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Learning to Master the Hedonistic Calculus

The food in Epicurus' Garden
For the wise, hunger is the best seasoning.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

The Epicureans put pleasure at the centre of their philosophy. For centuries, they presented the main alternative to Stoicism as a comprehensive way of life. With an appealing message elevated and propagated by poets such as Horace, Lucretius, and Virgil, Epicureanism vied with Stoicism for the hearts and minds of Roman elites.

So, who was Epicurus, and what did he have to teach us?

The Garden School

Epicurus of Samos (341–270 BCE) and Zeno of Citium (the founder of Stoicism) were almost exact contemporaries in Athens but may never have met. A few years before Zeno began teaching, Epicurus founded a school of philosophy in a garden outside the city’s Dipylon gates. This school, called ‘the Garden’, dedicated itself to attaining happiness through the exercise of reason, and, in a highly sexist and stratified society, admitted both women and slaves.

Life in the Garden was not as you might imagine. Epicurus was content with bread and water and famously asked a friend to send him a little cheese so that, when he wished, he might feast. Far more important than luxury was friendship. ‘Of all the things which wisdom provides for the happiness of the whole life,’ he wrote, ‘by far the most important is friendship.’ Thus, the Garden was more of a live-in community, or fellowship, than a school—influenced, no doubt, by Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum.

Although the most famous, Epicurus was not the first philosopher to make pleasure the highest good. A century earlier, Aristippus of Cyrene, a student of Socrates, had advocated a more immediate and sensual form of hedonism. The irony is that Aristippus lived rather more like our idea of an Epicurean, while the moderate Epicurus lived more like our idea of an Aristotelian—or simply our idea of a philosopher.

Pleasure as the Highest Good

According to Epicurus, reason leads to the conclusion that pleasure is good and pain bad, and that pleasure and pain are the ultimate measures of good and bad. This has often been misconstrued as a rampant call for unbridled hedonism, rather than the absence of physical and mental suffering that Epicurus actually had in mind. He referred to freedom from bodily pain as aponia, and to freedom from mental disturbance as ataraxia. His highest pleasure, then, looked more like tranquillity than ecstasy. 

Indeed, Epicurus explicitly warned against overindulgence, since overindulgence so often leads to pain. ‘The pleasant life,’ he wrote in the Letter to Menoeceus (the most important of his three surviving letters), ‘is produced not by a string of drinking bouts and revelries, nor by the enjoyment of boys and women, nor by fish and other items on an expensive menu, but by sober reasoning.’

Pleasure is the highest good, and all else that is good is so only by virtue of the immediate or deferred pleasure that it can procure. The behaviour of infants confirms that human beings instinctively pursue pleasure. All our actions, including those that may be construed as virtuous or altruistic, are, in the final analysis, aimed at obtaining pleasure for ourselves. Just as we can instantly sense whether something is hot or cold, or colourful or dull, so we can instantly sense whether something is pleasurable or painful.

Even so, not everything that is pleasurable ought to be pursued, and not everything that is painful ought to be avoided. Instead, a kind of hedonistic calculus ought to be applied to determine which things are most likely to result, over time, in the greatest pleasure and least pain—and it is above all with this arithmetics of pleasure that people struggle.

Lesson 1: The Two Types of Pleasure

To help us along, Epicurus began by distinguishing between two types of pleasure, ‘moving pleasures’ and ‘static pleasures’. Moving pleasures involve the satisfying of a desire—for example, tucking into a meal when hungry. Static pleasures, on the other hand, involve the state of having had a desire satisfied—for example, feeling sated after having eaten the meal. According to Epicurus, static pleasures are better than moving pleasures because they free us from the pain of need or want.

Lesson 2: The Three Classes of Desire

Because pleasure often arises from the satisfaction of desire and pain from its frustration, Epicurus also distinguished between three classes of desire: natural and necessary desires, such as those for food and shelter, which are hard to eliminate but naturally limited and both easy and highly pleasurable to satisfy; natural but non-necessary desires such as those for luxury food and housing, which offer ever diminishing returns; and vain desires such as those for fame and fortune, which, being inculcated by society, are not naturally limited and neither easy nor highly pleasurable to satisfy.

