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Epicurus’ Conception of Happiness is Wrong
The Great Misunderstanding of Epicurus and Epicureanism
“You will live as a God among people.” This promise ends Letter to Menoeceus, one of most famous books of .
The Greek thinker is recognized as the first philosopher to fully follow the implications of the following statement: happiness is pleasure and pleasure is the absence of pain.
Happiness as the Elimination of Need
The issue starts for Epicurus with the fact that needs is something which has a “peras”, a Greek word for “limit”.
The need is seen as a deficiency that must be remedied, a void that must be filled. For Epicurus, this was crucial: the limit provides ‘form’, which is intended as the mode of being that can be definitively achieved. When the void is replenished, it makes no sense to go further because everything you add is useless.
This line of reasoning applies perfectly to hunger, which is the paradigm (both positively and negatively) of the Epicurean model. Once I have satisfied my appetite, in whatever way I do it, the need disappears.
A need (what we perceive as “need”) is the disruption of a balance that must be reestablished. Returning to the pre-existing state of balance is…
