What is Hedonism?
Key Concepts
- Hedonism
- Cyrenaics
- Epicureans
- Kinetic pleasures and Katastematic pleasures
- Pleasures of the soul versus Pleasures of the body
According to hedonism, one’s life is going well to the extent that it is pleasant and not painful. Hedonists differ amongst themselves on what sorts of things are pleasant and what sorts of things are painful and on the relative values of the different sorts of pleasures and pains.
The Cyrenaics & The Epicureans
One of the first hedonists was the Greek philosopher Aristippus (c. 435-356 B.C.E.), whose followers were called the Cyrenaics. Their teachings emphasize the intrinsic good of particular pleasures; happiness, they claim, is not worth choosing for its own sake, but rather for the particular pleasures that come of it or produce it.
Epicurus (c. 341-271 B.C.E.) founded a very different school of hedonism (Epicureanism). One major difference between the two schools of thought concerns that which takes away from one’s well-being: pain. While the Cyrenaics maintained that bodily pains are worse than the pains of the soul, Epicurus claimed that the pains of the soul are worse, as the soul can be troubled by the past, present, and future. Another important difference found in these readings arose between their views of pleasure. Aristippus considered only positive states as pleasure (kinetic pleasure); Epicurus, however, considered the absence of pain (katastematic pleasure) important among the pleasures we should pursue. In his view, the disciples of Aristippus failed to lead good (pleasant) lives because their pursuit of strictly-immediate pleasures tended to produce future suffering. Epicureanism, then, aims at mitigating potential pains, in order to secure both immediate and potential pleasures for the soul.
Nearly all the original writings of Aristippus and Epicurus have been lost, and today our primary source for their views is in the writings of subsequent chroniclers and philosophers. The most important of these is a compendium of philosophers’ lives, composed in the 3rd century C.E. by Diogenes Laertius.
Click on each of the links below to read more about each of these two major schools of hedonism.
Two Forms of Hedonism
- Selected texts on Cyrenaic hedonism (required reading)
- Selected texts on Epicurean hedonism (required reading)