Epicurus advised that desires of the first class ought to be satisfied, desires of the second class can be satisfied if doing so is easy, but desires of the third class should be entirely eliminated. ‘If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.’ Modern life has multiplied vain desires beyond anything that Epicurus could have imagined. The problem with vain desires, such as acquiring the next thing or gaining another thousand followers, is not merely that they are more difficult to satisfy, but that they have no natural point of satisfaction.

Lesson 3: The Two Greatest Fears

Epicurus divided pleasures and pains into physical and mental, and argued that fear of the future, especially fear of the gods and fear of death, are the greatest obstacles to happiness.

Although the gods exist, they have absolutely no concern for, or even awareness of, humankind. Indeed, for the gods to involve themselves in the menial matters of men would be to perturb the supreme happiness and tranquillity that characterises and defines them. Instead of fearing the gods, we would do better to emulate them in their supreme removal and detachment.

Neither should we fear death, and this for two main reasons. First, Epicurus, drawing on Democritus, held that everything in the universe, including the human body and mind, is ultimately composed of atoms. Our death entails the disintegration of both body and mind and the re-dispersion of their atoms. As there is no longer any person to be troubled, death cannot trouble us after we are dead. And if death cannot trouble us after we are dead, neither should it trouble us while we are still alive. Second, the eternity that comes before our birth is not regarded as an evil; therefore, neither should the eternity that comes after our death. These two arguments are early formulations, respectively, of the ‘no subject of harm’ argument and the ‘symmetry’ argument, which have both, more or less, withstood the test of time.

Epicurus’ Own Death

Epicurus died at the age of 72 from the complications of renal colic (kidney stones), which is associated with one of the most intense of all bodily pains. On the last day of his life, he purportedly penned this letter to his friend and follower, the political grandee Idomeneus, which is nothing if not a testament to the overriding powers of philosophy:

I have written this letter to you on a happy day to me, which is also the last day of my life. For I have been attacked by a painful inability to urinate, and also dysentery, so violent that nothing can be added to the violence of my sufferings. But the cheerfulness of my mind, which comes from the recollection of all my philosophical contemplation, counterbalances all these afflictions. And I beg you to take care of the children of Metrodorus [Idomeneus’ brother-in-law], in a manner worthy of the devotion shown by the young man to me, and to philosophy.

The philosopher of pleasure died in agony—and called it a happy day.

Some three centuries later, Seneca, in his Letters to Lucilius, compared his relationship with Lucilius to that between Epicurus and Idomeneus. ‘Who would have known of Idomeneus,’ he asks, ‘had not the philosopher thus engraved his name in those letters of his? All the grandees and satraps, even the king himself … are sunk in deep oblivion.’

When all is forgotten, only the humble philosopher will be remembered.

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The Freest and Funniest Philosopher of Antiquity

Aristippus at the court of Dionysius I of Syracuse
Aristippus of Cyrene believed that pleasure is best enjoyed by those who remain its master.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

History has largely forgotten Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435-c. 356 BCE). It shouldn’t have. A disciple of Socrates and the founder of the Cyrenaic school, he was the original hedonist— far more radical than the better-known Epicurus (341-270 BCE). He was also one of antiquity’s sharpest wits, perhaps even its funniest philosopher. Yet to dismiss Aristippus as funny but shallow would be to miss the point entirely. His philosophy is far deeper—and far more demanding—than first appears.

Before we turn to his celebrated wit, it is worth pausing over philosophy itself.

Ancient philosophy, for all its theoretical underpinnings, was above all an art of living, which aimed, through self-transformation, at controlling the passions, relieving suffering, and attaining wisdom. Philosophy was to the soul as medicine is to the body, and the philosopher, first and foremost, a healer of the soul. In the words of the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero, ‘Unless the soul is cured, which cannot be done without philosophy, there will be no end to our miseries.’ According to the Roman Stoic Musonius Rufus, ‘We must live like doctors and be continually treating ourselves with reason.’ For the Greeks and Romans, philosophy was not merely something to discuss, but something to be lived.

