According to the documentary, Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness, Epicurus would be shocked to find that the word “Epicurean,” has come to mean a person who is devoted to the sensual pleasures of good food and comfort, since this is opposed to what he taught as the path to human happiness. He taught that pleasure was the basis of happiness, but that humans almost looked for it in the wrong place by pursuing wealth instead of in the real pleasures of friends, freedom, and quiet reflection.
Epicurus, Food, and Happiness
Epicurus lived from 341-270 B.C, but his ideas seem to be quite modern. According to the positive psychology movement, Epicurus was on the right track. He put his ideas into practice by buying a large house and inviting friends to live in it. He believed that meals should always be enjoyed with friends and that the food consumed was not nearly as important as the fellowship. In fact, he ate very simple meals and lived very frugally.
Epicurus, Friendship, and Happiness
He said, “Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.” Positive psychology agrees with Epicurus that friends and family are a major source of happiness, and one that people of modest means can enjoy.
Epicurus, Freedom, and Happiness
He considered freedom to be personal and not necessarily political and that the path to personal freedom is self-sufficiency. In order to be self-sufficient, Epicurus felt that one should live simply and owe money to no one. He moved with his friends to a rural region, where they lived together and worked to raise their own food; one of the earliest intentional communes. In addition to friends and freedom, Epicurus believed that a person needed time to step back and examine their life, something Socrates also encouraged.
Epicurus’ encouragement to enjoy the pleasures of life was contrary to the spiritual practice of asceticism, or mastering the bodily appetites. The practice of fasting and self-inflicted suffering as a means to happiness would be completely foreign to Epicurus and indeed even the Catholic St. Jerome issued a warning about pride connected with these practices, “Be on your guard when you begin to mortify your body by abstinence and fasting, lest you imagine yourself to be perfect and a saint; for perfection does not consist in this virtue.
