One of the fundamental questions of philosophy is what constitutes the ‘good life.’ For many, the ‘good life’ is one that involves and achieves happiness or fulfillment. Still, the specific methods to achieve the ‘good life’ and the exact natures of happiness and fulfillment are expounded from a wide range of philosophical perspectives. Platonic philosophy asserts a single, objective understanding of the good life: that one must live virtuously and honestly, following a certain set of values that make one more wise and good. Similarly, Aristotle – a student of Plato – argues in favor of “virtue ethics,” or acting virtuously with such habit that it becomes a part of one’s natural character, as a means of achieving ultimate happiness. Later, Saint Thomas Aquinas returned to Aristotelean thought through a religious perspective, claiming that only true Christians were those who could act virtuously and that happiness was essentially equal to the enjoyment of God. Epicureanism, on the other hand, proclaims the true manner of achieving fulfillment is to pursue one’s pleasures while avoiding pain, fear, and stress. Of all of these, Epicureanism proves the most philosophically sound; the difference between Epicurus’ definition of the “good life” and all other definitions is, in its simplest form, that Epicurus sees happiness purely in terms of pleasure, which is dependent upon the individual’s definitions of “good” and “bad,” whereas Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas all see it in terms of virtue, which depends on a universal definition of “good” and “bad.”
Epicureanism poses that a good life can simply be defined as one lived in pleasure – both physical and mental, as well as kinetic and catastematic – as opposed to fear, and claims that to achieve fulfillment – or eudaimonia – one should maximize their mental pleasures. In this way, Epicureanism proves a stronger philosophical argument, as it retains the notion brought about with Platonian and Aristotelian philosophy that man’s “ultimate end” is eudemonia while providing a clearer, more practical approach as to how one can achieve their fulfillment. For Epicurus, eudaimonia was synonymous with no specific action or virtue, but rather with the absence of pain and fear. The only way by which one can achieve happiness, he argued, is through pursuing pleasure; even then, the pleasures for which he advocated were not simply impulses, but instead were simple, rational pleasures that were guided by reason. Indeed, he noted in his Leading Doctrines that while “no pleasure is a bad thing in itself,” it is true that the way by which some achieve their pleasures may “bring with them disturbances many times greater than the pleasures” (citation; 181 in the book). By pointing this out, Epicurus emphasizes that while pleasures are inherently good and should be pursued, it is important to do reasonably and with understanding of the implications, providing a practical parameter to his approach.
In his teachings, Epicurus laid out specific and simple ways by which one can achieve happiness. By contrast, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle simply taught to act and live virtuously, without providing any sort of guideline as to what that might mean. Like Epicurus, Aristotle in particular believed in happiness as the ultimate end and purpose of human existence; moreover, both believed in the crucial importance of friendship to obtaining personal happiness. Aristotle taught that we can attain happiness by cultivating virtue, and that part of developing such virtue is to find a balance between the extremes of our emotions and thoughts. For instance, a courageous person falls in the middle between a cowardly person, who experiences an excess of fear, and a rash person, who sees every danger as worth facing and has a deficiency of fear. The courageous person, then, stands as an intermediate, experience an appropriate amount of fear for their circumstance.
Aristotle’s “theory of the mean” also proposes that whenever a virtuous person chooses to act virtuously, they are acting in some way that is “an intermediate between excess and defect,” or falls in between two extremes, as a virtuous act will strike the right balance (citation; page 137 in the book). With this theory, though, several issues arise: primarily, there are instances in which the two options one faces are not necessarily “extremes” in the normal sense of the word, but simply two distinguishable choices between which one must decide without Aristotle’s quantitative analysis. One example would be if a person had to choose between completing two competing obligations: both are equally important and meaningful, but overlap; which one is the better choice? In an instance such as this, the doctrine of the mean can not reasonably apply, making Aristotle’s argument less philosophically convincing. Yet another difficulty can be raised if we question how Aristotle decides which emotions and values are governed by the theory of the mean. Consider an athlete who loves to play tennis, for example. Is this passion something that every human being must feel at certain times and to a certain degree? Surely, anyone who has never felt this emotion or shared the athlete’s passion could still live a perfectly happy life, and the athlete could very well live a happy life without feeling the same emotions as others. Why, then, should we not say the same about the emotions built into Aristotle’s analysis of the ethically virtuous agent? Why should someone experience fear at all, or anger, or the high degree of concern for honor and wealth that Aristotle praises? These are precisely the questions Epicureanism raises, coming to the conclusion that such common feelings as fear and anger are inhibiting and unnecessary. A defense of Aristotle’s argument would have to demonstrate that the emotions that appear in his explanation of the virtues are necessary and valuable components of the ‘good life,’ when they are experienced properly. Perhaps such a defense could be made, but Aristotle himself does not attempt it.
