Do we make life more complicated than it needs to be?
Should we focus on pleasure, as the ancient philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC) advised? How does pleasure connect with wisdom (or does it)?
In the new book Living for Pleasure, philosophy Prof. Emily Austin (a recent podcast guest) writes, “Epicurus puts it in his notoriously wooden prose, ‘pleasure is the starting point and the goal of living blessedly.’”
Prof. Austin explains,
Telling someone to aim at pleasure seems like a very unpromising starting point for a self-improvement plan, much less an ethical approach to living. It sounds more like a recipe for insurmountable credit card debt, a series of failed relationships, and a life-long problem with alcohol. Ethics is demanding, but pursuing pleasure seems all too easy and all too destructive. We don’t need some old philosopher like Epicurus giving license to our failures of self-control and calling it ethics and happiness.
Although the last thing we should do is cavalierly dismiss Epicurus as a debauched glutton, writes Austin. We shouldn’t lose sight of how powerfully liberating it can be to hear that pleasure is good.
Epicurus is not the only one saying that we shouldn’t make life more difficult than it needs to be. Generally speaking, all wisdom traditions focus on helping us find tranquility or at least minimizing suffering.
In a previous conversation of Reading & the Good Life (free weekly meetup) discussed this passage from the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh,
"If you know how to make good use of the mud, you can grow beautiful lotuses. If you know how to make good use of suffering, you can produce happiness. We do need some suffering to make happiness possible. And most of us have enough suffering inside and around us to be able to do that. We don’t have to create more."
