Yesterday I gave an example of how Epicureanism could (and has been!) interpreted – as a selfish creed. I gave the example of the man who abandons a wife and kids out of selfish motives of personal pleasure, offering neither help nor support to the family he helped to create.
There are plenty of men whose lives have been like this, but I bet they are never free of the uneasy feeling of guilt, even if they never admit to it publicly. Pleasure comes from much more than immediate gratification of purely self-centered desires.
One of the most gratifying pleasures is giving pleasure to others. “It is more blessed to give than to receive”. The biblical quotation does not refer to giving presents. It refers to given of yourself and making others happy through thoughtfulness, generosity and caring; it comes from loyalty and the pride of having taken responsibility for your own decisions, stupid ones as well as good. Epicurus is reputed to have been a gentle, kind man. He wouldn’t complain about my interpretation.
I remember someone cautioning me, “You never know what happens inside someone else’s marriage”. One should forebear to judge. There are few who have the right to cast the first stone in any case. I think it does children no good to live with parents who fight constantly, and divorce is an acceptable way of dealing with this. But going off without giving financial support and without loving attention to the children (indeed, not even trying to put the marrige right) is not Epicurean. How can you have ataraxia under the abandonment scenario?