In contrast to Epicurus, both Plato and Aristotle argue that pursuing one’s own pleasure is a selfish act, one that sets the soul out of proportion and ultimately makes one miserable; however, this counter does not hold up against Epicurean thought because, in addition to being unfalsifiable, it also asserts a single arbitrary definition by which some pleasures are bad or selfish and some are good and moral. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates notes that acting in favor of one’s self at the expense of another will make one’s soul “diseased,” and states that “good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices lead to vice” (Citation, 97). He makes this claim out of a hazy presupposition that happiness is a metaphysical state of perfection without actually defining that state, only providing slight hints as to what its different aspects might be. In neglecting to define the actions that pave the way for a good life, neither Socrates nor Plato rationally demonstrates any action is better than another, weakening their argument for objective virtues and truths.
Similarly, Epicurean thought holds up well against Thomas Aquinas’ modernization of Aristotelian thought. Aside from the fallacies of religious philosophy, Epicurus’ claim that all pleasures are good, which Aquinas denies, is independent from – and therefore does not refute – Epicurus’ claim that pleasure-seeking leads to a good life. In his writings, Aquinas states that not all pleasures are wrong – only the extraneous ones that are “immoderate” and “contrary to reason” (230). He also claims in his Summa Theologica that “Epicureans seem to have thus erred in not discriminating between that which is good simply, and that which is good in respect of a particular individual” (citation). While Aquinas is correct to some degree, the implications of his claim are wrong: he uses this as a counter to Epicureanism, when in reality, Epicurus believes that it doesn’t actually matter whether something is universally good or only good for an individual. In the end, one’s happiness depends upon whether they have pursued their pleasures, regardless of whether those pleasures are universally good and pleasurable. Like Aristotle’s argument for virtue ethics, Aquinas’ statement that some pleasures are good and some are evil proves futile in light of Epicureanism. So long as one has achieved their pleasure, it is irrelevant whether the pleasure is “good”; either way, the person will still be happy, and thus living a good life. Aquinas’ philosophy as a whole is unsubstantiated because it assumes several things: firstly, that there is a God; secondly, that those who follow and believe in God are inherently more virtuous than those who aren’t; and thirdly, that those who don’t believe in God are unable to experience the greatest happiness, since “the enjoyment of God… may be said to be the greatest among human goods” (Summa Theologica). Epicurus’ materialist perspective, on the other hand accounts for this assumption: if there is a God, he claimed, then that being has no interference with human life, and so we should not live in fear of God’s judgement and what happens after we die. Additionally, Epicurus’ materialism even accounts for the famous “problem of evil,” which questions how there can be evil if God is good and omnipotent (arguing that since God does not intervene in human life, he cannot eliminate evil). Clearly, Epicureanism provides answers to many of the questions left open by Aquinas’ school of thought.
Through a train of logical, case-by-case thought, Epicureanism proves to triumph over ancient philosophy in defining the ‘good life’ by providing a concrete, non-objective, yet still obtainable means of reaching happiness. But perhaps what proves the strongest characteristic of Epicureanism is its universality without objectivity. By promoting freedom of the individual, which may actually seem more segregating than unifying, Epicurus actually creates a universally applicable school of thought: anyone can achieve the good life, since anyone can reasonably pursue their pleasures. For Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, only certain people were able to be virtuous and thus achieve happiness. Any philosophy that can apply universally gets closer to answering the fundamental questions of philosophy or providing a true definition of the ‘good life,’ and Epicureanism does precisely that.