled with thy might. Then the tame beasts grow wild and bound over the fat pastures, and swim the racing rivers; so surely enchained by thy charm each follows thee in hot desire whither thou goest before to lead him on. Yea, through seas and mountains and tearing rivers and the leafy haunts of birds and verdant plains thou dost strike fond love into the hearts of all, and makest them in hot desire to renew the stock of their races, each after his own kind.

[21] And since thou alone art pilot to the nature of things, and nothing without thine aid comes forth into the bright coasts of light, nor waxes glad nor lovely, I long that thou shouldest be my helper in writing these verses, which I essay to trace on the nature of things for the son of the Memmii, my friend, whom thou, goddess, through all his life hast willed to be bright with every grace beyond his fellows. Therefore the more, goddess, grant a lasting loveliness to my words.

[29] Bring it to pass that meantime the wild works of warfare may be lulled to sleep over all seas and lands. For thou only canst bless mortal men with quiet peace, since ’tis Mavors, the lord of hosts, who guides the wild works of war, and he upon thy lap oft flings himself back, conquered by the eternal wound of love; and then pillowing his shapely neck upon thee and looking up he feeds with love his greedy eyes, gazing wistfully towards thee, while, as he lies back, his breath hangs upon thy lips. Do thou, goddess, as he leans resting on thy sacred limbs, bend to embrace him and pour forth sweet petition from thy lips, seeking, great lady, gentle peace for the Romans. For neither can we in our country’s time of trouble set to our task with mind undistressed, nor amid such doings can Memmius’s noble son fail the fortunes of the state.

Lucretius' viewpoint was firmly grounded in Epicurus' own texts, as we will see as we go forward, but for now let's discuss why the fact that Pleasure is the Guide of Life matters:

There are other contenders for the role of "Guide of Life," and many people argue strongly (and even violently) for their preferred guide. These alternatives include Piety, Virtue, and Logic or Rationalism.

• Piety - Submission To The Gods. Some hold that we should follow the instructions of the gods, through priests or divine revelation.
• Virtue - Goodness - Nobility. Some hold that we should look at the best men of the past and emulate them.
• Rationalism - Logic. Some hold that geometry or mathematics or pure logic is the key to knowing what to do.

Epicurus himself expressed the leading role of Pleasure in his letter to Menoeceus:

[129] And for this cause we call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good.

And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided.

[130] Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgment on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions we treat as bad, and conversely the bad as good.

As Norman DeWitt explains:

"The Feelings are two," wrote Laertius, "pleasure and pain, characterizing every living creature, the one being akin, the other alien, through which the decisions are made to choose or avoid." B9

This means that pleasures and pains are Nature's Go and Stop signals on all levels of existence, that of the lower animals included. They are distinct from the Sensations by two removes: in the meaning of the Canon sensation is restricted to the sensory stimulus; it is the intelligence that registers recognition or nonrecognition; it is the Feelings that register pleasure or pain. These are accompaniments of sensation, as Aristotle observed in advance of Epicurus.

The prevailing belief that Epicurus was an empiricist has led scholars to merge the Feelings with the Sensations. It is true that both may be called by the Greek word pathe, but this coincidence of predicate is offset by logical absurdities. Since the Sensations are confined to the five senses, the merging of the Feelings with the Sensations would exclude fears and hopes and all the higher emotions. Again, since Epicurus reduces all sensation to touch, the merging of the Feelings would confine these also to touch. Still again, according to Epicurus the higher emotions, which are included in the Feelings, have a different seat from the Sensations, deep in the breast.61 How then could they be one with the Sensations? Lastly, unless the Feelings are something distinct from both Sensations and Anticipations, Epicurus would lack a criterion on the level of the higher emotions, where the issue of happiness and unhappiness is ultimately decided.

It would also be obligatory, should the Feelings be merged with the Sensations, to ignore all gradations in pleasures, which Epicurus did not. Like Plato and Aristotle, he recognized the existence of higher and lower pleasures and he employed the same terminology. The pleasures of the flesh are denoted by the noun hedone and the verb hedomai, the higher pleasures by the noun euphrosune and the verg euphrainomai. For instance, it is the latter verb he employs when he speaks of the "higher enjoyment" experienced by the wise man in attendance upon public spectacles and also when he speaks of the "serene joy" with which the wise man approaches the end of life. He has still another synonym to employ, chara, when he denies that unlimited wealth can bring any "worthwhile happiness," and he uses the same word of that "peak of happiness" that comes of the confident expectation of health of body and peace of mind. These are Feelings but not Sensations in the meaning of the Canon.

