The Daily Stoic - Epicurus’s Key to the Good Life

Episode Date: February 5, 2023

Today, Ryan presents a reading of Epicurus’s Letter to Menoeceus in which the philosopher and father of Epicureanism lays out to his friend why he believes that living a life of pleasure based on virtuous acts is the greatest good. This greatly influential work offers insights into ethics that can still be applied to our lives thousands of years later. To learn more about Epicurus and his work, check out The Art of Living at The Painted Porch.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target. The new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that you like here recommend here at Daily Stoic and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast.

In the old days, in the ancient days, the Epicureans and the Stoics were rivals. They hated each other. In fact, there's one Stoic I talk about in lives of the Stoics, this diotimus, who so hated Epicurus that he writes this series of letters that are purportedly to be bi-epicurus that are in fact forgeries to kind of frame the Epicurians as these hedonists, as these liars, as these bad influences. None of it was true, this is obviously a betrayal of stoses. But I think it just highlights the rivalry that was long believed to exist between these two major philosophical schools. In some ways, kind of the narcissism of small differences, because the stoics and the epicurions were closer than one might imagine, the epicurions weren't these pleasure-loving hedonists, and the stoics weren't these pleasure-hatingness and the Stoics weren't these pleasure hating

gluttons for punishments not by any means as we are going to talk about as you are going to see in today's episode. But I think it's worth pointing out, you know, who to send a quote more than any other philosopher. It's Epicurus. He quotes his rivals. He says because I read like a spy in the enemy's camp. He says I'll quote even a bad line. He said, I'll quote even a bad author if the line is good. Well, what we're gonna be doing today is quoting a whole letter, an actual letter, not a fraudulent one, from Epicurus himself. This is Epicurus' letter to Menesius. It's a fascinating letter, one I think you absolutely should listen to. It's sort of laying out his understanding of both ethics and the aesthetic life, how one finds pleasure not in sex or drugs, rock and roll or whatever, but in virtue itself

and it's never a bad time to hear someone speak as eloquently of virtue and the pleasures of the good life as Epicurus does in this letter. Enjoy. And if you want to read some more Epicurus, there is a great book called The Art of Living, which is from Penguin Classics. It's a collection of Epicurus' writings and his fragments. I used it as a source in stillness is the key. And I think you will like that. I would check that out and carry the painted porch. I will link to it in today's episode. Let no one win young, delay to study philosophy, nor when he is old, grow weary of his study. For no one can come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul. And the man who says that the age for philosophy has either not yet come or has gone by, is like the man who says that the age

for happiness is not yet come to him or has passed away. Wherefore both when young and old a man must study philosophy, that as he grows old he may be young in blessings through the grateful recollection of what has been, in that in youth he may be old as well, since he will know no fear of what is to come. We must then meditate on the things that make our happiness, seeing that when that is with us, we have all, but when it is absent, we do all to win it.

The things that I used increasingly to commend to you, these do and practice, considering them to be the first principles of the good life. First of all, believe that God is a being immortal and blessed, even as the common idea of a God is engraved on men's minds, and do not assign to him anything alien to his immortality, or ill-suited to his blessedness, but believe about him everything that can uphold his blessedness and immortality. For God's there are, since the knowledge of

them is by clear vision, but they are not such as the many believe them to be, for indeed they do not consistently represent them as they believe them to be. In the impious man is not He who denies the gods of the many, but He who attaches to the gods the beliefs of the many. For the statements of the many about the gods are not conceptions derived from sensation, but false suppositions, according to which the greatest misfortunes befall the wicked

and the greatest blessings, the good, by the gift of the gods. For men being accustomed always to their own virtues, welcome those like themselves, but regard all that is not of their nature as alien. Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us, for all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing

terrible in life, for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible and not living. So that the man speaks but idly, who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because it is painful in anticipation. For that, which gives no trouble when it comes, is but an empty pain in anticipation. So death, the most terrifying of ill, is nothing to us. Since so long as we exist, death is not with us. But when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead since the former it is not, and the latter are no

more. But the many at one moment shun death as the greatest of evils, at another yearn for it as a respite from the evils of life. But the wise man neither seeks to escape life nor fears the cessation of life. For neither does life offend him nor does the absence of life seem to be any evil. And just as with food, he does not seek simply the larger share and nothing else, but rather the most pleasant, so he seeks to enjoy not the longest period of time, but the most pleasant. And he who counsels the young man to live well, but the old man to make a good end is foolish, not merely because of the

