Quotation
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“Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion.”
Epicurus · Epicureanism · Ancient · c. 300 BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that pleasure is the root of choice, and that the pleasure he means is a stable freedom from bodily pain and mental turmoil, not a series of luxuries. A competing reading hears a licence for indulgence, which is the ancient slander he pauses to reject in the next sentences. The claim sits in the Letter to Menoeceus, where he distinguishes katastematic pleasure, the pleasure of an untroubled state, from kinetic pleasures that come and go. The garden's reputation for revels is the rival view.
Did Epicurus really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Secure in the letter. He immediately explains that he means the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul, not drinking bouts and revels.
Where it comes from
Letter to Menoeceus, Diogenes Laertius 10.129
Approximate date: c. 300 BCE.
How to use it
A Friday takeaway can be a calm end to a week or the start of a Saturday you will regret. Ask which kind you are buying. Epicurus ranks the pleasure that leaves you able to enjoy plain food and a quiet evening above the spike that wrecks the conditions of pleasure.
A mindset reading
Wanting pleasure is not, on his view, a moral failure. Wanting pleasures that destroy the conditions for pleasure is the failure. The habit is to judge a treat by the state it leaves, not by how intensely it arrives.
Understand the philosophy
Epicurus is answering people who think hedonism means drinking bouts. Pleasure, hēdonē, is the starting point of choice because we naturally pursue it. The wise person's version is ataraxia, freedom from disturbance, together with absence of pain. That is why 'Epicurean' as a synonym for luxury got the doctrine backwards already in antiquity.
- happiness
- ethics
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that pleasure is the root of choice, and that the pleasure he means is a stable freedom from bodily pain and mental turmoil, not a series of luxuries. A competing reading hears a licence for indulgence, which is the ancient slander he pauses to reject in the next sentences. The claim sits in the Letter to Menoeceus, where he distinguishes katastematic pleasure, the pleasure of an untroubled state, from kinetic pleasures that come and go. The garden's reputation for revels is the rival view.
Did Epicurus really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Secure in the letter. He immediately explains that he means the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul, not drinking bouts and revels.
Which work is it in?
Letter to Menoeceus, Diogenes Laertius 10.129 Approximate date: c. 300 BCE.