Two Forms of Hedonism – God & the Good Life

What is Hedonism?

Key Concepts

Hedonism
Cyrenaics
Epicureans
Kinetic pleasures and Katastematic pleasures

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.

Selected Texts

From B. Inwood and L. P. Gerson, The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia. Hackett Publishing Company. (1994).

Diogenes Laertius 10.136–138 (Report of Epicurus’ Ethical Views)

136. He (Epicurus) disagrees with the Cyrenaics on the question of pleasure. For they do not admit katastematic pleasure, but only kinetic pleasure, and he admits both types in both the body and the soul, . . . And Epicurus, in his On Choices, says this: “For freedom from disturbance and freedom from suffering are katastem-atic pleasures; and joy and delight are viewed as kinetic and active.”

137. Further, he disagrees with the Cyrenaics [thus]. For they (the Cyrenaics) think that bodily pains are worse than those of the soul, since people who err are punished with bodily [pain], while he (Epicurus) thinks that pains of the soul are worse, since the flesh is only troubled by the present, but the soul is troubled by the past and the present and the future. In the same way, then, the soul also has greater pleasures. And he uses as a proof that the goal is pleasure the fact that animals, as soon as they are born are satisfied with it but are in conflict with suffering by nature and apart from reason. So it is by our experience all on its own that we avoid pain . . .

138. The virtues too are chosen because of pleasure, and not for their own sakes, just as medicine is chosen because of health …And Epicurus says that only virtue is inseparable from pleasure, and that the other things, such as food, may be separated [from pleasure].

Diogenes Laertius 2.88–90 (an account of Cyrenaic hedonism)

88. Particular pleasure is worth choosing for its own sake; happiness, however, is not worth choosing for its own sake but because of the particular pleasures. A confirmation that the goal is pleasure is found in the fact that from childhood on we involuntarily find it [pleasure] congenial and that when we get it we seek nothing more and that we flee nothing so much as its opposite, pain. And pleasure is good even if it comes from the most indecorous sources, as Hippobotus says in his On Choices. For even if the deed is out of place, the pleasure at any rate is worth choosing for its own sake and good.

89. They hold that the removal of the feeling of pain is not pleasure, as Epicurus said it was, and that absence of pleasure is not pain. For both are kinetic, while neither absence of pain nor absence of pleasure is a motion, since absence of pain is like the condition [katastasis] of somebody who is asleep. …But further, they say, pleasure is not produced by the recollection or expectation of good things, as Epicurus thought. For the soul’s movement is dissolved by the passage of time.

Aristippus’ Views: a) Particular pleasures are worth choosing for pleasure’s own sake — happiness is good not for its own sake, but because it promotes or comes from pleasure; and b) Pleasure is not the absence of pain, nor is pain the absence of pleasure. These are katastematic conditions, whereas ‘immediate’, or kinetic pleasures and pains are motions.

Letter to Menoeceus: Diogenes Laertius 10.121–135 (attributed to Epicurus)

And this is why we say that pleasure is the starting-point and goal of living blessedly. 129. For we recognized this as our first innate good, and this is our starting point for every choice and avoidance and we come to this by judging every good by the criterion of feeling. And it is just because this is the first innate good that we do not choose every pleasure; but sometimes we pass up many pleasures when we get a larger amount of what is uncongenial from them. And we believe many pains to be better than pleasures when a greater pleasure follows for a long while if we endure the pains. So every pleasure is a good thing, since it has a nature congenial [to us], but not every one is to be chosen. Just as every pain too is a bad thing, but not every one is such as to be always avoided.

130. It is, however, appropriate to make all these decisions by comparative measurement and an examination of the advantages and disadvantages. For at some times we treat the good thing as bad and, conversely, the bad thing as good. And we believe that self-sufficiency is a great good, not in order that we might make do with few things under all circumstances, but so that if we do not have a lot we can make do with few, being genuinely convinced that those who least need extravagance enjoy it most; and that everything natural is easy to obtain and whatever is groundless is hard to obtain; and that simple flavours provide a pleasure equal to that of an extravagant life-style when all pain from want is removed,

131. and barley cakes and water provide the highest pleasure when someone in want takes them. Therefore, becoming accustomed to simple, not extravagant, ways of life makes one completely healthy, makes man unhesitant in the face of life’s necessary duties, puts us in a better condition for the times of extravagance which occasionally come along, and makes us fearless in the face of chance. So when we say that pleasure is the goal we do not mean the pleasures of the profligate or the pleasures of consumption, as some believe, either from ignorance and disagreement or from deliberate misinterpretation, but rather the lack of pain in the body and disturbance in the soul.

132. For it is not drinking bouts and continuous partying and enjoying boys and women, or consuming fish and the other dainties of an extravagant table, which produce the pleasant life, but sober calculation which searches out the reasons for every choice and avoidance and drives out the opinions which are the source of the greatest turmoil for men’s souls.

According to Epicureanism… i) Although every pain is bad thing, particular pains are preferable if it should bring greater pleasure down the road ; ii) Extravagant sources of pleasure bring worse troubles for the soul. By limiting desires/want for extravagant pleasures, one drives out sources of potential pain for the soul

The Principal Doctrines: Diogenes Laertius 10.139–154

III. The removal of all feeling of pain is the limit of the magnitude of pleasures. Wherever a pleasurable feeling is present, for as long as it is present, there is neither a feeling of pain nor a feeling of distress, nor both together.

V. It is impossible to live pleasantly without living prudently, honourably, and justly and impossible to live prudently, honourably, and justly without living pleasantly. And whoever lacks this cannot live pleasantly.

VIII. No pleasure is a bad thing in itself. But the things which produce certain pleasures bring troubles many times greater than the pleasures.

X. If the things which produce the pleasures of profligate men dissolved the intellect’s fears about the phenomena of the heavens and about death and pains and, moreover, if they taught us the limit of our desires, then we would not have reason to criticize them, since they would be filled with pleasures from every source and would contain no feeling of pain or distress from any source—and that is what is bad.

XVIII. As soon as the feeling of pain produced by want is removed, pleasure in the flesh will not increase but is only varied. But the limit of mental pleasures is produced by a reasoning out of these very pleasures [of the flesh] and of the things related to these, which used to cause the greatest fears in the intellect.

Questions for Further Thought…

Can a hedonist consistently say that it would be against her own interest to spend tonight doing something more enjoyable than studying for tomorrow’s chemistry midterm?
Can a hedonist consistently forgo the enjoyment of a certain pleasure on the grounds that pursuing it would conflict a moral duty (for instance, because he has made a promise to a spouse that he will not have sexual relationships with other people)?

3. Can you think of anything besides pleasure that you seek out and desire purely for its own sake?

4. Hedonists are committed to the view that every pleasurable experience makes a positive contribution to the quality of a person’s life – even those that weren’t worth what they “cost” the person in the long run and those that were obtained at the price of immorality. Do you agree?