What’s the opposite of Stoicism, this austere philosophy based on toughness and resilience, virtue and service? Well, in the ancient world, it was Epicureanism–a philosophy that said that pleasure was the highest good. Could there be anything more different than Stoicism?
Diotimus the Stoic (whose story is told in Lives of the Stoics) despised the Epicureans. He thought they were not just soft, but that they were perverted gluttons. He would have been aghast at the fact that Seneca regularly quoted Epicurus in his Letters, even if Seneca stipulated that he was no Epicurean. To tarry in the garden? To avoid pain? This was the antithesis of what the Stoic was supposed to advise or celebrate.
As it happens, the Epicureans got a bad rap in the ancient world and in today’s. Part of that is because Diotimus spread lies about them (not very Stoic!), and part of it is because we just plain miss what they meant when they talked about pleasure. Which is why it’s worth quoting Epicurus’ famous Letter to Menoeceus, which clarifies it for us.
“By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of merrymaking, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul. Of all this the d is prudence. For this reason prudence is a more precious thing even than the other virtues, for ad a life of pleasure which is not also a life of prudence, honor, and justice; nor lead a life of prudence, honor, and justice, which is not also a life of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them.”
So maybe we don’t disagree as much as we think we do? Perhaps we are not rivals but kindred spirits. And instead of scorning the Epicureans, we should try, as Seneca did, to learn from them.
