{"id":"600aa4bb6cee070007562cc2","slug":"how-to-be-an-epicurean-en","title":"How to Be an Epicurean","audio_url":"https://hls.blinkist.io/bibs/600aa4bb6cee070007562cc2/600aa4bb6cee070007562cc4-T1611310459.m4a?Expires=1642719524&Signature=H36FxlDzACIfTyGIHq1-TEpnRi4TqzVyJFzpeYHKg-450EsiMReJ40KkRWz3s0OJKPXUWSsY1uYKUE1cpeg70xUnYvn-VOVKT5moaMSaBA4fY-3m~C8n40dW88ma18XqYr-3t6zuBSJtWO1XH8w8h53D8stvwb5Wx~qEdg1pRZH2mV0HsHJ5cF6kLhLY72walaXH7IqZ8ETILWWpXZ96hU7IVaKS3n1cl4JBtuWEkfz5lOi50PHsBSwuZNKaQpV0BcrEDs5hu2Ge~p8jWdDh7eF3ilE90IzLeUbZ50RWs0E3d~2W0FBWIRlXYyRGBSxTetZCs6rzji0Z145yR1zinw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJXJM6BB7FFZXUB4A","chapters":[{"id":"600aa4bb6cee070007562cc4","title":"The ancient Greek philosophy of Epicureanism isn’t just about pleasure – it’s a theory of everything.","text":"

These days, when people think of Epicureanism, they tend to imagine scenes of luxury – an aristocrat, perhaps, in his wine cellar, or a gourmand tucking into a generous dinner. Epicureanism often just means pleasurable, hedonistic high living, with a weirdly strong emphasis on food and drink.

But there’s far more to it than that.

It’s true that the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus emphasized the importance of pleasure. And so did his most influential follower, the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. But they also acknowledged this was complex. Too much pleasure today, for instance, can lead to pain later on. And of course, other people are seeking pleasure too, and we shouldn’t seek our own pleasure at their expense.

Plus, Epicurus and Lucretius had a lot to say about nature, physics, history, love, death, religion – nearly everything. And a lot of it’s still highly relevant today.

The key message here is: The ancient Greek philosophy of Epicureanism isn’t just about pleasure – it’s a theory of everything.

Epicurus lived with his followers in Athens in the third century BCE, in a grove – usually called his garden – outside the city. Most of his writings were lost – many were buried by the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. But by that time, over in Rome, Lucretius had written many of his own Epicurean texts, notably his long poem On the Nature of Things.

Despite its unprestigious reputation today, Epicureanism has had a major role in the history of thought. It influenced many philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Karl Marx. Several of the American Founding Fathers were Epicureans too, including Thomas Jefferson.

Epicurus also has an intriguing place in the history of science: he developed one of the earliest theories of the atom, which is now known as Epicurean atomism. According to this theory, everything is made up of atoms – tiny, indivisible particles that are invisible to the eye. Not only that, but these atoms are the only truly permanent things in the universe. Everything we see – people, nature, human-made objects – are simply arrangements of atoms, and when these things change or cease to exist, that’s just the atoms rearranging themselves.

The details of Epicurean atomism aren’t correct, according to modern science. But as ancient philosophical theories go, it’s actually pretty accurate. In fact, the same goes for Lucretius’s theory of the development of human beings. You might even call it “natural selection,” as we’ll explore in the next blink.

"},{"id":"600aa4bb6cee070007562cc5","title":"There are no supernatural powers in Epicureanism, so it often sounds surprisingly modern.","text":"

The ancient Epicureans believed that, long ago, atoms happened to form many animals – far more than exist today. But only some survived: the ones that had the most useful features, like speed or intelligence. In other words, there was no divine force behind the creation of the natural world around us – a belief that was widely ridiculed for centuries.

Charles Darwin’s work was ridiculed, too, back in the nineteenth century. In fact, his theory of natural selection was frequently compared to the doctrines of Lucretius. Yet these days Darwin’s ideas are widely accepted, and Lucretius’s work sounds remarkably like a precursor to it.

What the Epicureans said about consciousness bears up well today, too.

The key message here is: There are no supernatural powers in Epicureanism, so it often sounds surprisingly modern.

