One thing we may have forgotten in the past is the practice of philosophy as a ‘way of life.’ When we hear of philosophy we immediately think of centuries-old university spires with academics hunched over tomes or engrossed in the abstract study of logic. Even in the Classics departments, professors may teach Plato’s Republic or Stoic ‘spiritual exercises’ but contradict these ideas in their own practice.
Moreover, philosophy itself has become an occupation for those with the dedication and good fortune to pursue it professionally and a hobby for the rest. In both cases it looks very different to what the Ancient Greeks had in mind. In ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life,’ French philosopher Pierre Hadot writes that ancient “philosophy was a mode of existing-in-the-world, which had to be practiced at each instant and the goal of which was to transform the whole of the individual’s life.”
Today, philosophy is at best a discipline and at worst a marketing trope used to add depth to otherwise shallow taglines. As tech pundits and legal professionals quote Heraclitus on LinkedIn [“change is the only constant”] and university departments turn to the ethics of Artificial Intelligence, now more than ever, we must return to the moral question par excellence: what makes a good life?
The major Athenian schools in the Classical and the Hellenistic eras, despite their differences, all believed happiness to be the goal of life. For Plato, happiness was the perfection of the virtues and the harmony of the soul. For Aristotle, it was the life of reason combined with virtue and sustained by habit. The Stoics believed it was virtue and independence from emotion and desire. In the history of Greek philosophy, Epicurus represents a marginalised figure often misunderstood within whose work we find a truly remarkable approach to philosophy as a way of life.
Epicurus inverted the procedure of the great philosophers. He believed we needed to understand how happiness affected our being in order to develop a method of producing it. His frustration with popular philosophy was this: Aristotle, Plato and the Stoics all offered different paths to happiness, and while their respective methods varied, the overarching goal remained the same. It was clear that they offered methods to produce happiness but failed to sufficiently clarify what happiness actually was. To define happiness clearly would be to understand what these theories had in common. Epicurus abandoned all conventional beliefs and returned to nature to recalibrate an understanding of happiness according to natural necessity. His became a study of the psychology of happiness.
Epicurus begins by observing that every animal experiences pleasure and pain as the basis of every choice and avoidance. He then considers a human infant in the state of nature; before the influence of instruction or culture. Independently or ‘by its nature’ the infant pursues pleasure and avoids pain, and this is the starting point for Epicurus’ natural ethics. As the infant develops and their experience diversifies, they encounter an entire spectrum of emotion and their understanding of pleasure deepens. They become capable of recognising the feeling of satisfaction that follows the pleasure inherent in a given activity; of drinking water on a hot day and the feeling of having your thirst quenched.
Epicurean psychology understands that pleasure is the natural goal of life; the greatest pleasure is the removal of all pain, or the pleasure of existence; and happiness is the ability to surmount disruptions and return to this state throughout one’s life. Regardless of how we satisfy which desires, we will ultimately be as happy as we are free from pain in the body and trouble in the mind.
Philosophy becomes the ‘art of life’ or the discipline of assessing every choice and avoidance and navigating circumstances in the pursuit of serenity. It isn’t something we take a break from or would ever need to; neither an occupation or a hobby but a way of life. When happiness is clearly defined, that is, reduced to psychological principles, it becomes incredibly simple. We don’t need wealth or status or luxury. All we need is shelter, food, drink and friendship, and once we have these things “we may rival Zeus in happiness.”
Epicurus was a heterodox and his philosophy caused outrage in Athens. He was labelled an ‘enemy of culture’ and efforts were made to misrepresent his teaching both during his lifetime and after his death. The portrait of Epicurus as a ‘sensual hedonist’ that lingers today is a caricature, as one historian notes:
“This complete reversal of the Platonic programme is almost universally described in the histories and handbooks as evidence of a total indifference to Greek culture. It is on the
contrary the salvation of its most characteristic and vital element, its essential originality, the unique thing it contributed to the world, the pursuit of natural knowledge and the endeavour to base life upon it.”
By abandoning popular morality and focussing on the psychology of happiness, Epicurus both emphasises the practice of philosophy as a ‘way of life’ and preserves the sort of thinking that made Ancient Greek special to begin with.