The conception of philosophy as therapy can be traced back to Socrates. After his death by hemlock in 399 BCE, his closest students each carried away a different aspect of his teaching. Plato inherited his theoretical side and founded the Academy. Antisthenes embraced his ethic of self-sufficiency and laid the foundations for Cynicism. Aristippus, by contrast, established the Cyrenaic school, which taught that the only intrinsic good is pleasure—especially the vivid, immediate pleasures of the present moment.

The Philosophy of Pleasure

Aristippus emphasised present and physical pleasures over distant hopes or abstract ideals. For Aristippus and his followers, pleasure meant not merely the absence of pain but positively making the most of every moment.

Aristippus first encountered Socrates while visiting Athens for the Olympic Games. Captivated by the philosopher, he remained in the city and became one of his closest followers. Yet he was never content merely to imitate his master. Once, he had the temerity to tell Socrates that he preferred living in Athens because it spared him the politics of his native Cyrene—the sort of remark that alienated fellow Socratics such as Plato and Xenophon, who regarded civic duty as an obligation rather than a burden.

Aristippus was also the first of Socrates’ followers to take money for teaching. When he demanded five hundred drachmas from a man for tutoring his son, the man protested, ‘For that much money, I could buy a slave!’ ‘Go ahead,’ replied Aristippus. ‘Then you’ll have two.’

Many stories are told of Aristippus, and even if some are later inventions, they capture something essential about the man.

One day, Diogenes the Cynic was washing the dirt from his vegetables when he saw Aristippus passing by. ‘Had you learnt to make these your diet,’ called Diogenes, ‘you would have no need to pay court to kings.’ ‘And you, Diogenes, had you learnt to associate with men, you would have no need to wash vegetables.’

When someone chided him for his extravagant tastes, he retorted, ‘Wouldn’t you have bought this if you could have got it for three obols? Very well then, it is no longer I who am a lover of pleasure, but you who are a lover of money.’

When someone remarked that philosophers were always to be found at the doors of rich men, he replied, ‘Physicians are always calling on the sick, but no one would therefore rather be sick than be a physician.’

When Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, asked why he had come to his court, Aristippus answered, ‘When I needed wisdom, I went to Socrates; but now that I am in need of money, I come to you.’

On another occasion, Dionysius spat in his face. When someone reproached him for enduring such an insult, Aristippus remarked, ‘If fishermen are prepared to be drenched in seawater in order to catch a gudgeon, should I not be prepared to be sprayed with spittle in order to take a blenny?’

When Dionysius gave him his choice of three courtesans, Aristippus carried off all three, explaining, ‘Paris paid dearly for preferring one out of three.’

For many years he was intimate with the celebrated courtesan Lais of Corinth, reputedly the most beautiful woman in Greece. Yet he maintained, ‘I possess Lais, but I am not possessed by her.’

The Hidden Depths of Aristippus

By now, Aristippus might seem little more than a witty opportunist devoted to luxury and pleasure. But appearances can be deceptive.

Aristippus was far from amoral. He simply believed that we ought to make the most of every situation. When criticised for his love of pleasure, he replied, ‘It is not abstinence from pleasures that is best, but mastery over them without ever being worsted.’ Pleasure, in other words, is not our master; we are.

One day, as he entered the house of a courtesan, one of the young men with him blushed. Seeing this, he said, ‘It is not going in that is shameful, but being unable to come out.’

Vitruvius, in his treatise on architecture, recounts the story of Aristippus’ shipwreck. Cast ashore on Rhodes, Aristippus made straight for the gymnasium, where he spoke with such eloquence that the Rhodians provided for all his needs. When his companions later prepared to return home and asked what message they should carry back, he bid them tell their children to acquire possessions that could swim with them even out of a shipwreck.

Despite having two sons, Aristippus appointed his daughter Arete to succeed him as head of the Cyrenaic school. Her own son, Aristippus the Younger, would later formalise the principles of Cyrenaicism.