If everything is just made up of atoms, where does our feeling of consciousness come from? The Epicureans believed that a special, especially lively sort of atom was responsible: “soul atoms,” they called them. But good news: you don’t have to believe in all of that to think about consciousness in an Epicurean way.

Instead, just think about the materials that we’re made out of. Is it more likely that our feeling of consciousness is a result of the particular configuration of atoms each of us has – or that some other, non-physical thing is dwelling imperceptibly inside us? From a modern, scientific perspective, the first answer seems more plausible.

But this raises another question: Why do we even have consciousness in the first place if we’re just a chance configuration of atoms? Science gives us an answer that a modern-day Epicurean might approve of: consciousness has an evolutionary advantage.

Compare one of those robotic vacuum cleaners to a mouse. Think of all the tasks the robot is specifically programmed to do. And now think of all the extra stuff the mouse can do that the robot can’t, like identify food and reproduce.

How does it do all that? In part through emotions – fear makes it flee cats; love makes it nurture its young. The very unmechanical way the mouse’s brain works is exactly what enables it to survive. And the same goes for the human brain, in abundance.

Because our feeling of consciousness comes from within our brain, that feeling disappears when our bodies die. An Epicurean would say our soul atoms simply evaporate into the air and become something else.

But that doesn’t have to be bleak. It can simply provoke us to live the best life we can while we’re still here.

"},{"id":"600aa4bb6cee070007562cc6","title":"Epicurean ethics is about seeking pleasure and avoiding pain – but with prudence and morals.","text":"

What should you do with your life? For Epicurus, this question is about choice and avoidance. Put simply, we should choose pleasure and avoid pain. Our desire to do that is natural – and nature, for Epicurus, is the most important force of all.

Too much pleasure can end up having the opposite effect, though – just think of a hangover. That’s why Epicurus’s advice is to act prudently – with an awareness of how much pleasure and pain your actions will cause in the long term, as well as right now. And that gets pretty complicated.

The key message here is: Epicurean ethics is about seeking pleasure and avoiding pain – but with prudence and morals.

For every decision you make, you should carefully, prudently weigh up all the pros and cons, and reach the decision that suits you best.

Sometimes, it’s easy. Should you experience the slight pain of going to the dentist? Yes, to prevent the greater pain of, say, an untreated cavity later on.

But here’s a tougher one: Should you buy an insurance policy protecting you against pipes bursting, if the risk of that happening is almost zero? If the risk really is that tiny, then perhaps not. However, what if you worry about the pipes anyway? Or what if knowing you’re covered makes you feel good? In those cases, the Epicurean answer is: go for it.

Prudence, then, is primarily about you. But what about everyone else? What about morality?

The Marquis de Sade claimed to be an Epicurean; he said he was following nature by seeking his own pleasure – which just so happened to involve torturing people. But this overlooks a hugely important part of Epicurus’s teachings: that we must act according to moral conventions.

Kindness, Epicurus said, usually comes naturally to people. But he also saw how much could be gained through torture, theft, or murder – and people’s nature, unfortunately, is sometimes drawn in that direction. So, he believed in human-made laws and institutions. Even though they’re not naturally occurring, laws are needed to prevent a descent into chaos.

Because they aren’t natural, moral conventions change over time, and systems are often hugely flawed – the author points to the American criminal justice system, for example. But despite all that, law is an artificial invention that we badly need, so that – for the most part – we can go on living our pleasurable lives.

"},{"id":"600aa4bc6cee070007562cc7","title":"Some pains are inevitable, like those we experience with love and death.","text":"

The Epicureans’ ancient rivals, the Stoics, had some dark views about passion – they likened it to a disease. But for an Epicurean, passion should be embraced. And besides, even if passion is like a disease, aren’t diseases part of nature? Surely they’re inevitable from time to time.

It’s true that romantic love comes with its share of problems. Both Epicurus and the especially passionate Lucretius recognized that love causes pain as well as pleasure. Just think of how agonizing it can be to feel uncertainty about whether someone loves you back – or jealousy about them loving someone else!

But does that mean we should shun love altogether? Not at all, we just have to recognize that the pain it causes is part of life. Just like death.

The key message here is: Some pains are inevitable, like those we experience with love and death.

Epicurus himself didn’t want to marry, although his followers were welcome to if they wanted. However, his views on women were striking. Epicureanism was the only ancient philosophical school that women were allowed to join, and were treated as equals – another way in which Epicurean thinking seems impressively modern when we study it today.

