Notes on the concept of pleasure in Epicurus

Abstract

This article aims to examine the notion of pleasure (hedoné) as a telos of the happy life (makários zén) in Epicurus. Understood as the first good (agathòn prôton) and inherent to the human being, pleasure is presented as the beginning and the ultimate end (archê kai télos) of a happy life. Indeed, it should be noted that it is not the pleasures of the common people (which consist in the immoderate enjoyment of the senses) that Epicurus considers as the telos of a happy life, but the pleasure that is the absence of suffering in body and soul, which is named by Epicurus of katastematic pleasure (hedoné katastematiké) or static/at rest pleasure. In this sense, two concerns guide the present work: i) that of presenting pleasure as a telos of a happy life; ii) to expose the strict meaning that the concept of pleasure assumes in Epicurean philosophy (especially in ethics), paying attention to the distinction between pleasure in movement and pleasure at rest. The present study is based mainly on passages from the epistle to Meneceus, in some Main Maxims and Vatican Sentences, texts in which Epicurus exposes the foundations of his hedonism, as well as in the testimonies of later disciples, such as Tito Lucrécio Caro, Diogenes Laertius and Diogenes de Enoanda.