A Christmas post about Epicureanism and happiness.
The aim of Epicureanism was to help people achieve happiness and live a good life. But how did Epicurus understand the ‘good life’?
Epicurus’ idea of happiness is quite different from most recent interpretations of the word. According to him, happiness was to be found only in a state of ataraxia (tranquillity, freedom from anxiety and stress). Happiness was thus defined negatively, as a condition that lacks worries and crises. Primarily, happiness was to be understood as a state of freedom from fear and from the pressure of needs (or from the perception of false needs, as in consumerism).
Epicurus summed up his personal cure to the disturbances and confusions that make life unhappy, in a neat formula of four points:
1 Don’t fear god (because gods are not bothered with human affairs)
2 Don’t fear death (because when death arrives, you are no longer there)
3 What is good is easy to get (because our natural needs are few and easy to satisfy)
4 What is terrible is easy to endure (because serious pains don’t last long, and minor pains are usually bearable).
In the end minor problems and inconveniences don’t matter that much. Certainly, not enough to affect your health and happiness.
Of course, the other, perhaps more important thing Epicurus recognized (as did the stoics and others) is that you have to think over these and other Epicurean precepts every day in order for them to take root and be reflexively available to your mind when you need them.