Several later Cyrenaics departed from Aristippus’ original teaching. Theodorus the Atheist (c. 340–c. 250 BCE) placed greater emphasis on mental than physical pleasures, identifying the good with prudence and justice. Hegesias of Cyrene (fl. 290 BCE), perhaps influenced by Buddhist missionaries sent out by Ashoka the Great, argued that happiness is unattainable and that the true goal of life is merely the avoidance of pain and distress. According to Cicero, his book Death by Starvation persuaded so many people that death was preferable to life that Ptolemy II Philadelphus banned him from teaching in Alexandria.

A Philosopher for Our Time

Within little more than a century, the Cyrenaic school had been eclipsed by Epicureanism. Yet Aristippus deserves to be rescued.

Contrary to the caricature, Aristippus did not teach people to become slaves to pleasure. He taught them never to become slaves to anything. He could enjoy wealth without depending on it, luxury without being possessed by it, and the company of tyrants without surrendering his independence. Pleasure, for Aristippus, was never an excuse for self-indulgence. It was a test of self-mastery.

In an age that often swings between thoughtless excess and puritanical self-denial, Aristippus still has something important to teach us. Freedom lies neither in rejecting pleasure nor in chasing it blindly, but in remaining its master. His life looked like a celebration of pleasure. His philosophy was really about freedom.

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A laughing philosopher (Democritus)
Democritus laughed at human folly—not out of contempt, but because he saw the world more clearly.

Philosophers are not generally renowned for their sense of humour. They spend their days pondering free will, personal identity, and whether the external world really exists. Yet philosophy has always had a playful side. Socrates delighted in teasing his companions, Diogenes made a career out of puncturing pretension, and Zen masters often concealed profound truths inside what seemed to be little more than jokes. According to one tradition, Chrysippus the Stoic saw a donkey eating figs, gave it wine to wash them down, and laughed himself to death.

Despite all his outstanding achievements, the people of his native Miletus mocked Thales for his material poverty. So, one year, having predicted a bumper crop of olives, he took out a lease on all the olive presses on Miletus and made himself a fortune. “You see,” he said, “a philosopher could easily be rich if only he did not have better things to do with his time.”

Xanthippe, after berating Socrates at length, emptied a chamber pot over his head. Wiping himself dry, Socrates remarked, “After thunder comes rain.”

Aristippus was the first of the Socratics to take money for teaching. When he demanded five hundred drachmas to tutor a man’s son, the man protested, “For that much money, I could buy a slave!” “Go ahead,” replied Aristippus. “Then you’ll have two.”

When someone chided Aristippus for his extravagant catering, he replied, “Wouldn’t you have bought this yourself if you could have had it for three obols? … Very well then, it is not I who am a lover of pleasure, but you who are a lover of money.”

When Dionysus I, the tyrant of Syracuse, asked Aristippus why he had come to his court, he replied, “When I needed wisdom, I went to Socrates; but now that I am in need of money, I come to you.”

Although he prized reason, Diogenes despised the abstract philosophy practised at Plato’s Academy. When, to great acclaim, Plato defined a human being as ‘a featherless biped’, Diogenes plucked a chicken, carried it into the Academy, and declared, “Behold! Plato’s man.” Plato is said to have amended his definition by adding, ‘with broad nails.’

One day, Diogenes asked Plato for a handful of figs from his garden. When Plato had a whole bushel sent out, he muttered, “Typical Plato.”

Diogenes used to wander about Athens in broad daylight carrying a lit lamp. Whenever anyone asked what he was doing, he would reply, “I am looking for a human being.” 

Diogenes delighted in walking backwards through the streets or entering the theatre against the tide of people leaving. Once a crowd had gathered to laugh at him, he turned on his heel and said, “Why do you mock me, when you’ve spent your whole lives walking backwards? At least I can turn around.”

When a young man asked to study under him, Diogenes handed him a fish and told him to carry it around the city. Ashamed, the young man threw it away and fled. Some time later, Diogenes met him in the agora and remarked, “Fancy—our friendship was ended by a fish.”

Epictetus neither married nor had children, despite urging others to do so. When he reproached his friend and pupil Demonax for remaining unmarried, Demonax replied, “Very well, then. Will you give me one of your daughters for a wife?”