Not that every relationship is between a man and a woman. A modern Epicurean perspective on homosexuality is accepting. Of course, banning such relationships causes enormous pain. And there’s nothing objectionable about any relationship, as long as it’s conducted prudently and morally, with no harm caused to anyone else.

Just as we have to recognize that love causes pain as well as pleasure, we must acknowledge the inevitability of death. Death, Epicurus said, is bad – in fact, the worst thing that can happen to us. However, it isn’t something to fear or rail against.

Human life has a natural limit, just like everything else in the universe, whether living or inanimate. And once that limit is reached, we should accept it. Death in old age should not cause sorrow, so long as the person has lived a happy life. It’s all just part of nature.

What happens after death? The Epicurean says: nothing. Simply put, we cease to exist; our atoms become something else. One consequence of this is that in Epicureanism, unlike in some religions, there’s no cosmic justice system – no rewards for the good or punishments for the bad. All the more reason to live a good, moral, pleasurable life on Earth while you still can.

"},{"id":"600aa4bc6cee070007562cc8","title":"The distinction between nature and convention is at the heart of Epicureanism.","text":"

Rocks are heavy. Fire is hot. Water is liquid. These are all characteristics we’d normally ascribe to the things in question. Lucretius called them properties – rocks have the property of heaviness, he’d say. Properties are natural; they’re part of a thing’s essential nature – the set of characteristics that make it what it is.

But what about a person being enslaved or free? Poor or rich? Lucretius didn’t think of these in the same way. He called them accidents – things that might change, without affecting something’s essential nature.

To put it another way, Epicureanism distinguishes between nature and convention. Natural things simply are as they are, and there’s nothing we can do to change them. But conventional things could be one way or another, so they’re changeable – and sometimes we ourselves can change them.

The key message here is: The distinction between nature and convention is at the heart of Epicureanism.

That distinction means that there are three categories of things in the world. First, there are indestructible things – those are just atoms. Second, there are natural things like plants, animals, and stars. And third, there are conventional things, which we’ve made. That category includes objects like clocks and driving licenses, and concepts like royalty and money.

While conventional things may be physical objects, their meaning depends on context. Imagine a pound coin somehow turned up in ancient Assyria. It wouldn’t actually be a pound coin, because nobody would be able to use it as one. Similarly, if Queen Victoria was there, she wouldn’t be a queen.

However, conventional things do have actual effects on the world. Poverty may only exist by convention, but it means that people really do go hungry. War, too, is a human invention, but one that kills people.

By the same token, modern-day Epicureans believe that human rights are conventions – even though many other philosophies say they’re natural. An Epicurean would point out that, if rights were natural, there would be no need for people to discuss and debate them at length; we would simply be able to observe them.

Strangely enough, history is dependent on convention as well. Think about it this way: Did you personally experience the Trojan War or the Cambodian genocide? Unless you did, you only know about those events through other people’s testimony. That testimony can add up so that we get a reasonable idea of what happened, but it never quite becomes objective fact – our knowledge of events is always mediated through subjective human interpretation.

In fact, by the same logic, there are limits to what we can perceive in general, based on our senses. And that’s a troubling realization we’ll explore in the next blink.

"},{"id":"600aa4bc6cee070007562cc9","title":"It’s impossible to know what’s really true, but we can get as close as possible.","text":"

One consequence of Epicurean Atomism is that we can never see what’s truly going on – atoms are simply too small. All we can see is the blur that all those millions of tiny particles make in aggregate after they’ve come together to form larger things.

What’s more, we’re all in possession of our own set of senses, plus our unique past experiences. So we all see slightly different things when we look at the world.

How, then, can we work out what’s really true? Disturbingly, we pretty much can’t – at least not with 100 percent certainty.

However, we still have to do the best we can. And the way to do that is through empiricism – an approach to truth that’s all about trying to gain knowledge from our senses.

The key message here is: It’s impossible to know what’s really true, but we can get as close as possible.

Empiricism simply asks us to gather all the information we can about something, and work out what’s most likely to be the case. That’s the closest we can ever get to the truth.