It is true, of course, that Epicurus sponsored a doctrine of the unity of all pleasures on the ground that body and soul are coterminous and cosensitive and both corporeal, but this does not mean that the pleasures and pains of the flesh are on a level with the pleasures and pains of the mind. In the meaning of the Canon there are two classes of Feelings, the one class accompanying the activity of the senses, the other accompanying the social and intellectual activities of the individual and specifically located in the breast. Neither class of Feelings is identical with Sensations.

The Feelings operate as criteria on all levels of life, somatic, social, and, if a term may be borrowed from religion to denote the higher emotions, spiritual.

On the somatic level the cub of the wolf no less than the child must learn by trial and error to choose the pleasant and avoid the painful. As the child begins to participate in the life of the family and society the usefulness of lessons learned from burns and bruises shrinks in importance as compared with the edifying approval and disapproval of parents, elders, and teachers.

This sequence of experience was aptly condensed by Epicurus into an oracular statement: "Pleasure is the beginning and the end of the happy life." 6T By this he meant that pleasure was both the starting point and the goal. The approach was genetic. On the level of infancy activity is merely instinctive; there is as yet no intelligence to take cognizance of sensation. On the level of adolescence the young man is apt to exult in his strength and drift at the mercy of chance.68 On the level of maturity, however, if wisdom is attained, pleasure, that is happiness, becomes a conscious objective and also an incentive. In other words, pleasure or happiness becomes the telos or end and thus on this last level the telos itself becomes a criterion, by which the decision is made to choose or to avoid.

This recognition of the telos as attaining the rank of a criterion on the level of the mature man was deemed by Epicurus of sufficient importance to be included in the Authorized Doctrines, No. 22: "We must take into our reckoning the established telos and all manifest evidence, to which we refer our judgments; otherwise all life will be filled with indecision and unrest." This pronouncement was directed against the Platonists, who, as astronomers, were bound to place dependence upon celestial phenomena and, as accepting the theory of the ideas, were bound to distrust terrestrial phenomena. Hence Epicurus insists upon taking into account "all the manifest evidence," terrestrial as well as celestial. If the latter alone is studied, there will be an increase of wonderment and an end to peace of mind.69 He also insists that the sole reason for studying the heavenly bodies is "peace of mind and an abiding faith." 70 Thus the telos, happiness, becomes the criterion.

It is chiefly with reference to the gods and death that the Feelings operate as criteria, as may be inferred from the first two of the Authorized Doctrines. If the individual is rendered miserable by the fear of death and of the possible punishment after death, this misery is a Feeling in the meaning of the Canon and a sure evidence of "false opinion." He must habituate himself to the thought "that death is nothing to us," that death is incidental to life, and that "the fulness of pleasure" may be attained within the narrow limits of mortal life.

The case is similar with respect to the gods. If the individual is rendered miserable through fear of the gods, if he feels that he must perform sacrifices to avert their hostility and win their favor, if he feels that at every mischance he must consult a soothsayer to discover which god must be appeased, this is Feeling in the meaning of the Canon.71 He must learn to believe "that the blessed and incorruptible being is neither susceptible of trouble itself nor occasions it to another."

The Feelings operate as criteria also in the sphere of justice and injustice. The Pauline doctrine "The power of sin is the law" is straight Epicureanism. Among sayings of Epicurus covering the point is the following, Authorized Doctrine 34: "Wrong-doing is not an evil in and by itself; the evil lies in the uneasy feeling, amounting to fear, that he will not escape detection by those appointed for the punishment of such offenses." 72 This fear is a Feeling in the meaning of the Canon; it differs from the child's fear of the fire only by being operative on a higher level of understanding. Adverse criticism of such utilitarian teaching was inevitable.73 On the side of Epicurus it may be said that, while arguing within the scheme of his premises, he was also discerning the dependence of happiness upon a clear conscience. The concept of conscience, slow to crystallize, is here seen in the nascent state.

The Feelings also serve as a criterion in the choice of a proper attitude or diathesis toward competitive careers. For instance, Diogenes of Oenoanda points out "that the career of the orator allows a man no rest and fills him with anxiety for the success of his plea." 74 The extant sayings of Epicurus himself abound in references to the deceitfulness of the quest for riches, power, or fame.75 On this level the telos and the Feelings coincide as criteria of choice. The individual must bear in mind that the goal of living is happiness and submit every decision to the test of the Feelings that will ensue upon that decision. As Epicurus himself expressed it: "What will be the result for me if the object of the desire is attained and what if it is not attained?" 7S

As a criterion the Feelings may take precedence over reason. Plato, for example, argued endlessly about the meaning of "good." Epicurus scorned this dialectic and arrived at a simple solution. His line of attack is as follows: the greatest good must be associated with the greatest pleasure. This greatest pleasure is easily identified: "What causes the unsurpassable joy is the bare escape from some terrible calamity." 7T This joy arises from the saving of life, the escape from shipwreck, for instance. Therefore life itself is the greatest good. To think of pleasure as the greatest good is an error; pleasure is the telos and is not to be confused with the greatest good. The testimony of the Feeling functioning as a criterion is decisive. More will be said of this in the chapter on the New Hedonism.