Descartes invites his date, Jeanne, to a fine restaurant for her birthday. The sommelier hands them the wine list, and Jeanne chooses the most expensive Burgundy. “I think not!” exclaims an indignant Descartes. Poof. He disappears.

Kant once joked: A man tried to arrange a solemn funeral for a wealthy relative, but failed. “The more I paid the mourners,” he complained, “the merrier they looked.”

On another occasion, Kant joked: A merchant returned from India with a great fortune, but, caught in a violent storm, was forced to throw all his cargo overboard. The shock was so great that his wig turned grey overnight.

A student lent his copy of Objects of Thought by A. N. Prior to his tutor. At their next meeting, the tutor said that he had browsed the book and left it in the student’s pigeonhole. Some time later, the student burst into his office crying, “Professor, Professor! Someone’s stolen my Prior!” The old man calmly replied, “You’d be lucky around here if they hadn’t taken your posterior as well.”

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are on a camping trip. In the middle of the night, Holmes nudges Watson awake and says, “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.” “I see millions of stars, my dear Holmes.” “And what do you infer from these stars?” “Well, a number of things,” he says, lighting his pipe. “Astronomically, I observe that there are millions of galaxies and billions of stars and planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Meteorologically, I expect that the weather will be fine and clear. Theologically, I see that God is all-powerful, and man, his creation, small and insignificant. What about you, Holmes?” “Watson, you fool! Someone has stolen our tent!”

A renowned philosopher was held in high regard by his driver, who listened in awe as his boss lectured and answered difficult questions about the nature of things and the meaning of life. Then, one day, the driver approached the philosopher and asked if he would be willing to switch roles for just one evening. The philosopher agreed, and, for a while, the driver acquitted himself remarkably well. However, when the time came for questions, someone at the back of the room asked, “Is the epistemological meta-narrative that you seem to espouse compatible with a teleological account of the universe?” “That’s an extremely simple question,” replied the driver. “So simple, in fact, that even my driver could answer it.”

Two behaviourists meet in the street. “Hello,” says one. “How am I feeling today?”

 Some months later, the two behaviourists have sex. One turns to the other and says, “That was good for you. How was it for me?”

Upon waking, a woman said to her husband, “I dreamt that you gave me a necklace of pearls. What do you think it means?” The man smiled and kissed his wife. “You’ll know tonight,” he whispered. That evening, he came home with a small package. She eagerly unwrapped it. Inside was a book entitled The Meaning of Dreams.

Seeing the Zen master on the other side of a raging torrent, a student shouted, “Master! Master! How do I get to the other side?” The master smiled. “You are on the other side.”

A Zen student asked the master how long it would take to attain enlightenment. “Ten years.” “And if I work twice as hard?” “Twenty years.”

For his seventieth birthday, one of his students presented the Zen master with a beautifully wrapped box. Inside was nothing. “Aha,” exclaimed the master. “Just what I wanted!”

A novice was loading the larder with flour and oil. Seeing one of the monks sitting beneath a banyan tree, he asked if he might lend a hand. “Sorry,” said the monk. “I’m busy.” “But your eyes are shut!” “Yes. I’m busy doing nothing. It’s much harder than what you’re doing. It’s what the food is for, what the kitchen is for, and why we built the temple. Don’t interrupt me again with your lardering.” Hours later, the weary novice found the monk still sitting on the bench. “Can we talk now?” he asked. “No,” he snapped, “I haven’t finished yet.”

“After twelve years of therapy,” said a man, “my psychotherapist said something that brought tears to my eyes.” “What did he say?” “No hablo inglés.”

Humour and philosophy have more in common than might first appear. Both begin by challenging what we take for granted. A joke lures us into one way of thinking before pulling the rug from under our feet; philosophy often does the same. In both cases, we emerge seeing the world a little differently.

No wonder philosophers have always been drawn to wit, irony, paradox, and satire. A good joke can expose a bad argument, puncture pomposity, or illuminate an idea more effectively than pages of solemn analysis. As Nietzsche observed, ‘It is not by wrath but by laughter that one kills.’

Perhaps, after all, laughter is simply another way of thinking.

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