If you see your neighbor’s house burn down, you should believe it happened. If someone else tells you it happened, ask yourself: Do you accept they’re in a position to know about it, and they don’t want to trick you? If the evidence adds up, believe them.

Empiricism isn’t perfect, not even in modern science. In the 1980s, many scientists claimed that margarine was healthier than butter. Many people dutifully changed their diets. But it later turned out that margarine back then was actually worse for us than butter.

A dose of skepticism is healthy, then. However, it still makes sense to listen to the current scientific consensus, even if it may later prove wrong. For now, it’s the best we’ve got.

It’s worth bringing an empirical approach to climate change, too. Is there a chance that the scientific consensus is wrong, just like it was about butter? Only a very, very slight one. Bear in mind that science is constantly improving its methods – the evidence for climate change today is far better than the evidence was for margarine being better than butter back in the 1980s.

And even more, bear in mind that climate change is a moral issue – people’s lives are at stake. We have a responsibility – we can’t just ignore the problem by claiming it might not be happening.

Can we be absolutely certain about climate change? No, but the same goes for anything and everything. We just have to act according to the best evidence available.

"},{"id":"600aa4bc6cee070007562cca","title":"Choose Epicureanism if you want to live a pleasurable life that feels meaningful.","text":"

Take an empirical approach toward religious beliefs, and they start to look unlikely. The author even suggests we have a moral responsibility to disagree with the claim that there’s a god or gods watching over us all, sorting everything out.

Not all aspects of religion are at odds with Epicurean values, though. Some religious communities do charity work, and many religious teachings encourage good morals. However, there’s a superstitious aspect to religion that doesn’t fit with the rational Epicurean perspective.

But perhaps you’re tempted by another non-religious philosophy – Stoicism. It’s enjoyed an upsurge in popularity recently. But life for the Stoic is perhaps not as enjoyable as it is for the Epicurean.

The key message here is: Choose Epicureanism if you want to live a pleasurable life that feels meaningful.

We’ve already mentioned that the Stoics frown on emotions, calling them “diseases.” But an Epicurean embraces emotion as something natural – what could be more natural than feeling, and wanting to feel, pleasure?

A Stoic might reply that it’s selfish to want a pleasurable life. Shouldn’t we live a life that’s not just enjoyable, but meaningful? The Epicurean answer to this questions what the word “meaningful” really means in this context.

Our brains make us different from animals. We can plan for the long term and act based on understanding complex abstract concepts. It’s through doing these things that our lives feel meaningful. You might feel you’ve done something meaningful if you have a successful career or do charity work, for instance.

But it’s a mistake to believe that we must strive for these goals to the point of excess. Think of some of the most notable figures in history, and consider how many waged terrible wars or selfishly hoarded money. If we try to be extreme overachievers, we may end up moving away from our true human nature.

That’s why the Epicurean believes that a life can be well-lived, even if your awards cabinet is empty and you’ve never won a war. You can live a meaningful human life simply by doing what you do and loving those close to you.

After all, on the vast, cosmic scale, none of us are really so significant. Our planet is home to countless species, the universe to countless planets – and none of it has any divine purpose.

That might make us feel small, like our lives are insignificant. But the simple fact that we exist as unique, conscious human beings, in such a vast and purposeless universe, can also make us feel enlarged. Isn’t it amazing that those tiny, imperceptible atoms have chanced to arrange themselves like they have, so that you can think all your thoughts and feel everything you feel?

It’s miraculous, isn’t it? Aren’t we lucky to exist?

"},{"id":"600aa4bc6cee070007562ccb","title":"Final summary","text":"

The key message in these blinks:

The ancient philosophy of Epicureanism encourages us to seek pleasure and avoid pain, while always acting prudently and morally. There are no supernatural powers in Epicureanism, and there’s no afterlife either, but it’s not a pessimistic philosophy. Rather, it encourages us to embrace the pleasures and wonders of the life we live.

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We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with How to Be an Epicurean as the subject line and share your thoughts!

What to read next: How to be a Stoic, by Massimo Pigliucci

Epicureanism is just one of the ancient philosophies that still has a lot to tell us today. Even though the schools have long been rivals, Stoicism and Epicureanism have some interesting parallels and overlaps – as well as some major differences and points of contention. The blinks to How to Be a Stoic explain how ancient Stoic philosophers like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius can still help us in our everyday lives today.

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