• Norman DeWitt, Epicurus and His Philosophy, Chapter VIII

Diogenes Laertius explains the Epicurean Canon this way:

[29] I will also give you the Principal Doctrines, and a selection from his sayings which seem most worthy of mention. You will thus be able to understand Epicurus from every point of view and could form a judgment on him. The first letter he writes to Herodotus (and it deals with Physics; the second is to Pythocles), and it deals with Celestial Phenomena; the third is to Menoeceus, and contains the moral teaching. We must begin with the first letter, but I will first speak briefly about the divisions of his philosophy.

[30] It is divided into three parts, the Canonicon (or Procedure), the Physics and the Ethics. The Canonicon gives the method of approach to the system, and is contained in the work called The Canon. The Physics contains all the investigation into nature, and is contained in the thirty-seven books On Nature and in an abridged form in the letters. The Ethics deals with choice and avoidance, and is contained in the books On Lives and the letters and the book on The End. The Epicureans usually group the Canonicon with the Physics and state that it deals with the criterion of truth and the fundamental principles and contains the elements of the system. The Physics deals with creation and dissolution and with nature; the Ethics with things to be chosen or avoided, with the conduct of life and its purpose.

[31] Logic they reject as misleading. For they say it is sufficient for physicists to be guided by what things say of themselves. Thus in The Canon Epicurus says that the tests of truth are the sensations and concepts and the feelings; the Epicureans add to these the intuitive apprehensions of the mind. And this he says himself too in the summary addressed to Herodotus and in the Principal Doctrines. For, he says, all sensation is irrational and does not admit of memory; for it is not set in motion by itself, nor when it is set in motion by something else, can it add to it or take from it.

It is also important to observe that Epicurus did not advise any particular "type" of pleasure as the most desirable. Epicurus knew that pleasured differ in terms of intensity, duration, and parts of the body affected, as stated as premises of Principal Doctrine 9, in which he explained that these differences explain why pleasures are not all the same:

If every pleasure could be intensified so that it lasted, and influenced the whole organism or the most essential parts of our nature, pleasures would never differ from one another.

• Principal Doctrine 9

Epicurus held that every decision we make should be evaluated in terms of the pleasure and pain that result from making it. Because we will sometimes choose pain, or forgo an immediate pleasure, because greater pleasures or pain will result, we have to be able to weigh and balance pleasures and pains against each other.

The key here is that this weighing process is necessarily individual, as there are no supernatural gods nor sources of absolute morality that apply to all times, peoples, and places. Epicurus tells us to look to our own feelings of pleasure and pain and do our best to evaluate what we will be happiest with achieving. Some will choose a quiet life disengaged from society, but others will choose action and engagement as more pleasurable to them than the pleasures of solitude. In every case, however, we know that we will eventually die and forever after cease to exist, and whatever experiences we decide to prioritize must be achieved while we are alive.

Here is it important to remember that "longest in time" does not equal "best." Duration is not the only factor – intensity and parts of the body affected must also be considered, with the goal being best described not as the longest, nor the most intense, nor that which prevails over the largest parts of the body. In the end, we are the judge of what is "most pleasant," and that is the phrase Epicurus uses to describe the best life:

But the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, at another (yearn for it) as a respite from the (evils) in life. (But the wise man neither seeks to escape life) nor fears the cessation of life, for neither does life offend him nor does the absence of life seem to be any evil. And just as with food he does not seek simply the larger share and nothing else, but rather the most pleasant, so he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time, but the most _pleasant.

• Epicurus Letter to Menoeceus 126

• Pleasure Is the Guide of Life, Not Piety, Virtue, Or Rationalism.
• Pleasure Is A Wide Term That Includes Not Just Sensual Stimulation But Everything In Life Which Is Desirable.
• All Pleasures Are Not The Same.
• Nature Teaches Us Directly To Follow Pleasure and Avoid Pain, And We Need No Abstract Logical Proof of This.
• In Order For Us To Understand The Full Extent of Pleasure, Logical Explanation Through Epicurean Philosophy Can Play An Important Role.
• Pleasure And Pain Are An Important Part of Our Canon of Truth - Our Test of Reality.

Also see: (1) Cosma Raimondi, (2) Lorenzo Valla, and (3) Thomas Jefferson's letter to William Short about not indulging in indolence)

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