desirability of life, but also because it is the same training which teaches to live well and to die well. Yet much worse still is the man who says it is good not to be born, but once born, make haste to pass the gates of death. For if he says this from conviction, why does he not pass away out of life? For it is open to him to do so, if he had firmly made up his mind to this. But if he speaks in jest, his words are idle among men who cannot receive them. We must then bear in mind that the future is neither ours nor yet wholly not ours so that we may not altogether expect it as sure to come, nor abandon hope of it as if it will certainly not come. We must consider that of desires some are natural, others vain, and of the natural

some are necessary, and others merely natural, and of the necessary some are necessary for happiness, others for the repose of the body, and others for very life. The right understanding of these facts enables us to refer all choice and avoidance to the health of the body and the soul's freedom from the distor, Epicurus, Letter to Manisus, two of two bands, since this is the aim of the life of blessedness. For it is to obtain this end that we always act, namely, to avoid pain and fear. And when this is once secured for us, all the tempest of the soul is dispersed, since the living creature

has not to wander as though in search of something that is missing, and to look for some other thing by which he can fulfill the good of the soul and the good of the body. For it is then that we have need of pleasure, when we feel pain, owing to the absence of pleasure, but when we do not feel pain, we no longer need pleasure. And for this cause, we will call pleasure the beginning and end of the blessed life. For we recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidanceance and to pleasure we return again

Using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good Is this thing all check one two one two Hey y'all I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress a singer an entrepreneur and a Virgo Just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Keep a Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a Bag Love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started, and there's so much I still want to do.

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Download the Amazon Music app today. And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this reason, we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them. And similarly, we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure, then because of its natural kinship to us, is good. Yet not every pleasure is to be chosen, even as

every pain also is an evil. Yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided. Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages, we must form our judgment on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions, we treat as bad, and conversely, the bad as good. And again, independence of desire, we think a great good, not that we may at all times enjoy but a few things, but that if we do not possess many, we may enjoy the few in the genuine persuasion that those have the sweetest pleasure in luxury who least need it, and that all that is natural is easy to be obtained. But that, which is superfluous, is hard. And so plain savers bring us a pleasure equal to a luxurious diet, when all the pain due to want is removed, and bread and water produce the highest pleasure, when one who needs them puts them to his lips.

To grow a custom therefor to simple and not luxurious diet gives us health to the full, and makes a man alert for the needful employments of life. And when after long intervals we approach luxuries, disposes us better towards them and fits us to be fearless of fortune. When, therefore, we maintain that pleasure is the end. We do not mean the pleasures of profflegates in those that consist in sensuality, as is supposed by some who are either ignorant or disagree with us or do not understand, but freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind.

For it is not continuous drinkings and revelings nor the satisfaction of lusts, nor the enjoyment of fish and other luxuries of the wealthy table, which produce a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, searching out the motives for all choice and avoidance, and banishing mere opinions to which are due the greatest disturbance of the Spirit. Of all this, the beginning and the greatest good is prudence. Wherefore prudence is a more precious thing even than philosophy, for from prudence are sprung all the other virtues and it teaches us that it is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently and honorably and justly, nor again to live a life of prudence, honor, and justice

without living pleasantly. For the virtues are by nature bound up with the pleasant life, and the pleasant life is inseparable from them. For indeed who think you is a better man than he who holds reverent opinions concerning the gods, and is at all times free from fear of death, and has reasoned out the end ordained by nature. He understands that the limit of good things is easy to fulfill and easy to attain, whereas the course of ill is either short in time or slight in pain.

He laughs at destiny, whom some have introduced as the mistress of all things. He thinks that with us lies the chief power in determining events, some of which happen by necessity and some by chance, and some are within our control. For while necessity cannot be called to account, he sees that chance is in constant, but that which is in our control is subject to no master, and to it are naturally attached, praise, and blame. For indeed, it were better to follow the myths about the gods than to become a slave to the destiny of the natural philosophers.

For the former suggests a hope of placating the gods by worship, whereas the latter involves a necessity that knows no playcation. As to chance, he does not regard it as a God as most men do. For in a God's acts, there is no disorder, nor as an uncertain cause of all things. For he does not believe that good and evil are given by chance to

man for the framing of a blessed life. But that opportunities for great good and great evil are afforded by it. He therefore thinks it better to be unfortunate and reasonable action than to prosper in unreason. For it is better in a man's actions that what is well chosen should fail, rather than that what is ill-chosen should be successful owing to chance. Meditate therefore on these things and things akin to them, night and day by yourself, and with a companion like to yourself, and never shall you be disturbed, waking, or asleep.

But you shall live like a God among men. For a man who lives among immortal blessings is not like to immortal being. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The Ops goes the way. You go as the enemy, stillness is the key. The leather bound edition of the Daily Stoke. We have them all in the Daily Stoke Store, which you can check out at store.dailystoke.com. Come.

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